From backyard growers to full-fledged farmers, Island residents seem to have caught chicken fever.

The Island Grown Initiative hosted an all-day Vineyard workshop on the bird Saturday, which covered the ground from egg to plate.

It’s on! The writers’ strike is over, and glittering preparations are under way for Hollywood’s annual Academy Awards presentation — as well as for the Island’s very Vineyard version of the Vanity Fair party, the third annual Oscar Night Benefit with the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society.

A retaining wall estimated to weigh about 30 tons holding up a steeply sloping bank along Sea View avenue in Oak Bluffs collapsed suddenly Wednesday morning, sending town officials scrambling to repair the wall in time for the summer season and raising fresh questions about the structural integrity of certain parts of the town waterfront.

Faced with a budget deficit of as much as $2 million — the largest in town history — Oak Bluffs selectmen on Tuesday debated a wide range of painful cost-cutting measures, including eliminating salaries for elected officials, combining debt with other towns, restructuring town departments and eliminating positions.

The Boston Pops concert at Ocean Park in Oak Bluffs was a highlight of summer last year, and with an attendance figure of 5,000 people it ranked among the most attended Island event of the season.

Building on last year’s success, promoters this year want to expand the concert to include food and alcohol sales and also have a longer running time from early afternoon to late evening. They also want to put up high barricades along Seaview avenue to control crowds and to block people from watching the concert for free along the road and town beach.

Beer and wine: fine? Or, wine and beer: oh dear? A barbed public discussion at the Katharine Cornell Theatre Tuesday night appeared to bring neither residents nor selectmen any closer to which of these — if either — should be Tisbury’s town slogan going into the annual town election this spring.

And in the lead-up to April 15 — when voters will decide on whether to allow the town to license the sale of beer and wine by restaurants and cafes of a certain size — few residents at the meeting were seeing the lighter side.

The founder of the Vineyard Energy Project, Kate Warner, is preparing to step down as director as the VEP shifts its focus from primarily education and advocacy to practical implementation of energy saving measures.

In Sengekontacket Pond in mid-February, there is no competition for shellfish. Kyle L. Peters, 47, of Oak Bluffs had the pond to himself.

Mr. Peters was fishing the flats, tolerating the wind and the cold, working amid drifting ice.

About a quarter mile away, Mr. Peters had an observer. A harbor seal sat on the beach at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary for most of the week. The reclining seal occasionally turned its head to watch Mr. Peters in his distinctly bright orange overcoat.

Dean’s List

Michael Gately of West Tisbury has been named to the dean’s list during the fall 2007 semester at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay.

A Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School senior may have saved the life of an Oak Bluffs man Monday night after he fell into the frigid waters of the Oak Bluffs harbor and was unable to pull himself to safety.

Shelagh Kelley, 18, was inside her family’s home on East Chop Drive around 11 p.m. when she heard the faint cries of someone in distress. She alerted her mother Patricia and her father Rick Kelley, a state police lieutenant who works off-Island, and together they strained to listen to determine where the cries were coming from.