There I was on the steps of the Tower of London where Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey and Sir Thomas More, among others, lost their heads — and I lost my wallet.

There’s no comparison, of course, but history buff that I am — their names couldn’t help but pass through my mind as I reached into my handbag for my wallet on a recent trip to London — and found it gone.

Late-night revelers will be out on New Year’s Eve celebrating under a Last Quarter Moon. The moon rises in the eastern sky, less than an hour after the arrival of the New Year. The moon is in the zodiacal constellation Leo, a constellation most often associated with spring and summer.

By LYNNE IRONS

I like rain and don’t even mind the cold, but this hardened snow/ice/treacherous footing is totally irritating. Never being one to stay indoors, I still attempt to do outside activities. I have been using a pitchfork to keep myself upright while tending to my chores. I trudged to my pigs carrying a five-gallon bucket of hot water to melt the ice in their water trough. They took one sip and promptly spilled it. I resorted to name-calling.

Hippie, beatnik, bohemian are all words that have been used to describe someone who is different than the norm. Other definitions of the adjective bohemian are wanderer or vagabond. And that is exactly what is occurring in Massachusetts with a particular bird which was given a perfect name: bohemian waxwing.

Two plants that merge into one, growing together to the benefit of each other. Sounds strange, but lichens are unique combinations of fungi and algae growing together, yet they are distinct from either of their components. They are abundant in nature, occurring just about everywhere: silvery gray flat patches growing on tree trunks, rocks, roofs and other flat surfaces. Well, most of the time that is what they are.

Temperature: Precip.

Day Max. Min. Inches.

Fº Fº

Dec. 21 38 32 Trace

Dec. 22 38 34 .00

Dec. 23 45 33 .00

Dec. 24 55 33 .75

Dec. 25 45 34 .00

Dec. 26 43 23 .00

Dec. 27 40 26 .08

Water temperature in Edgartown harbor: 43º F.

People of the Book is the new novel from Vineyard Haven author Geraldine Brooks — her first since March won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It hits stores on Tuesday and will be launched on Thursday with a special public reading at the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center. A longtime foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Brooks was inspired by the true story of a mysterious codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah.

Readers this year lost voices that long had thrived in the Island’s literary ecosystem, from the internationally acclaimed wag Art Buchwald to the perenially pot-boiling (literally — see his cookbook D’lish! for recipes) bestseller Philip Craig. Both left a rich legacy, however, with Mr. Craig’s latest (not last — another will be in stores in May 2008) mystery served up poshumously. His quahauging and crime-solving detective J.W. Jackson is back in the just-released Third Strike, another of Mr.

In the summer, birds and bees and buzzing things are easy to see. They are out and about at the beach and on the playground. But come winter, the Vineyard animals are harder to spot. Beginning in January, the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary will, for the first time, offer its popular Creature Feature program for young naturalists in the winter months.

There is probably no simpler illustration of the dominant news themes of Martha’s Vineyard, 2007, than that of the friendly Rhode Island red rooster owned by Jessica Rose Seidman, of West Tisbury.

Chickie, who Ms. Seidman hatched from an egg almost five years ago when she was 11 and then kept as a pet, had won four firsts at the annual Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Livestock Show and Fair.