This has been a really rough winter weather-wise. I’m curious about how the Island homeless are faring.

As the result of interest shown at a meeting Monday night, the Island now has a chapter of its own of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Thoughts of spring — just a few weeks away — and milder temperatures, warmer sunshine and daylight getting longer each day gives us hope. Soon, Eleanor Stanwood will be reporting on the birth of lambs at her farm.

Chilmark welcomes the lion this year as March will begin with snow and cold, and has us looking forward to the early spring. Folklore promises March will go out like a lamb. My prose is seriously affected by this long, cold winter, and by the deadly silence that is Chilmark this week of school vacation and, traditionally, the week when everyone who can, finds a warmer island to visit!

The next Chappy potluck will be on Wednesday, March 5, hosted by Pat Rose and John Ortman. Catching up on gossip begins at 6 p.m. with the dinner bell ringing at 6:30. The potlucks are always a lot of fun and lately have a good turnout of children.

Last weekend was great. It was warm and sunny with no wind so that we could walk on the beach. Everyone was smiling and out doing something. Now, bang, as fast as you know it, the sun is still shining but it is freezing, and now we have some snow falling. I think one of the funniest videos I watched this week was a lady getting out of her car when her yard was still full of snow. The driveway was just wide enough for the car and for her to get out. On the way up the path to her house was a snowman. She looked at it, took her pocketbook and smashed its head right off.

As I sit here on Wednesday morning, I thought perhaps I was hallucinating but tiny snowflakes are flying and already sticking to the ground. Oh well, we had a heat wave over the weekend with the temperature in the 50s.

On reflection, Ogkeshkuppe, as the original people named Oak Bluffs, is extraordinary in many respects, and not just because it’s a cool place to grow up, the summers, or that it’s the colorful, honky tonk capital of Martha’s Vineyard.

Shaun A. Sicsico, 20, pleaded guilty Tuesday morning in Dukes County superior court on a charge of assault and battery on a child with substantial injury. The Hon. Tina S. Page, associate justice of the superior court, sentenced Mr. Sicsico to three to five years at MCI Cedar Junction.

After a referendum to quash the plan to put high-stakes bingo in the Wampanoag community center failed by two votes, tribal chairman Tobias Vanderhoop said the project will go forward. But many hurdles remain.