Hello, Gloriannie

Martha Carolina Espinoza and Adarlécio Do Amaral of Edgartown announce the birth of a daughter, Gloriannie C. Amaral-Espinoza, born on Feb. 2, 2011, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Goriannie weighed 6 pounds, 10.4 ounces at birth.

Travel to Flower Show

The groundhog checked out the scene and by not seeing his shadow declared spring is on the way. Perhaps there’s some measure of truth in this seemingly arbitrary tradition. A few days later, rain came and washed away all the snow and ice. Perhaps flowers will be in bloom soon.

Feeling Fourth Grade

Do you remember who you were, let alone what you thought in the fourth grade? And even if you do, ah, Miss Fenner who yelled so ferociously one day she popped a blood vessel in her eye, Randy Kibler and his new hairdo like a dog with mange and Tammy Kerchner with the ski-sloped nose and macrame vests whose parents were a bit nervous because you came by every single day to visit, was it ever immortalized on stage?

Dogs of Love

Chilmark Chocolates is open again just in time for Valentine’s Day. On your way to pick up sweets for your sweet, stop by the Chilmark outpost of Sovereign Bank to check out an art exhibit featuring work by Lisa Vanderhoop.

The wizard behind the Seadogs calendar, Ms. Vanderhoop will be showing and selling her work.

The major theme of the exhibit is Valentine’s cards - from a canine perspective, of course. Calendars will also be for sale at a discount.

Screenwriting Class

There’s an old adage that character is story. Sounds good. After all, what is a story without a bunch of folks doing stuff to advance the plot. But what then is character? And even more important, how to get someone to care about the characters you invent.

The former head of New York’s Dance Theater Workshop, David R. White, last week joined the Yard as consulting artistic director.

Hold your breath> , make a wish, count to three. In the world of Willy Wonka, there is no life comparable to pure imagination. Chocolate rivers, everlasting gobstoppers and candied flowers in a sugarcoated meadow are the norm, a three-course dinner can be served in a piece of gum, and words like snozzwangers and wangdoodles are used in everyday conversation.

A Balm for Mother Earth

It’s never easy being a mother. But imagine being mother to 6,898,909,932 people. And that number of children represents just this exact moment. By the time you finish reading this at least another few million births will be added.

Even after they were done rehearsing the finale last weekend, the performers in MV Glee didn’t want to take off their strappy high-heeled shoes. A group of middle school girls clacked around the Space at the Triangle in between takes of the Lady Gaga’s song Bad Romance to check their cell phones or steal a bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

But MV Glee cofounder and choreographer Sandra Stone-Benjamin wanted to make sure their clawed hands were as gnarly looking as the pop star’s in her music video.

“You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”

These are clearly not the words of a doting parent nor were they possibly encouraging to a budding scholar and scientist. They are, however, the rantings of Charles Darwin’s father.