Catholic youth ‘spare squares’ to help homeless

A service project conceived and conducted by the eighth graders at St. John’s Catholic School will help countless homeless people in the Brunswick area.

The project, which wrapped up this week, was entitled “Can You Spare a Square?”

“The drive was for paper products like toilet paper, paper towels, napkins and tissues,” St. John Principal Shelly Wheeler said.

Thanks to generous school families and parishioners at All Saints Parish in Brunswick, over 225 rolls of bath tissue, 75 rolls of paper towels and 25 boxes of tissues were collected,” said Wheeler. “The response was overwhelming.”

Benefiting from the project is Tedford Housing in Brunswick, an organization that has provided emergency shelter and supportive housing for the area’s homeless for over 30 years. Tedford also offers homeless prevention services, case management and social service assistance.

Freeport student getting the bugs out

A Freeport student was awarded a research grant from NASA to study two invasive insects this summer in the Sebago Lake region.  

Jared Burns, who is attending Saint Joseph’s College in Standish and is a National Science Foundation-funded Science Scholar, was awarded a summer research grant through the Maine Space Grant Consortium to investigate the distribution of the Emerald Ash Borer and Hemlock Wooly Adelgid.

“I used to catch bugs in my backyard as a kid, and now I get to do it as an adult,”  Burns said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

Burns is part of a NASA-funded research team. The project, titled “Monitoring Invasive Insects in southern Maine,” will set up pheromone traps and use biosurveillance of solitary hunting wasp nests to detect the presence or absence of the beetle. To detect the presence of the adelgid, they will visually inspect hemlock trees.

“The invasive insects in this study are specific to ash and hemlock trees, respectively, and can cause major destruction if not identified quickly,” Burns said.

Maine Coast Waldorf School’s Class of 2019, front row from left, Caroline Odlin-Brewer, Avery Bakewell, Quinn Holley, Jennie Bakewell and Isabel Konstantino. In back are Finn Dierks-Brown, Nash Holley, Wilson Haims, Calvin Soule and Charles Van West. The commencement ceremony took place June 8 on the Freeport campus.

Members of the Class of 2019 at Mt. Ararat High School in Topsham donned their caps and gowns earlier this month to march through elementary schools in School Administrative District 75 they once attended.