Families and music lovers from across the Island will gather on Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Oak Bluffs for the 11th annual Reflections of Peace concert. This holiday tradition celebrates and benefits Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard.

Songs of the season will be performed by a cappella group Novum, Shelley Brown, Brad Austin and Kevin Ryan, and the West Tisbury Congregational Choir.

Instrumental offerings will be performed by the Katama Trio, the Vineyard Handbell Choir, and organist Wesley Brown.

Courtney Sullivan and David Luce of Edgartown announce the birth of a daughter, Jayden Marie Luce, born on Nov. 28 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. She weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces at birth.

Bankers are supposed to be flinty eyed. Evidently, Paul J. Watts didn’t get the memo.

The Island Rotarian looked a tad teary eyed last Friday as he described some of the 280 Peruvian villagers who were given the gift of mobility, some for the first times in their lives, as the result of the Martha’s Vineyard Rotary Club’s wheelchair mercy mission.

Mr. Watts, senior vice president of Bank of Martha’s Vineyard, was back in Vineyard Haven with seven other Island residents who spent a restful two weeks vacationing in Peru.

Reduce the number of birds and leash the dogs.

That's the translation of a technical study released this week by a leading marine biologist which concludes that a flock of invasive cormorants and - to a lesser extent - a group of domesticated dogs are responsible for the high levels of fecal contamination in Sengekontacket Pond.

None of the houses on North Water street in Edgartown are small. But tucked among the old whaling captains’ homes, with their broad lawns stretching down to private docks on the outer harbor is a comparatively diminutive Greek revival building known as the library. The fate of this home has hung in the balance since September, when plans for its demolition were first presented to the Edgartown historic district commission in the wake of strong neighborhood opposition to the project.

A leading opponent is neighbor John Connors.

In a move that has outraged Island homeowners and their elected state representatives alike, the Massachusetts Division of Insurance, with only scant publicity, recently agreed to hike to the roof certain deductibles for people insured under the FAIR plan.

Two leading Island recreational fishing organizations have called on the state Division of Marine Fisheries to end the controversial practice known as yo-yoing, which laces bait fish with lead that ends up in the bellies of striped bass.

When celebrity chef Jamie Oliver found students at an English elementary school eating a quarter-ton of chips each week in lunches that cost less to make than those at nearby prisons, he did something completely unexpected. He signed up as a lunch lady — bringing his fame, culinary skill and television production crew. In the four-episode series that followed, the ebullient Mr. Oliver faced student revolts, cafeterias losing money, and parents smuggling junk food over school fences.

Edgartown wastewater authorities believe a plan to sewer hundreds of homes in the watershed of the Edgartown Great Pond can achieve the 30 per cent reduction in nitrogen pollution required to restore it to health.

A draft report of the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, obtained and published by the Gazette last week, finds the Great Pond’s water quality is significantly affected by heavy nitrogen loading. The biggest single contributor to the problem is household septic systems, the report found.

In a classic double bind, Edgartown will need to rely on voter turnout to reduce the number of voters required for future quorums at town meetings. The quorum question will form part of a special town meeting on Tuesday night.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Old Whaling Church and will be moderated by Philip J. Norton Jr.