Connected. Privileged. Honored. Thankful. Full.

Those were a few of the words the Chilmark School fourth and fifth grade class used in their class blessing at the school’s community lunch Friday afternoon. The lunch was the last of the school year in a series of gatherings organized by Island Grown Schools and volunteers.

With the opening notes of Edward Elgar’s traditional processional music Pomp and Circumstance, two long columns of graduates made their way down the aisle of the Tabernacle Sunday afternoon. The audience turned and erupted in applause for the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s Class of 2013, 184 strong.

Students chatted excitedly as they took their seats, practicing the proper method for receiving diplomas (right hand to shake, left hand to take) and looking back at the rest of the audience, which spilled out of the open-air Tabernacle onto the lawn.

Despite strong gusts of wind, and ominous clouds looming overhead, the West Tisbury Farmers' Market opened its season Saturday morning to an increasingly robust crowd.

It was the first day of the market, which started 39 years ago. Eighty-eight-year-old Robert Daniels of Old Town Garden in Edgartown was one of the few vendors back then.

Students and families gathered at the Tabernacle Friday as nearly $947,000 in scholarships were awarded. The scholarships are part of a community-wide program that provides a much-needed financial break to seniors and post-graduates.

The Tisbury town hall was briefly evacuated Friday afternoon after officials received a suspicious letter that police described as "ranting" but not particularly worrisome.

The letter contained no "particular threat to anybody or any town," Tisbury police Sgt. Timothy Stobie said, and the building was evacuated out of an abundance of caution.

A federal lawsuit challenging the state’s right to reserve a casino license in southeastern Massachusetts for an Indian tribe will go forward without any involvement from the Vineyard.

In a decision issued yesterday, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton denied attempts by the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the town of Aquinnah and the Aquinnah Gay Head Community Association to intervene in a case brought by a private casino developer against Gov. Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.

Drug task force officers arrested Fernando A. Jesurum, 26, after he arrived on the Island via ferry Tuesday night, Edgartown Det. Michael Snowden said in a statement of facts about the case. He was arraigned Thursday in Edgartown district court on charges of possession to distribute a class B drug (cocaine), subsequent offense and cocaine trafficking. Bail was set at $40,000 cash.

Allen P. Spaulding Jr., 70, was the sole occupant of the 1965 fixed-wing Maule Bee Dee M-4-210 that crashed Wednesday morning on Cuttyhunk, state police said. The pilot was determined to be dead at the scene.

Over the next year, a million tiny pioneers will arrive at Sengekontacket Pond. Simply by growing from the size of a pencil eraser to a full three inches, a million oysters are the key part of a project launched by Oak Bluffs and Edgartown to cultivate the shellfish in Sengekontacket, which has been found to have nitrogen levels well above acceptable limits.

Part of the Tisbury Great Pond is about to become an oyster reef, thanks to a project sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and the towns of Chilmark and West Tisbury.

The propagation projects calls for putting down 100 cubic yards of sea clam shells as culch and then planting 250,000 juvenile oysters.