The motorcade is a familiar sight by now, whizzing through the leafy canopy of North Road on its way down Island and back up again. The President heads to the golf course. The President heads home after several hours on the links. The President goes out to dinner. Not much news there, and this year even the press corps whose job it is to follow the President’s every move sounds a little bored by it all. Of course that’s just fine by most of the people who live on Martha’s Vineyard, who have long since learned to take things like presidential vacations in stride. This is after all a place where people come for vacation and a vacation is supposed to be down time. And what better place for down time than the Island, where the late days of summer stretch on with misty August mornings full of geese in flight and warm, starry evenings with a crescent moon high in the western sky.

The Obama family’s two-week-plus vacation is scheduled to come to an end on Sunday when the First Family will board Marine One for the trip back to Washington, D.C.

The vacation has been even quieter than usual this year, with the Obamas staying mostly out of sight at their rented home in Chilmark save the President’s nearly daily trips to the golf course to play eighteen holes with his rotating foursome of friends. Add a few beach trips, some dinners out and that about sums up the presidential vacation.

As of Thursday afternoon this week there had not even been a press briefing on national affairs. The biggest news to come out of the links was the day the actor, producer and Chilmark resident Larry David joined the Obama foursome and became briefly stuck in a deep sand trap at Farm Neck Golf Club. Cue the next comedy scene.

Only a handful of pictures have been taken. One candid shot sent to the Gazette captures Mrs. Obama having a casual lunch outdoors at a house in Oak Bluffs with women friends, including senior presidential advisor and longtime family friend Valerie Jarrett. There was something refreshingly normal about the grainy picture of the four women clustered around a patio table, at ease with each other, absorbed in conversation.

A fitting metaphor, for if anything this has been a summer of conversation on the Island, perhaps especially the conversation on race that is taking place around the country. In the wake of Ferguson, Charleston and other place names sadly now associated with deeply troubling incidents of violence against people of color, the Vineyard has played host to numerous forums this summer —more numerous than usual, it seems — where issues of race and human rights have been explored and examined by some of America’s most thoughtful leaders: academics, religious folk, policymakers, writers, some African-American and some not.

It’s easy to make the leap that Mr. Obama’s presence on the Island has encouraged more of these lectures and forums. And there may be some truth to that. But Michele Norris, the respected National Public radio journalist and longtime Vineyard Haven summer resident, reminded us of something else at the outset of a provocative talk in early August with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates that kicked off the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival. The Vineyard has a long tradition as a place where people who come for vacation end up energized and engaged, she said.

There is a Vineyard that is all beaches and sunsets and lobster rolls. And there is a parallel Vineyard, where people who set the direction of the country and influence the fate of the planet are meeting in a beautiful relaxed setting and talking about issues and things that matter.

We see the comings and goings of the motorcade, but we are not privy to the discussions that are surely going on behind the tinted glass.

Last weekend, the press pool was kept at a distance as a President and a former President and quite possibly a future president gathered at Farm Neck Golf Club with people of all races to celebrate the birthday of Vernon Jordan. There was music and laughter and conversation, and who is to say there were not connections made that will make a difference for a country still struggling to fully embrace justice for all.

The Vineyard is a little different that way.

Now back to the motorcade — one final salute as another August begins to slip below the horizon of summer. See you next year, hopefully to continue the conversation.