Call them critics-in-training. Children go behind the camera, videotaping kids' reactions to films.

Some six weeks ago, by the light of a slowly rising full moon, painter Ray Ellis stole away to a silent corner of Edgartown and settled in to capture an image of the swollen moon creeping up over Chappaquiddick. Facing down-harbor, he had a perfect view of the Chappy bank, dotted with lights from the houses nestled along its coast.

“The moon was just coming up,” Mr. Ellis said yesterday. Carefully, he captured the silvery reflection of the great white globe in the harbor, a lone sailboat suspended in the water.

Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust executive director Chris Scott stood in his usual spot onstage with auctioneer Trip Barnes Saturday night, as Mr. Barnes kicked off the Taste of the Vineyard gala auction. With only five items up for bid, it was a light year for the trust. Bidders generally have some two dozen items to choose from.

Working as a paramedic on a mobile intensive care unit in New Jersey, Robert Bellinger remembers well the morning when a friend came into the diner where he was eating breakfast to tell him that something was amiss in Manhattan. A plane had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a mere 12 miles from where Mr. Bellinger sat.

“It is Sunday, and a very pleasant day. I have read two story books. This is my journal. Goodbye for today.”

So opened six-year-old Laura Jernegan’s journal, in an entry dated Dec. 1, 1868, as she set sail on a three-year sea expedition with her family aboard the whaling vessel Roman.