By LYNNE IRONS

Last Saturday’s cold snap lit a fire under me. There were so many last (for me, first) minute winter preparations.

I stapled a bunch of grain bags over the hardware cloth windows of my hen house. The girls were mighty chilly last Friday night. When I closed their door that evening, their feathers were blowing around on them. I always feel sorry for birds in winter with their bare legs and feet.

The world around us is full of misnomers: hamburgers are not ham, tin foil is actually aluminum, and a shooting star is not a star. Nature has even more: koala bears are not bears, peanuts are not nuts, and a magpie is a bird, not a dessert.

This column is about a hornet that is not a hornet.

Bald-faced hornets are not true hornets. To call them hornets would be, well, a bald-faced lie. They are actually wasps, related to paper wasps and yellow jackets, and are identified by the white pattern on their face, if you cared to get that close.

Caroling is all about alcohol, traditionally. “This time of year is about being with friends singing carols, and being in a pub drinking good beer,” Peter R. Boak, director of the Island Community Chorus, told his audience at a performance in the Edgartown Old Whaling Church this Sunday, making a misleading distinction.

A sharply divided Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School district committee voted 5-4 to certify a $16.2 million budget on Monday, up 2.7 per cent over last year. Approved by a single vote at an uncharacteristically well-attended high school committee meeting, the budget reflects last-minute revisions to instructional and fixed costs.

And it follows an emotional public hearing last week at which music and drama students, teachers and parents spoke out on proposed teacher and program cuts across those departments.

Aline Pereira Leite has been lucky since she left Brazil 27 months ago to work on Martha’s Vineyard, and she knows it.

This pretty, softly spoken, 23-year-old woman is sitting in the living room of a sumptuous Island home. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows is spectacular: snow-dusted trees down to the shore of Lake Tashmoo and, beyond it, Vineyard Sound. It is a glorious sunny morning.

The Island Food Pantry is facing a tough winter. While contributions of food are up this season, Arman Hanjian, the coordinator, is concerned the need will exceed the supply as it has for the past several years.

The cost of food, heat and general living is the highest it has been in recent memory on the Island. For some Vineyarders, that spells trouble. People living on fixed incomes, the underemployed and unemployed face the greatest peril.

Downtown Edgartown began looking a bit like Christmas weeks ago when wreathlike green loops appeared on the white picket fences at Hob Knob Inn and Tomassian & Tomassian law offices. Soon after, Santa began standing sentry in faux Doc Martens by Edgartown Hardware and evergreen spriggery sprouted in Soigne’s windows.

The time for action is now. So said Ted Stanley of the Dukes County charter study commission last week.

“Everyone is caught up with the process,” he said of his fellow commission members. “People are getting impatient with the process and we need to start thinking out of the box here.”

After a process that has gone through fits and starts since September, the Dukes County Commission decided this week to readvertise for a new county manager.

At a meeting on Wednesday night the county commission could not reach a majority vote on any of the three final candidates for the job.

Oak Bluffs voters on Tuesday will decide whether to commit the town to an ambitious plan to radically overhaul the town waterfront and whether to adopt a new policy of paying all town employees based on a uniform pay scale.

Voters will consider 17 warrant articles at the special town meeting at 7 p.m. at the Oak Bluffs School. Moderator David Richardson will preside over the session.