Mari's performing in 12 Dancing Princesses

The Children's Museum & Theatre of Maine present The 12 Dancing Princesses. First produced by The Children’s Theatre of Maine in 1942, this is a classic fairy tale from The Brothers Grimm of princesses who ignore their father’s rules and dance instead of sleep. Only love and courage hand-in-hand breaks the spell! Come see our talented company of young actors tell an age old fairy-tale. Fridays December 12 & 19 at 4:00 Saturdays December 13 & 20 at 11:00, 1:00 & 4:00 Sundays December 14 & 21 at 1:00 & 4:00 By Margaret Ellen Clifford Adapted and Directed by, Reba Short With music by Colin Gulley of The Toughcats In the Dress-Up Theater of The Children's Museum of Maine 142 Free St. Tickets are $7 each. Reservations Recommended. 828-1234 ex 247 www.childrenstheatremaine.org

Quaker Parenting Workshop

WEAVING THE TESTIMONIES INTO OUR PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS: A FAMILY WEEKEND with Beth Collea, Pat Weitzman, and the NEYM Christian Education Committee March 20-22, 2009 Gather with other Quaker families for a weekend of inspiration, support and community as we reflect on raising Quaker children in an often unfriendly culture. Our time together will feature a Saturday workshop for parents, family activities in the evenings, and a children’s program on Saturday reveling in the beauty of Woolman Hill. Our special guest will be Pat Weitzman, a Wellesley Friend, developmental psychologist and parenting coach, and mother of two teens. Our parent workshop will be built around Pat's sense that if the Quaker Testimonies are woven into the core of our family relationships, our children will be in the best position possible to meet whatever culture presents. Pat gathers with us not so much as an expert but as a Quaker parent facing the same challenges. We’ll balance the search for family-by-family solutions with the broader, bolder dream of creating “a Quaker cultural alternative."

Phyzgig for Kids

PHYZKIDZ SHOWS All Phyzkidz shows at SPACE Gallery 538 Congress St., downtown Portland PHYZKIDZ TICKETS $12 adults $10 students and seniors $8 kids twelve and under PURCHASE TICKETS WITH PAYPAL Karen Montanaro Saturday, December 27 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Jan Damm, Julie Goell, Yo-Yo People Yo-Yo People Sunday, December 28 at 2 p.m. Alex the Jester, Tim Holland, Drew the Dramatic Fool featuring pre-show entertainment by stiltwalker Donna Penoyer as Carmen Banana Monday, December 29 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Norman Ng, Jacob Sharpe, Michael Lane Trautman Jacob Sharpe Michael Lane Trautman Saturday, December 29 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tim Holland, Karen Montanaro, Two

Friday Night Movie NIght

The movie for Friday Night Movie Night this week is Chicken Run which is rated "G". Lise is also considering bringing shorter films for younger children... preschool parents, use the comments or e-mail Lise if you have ideas or opinions!

Ideas for simplifying the holidays from Meg Cox

Meg Cox's Ritual Newsletter Special Holiday Edition for 2008 I stopped the monthly editions of this newsletter in September, but I haven't stopped thinking about tradition and celebration. It occurs to me that this holiday season brings a poignant and unusual mix of contradictory realities: great hope combined with desperate need. How do we embrace these conflicting truths and make them part of our family celebrations this year? Here's one idea: create a "Giving Tree" for your family. You're probably all familiar with the Shel Silverstein book of that name, about all the ways in which a single tree helps one human being throughout his life, providing shade, apples, and so forth. But this is more like a special Christmas tree that isn't hung with ornaments but with mementoes of all the different ways a family finds to give to others in need during the holiday season. You can make a paper Giving Tree and tape it to a wall or door. Or you might get one of those cute small, live evergreens in a pot (which you could plant in your garden next spring). Cut out paper hearts of red and white from construction paper and use pretty holiday ribbons to tie them to branches of the tree. Have a bowl of pre-cut hearts all ready to put on the tree. Add another heart every time you put some change in a Salvation Army Christmas pot, or when you buy a book or a toy for a needy child in your community. Add a heart when you collect canned goods for your church or town hall to help insure a needy family gets to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. Add a heart after your choir sings carols at a nursing home or hospital. Add a heart when you volunteer at the local animal rescue shelter. Let the Giving Tree provoke family discussions about who else needs help in your town and throughout the world, and how you might respond right now. Maybe the kids would like to send a card to a soldier who won't be home for Christmas. Maybe they want to pitch in to help with a seasonal community service project at their school. Collect some money from allowances and then have a family vote to pick the charities that receive help. There are many variations on the ritual: decide whether you want to add hearts to the tree every time a family member does a good deed, or you might add hearts once a week, on Sundays after dinner. Like all of you, I'm looking at ways to make my family's holiday mean more and cost less this year. In that spirit, I want to share a few online resources that I find especially helpful: www.redefineChristmas.org I've always been a huge fan of the organization Alternatives for Simple Living (www.simpleliving.org), which got started years ago as an effort to make Christmas less commercial. Alternatives works within a religious, Christian context and produces excellent resources such as its annual Advent guide, Whose Birthday Is It Anyway? But there are a number of other excellent nonprofits that don't deal with the religious element but also provide great resources. The website above, redefineChristmas.org, is an effort to harness the internet as a way to encourage individual philanthropy and it's a great tool for finding good charities and then getting money to them. You can send e-cards to friends telling them you gave in their name and you can create a gift registry where you tell your friends that you'd prefer they donate money rather than give you another sweater. You can zero in on causes you care about deeply, whether it's global warming, poverty and hunger, helping to clear landmines or encouraging budding artists. Three other web resources I highly recommend: The Simple Living News has a good website that includes an online bi-monthly newsletter. The November-December issue has good holiday ideas. www.simpleliving.net I'm a fan of the organization Center for a New American Dream, which promotes simple living with an emphasis on environmentalism. They've also got good resources and recently updated their materials on holidays. www.newdream.org/holiday/index.php Finally, there's a Canadian Mennonite group that started a Christian inititative in that country to make the holiday less materialistic and one result is a detailed, self-explanatory website, www.buynothingChristmas.org May your holidays be full of love and presence! love, Meg

Friends School of Maine (sung to the tune of Home on the Range)

Oh give me a place where the dark forest lays and the ocean is dazzling cold where the sand meets the rock and the path meets our school and the critters are friendly and bold

chorus: Friends, Friends School of Maine where there's reading and writing and art James greets us each day with a smile and says "HEY" and the ocean is close to our heart

Oh give me a place where I will feel safe where we celebrate pinwheels for peace where Billy teaches Billy-Ball to the kids and we're sad to go home every day

repeat chorus -- Written by the 3/4 class, fall 2008

THURSDAY NIGHT CONVERSATION

We had a great conversation last night about the strategies we use to protect our kids from what we consider harmful commericialization, strategies for helping them use media and consumerism in a healthy way, the hard places we find ourselves in negotiating a consumer society with our kids, and our thoughts and visions for building community at FSP. We welcome other thoughts from the larger community if anyone has the ummph to blog or comment!

Simplicity in the Winter Holidays

Another place for conversation was about the winter holidays -- namely Christmas -- and the challenges that can arise for families that participate in a fairly mainstream way but want to be more intentional about the value of simplicity. Some ideas included : --- encouraging family members to give the gift of time through coupon exchanges -- talking with kids about peer pressure and helping them recognize that they won't get all the things other kids might -- making explicit the connection to values (a book about a Quaker girl, entitled The Hannah!, was suggested) -- creating community norms about when particular technology gets introduced to kids (some discussion about how to do this in a way that doesn't promote exclusivity) -- suggestions are needed for how to bring this value and set of ideas to a less welcoming audience, like in-laws.

Simplicity in Birthday Parties

The FSPPA conversation last night included a wish for a way to capture all the good ideas we collectively have... One topic was simplicity birthday parties -- some of the ideas were: -- No goody bags and try to make this a community norm through more conversation -- One item instead of goody bags -- a garden party with the gift of plants -- a donation party What other ideas do we have that help keep birthdays authentic for kids, special feeling, and more simple for all of us?

Garden Lovers Movie Morning

The Brunswick Park and Gardens would like to invite the area business community to a free showing of "A Man Named Pearl" on Tuesday, November 18th at 7:30 AM, before your work day begins. The BP&G's mission is to create a world-class garden park on land soon to be vacated by the Brunswick Naval Air Station. The film is about a man who created a topiary garden on his 3 acre property that attracts thousands of tourists each year to the small town of Bishopville, South Carolina. The business community is invited to view the film to learn ways that BP&G's proposed project can positively affect the area as part of the redevelopment of BNAS. There will be a short introduction by the Garden Project. The film will be over before 9:00 AM. Coffee, tea and muffins will be available for sale at the box office, and the doors will be open by 7:00 AM. Admission is free. A description of the film follows: A Man Named Pearl (G)(80 min) Directed by Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson's warm, big-hearted documentary opens with Pearl Fryar working on his topiary garden to the strains of Fred Story's resolutely old-school jazz score. This gives the initial impression of an elite environment, one accessible only to the few able to appreciate its rarefied pleasures. But once the man named Pearl begins to tell his tale, all that melts away. Just as jazz was once the popular music of all walks of American life, Fryar makes the case that gardening isn't solely the bastion of the wealthy. With a boundless energy that belies his age (he's now 68), this blue-collar, self-taught artist has created a three-acre topiary garden so extraordinary that its presence has put the small town of Bishopville, S.C., on the map. "Horticulture people," explains Fryar while driving his pick-up truck, "come to my garden and the first thing they say is, 'You shouldn't be able to do that.' And I would say to them, 'I didn't know that.' The one time in my life ignorance paid off." The acknowledgement that he possessed more enthusiasm than experience is punctuated by a hearty laugh that goes a long way toward explaining Fryar's accomplishments. (His wife of 40 years, Metra, shares that same easy humor and unflappable optimism.) The son of sharecroppers who passed on their work ethic and unwavering religious faith, Pearl was looking to buy his first house when the casual racism of a potential neighbor - "black people don't keep up their yards" - inspired him to transform his outdoor property into something spectacular. So began a 30-year commitment to an evergreen sanctuary where the words "Peace Love & Goodwill" welcome visitors from around the world - all in his own back yard. The ability to coax plants other gardeners have left for dead into living abstract sculpture - a live oak forms a crisp, perfect box, a Leyland cypress morphs into a massive, fishbone-topped totem ? takes patience, determination and what his friends and admirers deem Fryar's special skill: the ability to visualize future growth and act accordingly. Some biographical details that were left out of this love-fest (as a college student, Fryar participated in civil rights sit-ins, he was also a Korean War veteran and union organizer) demonstrate the tough tenacity of this soft-spoken, welcoming man. With effusive praise for Fryar's DIY aesthetic and his selfless nature, the filmmakers give a big, green thumbs up to Pearl's earthly paradise.