While the Martha’s Vineyard Museum continues to stall on the question of shifting its base to the old Edgartown school, selectmen have formally put the historic building back on the market.

Following six months of debate, the museum board of directors Friday voted to ask the town for more time, requesting a one-year option to lease the building for $1.

But that request was denied by the Edgartown selectmen, who voted Monday to prepare a request for proposals for the school, putting the building up for grabs once more.

As meteorologists yesterday charted a storm creeping inexorably toward the East Coast, in Aquinnah a race was on to get someone behind the wheel of the town snow plow.

Though the retirement of highway surveyor Forest Alley is apparently imminent, town coordinator Jeff Burgoyne said yesterday Mr. Forest will be manning the plow this weekend.

“He is ready, willing and able,” he said.

Yet selectman Jim Newman said that a new hire is waiting in the wings.

An Island native and young attorney with a bit of political legacy in her own right has been appointed as the next Vineyard legislative liaison.

Cape and Islands state Rep. Tim Madden, who takes office in January, announced this week that he has appointed Virginia Nelligan Coogan — she goes by the first name Nell — to the post.

Like most Vineyarders, Connie Teixeira had not given much thought to the specter of homelessness on the Island. Then, this year, she found herself looking the reality of it in the face, day after day at the Tisbury Senior Center.

“We have a gentleman who comes and spends most of the day at the senior center, he has lunch in the senior program, and then he goes to the library until it closes, and from there he goes to wherever he can find a place to sleep, and stays there until they find out he’s there and they put him out,” she said.

Soo Whiting, on her annual southbound migration, asked me to fill in for this week’s Bird News column. While Soo and Flip Harrington are navigating their way to Florida, it seems a perfect time to wrap up the story of this year’s osprey migration.

Load 16 tons,

What do you get?

Another day older

And deeper in debt!

I ran into Nancy Hall in the Vineyard Haven post office, who reminded me of this song from the early sixties. We spent some time lamenting our sorry state of financial affairs nation and worldwide.

Want to Direct?

Island Theatre Workshop, Inc. is searching for new stage directors join the company for its third annual Short Play Festival to be performed in March, 2009. Anyone who has a short play, either classic or contemporary, that she or he would like to direct should contact artistic director Lee Fierro to discuss possibilities. Please call 508-693-5290 by Jan. 6.

First-time directors will be considered. Material can be between 5 and 30 minutes in length. Both dramatic and musical submissions are welcomed.

Here’s how to prepare for It’s A Wonderful Life: The Radio Play (by Phil Grecian), based on the 1946 movie by Frank Capra, now showcasing at the Vineyard Playhouse: Bring tissues because you’re bound to cry at the end (happy tears), even if you don’t normally well up at theatre events. The second piece of advice is to view the production twice. That’s right, you’ll want to sit through two performances.

Guest chef Robert Lionette is helping the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School to continue its tradition of organizing five-course international dinners in January. Partnering with Zephrus, chef Lionette will prepare foods from two countries for elegant evenings of exquisite, locally grown international menus. Food from Italy features on Saturday, Jan. 17, and food from Mexico will be on Saturday, Jan. 31.

In this year-long serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. His staff includes Mott, the big-brotherly general manager, and Quincas, a cute Brazilian. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway.