Schools

Brewer High School

BREWER – Dj Ault, a junior at Brewer High School, has been recognized by the National March of Dimes as a top 250 Youth Walker in the United States. Ault raised $1,281 at the March of Dimes WalkAmerica event held last spring in Brewer. He is the top youth fundraiser for Maine and ranks 128th nationally out of more than 20,000.

In addition to raising money for the March of Dimes, Ault is a frequent volunteer at the local March of Dimes Division office in Brewer. He has spent much of his free time helping in the office.

Ault is not new to volunteerism. He spent the last two years in Belize, Central America, working with impoverished youth. He is active in his local church, sending letters of support to missionaries around the world.

Ault also represented the Brewer High School Key Club at the international convention in Florida this past summer.

Home-school milestone

BANGOR – Penobscot Valley Homeschool Adventurers has announced that it will celebrate 20 years of partnership between home schooling and 4-H in the Bangor area. PVHA 4-H, a part of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Program, is one of the largest 4-H groups in Maine with a membership of 75-100 children.

The organization will celebrate with an open house 1 p.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, at its meeting location, 63 Columbia St.

The open house will showcase the projects and activities PVHA members have participated in during the past 20 years.

Past, current and future members of the group will be asked to remember the past and celebrate the future of home schooling. For information, e-mail PVHA Director Cheryl Guay at CherylG@pvha4h.org or call at 942-5609. Information also is available at www.pvha4h.org.

Essay contest

BANGOR – Sylvan Learning Center is sponsoring a community essay contest for pupils in grades four through 12. There are separate categories for children in grades 4 and 5, 6 to 8, and 9 to 12. Essays are due by Wednesday, Dec. 7.

First-, second- and third-place prizes will be awarded in each of the three categories. First-place winners receive $400. Second place is $200 and third-place winners will receive $100. Every pupil who participates will be invited to a writing celebration. Winners will read their winning essays and receive award checks at the celebration. All participants will receive a ribbon.

Essay topics have been chosen to be in line with the Maine Learning Results.

Completed entry forms are due by Friday, Dec. 7.

For information and entry forms, call Sylvan Learning Center at 942-7234.

School help

Now in its seventh year, the Hannaford Helps Schools program will allow shoppers in stores in Maine and four other states to help support their schools by earning “School Dollars” until Saturday, Dec. 1. To raise money shoppers purchase participating products in Hannaford stores. There is no limit to the number of products that can be purchased in each shopping trip. Last year, more than 2,400 schools participated, raising more than $730,000.

“School Dollars” are equivalent to cash and can be turned in to school or placed in special collection bins at any Hannaford store. Schools must turn in their “School Dollars” to the store where they are registered by Friday, Dec. 14. Checks will be mailed to schools in March 2008.

In addition to the “School Dollars” earned by schools, each Hannaford supermarket will award an additional $1,000 education grant to the school that raises the most money.

New this year, 10 schools, two schools in each of the five states where Hannaford operates, will win the Radio Disney Rockin’ Recess on the Radio Disney Jump to Fitness.

For information, visit www.hannaford.com.

Colleges

Bangor Theological Seminary

BANGOR – The public is invited to explore the educational possibilities at Bangor Theological Seminary.

An informational session will be held 9-11:30 a.m. Monday, Sept. 24, at the seminary on the Husson College campus.

Hosted by the director of admissions, the session will feature informal discussion of the various opportunities at BTS, including degree programs, the admissions process and financial aid information. Light refreshments will be provided.

To obtain information or to reserve a space, call Fae Gilbride, assistant director of admissions and financial aid, at 800-287-6781, Ext. 126, or e-mail fgilbride@bts.edu.

All are welcome, whether they are thinking of answering a call to ministry or seeking answers to spiritual questions.

Founded in 1814, Bangor Theological Seminary is an ecumenical seminary in the Congregational tradition of the United Church of Christ.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

TROY, N.Y. – Kelly Heinonen of Bangor graduated on May 19 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

U.S. Military Academy

WEST POINT, N.Y. – Cadet Jeffrey Dow, son of David and Trecia Dow of Old Town, was named to the dean’s list for the spring semester at the United States Military Academy. Dow is a 2006 graduate of Old Town.

Digitized publications

ORONO – The University of Maine has reached an agreement with BookSurge International to make available out-of-print books in Fogler Library through amazon.com’s print-on-demand services. This partnership will allow Fogler Library to achieve partial cost recovery of its efforts to digitize books, the products of which will be freely available to the public for online reading through its Web site.

The book digitizing project uses a cutting-edge book scanner developed by Kirtas Technologies that facilitates large-scale scanning of bound volumes by virtue of its automated page-turning technology.

Library staff envision using this technology to create digital collections of public domain publications with full-text searching and online access. The collections now planned include University of Maine publications, historical Maine town reports, local Maine histories and publications relating to Wabanaki peoples.

The library is only able to digitize materials out of copyright – published before 1923 – in the public domain, such as government documents, or for which the University of Maine owns the copyright, such as university publications.

“This project will dramatically enhance our ability to support research in history, the social sciences, the environment, genealogy and on various public policy issues,” said Fogler Library Dean Joyce Rumery. “It also will make a significant contribution toward our goal of making our holdings available to all Maine residents, since researchers will no longer have to come to Orono to use them.”

Fogler Library anticipates that the first digitized materials will be available this month.

Book by UM professor

ORONO – With so many iconic pre-Revolutionary War events in New England – the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s midnight ride and the first skirmish between “Redcoats” and the colonial militia – early America historian and University of Maine history professor Liam Riordan understands why people may associate a predominantly English presence with the early American persona.

He maintains, however, that the association is a misperception. A more accurate representation can be found among the diverse religious, racial and ethnic populations of the mid-Atlantic region, whose relationships with one another changed dramatically during the American Revolution and in the post-war early national era, Riordan said.

He makes his case in his recently published book “Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic,” published by University of Pennsylvania Press.

Riordan looks at the lives of the people who settled not in New England, but in the Delaware River Valley surrounding Philadelphia, buttressing his argument with evidence that includes tax, church and census records as well as newspapers, personal papers, music, folk art, clothing and architecture.

“We think of early America, at least in the popular mind, as a place with a lot of Puritans. New England has long symbolized everything that’s early American, and that’s really a misrepresentation,” Riordan said. “By looking at the mid-Atlantic, one of the obvious things we see is its enormous diversity of human settlement; the different cultural groups were critical to the social experience, and public and political life of people there.”

Riordan explains this multicultural society by focusing on people in three specific towns, each with different key groups: African Americans in New Castle, Del., evolving from a slave society into a free society; bilingual Germans recruited by founding father William Penn to populate his Pennsylvania colony; and Quakers in Burlington, N.J., whose unorthodox religious practices and pacifist lifestyle contrasted starkly with the patriotic spirit of the day.

“I try to look at how all of those groups contributed to, experienced and were changed by the American Revolution, and I look at it over six decades, from 1770 to 1830,” Riordan said. “It was a very dynamic and exciting period, but also filled with conflict.”