Edgartown harbor sparkled brilliantly in the sun Saturday afternoon as families from the Vineyard and beyond gathered for the annual ceremony of remembrance at the Edgartown Lighthouse Children’s Memorial, where small, engraved granite cobblestones honor hundreds of young lives lost.

Cross country runners representing schools from across the region competed in the fourteenth Annual Martha’s Vineyard Invitational Saturday at the regional high school.

Call them the last days of summer or the first days before the official arrival of fall. A traveler may find a certain seasonal confusion in these September days of high blue ocean skies and nights when bright star patterns dip low enough to touch.

Derby fishermen are back at Wasque Point, on the southeastern tip of Chappaquiddick, casting into the churning rip current where bluefish and other species feed on the smaller fish that get trapped.

The wind festival delights each September as the winds pick up and everyone heads to Ocean Park with all manner of wind-related flyers — kites, Frisbees, even bubbles.

First weigh-in for the 76th Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby took place from 8 to 10 a.m. on Sunday morning. Weigh-ins are everday, down at the Edgartown Harbor, from 8 to 10 a.m. and 8 to 10 p.m.

It's the time of year when everyone want to get the blues — bluefish, that is, along with, false albacore and bonito.

The year begins to turn and this week of school openings tells us so. School days remind us that the month of September always returns the community to a more serious side of Island life, to those essential Vineyard issues that stretch far beyond the rush of summer.