Like your tiles more exotic than Scrabble? Join the mahjong games at the Vineyard Haven Public Library on the last Saturday of each month — mark your calendar for next Saturday, April 30 — from 2 to 4 p.m.

Beginners and players of all skills are welcome. Newbies can receive teaching on how to play along with a handout with all the rules.

There are many variations of Mahjong. Nevermind the many modern twists; this is old school play, the traditional Chinese version of the game using Henry Snyder’s rules and simplified scoring method.

Max Eagan has been appointed executive chef at the restaurant at Lambert’s Cove Inn, with a new menu and a newly decorated dining room.

He will be responsible for menu planning and execution as well as day-to-day operations of the kitchen culinary staff, reporting to the proprietors, Scott J. Jones and I. Kell Hicklin, with a sideline to general manager, Michael Rego.

Mr. Jones said of the young chef, “Max’s culinary brilliance is complimented by his travels, creative energy, hard work and his love of Martha’s Vineyard.”

Salsa for Seniors

The Martha’s Vineyard Center for Living urges Vineyarders to participate in Sharky’s Cantina’s dine-to-donate evening on Tuesday, April 26. Sharky’s owner JB Blau will donate 15 per cent of the food sales from both Sharky’s Cantinas, on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs and Main street in Edgartown, to the center’s efforts to enrich the lives of Island seniors.

Every Tuesday Sharky’s benefits a different nonprofit organization.

Let Freedom Ring

Islander Mev Good will tell the story of two people, one white and one black, and their shared pursuit of freedom, in A Daughter of a Slave Gives Me My Freedom: A Personal Account, his talk on Tuesday, April 26, at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Public Library.

Improv Impresses

Here’s your chance to say, years from now when these teenagers show up on Saturday Night Live or Second City, “I saw them when...”

The IMPers have been accepted once again to the prestigious Teen Comedy Festival in Chicago, and they will show the hometown crowd what they’ve got with a benefit performance next Friday, April 29, at the Grange Hall Theatre in West Tisbury.

British neurologist and bestselling author Oliver (Awakenings) Sacks noted that enjoying art is not just a visual experience — it’s an emotional one: “In an informal way I have often seen quite demented patients recognize and respond vividly to paintings and delight in painting at a time when they are scarcely responsive to words and disoriented and out of it. I think that recognition of visual art can be very deep.”

When the Civil War began> a century and a half ago the Vineyard was decidedly pro-Union, but ever since there has remained one prominent Vineyarder whose allegiance to The Cause has been suspect. He greets many thousands of visitors yearly from his Ocean Park pedestal and his original foot will be on display next Saturday when the Martha’s Vineyard Museum unveils its exhibit We Are Marching Along: Martha’s Vineyard and the Civil War.

Custom Interiors

Martha’s Vineyard Interior Design is opening a new retail store, Bespoke Abode, at 53B Main street in Vineyard Haven. Opened by local interior designer Liz Stiving-Nichols, Bespoke Abode is a home furnishings boutique offering custom furniture, rugs, lighting and a wide variety of home accessories described as “a perfect mix of reclaimed and refined.”

I guess you could call it forensic ornithology — assembling a story or an answer by linking bits of information, like detectives solving a murder on all those TV shows I don’t watch. Anyway, birders do it a lot.

April showers bring May flowers and also, perhaps, a torrent of toads!

The wet weather could inspire more than just the ducks. The large amount of rain last week was plentiful enough to bring out spadefoot toads. Spadefoot toads need at least two inches of rain and a drop in barometric pressure before they are persuaded to venture out of their comfy underground burrows.