My dear friend Susan Carlisle is so excited about Sitting Pretty, a fund-raiser for the Maine Discovery Museum, that she can hardly contain herself.

She keeps using the word “cool” to describe it, a word she doesn’t use often.

Sitting Pretty consists of 65 one-of-a-kind, artist-decorated children’s rocking chairs that will be auctioned off during a gala dinner-auction Saturday, Nov. 15, at Norumbega Hall in Bangor.

I’m happy to report our talented Bangor Daily News colleague Sharon Kiley Mack has painted one of the chairs.

You may remember seeing some of the chairs displayed in Bangor business windows during the National Folk Festival, but if you missed them in August, take a look around next time you’re in town because they’re back in the windows.

You are cordially invited to participate in this event and perhaps you’ll be fortunate enough to acquire one of the chairs as a holiday gift for your favorite little one.

For ticket information, call the museum at 262-7200, or visit www.mainediscoverymuseum.org.

Maine Discovery Museum, the largest interactive children’s museum north of Boston, is located in the former Freese’s Building at 74 Main St. in Bangor.

If you have not taken your children there, you should.

I promise they will have a wonderful time, and so will you.

On behalf of the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter and all it assists, program manager Michael Andrick extends sincere thanks to the Beth El High Holiday Hunger Project, which recently made the largest food donation of the year.

“With your support, we are able to feed 1,320 households here” in Greater Bangor, as well as use the food as a resource for the shelter’s meal providers.

Andrick described this project as “an example of selflessness in the spirit of giving to those in need.”

Residents such as those in Congregation Beth El help others “rekindle hope, bring back a zest for living, inspire plans for the future and restore self-respect and pride,” Andrick wrote.

And he noted when those volunteers visited the shelter, he could see the qualities of “courtesy, human companionship and charity.”

For everyone at the shelter, Andrick thanks members of the Beth El High Holiday Hunger Project for your hospitality and help in feeding the hungry.

Brenda Hall of Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor reminds readers of two events.

First is the MDI Hospital Auxiliary Books Are Fun Fair 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3, in the old lobby entrance on the hospital’s first floor.

Children’s books, cookbooks, educational and sports books, as well as stationary, photo albums, toys, videos, music and more will be offered by Books Are Fun, a Reader’s Digest company. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the auxiliary.

The hospital and Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce invite you to celebrate the opening of the hospital’s new Orthopedics Clinic 5-6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 4, in the hospital’s basement level.

Hall urges you to vote and then “stop by and check out our newest addition”

Some great news from Pat Hamor, chairwoman of the Acadia Area ATV’ers sixth annual charity ride to benefit KISS 94.5’s Christmas is for Kids program.

Held mid-September in Beddington, the ride included 53 ATVs and 67 riders covering 110 miles.

On Sunday, 152 ATVs with 200 riders rode 50 miles from the Airline Snack Bar to Deer Lake, where they enjoyed a cookout thanks to the generosity of many local businesses, she noted.

The ride raised $2,375. Including money already received, the current total is $4,685. “This program will help many needy children have a merry Christmas this year,” she wrote.

Hamor extends her thanks to co-chairwoman Beverly Sargent, committee members, volunteers, business contributors and everyone who helped make this fund-raiser a success.

You can receive 10 free trees by joining The National Arbor Day Foundation by Friday, Oct. 31.

Your $10 contribution, mailed to Autumn Classic Trees, National Arbor Day Foundation, 100 Arbor Ave., Nebraska City, NE 68410, provides you two sugar maples, two red maples and one scarlet oak, sweetgum, red oak, silver maple, white dogwood and Washington hawthorn.

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