Brian Athearn isn’t used to sitting still and keeping quiet. But on Wednesday, the Agricultural Society president stayed in his seat and listened to a string of speeches in his honor, before accepting the Spirit of the Vineyard Award.

Oak Bluffs took another step closer to its ambitious downtown streetscape reconstruction Tuesday, when the select board agreed to issue a request for proposals to rebuild Circuit avenue with wider sidewalks, new trees and planters and parallel parking.

Bay scalloping season is about to begin, but harvests are expected to be limited, Island shellfish constables said this week. Edgartown traditionally gets the season started first, with recreational scalloping open Oct. 1.

In the dark stillness of Saturday morning, music mingled with the smell of woodsmoke at Bend in the Road Beach in Edgartown, where scores of tea lights twinkled against a backdrop of navigational markers flashing out to sea.

Executive director Richard Paradise said that buying the building — a condominium within the Tisbury Marketplace development — has always been part of the long-term plan.

After nearly 43 years of nursing at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Betsy VanLandingham is retiring this month — sort of.

A divided Tisbury select board voted this week to appoint two new members to the town’s sewer advisory board, along with four existing members — but not longstanding representative John Best, whose request was denied.

The Red House peer recovery center recently reopened after its launch early last year was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic.

About two dozen Dukes County workers have until Oct. 30 to show they are fully vaccinated or apply for a legal exemption under a newly-enacted vaccination mandate.

Jeff Robinson finished first in the schooner division, capturing the Ingrid B. Robinson Memorial Cup, named for his late wife Ingrid.