Mass Audubon’s volunteer day is next Saturday, April 28 from 9 a.m. to noon.

To help out, head over to the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary and after the work enjoy a thank you barbecue lunch.

Projects will span age ranges and abilities and go toward fulfilling any community service projects that need checking off. Help spruce up the butterfly garden, clear paths, rejuvenate soil, build a picnic table, or battle some invasive Bittersweet.

Bring work gloves and whatever tools you think you might need.

Sparky and Rhonda Rucker are coming to the Vineyard Haven Library and they are doing some plain talking about the Civil War. In fact, their presentation is entitled, The Blue and Gray in Black and White.

Actually, they will be doing more than just speaking. They will bring the world of the Civil War to life via stories, personal insights from those who participated in the war, and songs including slave songs, Underground Railroad songs, finger-picking and bottleneck blues guitar, harmonica, old-time banjo, slide guitar, piano, spoons and bones.

“April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

So said T.S. Elliot at the beginning of his epic poem The Waste Land.

Here on the Vineyard, though, April is poetry month, nothing cruel about that, and to celebrate, the West Tisbury Library’s is holding its annual community poetry night on Sunday, April 22 from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Physically speaking, John Hough Jr. lives in a book-filled home in modern-day West Tisbury. But for the last few years, he’s ventured far from Vineyard shores, and back in time: to Civil War-era Martha’s Vineyard, to the battlefield at Gettysburg, to the vast plains of Montana in 1876.

West Tisbury selectmen voted Wednesday to pass regulations for the sale of beer and wine, the final step in turning the historically dry town wet.

The move comes less than one week after voters at the town election overwhelmingly approved permitting the sale of beer and wine at restaurants with more than 50 seats and issuing one-day beer and wine licenses for special events.

Martha’s Vineyard Museum and Featherstone Center for the Arts need your help to determine the People’s Choice winner of the Island Faces Portrait Competition. The artist whose portrait of an Island character best captures the voters’ attention will have his or her work displayed at Featherstone in fall 2012. To see the submissions and cast your ballot go to http://ifcontest.wordpress.com/.

Chilmark selectmen will ask the U.S. Coast Guard to reconsider its denial of town insurance claims from the Menemsha boathouse fire. On advice of their town counsel, the selectmen decided not to pursue an appeal through the U.S. District Court, at least for now.

New Bedford civic leaders this week doubled down on their push to have the Steamship Authority begin summer freight service between their city and the Vineyard, despite a detailed analysis from SSA senior managers that shows the service would be both impractical and prohibitively expensive.

At the monthly boat line meeting held in New Bedford Tuesday, SSA governor and board chairman John Tierney led the charge for freight service between the Whaling City and the Island.

Congratulations go out to seven hardy Vineyarders, who ran — and completed! — the Boston Marathon in near-record breaking heat on Monday.

James Lanctot, 46, of Oak Bluffs, led the pack of Islanders, finishing with a strong 3:47:41. Marylee Schroeder, 47, of West Tisbury and Hilda Lewis, 30, of Vineyard Haven, followed closely behind with 3:48:32 and 3:51:26 finishes.

Kim O’Callaghan, 47, of Vineyard Haven ended with a strong 4:51:40 run.

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) has announced that the tribe is considering bringing gaming to the Island, according to a new Web site published by the tribe’s gaming corporation this week.

“The tribe currently holds land in trust on Martha’s Vineyard for economic development and we would consider that option,” the Web site states. “There is no legal impediment for us to open a casino on our trust land. Martha’s Vineyard is a very popular tourist destination that could certainly support a smaller-scale casino.”