Hundreds of boats ranging in size from eight-foot long Optimist sailing dinghies to 30-foot Shields will fill the Edgartown harbor this weekend as the 88th annual Edgartown Yacht Club Regatta gets under way.

Racing begins Thursday; boats begin arriving in Edgartown harbor on Wednesday afternoon.

More than a dozen Wianno Senior 25-foot gaff-rigged sailboats will arrive Thursday afternoon from the Cape. They race from Osterville to here.

As the ink was still drying on a $30.6 billion state budget signed into law on Monday by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a spokesman for Cape and Islands state Sen. Dan Wolf said they were still studying the local impacts of the budget.

Pared down some $750 million from the previous year, Mr. Wolf has characterized the budget as one of the most difficult in memory, but his chief of staff Seth Rolbein said there were some welcome developments.

By DAN WATERS

To live in Christiantown is to abide by the laws, quirks and schedules of hundreds of other animals that share these primeval woods. If you are not a naturalist and a natural philosopher when you first move here, you will become one through regular contact with furry, scaly, fanged and feathered neighbors.

CALL FOR LEADERSHIP

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

In any small town, there are cultural, political, social and economic factions that converge to give each town its own special personality. Within each faction, there are personal issues, public interests and many hidden agendas to deal with. These are the difficult and enormously complicated problems that make a small town so special. We all get to be involved. And we all get to be affected. It is the curse and the blessing of small-town living.

THE GREATER JOURNEY: Americans in Paris. By David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, New York, N.Y. May 2011. 558 pages, photographs. $37.50 hardcover.

From Gazette editions of 1962:

Veterans Memorial Park in Vineyard Haven is the finest example of cooperative effort on the part of residents of every Island town. Its ten acres or so, reclaimed from swamp, marsh and actual open water, has become an Island landmark, a fitting memorial to war heroes living and dead, and is the scene of much activity on the part of old and young.

There was a time when milk was just milk, when cream was skimmed off the top for butter and a percentage of fat didn’t deem a tall glass of the refreshing drink, glistening like porcelain, to be unhealthy. But with two Island farms selling straight-from-the-farm milk in glass bottles, milk may have another chance.

Hello, Jasper

Alexandra London-Thompson and Peter Stray of Chilmark announce the birth of a son, Jasper Christophe Stray-London, born on July 8, 2011, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Jasper weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces at birth.

Merrill Arrives

Jamie and Merrill Langley of Edgartown announce the birth of a son, Merrill Keenan Langley, born on July 5, 2011, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Merrill weighed 10 pounds, 3 ounces at birth.

Devin Colter

Devin Colter, son of Richard Colter and Deborah Colter of Edgartown, received a degree in communications from Ithaca College in May.