Alison Shaw Gallery is opening up again for a Columbus Day weekend sale. On Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. posters are 15 per cent off, cards are one-third off, selected prints are 25 per cent or more off regular prices.

After this weekend, the gallery will be available only by appointment, so visit this weekend at 88 Dukes County avenue in the Oak Bluffs Arts District. For details, call 508-696-SHAW or see Alisonshaw.com.

Buddhism is on the rise in Brazil, and West Tisbury journalist Perry Garfinkel has some ideas on why.

He’s the author of the 2006 national bestseller Buddha or Bust: In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness, and the Man Who Found Them All. When the Portuguese edition of the book was released in June, Mr. Garfinkel traveled to Brazil, where the national census shows the percentage of Roman Catholics there has dropped from about 90 to 70 per cent since 1980.

Even on Martha’s Vineyard, where art gallery openings are reliably free of suits and swanky dresses, it is still uncommon for an opening to draw a sizeable crowd clad in bathing suits — sunbathers literally on the way home from the beach. And rarer still for a bank to open its lawn on a Friday evening, after business hours, to play host. Yet bare-footed art openings at the Chilmark branch of the Bank of Martha’s Vineyard have been a regular occurrence for at least 30 years.

Never have a manicure before beginning a major carpentry project.

That’s the first of many lessons Chris Rasmussen learned last week while installing the foundation deck on her new home in Vineyard Haven made possible by Habitat for Humanity. Ms. Rasmussen’s enterprise is the fifth Habitat home to be built.

Karl G. Buder of Vineyard Haven, a member of Good Shepherd Parish on the Vineyard, is one of 13 men scheduled for ordination to the permanent diaconate for service in the Fall River Diocese on Oct. 8.

The service is scheduled for 11 a.m. at Corpus Christi Church in East Sandwich.

Mr. Buder and his fellow candidates have been preparing for their ordination for the past five years.

By KATE J. CONDE

The lead foreman of Vineyard Gardens, Jeremiah Brown, doesn’t mince words about his expertise.

“What I know is pruning,” he said.

He shared his experience with members of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club at its September meeting by combining a talk and hands-on demonstration on the grounds of the Old Mill in West Tisbury. 

Mr. Brown admitted to starting out his career in horticulture by “knocking out false bamboo in his mother’s garden with a golf club.”

Imagine you have 12 juice-size cups in front of you. Carefully construct a six-cup pyramid in the middle and two three-cup stacks either side. Then, working from right to left, demolish these structures finishing with three perfect cup stacks, and punch the clock.

You just mentally completed what stackers call a 3-6-3. How long did it take? A minute? Thirty seconds . . . 2.6 seconds? Odds are, even in your head, you can’t do it fast enough to beat some of the Island kids who have taken up the sport over the past year.

Temperature: Precip.

Day Max. Min. Inches.

Fº Fº

Sept. 28 80 65 .27

Sept. 29 75 58 .00

Sept. 30 71 50 .00

Oct. 1 68 45 .00

Oct. 2 67 50 .00

Oct. 3 72 59 .00

Oct. 4 73 62 Trace

Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 71º F.

It’s the great Pumpkin Festival! Anyone who ventures into the growing pumpkin patch at Morning Glory Farm next Saturday, Oct. 13, need only wait until 11 a.m. for sightings of — if not the Great Pumpkin — at least pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, pumpkin squares and, well, you get the idea.

Nonbelievers, too, can gobble up an Island-grown burger, carve their own Halloween pumpkin, crawl through the hay bale maze, or join the pumpkin tossing competition.