It’s been called the Buena Vista Social Club for Gypsy music: Gypsy Caravan is a luscious film interweaving the real lives of top international performers and their world music tour across Spain, Macedonia, Romania, India, Europe and the U.S. The Martha’s Vineyard Film Society is screening this whirling Albert Maysles-shot documentary on Saturday, Dec. 8, at Outerland at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

Renowned photojournalist Peter Simon will present a slide show documenting his life in photography and music at the Chilmark Public Library on Saturday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m. Mr. Simon has documented many historic events from the protest-filled 1960s to the greatest names in rock and roll, reggae and pop music.

Chappaquiddick has a powerful and stunning visitor from the North. Olsen Houghton and Joel Graves were between the Cape Pogue Gut and Cape Pogue Lighthouse on Dec. 2 and spotted a snowy owl working over the dunes. They were able to videotape the bird and watch it for quite a while.

With Thanksgiving over, pie crust pressure is off. Whew.

By LYNNE IRONS

Last Saturday’s cold snap lit a fire under me. There were so many last (for me, first) minute winter preparations.

I stapled a bunch of grain bags over the hardware cloth windows of my hen house. The girls were mighty chilly last Friday night. When I closed their door that evening, their feathers were blowing around on them. I always feel sorry for birds in winter with their bare legs and feet.

The world around us is full of misnomers: hamburgers are not ham, tin foil is actually aluminum, and a shooting star is not a star. Nature has even more: koala bears are not bears, peanuts are not nuts, and a magpie is a bird, not a dessert.

This column is about a hornet that is not a hornet.

Bald-faced hornets are not true hornets. To call them hornets would be, well, a bald-faced lie. They are actually wasps, related to paper wasps and yellow jackets, and are identified by the white pattern on their face, if you cared to get that close.

Caroling is all about alcohol, traditionally. “This time of year is about being with friends singing carols, and being in a pub drinking good beer,” Peter R. Boak, director of the Island Community Chorus, told his audience at a performance in the Edgartown Old Whaling Church this Sunday, making a misleading distinction.

A sharply divided Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School district committee voted 5-4 to certify a $16.2 million budget on Monday, up 2.7 per cent over last year. Approved by a single vote at an uncharacteristically well-attended high school committee meeting, the budget reflects last-minute revisions to instructional and fixed costs.

And it follows an emotional public hearing last week at which music and drama students, teachers and parents spoke out on proposed teacher and program cuts across those departments.

Aline Pereira Leite has been lucky since she left Brazil 27 months ago to work on Martha’s Vineyard, and she knows it.

This pretty, softly spoken, 23-year-old woman is sitting in the living room of a sumptuous Island home. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows is spectacular: snow-dusted trees down to the shore of Lake Tashmoo and, beyond it, Vineyard Sound. It is a glorious sunny morning.

The Island Food Pantry is facing a tough winter. While contributions of food are up this season, Arman Hanjian, the coordinator, is concerned the need will exceed the supply as it has for the past several years.

The cost of food, heat and general living is the highest it has been in recent memory on the Island. For some Vineyarders, that spells trouble. People living on fixed incomes, the underemployed and unemployed face the greatest peril.