On a recent Tuesday morning culinary students at the Martha’s Vineyard High School were preparing lunch for some of the teachers. They baked foccacia bread and made sandwiches with vegetables, whipped ricotta cheese and roast chicken, and Italian sausage and mozzarella cheese.

“The food is extraordinary,” said Cindy West, a Spanish teacher who attended the lunch. But cooking wasn’t the only item on the educational menu

In an effort to spread the success of raising mussels offshore, local Vineyard commercial fishermen and shellfishermen are being invited to a special workshop on mussel farming on Friday, May 17 in Rhode Island.

The Permanent Endowment Fund for Martha’s Vineyard is accepting nominations for the 2013 Creative Living Award. Established in 1983 through the Ruth J. Bogan and Ruth Redding Fund, the award recognizes members of the Vineyard community who embody Ruth Bogan’s spirit and love for the Island. Ms. Bogan was a nurse by training but was also a self-taught painter, sculptor and photographer.

The Massachusetts Property Insurance Underwriting Association, or FAIR Plan, has submitted a request for a rate hike. The Cape and Islands have a proposed rate hike of 9.9 per cent on homeowner insurance premiums scheduled to go into effect July 1. A public hearing on the rate request will be held on Wednesday, May 29, at 11 a.m. at the Barnstable town hall in Hyannis in the second floor hearing room. Citizens for Homeowners Insurance Reform will hold a rally on the village green next to the town hall from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. before the hearing.

The Dockside Inn in Oak Bluffs was named 2013 best harborfront hotel in New England by Yankee Magazine’s Travel Guide to New England. The magazine cited the hotel’s contemporary design and nautical decor. The Dockside Inn was previously named in Boston Magazine’s 2012 Best of Boston.

Field of Dreams! I recently experienced the dream of every parent and so many offspring — college graduation. I am bursting with pride because my son Christopher Leigh Clark graduated from Upper Iowa University on Saturday, May 11, and I was there to see it. Chris has earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

I was watching Ellen Degeneres’ show today and she told her audience that it sure was hot outside. She said it was 102 degrees so I turned on the guide to see if this was a repeat episode and it was not. Now I’m thinking it is 50 degrees today and it is chilly. I would much rather have it that way then trying to keep cool.

In this typically tardy Vineyard spring, the Chappaquiddick trees are finally decked out in all their finery — delicate leaves, dangling catkins, and frilly blossoms that entice the bees to do their job while we shiver in the morning, refusing to get the stove going because it’s the middle of May, for God’s sake!

Oak Bluffs has always been the sweetest town, at least cavity-wise. Back in Stuart MacMackin’s 1920s, Circuit avenue and its surroundings included three ice cream/soda fountain establishments (the Jack Hughes Ice Cream Parlor, Rausch’s Ice Cream and Pearson’s Drug Store Soda Fountain at the Arcade), two bakeries (Mrs. Dow’s Bake Shop and LaBell’s Bakery), cotton candy from the Flying Horses and of course, saltwater taffy from Darling’s.

Well, the weather was mild and the sun came out Saturday afternoon and it turned out to be a decent weekend. Lawn mowers could be heard buzzing around town cutting lawns. The cherry trees in Harriet Bernstein’s front lawn were ablaze with color and so was the one on Music street