The Polly Hill Arboretum is hosting a talk on grasses, sedges and rushes led by PHA research associate Melissa Cullina. Grasslike plants or graminoids tend to be ubiquitous but often overlooked. Not on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 21 and 22, when Ms. Cullina leads participants on a tour through the arboretum grounds giving center stage to the sedges and rushes. After the two-day tour, Ms. Cullina won’t be the only grass specialist on the Island.

This year’s Living Local Harvest Festival is next Saturday Sept. 29 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Agricultural Hall in West Tisbury. The event is an all-things-sustainable gathering where those with boots in the soil and fingers on the green pulse, be it energy or otherwise, showcase not only their wares but their wherewithal.

Take a local wild food adventure, learn how to fillet a fish or create the perfect compost mix, enjoy food from Island farms, carve pumpkins, ride ponies and cows or take part in a bit of cow chip bingo. In other words, the possibilities are endless.

It is the season of En Plein Air, even if you don’t paint. Fall on the Vineyard is an invitation to stroll, to meander, to lay down on the grass (less ticks now) and stare open mouthed at the trees swaying and clouds crawling by, while the sun provides a gentle caress rather than a 100-degree heat slap. Everywhere you look it is a bouquet of beauty which is why there are so many folks outside now, capturing it all on canvas, aka en plein air.

On Sunday, Sept. 23, the Mink Meadows Golf Club is hosting its second annual tournament to benefit Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard. CBS News correspondent Morton Dean will serve as one of the hosts of the event.

Anyone interested in learning more about ticks and tick-borne illnesses should mark their calendars for Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. On that evening the Vineyard Haven Public Library is holding a forum entitled Island-Wide Boards of Health: How to Protect Yourself from Tick-Borne Illnesses.

This Sunday Steve Maxner, a Viet Nam veteran and environmental activist, will speak at the Unitarian Universalist Church on the topic, About Protest. Mr. Maxner recently paddled a yellow kayak near the award ceremony at the Monster Shark Tournament in Oak Bluffs. His small boat carried the words, “Killing Sharks for Fun and Prizes is a Crime against Nature Shame on Us.”

There are many benefits and hardships from living on an Island. I would like to expound on one of the benefits which we experienced at our annual fundraiser this past August. I am referring to Rising Tide Equestrian Center’s party that was held on Wednesday, August 8. There are over 200 nonprofit organizations here on the Vineyard, and most of us rely on the generosity of Island residents and businesses to help us make our yearly financial budgets. Especially in this time of economic uncertainty, fundraising is a real challenge. Many businesses are asked many, many times for support from all of us in the nonprofit sector.

On three occasions this summer, either my wife or I required emergency service from the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. These visits were not because of accidents with easily identifiable problems but were caused by sudden symptoms which, in two cases, required much testing.

It was the night of Sept. 11 when the president was mourning losses with families at Arlington Cemetery and elsewhere, and simultaneously dealing with world events in the disaster in Libya, and the outbreak in Cairo. And Mitt Romney took to the airwaves. With limited information, he chastised the president for not condemning this immediately

A note to Gazette readers and letter writer Larry Lewis. If more attention was given to energy conservation and efficiency in this wasteful society we live in, the need for problematical wind turbines would be lessened. Coincidentally, saving energy rather than making even more, will go much toward reducing CO2 emissions and addressing the climate crisis. A major contributor to climate change is the epidemic of carelessness, especially in the United States, regarding the use of energy already being generated.