Proceeds from one of the area’s most delicious events this year will be used to help raise money to celebrate a very special event in the life of the community that is home of the University of Maine.

Appropriately, the Orono Historical Society’s 8th annual Tasting Bee, from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 28, in the gymnasium of Asa Adams School in Orono, will benefit “a fund for Orono’s Bicentennial Celebration in 2006,” wrote Marlene Doucette.

Admission to the Tasting Bee is $10 for adults, $5 for children ages 6 through 12 and free for children under 6.

Tickets are on sale at Ampersand/The Store and Pretty Woman, both in Orono, at the door, or by calling Doucette at 866-2597.

Doucette reminds you that the Tasting Bee offers attendees the opportunity to sample the “excellent food” provided by six area restaurateurs.

And, as you now know, it also offers attendees an early opportunity to help ensure that the town of Orono has enough money in its bicentennial kitty to make that an occasion commensurate with its position as home to the flagship campus of the University of Maine System.

Friends and acquaintances of Hazel Andrews of Bangor certainly will want to remember her as she reaches the marvelous milestone of 100 years on Monday, May 26.

Daughter Shirley Robertson of Holden told me that many of our readers may well remember her mother as the co-owner, with her late husband, Lamont Andrews, of Hazemont Diner, which they operated in the late 1940s and early 1950s on Outer Hammond Street in Bangor.

Robertson told me Mrs. Andrews “drove her car and spent her summers at her cottage on Hermon Pond through her 95th year, and maintained her own apartment until 2002.”

The Bangor native’s family includes Shirley and her husband, Duncan Robertson of Holden, daughter Gloria and her husband Ronald Byers of Brewer, three grandsons, four great-grandchildren and nine great-great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Andrews is in very good health, I understand.

“She is bright and alert but has hearing problems,” her daughter said, so cards would be most appreciated as you join Mrs. Andrews’ family in wising her a very happy day.

You can send your birthday greetings to Hazel Andrews, Room 13, 103 Texas Ave., Bangor 04401.

On behalf of the Eastern Maine Orchid Society, May Pardy invites you to take advantage of its annual Orchid Seedling Sale from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 24, at the Roger Clapp Greenhouses on the University of Maine campus in Orono.

Pardy reports many varieties of orchids will be on sale, “some flowering and some just babies,” and all can be purchased “at very reasonable prices.”

Orchid care sheets will be available, and Orchid Society members will be there to answer your questions.

Proceeds from the sale benefit EMOS activities that include a scholarship, a periodical for the Bangor Public Library and support for the UMaine orchid collection.

A check this week with Sandra Neily of the Maine Conservation School of Bryant Pond confirmed that great summer camp scholarships for young people, and teachers, are still available.

In fact, she reports that 70 $200 scholarships are available for northern and Down East Maine campers to attend a Conservation Camp at Greenland Point Center in Princeton.

Campers are required to pay only $100 for the weeklong program.

The scholarships making up the remainder of the fee are made possible through the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s auction of five moose-hunting permits.

Among other programs, the course offers hunter safety as well as paddling, swimming, map and compass-reading skills, and is open to any child up to age 13, but also includes youngsters who will celebrate their 14th birthdays during the summer.

The American Wilderness Leadership School workshops at the Maine Conservation School combining adult level natural resource classes and skills education, has 10 full scholarships available for teachers.

This program includes everything from white-water canoeing and fly-casting clinics to all-day seminars with biologists of Maine’s Wildlife Park in Gray. Each scholarship has a $700 value.

Finally, six young people can each obtain a Maine Conservation School $1,000 scholarship to take training that might lead to a Junior Maine Guide certification.

For the full month program, JMG candidates pay only $400.

If you are interested in obtaining any of these scholarships, call Neily at 772-9557 or 838-3377, or call MCS at 665-2068.

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