Their individual personalities look like fire and ice. But family law attorney Linda Jackson and artisan carpenter Paul Hudson have forged a seven-year marriage that Ms. Jackson calls a friendship on fire. During an interview in their handcrafted, airy Edgartown home, they discussed how families, careers and life perspectives intersect to produce both prize-winning cupcakes and recognition of happiness by complete strangers.

A deal to sell Thimble Farm to a private buyer is no longer on the table, allowing more time for Whippoorwill Farm owner Andrew Woodruff to put together his own bid to buy the farm.

Thimble Farm owner Lawrence Benson confirmed yesterday that a private buyer who had offered to pay $2.3 million for the 43-acre farm has backed out. Two weeks ago Mr. Woodruff, who leases Thimble Farm for his community supported agriculture program, was facing an August 28 deadline to match the private offer. Mr. Woodruff has a right of first refusal on any sale at the farm.

The 20th anniversary of the Martha’s Vineyard Challenge was golden. The Saturday sailing and paddling event raised $14,423 for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. High winds and bright sunshine made the day perfect for windsurfers and a challenge for sailors and paddlers.

The 43 registered participants and their friends set a record in fundraising.

Island bars and restaurants were jumping this past Labor Day weekend, but police from Aquinnah to Oak Bluffs reported most people were on their best behavior and there were few notable incidents of depravity or disturbance.

Police officials said the number of calls for service was up, although most were for more mundane indiscretions such as traffic stops.

“There was a high number of people on the Island; but everyone seemed to be on their best behavior. It was pretty tame,” Oak Bluffs Sgt. Michael Marchand said.

By Henry Beetle Hough. From the Vineyard Gazette editions of September, 1982:

“Don’t you think Tracy must have been the murderer?”

“I know he was. He told me so.”

Edgartown’s venerable landmark hotel, the Harbor View Hotel, will close later this month for extensive renovations, probably not to reopen until late spring next year.

Work on the kitchen, restaurant and rooms is expected to cost around $25 million and be done by May. It is the first phase of a two-year, $77 million project to refurbish and expand the hotel, which first opened in 1891.

p> The SSA has sunk low in displaying large gaudy advertising “art” in the new ferry. As usual, business interests, largely indifferent to values other than profit, have pulled strings and worked their will: to scribble their graffiti over every blessed empty public space.

A flinty sun was dropping brilliantly, taking the temperature with it as the countdown to show time began Friday evening in the outdoor horse ring at the agricultural fair ground —­ but it was the gleaming white Lippizan stallions that shone.

Red Cross Slates Workplace Safety Seminar

The American Red Cross, Cape Cod and Islands chapter will has scheduled a workplace safety informational seminar for Sept. 26 in Hyannis.

The seminar will be held from 10 a.m. to noon at the Four Points by Sheraton Hyannis Resort at the West End Rotary.

A proposal by the Chilmark planning board to require solar thermal heating for swimming pools is an example of a small but meaningful step to make the Vineyard more energy self-sufficient.

The idea also reflects a quiet yet crucial change in pursuing that worthy goal: shifting the self-sufficiency initiative from broad goals outlined by the Vineyard Energy Project to the nitty-gritty of adoption and enforcement of particular measures by individual Island towns.