JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

JUNE D. MANNING

508-645-2574

(lthslnks@gis.net)

KATHIE CASE

508-627-5349

(kathleencase@comcast.net)

It has been quite the week. We were lucky compared to the people in Waltham and the area around them with all the rain. But now we are in for a nice spring break for the rest of the week.

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital has been identified as one of the most expensive in Massachusetts in data compiled by one of the state’s major health insurers.

The numbers, from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, given this week before the start of state hearings into the rising costs of health care, found the Vineyard Hospital ranked number five among 72 hospitals in the state. Nantucket Hospital which, like the Vineyard hospital, is part of the Partners Healthcare network, ranked third.

The tiny population of Cuttyhunk has won its David and Goliath battle with Comcast. The giant telecommunications company this week reversed its decision to pull the plug on the islanders’ do-it-yourself high speed Internet service.

Cuttyhunkers are expected to rejoin the modern world within the next week, as soon as Comcast can wrap up a formal vendor agreement with the man who had developed the island’s innovative wireless network over the past five years, Mark Storek.

The vernal equinox is tomorrow, but the sound of spring arrived early: Joyce Dresser of Oak Bluffs on March 16 was the first of many this week to report hearing pinkletinks. The weekend forecast calls for sun.

While Disney saturates the media with ads for its Tim Burton extravaganza Alice in Wonderland, young Island thespians are sending Alice tumbling through a television screen instead of a looking glass, in a play about the absurdity of media-saturated consumer culture, called Alice in Americaland.

Kids’ Art Scholarships

Scholarships for Lani Carney’s 2010 children’s programs at Featherstone Center for the Arts are available to individual children ages 3 to 10 and of all abilities. The scholarships, which are awarded at 100 per cent on the tuition, are supported by the generosity of three community women committed to the arts, not only in their individual and family lives but also through the children’s arts programming at Featherstone: Anne Gallagher, Susan Guerin and Stina Sayre.

Throughout their lives, they have been labeled with various syndromes and conditions. They experience the world in a way that is different from the bulk of society and from each other. But this Saturday, March 20, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Baptist Church parish house, they will all share one label: they are artists.

Drawing and painting teacher Janice Frame had reason to be proud of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School senior Lonni Philips’ success last week at Featherstone Center for the Arts. Ms. Philips has, after all, been a student of Ms. Frame’s since kindergarten, when her work most likely consisted of finger paintings and play dough sculptures.