Spokesmen for MassHighway said this week that a plan to close Beach Road for six months to replace the Big Bridge and Little Bridge will not happen.

Last month, the Acton-based construction firm MIG Corporation filed a detour proposal with MassHighway requesting that Beach Road along Joseph Sylvia State Beach be closed from the start of construction until Memorial Day.

The news came as a surprise to Oak Bluffs and Edgartown officials, who knew about the planned bridge work but not about the plan to close the road.

The Vineyard bay scallop season is underway and the news is mostly good for local consumers and commercial fishermen alike. Chilmark is having one of its best seasons in years; Edgartown is having one of its worst. Oak Bluffs and Tisbury are doing fine and on Monday another banner year is set to open in Aquinnah.

How to handle a $40 million school budget — ratified months ahead of other annual town budgets — during a recession. That is the vexing question now facing school and finance committee leaders across the Island.

Move the town budget season forward? Push the school process back? Scrap the current budgets and start over with a fixed, lower bottom line?

Affordable child care on the Vineyard has been suddenly and severely curtailed due to state budget shortfalls.

Already, no new Island children are being funded; as of Nov. 3, even eligible working parents are being placed on waiting lists indefinitely, Vineyard child care advocates confirmed this week. Because of a multimillion dollar deficit, the state department that handles early childhood education has unilaterally frozen child care assistance for low-income families.

Announcing Cole

Linda Mosley Corfield and Eric Corfield announce the birth of a son, Cole William Corfield, born on August 8, 2008. Cole weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces at birth. We is welcomed by sister Grace and Hannah and brother Christopher, as well as by grandparents David and Eleanor Corfield of Edgartown and Phylllis and Miles Goff.

By LYNNE IRONS

We have had a series of what the Irish call soft days — warm, foggy, misty and calm. It has been pleasurable to work outdoors. We have a rule in our small gardening company. We don’t work under 20 degrees all day and we go home if it rains up our noses while bending over in a flower bed. Otherwise we are a hardy sort with a moderate amount of whining. Nevertheless starting the day in the rain tends to make everyone fairly sour.

It is a killer.

Not a lady killer, but a livestock killer. The common names of Kalma angustifolia say it all; sheepkill, lambkill and calfkill. With aliases like that, you’d think that this plant definitely has a public relations problem on its hands.

Its common names speak to a characteristic that is worrisome (to say the least) for the shepherd. This plant is a mean, green poisoning machine!

November is the season for a suite of visitors I call the open-country birds. This is a diverse group of species connected not by taxonomy or point of origin, but rather by migratory habits, a tendency to flock in winter, and a preference for austere habitats like beaches, grassland, and large pastures. While some of these species are easy to find and identify, others are wary and hence typically seen at a distance; to recognize them, a birder needs sharp eyes and ears and the ability to note subtle field marks at a long range.

When it comes to the off-season, the Vineyard shines at a couple things. One is dancing. Another is dessert. Last Saturday at the annual Barnraisers’ Ball at the Agricultural Hall, there was plenty of both, set to the music of Johnny Hoy and the Bluefish that kept the barn bouncing.

Island Art Talk

Melissa Breese of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association’s Old Sculpin Gallery and studio school will present a talk about selected works from the Permanent Collection of art made on the Vineyard from 1897 to the present, on Sunday, Nov. 16 from 1 to 2 p.m. at the Louisa Gould Gallery on Main street in Vineyard Haven.