Tisbury School has announced the first quarter honor roll for the academic year 2008-2009:

Fifth grade high honors go to Benjamin Davey, Olivia Jacobs, Nelly Katzman, Casey McAndrews and Dayanna Middleton. Fifth grade honors go to Matthew Barton, Noell Coburn, Yuri Da Silva, Edwin Gould-Hatt, Celena Guimaraes, Karem Guimaraes, Mya Houston, Jacob Janak, Jacob King, Evan Kristal, Jeremy Mercier, Ellie O’Callaghan, Maxwell Santos, Zachary Stevenson, Kayla Vecchia-Zeitz and Amber Willoughby.

The week ahead offers perfect moonless nights. There is a New Moon on Thanksgiving, so for the coming week the moon resides only in the early morning sky.

Don’t be fooled by the lush, new green grass at Veterans Park in Vineyard Haven. The park, the first place football was played on Martha’s Vineyard, is off-limits for football this season. It will be off-limits for soccer and softball games in the spring, too, and still for teams next summer. It’s “Keep off the grass” until next September.

There will be little change in the tribal council makeup at the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) as a result of elections, held Sunday, in which three incumbents prevailed.

Richard Randolph will remain vice chairman of the tribal council, trouncing challenger Shelley Carter with approximately 70 per cent of the vote.

Hello, Lily

Ellie and Steven Wise of New York announce the birth of a daughter, Lily Wise, born on Oct. 26 at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York city. Lily weighed 8 pounds at birth. Lily joins her sister Anna and brother Henry.

Ellie Wise is the daughter of David and Molly Finkelstein of West Tisbury.  

A second attempt to attract a quorum failed in Aquinnah last Thursday, with just 17 voters turning up for a special town meeting.

Four per cent of the electorate made the journey to the old town hall on Thursday night. The minimum quorum requirement is 39 voters, or 10 per cent of the 396 registered in Aquinnah.

As a result, town moderator Walter E. Delaney dissolved the special town meeting, already continued from October, and in the process indefinitely delayed action on some $25,000 in spending requests.

The town of Oak Bluffs emerged a winner from Tuesday’s monthly Steamship Authority meeting, which set next year’s summer and fall operating schedules. Vineyard Haven was a loser, as was the boat line itself. Marc Hanover, the Vineyard’s governor, was just angry.

Credit hard economic times for all of the above.

The average year-round resident in Tisbury will pay an extra $110 in property taxes next year, following a successful push from town businesses to shift the tax burden off commercial property.

A nonresident property owner whose Vineyard Haven home is of average value — $860,425, according to the town assessors — will see an even bigger increase of almost $138, while business properties of the same value will see their taxes decrease by some $1,015.

It is a chilly November evening; the sun has just dipped below the horizon and Mike McCarthy, quarterback for the Vineyarders football team, stands in back of the high school answering a reporter’s questions about this weekend’s Island Cup game.

Nearby a group of cheerleaders is spray-painting signs and posters with words of encouragement for the team. Some of the signs will be used to decorate the bedrooms of the starters and seniors on the football team; others may be brought over to Nantucket this weekend to cheer on the Vineyarders during the game.

The annual Island Cup game between the Vineyard and Nantucket football teams has long been a high-stakes affair, played to the bitter end for the right to dominate the world — or at least bragging rights between the two Island rivals.

And until six years ago the Whalers won the game on a regular basis. From 1993 to 1998 Nantucket won five out of six, and four in a row over the Vineyard.