In most people’s lives, glass has become so transparent as to be almost invisible. We drink from glasses, store food in glass jars and look out of glass windows. But a customer walking into the main building of Martha’s Vineyard Glassworks can’t help but consider the artistic process of making glass, too.

Inside the welcoming cedar-shingled building located on State Road in West Tisbury, the glassblowing studio is separated from the gallery by just a wraparound countertop. Within one building, the before, during and after takes place.

Down at the Menemsha docks on an early October evening, a regular is out casting into the harbor. He’s dressed for the occasion in red rubber boots and rain pants and a bright yellow rain jacket. His blue derby hat is decked with four pins — one with his derby number, two daily bluefish award pins, and one junior angler pin.

And of course five-year-old Grady Keefe of Menemsha is wearing his faded yellow life jacket.

Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School junior Jeremy Alley-Tarter had exactly one week atop the record books for the school cross-country team.

Although relatively few weigh-ins took place Wednesday night at derby headquarters, the docks were crowded with curious out-of-towners, fresh from eating dinner at the Atlantic and on their way back to their hotels. Outside, bundled-up derby newcomers watched the fillet volunteers prepare fish. A woman snapped photos of a large bluefish on weighmaster Charlie Smith’s table. Another approached the derby ladies behind the counter and asked the difference between an albacore and a false albacore. Derby chairman Chuck Hodgkinson was called to the task.

The football team plays its Homecoming game tonight against Cardinal Spellman. Kickoff is at 6:30 p.m. Golf plays Dartmouth at the Vineyard Golf Club at 3 p.m. On Saturday, boys’ soccer hosts Eastern Athletic Conference opponent Bishop Feehan at 11:30 a.m.

Although recreational fishing dominates Island chatter with the derby on this month, talk up and down Squid Row in Menemsha on Tuesday afternoon wa