The West Tisbury selectmen have begun to advertise for bids for the $4.1 million construction phase of the $5.1 million town hall renovation project.

Specifications for the project were listed online beginning June 11 at the Central Register, an online service maintained by the Massachusetts Secretary of State.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook since, more than two dozen calls,” executive secretary Jennifer Rand told the selectmen at their weekly meeting Wednesday afternoon. She said the majority of calls were from subcontractors.

When Michael Valentino, owner of Chappy clothing store on Main street Edgartown, addressed selectmen this week he was careful to preface his comments with pleasantries about his fellow merchant at Number Two Main street.

“Gerry has been very cooperative,” he said, referring to Gerret C. Conover, of the Boathouse private club and the Atlantic, previously known as the Navigator restaurant. The building, which is next door to Chappy, has been undergoing extensive renovation since September 2007.

Then Mr. Valentino launched into it.

Abigail Arrives

Moira and William Clark of West Tisbury announce the birth of a daughter, Abigail Elizabeth Clark, on June 10 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. She weighed 9 pounds, 12 ounces at birth. Abigail also is welcomed by big sister Emily and big brother Reed.

Long before their Tuesday night blowout championship win over the Los Angeles Lakers, the signs of a Boston Celtic championship win were clear to Rich Merullo.

“What’s the date today, 6/17, right?. The sixth game of the series and they’re after their seventeenth championship,” the Oak Bluffs summer resident from Ramsey, N.J., said during the first quarter.

When Paul Strauss and his wife Marion moved to the Island year-round 16 years ago after he retired from a long career in the scientific laboratory industry, he envisioned a leisurely life — one that might include him swinging in a hammock with his feet up with a book in one hand and an iced tea in the other.

Paul Bunyan the lumberjack. John Henry the steel-driver. Giacomo Casanova the womanizer. And Zeb Tilton the schooner captain.

That last name may not be as well recognized as the others, but for many who have heard the stories of the famed mariner, Capt. Zebulon Tilton is the Vineyard’s own folk hero. He was very much real, as was his vessel the Alice S. Wentworth. But in the first half of the 20th century, accounts from newspapers all along the Northeast coast made him out to be larger than life.

The gibbous moon appears late tonight, low in the southeastern sky. The moon follows behind the bright planet Jupiter when it rises. The moon is two days past full and rises after 11 p.m. In the nights ahead, the moon rises even later.

Eva Arrives

Jackie and Bill Giordano of Oak Bluffs announce the birth of a daughter, Eva Antoinette Giordano, on April 4 at the Martha’s Vineyard Community Hospital. She weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce at birth. Eva also is welcomed by big brother Ryan and big sister Elena.

Kaf Warman, professor in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Drama and associate artistic director of Island Theatre Workshop, will offer her popular adult acting class again this summer.

The class will explore personal material in a theatrical context, incorporating movement, mask work, poetry and music. The class is of particular interest to actors, dancers, writers, teachers, therapist, painters and anyone age 16 and up interested in the visual, performing and healing arts.

The latest film from Julie Taymor, Across the Universe, screens tonight at 8 p.m. at Outerland at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, continuing the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society’s dinner and a movie series at the club.