Corrections

A story in last Friday’s Gazette incorrectly reported the number of votes received in the Edgartown town election by Susan Mercier, who was elected to the school committee. She received 707 votes. The Gazette regrets the error.

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A story in last Friday’s Gazette incorrectly sited the author of History of Martha’s Vineyard. The correct author is Charles Edward Banks. The Gazette regrets the error.

JOHN S. ALLEY

508-693-2950

(alleys@vineyard.net)

Today is the beginning of a long holiday weekend in the Commonwealth. Monday is Patriots Day and it is also the beginning of spring break week over at the school. Trout fishing in the Mill Pond continues to increase each day and should really pick up next week. On Monday the town buildings will be closed to observe the state holiday. Passover begins at sundown on Saturday and Tuesday is the 19th annual Earth Day.

The Dukes County Charter Study Commission has revised several dates for its series of public feedback sessions.

The sessions will provide an opportunity for the public to weigh in on the work of the commissioners as they near the end of their 18-month study of county government. The commission will make recommendations to the public in May.

Osprey have been around since well before man showed up, but the graceful raptors created a shiny new moment for two boys last Sunday.

“Look, they’re coming in to land,” shouted Finn Hall, 11, to his younger companion. Both sets of eyes were glued to telescopes focused on osprey pole nests several hundred yards away.

“Oh, wow, it looks like they’re going to land on each other,” the younger boy replied before racing away to report the impending cataclysm to his parents.

A retrospective exhibition of Susan Sellers’s plein air works opens this Sunday, April 20, with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at Featherstone Center for the Arts.

Ms. Sellers’s show of nearly 30 pieces, primarily oils with a few pastels and giclées, reflects the Vineyard. The gas pump on North Road, an abandoned Chilmark tractor, a weathered house — such things inspire Ms. Sellers and imbue her art with a timelessness.

Although Tuesday’s boys’ lacrosse game between the Vineyarders and the Whalers from Nantucket had all the makings of a classic barn burner between two inter-Island rivals, the game in the end provided plenty of smoke but little fire.

A longtime West Tisbury resident has donated $12,000 to support and encourage female farmers on the Vineyard.

A documentary film on women in agriculture and a panel discussion which followed inspired Kenneth Malcolm Jones, a machinist and founder of the nonprofit organization Up the River Endeavors, to give the money.

The event, entitled Ladies of the Land, was part of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival which took place in Chilmark last month.

Paul Mahoney, a nurseryman for 30 years and the owner of Jardin Mahoney in Oak Bluffs, spoke at a recent meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club on the topic of Sustainable Plants in the Landscape.

Mr. Mahoney explained that the word sustainable, when used in gardening, has an open definition, but he bases it on three general concepts: a growing public enthusiasm for native plants, conservation of wildlife habitat, and a movement away from the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides.

Student Honored

Michelle Holmberg, a senior at Fairfield University and a resident of Oak Bluffs, is scheduled for induction April 13 into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society.

The daughter of Donna and Warren Holmberg and a graduate of Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, she is majoring in psychology in the college of arts and sciences at Fairfield.

Starting July 8, the newest crop of low-numbered Massachusetts license plates will be on the auction block when Cape Cod and Islands plates numbered 1 through 999 finally become available. 

The Cape and Islands plates, which have been in circulation since 1995, carry imagery of Nauset Light in Eastham, along with the cliffs of Siasconset in Nantucket and Gay Head on the Vineyard.