Family to Family

On Friday, Dec. 12, the Serving Hands Program and the Family-to-Family Program hand out Christmas dinners. As in the past, the group will provide all the ingredients for a wonderful holiday.

Distribution to income-qualified Islander will take place at the First Baptist Church parish house, on William street in Vineyard Haven from 2 p.m. Please do not arrive early, as volunteers will be packing the bags and boxes.

The performance of the crescent moon, Venus and Jupiter drew a lot of attention on Monday night. The three celestial objects formed a perfect triangle, close together, high in the western sky after sunset. Anyone outside couldn’t miss the show as it lasted until all three set in the west. Venus is brighter than Jupiter.

Vineyard Haven native Marshall Pratt recently sold just over 20 photographs to the Boston Athenaeum, an achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that the photographer is just over 20 years old.

Mr. Pratt is a junior at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he studies photography. The work acquired by the Athenaeum is a collection of prints that depicts areas of Greater Boston that have become derelict or otherwise suffered the effects of poverty, cultural isolation and neglect.

Handmade from the Heart

All Island artisans and bakers are invited to contribute to the much-anticipated holiday fundraiser for Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard, the Handmade from the Heart Bazaar. The one-day event will be at the Daniel Fisher House during the Christmas in Edgartown weekend, on Saturday, Dec. 13 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

A $16.4 million Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School budget for 2009, a 1.7 per cent increase on the previous year, was certified by the high school committee Monday in a 9-1 vote.

The budget cuts five and two fifths positions at the high school, in English and math, assistant in special education, custodial and driver’s education. Additionally, Mr. Nixon eliminated two fifths of a bus driving position.

This holiday season, remember someone you love and celebrate a revered Island tradition, when the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital Auxiliary marks the 25th anniversary of its Tree of Lights fundraiser to benefit Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

Every December, a tree at the hospital is lit with hundreds of lights, each donated in honor or in memory of a loved one. As construction of the new hospital continues, this tradition endures.

An elaborate scheme seeking to trick people into providing sensitive information about their bank accounts over the telephone resurfaced on the Vineyard this past week. Reports indicate several Islanders received automated phone calls on Sunday and Monday telling them there was a problem with their bank account.

The project to restore Bend in the Road Beach with dredge spoils from Sengekontacket is now complete. Charlie Blair, town harbor master and overseer of the $200,000 project, said this week that the 10,000 cubic yard project was completed under budget and on time. Next spring the beach, which is well piled with soft sand sucked from the bottom of the pond, will be shaped and planted with beach grass.

The project began in mid-October and involved more than a mile of plastic dredge pipe that ran from a sandbar near the Big Bridge known as the burrow.

The Oak Bluffs zoning board of appeals on Tuesday agreed to a preliminary list of conditions that will be sent to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission as it prepares to review the revised Bradley Square affordable housing project.

It took a few attempts, but Tisbury finally got its sense of direction back on Wednesday, when the long-broken weather vane on top of town hall was repaired.

It was no small endeavor. At roughly 79 feet, the steeple on town hall is about seven feet higher than the Christmas Tree which they finished putting up at New York’s Rockefeller Center, also on Wednesday. Plus town hall is on a hill, and amid a thicket of power wires.

So things could have been ticklish.