Sixteen-year-old Hans Buder isn't the Island's most enthusiastic baseball player, but he certainly is an authority on the physics of the sport. Mr. Buder won last weekend's regional high school science fair by putting a lot of balls on a single bat.

The future of the First Baptist Church of Vineyard Haven is caught in the middle between two opposing forces. Half the congregation wants to sell the building and build a new church somewhere else. Half wants to pursue a daunting task: Restoration of the 1885 building.

The coldest weather in years has the Vineyard in a deep freeze. Night temperatures have dropped into single digits and afternoon highs have stayed below freezing every day this week but one. Edgartown and Oak Bluffs harbors are locked up in ice.

Islanders Brave Cold to Share Concern at Prospect of U.S. War in Middle East

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

On one of the coldest days of the year, more than 170 people gathered at Five Corners for a peaceful noontime rally expressing their concern at the prospect of an American war with Iraq.

The lobster fishery in the waters south of Cape Cod is declining, so sharply that a number of Island commercial lobstermen are wondering how they will survive in the new year.

A $1 million project to upgrade and expand the Massachusetts State Lobster Hatchery in Oak Bluffs is on hold while the state addresses its fiscal crisis. Massachusetts state lobster hatchery director Mike Syslo he is not surprised, given the budget cutting going on in Boston.

Two months ago, the hatchery's saltwater pumps were shut off. Jim Rossignol, the assistant hatchery biologist, has moved back to the mainland.