Scarborough teen honored for service

Hardy Girls Healthy Women is celebrating Maine girls in its sixth annual Girls Rock! Weekend, April 5-6. The weekend includes the fifth annual Girls Rock! Awards: a ceremony which recognizes the accomplishments of five Maine girls, including one from Scarborough.

Girls Rock! Weekend celebrates girls’ voices in art, music, literature, and society, and the awards honor girls who are using their voices in bold and powerful ways to make Maine a better place for all girls.

The Against All Odds Award winner, Adrienne Damicis, 17, is a senior at Scarborough High School. Born with a congenital heart defect and a congenital limb difference, Damicis has not allowed her physical differences to affect her ability to become a role model and leader within her community. President of her high school’s key club, she has logged more than 500 hours of community service, participating in activities ranging from volunteering at her local soup kitchen to participating in STRIVE Teens Night, a program for youth with intellectual and emotional disabilities. Adrienne is also a counselor and mentor at Camp No Limits, a camp for children with limb differences.

“Whether it’s leading by example or organizing the school to campaign for social justice, we want to honor girls who are making Maine a better place for other girls to live here,” said Jackie Dupont, vice president of research & programs for Hardy Girls Healthy Women. “We were in awe by the powerful social changes these girls are doing not only because it will spark other girls to take the lead, but because their actions also break stereotypes about what girls are capable of doing and what they care about.”

To find out more about the Hardy Girls programs and events, go to www.hghw.org or call 861-8131.

Find your inner moose at the library

Beat the winter doldrums at the Scarborough Public Library on Wednesday, March 6, at 6:30 p.m., as Susan Poulin, the creative force behind the popular stage personality Ida LeClair, will be reading from and signing copies of her new self-help humor book, “Finding Your Inner Moose: Ida LeClair’s Guide to Livin’ the Good Life.”

Readers will discover sections such as: What Did I Do Wrong to Deserve this Turkey Gobbler Neck?; How Many Points in Cabbage Soup?; Feng Shui-ing the Double Wide; Slaying Energy Vampires; and Spousal Deafness. This book is 100 percent Ida, who, as her husband Charlie often says, “just loves giving advice to people, whether they ask for it or not!”

Poulin, selected by Portland Magazine as one of the “Ten Most Intriguing People in Maine,” created the character Ida LeClair in 1997. Poulin has been a leader in bringing a female voice to New England storytelling and humor, a genre historically dominated by “Bert and I” and Tim Sample. Poulin has produced five stage shows featuring Ida: “Ida: Woman Who Runs with the Moose,” “Ida’s Havin’ a Yard Sale,” “A Very Ida Christmas,” “The Moose in Me, the Moose in You,” and her latest, “I Married an Alien.”

This event is free and open to the public. For more information about this program and other services at the Scarborough Public Library, call 883-4723 or go to www.scarboroughlibrary.org.

Library continues ?crime series

The fourth and final presentation in the Friends of the Library series “Murders They Wrote” will take place on Sunday, March 10, at 2 p.m. at the Scarborough Public Library. A panel of three female crime writers from the New England organization Sisters in Crime will discuss their experiences as writers and their latest novels.

Janis Bolster grew up in small towns in Maine. After various post-English-major stints she found her way to a job in publishing that has become a career. When she discovered that copy editors and proofreaders almost always share her enthusiasm for mysteries, she got the idea for the Sally Jean Chalmers series. Bolster has moved back to Maine, settling into an old shipwright’s house in Bath that is making its way into the third Sally Jean Chalmers mystery, tentatively titled “Emily Dickinson in the Attic.”

Jessie Crockett’s first mystery, “Live Free or Die,” was published in 2010. The first book in a new series involving maple syrup, “Drizzled to Death,” will be published by Berkley Prime Crime in October. When not plotting her own murderous adventures, Crockett enjoys mentoring young writers at local schools.

Lea Wait, also a Maine author, writes the five-book Shadows Antique Print Mystery series featuring antique print dealer Maggie Summer. “Shadows at the Fair,” the first in the series, was a finalist for a “best first mystery” Agatha award. “Shadows of a Downeast Summer,” the most recent book, is partially set in Scarborough.

Upcoming events at St. Max Church

St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Scarborough has a few events and activities coming up in March.

On Monday, March 11, 7-8:30 p.m., the church will host “The Good, the Bad, and the Merciful.” The talk will explore the following questions: What is the history of the sacrament of Reconciliation? I have not been to the sacrament of Reconciliation in many years, what has changed and what has remained the same? Why do I need to confess my sins to a priest? How can I forgive someone who doesn’t want to be forgiven? Can I forgive someone if I continue to remember the hurt?

Kathy Williamson, pastoral life coordinator for St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Bartholomew, Holy Cross, and St. John the Evangelist Churches, will offer some answers to these questions and more in this workshop style presentation.

To sign up for this presentation, contact Judi Logue, 883-0334 or [email protected], or signup online at www.saintmax.com and wait for the picture on the home page for “The Good, The Bad, and the Merciful” and click on it to get to the page for signing up. Open to everyone at no cost.

Also, Holy Week services at St. Maximilian Kolbe are as follows:

Palm Sunday – Saturday, March 23, at 4:30 p.m., and Sunday, March 24, 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.

Holy Thursday – Thursday, March 28, 7 p.m.

Good Friday – Friday, March 29, 7 p.m.

Easter Vigil – Saturday, March 30, 7:30 p.m.

Easter Sunday – Sunday, March 31, 7:30 a.m., 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.

Adrienne Damicis of Scarborough, pictured in 2011 working at Camp No Limits at the Pine Tree Camp, is being honored for her community service.