(Searsport, ME) Left Bank Books is honored to welcome Dennis McCullough, MD on Tuesday evening, October 19th, at 7:00 pm when he will join us to discuss and sign his book My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine" - The Compassionate Approach to Caring for your Aging Loved Ones. The event is free of charge, and the public is warmly invited to attend.

Thanks to advances in medicine, the lives of the elderly and the infirm can be significantly prolonged. But at what cost? Wrestling with the question "What's the right thing to do for Mom or Dad?", many of us become unwillingly caught up in the new "death by intensive care" epidemic in which the "care" is often more destructive than the disease. We want to do the best thing, but are overwhelmed with the staggering choices we face. Geriatrician Dennis McCullough has spent his life helping families to cope with their parents' aging and eventual final passage, experiences he too faced with his own mother. In this comforting and much-needed book, he recommends a new approach: Slow Medicine. Shaped by common sense and kindness, grounded in traditional medicine yet receptive to alternative therapies, Slow Medicine is a measured treatment of "less is more" that improves the quality of patients' extended late lives without bankrupting their families financially or emotionally. Expensive state-of-the-art medical interventions do not necessarily deliver superior outcomes, Dr. McCullough argues. Gentle, personal care often yields better results, not only for elders in late life, but for the families who love them.

Dr. McCullough has been an "in-the-trenches" family physician and geriatrician for 30 years. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, and serves as a faculty member in the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. He is a member of the American Geriatrics Society, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, and the American Medical Directors Association, as well as the coauthor of The Little Black Book of Geriatrics.

For more information, or to reserve a copy of My Mother, Your Mother, please call Left Bank Books at 548-6400.

The following classes will be offered in the Studio on Wednesdays beginning October 27th:
Ceramics Exploration (ages 7 to 12)
Instructors: Artist and gallery owner Jeanne Peterson Kamfonik and Carol Brower, MFA and local ceramics sculptor
This is a children’s beginner pottery and ceramics consisting of 6 weekly sessions from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. The student will make five projects while learning about clay storage, handling, tools texture and decoration. All projects will be bisque and glaze fired. There will be a special reception and gallery exhibit the last week! The cost of the course is $125 which includes supplies.

Introduction to Ceramics (ages 13 and up)
Instructors: Artist and gallery owner Jeanne Peterson Kamfonik and Carol Brower, MFA and local ceramics sculptor
An adult beginner’s pottery and ceramics with 6 weekly sessions from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Students will make four projects (a coil bowl, two slab projects and a cast project), with possibly time left for a fifth project. All projects will be bisque fired—the first three or four will be glaze fired and the last will be painted using acrylics. Also, each student will have a brief introduction to using an electric pottery wheel. There will be a special reception and gallery exhibit the last week! The cost of the course is $125 plus supplies.

The following class will be offered in the Studio on Thursdays beginning October 28th:
Ceramic Sculpture (ages 15 and up)
Instructor: Carol Brower, MFA, local ceramics sculptor
Adult intermediate/advanced ceramics class will include 6 weekly sessions from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. This small class will be an intensive focus upon ceramic sculpture. Methods and materials will be discussed, and individuals will be allowed to pick their own projects. The student should expect to work on either one large sculpture or two smaller projects during this six week class. A continuing class will be offered at the end of this session so that the students who are still working on a sculpture can finish their project. The cost of the course is $125 plus supplies.

Course pre-registration is required. For more information or to register for any of the classes, please visit the gallery or call 207-937-2673. Beggar’s Ride Studio & Gallery is located 39 Old Orchard Street in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The gallery is open Wednesday and Thursday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm (plus evening classes); Friday and Saturday from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm; and Sunday from 1:00 to 4:00 pm.

On Saturday, October 23rd at 7:30 pm and on Sunday, October 24th at 2:00 pm.

(Gardiner, ME) The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman recounts how in October 1998, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence in the middle of the prairie outside Laramie, Wyoming. His bloody, bruised and battered body was not discovered until the next day, and he died several days later in an area hospital. His name was Matthew Shepard, and he was the victim of this assault because he was gay.

Moises Kaufman and fellow members of the Tectonic Theater Project made six trips to Laramie over the course of a year and a half in the aftermath of the beating and during the trial of the two young men accused of killing Shepard. They conducted more than 200 interviews with the people of the town. Some people interviewed were directly connected to the case, and others were citizens of Laramie, and the breadth of their reactions to the crime is fascinating. Kaufman and Tectonic Theater members have constructed a deeply moving theatrical experience from these interviews and their own experiences.

The Laramie Project is a breathtaking theatrical collage that explores the depths to which humanity can sink and the heights of compassion of which we are capable.

An Open Book Players production, tickets are $8 for adults and $6 for students/seniors. For more information, please visit the Johnson Hall website.

(Belfast, ME) Aarhus Gallery is excited to welcome back the nuanced raucous Balkan/Gypsy folk dance music and the multidimensional Yiddish celebration anthems of Cinder Conk, Saturday, October 9th at 7:30 pm.

You may have heard them at Belfast's first annual Free Range Music Festival in April where they played to a sold out crowd at Åarhus Gallery. The duo has gone on to share the stage with such entities as Beat Circus, The Toughcats and Slavic Soul Party.

Though intrigued by the rousing traditions of Gypsy/Roma cultures and Eastern European folk music, Cinder Conk is wholeheartedly Midcoastian. Matt Rock is a nimble fingered accordion activist committed to promoting spiritual development through free-reed music. Xar Adelberg is an orthodox bullfiddle pilot committed to a revolution.

There is a suggested donation of $10, and refreshments will be served. Åarhus Gallery is located at 50 Main Street in Belfast and is open 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, 7 days a week. For more information call 338-0001 or visit the website www.aarhusgallery.com.