The animal shelter is the place to hear both the saddest and the happiest stories.

Last week was fried dough at the Tisbury Street Fair. This week it’s malasada, sopa and cacoila. Welcome to the Portuguese Holy Ghost Feast and Festival, a two-day extravaganza of eating, festivities and a parade through the streets of Oak Bluffs.

Take a group of local cookbook authors, add food, wine and conversation, and you’ve got Cook the Vineyard!, a panel discussion-meets-lunch event sponsored by the Martha’s Vineyard Magazine. The second annual event will be held Monday, July 20, at Lola’s in Oak Bluffs, starting at noon. Tickets are $65 for a multi-course wine-paired lunch.

The Vineyard is a place of rejuvenation and inspiration for actress Amy Brenneman and director Brad Silberling. “It becomes this very creative place where the stakes are artistically high and financially low for me to just mess around,” Ms. Brenneman said.

In March, the president of Sweet Briar College announced that the 114-year-old women's college in Virginia would be closing. But he hadn't counted on Tracy Stuart, an alumna and Vineyard resident, who led the fight which eventually saved the school.

More than 200 community members gathered together for an interfaith service at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs on Sunday that reflected on and remembered the nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. who were killed on June 17.