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.

Aquinnah failed to achieve a quorum Tuesday to finish its annual town meeting. The town now is planning to conclude the annual meeting and hold a related special town meeting, tentatively scheduled to start Thursday, June 19, at 7 p.m. at old town hall.

The hubbub of non-English voices stilled and everyone stood for the entrance of clerk magistrate Liza Williamson. Things began in the usual way: “Hear ye, hear ye . . .”

But from then on the proceedings in Edgartown district court on Tuesday were far from usual.

For a start, the proceedings were conducted in neither English nor Portuguese, but wholly in Spanish, and the 60-odd people who appeared before Mrs. Williamson were 14 or 15 years old.

Four years ago this summer, Paul Gamson was married on the Vineyard to his partner of almost five years, Richard Knight. But as residents of Chilmark and Oakland, Calif., their marital status shifted as they moved between homes — until last Thursday.

“Not married? Married? At least I know what box to check in California and Massachusetts,” Mr. Gamson said following a 4-3 ruling from the Republican-majority California Supreme Court which struck down the statewide ban on same-sex marriage.

Initially Margaret Martin thought the want ad for a Cuttyhunk schoolteacher contained a typographical error. Scouring a jobs Web site for the Cape and Islands area in the spring of 2003, she saw an entry for a school with one student. She wasn’t reassured when she traveled to Rehoboth to meet Russell Latham, the district superintendent, and found that the listed address was actually a private residence. Sensing the whole thing might be an elaborate joke, she almost drove home to Long Island.

In the weeks following the devastating earthquake in southwestern China, a senior at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is raising money to help the victims.

Laura Kimball of Oak Bluffs, who herself was born in China, has spent the last week collecting money and plans to do it through Memorial Day weekend.

Five or six years ago Kristin Henriksen started doing lectures on Martha’s Vineyard about the value of planting Island native plants.

“And afterwards,” she recalled yesterday, “people would come up to me and ask where they could get them. And I had to say I didn’t know.”

And so in 2006, she opened a nursery called Going Native, in Vineyard Haven. And when she talks native, she means local. Not native to North America, not native to New England, but Island native genotypes — plants from seeds collected here.

Restoring the Public Trust

The stripping of protected Vineyard conservation land to provide native plants for a private estate on the North Shore in West Tisbury has thrust the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation — the venerable land trust founded by the late longtime editor of this newspaper who campaigned fearlessly for the preservation of the Vineyard environment — uncomfortably into the public eye.

KEEP EDUCATION STRONG

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

I want the voters who will be voting on the override on May 28 in Oak Bluffs to know how strongly I oppose placing the town’s budget problems on just the schools. With less than 40 per cent of the town’s budget, the schools in Oak Bluffs are being asked to fund 100 per cent of the budget override. This is wrong. This is a town problem, not just a school problem.

Violating Its Charter

Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

My family and I are at a loss to understand the reasons why the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation board of directors permitted the strip-mining of trees, plants, and grasses from Foundation properties, as described and photographed in the Vineyard Gazette of May 16. The properties involved, furthermore, are also designated as priority habitats by the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Therefore, any restoring of these properties should be done only if in accord with the Endangered Species Act.