Plans for a large expansion and renovation of the Vineyard Haven Stop & Shop, which have raised concerns about a range of issues from aesthetics to traffic, had a slightly different look when they came before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission again Thursday night.

The sun had just climbed above Squibnocket ridge when Lieut. Nathan Rimpf and Senior Airman Emanuel Thompson spotted their first catch of the day.

“Birds,” Mr. Rimpf and Mr. Thompson said simultaneously with the quiet confidence of pros. With a slight nod of the head, the two surmised that a large school of fish weren’t too far away.

It is incredibly dry. How dry? Last month was the driest September on the Vineyard in 67 years of record keeping.

Foliage is turning brown. Lawns are amber and leaves and grass crunch underfoot. Fire has become a concern.

Yesterday, while responding to a mid-day small brush fire in the woods near Sweetened Water Farm in Edgartown, fire chief Peter Shemeth called for mutual aid from West Tisbury.

“It is awfully dry and there is nothing you can do about it,” confirmed West Tisbury fire chief Manuel Estrella.

As the summer season comes to a close, revenue from two new taxes in Tisbury is helping to boost town finances.

Town administrator John (Jay) Grande presented summer totals from an occupancy tax increase and a new meals tax during the selectmen’s meeting Tuesday.

The occupancy tax increased from four to six per cent, leading to revenues of $95,309 for July and August. Last year during the same time period, revenues were $64,611.

The meals tax netted Tisbury $24,796, town treasurer Timothy McLean said in a phone conversation Wednesday.

The fall sitting of the Dukes County superior court begins next Monday at the Edgartown courthouse.

The Hon. Cornelius J. Moriarty 2nd, an associate justice of the superior court, will preside over the session. A new grand jury convenes on Monday.

Several civil trials are on the schedule. The schedule is light on criminal matters, with jury trials scheduled for the end of the month for Darryl B. Baptiste and Patrece L. Petersen.

Rez Williams, the renowned Vineyard artist and conservationist, will receive this year’s Creative Living Award, the Permanent Endowment Fund for Martha’s Vineyard announced this week.

“He has painted landscapes and portraits, but is best known for his paintings of hulking fishing trawlers using a vibrant palette and sure, determined brushstrokes,” the fund said in a press release about the award.

Mr. Williams will be honored in a ceremony on Oct. 21 at 5:30 p.m. at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury. The public is invited to attend.

Stand on the north shore of the Vineyard at any point as the sun begins to set and look to the west. As the last light of day floods the land and sea, in the distance you will see the silhouette of the lighthouse, a lonely sentinel standing on a promontory of land at the westernmost edge of the Vineyard.

With its historic carousel, best-of-the-Vineyard pizza and fried clams and Victorian seaside charm that is rooted in an earlier century, Oak Bluffs is proud to be different.

Before the fall football season started Lou Paciello was a bit worried about numbers. Mr. Paciello had joined with several other parents to help re-establish a youth football program on the Island, but he didn’t know how many players to expect at practice.

It’s barely a month into the new season, but youth football has already exceeded expectations, Mr. Paciello said. At a recent Wednesday practice, third and fourth graders worked in small groups with their coaches. Some wore white jerseys; the program had run out of the purple jerseys ordered before the season.

Chris Patnaude’s socks are pink. The laces of his football cleats are pink, the band on his left elbow is pink, and the Under Armor sleeve on his right arm also is pink.

If you examined his white blood cells beneath a microscope, you would also see a fair amount of pink. It’s the color that eosiniphils, the rarest type of white blood cell, turn when stained with laboratory dye. In most people’s bodies, eosiniphils makes up no more than four per cent of all white blood cells, and helps fight infections. But for Chris, 14, who is in eighth grade at the Edgartown School, the eosiniphils are rampant and, as his mother Tanya explained: “They fight against him.”