The annual fireworks show returns tonight with promise of a spectacular show, but also increased security.

A mosquito caught on Monday in the town of Tisbury has tested positive for the West Nile virus, confirmed Thomas Pachico, health agent. It is the second Island appearance of the virus this year. The town was notified Thursday evening.

Each morning when West Tisbury emergency management director John Christensen wakes up, he turns on his iPad and checks the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s weather forecast. It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of winter or hurricane season.

More than 30 years ago Dr. Donald Berwick began seeing patients in the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital emergency room. At the time, the ER was staffed by visiting physicians on weekends, so he helped set up the schedule and find the doctors a place to stay for the night. Since then, he has stopped seeing patients, was temporarily appointed by President Obama as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, D.C., and in June, declared his campaign for governor of Massachusetts.

What if a deceased dog could talk? What if hippos went on holiday?

Those are some of the questions asked and answered by the former U.S. poet laureate and Island favorite Billy Collins in a reading of new and selected poems at Featherstone Center for the Arts last Friday evening. Among other disparate themes, he explored parenting, animal-human relationships, endearing soap bars and the experience of a traveler who arrives in a foreign place and is immediately told he has arrived too late in the year to witness the peak of the natural beauty.

Fifty years ago this month Harry Belafonte helped make history. On August 28, 1963, Mr. Belafonte, at Martin Luther King Jr.’s behest, recruited celebrities to speak to the estimated 250,000 Americans assembled on the Washington Mall ­— an event which, for many, defined a decade, even a century.