May Festival features food, music, art for seniors

The May Festival, where the University of Maine Center on Aging was introduced to the community, is back with bigger and better plans to please all who participate.

Sponsored by the Center on Aging and Eastern Agency on Aging, this year’s festival is chaired by Leonard Kaye, Center on Aging director, with Bangor City Councilor Mike Crowley as honorary chairman.

The festival will be held Friday, May 9, and Saturday, May 10, at various sites in downtown Bangor.

The May Festival was a hit last year, and it should be even better this time around, especially with your help.

Organizers have rented Norumbega Hall on Harlow Street, where the Senior Spectacular, coordinated by Deb Chapman of EAA, will be located. Senior Spectacular features a number of different agencies that serve seniors, and booths will offer handouts and giveaways.

Bangor businesswoman Cynthia Cavanaugh, serving as May Festival chairwoman of volunteers, issues a plea for help with the many activities that will be available.

Among the volunteer positions yet to be filled are greeters, seaters, hosts and hostesses, and people to help with decorating, making centerpieces and registration.

Volunteers also will be needed to offer hospitality at the Coffee Wagon. Sponsored by Maine Wholesale Foods of Bangor, the Coffee Wagon will be open both days at Norumbega Hall, to welcome early risers and those on their way to work.

The May Festival luncheon, a served, sit-down event, is planned for noon Friday, May 9, at Norumbega Hall. Registration will be required and a modest fee will be charged.

Members of the Bangor City Council will serve as celebrity waiters, and returning for an encore performance will be the popular, all-woman Six Basin Street band.

The Moon Puppies, sponsored by Back Door Dance Studio, will be the featured band at a swing dance Friday night at Norumbega Hall. There will be a separate charge for this event, which benefits the Center on Aging and Eastern Agency on Aging.

An art show and open house will complement the festival on Friday at the Hammond Street Senior Center.

Local antique expert Robert Crowell will conduct an appraisal Saturday at Norumbega Hall and during the festival the public will be offered free access to the University of Maine Art Gallery.

To ensure that these and other May Festival events and activities run smoothly, many volunteers are needed.

Cavanaugh requests that those who are interested call volunteer coordinator Elizabeth Johns as soon as possible at 581-3444 or visit Mainecenteronaging.org.

Joyce Given, president of the Millinocket Regional Hospital Auxiliary, hopes you will attend a “very important, fun time, fund-raising event” which benefits the MRHA scholarship fund. The MRHA holds its Books Are Fun Book Fair from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in the hospital lobby at 200 Somerset St. in Millinocket.

Givens reports that “hundred of books, mostly hardcover, best sellers, children’s books,” will be sold at a discount as much as 70 percent off the list price. There is no charge to attend and the public is invited.

Kathy Marks-Moloy, director of the Orono Public Library, invites you to participate in a “Let’s Talk About It” series titled “Fear and Hope: Writing from the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

Participants will meet at 7 p.m. five Thursdays, April 3, April 10, May 1, May 15 and May 20, at the library on Goodridge Drive.

Series developer Charles Bassett, a retired Colby professor of American studies and English, will lead the first discussion.

The program is sponsored by Friends of the Orono Public Library through the Maine Humanities Council’s Maine Center for the Book in cooperation with the Maine State Library.

The five books to be discussed, including Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night,” are on loan at the library.

You are asked to register for the series by calling the library at 866-5060.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.