Editor’s Note: Columnist Lynne Irons was struck with the flu and will be back next week. The following column by her was published in the Gazette on Oct. 12, 2007.

By LYNNE IRONS

Editor’s Note: Columnist Lynne Irons was struck with the flu and will be back next week. The following column by her was published in the Gazette on Oct. 12, 2007.

Arboretum Award

On June 28 the Polly Hill Arboretum’s newsletter, Meristems, received theDorothy E. Hansell Publication Award for newsletters and special publications at the American Public Gardens Association (APGA) annual meeting.

Wonder-Full

Sense of Wonder is about to begin their fall season of art classes. The classes are, as always, led by Pam Benjamin with help this year from Lily Jane Morris. Lily is a graduate of Mass College of Art and is also a past Sense of Wonder camper and counselor. You could say she has wonder pulsing through her veins.

Classes begin soon with the following schedule: Tuesdays 3:30 to 5 p.m. for K through 1st grade; Wednesdays 3:30 to 5 p.m. for 4th through 6th grades; Thursdays 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. for 2nd and 3rd grades.

Slow Food Martha’s Vineyard is combining its philosophy with the ancient traditions of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Indian Tribe with a celebratory harvest dinner beginning at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 22, at the Chilmark Community Center. Traditional native Wampanoag dishes including journey cakes with cranberries, venison stew, and sea bass with sage stuffing will be served. Corn meal from the Sandwich Grist Mill will be used for the authentic journey cakes to be cooked in Juli Vanderhoop’s clay oven.

Among the greatest legacies of Queen Victoria, who died in 1891, are the funeral rituals from that long-ago era that bears her name, the Victorian Age. When her husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861 the queen was so devastated she retreated from Buckingham Palace to her country estates, and wore widow’s weeds for the rest of her life.

In style for many decades, black was the new black.

Your dog bit three people. Drew blood each time and now you’re told, “It’s time to euthanize, time to put the dog down.” To the non-dog person the third bite is two bites too late. But what does the dog owner hear? “You’re telling me to kill my dog. Kill a family member that I love dearly?”

Jon Katz, dog lover, befuddled farmer in upstate New York and author of 20 books, many of which take place on Bedlam Farm, is returning to the Vineyard to promote his latest book, Going Home. Those of us fortunate enough to see Mr. Katz on his last trip here can pass on the news that his talents as a writer are eclipsed only by his abilities before a live audience. His talk takes place on Friday, Oct. 28, at 7:30 p.m. at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.

Henry James Digs into Your Psyche

It would seem that everything one does, from eating to watching television, from meditating to juggling Chihauhau’s, or from painting your masterpiece to lion taming, could also be done while spinning. At least this is the bold proposition being woven in the spokes by Om of Motion, a new spinning class and location that seems to know no boundaries.

Om of Motion opened up earlier this summer in a cozy nook on 505 State Road in West Tisbury, right next to Eileen Blake’s Pies and just past up-Island Cronigs.

Throughout the spring and summer the folks at the Vineyard Ghosts Walking Tour have delighted and frightened visitors and Islanders alike during their tours through the three down-Island towns. The journeys travel literally through graveyards and to homes and businesses known to have haunted roots. They also travel much farther, to times past and the legends that birthed these spectral necromancers: A violent or too soon demise, whalers and their wives separated too early and their grief flowing everlasting, the cursed and revengeful.