On his 103rd day on the job, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Matthew H. Malone came to the Vineyard for a full immersion in Island education: he chatted up students and praised the school’s vocational program, made suggestions for school fundraisers and sampled the culinary program’s scalloped potatoes.

Mr. Malone was on the Island Thursday for a look at Vineyard schools and to listen to concerns, he said, as part of a tour of schools across the commonwealth.

James Flight Alley, 81, former West Tisbury postmaster and selectman, conservationist and life-long Democrat, real estate broker, horse dealer, farmer, new- and used-car salesman, and owner, with his brother, John, and his late sister, Phyllis Alley Smith, of Alley’s General Store from 1961 to 1981, died in West Tisbury on Wednesday after a long bout with cancer.

It’s been 16 years since her first ferry ride to the Island. Luciana Freire wipes a sink and remembers it all as clearly as if it was yesterday. “I flew from Sao Paolo, Brazil to New York. A friend of my husband’s, a guy I’ve never met before, picks me up and drives me to Woods Hole. I see the boat. I can’t believe my eyes. It’s huge. So white. I’ve never seen a boat like this. Then I’m standing on the deck, wind in my hair, looking at this beautiful Island in the distance and I feel like I am Rose in the movie Titanic.

Aquinnah voters approved a hefty hike in the town operating budget for the coming year and backed a spending package to help restore and ready the Gay Head Light for moving at their annual town meeting Tuesday, but balked at a town bylaw to ban public consumption of marijuana.

“Isn’t there a no smoking law in any public place?” said Juli Vanderhoop, who questioned the need for the bylaw. “Smoke is smoke.”

The owners of the dog believed to have killed a miniature horse in Edgartown last weekend have decided to euthanize the dog, while the owner of the horse said she will not press further charges.

Mugsy, a three-year-old neutered American Staffordshire-bulldog cross, will be put down on Monday, animal control officer Barbara Prada said, nine days after two miniature horses were attacked and one killed at an Edgartown farm. The incident rattled residents of the Edgartown neighborhood and highlighted what animal control officers said are rising dog incidents on the Island.

The Massachusetts Division of Professional Licensure confirmed this week it is investigating years-old allegations of ethical impropriety against popular Vineyard veterinarian Dr. Steven Atwood.

Dr. Atwood, the owner of Animal Health Care Associates, resigned last month as chairman of the state Board of Registration in Veterinarian Medicine, the agency that oversees licenses for veterinarians. He gave no reason for his resignation in a brief April 16 letter to Gov. Deval Patrick.

West Tisbury will be the last Island town to decide two marijuana questions next week: one to prohibit public consumption and another to place a one-year moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries in town.

The two bylaws are on the warrant for a special town meeting that begins at 7 p.m. at the West Tisbury School. Moderator F. Patrick Gregory will preside; there are seven articles on the warrant.

A state law passed last fall legalizing medical marijuana. The law went into effect Jan. 1. The state Department of Public Health issued regulations last month.

When a miniature horse was killed by a dog in the rural outskirts of Edgartown last weekend it clearly struck a nerve around the Island and beyond. As the news was reported on the Gazette website, reaction poured in, most of it civil and heartfelt. People winced at the terrible, violent death of a small horse named Magik.

Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me. The World War Two-era song sung famously by the Andrews Sisters sounds a little dated but the wild apple trees on the Vineyard are right in tune this year, their crooked boughs heavy with pink blossoms everywhere you look.

There is a field across the way

Where dandelions bloom in May.

Like Flanders field, where hopes fly

And dreams too often come to die,

The flowers dot the field like fleets