Richard Friedman of Boston and Edgartown was named to President Obama’s Export Council last week, the only New Englander to be named to the council. Mr. Friedman, who owns the Charles and Liberty hotels in Boston, is a longtime summer resident of Edgartown where he owns a home on the Oyster Pond. The Friedman home was the Summer White House during consecutive years when President Bill Clinton and his family came to the Island for their summer vacation.

The Coast Guard has pledged to rebuild and the Chilmark selectmen have declared a state of emergency in the village of Menemsha following the Monday afternoon fire that destroyed the U.S. Coast Guard boathouse and most of a wooden pier leading out to the West Dock.

Voted formally by the selectmen in a special meeting held Wednesday afternoon, the third such meeting since the fire broke out, the declaration will allow the town immediately to begin cleanup and reconstruction, and possibly cut through state red tape related to procedures for town projects.

There was good news this week for Islanders struggling to pay for child care, including preschool: a state grant has come through that will make child care subsidy money available for income-eligible families in five of the six Island towns.

It’s been an exhausting week for Chilmark fire chief David Norton, but during a brief respite at the station yesterday, he took a few minutes to look back on the events, Monday afternoon that are now well recorded in newspapers and cameras around the Island and beyond.

Waiting for Superman is the new documentary by the same people who made An Inconvenient Truth, and this film sets out to do with regard to public education in America what its predecessor did with regard to climate and energy policy.

That is, to expose the manifest failings of the system, point to the culprits for those failings and, finally, to suggest remedies.

Graduates

Scott Cleary of Edgartown graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon, a coeducational boarding school for students in grades 9 to 12, during the school’s commencement exercises on May 23.