Last Call for Chowder

The last New England chowder supper of the season at the Federated Church in Edgartown will be held Thursday, August 14. Supper will be served from 6 to 7:15 p.m. The cost is $8 for adults and $5 for children. Proceeds benefit the Island Food Pantry. A Vineyard Sound concert will begin at 8 p.m. in the church meetinghouse. For information call 508-627-6040.

On Sunday, August 10, the preacher and celebrant at Trinity Episcopal Church, Oak Bluffs will be the Rev. Stephanie Spellers. Services begin at 9 a.m. The church is opposite the Steamship Authority wharf in Oak Bluffs.

Lama Yeshe Drolma has returned for her eighth year of teaching at The Bodhi Path Buddhist Center in West Tisbury to give a series of teachings in August and September.

Beginning Sunday, August 10 at 10 a.m. running through Sunday, Sept. 28, Lama Yeshe will teach on the topic Samsara and Nivana, explaining the significance of these Buddhist terms which describe the state of all sentient beings trapped in suffering and the path beyond it.

Falmouth Academy Honors

Seventy-nine students were named to the Falmouth Academy Headmaster’s List for the third trimester of the 2007-2008 academic year. To be named to the list, students must earn at least three As in their five core subjects and have no grade lower than a B minus.

Degrees

Two Oak Bluffs residents recently received degrees from Simmons College in Boston. They are Morning Star Tarter, who received a bachelor of science degree in nursing, and Whitney Burke, who received a master’s degree in library and information science.

Dean’s List

Emmeline C. Brown of Oak Bluffs has been named to second honors on the dean’s list at Clark University in Worcester.

Jupiter is the big man on campus in the August night sky. While not a star athlete, or even a star, it is certainly among the biggest and brightest.

By LYNNE IRONS

While sitting once again in traffic, I was developing a bad attitude. I began seeing weeds, dead flower heads, planters needing water, and general neglect all over town. I was thinking, in a darkly humored moment, of pointing out some of those places in next week’s column.

West Tisbury selectmen are considering a new bylaw that would prohibit registered sex offenders from living or loitering near public spaces like schools, bus stops, day care centers, parks and playgrounds.

Town resident Kelly Wilson presented an early version of the bylaw to selectmen on Wednesday, a five-page document she drafted along with police chief Beth Toomey. Ms. Wilson told selectmen she herself was a victim of sexual abuse when she was young, and urged selectmen to adopt the plan to prevent abuse in the future.

After more than two years of debate and planning at the local and state level, time literally ran out last week on a proposal to impose a one per cent tax increase on the sale of more expensive homes on the Vineyard to pay for affordable housing.

Two days before a special town meeting, Aquinnah selectmen are sharply divided over whether a pioneering energy bylaw should go to a vote, leaving the future uncertain for the Island’s first set of regulations on energy use.

A 16-page document, the energy bylaw remains largely unchanged from when it failed to achieve a needed two-thirds majority at the final session of the annual town meeting in June. A series of amendments to the bylaw were still being worked on at press time yesterday and were due in at the selectmen’s office this morning.