Mother Nature is keeping the Vineyard Golf Club under construction until the next summer season.

Even though the fairways and contours of the course are beginning to glow in a shade of bright green, the caretakers of Vineyard Golf Club refuse to open the 71-acre facility until they know it can sustain foot and cart traffic.

“We agreed to do this the right way. It’s really a labor of love,” said Owen Larkin, managing partner of Vineyard Golf Club.

The streets of Edgartown early Tuesday morning are nearly empty. The day breaks sunny, a lovely September morning.

9:49 a.m. Small groups of people gather in store entrances to listen in disbelief to the normally soothing broadcast voices of Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. People exchange any tidbits they know as they try to piece together the sketchy details of terrorist plane attacks on the World Trade Center.

In a time of terror and grief in America, Vineyarders join citizens across the nation in an outpouring of support for the most timeless of American symbols: 50 stars and 13 stripes.

American flags wave proudly from vehicle antennas, from minivans to tow trucks. From Main street to your street, American flags cover the community in red, white and blue. But instead of standing tall in Independence Day pride, the flags hover halfway up the poles, paying homage to thousands of Americans lost in last Tuesday's terrorist attacks and to a country navigating through uncharted territory.

Television police dramas depict officers arriving at the scene of the rape - often a dark public park - where they meet a shaken young woman who describes with perfect accuracy the bearded man who raped her. After searching the park, the officers find the rapist, arrest him and the woman presses charges without hesitation.

Hollywood's depiction of the typical sexual assault and the survivor's response strays far from reality. Women often hesitate before contacting the police, and the attackers often get away.

There are moments that can only be captured at an agricultural fair — children toting balls of cotton candy larger than their heads, piglets resting peacefully across the midsection of a somnolent mother pig, and fathers being tugged to the Ferris wheel for the fifth time in an evening.

Martha's Vineyard Land Bank revenues will fall slightly below the $8.5 million record set in the last fiscal year. With the close of the fiscal year but two weeks away, land bank executive director James Lengyel projects ending the year with $7.6 million.

Given the recent downturn in the economy, Mr. Lengyel and the land bank commission expected this drop. In fact, the commission predicted a 15 per cent decrease for this year and the next two years. The decline for the present fiscal year represents only an 8.4 per cent decrease.

The leading critics of the 170-turbine offshore wind farm proposed for the shallow waters of Horseshoe Shoal made their way across Nantucket Sound to rally Vineyard opposition to the project.

"I've seen grocery stores take longer to get permitting in front of the Cape Cod Commission than it took for Cape Wind to get [a data tower permit] from the Army Corps of Engineers," said Isaac Rosen, executive director of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, to less than a dozen officials at the all-Island selectmen's meeting Wednesday night.

A crowd of Vineyard residents registered their concerns with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding a proposed private energy project that aims to plant 170 windmills in 28 square miles of shallow water in Nantucket Sound. For nearly two hours last Thursday night an audience of 60 entered comments into the formal record during a scoping session held in conjunction with a Martha's Vineyard Commission meeting in the basement of the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.

Martha's Vineyard Community Services sees the writing on the wall.

Just across Vineyard Sound and Buzzard's Bay, the Center for Health and Human Services of New Bedford is closing its outpatient counseling operation - turning away 600 clients after not being able to pull itself out of the red.

Emotions ran high throughout the final night of public testimony regarding a Chapter 40B affordable housing development that, if approved, would place 20 homes on 4.9 acres of land near Tisbury's center.