Since last we celebrated a Memorial Day, Douglas E. Vanderhoop has become one of the highest decorated veterans in the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). In the annual Ute Tribe’s Fourth of July Pow Wow, Mr. Vanderhoop was initiated into the Red Feather Society, the highest military honor that can be bestowed upon indigenous tribal members in the United States and Canada.

Mary Carr, 88, made a journey back to the Vineyard last Friday. The last time she was here, 67 years ago, war raged in Europe and in the Pacific. It was a time in the nation’s history when people all around her made huge sacrifices. In that year, she lost her husband.

For Mary, this two-day Vineyard visit was a rekindling of fond memories. It was also about Memorial Day and loss and sharing her personal story with others.

The house at Tea Lane Farm in Chilmark needs $500,000 worth of repairs and renovations to prepare it for a future farming family, a special subcommittee told the Chilmark selectmen this week.

The committee of Frank Fenner, Leonard Jason and Dick Smith presented preliminary plans to the selectmen at a public hearing Tuesday night that show a much-altered interior layout but keep the existing exterior the same.

Tiffany Smalley yesterday was awarded her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, and with it the distinction of being the first student from the Wampanoag nation to do so since its first Native American graduate, another Vineyarder named Caleb Cheeshateaumuck, graduated in 1665.

Several major employers of Brazilian labor on the Vineyard spoke out this week against a newly-established Island blog which has accused them of hiring undocumented workers. The inflammatory blog has caused distress and anger among the Brazilian community as well as their employers.

Posts on the blog accuse entities as diverse as landscape companies, restaurants, retailers, even the YMCA and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission of illegal hiring and sometimes corruption.

The owners of the Home Port Restaurant announced this week that from now on they will only serve locally-caught fish and shellfish at the landmark Menemsha eatery known for its sunsets and swordfish.

The sunsets will of course stay but swordfish will only be on the menu at the Home Port if it has been caught off the Vineyard, restaurant owner Sarah Guinan Nixon told a gathering of Island fishermen on Wednesday night.

Summer is peeking in at the Island, with buds and bushes in full bloom and sunsets that spread across the western sky with rosy-hued fingertips.

And it’s summer for business too — shops are opening, gardeners and farmers are busy putting flowers and crops in the ground, and more than a few new shingling and painting jobs are in evidence around the Island.

Oak Bluffs will have to make do with a severely cut-down, no-frills budget this year after voters soundly rejected two Proposition 2 1/2 overrides in a special town election yesterday.

Catherine Coogan walked into the Family Planning clinic at 8 o’clock one morning this week, fresh from getting her three kids out the door and dropping them off at their respective schools, ready to do battle once again in the fight to keep her clinic open.

She was calm and collected, only momentarily frazzled when she couldn’t find the keys to her office in her purse.

For Martha’s Vineyard veterans the past year has been one of frustration as they have been forced to travel off-Island for treatment, and often left to pay the bill.

After administrators discovered more than a year and a half ago that the contract between the Veterans Administration and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital had expired, Island veterans, some more than 90 years of age, have had to navigate a maze of bureaucracy and endure day-long trips to Providence, R.I., for basic treatment.