After a flurry of emergency preparations that went on through the week, Hurricane Earl was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it arrived on the Island late Friday night, sparing the Island any damage save from drenching rains that flooded some cellars and washed out driveways.

Up in the attic of the old house at Quansoo, you can read its somewhat haphazard growth over 300 odd years. You see where the several additions were made to the original structure. You see ancient roof timbers, reinforced with temporary framing and juxtaposed with a concrete block chimney.

Downstairs, too, there is something of an historical jumble. In the cracked wall evidence of wattle and daub construction but on the floor, linoleum. And outside, a new temporary roof over the old one to protect the building from further deterioration.

Vineyarders shook the sand out of their towels one last time this week before returning to work and school, and now comes the time to look back and count the numbers. No doubt boosted by endless hot and sunny days, it was a good summer, most Island businesses report.

The Vineyard prides itself on promoting all things local: music, painting, livestock, produce, you name it. This weekend, though, the Island goes international as it celebrates the cinema of the world.

Last night the fifth annual Martha’s Vineyard International Film Festival kicked off as it always does, with an opening night reception on the Mansion House rooftop.

The blue front door of radio station WMVY looks like a relic from colonial times. Its last coat of paint was perhaps slapped on before the day in 1986 when a young singer from Wellesley and then Cambridge named Barbara Dacey first knocked on it. Once inside the small studio, she offered to do some unpaid on-air commercials as a way of auditioning for some work.