The winter high school sports season is set to begin, with teams getting ready for action during recent scrimmages.

Chorus director Peter Boak took the stage at the Old Whaling Church Saturday and welcomed the audience with two words: “We’re back.”

With the impact of the new Omicron variant still unknown, cases of Covid-19 on the Island are back on the upswing, with 48 more people confirmed positive for the virus in just five days.

In April 2013 an overflow crowd packed the Chilmark annual town meeting to cast a historic vote on what by then had been dubbed the big-house bylaw, a zoning bylaw aimed at regulating a perceived trend of super-sized homes.

A house-size bylaw similar to one adopted in Chilmark eight years ago is in the works for West Tisbury, with a public forum expected early in 2022 and a potential town meeting vote in the spring.