After receiving a notice of noncompliance from the state last month confirming that treated effluent is seeping to the surface at Ocean Park, the Oak Bluffs wastewater commission has agreed to hire an environmental engineering firm to begin work on additional leaching beds at a new site adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant.

The Vineyard community from here and abroad showed up for a fundraiser to help an Island personality coping with medical hardship. Jim Moore, a sales representative from Island Food Products and a former food and beverage director for the Harbor View Hotel, is fighting the cancer Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He has yet to hold a press conference in his front yard, hold forth on foreign policy regarding Israel, or hire a publicity management agent, as Ohio’s Joe Wurzelbacher has. But Joe Guerin, an Edgartown plumber with nearly 30 years experience, has seen his local fame skyrocket in the two weeks following the final presidential debate thanks to Mr. Wurzelbacher and the three little words he inspired: Joe the Plumber.

The stock market may be seeing red on Wall street this autumn, but here on the Vineyard there is a bright future in cranberries. On the Island and across southeastern Massachusetts, it is a banner year for cranberries, both wild and cultivated.

With the election of a new Cape and Islands state representative days away, campaign finance reports released this week show Vineyard candidate Daniel Larkosh outspending his opponents three to one.

The committee to elect Mr. Larkosh, who won the Democratic primary, spent $31,200 in the period between August 30, two weeks before the Massachusetts primary, and Oct. 17.

Seventy-odd years ago, Everett Poole recalls, the first Democrat appeared in Chilmark. He ran the post office.

“The reason he was a Democrat was that Franklin Roosevelt was President and those jobs were all political appointments. So he had to be a Democrat. He came from Maine,” said Mr. Poole.

“As the post office grew larger, they wanted a clerk, so his wife became a Democrat too.”

Amid the heap of state and national issues on Tuesday, Island voters will be asked one local question: whether to reduce the terms of the seven-member Dukes County commission. A yes vote on ballot question number four will reduce terms from four years to two. A no vote will leave commission members serving four-year staggered terms.

Vineyard election officials are expecting a record turnout for Tuesday’s election following a rush of new voter registrations and a huge number of absentee ballots already cast.

The number of absentee ballots as of yesterday was in some cases close to twice that normally seen at a presidential election, a sure sign, Island town clerks said, of an engaged electorate, and a likely indicator of an unprecedented turnout.

The stunning success of the ninth annual Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School Scarecrow Contest is evident across the Vineyard. This year’s theme of marine life resulted in fishermen, jellyfish, sharks, sardines, sea dragons and whales appearing in front of participating businesses everywhere. Scarecrows will be coming down on Sunday, Nov. 2, so make sure to get down Island to see them all.

By LYNNE IRONS