There are bells for alarms, for church services, for the striking of noon. There are dinner bells, at least somewhere one still hopes, and school bells and maybe even bells when angels get their wings.

Two Island businesses have this week been awarded $2,500 grants by the Martha’s Vineyard Women’s Network.

Holly Bellebuono, director of Vineyard Herbs, Teas & Apothecary, and the Martha’s Vineyard Arts and Culture Collaborative chaired by Featherstone executive director Ann Smith, received the second annual awards by the women’s business group. The official presentation of the grants will be made Tuesday, May 17, at the network’s final meeting of the 2010-2011 year featuring best-selling author Liz Murray.

Award Easy to Digest

FOUNDING GARDENERS: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation. By Andrea Wulf. Knopf, March 29, 2011. 352 pages. $30, hardcover.

At first glance this book, with its lovely old-style sketches of such flowers as Rhododendron maximum and Kalmia angustifolia, gives you the notion it would make the ideal gift for someone who knows her forsythia from Scotch broom. But the moment you start reading Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf (Knopf, $30), you realize something groundbreaking is going on — pun intended.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME. By Carly Simon (performer, author), Jack Norworth (author) and Amiko Hirao (illustrator). Imagine, a Charlesbridge Imprint. April 2011. 26 pages, hardcover. $17.95.

Imagine a 1908 Tin Pan Alley ditty that continues to be heard by tens of millions of Americans on a daily basis — at least during baseball season. Yes, the incredibly catchy Take Me Out to the Ballgame (by Jack Norworth), is the unofficial baseball anthem, and it gets the crowds roaring to the immortal lyrics:

If you visit the Alison Shaw Gallery during its opening this Memorial Day weekend, you may find yourself among the many who are inspired to go out and make photographs as calmly arresting and as quintessentially Vineyard as Ms. Shaw’s. If this is the case, the best remedy might be a copy of Ms. Shaw’s new book, Photographing Martha’s Vineyard: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them.

We often equate artists with one distinct style. But John Holladay, originally from the Midwest and for many years now a resident of Vineyard Haven, paints and illustrates with so much versatility, he’s impossible to pigeon- hole.

And yet one of his hugely successful, largely unknown artistic endeavors is now being celebrated at the Louisa Gould Gallery on Main street, Vineyard Haven. From 1980 to 2000 he was licensed to paint the official artwork for NBA, NFL and college sports teams, work that later appeared on posters, shirts and jigsaw puzzles.

New Food Yorker

Chef AJ Black, owner and restaurateur of Il Tesoro at the Terrace in Edgartown, is opening his newest venture in the upper east side of Manhattan. Opening in September 2011, Il Tesoro Ristorante and Bar will bring Mr. Black’s award-winning Italian cuisine to diners at 1578 First avenue at 82nd East, previously the home for 35 years to Primavera Ristorante. For updates or to make reservations, go online to iltesoro.net, call 508-939-3840, or stop by Il Tesoro at the Terrace.

Much has been said and written about the filming of Jaws and its impact in the spring and summer of 1974 on a still relatively obscure fishing and agricultural tourist redoubt seven miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts. After Jaws: Memories from Martha’s Vineyard there is simply nothing left to be said.

What happened at the end of high school that you would rather forget? And what would it be like if your dark past was suddenly shoved in your face ten years later? By someone you trusted?

This is the premise of the play Tape by Stephen Bender beginning its run next Thursday, June 2 at the Vineyard Playhouse and continuing for two weeks. Tape first appeared at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2000 and was later adapted into a film starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.