By wide margins, Island high school students are still outpacing their peers in the rest of the state when it comes to risky behaviors such as drunk driving, binge drinking and smoking marijuana.

It was one of the town's best-kept secrets, and hundreds of coconspirators kept it quiet for months. Retiring fire chief Richard H. Clark Jr. was treated to a surprise party on Saturday. The event that filled the Agricultural Hall in West Tisbury took months to plan and was kept a secret from the chief until the last moment. This party will go down in the record books as Tisbury's biggest caper.

Family, Friends, Island Gather to Honor Life of Marc Widdiss

By JOSHUA SABATINI

Friends and family of the late Marc E. Widdiss gathered in the Aquinnah cemetery Saturday afternoon for a graveside ceremony underneath a clear sky, meeting later at Aquinnah Circle for a celebration of his life.

Mr. Widdiss, of Aquinnah, died June 17 at age 54 after a three-year battle with leukemia. His wife, Beverly, was at his bedside at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Lyme disease may be carried to humans by the deer tick, but this time of year, it's not the deer who are playing host to this tiny insect. It's the Island's white-footed mice.

Revenues fell $1 million at the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank in the fiscal year just ended, reflecting a distinct new cooling in the overheated real estate sales market that has made an indelible mark on both the economy and the culture of the Island in recent years.

The land bank fiscal year ends on June 30 (because the date fell over the weekend this year, the land bank closed the books on Friday, June 28).

Almost 10 months after Sept.