The back of the T-shirt read: “Burn Crew 2007. Burning landscapes near you.” Under those words was the equivalent of a band’s performance schedule, a dozen locales across six states.

And even though the wearer of the shirt and eight other members of her group were sitting around in a circle in a weedy clearing in the woods in firefighting gear on Wednesday, it was very like the atmosphere at the sound check before a music gig.

The word library comes to us from the Latin librarius , meaning of, or relating to, books. But anyone visiting the Oak Bluffs Public Library on a Thursday afternoon might find such a definition sorely outdated.

Between heats at Nancy’s Snack Bar in Oak Bluffs on Saturday Jon Holden, last year’s winner of the Martha’s Vineyard annual oyster shucking contest, inspected his knife doubtfully.

“I hate this knife,” he said, peering through his aviator shades at the black-handled Oxo brand shucker, “I wish I never bought it.”

Martha’s Vineyard is privileged to have five lighthouses on its shores and a sixth at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum campus in Edgartown. Two more afar can be seen from the Island, sometimes even more at night.

This weekend all the Island’s lighthouses will be celebrated in what is being called the Martha’s Vineyard Lighthouse Challenge. Visitors from around the country who make a habit of visiting lighthouses are making a special trip to the Island to share their affection for these centuries old beacons of the waterfront night.