The Vineyard recently received an honored guest and a living historical figure to its shores. On Wednesday, the Honorable Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, Haiti’s minister of women’s affairs and rights since 2006, came to serve as guest of honor at a weekend-long celebration of solidarity between the island of Hispaniola and Martha’s Vineyard, sponsored by the Vineyard organizations Peacequilts and MV Fish Farm for Haiti.

“How do you transform a continent?” asked Fred Swaniker, the founder and chief executive officer of the African Leadership Academy, in his presentation last Saturday afternoon at the Edgartown home of Joe and Sylvia Frelinghuysen. The audience of 30 joined Mr. Swaniker in light laughter; he knows his goals for educating African youth and preparing them for effective, ethical leadership on the continent of Africa may at first sound hyperambitious.

Unknown to many of the thousands of people on the Island this week, an important group of visitors arrived bearing a special gift. It comes in several forms. In one regard, it is a piece of artwork, a stunning visual display of painstaking intricacy. It also spans educational and therapeutic services, music and dance presentation, and cultural exchange. But most of all, the monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery hope to give all who attend this week’s events a sense of inner peace and compassion.

In the 1800s, Vineyard farmers moved their goods to market in very different ways than they do now, by cart and buggy or, in some cases, by seacraft, a mark of the Island’s bustling maritime service economy. This week young Islanders and visitors revisited those vintage ways.

“We’re doing a pioneer thing,” said Alex Mahedy, one of the students in a new back-to-the-old-ways program called Mabel to Table, sponsored by the Farm Institute and Vineyard Voyagers.

A streetball rivalry was seething on the basketball courts of Oak Bluffs’ Niantic Park this past weekend. On Saturday, July 4, the Edgartown defending champions, the Cheezits, were preparing to take on the tough and much-hyped WBA, a four-man team from Boston and North Carolina.

Caroline Hunter opens up a binder densely packed with years of newspaper clippings, decades-old photos, letters and other paper mementos. Beside her is a stack of books marked with dozens of blue Post-it notes. The meticulous bookkeeping is not a hobby. And though the man to whom these records pertain is Caroline’s late husband, Ken Williams, this scrapbook filled with Ken’s work, and articles and books mentioning him, is not a memorial: for Caroline, it is a civic responsibility.