Janette Vanderhoop says she cannot function without caffeine. Her addiction is recent, but, she admits, chai tea in hand, she is worried. Halfway between Aquinnah and the Gazette office in Edgartown, she realized she had not had her morning cup and found herself veering to the other side of the road. She makes a beeline for the coffee shop.

Vineyard summer, with all its last-minute social scramble, is over, and I’m back in New York. I decide it is finally, finally time, after 25 years, to create a new address book. As a member of the pre-computer generation, I had kept my addresses and phone numbers in a black leather notebook on small sheets of lined paper, and in pencil so that I could make erasures and additions and changes. After all these years it was a mess.

A thin crescent moon appears tomorrow morning right above two planets. The moon is right above Venus, the brightest “star” in the East. The ringed-planet Saturn appears underneath Venus. The assembly of three celestial objects will be an impressive sight.

Double Dip

The ice cream cone is soon to become an endangered species on the Vineyard after a long, hot, delicious summer.

From Columbus Day to May, ice cream cones are simply not to be found up-Island or down. Occasionally, one surfaces in a convenience store ice cream freezer, but those are hardly the same. Popsicles, fudgicles, chocolate-covered ice cream bars are quite acceptable from a grocery freezer, but never an ice cream cone. An ice cream cone must be freshly scooped.

After less than 30 minutes of deliberation, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission last night unanimously and decisively agreed to add five Edgartown pathways dating back to colonial times into a special protection zone that will prevent them from being clear cut or widened in the future.

One of the top striped bass caught in the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby this past week had a rough journey off and back onto the derby leader board.

On Sunday evening, Lev Wlodyka, 28, of Chilmark weighed in a 57.56 pound striped bass.

But the fish, it turns out, had ingested 1.68 pounds of lead prior to being caught.

This was a big surprise to Mr. Wlodyka, not to mention to derby officials. They quickly disqualified the fish. The decision upset Mr. Wlodyka, for he had caught the fish using a hooked eel.

New Hampshire advertising agency executive David Flood has produced a documentary on Vineyard life and the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

The hour-long color film, Feeding the Water, will premiere today at 7 p.m. on MVTV and will run on the station through the remainder of the derby. Mr. Flood filmed for five weeks during the 2006 derby.

You were wandering around looking lost and lonely. When we looked at each other, I immediately could see you wanted me to help rescue you. Your eyes said: “Please take me home with you — I promise to be good.”

For the next five years we were best friends.

On Sept. 11 I lost Happy to a series of illnesses.

Fordie would have grinned and shaken his head over the derby fish flap.

He was a good guy who grew up in a tough place. He worked hard jobs and learned early that life isn’t always fair.

So when the cancer doctors told him to put his affairs in order late in 1994, he knew how to handle adversity.

His full name was Walter Ford. He died in 1995 a month after the derby and this is probably the only time he’ll be memorialized in print.

Mainland police this week said a Fairhaven man who disappeared from a Vineyard-bound voyage of the New England Fast Ferry late last month left a note for his family; as a result police now believe the man did not fall off the boat by accident.

On Sept. 24 Walter P. Tyler, 28, of Fairhaven, reportedly boarded the 1 p.m. high-speed passenger ferry from New Bedford to the Vineyard but never arrived on the Island. A team of investigators last week searched the waters between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound but found nothing.