Unusual sounds are coming out of the normally sedate Up-Island Senior Center at Howes House this Monday afternoon in May. Shortly after a barefoot man jumps out of a van to unload a set of conga drums, the rhythms from palms and sticks start to reverberate throughout the building.

One morning in 1934, when Nelson Bryant was eleven years old, his father bought him a twenty-gauge shotgun. He took it out to the marsh at the head of a great salt pond near his house to look for birds. The landscape around him had changed little in the past five thousand years. He could turn in every direction and see just one house. Before long, a black duck flew by, and he took aim, pulled the trigger, and watched the bird drop to the ground. It was Christmas Day.

It was a mixed group that gathered in the Polly Hill Arboretum Saturday night about 5:30 p.m. From this aging grandmother to a six-month-old baby boy, and in between stood six lovely teenaged girls in their colorful prom gowns, contrasting shawls, wrist corsages, makeup, and recently done hair styles. As they stood together in front of a blooming rhododendron bush, bookended by two handsome young teenaged boys, Sal and Josh, in black tuxedos — one with a forest green vest and the other with a silver vest — they giggled and posed for their pre-prom photographs.

call to arms

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

The following letter was sent to the New England Fishery Management Council Herring Advisory Panel on May 11:

Memorial Day 2009

What will the summer bring? This has been on the minds of Islanders throughout the long winter. As sidewalks and farm fields lay frozen beneath endless layers of snow and ice, as the economic downturn cast dark shadows across the nation, as Islanders pulled in their collective horns and counted their pennies along with their blessings — the question hung in the air wherever you went. What will the summer bring?

By MEGAN DOOLEY

Budget issues, administrative responsibility and educational philosophy were all topics of discussion at the final interviews for three Chilmark head of school candidates this week.

Hosted by Vineyard schools superintendent Dr. James H. Weiss and the up-Island regional school district committee, the interviews took place on Wednesday and Thursday nights at the Chilmark school.

A daylong meditation retreat with Mark Hart will be held on Saturday, May 23, at the Unitarian Universalist Society chapel on Main street in Vineyard Haven. The retreat will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Comsog Greenhouse Open

The COMSOG greenhouse lets all of us know that spring is finally here on the Vineyard! The Mother’s Day sale will continue for the whole month of May during the mornings. Stop in for lots of your gardening needs — lovely gift baskets, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, annuals, pepper plants, herbs, flowering plants and much more. We’d love to help you to fill up your planters and/or window boxes. Come check us out.

Piano Concerts

Rebekah Nivala, an 18-year-old pianist from Vineyard Haven, will be presenting two piano concerts this Memorial Day weekend, and both are open to the public.

The first performance is at 4 p.m. on May 23 at Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven, with a reception to follow. Donations accepted. The second is at 4 p.m. on Sunday, May 24, at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.

Music featured in the concerts will include works by Beethoven, Schumann, Bach, Messaien and Corigliano.

As a senior editor at Discover Magazine, science journalist Pamela Weintraub had covered myriad scientific dramas throughout her career. But it was her own family’s medical odyssey with Lyme disease — and the book she wrote about it, Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic — that brought her to speak on Monday to about 60 people on Martha’s Vineyard, where tick-borne illness is one of the most serious and prevalent health concerns.