Instead of going down the “rabbit hole” with The Atomic Café, this month’s potluck dinner presentation will focus on a more immediate concern: keeping your home warm. Corliss Davis and the Window Dressers volunteers will be coming to the Palermo Community Center on Friday, February 22, to demonstrate that adding their low-cost window inserts can can save money on heating, make your living space more comfortable by eliminating drafts, and reduce carbon emissions. Over the past year alone, Window Dresser volunteers made 459 new window inserts at the Belfast Boathouse that were placed in many older homes, reducing heating costs significantly. Since Window Dressers is a nonprofit organization, it will work with people who might have trouble paying for the materials. This program is not only worth checking out, but you may also want to join the fun and donate your time and skills.

Bring a dish to share with a lively group of neighbors at 6 p.m. at the Palermo Community Center, Turner Ridge Rd., at Veterans Way. The program is free and open to the public. For more info or directions, please call Connie at 993-2294.

To undergo leukemia treatment for second time

Submitted by Jane Golden

A spaghetti supper fundraiser, which will include 50/50 tickets and a silent auction, for Jacob Seigars, will take place on Saturday, February 2, between 4:30 and 7 p.m., at the Erskine Academy cafeteria, in South China, as he battles leukemia for the second time around. The fundraiser is sponsored by the Erskine girls basketball team.

The community is invited to come out and support Jacob Seigars, who is fighting his second round of Leukemia. Jacob is a 14-year-old teen from Palermo and China. He attended China schools from kindergarten until September 2017, then Palermo School from October 2017 to January 2018. He’s an all-star athlete who is especially talented on the basketball court and the soccer field. Jacob has a million dollar smile and always keeps his family and friends laughing with his jokes. He is so kind to everyone around him: holding doors open for others and usually the first to offer a helping hand wherever it’s needed. He missed his first day of high school and hasn’t yet been able to play in a high school sports game or attend a high school dance.

He was first diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia on January 15, 2018. He spent five out of the first seven months of 2018 in the hospital between Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. In his first battle he had three rounds of various chemotherapies, blood transfusions, a PICC line put in and taken out, a central line put in and taken out, a ventilator while intubated, a feeding tube, countless bone marrow biopsies and lumbar punctures and a bone marrow transplant with marrow donated by his big brother Shawn.

He has been recovering from his bone marrow transplant at home since July 2018, and everyone believed he had fought and beaten his Leukemia. But on January 2, 2019, it was learned that Jacob had relapsed and he has to fight Leukemia for a second time. Since his diagnosis he has had another bone marrow biopsy, two lumbar punctures, started a new course of chemotherapy and had a new central line placed.

All money donated will go directly to Jacob’s family and will be used for gas, tolls, hotels, food while traveling to the hospital and any uncovered medical expenses.

If you can’t make the dinner but would like to donate either money or a silent auction item, please feel free to contact Jane Golden at janedickgolden@hotmail.com.

There were enough points from all the karate tournaments that were held this year for Roger Files, 14, of Palermo, to qualify for the karate state championships. Roger collected first place awards in both Kata and Kumite at the State Martial Arts Rating and Total Championships, held at the Boys and Girls Club, in Waterville, on December 1. Roger trains with Club Naha, at the Boys – Girls Club, and instructor Craig Sargent.

From November 15 to December 15, the Palermo Community Garden is seeking matching funds for a small grant to buy seeds, replace worn-out garden tools, procure organic soil nutrients, and generally upgrade the 22,000 sq. ft. garden that provides fresh produce for the Palermo Food Pantry. The Community Garden features 32 cedar log raised beds, raspberry and blackberry patches, and 18 kinds of perennial fruits and vegetables, including fiddlehead ferns. A spectacular grape arbor graces the north end of the Garden, which is a favorite place for holding all sorts of barbecues and celebrations.

Master Gardener Volunteer Connie Bellet cares for the gardens, with help from her husband, Phil White Hawk and occasional volunteers. “This is a ‘sweat-equity’ garden,” explains White Hawk. Anybody can come over and put in an hour of weeding and go home with all the produce their family can use. Bellet has planted some 140 varieties of edible vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruit. “We try for at least one kind of exotic, weird, and colorful new plant every year, just to see if it will grow here,” she says. “We want people of all ages to come and join the fun!” Now, even with snow on the ground, everybody CAN jump in.

There’s not much time to do this, but please go to our donation page and donate whatever you can spare. “We are not trying to break the bank, but we do need your support, and we need it today, while you are thinking of it. Your timely donation is very important to us and highly appreciated. Thank you so very much for helping us meet our challenge of $800,” said Bellet. “All of us at the Palermo Community Center wish you and your family a holiday season of joy and abundance.”