In the very beginning, when nobody knew anything, everyone was afraid. It was 1986 and Kevin had just been diagnosed as HIV-positive. Many of his friends were dying from AIDS.

“I went to visit my friend Larry in a hospital, who had pneumocystis [a form of pneumonia],” Kevin recalled. “He was at the very end of the corridor and the rooms on either side of him and across the hall were all empty. When I went to visit him I had to put on a mask, a gown, gloves and booties. And then I went into the room and he was in an oxygen tent.”

Madeline Way tapped on an iPad in her Project Headway classroom at the West Tisbury School.

“The kids who use this program cannot talk,” she explained. “But they can go like this in a fury.”

Tap, tap, tap. The iPad speaks: “I — want — puzzles.”

With the sale of Viking, a 40-foot fishing boat that has plied the waters off the Vineyard for three generations, the Island’s once-vibrant fleet of small wooden draggers is now at the brink of extinction.

Craig Coutinho of Vineyard Haven confirmed this week that he will sell Viking along with his fishing permits.

Following Hurricane Sandy’s blow to the south-facing coastline of the Vineyard last month, the Chilmark conservation commission is now facing a slew of plans for beach protection, including a request to move two homes and a shed now perilously perched atop the cliff at Stonewall Beach.

The state Department of Public Utilities has approved a 15‑year power purchase agreement between the electric company NStar and Cape Wind Associates, the company that plans to build a wind farm on Nantucket Sound.

The approval was announced this week following an eight-month adjudicatory proceeding.