Gone are the days of coming home from school and telling Mom and Dad there was no homework. With about 80 per cent of teachers at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School using school Web sites to post assignments and a host of other information, parents know what's due tomorrow - and down the road.

After six months of waiting, $900 in application fees, one lost job offer, thousands of dollars in lost salary and untold emotional strain, a Martha's Vineyard immigration story ended happily last week. If there is a moral to the tale, it is that the Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucracy as easy to navigate as Cape Horn in a squall, and despite its reputation, the Edgartown post office is not always to blame.

This week, five downtown Vineyard Haven venues will become portals to far off places like Chile, New Zealand, Bosnia, South Africa, France and Iran. The mode of mental transportation: film.

Roughly 40 feature-length and short films from more than 15 countries will screen in three days and four nights during the Martha's Vineyard International Film Festival - the first of its kind on the Island.

It's usually not a good thing when an interview ends in bloodshed, but an exception will be made for Ward Just, who was still nursing his wounds from a battle with a wicker basket when this reporter left his West Tisbury home one morning this week.

Donning their favorite clothes and backpacks full of new pens and notebooks with corners still perfectly crisp, some 2,350 students will begin a new school year this week at the Island\'s seven public schools. Before the first bell, they will shut off their iPods, put their cell phones on silent and turn their full attention to their new teachers - and old friends, perhaps unseen since summer began.

Donning their favorite clothes and backpacks full of new pens and notebooks with corners still perfectly crisp, some 2,350 students will begin a new school year this week at the Island's seven public schools. Before the first bell, they will shut off their iPods, put their cell phones on silent and turn their full attention to their new teachers - and old friends, perhaps unseen since summer began.