By 10 p.m. on the night of the New Hampshire primary, the signature chants of the hundreds of Barack Obama faithful gathered in the Nashua school gymnasium were getting pretty thin.

Sporadically, and particularly when the big screen on the wall cut to the speeches of the various Republican candidates — whose contest had been decided two hours previously — the call-and-response broke out still.

“Fired Up. Ready to go”.

International Dinners

International-themed meals will be served at the Dr. Daniel Fisher House in Edgartown to support the International Travel Fund at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School.

On Saturday, Jan. 12, a dinner of traditional fare from India will be served. On Jan. 26, a Jamaican dinner will be served.

The Martha’s Vineyard NAACP will hold its annual membership and awards brunch celebrating the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, Jan. 21 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, 130 Centre street, Vineyard Haven.

The event will include a special tribute to Vera Shorter. Sadie Burton-Goss is the scheduled guest speaker.

Friends and relatives came Saturday to celebrate the 100th birthday of Thelma Luce Baird. The gathering at Windemere Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Oak Bluffs included colorful flowers and two birthday cakes, and was documented by a dozen flashing cameras.

Mrs. Baird’s centennial birthday party was a community event, a time for the exchange of greetings, memories and pictures of a changing Island.

Mrs. Baird said she was honored by all the attention and she said she liked seeing all her friends. She couldn’t thank them all enough.

The town of West Tisbury has filed a lawsuit against a mainland subprime mortgage company that loaned more than half a million dollars to an affordable homesite owner in town who had no ability to repay — and then foreclosed on the property.

The lawsuit charges Saxon Mortgage Services Inc., a Texas-based lending institution, and Fremont Investment and Loan of southern California, with unfair, deceptive and predatory lending practices.

Although names were never discussed, it might have been called Middletown or Centerville, a seventh town in the center of the Island that some envisioned as the future social and economic center of the Vineyard.

A 1972 study from the engineering firm Metcalf and Eddy suggested the creation of this town, both as a means to protect the integrity of the existing down-Island centers and to keep large-scale development away from the more vulnerable ecology and geography of the up-Island towns.

Faced with rising operating costs, nearly no growth in the residential and commercial sectors and sharply reduced revenues, Oak Bluffs officials will have to cut spending even more this year as they begin to draft the town’s next operating budget.

Town administrator Michael Dutton on Tuesday told selectmen the town faces a $1 million deficit at the start of this budget season. Although it is early in the process, he noted, and that figure is expected to shrink, the early shortfall is a telling indicator of the tough economy facing the Island.

An unpopular Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School budget reemerged last week after a staff member at the school superintendent’s office spotted that not enough votes had been cast to obtain the legally required two-thirds majority at a meeting in December.

The high school committee voted 7-1 to certify a revised $16.2 million budget last Thursday, but not before eliminating a controversial proposed facilities manager position.

In frustration over their failure to negotiate change to what they consider a blatantly unfair state-imposed formula for funding the regional high school, Tisbury selectmen will take the matter to court.

A lawsuit filed in Dukes County Superior Court last Friday names the Massachusetts Board of Education, the Acting Commissioner of Education Jeffrey Nellhaus, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School and the town of Oak Bluffs as defendants in the matter.

A sleepy, indoorsy Martha’s Vineyard afternoon, a preview of more to come as January slides by, greeted the streets down-Island on Sunday. Not one car was parked at Tashmoo overlook, not a soul lingered outside the Black Dog Cafe, and empty parking spots, months ago coveted, yawned along Main street Vineyard Haven in twos and threes.

But then, just before the library, the cars came into view. One behind the other, block after block they lined the street.