Island residents, the Whiting family hopes, can have as much fun skating on Parsonage Pond as they have had watching the pond being dredged.

Onlookers were abuzz Tuesday morning as a unique paddle-wheeled excavator on pontoons crept into the two-acre pond and began snuffling pond grass and weeds into the maw of its extended rake, then churning back to shore to deposit the materials on the bank.

The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital Auxiliary will mark the 24th anniversary of its tree of lights fundraiser to benefit Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. Each December for over two decades, the great pine located in front of the hospital was lit with hundreds of red and white lights, each donated by an individual in honor or in memory of a loved one.

Better communication between the county commission and a committee appointed to screen applicants for county manager would have helped the search run more smoothly, committee chairman Greg Coogan said this week.

Despite a fallout between the commissioners and the committee earlier this fall, Mr. Coogan said the committee will stand behind the vote the commission is expected to take next week for a new manager.

“We all strongly wish the best for the county,” said Mr. Coogan, reached this week by telephone.

The social security numbers of state-licensed Island professionals, including realtors and medical professionals, have not been compromised and are safely back in Massachusetts state databases, a spokesman for the state division of professional licensure said this week.

A last quarter moon appears close to the ringed-planet Saturn tomorrow morning. The two rise in the eastern sky at midnight, and will be best seen after 1 a.m. The two are in the zodiacal constellation Leo.

The Vineyard is set to get a new radio station and the town of Tisbury to get an integrated information system following a couple of last-minute approvals this week.

On Tuesday, selectmen Tristan Israel and Denys Wortman (Thomas Pachico was absent) approved an easement at the department of public works site for a 70-foot pole which will be used by the station for its broadcasts and by public works to communicate with other town departments and the Tisbury school.

Welcome Beckett

Heather and Josh Kochin of Oak Bluffs announce the birth of a son, Beckett Michael Kochin, born on Nov. 20 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. Beckett is also welcomed by grandparents Chip and Michelle Leonardi and Jack and Christie Shea.

HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

Kathie Case>

508-627-5349

kcase1@verizon.net

December begins tomorrow and we only have 24 days to get everything done. Even though snow has not been a big event in recent years, I am still one who associates snow with Christmas — trees all decorated, lights shining through and a sled beneath the tree. I think I just dated myself, but these are memories you do not want to forget.

Margaret Knight>

508 627-8894

(margaret02539@yahoo.com)

With all the wind and rain we’ve been having lately, Chappaquiddick is looking almost wintry, most of the leaves gone from the trees. Certain plants, though, seem to like this time of year: the moss in the woods is a brilliant green and the lawns are still looking happy.