Summer is finally sizzling, and one place you can enjoy it is the Piscataquis River Festival, this weekend at the Guilford Recreational Field.

Sponsored by Guilford Area Kiwanis, this second annual event helps showcase historic aspects of the river than runs through several small towns in the area, as well as being the focus of Alumni Weekend for Piscataquis Community High School and former Guilford High School students, Judy Folsom reports.

Festival activities begin with a cruise-in at 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 28, at the recreational field where most of the activities take place.

Saturday events begin with a breakfast at 7 a.m. at Guilford United Methodist Church, followed by a road race at 8 a.m. and a parade at 9:30 a.m.

Kids games and a library book sale are 10 a.m.-2 p.m., a remote control car race is 11 a.m. and a rubber duck race is 1 p.m. You can purchase your ducks at Ride Aid in Guilford.

Call Paul Stearns, 876-3242, if you want to enter a tennis tournament, or the pie eating contest at 12:30 a.m.

The firemen’s muster is 1:30 p.m., and a street dance begins at 6 p.m.

Throughout the day, you will enjoy a variety of stage acts beginning with Buck and the Beecher Boys and Girls, 11:30 a.m.; King Fu, 12:45 p.m.; Zevulon, 1:45 p.m.; Fishers of Men, 3 p.m.; Dover Christian Fellow Worship Band, 4 p.m.; Ms. River Festival Queen Pageant, 5 p.m.; Midnight Flyer, 6 p.m.; Pig Muffin Band, 7 p.m.; and Losing Touch, 8:15 p.m.

Sunday’s featured event is an alumni golf tournament.

Throughout the festival, you will also enjoy visiting the craft and food booths, and tapping your toes to the music of the moment.

For more information about any and all events, call Gayle Watson at 876-2546.

Friends and acquaintances of former Houlton and Island Falls resident Angela Weiler, now of New York, will enjoy saying hello to the first-time author while she visits Vacationland.

Weiler will greet old friends as she signs copies of her first book, “Goin’ Up the Country, A Novel in Stories,” based on her own experience as a newlywed moving to Aroostook County in the 1970s.

You can visit with her from 10 a.m. to noon today at Mr. Paperback in Skyway Plaza, Caribou; 2-4 p.m. at Crystal Compass Books, Main Street, Presque Isle; and enjoy a reading and signing at 5 p.m. at Turner Memorial Library, 39 Second Street in Presque Isle.

Weiler will do a reading and signing from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, July 27, at Cary Library, 107 Main St., Houlton; a signing from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday, July 28, at Mr. Paperback, Maine Coast Mall in Ellsworth; and a reading and signing from 2 to 4 p.m. at North Light Books, 58 Main St. in Blue Hill.

Her next stop is 1-3 p.m. Saturday, July 29, at the BookStacks tent at the Bucksport Bay Area Festival, and her final signing is 1-3 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1, at Mr. Paperback, Promenade Plaza in Lewiston.

Camp director Ginger Hwalek and more than 350 middle and high school musicians from Maine and New England invite you to attend one or all of their performances during the 2006 Maine Summer Youth Music Camp now taking place at the University of Maine in Orono.

The performances are free, and feature Jazz Night at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, in Hauck Auditorium in Memorial Union; the Musical Theatre presentation, “Les Miserables,” at 2 p.m. Friday, July 28, in Hauck; and the Final Concert at 7 p.m. Friday, July 28, at Maine Canter for the Arts on the Orono campus.

Pianist Charles Jones will be featured in the free SummerKeys Mary Potterton Memorial Concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 26, at Lubec Congregational Christian Church.

For this concert, donations will benefit the West Quoddy Head Light Keepers Association. Intermission refreshments will be offered by Bay Views Bed and Breakfast.

For information about the roundtrip Eastport-Lubec boat, for which there is a charge, call 853-2500.

The Eastern Maine Medical Center mobile blood donation center will conduct a blood drive to benefit Children’s Miracle Network from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, July 27, at Unicel, 6 Telcom Drive, Bangor.

For each unit of blood collected, EMMC will donate $2 to CMN.

Donors should bring a photo ID. Refreshments will be available.

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