This year, the oak trees were nature’s underachievers.

Naturalists, landscapers and backyard rakers noticed a lack of acorns this fall. No apocalypse, unless you are a squirrel, but of interest nevertheless.

When Featherstone Center for the Arts launched its annual autumn appeal, the focus was on family members of multiple generations who participate in the arts at Featherstone.

Newly nominated board member Andrea Quigley’s granddaughter Ashley Biggs has enjoyed the Magic Garden summer camp for two years. Ms. Quigley herself has participated regularly at gallery openings and watercolor classes.

Good Luck Juliet Benoit

West Tisbury native Juliet Lynn Benoit is in Orlando Florida this week to compete in the world-famous Millie Lewis Actors, Models and Talent Competition, which runs from Dec. 30 to Jan. 4. Ms. Benoit was one of only 24 performers selected to participate in the competition out of an audition pool of 400.

This was painted in 1884 by John Noble Barlow, who was one of the earliest members of the Providence Art Club. Now Chris Ratcliffe is researching the painting, which has been in his family for some years, and would like Islanders’ help in identifying the scene.

Chris Ratcliffe writes:

The Louisa Gould Photography and Gallery annual holiday party is on Saturday, Dec. 27 from 4 to 6 p.m. A new exhibit, The Portrait Paintings of John Holladay and Louisa Gould, will be on view. Other artists showing new works at this time are: Anne McGhee, Meg Mercier, Rachael Paxton, Ovid Osborn Ward, Marjorie Mason, Ed Cohen, Russell Carson, Debi Gero, Donna Blackburn, Gail Rodney, Robert Jewett, Caryn King, Leslie Smith, Jeanne Campbell, James Murray, Laura Roberts, Steve London, Janet Messineo, Jeffrey P’an, Maya Farber and Gray Park.

In this yearlong serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the chief executive officer of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping and nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with taking down Moby.

It was too late to postpone Christmas this year when an Australian astronomer announced that his calculations prove a bright star appeared over Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago ­— on June 17, not Dec. 25.

Scholarships Awarded

Ryan Antolick and Ana Sargent from the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School have received the John and Abigail Adams achievement scholarship. Students who are granted this scholarship have scored in the advanced category in either mathematics or English language arts section of the grade 10 MCAS test and in the proficient or advanced category on the second subject (mathematics or English language arts).

J. Kevin Carroll and Linda L. Caroll of Fairfax Station, Va., and Oak Bluffs, formerly of Walpole, announce the engagement of his daughter, Miriam Adams Carroll, to Mattias R. Fenton, son of Heidi B. Fenton of Pittsburgh, Pa., formerly of Hanover, Germany.

JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Hopefully, as you read this, you will have had your fill of holiday feasting and company and conversation and be ready for a distraction. So, since this is traditionally a slow news week, I will resort to writing about non-news experiences.

Like most Islanders, I make all necessary doctor’s appointments in the fall and usually have several in sequence both on the Island and off.