This week Edgartown was bustling — mainly with landscaping crews who were renovating, refurbishing and touching up properties in time for the official start date of the tourist season. Lumber hung from the back of trucks and the smell of paint and fresh mown grass breezed along Main street and its peripheries, where many businesses are preparing to reopen to the public, and several more to just a few high-paying members.

The Boston Pops had a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” arrangement with the more than 200 high school students vying for a place in the finals of the orchestra’s first statewide singing contest. So when the phone hadn’t rung by 4 p.m. Sunday, Katie Mayhew, a sophomore at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, was resigned to her fate.

A bomb squad from the Massachusetts State Police detonated several pieces of unexploded ordnance left over from World War II on Chappaquiddick last Wednesday, sending a thundering boom across the island and rattling foundations from Cape Pogue to Sampson’s Hill.

The explosion prompted concerned calls to the Island communications center and Edgartown police department, and was the subject of speculation all across the tight-knit Chappy community for several days.

The ferries are full, the weekend forecast bursting with good news — even the weather forecast is good for Memorial Day.

And the fishing is even better. Reports of mackerel, bluefish and bass have spawned the sight of light tackle rigs in pickup trucks. Ace fisherman Janet Messineo hooked a 23-inch striper last week.

Most businessmen are optimistic about the season, although optimism is a word usually replaced by the phrase “let’s wait and see.”

Author and Vineyard resident Tony Horwitz may have won a Pulitzer prize, written several best-selling books and worked for esteemed publications like The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker magazine, but clearly he is still warming to the idea of being somewhat famous.

For someone more accustomed to conducting interviews for one of his stories or books, it’s still a bit peculiar to him that somebody would actually want to write a story about him.

The red planet Mars is high in the northwestern sky after sunset. The dull red planet resides in the zodiacal constellation Cancer and this weekend the bright planet is in the star cluster known as The Beehive.

Just a Thought . . .

Written by Arthur Railton, from the Vineyard Gazette of May 25, 1990:

Every town has one. Some have two, three or more. They are our most ignored public spaces. Except during a few days in May. They are our cemeteries. Quiet and restful, even in frenetic mid-summer they are sanctuaries. Not for birds, not for wildlife, but for humans, living and dead. Yet, except on Memorial Day, they are ignored.

The Gazette office will be closed on Monday in observance of the national holiday. A list of events appears in the weekend section.

They thought their house would sell right away.

It is a common refrain and one that longtime Island residents Woody and Phyllis Williams, who put their house on the market last April, know all too well.

Mr. Williams, born and raised in Edgartown, is an Island native. Mrs. Williams moved here at age 19, after spending her childhood summers also in Edgartown. The couple met in 1981, got engaged one year later and married in Edgartown the following year.

Dukes County Sheriff Michael McCormack, who last week borrowed money from the county treasury to pay his staff, will receive temporary relief in the coming week from state-issued emergency monies. The sheriff will see additional aid when Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signs his supplemental budget.

The Massachusetts house and senate approved the budget Wednesday, which includes $10 million for county sheriffs. Governor Patrick is expected to sign the budget today.