Elda Berlin is a first grader at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School. “I’m a little bit older than six and three quarters,” she says.

Thousands of fresh oysters will be distributed to Island families and school children this weekend, thanks to an anonymous benefactor who donated funds to help Island oyster farmers.

The sound of blaring sirens and horns echoed from Edgartown to Vineyard Haven Tuesday afternoon as a long line of police, fire and rescue vehicles wound through the mostly empty streets. But this was no emergency — it was parade to pay tribute to workers on the front lines of the pandemic.

The Edgartown Fourth of July parade — one of the Island’s premier summer events — has been canceled, the last in a long line of signature festivities to be cut from the summer calendar.