After a successul start this week — with eight writers, from the well-known Shirley Mayhew to charter school student and emerging novelist Hannah Vanderlaske, wowing the audience with their works in progress — Open Mic Night for Writers continues this Tuesday at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Main street in Vineyard Haven.

The evening’s emcee will be West Tisbury poet Laura D. Roosevelt.

Anyone currently working on a novel, short story, poetry or essay is invited to read for five minutes.

The Farm Institute in Katama is offering spring seasonal programming for ages two and up. Programs run from March 23 through May 29 and families can sign up for a series or individual sessions.

The Tuesday After School program offers kids six and older hands-on learning about our food systems, sustainable agriculture and taking care of the land. It runs weekly from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Cost is $15 per session or $120 for 10 sessions.

Please Adopt Us

The Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard has a few nice animals who need good homes.

Stop thief!

On the beach last weekend, it wasn’t a purse snatcher that had me worried. It was a robber of another sort, a beach bandit that makes off with more than just money and jewels. It steals habitat, health and shellfish wealth.

What’s the cliche — “It took an act of Congress”? While Congress hasn’t done much lately, through the years there has been agreement to shift the way the nation’s mornings and late afternoons are timed through the changing year. The shift this weekend from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time is still for the moment an unusually nonpartisan issue. Congress has been tweaking with the shift in time for at least 90 years.

Lamenting in short order “that three and a half hour shambles on Sunday night,” the Academy Awards; the “very stupid piece in the New York Times this morning which implies that the popular movies should have won the awards;” and the news that show-business trade magazine Variety had fired its veteran critic — “that’s really an outrage” — David Denby sounds every bit the articulate, authoratative film critic he is every other week in the New Yorker magazine.

Temperature: Precip.

Day Max. Min. Inches.

Fº Fº

March 5 36 31 .16*

March 6 38 31 .00

March 7 52 32 .00

March 8 55 35 .00

March 9 59 32 .00

March 10 53 29 .00

March 11 52 32 .00

*Melted Precipitation

By LYNNE IRONS

Kathie Case>

508-627-5349

(kathleencase@comcast.net)

This was the week for the windows to be open for a little to change the air in the house, the clothes made it to the line, and there was a lot of raking outside. It was really fabulous and I know that Mother Nature has really teased us.

Happy birthday to all who celebrated their birthday this past week. Big balloons go out to Joseph Pinto, who celebrated March 6; William Bruguiere, March 7; Kya Maloney, March 8; and to Ava Thors, who celebrated her day March 11.

Once the Christmas Bird Count has come and gone, memorable birding experiences can be hard to come by in the dead of winter. What tops the list for me is the avian activity that conveniently takes place right outside my kitchen window at the bird feeders. The number of birds using my feeders this winter is way down. It took me a while to catch on, but the reason eventually became clear. In past years a marauding Cooper’s hawk has been the culprit — sometimes a beautiful adult with blue-gray plumage, and sometimes a brown-backed youngster. Their stealth tactics are worthy of awe and their speed a little frightening.