JANE N. SLATER

508-645-3378

(slaterjn@comcast.net)

Well, we expected it . . . January couldn’t leave us without a winter storm with snow and wind. Some in town also had the season’s first power outage, lasting about 2 1/2 hours. However, the rains that came later in the week dispatched much of the snow, so what white stuff remains is only scenic.

JUNE MANNING

508-645-2574

(lthslnks@gis.net)

Dean’s List

Sonya Marie Mayrand of Aquinnah has been named to the dean’s list for the fall 2007 semester at Keene State College in Keene, N.H.

Autism Support Group

A support group is forming for families with children on the autism spectrum. The group will provide a place for conversation and sharing of resources and experiences in navigating the autism spectrum.

The first meeting will be held Thursday, Feb. 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the Chilmark library. More information is available by calling 508-645-3245 or 508-645-8002.

Each winter Featherstone Center for the Arts, the Vineyard’s only year-round art center, undergoes a rebirth.

While students register for art classes, the gallery is refurbished. This year a new track has been installed around the perimeter of the gallery to better display works of art. And the gallery floor has been sanded down to bare wood and sealed for a gleaming new surface.

Welcome Grazina

Ellen and Tauras Biskis of Chilmark announce the birth of a daughter, Grazina Meilute Biskis, born Jan. 29 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. Grazina weighed 9 pounds, 9 ounces at birth.

As Vineyard voters prepare to go to the polls for the state primary Tuesday, the outcome is anyone’s guess.

In fact, trying to predict how the Island will vote next week requires the kind of divination that would put a witch hunt to shame.

The hunt for a Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School principal, a position which will be created with Margaret (Peg) Regan’s resignation this June — is down to four candidates. The final candidates are from Texas, Connecticut, Massachusetts and the Vineyard.

New single family home permits issued last year on the Vineyard soared 38 per cent over 2006, a rate of increase reminiscent of the building booms of the early 1980s and 1990’s.

A 20-year-old woman who grew up on the Island and dreamed of being a teacher was killed Tuesday evening when the vehicle she was driving was struck by a delivery truck at the intersection of County and Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Roads.

Brandy Marie Gibson, who graduated from the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School in 2004 and recently worked as a substitute teacher in Vineyard Haven and Edgartown, was pronounced dead at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital around 11 p.m. Tuesday night.