On Tuesday afternoon, Vineyard Field was quiet; a breeze tinged with fall kicked up some dust next to the batting cages. The bounce houses were deflated, the food stands empty and there were just two people on the field, tossing a ball back and forth.

Martha’s Vineyard Sharks general manager Jerry Murphy loaded a tub of purple-and-black gear into his car before a meeting with some of this summer’s host families. He’d just put in another order for merchandise; the summer supply was sold out and still in demand.

When the Sharks come for the summer, they need a place to stay.

“Host families are our backbone,” general manager Jerry Murphy said. “Without them, we don’t have a team.”

The third try was the charm for the Edgartown Shellfish department. After two attempts earlier this month to open up Edgartown Great Pond to the Atlantic Ocean, shellfish constable Paul Bagnall and his crew finally succeeded Monday in creating a channel through the South Shore, allowing the freshwater and the saltwater to mingle, as it were.

The third try was the charm for the Edgartown Shellfish department. After two attempts earlier this month to open up Edgartown Great Pond to the Atlantic Ocean, shellfish constable Paul Bagnall and his crew finally succeeded Monday in creating a channel through the South Shore, allowing the freshwater and the saltwater to mingle, as it were.

We ordinarily associate fire with devastation, a barely controllable force that overtakes everything in its path. The metaphor is used throughout Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke’s Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare, which screened before a sold-out crowd of over 300 people Wednesday night at the Chilmark Community Center. The showing was followed by two lengthy discussion sessions nearly the duration of the film itself (the documentary is 95 minutes long).

Summer on the Vineyard conjures images of sand and surf, beaches and breaking waves, water and . . . wagging tails?

When Charles McGrath wrote about the annual Island Cup game between the Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket football teams for the New Yorker in 1984, he likened it to a fierce sibling rivalry. What mainland team could hope to drum up a rivalry as poignant with either of the Island squads? For all that the Vineyarders can’t stand about the Whalers, they also know that the only football team in the entire country that could possibly understand what it means to be an Islander is that of their brother-in-isolation, Nantucket.