Tisbury police officer John Dillon -- who has been under fire from the NAACP for allegedly racist acts against the town's only African-American patrolman -- is on indefinite paid administrative leave this week.

The operators of Alley’s General Store in West Tisbury have traditionally been known as the “Dealers in Almost Everything.”

But it seems that the current Alley’s operators cannot deal with their landlord, the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust.

The current operators — Victor Spelman, Emily Milstein and Will and Deborah Ware — have decided to sell their interest in the State Road general store in order to concentrate on a new retail business in Oak Bluffs.

The Martha's Vineyard NAACP this week called for the immediate dismissal of John Dillon, a Tisbury police patrolman who has been charged with racism by a fellow officer.

In a three-page letter to the Gazette, the NAACP lists a series of alleged offenses by Mr. Dillon, highlighted by an incident in which the officer parodied stereotypical African-American speech when rewriting a computer document authored by Theophilus M. Silvia 3rd, the town's only year-round African-American patrolman.

Charges of racism erupted this week at the Tisbury police department, with the town's only African-American year-round officer saying he has been the subject of harassment, jokes and even an offensive caricature displayed in the station.

The allegations of Theophilus M. (T.M.) Silvia III, filed over a period of 12 months with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, were made public this week by the Vineyard chapter of the NAACP, where officials were dissatisfied with the town's response to the issue.

John Hoft Farm on Lambert’s Cove Road is a spectacular place, a 90-acre expanse of pasture, woods and lowlands that, for many people, symbolizes the almost-vanished farming tradition of Martha’s Vineyard.

But now, the Hoft Farm is an unlikely battleground.

That’s because the farm is for sale, and developers, conservationists and private buyers are elbowing each other in an effort to secure this gorgeous parcel of West Tisbury history.

Wanda Emin is happy with her children's school. Still, she was one of dozens of parents who showed up this week at an open house for the Martha's Vineyard Public Charter School.

She came, she said, at the urging of Brooke, 13, and Heather, 10.

"We just came with an open mind, and we'll go home and talk about it," Mrs. Emin said, guessing that her daughters are attracted to the school because "what they like is being able to make their own decisions."

As the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank prepares for a confrontation with its new neighbors in Makonikey, pressure is mounting on its West Tisbury advisory board to buy a major inland property off Lambert’s Cove Road.

At issue is a handsome, 90-acre stretch of rolling woods and lowlands which is regarded as one of the last great, undeveloped pastures along Lambert’s Cove. The property, operated for generations as a family farm, is currently owned by Dan Alisio of Tisbury, who is trying to sell the property for $2.5 million.

Martha's Vineyard 1996 was a year of storms. There were tempests of the natural sort: September's Hurricane Edouard, though less fearsome than predicted, tore into the Island with gusts up to 80 miles per hour, tossing tree limbs around like chopsticks. An unexpected January blizzard dumped 20 inches of snow on the Island, the biggest one-day tally in nine years. Rain was a dreary, dull constant. The Vineyard absorbed a record 61 inches of rainfall this year, and the Island often looked more like Seattle than a sunny paradise.