All right, we have been officially initiated as full-fledged year-rounders in Vineyard Haven. We participated in Halloween. What a scene. What a kick!

We have been hearing about this holiday classic for years and missed it last year. It would have been our first Halloween in Vineyard Haven but we were called off-Island to a wedding. When we returned, all our neighborly friends informed us that we had missed an incredible tradition, a fantastic three-hour piece of Americana in which Norman Rockwell meets Grand Guignol.

Our U.S. election process is about as sophisticated as a high school’s. The way it now operates, we the people are not given a choice in terms of leadership abilities but rather chicanery skills. Each campaign may start out to educate and inform but in the end the candidates are dragged down into the mud where they are forced to stay alive by throwing at each other handfuls of what they’re stuck in, while lying, obfuscating, misrepresenting and generally messing with our minds. Is this a way to elect someone to lead or represent us?

You’d think with all the technology taking over our lives we would understand more about our surroundings and stumble over them less. But since we are all looking down at some device most of the time, with earbuds keeping out all distracting sounds of humanity, it’s little wonder we don’t crash a tea party or fall down a rabbit hole every so often. I suppose an even bigger distraction now are cyber security threats that could compromise our way of living, zap the national electrical grid and empty our bank accounts.

The other morning I ambled down Main street into the town center of Vineyard Haven with my noble yellow lab Floyd. We stopped at his usual oasis, the generously filled water bowl outside The Green Room, and the lapping commenced. He usually doesn’t stop drinking until his bladder assumes the proportion of water associated with that of the Earth’s surface.

Martha’s Vineyard is a perfect place to start a life. Especially in the fall. A time for renewal. A time to re-tool. The next best thing to moving here is marrying here. The perfect place to start a life — together.

The Food and Drug Administration is now dealing with a suit regarding false and misleading information in a case against Chobani, the Greek yogurt company, for listing “evaporated cane juice” as a major ingredient in its pomegranate-flavored yogurt. The FDA has the power to regulate product labeling and can ask for a change if it deems a rule violation has been committed.