Areawide

Children’s International

Summer Villages

The Maine Chapter of Children’s International Summer Villages is accepting applications for young people ages 11-18 to participate as delegates in international camps and exchange programs next summer. Destinations this coming year are Mexico, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Canada.

The deadline for applications is Thursday, Dec. 15.

Children’s International Summer Villages offers international and local programs fostering global friendships and cross-cultural understanding. CISV is an independent, nonprofit, nonpolitical worldwide volunteer organization that promotes peaceful solutions to global problems. It is dedicated to making a world of difference, and committed to the personal safety and welfare of all participants in its programs.

Applications also are being accepted for leaders age 21 and older to accompany the Maine youth delegations representing the United States. CISV-Maine will select delegates and leaders for the following 2006 international programs:

. Villages – four-week programs for 11-year-olds in delegations of two boys, two girls and an adult leader, from 12 nations in Mexico City, July 1-28; and Tampere, Finland, July 1-21. Female leaders are needed for both delegations.

. Junior counselor, ages 16-17, to assist staff and leaders at a CISV Village in Amager, Denmark, June 30-July 27, for a female delegate.

. Interchange – a cultural exchange for boys and girls ages 13-14, to spend two weeks with CISV peers and their families in Norway, and for the Norwegian CISV interchange delegates to spend two weeks in Maine with their CISV-Maine counterparts. Dates to be announced. A leader is needed to accompany the U.S. delegation.

. Seminar camp – a three-week camp with individual delegates ages 17-18 from up to 20 nations in British Columbia, Canada, July 9-29, for a male delegate.

Call Sue Erich, 866-2841 or e-mail erich@maine.edu for applications for all of CISV-Maine’s international programs. For information about CISV and any of its 2006 programs, call Maine Chapter President Penny Lamhut, 942-3558 or e-mail plamhut@adelphia.net. To learn more about Children’s International Summer Villages, visit www.cisvusa.org.

Bangor

Fundraiser to help children

A local restaurant is helping an adoption agency provide surgery and medical care for Chinese orphans. Maine Adoption Placement Service, a Maine nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and adoption services, will receive a portion of the proceeds from Panda Garden during an event marking National Adoption Awareness Month. The event will be held 5-8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19, at the restaurant, 123 Franklin St.

In June 2004, the China Center of Adoption Affairs launched the Tomorrow Plan is to provide corrective surgeries for 30,000 special-needs children at a cost of about $72 million.

As a placement agency matching adoptive families in Maine and the United States to children throughout the world, MAPS is coordinating local fundraising to support the Tomorrow Plan. Medical care will include cleft palate repairs, heart surgeries and other procedures to improve the health and quality of life of children living in China’s orphanages. Such care will increase the children’s chances of adoption.

Since 1977, MAPS has placed more than 4,000 children from the United States, China and other countries into adoptive families throughout Maine and the United States.

To obtain more information, call Melissa Huston at 941-9500 or e-mail melissah@mapsadopt.org.

Program on transgenderism

Jean Vermette will give a presentation on transgenderism 7-8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, in the vestry of the Unitarian Universalist Church, 120 Park St.

The title of her workshop is “Transgender 101: Understanding and Supporting Your Transgendered Friends.” There will be an opportunity to ask questions. All are welcome.

Vermette is a native of Maine. She was educated in the Skowhegan school system, Coburn Classical Institute in Waterville and Beal College in Bangor, where she received a paralegal degree.

She is the author of “Je Me Souviens,” a book about sexual reassignment surgery. Vermette is the founding director of the Maine Gender Resource and Support System, which in the past 12 years has educated or consulted with more than 6,300 students, nurses, social workers, psychologists, counselors, doctors, educators, administrators, researchers, clergy, legislators and business people in the state of Maine.

Brewer

Free the Z turkey drive

The fifth annual Free The Z turkey drive will be held at the Brewer Hannaford parking lot beginning at 6 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15.

Z107.3s “Z-Morning Show” co-host kid will join Z107.3 afternoon host Dan Cashman as they broadcast live from the parking lot until 2,005 turkeys have been collected to give to Manna Ministries. Both “Z-Js” will live in the Brewer Hannaford parking lot – morning, noon, night and overnight – until the goal is met. They will not be allowed to leave until all 2,005 turkeys have been donated.

Listeners may either drop off a turkey for donation, or donate $15 per turkey. Listeners who cannot make it to the Brewer Hannaford parking lot may call the Z107.3 hotline at 991-9600 and have the “Thompson Printing Turkey Taxi” pick up a turkey donation.

Orono

Staged reading of play

ORONO – The University of Maine Department of English will present a staged reading of “Consumption: A Historically Inaccurate Kafka Play” by Travis Baker, 1:30-3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11, at the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre. The reading is free and open to the public.

The play is inaccurately based upon the life of Franz Kafka. Artistically tortured and physically consumptive, Frank is dying – at least that’s what he likes to tell people over and over until they get sick of it and just want him to shut up and have a glass of sherry. Doomed before his time, Frank works feverishly to record the stories that crawl up from his soul, but such is his disgust with these wrenching tales that he demands of his best friend, Max, a promise to burn all of his work upon his death.

Add to this tangle of literate deceit a rising young novelist, Holly; the faded star of the Paris stage, Josephine; her skulking husband, Mr. Bearto; Frank’s father; and a giant bug-traveling salesman named Gregor, and “Consumption” is a fictitiously dark and humorous look at Franz Kafka’s final efforts to both produce and destroy his great works.

Playwright Travis Baker is a graduate student in the UMaine English Department. Before coming to Maine he lived in New York City where several of his plays were produced off-Broadway, including “God & Mr. Smith,” “Cold,” the Berrilla Kerr Award-winning “The Weatherbox” and the upcoming “Sex & Violence.”

Actors for the “Consumption” reading will include English department Chairwoman Margo Lukens; graduate student and poet, Kevin Davies; local actor Chris Newcomb and UMaine theater graduates Dominick Varney and Hillary Roberts. The reading will feature Kelly AuCoin, recently of “Julius Caesar” on Broadway, “The Sopranos” and “Third Watch,” in the role of Frank.

For more information, e-mail Travis.Baker@umit.maine.edu or call 866-3294.