If your New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking, Jay Schofield has an offer to help you do it.

For free.

Mr. Schofield, a West Tisbury resident and retired high school teacher and coach, has been hosting smoking cessation classes since 1974. He has helped over 1,000 Islanders quit smoking.

And as 2009 begins, he has decided he would like to give something back.

“I just think everybody is hurting. People don’t have money. So I am doing this as a good will thing,” he said.

Vineyard sports fans who love edge-of-your-seat contests had a good holiday week as both the boys’ hockey and boys’ basketball teams went down to the wire in thrilling but ultimately disappointing games.

The basketball team lost 55-54 to Harwich in the final seconds of the second round of the Cape and Islands Christmas Classic in Mashpee on Saturday, while the boys’ hockey team on the same day skated to a 5-5 tie against Bourne in an early season match-up of old rivals.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission early this month unanimously approved a new policy aimed at regulating and reducing the amount of nonrenewable energy used in certain new construction projects. The new policy only affects larger construction projects that qualify for review as developments of regional impact (DRIs).

It was too late to postpone Christmas this year when an Australian astronomer announced that his calculations prove a bright star appeared over Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago ­— on June 17, not Dec. 25.

Scholarships Awarded

Ryan Antolick and Ana Sargent from the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School have received the John and Abigail Adams achievement scholarship. Students who are granted this scholarship have scored in the advanced category in either mathematics or English language arts section of the grade 10 MCAS test and in the proficient or advanced category on the second subject (mathematics or English language arts).

J. Kevin Carroll and Linda L. Caroll of Fairfax Station, Va., and Oak Bluffs, formerly of Walpole, announce the engagement of his daughter, Miriam Adams Carroll, to Mattias R. Fenton, son of Heidi B. Fenton of Pittsburgh, Pa., formerly of Hanover, Germany.