There is a sign on a lawn in Vineyard Haven that reads, Drive Like Your Children Live Here. A good idea, but perhaps too narrow a sentiment, implying that there is a divide behind the wheel between how Islanders and summer visitors navigate the roads.

It’s been a dry spring, so dry that even the handful of rain showers and downpours we’ve had in the past few days can’t wash away the dust and pollen that have been coating cars, kitchen tables and throats in recent weeks.

Farmers and landscapers are lugging hoses and irrigation equipment and turning on the water full blast at a time of year when it’s usually not needed so often. Lilacs and bridal wreath lost their blooms quickly this year — viburnum is lush right now but may fade just as quickly without more rain.

One day next week citizens of the Island will look out over Vineyard Sound and watch as a striking vestige of our whaling heritage passes by.

Whether the whaleship Charles W. Morgan will sail into Tisbury Wharf on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday depends, fittingly, on the seas. Her final ceremonial voyage completes a journey that began in 1841 when she set sail from New Bedford for the first time with a Vineyard captain and seventeen Island crew members aboard.

What begins as a small circular bond between parents and child quickly becomes a communal enterprise of fellow parents, teachers, coaches and the community at large.

Meetings of the Martha’s Vineyard Airport Commission are turning into a spectacle that might be comical but for the fact that they involve a commission charged with oversight of the Island’s only commercial airport.