The white tent. The shadow you see at lower left is me standing on a picnic table.

Trav and I cross the grounds or playing fields of the West Tisbury School at least once a day and often twice, so of course I noticed when the white tent appeared a few days ago. Tents are not unusual on Martha’s Vineyard. If you want a tent for a reception or wedding or outdoor event, there are at least three businesses you can call, at least in the summer. (When the northeast winds start blowing hard in the fall, the demand for tents drops PDQ.)

So was a music festival coming to the playing field behind the school? Not bloody likely. The place was too quiet. A couple of days ago, not for the first time, I found a golf ball lying on the path that runs behind the playing fields. I tossed it back onto the field. The golfer who was out there practicing his drives thanked me.

Yesterday morning Trav and I met a fellow at the edge of the school grounds, near the crosswalk on Old County Road. This was unusual. The fellow was smoking. This was even more unusual. He admired Trav, which wasn’t unusual, and I soon learned that he was from Virginia, a neighbor of his had huskies, and he’d never been to the Vineyard before. He was with NBC. The press was using the school as a staging area during President Obama’s visit.

Aha! I thought. The white tent!

Oddly enough, Trav was being reticent. Usually he’s sniffing at the hands and pockets of any stranger, looking for treats. Maybe the smell of tobacco put him off? This was probably the first smoker he’d ever met. The poor dog has lived all but eight and a half weeks of his life in West Tisbury, where no one will cop to eating anything that isn’t locally grown, certified organic, and GMO free.

Never mind smoking cigarettes.

We continued on our way. My mission was to photograph the new sign I’d noticed the afternoon before:

NB: This replaces an earlier photo of the sign before it was quite dry.

Finally the creators of the bike path planets were taking credit for their work. The paint was barely dry. I had to move a tall orange cone aside to take the picture. That vertical line down the middle looks like smeared paint.

Late this afternoon Trav and I passed close enough to the white tent that I could look inside it. No one was around. I took a picture. It doesn’t look like a rock band is going to appear at any moment, but maybe they’re planning on doing an interview?