If you visit the Alison Shaw Gallery during its opening this Memorial Day weekend, you may find yourself among the many who are inspired to go out and make photographs as calmly arresting and as quintessentially Vineyard as Ms. Shaw’s. If this is the case, the best remedy might be a copy of Ms. Shaw’s new book, Photographing Martha’s Vineyard: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them.

We often equate artists with one distinct style. But John Holladay, originally from the Midwest and for many years now a resident of Vineyard Haven, paints and illustrates with so much versatility, he’s impossible to pigeon- hole.

And yet one of his hugely successful, largely unknown artistic endeavors is now being celebrated at the Louisa Gould Gallery on Main street, Vineyard Haven. From 1980 to 2000 he was licensed to paint the official artwork for NBA, NFL and college sports teams, work that later appeared on posters, shirts and jigsaw puzzles.

New Food Yorker

Chef AJ Black, owner and restaurateur of Il Tesoro at the Terrace in Edgartown, is opening his newest venture in the upper east side of Manhattan. Opening in September 2011, Il Tesoro Ristorante and Bar will bring Mr. Black’s award-winning Italian cuisine to diners at 1578 First avenue at 82nd East, previously the home for 35 years to Primavera Ristorante. For updates or to make reservations, go online to iltesoro.net, call 508-939-3840, or stop by Il Tesoro at the Terrace.

Much has been said and written about the filming of Jaws and its impact in the spring and summer of 1974 on a still relatively obscure fishing and agricultural tourist redoubt seven miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts. After Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard there is simply nothing left to be said.

What happened at the end of high school that you would rather forget? And what would it be like if your dark past was suddenly shoved in your face ten years later? By someone you trusted?

This is the premise of the play Tape by Stephen Bender beginning its run next Thursday, June 2 at the Vineyard Playhouse and continuing for two weeks. Tape first appeared at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2000 and was later adapted into a film starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.

What’s a heath hen? There was a time on the Vineyard when that question could easily be answered. Sad to say, that era ended around 1932 when the last heath hen was seen on the Island.

This coming Thursday, June 2 at 5:30 p.m. a film memorializing these extinct birds will be shown at the Federated Church in Edgartown. The movie is called Lost Birds and it is a documentary directed by Todd McGrain, a professor of art at Cornell University.

Isaiah Scheffer is hopeful about the future for those who love to go bay scalloping, oystering and quahaugging in Chilmark. Recent successes in all three fisheries may be due to Mother Nature, but another key ingredient is some labor-intensive, progressive shellfish restoration work. Mr. Scheffer recently gave a talk and slideshow at the Chilmark Free Public Library about that ongoing work.

Pearl Buck Returns

Once the weather turns warmer and the grey, spring skies blow blue and clear the Vineyard beckons to one and all. Time and the grave cannot even thwart the faithful. Pearl Buck is headed our way.

That’s right, on June 1 at 7 p.m. Ms. Buck will be reading from her short story collection East and West at the Vineyard Haven Public Library. Okay, the legendary author of The Good Earth may bear a resemblance to the actress Diane Quaid, but the words will be her own.

Is there a better place for a garden party on the Island — or anywhere for that matter — than the Old Mill in West Tisbury? Ponder the question while perusing plants you can buy for your own garden, sipping lemonade and nibbling a cookie when the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club hosts its annual plant sale and open house at the Old Mill on Memorial Day weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 28 and 29, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Oak Bluffs residents rejected both proposition 2 and 1/2 override questions on Thursday’s special election ballot.

A total of 559 residents turned out to reject one override that would have restored $230,000 in cuts to the town’s road paving program, and another that would have to restored $254,000 in cuts to hire a town finance director, two teaching aides at the Oak Bluffs school, an animal control officer and an assistant for the shellfish department.

The first ballot question was defeated 376-182 and the second was defeated 387-170.