World According to Alan

Documentary photographer Alan Brigish of West Tisbury will present a slide show entitled Eye Contact: Faces from Around the World on Wednesday, Sept. 26, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Chilmark Free Public Library.

Mr. Brigish has traveled the globe, taking photographs of people wherever he goes. The event is free and sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Public Library.

Eat your heart out, Nicholas Sparks.

Derby angler Janet Messineo last week found her second message in a bottle from an Island student.

Mr. Sparks’s popular novel by the same name about true love found by a woman who finds a message in a bottle may not be the stuff from which award-winning striped bass are found, but the derby weigh-in station was abuzz Sunday morning when Ms. Messineo popped in with a carefully sealed Snapple bottle enclosing a note.

A MedFlight helicopter had a bumpy landing at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital Friday evening when a piece of tarp covering contruction materials was sucked off the ground and got caught in the chopper’s propeller, forcing it to land partially off the heliport.

Hobbit in Edgartown

It’s Tolkien Week, and the Edgartown library is celebrating the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of the Hobbit books and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, through Sept. 23.

The library will screen an animated version of the Hobbit story at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18, in the children’s room. This film is suitable for third-graders and up.

Vineyard Women’s Network

Hosts Meeting Next Week

The Martha’s Vineyard Women’s Network will hold its first meeting of the season on Sept. 25 at the Grill on Main in Edgartown on Tuesday, Sept. 25 from 7:30 to 9 a.m.

Jean DiGiovanna, founder of ThinkPeople, will explore the importance of goal setting as an approach to business planning. Ms. DiGiovanna will advise attendees on keeping their business “on the right track” with measurable and proven goal-setting tactics.

Peace Rally

The Martha’s Vineyard Peace council is organizing a peace rally at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 15, at what the council calls Peace Corners (Five Corners) in Vineyard Haven. It will coincide with rallies across the U.S. For details, call Chris Fried at 508-693-7741.

Featherstone likes to take chances.

Several years ago Featherstone Center for the Arts introduced a gallery show featuring out-of-the-mainstream art, filled by artists who practiced what they felt was important, not what sold.

The show proved a success, and now Featherstone devotes one gallery show to the unconventional art created by Island artists. Titled The Other Side of Vineyard Art: Not Beaches and Boats, this year’s exhibition opens this Sunday, Sept. 16 with a wide array of creations, many never before exhibited.

Linda Greenlaw Talk

Lobster boat captain and author Linda Greenlaw speaks on fishing and lobstering issues at Tisbury Waterways Inc’s 2007 annual meeting. It is Friday, Sept. 21 at 5:30 p.m. at the Tisbury Senior Center 5:30 pm. Free admission and all welcome. For details, call 508-696-1893.

It was 5:30 a.m. and still barely light over Tisbury Great Pond. I noted motion over the pond and saw two birds chasing one another. Then I heard a distinctive rattle and realized that the silhouettes I was watching were two belted kingfishers. I put the kettle on and settled in to sip my tea and watch the sun come up. As dawn broke the two kingfishers raced by low to the pond, then they banked and rose up over the embankment and flashed a single broad breast band: two male kingfishers.

By LYNNE IRONS

I have no business writing a garden column. I should be doing a political blog, as if I knew how to blog. I can barely Google in a pinch.

There. I have set the stage.