In the disturbing yet vital film Taxi to the Dark Side, Army Specialist Damien Corsetti, one of six interrogators who confessed to torturing and killing an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan in 2002, stoically peers into the camera and tries to justify his actions.

“When you look at people as less than human, you find yourself doing unthinkable things,” Mr. Corsetti says of his role in the death of Dilawar, the young Afghani wrongly accused of being the trigger man in a rocket attack.

A few things became quite clear at Wednesday night’s public hearing on the draft environmental impact statement on the Cape Wind project.

The first was that about twice as many Vineyarders, assuming those who attended are broadly representative of Island opinion, oppose the project as support it.

The West Tisbury historic district commission this week approved the major parts of a proposed $5.1 million renovation of town hall. The renovation project, slated for a vote at annual town meeting on April 8, is the latest in a series of renovation proposals to voters dating back to 1997.

Between April 1997 and 2005, voters approved several design and development requests ranging between $10,000 and $75,000 for two separate architectural firms. In 2003, annual town meeting voters narrowly rejected a $3.8 million borrowing plan to fund the renovation.

Martha’s Vineyard Community Services will end its Visiting Nurse Service on June 30 after nearly 43 years of operation.

Seventy-two clients and 22 employees — 12 staff members and 10 per-diem workers — will be affected. The agency is not accepting new referrals, said Julia Burgess, executive director of Community Services.

Program director Sharon Clauss-Zanger noted the closing date is subject to assurance of adequate and appropriate transition arrangements for its home-care clients.

It is sap-running time on the Vineyard, and Simon J. Athearn of Edgartown already is in the thick of making maple syrup.

His own topping for home-cooked waffles and pancakes can’t be found in any store. But there is an ample supply for those lucky enough to join him and his wife, Catherine, for breakfast.

Mr. Athearn, 31, said he usually makes close to a gallon of maple syrup and gives it out to family and friends. None of it is for sale.

It seemed an unlikely coincidence that on the very day the community consultation process on the Cape Wind project began, another wind project should suddenly pop into the world, one conveniently out of sight of land, and apparently on the best of terms with the opponents of Cape Wind.

And indeed, it proved not to be a coincidence, as the general manager of the proponent company made clear on Monday.

This past Sunday saw the earliest recorded spring appearance of an osprey on the Vineyard, fishing Brine’s Pond on Chappaquiddick. The prior record was set on March 14, 2002.

In a markedly short meeting by Oak Bluffs standards, selectmen on Tuesday breezed through a wide variety of hot topics including the growing likelihood of an override for next year’s budget — the first in six years — and plans for emergency repairs to a 30-ton retaining wall that collapsed along Sea View avenue last month.

Plans for the collapsed retaining wall drew darts from Nancy Phillips, who complained that officials had focused their efforts on a plan that would negate another proposal for the revitalization of the town waterfront.

Corrections

A news article that ran in the Feb. 29 edition of the Gazette and an editorial in last Friday’s edition inaccurately described services at the Aquinnah Public Library. The hours of operation have not been scaled back. The Gazette regrets the errors.

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Edgartown selectmen approved a series of parking reforms Monday that included additional time allowances at parking spaces, increased fines for violations, and a name change for the Dark Woods Trolley Lot, the sinisterly monikered park-and-ride at the entrance to Edgartown.

The rulings follow the recommendations of the Edgartown planning board and a voluntary parking committee, who have met for the past five months to come up with ways to alleviate parking pressure in downtown Edgartown.