The Christmas holiday season can be a challenging time for American Jews and yet according to Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, PhD, former rabbi of the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, this has not always been the case.

Fred Waitzkin, whose memoir Searching for Bobby Fischer inspired the movie by the same name, has been waiting his whole life to write a novel. A seasoned journalist and seasonal resident of the Vineyard, Mr. Waitzkin said that his nonfiction books had progressively begun to resemble novels. He finally decided it was now or never.

The Gay Head Gallery is nestled amid a stand of scrub oak along State Road in Aquinnah. An electric vehicle charges in the driveway and inside the cozy home/gallery artwork hangs on every wall. The art depicts scenes from around the Island — a thunderstorm rolls in over the south shore, a stiff wind blows through a green pasture. But the art, while beautiful, doesn’t just please the eye. The current show is called Changing Coastlines, and the art details the way that erosion is shaping, re-shaping and, in some cases, destroying the Martha’s Vineyard coastline.

At dusk last night a single lantern lit by Gordon Long and his son Roy made its way down the center aisle of the Tabernacle in the Oak Bluffs Camp Ground. There was a collective gasp from the large crowd gathered inside the Tabernacle and around blankets and picnic baskets on the lawn.

Beth O’Connor was nine years old when she began skating at the Martha’s Vineyard Ice Arena. At that time, the arena had just a roof, and players hung tarps around the sides in the winter to keep rain and snow off the ice. In 1992 the arena was enclosed for year-round skating and locker rooms were added to the building a few years later.

“I’ve watched the arena be cut and pasted together over the years,” Ms. O’Connor said. “It’s been great to see it grow.”

How do you define love? Why is the same word used to define such a broad range of feelings? And, if your wealthy husband is paralyzed in a car accident, which gradation of love will keep you from killing him for the insurance money?

These are just a few of the questions posed by an upcoming short film by Islanders Ronan Noone and Steve Dunayer called The Accident. Although filming will not begin until the fall, the movie will be shot entirely on-Island and the pair has already begun fundraising and checking items off their lengthy to-do list.