Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard is asking for nominations for the Spirit of The Vineyard Award. This award, given annually, honors those who have served for one or more nonprofit organizations on the Island, and whose work has made a difference to individuals and to the community as a whole. The criteria for selection include selflessness, the range and depth of service performed, the length of volunteer service and the effect on the quality of life of the individuals who received help and for the Island community as a whole.

Alaska-based fishing captain and poet Dave Densmore has seen it all in more than 50 years as a commercial fisherman, and on Wednesday evening, he shared it all with a standing-room-only audience at the Chilmark Free Public Library.

Alaska-based fishing captain and poet Dave Densmore has seen it all in more than 50 years as a commercial fisherman, and on Wednesday evening, he shared it all with a standing-room-only audience at the Chilmark Free Public Library.

On Oct. 10, runners Liza Williamson of Oaks Bluffs, Maureen Best of Vineyard Haven and Suzanne Provost Flanders of West Tisbury will be running in the 10th annual B.A.A. Half Marathon presented by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund, as members of the official Dana-Farber team.

Each team member has committed to raise at least $500 for cancer care and research at world-renowned Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The 2010 team fundraising goal is $450,000.

Cultural Grants

Several Island arts groups have been awarded grants by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Cape and Islands state representative Timothy R. Madden, said that these grants support Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society, the Silver Screen Film Society, the Vineyard Playhouse and the Yard.

I learned about buying and selling Woof Tickets while teaching graphic arts in the New York city public schools. In my students’ neighborhood, if you were able to intimidate someone, that person bought your Woof Ticket. To survive in such a neighborhood, a student had to be able to sell but never buy a Woof Ticket. Buying and selling Woof Tickets also extends into the world of adults and politics. In fact, in one case, selling a Woof Ticket may have achieved a seat on the Supreme Court.

We few, we band of brothers and sisters, all six billion of us on planet earth, have identified the problem and we’ve identified the solution. We’re all in agreement about who is what. Even those who are classified as the problem know they’re the problem. And yet they continue to charge around like the bulls of Pamplona. I’m talking, of course, about drivers of cars.

There have been many televised and Internet reports about potential Koran burnings and Muslim worship centers of late. Sadly, most of them have been from a biased viewpoint that does nothing to alleviate concerns, but rather continues to feed irrational fears of the unknown and the “other.” This is nothing new to Martha’s Vineyard as we continue to see in letters to the editor that oftentimes overtly blame an entire group (read: ethnic group) of people for the actions of an individual.

Vineyard fishermen have joined a federal lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission over the lack of management of river herring and shad in federal waters. The lawsuit targets offshore industrial large-scale fishing boats working the Gulf of Maine and waters south of the Vineyard as culprits in the sharp decline of the fish.

In 326 B.C., they thundered across Rajasthan and Punjab in northwest India on their war horses; men in military garb, shouting their battle cries, wielding lances and sabers and bent on conquest.

And 2,300 years later, they came from Rajasthan and Punjab to thunder across the sands of Chappaquiddick on their war horses; men in military garb, shouting their battle cries, wielding lances and sabers, also bent on conquest. But of a different kind.

Jessie Little Doe Baird was having a bad week. On Sept. 13 she went to a ceremony to ask for cleansing, to ask for help and to give thanks for the good and the bad in her life.

“We need both of those things, unfortunately. We do,” she said in an interview at her home in Aquinnah, built by her husband, the medicine man of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), Jason Baird.