On Thursday at around 7 p.m., Marques Rivers was seen fiddling with something in his pocket. He stood beside his girlfriend of almost five years, Sarah Neubert, waiting to board the Ferris wheel at the Agricultural Fair. It was their annual “date ride” they said, the one they always take the first day of the fair. Ms. Neubert, who is mildly afraid of heights, was nervous, but not nearly as nervous as Mr. Rivers. Minutes later, just as she had summoned the courage to look up from her hands and take in the view from atop the wheel, the ride stopped.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney came to the Vineyard Saturday for a brief fund-raising trip, with a small group of supporters braving intermittent rain showers to get a glimpse of him.

The plane carrying the former Massachusetts governor arrived at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport at about 10:20 Saturday morning, with state police cars and motorcycles and Secret Service on the ground to greet him. Mr. Romney did not announce his arrival ahead of time through his campaign office.

The Oak Bluffs selectmen took a significant step toward construction of the controversial blinker section roundabout on Monday morning, signing documents for temporary easements to take some small parcels of land bordering the road by eminent domain.

Construction on the state-funded $1.5 million traffic improvement project is expected to begin in October.

Highway superintendent Richard Combra told the selectmen yesterday that the town would spend about $12,150 from Chapter 90 funds to pay for the easements, prompting selectman Gail Barmakian to balk.

There were plenty of problems on the table and few easy solutions at hand as an influential panel convened Thursday evening to discuss the issue that has gone unnoticed in this issue-laden presidential election year: unemployment and high poverty rates in the African American community.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, few “would have anticipated that in the year 2012, we would have the largest black middle class in American history,” said forum host Dr. Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr.

The fight for equality is far from over, and the upcoming elections and U.S. Supreme Court term in the fall will be the strongest test of this since the Civil Rights era.

That was the word on Saturday from NAACP Legal Defense fund president and director-counsel Debo Adegbile and Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier at an NAACP voting rights forum entitled Hijacking Democracy. The legal defense fund has been on the front lines of protecting voter rights, and Ms. Guinier is one of the foremost legal experts on the subject in the country.

171 Lake Street in Vineyard Haven sold for $529,000 on August 10.

14 Yellow Brick Road in West Tisbury sold for $769,000 on August 7.

79 Beach Road, Unit 28 in Vineyard Haven sold for $455,000 on August 10.

Pictures by Ray Ewing

Wynton Marsalis, the jazz composer, band leader and trumpet player, brought his quintet to the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs on Saturday evening. The concert, entitled Treasures at Dusk, featured some new compositions and old standards that saw an enthusiastic reception from the audience. Mr. Marsalis is also managing and artistic director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

A large dead leatherback turtle that was more than five and a half feet long washed up at Great Rock Bight beach on the north shore last Tuesday afternoon. The beach is owned by the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank. Land bank property foreman Matthew N. Dix said the New England Aquarium was contacted, but then the turtle washed back out into the Sound.

Mr. Dix speculated that the turtle may have been killed by a boat, as it had large gashes on it that could have come from a propeller.