More than $2 million in community development block grants have been awarded to the Island and Gosnold this year.

Funding was announced Friday for three key projects: the restoration initiative at Squibnocket Beach in Chilmark; a pilot by the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group to sow marshlands with ribbed mussels; and a project at Barges Beach on Cuttyhunk.

If you believe that Chilmark Store pizza costs more per square inch than Chilmark real estate, then it shouldn’t be hard to make the leap to the premise that inch for inch, the 75 acres that make up Penikese island have more history than any other place of its size in  the country.

It was just too hot to think last week so I just sat around with a dead brain remembering silly things, which is a lot easier than some of the other stuff I think about.

The first returns from Dukes County are in: Gosnold, the seventh town in the county and smallest town in Massachusetts, narrowly voted for Barack Obama, casting 49 votes for the incumbent president and 36 votes for his challenger, Mitt Romney. In the closely-watched U.S. Senate race, it was a nearly even split with Scott Brown beating Elizabeth Warren by a single vote, 44-43.

There was no crime on Gosnold Wednesday, a day much like any other. The only difference, this time it’s official.

“No incidents whatsoever,” announced the town’s first ever police chief, George Isabel. “There is nothing to report. The one problem was the rain, but there was no police action on that.”