Parenting Talk

Dayle Pomerantz, a parent skills coach and child development specialist will share her latest book, Secrets of Great Parents, and explore successful parent-child relationships, on Thursday, August 7, at 4:30 p.m. at the West Tisbury library. The talk is free with refreshments. For details, call 508-693-3366.

Receives Degree

Michelle Holmberg of Oak Bluffs recently received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn.

They’re back — in record numbers.

After capturing and releasing four osprey fledglings last week from two Island locations, Dr. Rob Bierregaard said the Island now hosts 70 pair of summering osprey, “as many as there have ever been [in recorded history] on the Island.”

The University of North Carolina biologist should know. He’s been researching the Island osprey population since the early 1970s, shortly after Island naturalist Gus Ben David set about protecting and expanding the handful of surviving osprey pairs in 1969.

Island Baseball

The big turnout for the Cape Cod Baseball League game held two weeks ago at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is strong evidence that the league and Vineyard baseball enthusiasts should seriously explore creating a league team for the Island, or moving a league team here.

At a dinner party recently, I listened as the person next to me answered my standard dinner party question: what brought you to the Vineyard?

The response: “I wanted to go someplace where I could walk a little slower.”

It made me stop and think.

I myself am a fast walker. And this time of year, I walk on the street because the sidewalks are clogged with summertime dawdlers and packs of window shoppers. They slow me down.

Here we stand at the beginning of August, the maw of summer where the maelstrom of Vineyard life swallows us whole each year. Instead of the mythical long lazy days of summer we all secretly hunger for, we are faced with the prospect of plunging into the morass of fund-raisers, silent auctions, galas and champagne receptions. It is August, the season of flaring tempers, traffic jams and major event overload. August, the month that requires a wall-mounted dry erase board, a date planner, a Blackberry and at least one personal assistant to keep it all straight.

MISQUOTED

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

Maybe you have had this experience: a reporter from one of the local newspapers calls you and asks your opinion about something — for example, how you’re finding this season — is it slow, is it strong, whatever? Maybe you are even flattered that you’re being asked. And maybe you’re naive enough to think that whatever you candidly say will not be distorted.

The Vineyard in August: ample time to amble, more than enough moments to mosey, and reasons aplenty to roam and rove. But when it comes to art, there is only one way to take it in and that is to stroll. “It’s like an arts block party with people just mingling in the warmest, friendliest way you could imagine,” said Judy Hartford, owner of the Red Mannequin, a boutique clothing store on Dukes County avenue, smack in the center of the Oak Bluffs arts district.

Radcliffe Party

All Radcliffe and Harvard-Radcliffe alumnae and their guests are invited to a party on Monday, August 18, from 5 to 7 p.m. on the porch at 143 Munroe avenue, East Chop, Oak Bluffs.

Bring an hors d’oeuvres dish if you come. Beverages will be provided. Please call Wini Young Blacklow at 508-693-3346 or Claire Richardson Bennett at 508-627-7121 for directions.

Singer-songwriter Bella will be performing a bossa nova show at Che’s Lounge every Tuesday through August at 7 p.m.

Called Bossa on the Moon, the show includes original songs and classics of samba, jazz and blues that Bella swings on her guitar and her cavaquinho, a soprano Brazilian guitar.

On the set list there will be sweet summer treats like Samba Chocolate and Samba Noir by Bella, and standards such as The Little Boat and Fly Me to the Moon with a bossa arrangement.