The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), inland waterway, or the Ditch, as it is also known, is an incredible piece of water. It offers the boater, whether by sail, paddle, oars or motor, a fascinating peek into the history and natural history of the Eastern Seaboard. The ICW doesn’t officially start (mile marker number one) until Norfolk, Va., and ends in Key West, Fla. (mile marker 1241). However, many seamen believe it starts at Cape Ann and goes to Brownsville, Tex.

Morgan Woods affordable housing development in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard has won the 2008 Urban Land Institute’s J. Ronald Terwilliger Workforce Housing Models of Excellence Award.

The award recognizes exemplary developments that meet workforce housing needs in high cost communities. Entries are judged on specific criteria including: extent of affordability, involvement of public/private partnership, energy cost savings, green construction and innovative building technologies that reduce cost and improve efficiency.

In many ways, autumn is the same as it ever was: the result of our Island, our region — this hemisphere — turning slowly away from the sun. Days still shrink as the nights grow longer. Temperatures gradually drop towards winter’s frigid lows, although perhaps not as low as they used to go. The trees still turn dramatic shades of yellow and red. And the indefinable qualities of the deepening blue sky, the brightening of the stars at night and the scent of leaves returning to the damp soil still stir feelings which defy description.

Chamber Music Concert

Island music lovers always have packed calendars between now and Christmas, and here is another date to set aside: on Nov. 29, the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society has planned an extraordinary concert for Islanders. That’s on the Saturday evening of Thanksgiving weekend, at 7:30 in the Old Whaling Church.

Eeeep-Eeeep!

As I make my way down the trail winding through the Aquinnah highland forest, the strange call repeats itself.

Eeeep-Eeeep!

I look around for the colorful bird that is surely the source of the noise. Perhaps it is one of those migratory species the Island is home to these autumn days.

Eeeep-Eeeep!

It’s a rock doc like you’ve never seen before: The average age of the singers is 81, and the group is a choir, not a clapped-out band of has-beens busting guitars on stage. The film Young at Heart follows the eponymous chorus from Northampton who belt out Sonic Youth and James Brown tunes, punk, pop, disco — even singing Dylan’s Forever Young at a penitentiary gig.

Radio Play Auditions

The Vineyard Playhouse is holding open auditions today, Friday, Nov. 21 from 4 to 6 p.m. for the supporting roles in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life–The Radio Play by Philip Grecian. Auditions are at the playhouse, 24 Church street in Vineyard Haven, for older teens, men and women, plus children ages 11-14. The show runs two weekends from Dec. 12 to 21. For details, call 508-693-6450, extension 18.

The annual Oak Bluffs tree lighting ceremony will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. The community is invited to this free event, beginning with caroling at 6:30 p.m. at Post Office Square. The Vineyard Classic Brass Ensemble will perform a medley of traditional holiday carols and board of selectmen chairman Ron DiOrio will officially light the town tree.

Peacecraft holiday craft sale will be located at 9 Beach Road in Vineyard Haven this year, opening the day after Thanksgiving and running through Dec. 24. Organizers hope to recruit enough volunteers to be open daily from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

In this year-long 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 of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.