The national media has descended, the Vineyard suddenly newsworthy with the arrival of a certain VIP: Very Important President. But a relaxing retreat leaves little room for groundbreaking news material, and colorful details become the preferred descriptors for the movement of the Obama family around the Island. The accounts pour in, in the form of press reports, dispatched intermittently throughout the day. President Obama is the star of the show, but the Vineyard provides a curious backdrop to those unfamiliar with our humble landscape and casual lifestyle.

Inside Gossamer Gallery last Tuesday, Joan Merry pulled out a framed portrait to demonstrate the dire economic situation in Zimbabwe: the colorful image of a man sitting on a chair was painted on a paper “canvas” made from $25 million Zimbabwe dollar notes stitched together.

The influence of nature versus nurture, the difference between forgiveness and forgetting, the existence of good and evil: these paradoxes were invoked by a cast of three actors against a spare backdrop in Monday night’s Island opening of Bryony Lavery’s Tony award-nominated drama Frozen. The story involves a grieving mother, a psychiatrist, and the murdered child who connects them.

Blond and boyish Brad Tucker, a skateboarding Island-grown guitar player who also carries a fast and fine tune, was flipping through the dictionary one winter night with his then-roommate, Vinnie Padalino, who plays the washboard. The two were searching for a name for a band they wanted to form when they came upon the word ballyhoo.

“It said it was a town in Ireland known for rowdy crowds and lots of noise and ruthless folks,” said Mr. Tucker in an interview outside the tiny one-room guesthouse he shares just with his dog, Murphy, on Tuesday evening.

As canaries once signalled early warning for coal miners, so kids in today’s Harlem serve as a warning to Americans to change the way we deal with poor young minorities, according to Harvard Law Prof. Lani Guinier.

She sounded an alarm over the steep challenges facing black and Hispanic youth in Harlem, when she was guest speaker Monday at a benefit at Farm Neck Golf Club for the nonprofit organization Brotherhood/Sister Sol.