The boys’ hockey teams are sponsoring a Stuff-A-Bus drive throughout the weekend, with proceeds going to benefit the Island Food Pantry. Bring canned goods to the Martha’s Vineyard Arena today from 4 to 10 p.m., Saturday from 9 a.m. to midnight (with a break for the teams’ games against Bourne), and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

The boys’ varsity team will take on Bourne on Saturday at 6 p.m.; the JV squad will play at 5 p.m. The girls’ squad takes on North Quincy in a 1 p.m. home game.

Oil and natural gas are found in two different varieties, conventional and unconventional. Conventional oil is liquid crude oil. Conventional natural gas is free untrapped gas. Each can be found uniquely. Both can be found together. Colonel Drake struck conventional oil with a well drilled to a depth of 69.5 feet at Titusville, Pa., in 1859. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon was two days away from temporarily capping an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico it had drilled more than six miles deep in 4,130 feet of water. During the disconnection process the rig suffered a blowout.

What gives, honestly, with our representative’s stonewalling of the many scientific and intuitive questions which are being asked of the 9/11 Commission Report, and the (mainstream) media’s apparent total lack of curiosity or interest? If our own government isn’t guilty of some sort of cover-up you wouldn’t guess it from the arrogant, ad hominem way it has attacked the questioners rather than respond to the valid questions being asked. Should we not be curious that such blatant evidence of controlled demolitions (go to ae911truth.org) was withheld from the official report?

The beautification committee in Edgartown has received two gifts in memory of Marie Sbardelli of Chestnut Hill, who died on Oct. 24. These gifts were given by friends of her family.

Mr. and Mrs. Pat Sbardelli visited every summer for many years with the Thomas Chirgwins, and later with Carol and Dick Fligor. Edgartown was a second home.

With their love of the Vineyard, these gifts have been designated for the new sign, in the making, Welcome to Edgartown, which in the spring will be placed at the Triangle area coming into town. It will be set off with lovely plantings.

Sharks fans: I just wanted to inform all of you before you found out before the summer started that I will not be returning for a second season on Martha’s Vineyard. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you personally for an amazing summer in 2011. Being a member of the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks inaugural campaign was truly an honor and all of you fans made this team possible. Without all the fans there would be no Martha’s Vineyard Sharks.

When I had a tunnel permit bumper sticker on my car, I said it eliminated waiting in the standby line for the steamship. Now I propose eliminating the issue of the roundabout by simply digging a tunnel under the intersection.

The tunnel would start by Goodale’s pit and emerge just past the high school. Exits and on-ramps to the tunnel would provide easy access. Traffic along Barnes Road could proceed at its leisurely pace.

I work at the food pantry as a volunteer. I now get it about the hardship on Island that justifies support for the food pantry. It’s real to me, now I see that it’s more that just putting some groceries in the purple boxes in the supermarket. The need is real. I see the elderly, infirm, single mothers, mentally incapacitated, unemployed people come in, and they all need to eat.

In 1992, Charlie Shipway took to the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, sailing in the Barcelona Olympic games as a representative of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The competition was world-class; the stakes raised to a near-peak. Mr. Shipway and catamaran captain Jean Brauer placed 22nd in the 22-boat field—somebody has to, after all.

Yesterday morning Mas Kimball of Oak Bluffs packed his bags for a three-day trip to New York. Specifically, Zucotti Park. It’s his fourth trip since October.

“You get the criticism, oh you’re just being idealistic,” he said one day earlier. “We love the way children are free-spirited and idealistic but then it’s beaten out of us as we get older. Luckily I’m 62 years old and it still hasn’t been beaten out of me.”

The whimsical alabaster dancing sculptures that are synonymous with the Field Gallery in West Tisbury now have a firmly-cemented place in the town’s future.

The West Tisbury selectmen signed the final papers yesterday morning to buy 1.4 acres of the gallery and sculpture garden in the village center from Tim and Eileen Maley. The purchase price was $625,000; a sale agreement was signed last spring and approved by voters at the annual town meeting.