When most guests sit down to a dinner at Beetlebung Farm in Chilmark, they usually glance at the menu and then set it down again, absentmindedly imprinting it with grease and wine stains. But the more discerning will notice that the seemingly disposable item is actually a work of art — the design is innovative, the words have been selected for sound and form, and the ink has been elegantly fused with the paper.

p> Summer Is. By M. Lesnikowski, 21 pages, Southern Lion Books, $20. Vineyard-born artist Molly Lesnikowski, who has written two earlier children's books, has turned her pen and paintbrush to the Island, at last.

Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr. is passionate about roots. The Harvard professor, writer and genealogist first started on a family tree as a nine-year-old, after his grandfather’s burial, wanting to know about his connection to his father and grandfather. He’s followed his passion in his professional life, through scholarship and his popular television shows tracing people’s genealogy, and in the personal realm: still working on the family tree, he is trying to find the identity of his great-great-grandfather.

Always under the skin of America. White guilt defines my life relentlessly. Never a Nazi, just a German. Marry white to dilute brown. Glad love doesn’t come in colors.

Six words to define how you feel about race may seem far too short for such a complex topic, but this is the philosophy behind the Race Card Project, an online forum meant to restart a conversation that some say has been left by the wayside in America. Project founder and longtime summer visitor Michele Norris said her six words change all the time.

Daily newspapers shuttered. Radio and TV networks swimming in red ink. Reporters and editors enduring widespread buyouts and layoffs.

This was the landscape of the news business that Boston University professor Christopher B. Daly confronted as he began researching the history of American journalism about eight years ago. It occurred to him that he just might end up having to write the obituary of American journalism.

David Driskell

David Driskell is a painter, collector of art and one of the leading authorities on African American art. He is an emeritus professor of art at the University of Maryland where in 2001 the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora was created to celebrate his legacy.

Dr. Kenneth Alleyne, 46, and his wife, Dr. Shaun Biggers-Alleyne, love jazz. They also love Martha’s Vineyard. So they began brainstorming a way to combine these seemingly disparate passions. The result was Jazz on the Vineyard, a daylong jazz festival now in its second year, which will be held tomorrow, August 18, at Featherstone Center for the Arts in Oak Bluffs.

Outside Union Chapel last Saturday evening people lingered on the stairs; little girls doing each other’s makeup and mothers making small talk, all the while keeping an eye on the green doors behind them. At 7:30 p.m. sharp, the doors of the chapel opened and the people streamed inside, running to the closest seat and marking their territory in preparation for this summer’s edition of Built on Stilts.

Announcing Nathan

Lori and Dana Rezendes of West Tisbury announce the birth of a son, Nathan John Rezendes, born on August 10 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Nathan weighed 7 pounds at birth.

Hello, Bonnie

Bethany Buaiz and Jon Jacobs of Oak Bluffs announce the birth of a daughter, Bonnie Montague Jacobs, born on August 14 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Bethany weighed 6 pounds, 5 ounces at birth.