“You know, there are over a hundred ways you can die from pigeons,” volunteers 10-year-old Vineyarder Zale Narkiewicz. “Sometimes when they poop it has toxins that can kill you, sometimes you just have to breathe it in.”

“Well, that’s really great,” replies California-based filmmaker Gabriel Cowan, “because this movie is all about parasites.”

Four hundred thousand dead civilians and 2.5 million displaced refugees. Hundreds of undefended villages razed by government-funded marauders on horseback. People living in camps with poisoned wells. Starving two-year-olds who look like they’re 102. Mothers who send their daughters out to collect firewood, knowing they will be raped. The violence in Darfur makes the early 21st century look as dark as the 20th.

By JACOB KRAMER

Theories abounded when David Merry began pouring sand and shells in a plot in the backyard of Cleaveland House, the home of Island author Cynthia Riggs, “There was all kinds of speculation — was it a bocce green, a tennis court, a place where I could burn brush, a garden, a memorial pet cemetery?” A writer of mysteries herself, Ms. Riggs no doubt relished the suspense. The public’s guesses were soon proved wrong when a 34-foot 1967 Egg Harbor pleasure yacht was trucked in to be berthed on the pad.

The Chilmark Road Race is a chimerical beast, part family-oriented charity jog, part cutthroat competition. Perhaps the contradictory spirit of the now-legendary institution was best summed up by Willy Anderson, age 10. When asked about his plans for the race, the bespectacled youth declared, "I really want to beat my mom. We'll start out together, but at the end I'll try to beat her."