As I pulled up to the pump last weekend and emptied my wallet for $4.35-a-gallon gas, I thought what a shame it is that we aren’t doing more to lessen our dependence on imported oil. For almost 40 years we have been talking — but not doing — anything significant to solve the problem. Alternate energy is clearly one answer. What about projects like Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound? Shouldn’t we allow it to be built to help us become energy independent? On reflection, the answer is a resounding no.

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.

There are times in our lives when incidents in the lives of people we do not know take on such profound meaning that we want to learn more. For me that came through a conversation with my husband, Bill Baker. He had heard the Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski, dean of The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York city, speak at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs.

The story the dean told in the church was so powerful that I felt an imperative to speak with him personally. I wanted to know more of this story.