By JULIAN WISE

The dog days of summer take on a whole new meaning as New York artist Judith Gwyn Brown is now offering a portion of the proceeds of her commissioned pet portraits to P.A.W.S. of the Vineyard, the all-volunteer, nonprofit Pet Adoption and Welfare Service of Martha’s Vineyard.

Proceeds from Ms. Brown’s pet portraits can be designated to provide coupons to Vineyard pet owners to help alleviate the ever-rising cost of spaying or neutering.

LIPMAN PIKE: America’s First Home Run King . By Richard Michelson . Sleeping Bear Press. 32 pages, photographs. $16.95.

Every August I look forward to the Chicken Alley Sale at the Vineyard Haven Thrift Shop. For 10 years, Olga Hirshhorn has organized, supervised and advertised her pet Vineyard project and her hard work and imaginative impulses have been richly rewarded. The Chicken Alley Sale has made hundreds of thousands of dollars for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and given hundreds of people a chance to snatch up a vast number of donated items, proving the theory once again, that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

He never thought of the era when he wrote TV comedy as the Golden Age. For him that honorific was reserved for the earlier epoch of Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner. But Marty Nadler, staff writer and producer in the 70s and 80s of Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Chico and the Man, The Odd Couple, Perfect Strangers, Valerie, and Amen, was part of a time in Hollywood entertainment that, hands down, is considered Most Funny.

The first time Leonard Bernstein laid his young fingers on the keys of a piano at the age of 10 he felt as though he had been touched by God.

He would sit at the piano, hour after hour, his father berating him to quit playing while his mother encouraged him to continue. Even growing up in a hostile environment with only his aunt’s piano as musical inspiration couldn’t stop him from becoming one of the most watched and listened to musicians in the world.

Perhaps even the greatest American musician, ever.

It was hard to believe the witty and talented musician who played at the Yard last Tuesday night to promote the release of his first CD heard his own music on the radio for the first time that very morning. The artist, Ollie Childs, and his wife and manager, Alix, had been out driving around the Island when WMVY radio debuted a song from All in Good Time.

It was an emotional moment for the young couple, and, as Mr. Childs put it, quite “surreal.”

Ken Alleyne doesn’t let rain get between him and jazz. Sitting on his beach chair, even when it meant simultaneously clutching his umbrella, Dr. Alleyne will take in the acts at the world famous Newport Jazz Festival, which goes on rain or shine. But as he and his wife began spending more of the summer on the Vineyard, he started missing the annual outdoor jazz event. So instead of tearing himself away from his home in Harthaven, Dr. Alleyne decided to bring jazz to Martha’s Vineyard.

The key to a great seafood meal on the Vineyard naturally lies in the best ingredients: just-caught fish, farm-fresh produce and a talented chef.

At the second annual Seafood Throwdown on Saturday, the organizers brought all three together in the hot summer sun at the West Tisbury Farmers’ Market.

A competition between two Island chefs, the throwdown is designed to raise awareness about locally-caught fish and an Island initiative called Vineyard Wild Caught Seafood.

Hebrew Center Conversation

Jewish women living in the U.S., committed to social justice and a strong Israel, will share their experiences when mother and daughter Shulamit Reinharz and Naomi Reinharz speak at the Hebrew Center on August 22 at 7:30 p.m.

Presented by the Jewish Federation of Cape Cod, the talk is a fundraiser.