David McCullough laughingly calls the pretty little eight-by-10-foot structure in his back yard his “world headquarters.” Naturally, he was keen to pass on the details of its architecture and history.

“This is where I’ve worked since 1972,” he said. “It was built by Alan Miller, an artist with carpentry. He built the Black Dog in Vineyard Haven. He built numerous buildings around the Island, all distinctive.”

Come May for the past two years, a pair of ducks have come to nest on Rose Styron’s lush lawn overlooking the outer Vineyard Haven harbor. “They eat a lot, at least the mother eats a lot, and the father, a gorgeous green-necked mallard, guards her. And when she’s fat enough, she goes to make a nest under the dock,” Mrs. Styron said, looking out at the water from her porch.

As a little girl, Charlayne Hunter-Gault would sit on her grandmother’s knee while she read the news, picking out the comics, finding one in particular rather enchanting.

“I fell in love with Brenda Starr,” she said. “I thought, here’s the most exciting job for a woman — taking on the world as she reported for the newspaper. It never occurred to me that this was a white woman with red hair and blue eyes.”

Scholar.

Athlete.

Entrepreneur.

Volunteer.

Fisherman.

Chef.

Pianist.

Wait, that last one hasn’t happened yet.

But regional high school senior William Stewart has been thinking about teaching himself to play the piano for a while now, and this summer, before he packs his bags and heads off to Harvard in the fall, might be the perfect time to learn.