Thanksgiving, done. Next? For many, the next holiday tradition is the classic ballet, The Nutcracker.

Children in the Arts of Martha’s Vineyard will present the 11th annual Nutcracker Gala at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Dec. 6, and Sunday, Dec. 7.

The Nutcracker Prince’s triumphant battle with the Mouse King? Check.

Darting Snowflakes? Arabian and Spanish dancers? Sugar Plum Fairy? Check, check, check (with sugar on top).

Looking for easy-to-digest entertainment after stuffing yourself on stuffing? Tonight and tomorrow night, Shakespeare for the Masses will present a free, script-in-hand performance of the Bard’s spiciest “problem play,” All’s Well That Ends Well at the Vineyard Playhouse.

The renowned Limón Dance Company will dedicate its coming season to the founder of the Chilmark dance colony, The Yard, the late Patricia Nanon.

The dedication was announced shortly after President Bush awarded The JoséLimón Dance Foundation with a 2008 National Medal of Arts for Lifetime Achievement in a ceremony held in the East Room of the White House on Nov. 17

The Honey Boat,> by Polly Burroughs. Illustrated by Garrett Price. Published 1968 and 2008. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA, 44 pages. $14.99.

For those who remember traveling the streets of Edgartown years ago, the term honey wagon was a euphemism for the septic system pump-out trucks that traveled the streets during the height of summer. It was pretty easy to understand why they got such a witty name. The vehicles attracted so many flies that from a distance they could look like beehives.

Today is fall festival, a traditional celebration at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown. Every year since 1980, the sanctuary has held a day-after Thanksgiving event which brings together strangers and friends, young and old to sip hot cider and participate in an array of family-friendly activities.

While other people are busy shopping and scurrying about with holiday errands, at Felix Neck there is a different kind of tradition for those who want to get outdoors and work off some of that turkey dinner.

W e had committed to spending the last week of May along the New Jersey side of Delaware Bay, on the beaches that stretch north from Cape May. One of my two partners in this project, Porter Turnbull, had set up our first meeting at a service stop far down the Garden State Parkway. Our discussion was with a longtime fisherman who has been an advocate for commercial horseshoe crab harvesters. The meeting outlined the complexities of balancing the interests of crab fishermen, shorebird researchers and the wildlife that served both.

In this serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after years in Manhattan to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe loathes Richard Moby, chief of the off-Island landscaping business Broadway. He is irrationally convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and Island-based nursery businesses in general.

Dear P:

On Oct. 26 the late Claire Belcher Thompson was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Okla.

She was born Gladys Emmons in Mansfield in 1902, the granddaughter of David and Frances Harding. She spent much of her childhood in Mansfield with her grandmother and her aunt, Mabel Harding Barnes. She became an experienced horsewoman.

Dr. Elaine Cawley Weintraub has been appointed to an elite education think tank, the only teacher among a group that includes principals, superintendents and executives in private industry, such as IBM.

The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School history teacher and West Tisbury resident already has attended her first meeting of the Global Education Advisory Council, after her recent three-year appointment by the commonwealth commissioner of elementary and secondary education, Mitchell D. Chester.

Thanksgiving

Eighteen eider ducks

are swimming in the sun

from Vineyard Haven’s harbor

on their lighthouse run

underneath our dock and by

our bright sand cove

they pause to feed, then spin and

dance in pairs, as if in love

with the freezing winter weather

come too soon: November, first

plunging from Indian summer