This is your final reminder: The Whiffenpoofs of Yale University will be performing at Newtown Middle School on Saturday, January 30, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $30 and may be purchased online by visiting NewtownArtsCommission.org or at the door. The group was a featured performer during the December presentation of Flagpole Radio Café and their appearance was so popular that Newtown Cultural Arts Commission members decided immediately to bring them back to town for their own headlining show. The Whiffenpoofs have been around for more than 100 years and usually make appearances at places like Carnegie Hall, The White House, and Vail Resort. Saturday night they’re going to be right here in Newtown.

After you enjoy The Whiffenpoofs concert Saturday night, why not continue the cultural immersion Sunday afternoon? The new exhibition in the Olga Knoepke Memorial Meeting Room at Booth Library is a collection of photographs by members of Candlewood Camera Club. Members of the club will be hosting an opening reception on Sunday afternoon from 2 to 4. The public is invited to meet the photographers and enjoy some light refreshments, and maybe even pick up a few photographic pointers at the same time. If you miss Sunday’s celebration, the show will be up until February 27.

And if that is still not enough culture for you, don’t forget that the annual SCAN winter art exhibit continues through this Sunday, January 31, at Lexington Gardens on Church Hill Road. If you time it right — 12:30 pm — you can watch artists Alain Picard (Saturday) and Barbara Branch (Sunday) demonstrate pastel and portrait painting, respectively.

By the time you read this column, longtime Newtown elementary school teacher Al Washicko will be packing up the last of his boxes at Reed Intermediate School. After 38 years in the school system, the last seven of them as a fifth grade teacher at RIS, Mr Washicko is retiring from teaching. Staff and students alike (including some kids whose parents had Mr Washicko as a teacher) will miss the teacher who has made a lasting impression on so many of Newtown’s school children.

A couple of young artists have shared their artwork with The Bee this past week. The front office received a drawing by 4-year-old Madeleine (with help from her dad) for us to pass on to Warren Pinckney. Mr Pinckney is a World War II veteran who recently shared his story of surviving the sinking of the USS Leopoldville on Christmas Eve 1944, and Madeleine just wanted to say “Thanks!” to Mr Pinckney and all of those in service to our country. Then Sandy Hook first grader Lenie Urbina passed on the drawing that she made in her weekly art class. Like so many others in Newtown and around the world, the earthquake disaster in Haiti has been on Lenie’s mind, and she just wanted to share that “We are all in this together.” Thank you, Madeleine and Lenie, for sharing your works and for realizing that there is so much more beyond the boundaries of Newtown.

Newtowner Bret McEvoy (see page 1, January 22 issue of The Bee) is still in Haiti and his mom passed on this recent email from him: “Go to the AmeriCares website [www.americares.org] and check out the main photo. Our photographer that’s down here with us (and my roommate) took that photo as the boy was dug out of the rubble by NYC search & rescue after 7 days! Right as he came up, he threw his arms in the air and Matt snapped that photo. It’s now all over the world. It was the front page of the London Times today and Matt was on CNN this afternoon. They’re talking Pulitzer.”

You don’t need to be in the running for a Pulitzer to help. Eat in or take out dinner at My Place Restaurant on Queen Street, Tuesday, February 2, from 5 to 9 pm, and mention Newtown United Methodist Church Haiti Fundraiser. My Place will donate 20 percent of the bill to the fundraiser. Easy, and delicious. You’ll feel good in a lot of ways.

Reed Intermediate School students, faculty, and staff raised $853 over the course of five days of fundraising in the school’s cafetorium to send to Haiti. The fundraiser ended on Monday, January 26, and it was overseen by the school’s Interact Club. Club advisor Al Finelli said fifth grade teacher Carla Tischio’s homeroom raised more than $200 of the $853. The Newtown Rotary Club will match the student’s raised money, and the combined roughly $1,700 will be donated to help Haiti recover from the earthquake that devastated the country on January 12.

Speaking of students giving to a good cause… St Rose of Lima School National Junior Society members are overseeing a collection of pennies through Friday, January 29. As of Tuesday, according to Nation Junior Society advisor Joe DeMaida, donations of pennies to go the Pennies For Peace program had filled a water jug. The Pennies For Peace is a program of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Central Asia Institute, and it was founded by Greg Mortenson, co-author of Three Cups Of Tea. Pennies For Peace works toward building and promoting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Salvation Army Bell Ringers co-chairs Marie Sturdevant and Sylvia Poulin are feeling a little sheepish and hoping that devoted bell ringers Marg and Don Studley will forgive the oversight that left the Studleys out of the recent Bee Hive letter thanking those who helped. “Please accept our apologies for this oversight and know we are grateful for your help,” plead the co-chairs. How can Don and Marg refuse when it is put so sweetly? My “purr-diction” is that they will gracefully accept the apology.

If you’re like me, you get tired of sending the same old bowl of cream and a dead mouse to your favorite Valentine. I discovered a cute website while trying to come up with something different for the upcoming day of love. FindGift.com has a slew of ideas for those of us who are gift-giving impaired. Check it out. Strangely, they do not carry dead varmints….

The best gift I could get, of course, would be to know that next week you will…. Read me again.