Matthew Stackpole has ridden the crest of so many successful Island endeavors for so long, it should be no surprise that on Saturday, July 9, he will receive a coveted Island award. Mr. Stackpole is the recipient of the second Walter Cronkite Award; he will be honored at the 20th annual Seafood Buffet and Auction, a fund-raiser for Sail Martha’s Vineyard at Tisbury Wharf.

Sixteen-month-old Tanner Weiss wants his daddy. The toddler is on the sidelines of Flanders Field, pouting and stretching out his arms toward third base, where Larry Weiss is holding down the fort for Sig’s Sluggers.

For its first birthday, the Island’s newest community center got a new name: The Swartz Family YMCA is what the sign reads above the door to the 35,000-square foot building housing a pool, fitness center, cafe and gathering place for thousands of Islanders.

Donors Jim and Susan Swartz, who have given $3 million to the cause, were honored at a one-year anniversary ceremony at the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard on Thursday, when the sign was unveiled.

Landscape Artistry

Camp Be-Someone-Else

Be the star you know you are. The curtain is about to go up for summer theatre arts camp for ages 9 to 14 at the Vineyard Playhouse. Camp begins on Tuesday, July 5 and afterwards runs Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through August 26.

Camp directors Liz Hartford and Mac Young are returning this summer, along with Katharine Pilcher. The camps are designed to be small and nurturing with an average of 12 to 15 campers per week.

Silly Shakespeare Is Brain Candy

Where can you watch trained professionals and not-even-potty-trained extras take the stage together? The Fabulists’ theatre for kids, that’s where.

Free Pancakes

It’s a freedom festival of the most floury kind. Pancakes for free and someone else is making them. What more could a harried vacationer ask for?

The breakfast party is being thrown on Monday, July 4 by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in honor of our veterans. The eating begins at 8:30 a.m. and the flapjacks are flipped until 10 p.m. at the Merchants Mart off State Road in Vineyard Haven.

For more details, call 774-563-0460.

C.B. Stark Jewelers is a place that’s so well known you probably take it for granted. If you’ve ever needed a new charm, or cuff links or had to have the battery changed in your wristwatch, chances are you went to C.B. Stark, which has stores on Main street in Vineyard Haven and North Water street in Edgartown.

The jewelry store turns 45 this year, which is a lot of years to be in business on the Vineyard.

Most painters cannot tell you at precisely what moment, or how, they knew they wanted to become an artist. Usually they attempt to articulate some ineffable urge that has been with them for as long as they can remember, or perhaps an epiphany triggered by their first contact with an inspiring masterpiece or art teacher. Chris Pendergast, in marked contrast, sat down at the age of 20 to think about his life, and having mused upon everything that mattered to him, decided that “painting is what I should do” — even though he’d never painted.

This sunny Saturday in West Tisbury, Allen Whiting is out at his easel, working at his latest landscape and simultaneously working at his answers to questions about his art.

His approach to both tasks is similar: He goes at it enthusiastically for awhile, then pauses to reconsider things, then goes back and adds another layer.

Ask, for example, why an artist who seldom shows outside his own gallery has decided to put on a retrospective of his work at Featherstone Center for the Arts, and he gives a succession of answers.

First up, he is glib.