Aquinnah celebrates the Fourth of July with its 10th annual children’s parade. Floats, antique cars, face painting, music, buried treasure on the beach and town officials will all be part of the festivities.

The parade starts at 11 a.m. sharp at the top of Old South Road.

Three downtown divas arrive on the up-Island dance scene this weekend.

New York choreographers Jodi Melnick, Vicky Shick and Jon Kinzel are performing at the Yard in Chilmark today and tomorrow, June 29 and 30, both performances beginning at 8 p.m.

The stage is set at Alex’s Place at the YMCA every Friday night in July and August during open stage nights. Singing, dancing, performing stand-up comedy — you decide on community open stage night. A candlelit atmosphere sets the mood and all equipment is provided.

Jim Thomas and his Spirituals Choir will perform on Saturday, June 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven. The choir is in its ninth year and is the offspring of the Martha’s Vineyard NAACP. The performance is titled, Songs From the Field: The Underground Railroad.

The choir performs at many venues around the Island and is made up of summer residents and year-rounders. They perform sitting down as the slaves did, and only with percussion accompaniment.

Each week the folks at Cinema Circus show a series of short films on Wednesday evening at the Chilmark Community Center. The films begin at 6 p.m. but the circus — complete with jugglers, face painters, stilt walkers, food and music — gets under way at 5 p.m.

The short films are programmed each week around a central theme, introduced in the first film by Professor Projector. This week’s theme is sound tracks.

If you’re looking for live music, you’ve come to the right Island. Martha’s Vineyard features a diverse selection of music venues, from dives to dancehalls and everything in between. If it’s local musicians you want to hear, check out some of the watering holes in Edgartown or Oak Bluffs. For big-name bands, visit Dreamland in Oak Bluffs or Flatbread at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

In the Wampanoag language, the word “noepe” means, according to one interpretation, a still place among the currents. The Wampanoag people gave the name Noepe to this Island to indicate that it was a piece of dry land among opposing tidal currents.

In downtown Edgartown, a still place exists at the intersection of three roads. It is a refuge of sorts, which has for years provided shelter and peace of mind to visiting artists.

In the winter of 1993, travel writer and essayist Edward Hoagland was travelling in Eastern Africa on assignment for Harper’s Magazine. He had visited the region twice before, in the years 1976 and 1977. This time, however, a civil war was raging in Sudan and a crippling famine gripped the region. Political, ethnic and religious conflict had created a web of alliances that divided the country, making travel outside the cities a dangerous and complicated ordeal. As he ventured into famine zones alongside NGO
(non-governmental organizations)
aid groups, Mr.

Come one and all to join the Animal Shelter’s contingent marching in the big parade on the Fourth of July in Edgartown. The Black Dog will be giving out commemorative T-shirts to the first 50 marchers to assemble. A donation of $10 to the shelter will guarantee you one of these keepsakes. The line will form between 4 and 5 p.m. behind the Edgartown School.

Three teenage girls stood on the deck of The Bite in Menemsha wearing sweatshirts over their swimsuits to keep the chilly dusk breeze at bay. The sun was setting and the last call for fried clams was about to go out, but the blue-painted picnic tables next to the small cedar-shingled shack were still full of people eating.