The Eastern Maine Chapter of Project Linus is participating in the national annual Make A Blanket Day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, in the gymnasium at Penquis Higher Education Center, 50 Mayo St. in Dover-Foxcroft, reports Merlene Sanborn.

According to its Web site, the mission of Project Linus is “to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children, who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need, through the gifts of new, homemade, washable blankets and afghans, lovingly created by volunteer blanketeers.”

This chapter serves four counties in eastern and central Maine, and has donated 2,308 blankets for youngsters since Sanborn got it fully up and running in 1998.

The goal for Saturday’s event is 100 blankets, and you can participate the entire day or any part of it. During the day, two free quilt classes will be offered for those who would like to learn more about making them.

Lee Priest will teach a “quilt as you go” pattern, and Rita Mountain will show how to make a ragged-edge flannel quilt.

Fabrics will be provided, but those who attend must bring their own machines.

Sanborn explained that you can work on your own, with a friend, or choose a project.

The Main Street Business and Professional Women will have food available for a donation, but you should call Sanborn at 965-8005 to reserve your space.

For more information about this event or about Project Linus, you can call Sanborn at the above number, e-mail mainelinus@panax.com or visit www.projectlinus.org.

Jeff Franklin reminds you that the Caribou Kiwanis Club is sponsoring its Keystone Kops Fundraiser during Caribou’s Winter Carnival.

You can purchase “warrants for arrests” to put friends “in jail” from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20, at the American Legion Bingo Hall in Caribou.

The “warrants” are $10 each and are available at Caribou One-Stop and the Caribou Chamber of Commerce, from Kiwanis members, or by calling the Legion Hall on Friday at 498-2844.

It will be a bittersweet evening for members and guests attending of the 29th annual Elks National Foundation Banquet beginning at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at the Skowhegan-Madison Elks Lodge.

Dinner will be served at 7 and dancing begins at 9.

The event will be special because it not only will feature the official visit of the Maine Elks Association president and his wife, James and Verna Ferland, but it also marks the end of an era as Maroon Nemer makes plans for his retirement in 2005 from his post as the local ENF committee chairman. Nemer has served in that position since 1975.

The dinner-dance is free for paid-up ENF members, half-price for those currently making pledge payments, and $12 per couple for members and guests.

Scott LeBlanc and No Strings Attached are the featured musicians at the event which, during the past three years, has raised more than $52,000 for the national foundation to help provide scholarships, assistance to veterans, and disaster relief along with programs for disabled children and adults.

Local lodges also may apply for matching grants for their own charitable causes.

For more information about the banquet, call 474-3111.

Amy Curee of Waynesville, Mo., is another “grateful Army wife” who thanks our Bangor International Airport troop greeters for welcoming her husband home from Iraq on Saturday, Jan. 30.

She wrote that she had “slept with my phone the night before,” and what she wanted most to hear was that “my husband of 17 years was out of the war zone he had been in for a year.”

To those who provided cell phones for the soldiers to call home, Curee says, “God bless you. You don’t know what that generous gesture meant to me, and I will remember it forever.”

When he called, she wrote, “it sounded like a party was going on. I could hear music and excited voices in the background. And I was touched by the fact that these soldiers were handed cell phones and told to call their families for free.”

Her husband, she added, was very excited and surprised by the welcome the soldiers received from the troop greeters. “It is so nice to know that there are folks who care about our soldiers enough to take care of them when their families can’t be there,” she wrote.

Curee thanks you all, and urges our troop greeters to “Keep up the good work!”

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