Summer Reading

School’s out so let the reading begin. The type of summer reading that can go on for hours and hours uninterrupted by anything except maybe a balmy breeze off the ocean.

But just because reading is a solitary affair there’s no need to do it alone. Head out to the West Tisbury Library this Saturday, June 25 to sign up for summer reading and learn how many books you get to read this summer to win a cool T-shirt. A double winner if there ever was one.

Oh, good grief. It is an Empidonax flycatcher. They all look the same, they are not very bright — drab greenish, as one bird field guide suggests. They all have whitish wing bars during nesting season and they all boast eyerings.

I received the AARP magazine in the mail. Now there is a publication I never thought I would receive, much less enjoy.

It was without a doubt the best Father’s Day bouquet that I had ever seen.

Elegant in its simplicity, this gift was clearly created with love and affection. It was made of found objects and plants collected in the yard. The vase was an empty Guinness beer can, well-rinsed and shined up, with the top of the can removed. A few flowers and grasses from the yard were cut and put into this special container. It was perfect.

Oak Bluffs will cover shortfalls in the current town budget with money from the town’s rainy day fund, after 100 people met Tuesday night for a special town meeting at the Oak Bluffs School.

Voters agreed to transfer $106,000 from the town’s stabilization fund to cover higher-than-budgeted health insurance costs for town employees.

Lauren Franklin

Lauren Kate Franklin, of Vineyard Haven, graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in communication studies.

The Vineyard Playhouse hopes to raise $1 million this summer in the first phase of a $5 million capital campaign that encompasses the renovation, restoration and expansion of the historic theatre on Church street in Vineyard Haven.

The restoration already has begun. With Community Preservation Act funds and private donations, the playhouse has installed new wood clapboard siding and windows on three sides of the building, and a new fire-safety sprinkler system.

The Road to Sagarmatha,> by Adam Wilson, Xlibris Corporation, Indianapolis, IN 2011, 284 pages, hardcover, $29.99.

A valiant effort to save the life of two malnourished baby otters came to an end over the weekend.

One otter, found in a yard in Oak Bluffs on Thursday afternoon and sent Friday morning to the Trailside Museum in Milton, died over the weekend. A second baby otter, recovered on Friday not far from where the first otter had been found, also died.

The two otters, about eight weeks old, lost their mother when she was hit and killed on Barnes Road in Oak Bluffs on the morning of June 7.

Foreclosure proceedings have begun on the Bradley Square property in Oak Bluffs, four years after the Island Affordable Housing Fund began an ambitious redevelopment scheme that never got off the ground.

The nonprofit housing fund — recently renamed the Martha’s Vineyard Housing Fund — owes the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank almost $750,000 in principal, interest and late fees on a mortgage that has seen no payments made on it since at least last year.