A drastic decline in striped bass stocks has state and federal officials scrambling to protect the fish, but many recreational fishermen say the government isn’t moving fast enough.

A bare-bones budget, bylaw changes to allow more affordable housing in town and a proclamation to “condemn” the Cape Wind project await Aquinnah voters at the annual town meeting on Tuesday night.

The meeting begins at 6:45 p.m. at the old Aquinnah town hall with a special town meeting preceding the annual session.

Town moderator Michael Hebert will preside over the sessions.

The completion of the first 100 days has become an important milestone in the career of a politician. For freshman Cong. William Keating, it has seemed more like 1,000 days, with geopolitical, domestic and even nuclear crises coming in quick succession. For the past two weeks Mr. Keating has been catching his breath, meeting with constituents from Edgartown to Quincy, but on Sunday he was reminded that the world doesn’t wait.

Just two weeks after it finished accepting proposals from wind power developments in waters south of the Vineyard, the federal government has more than halved the area in which it will allow wind farms.

Citing concerns from fishermen, the state and others about potential adverse impacts, particularly on fishing and migrating marine mammals, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has reduced the size of the prospective area from 3,000 square miles to 1,300.

Plans for a new grocery store on State Road in Vineyard Haven put forward by Island entrepreneur Elio Silva have been fast-tracked at the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, which was expected to vote on the project last night.

Tisbury town leaders and those involved in building the town’s new $7.4 million emergency services building are in the process of vetting a new construction supervisor, after the former one was sacked over the trouble-plagued project.

The former construction supervisor was terminated at the town’s request, in response to a long list of faults in the building, which have delayed the project. An interim supervisor is in place, but has yet to be approved to take over permanently.

It took a gentle push and a firm pull of many hands to get the 1,590-pound bronze bell back into position. But last Friday, after months of work and preparation, the Old Whaling Church bell was again in its place high above downtown Edgartown.

It was supposed to be like any other Tuesday.

I was 13 years old, sitting outside on the breathtakingly beautiful day in between classes, diligently reading my history textbook, when a teacher told a group of us they were calling an immediate emergency schoolwide assembly.

The actual announcement that terrorists had hijacked planes and taken down the World Trade Center towers is a bit of a blur, but the energy and confusion was palpable. My heart burned, my body went numb. We returned to class, speechless.

On the rainy morning of Sunday, April 23, I boarded the Steamship boat and returned to the mainland and my life as I knew it before Camp Safe Haven. I had been gone for only seven days, yet had been so immersed in the experience that I felt a sense of novelty when re-exposed to my own life. My thoughts, emotions and my passion lingered with the volunteers and campers that had shared the experience with me.

Wind turbines get all the negative ink. Noise, vibration, flicker, interruption of beloved views. Big troublemakers, aren’t they?

Solar panels, on the other hand, are considered to be quite benign. The Nantucket Historic District Commission doesn’t like them much, and some people would rather see roofs without them, but by and large they have come to be widely accepted.

But what about when we scale them up with considerably larger installations that can make a meaningful contribution to our energy supply? Are they really so benign?