Dear John:

The romance is over. It’s been a wonderful ride, snowy days spent sledding gentle Island hills, traversing farm fields on cross-country skis and snowshoes, blizzardy nights by the fire, hands wrapped around steaming mugs of tea while the wind howled around the chimney.

The elaborate project now unfolding to move four buildings on Richard and Jennifer Schifter’s property on a remote and windswept promontory at the extreme southeastern corner of Chappaquiddick, including an eight-thousand-square-foot home, is riveting. This very big project for a very small island has already cost the homeowners millions of dollars as they engage in a spellbinding race against nature to move their summer home and assorted other structures back from the edge of a rapidly eroding cliff.

The results of the Boston Globe Scholarship Art Awards are in and once again Vineyard students did very well. This year was in fact the best ever as thirty-three Island students were honored for a total of forty-one awards. The acknowledgment spanned nearly all art mediums imaginable including photography, drawing, writing, painting, ceramics and jewelry.

Examples of these awards can be seen on the Commentary Page in today’s edition.

Today the music dies on 92.7 FM when the signal formerly owned by Island-centric WMVY will pass to WBUR, a Boston-based National Public Radio station. Those of us accustomed to filling our homes, our offices and especially our cars with the eclectic blues-folk-rock sounds of WMVY will have some adjusting to do.

Consider the lowly oyster, a homely bivalve if ever there was one.

It has always seemed unlikely as a culinary delicacy. But it turns out that flavor is only part of its charm.

Shellfish constables in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs have proposed a relatively low cost plan to harness the oyster’s exceptional ability to remove nitrogen from water to help reduce pollution in Sengekontacket Pond. According to a 2009 report by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, an adult oyster can pump and filter up to 50 gallons of pond water per day.

A neighborhood place to get a drink, share some food, watch sports or just relax after a long week. This is the essence of a good pub, one that stands the test of time, or at least a number of decades. Seasons in Oak Bluffs fit this description for 27 years, and for many of those years offered a whole lot more, too.

On Sunday, Feb. 3, Seasons will bring football fans together for one last Super Bowl. At closing time the doors will shut on another era on Circuit avenue.