AUG., VARIOUS DATES

August Pledge Specials

PBS, various times

Check your local listings for the dates and times of PBS'August specials in your area. Highlights: In Andrea Bocelli: the Homecoming, tenor Bocelli returns to Tuscany and reprises the pop tunes he used to do as a restaurant singer-pianist. In Celebrate! With the Celtic Tenors, Matthew Gilsenan, Niall Morris and James Nelson sing songs of the world in Hamburg. The Drum Corps International Competition 2002 showcases the finest youth drum and bugle corps. In The Spirit of America Concert, host Daniel Rodriguez, New York City's “singing policeman,” performs with Broadway star Linda Eder, the Metropolitan Opera's Aprile Millo and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval.

SUNDAY, AUG. 4

Evening at Pops

PBS, 7 p.m.

Classical violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Irish-country violinist Eileen Ivers and jazz violinist Regina Carter guest with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops.

SUNDAY, AUG. 4

World Diary:

Holy Land Divided

National Geographic Channel, 8 and 11 p.m.

Correspondent Mick Davie seeks to summarize the tragic conflict in the Holy Land.

MONDAY, AUG. 5

Monster Mystery: Loch Ness

Travel Channel, 4 p.m.

Learn the latest on the legendary Scottish lake monster.

TUESDAYS

Cooking Thin

Food Network, noon

Chef Kathleen Daelemans went from a size 22 to a size 8. Find out her yummy recipe secrets and follow her action plan: “Eat healthy, start moving, do it now!” Other episodes, as well as rebroadcasts, air Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 7

Room by Room: Biltmore Estate Style

Home & Garden TV, 10 p.m.

Hosts Matt Fox and Shari Hiller visit Asheville, N.C., to research redoing a cottage in the Biltmore Estate style.

FRIDAY, AUG. 9

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly

PBS, 5 p.m.

The first part of this show covers Southern rural black Protestant churches’ handling of AIDS. In the second half, Fred de Sam Lazaro interviews Welshman Donald Jackson about the illuminated Bible he is making for St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minn.

SATURDAY, AUG. 10

Classic American Cars of Cuba

PBS, 8 p.m.

Cars of the 1950s are collectors’ items in the United States, but in communist Cuba people desperately maintain them for daily travel. This hour-long special depicts Cubans’ love for their pre-Castro American autos — mute witnesses to Marxism's built-in inability to meet even people's most basic needs — food, clothing, shelter and transportation.

Dan Engler writes from Santa Barbara, California.