The scope of one homeowner’s unpermitted dredging and filling work on Mink Meadows Pond became apparent on Tuesday night when conservation commission members heard from a land surveyor and the contractor who carried out the work.

Oliver Carson Wins Bee

For the second year in a row, Oliver Carson, now a seventh grader, won the Oak Bluffs School Geography Bee sponsored by National Geographic. Oliver edged out sixth grader Ellie Hanjian in the final round by knowing that the tallest mountain in Africa is Mt. Kilimanjaro. Oliver has taken a written exam to try to qualify for the Massachusetts State Geography Bee which will take place in April. The winner from the state bee competes in Washington, D.C. in the National Geography Bee.

Chilmark fire chief David Norton took a little heat of a different kind on Tuesday night, as he pushed his case with selectmen for a pay raise of more than 50 per cent.

Mr. Norton’s current stipend is $21,000. He wanted it upped to $33,000. And that figure, he suggested, was giving the town a discount.

Vineyard residents between the ages of 15 and 19, in the upper one third of their academic class, who want to be a world traveler, should take note of the Rotary Club of Martha’s Vineyard offer of a short-term exchange in 2011. With the short-term exchange the Island student will go overseas for about three weeks during the summer vacation, staying with a Rotary family abroad that also has a teenaged student. At the end of the stay, the foreign teenager will return and spend about three weeks with the Vineyard student’s family.

This is the big centennial year for the Martha’s Vineyard Rod and Gun Club. While the club members haven’t yet figured out how to celebrate, they’ve taken one first step to capitalize on the milestone: They’ve come out with 100 special, limited edition, numbered hats.

Anyone affected by Alzheimer’s and dementia will be interested in a Monday video series featuring the highly regarded expert and presenter Teepa Snow. Ms. Snow is known for being funny in a very respectful way in order to humanize this debilitating disease. Friends, family members and caregivers of any age can learn from these videos how to better communicate with or relate to those suffering from dementia.

The Martha’s Vineyard Women’s Network will offer a $2,500 grant to a Vineyard-based business person who wishes to improve their business skills, grow or improve an existing business, or start a new one.

The grant, offered for the second year by the four-year-old network, is open to all Vineyard business people, men and women, members and nonmembers. The winner will be announced at the year’s final Martha’s Vineyard Women’s Network program on May 17.

You’re late for work, the caffeine hasn’t quite kicked in yet, and your morning dose of NPR is gently waking your brain up on the car radio. Or perhaps it’s the end of the day and you were too busy to read the papers, so you tune in for the radio news on the hour. At some point you stop to wonder, who are the faces behind the voices?

Kerry Alley of Oak Bluffs sees a parallel between some of the hardships being experienced by Brazilians on the Vineyard these days, and those of a century ago when the Portuguese arrived on the Vineyard. “There were a lot of them,” Mr. Alley said of the earlier immigrants. “They did all the work nobody else would do.

“They faced some of the same prejudices.”

Last week I spoke at the renowned South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. SXSW, as it is usually written, began as a music, and then film, festival and is one of the most “happening” events on the planet. Recently, a third component joined film and music: “Interactives.” This means cyber-stuff and all that 21st-century jazz. Although I have a lifelong terror and ineptness in this arena, I accepted a surprise invitation to speak at an “interactives” panel, and headed for sunny Texas, optimistic I would feel right at home.