These were the top finishers in the 85th Annual Regatta of the Edgartown Yacht Club, held from July 10 through 12.

Wianno Senior Division (21 boats)

1, Cochenoe, Donald Law; 2, Yankee Dime, Frank Saul; 3, Cheerful, Lloyd B. McManus Jr.; 4, Heritage, John Fallon; 5, Aurora, Holly Edmonds; 6, Dauntless, Jeff Tracy; 7, Lente Festina, Kevin Plunkett; 8, Golden Summer, W. Patrick Lentell; 9, Rapparee, Peter O’Keeffe; 10, Odin, Andrew Dunne 4th.

Shields Division (9 boats)

Spirituals at East Chop

Lighthouse: Free at Five

The Martha’s Vineyard Museum will present the second in their summer Free at Five series on Wednesday, July 23, at the East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs.

The lighthouse will be open free of charge to the public beginning at 5 p.m., followed by a performance by the Jim Thomas Spiritual Choir at 6 p.m.

JAY ALEXANDER BROWN

Hold on to your hat, because on Tuesday, July 22, the Oak Bluffs Tabernacle will be whisked away to the Valley of the Wind.

In this serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after years in Manhattan to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe loathes Richard Moby, chief of the off-Island landscaping business Broadway. He is irrationally convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and Island-based nursery businesses in general.

Dear P:

Tonight’s full moon resides in the zodiacal constellation Sagittarius and has a companion. The bright planet Jupiter is nearby. The two are a handsome pair and shine together through the night in the southern sky. For those venturing to South Beach, the two celestial objects will hang together, making the water sparkle underneath.

This past fall, three American women went camping with the Qashqai nomads in the mountains of southwestern Iran. They came back from their travels with amazing stories and, perhaps more impressive still, with the hand-woven Qashqai rugs known as Gabbehs.

Now these Gabbeh rugs, made by small collectives of nomadic women, are the focus of a two-week trunk show at the Mansion House in Vineyard Haven.

Thomas Bena, founder of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival, stood in front of a mostly full house at the Chilmark community center last Wednesday night, and shared an anecdote.

“I can remember one night a few years ago when a man approached me on his way out the door. He told me that he appreciated what we were doing here, but that the film we had just shown was repetitive and just generally not very good. I thanked him for his thoughts and was watching him leave when someone else came up to me and said ‘Do you know who that guy was?’”

People packed into the Chilmark Public Library last week — finding spots on the floor, standing in the back, even watching from the windows — to see Alan Dershowitz explain why torture should be allowed through a warrant.

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, or so the song goes. And Mr. Dershowitz, a longtime Chilmark summer resident famous for his controversial career as a lawyer and a professor at Harvard Law School, knows how to lay on the sugar.

Time does not heal all wounds, at least for the Gulf Coast, which is why, three years after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Finding Our Folk, the New Orleans Hot 8 Brass Band, and the KatrinaRitaVille Express Trailer are coming to the Vineyard this weekend, under the leadership of Derrick Evans.

“You are not my enemy/ my grandmother my grandfather.

I built walls between us./ Rubble made sound

sand scattered plastic bags all around

rifles and checkpoints/bright lights into your eyes...”