At 4:45 the sun edges
through a loose nest
of branches, sets

behind a snow bank,
slipping out early
after its brief appearance

in today.

New FEMA maps mean many home and business owners in the commonwealth must either pay millions of dollars for renovations or shell out for flood insurance premiums that reach beyond $30,000 a year.

On New Year’s Day I drove from Chilmark to Edgartown, from Peaked Hill to Main street, listening to Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch alone in my car.

The following letter was sent to NStar:

I just recently heard that the public has until Jan. 15 to write to you in protest the spraying of herbicides on Martha’s Vineyard to save your company the expense of trimming plants by hand. How absurd!

Should Ahold-Stop & Shop’s proposal for a greatly expanded store, the subject of a long hearing process before the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, be approved or rejected?

On Monday, Jan. 20, trained local volunteers working with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) will begin a course for family members of individuals with serious mental illness. This is a free, 12-week series of classes on consecutive Mondays, through April 7, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. in Vineyard Haven.

Herb Foster’s article in the Jan. 3 issue of the Gazette has an interesting organization that braids together effectively but sometimes a bit confusingly several different time sequences.

As a nod to authenticity of voyages of old, Mystic Seaport is holding a contest to put a stowaway on board the Charles W. Morgan, oldest surviving whaleboat, as it heads out this spring on a three-month voyage throughout New England.

Roy Scheffer and his son Jeremy Scheffer will put two small farms to keep cages of oysters in the area known as middle flats. Father and son already grow oysters in Katama Bay.

Time totters on, and almost any day now — the word “day” being used in its Genesis or geological sense — the Islander will stop his car on the shoulder of some road leading away from the ferry slip in Vineyard Haven and take aboard the two young hitchhikers and their baby and their dog and their orange backpacks.