The Island’s surviving home health care agency has a full plate.

The Vineyard Nursing Association is moving quickly to absorb a 50 per cent increase in patients and a 20 per cent increase in employees while expanding its services and stepping up professional training for its employees, said Robert Tonti, chief executive officer of the association.

And Mr. Tonti has started the process of finding larger space to accommodate the unexpected growth.

Hello, Aquinnah

Kendra and Will Adams of Studio City, Calif., announce the birth of Aquinnah Abigail Adams on May 30. Quinn is the great-granddaughter and 17th great-grandchild of Helen Jackson of Edgartown. Her grandparents are Marilyn and Bill Adams of Quincy and Gail and Peter Raynsford of McConnelsville, N.Y. Quinn plans to visit the Vineyard in August.

A key subcommittee of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission on Monday voted without dissent to recommend approval for the Bradley Square project in Oak Bluffs with a list of conditions, perhaps paving the way for the full commission to endorse the mixed-used affordable housing project when it begins deliberations in the coming weeks.

Former chancellor of the University of Connecticut health center Dr. Les Cutler presents The Health Care Dilemma: How We Got Here, Where Can We Go, How Do We Get There? on Wednesday, June 11, at 5:30 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Public Library, his lecture is free and all are welcome.

In addition to serving as chancellor, Dr. Cutler was president and chief executive of the University of Connecticut Health System and its Finance Corporation from 1992 to 2000.

Last Friday afternoon at four o’clock, a woman on a red moped tossed a clear plastic water bottle off the eastbound side of the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road.

On Tuesday morning, Steve Duarte picked it up for her.

The simple act represented a huge change in the life of a man who was sitting in Barnstable county jail 12 months ago, serving the second year of a five-year sentence for a drug offense.

Again.

Public Safety Day

Public Safety Day, a family event sponsored by the Oak Bluffs police department, is set for Saturday, June 7, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The event will be held at the Dennis Alley Park (formerly Waban Park) on Sea View avenue. Event participants will include the Oak Bluffs police and fire departments and the U.S. Coast Guard.

Women’s Support

Pattern changing — a weekly support group exploring healthy and unhealthy patterns in relationships will begin on June 17, and will feature six weeks of discussions, skill building and support. If interested, please call Women’s Support Services at 508-693-7900, extension 219.

As many as 100 ceramic works of art were heated in the Featherstone Center for the Arts’s kiln over the past week. After days of cooling, the works came out into the daylight yesterday for display at the Oak Bluffs gallery.

Scott Campbell, art teacher at the regional high school, orchestrated the 12th annual kiln firing.

He and some 40 students set the fire on Wednesday, May 28, and kept it burning day and night into the weekend to achieve the necessary temperature of 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Two longstanding Chilmark residents who own and rent out multiple moorings in town will be allowed to continue — for the time being, at least.

But Chilmark selectmen this week agreed to seek guidance from the state on the matter.

Earlier this winter, a sharply divided board of selectmen requested an opinion from their attorney as to whether the practice was legal.

In the wake of revelations this week that Oak Bluffs officials may have lacked the authority to approve over $200,000 in end-of-the-year transfers, selectmen on Tuesday hastily scheduled a special town meeting later this month to approve the transfers and close the books on the current fiscal year.