Aubrey Arrives

Noelle and Nicholas Warburton of Oak Bluffs announce the birth of a daughter, Aubrey Noelle Warburton, born on March 7, 2009, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Aubrey weighed 8 pounds, 5.6 ounces at birth.

Oak Bluffs selectmen on Wednesday approved three ballot questions for voters in April — including one that would authorize $500,000 for dredging at Sengekontacket Pond — as well as the warrant for the annual town meeting, which calls for a balanced budget of $24.1 million among other things.

Winter fades, Spring dallies.

A limbo. And then, a sound.

The pinkletink peeps.

Alex Goethals of West Tisbury e-mailed the Gazette Thursday with the first pinkletink peep of the season.

The Island’s senior centers offer a lot of programs for the elderly, They also offer a haven from the drama of these difficult times.

The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.

Martha’s Vineyard’s two community banks face hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra costs as a result of increased demands from the federal agency charged with protecting customer deposits.

The two local banks, the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank and Edgartown National Bank, neither of which was complicit in the reckless financial practices which precipitated the banking crisis, will nonetheless have to pay increased fees to help bail out customers of banks which go bust.

Against the backdrop of a sustained national recession, the board of directors for the YMCA of the Martha’s Vineyard voted unanimously last Friday to begin construction on the long-awaited 38,000-square-foot YMCA building to be built across from the regional high school on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road.

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The old-fashioned practice of allowing some customers to hold house accounts at Cronig’s Market will be getting a high-tech twist in the coming weeks, as customers will have to use a fingerprint identification system in order to access their accounts.

The grocery store offers house accounts as a courtesy to certain customers, and up until recently the practice caused few problems or disruptions.

West Tisbury selectmen on Wednesday held a dog hearing for a Siberian husky that recently got loose and attacked a neighbor’s livestock. Selectmen voted 2-1 to impose restrictions for the dog, named Coda, and his owner Chase Marcello. The restrictions call for the animal to be kept in a secure pen with a chain link fence.

If Coda is found loose again, selectmen stipulated, they may order the dog to be humanely euthanized.