We don’t call it the dump anymore, not officially anyway. We don’t even call it the landfill, because our trash is no longer buried in the ground. For the past two decades, Islanders have been disposing of their trash by taking or sending it to a transfer facility.

The Ebola virus, with its terrifying symptoms and high mortality rate, evokes a dreadful fascination. But despite some well-publicized missteps in the way the disease has been managed elsewhere, it is unlikely to become the next big health crisis on the Vineyard.

They were two Ruths who became friends. Ruth Redding and Ruth Bogan both overcame obstacles early in life, including poverty born of war and the Great Depression and broken families.

With the announcement by executive director Mark London that he will retire at the end of next summer, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission has been handed an opening to articulate its mission and reconsider its priorities and the time to do it right.

Groundsel trees are in full bloom and thriving these days in the vast salt marshes that ring the many Island saltwater ponds, their gray-green silvery flowers leaning and nodding in the autumn winds that buffet the shorelines.