The annual Grantham Garden Club Plant Sale will begin at 9 a.m. May 15 at the Grantham Town Hall. Proceeds benefit the club's Scholarship Fund. There are always gorgeous plants – annuals, perennials, hanging pots – to choose from, but it gets busy early, so don't be late!

CRVO ends its `09/10 season

Three residents of Grantham – Andy Bourke, Harry Critchley and Mary Lou Schaefer – will be playing with the Connecticut River Valley Orchestra, a professional symphony based at the Claremont Opera House, when it presents its final concert of the season entitled "An Evening in Paris" at 4 p.m. May 16. Gold seats are $35; adults $25; seniors $20; students $10; children 12 and younger accompanied by an adult get in free. For tickets call 542-4433 or visit claremontoperahouse.com or www.crvo.us.

LHS announces third-quarter honors

Congratulations to the following Grantham residents for making the honor roll at Lebanon High School for the third quarter:

9^th Grade: High Honors: Mary Caffrey, Haley Jones, Erin McClory, Brooke Morgan; Honors: Taylor Anderson, Benjamin Becker, Gabriel Blanche, Geoffrey Blike, Phoebe Buckman, Nikayla Cartier, Andrew Googins, Connor Greeley, Alex Head, Liane Holdowsky, John Hunt, Mariana Del-Valle Marcano, Daniel Martin, Joshua Rios, Colette Schmidt, Zachary Wilson

10^th Grade: High Honors: Jennifer Arnold, Zachary Bessette; Honors: Emily Broughton, Michael Cyphers, Cody Dziegelewski, Alyssa Goucher, Jillian Malnati, Kirsten Ray, Emma Richard, Kenneth Stitt, Nicholas Wardwell

11^th Grade: High Honors: Matthew Blandin; Sarah Caffrey; Danielle Field; Colleen Gilliatt; Haleigh Paquette; Madeleine Wells-Bogue; Honors: Lindsey Cohen, Christine Collier, Dalton Covel, Corin Craig, Marlin Hueil, Daniel Lendaro, Jeremy Marsh, Morgan Purcell, Tyler Sekula, Katherine Siegel, Michael Willis, Jacob Wilson

12^th Grade: High Honors: Tammy Chou, Joshua Cyphers, Jayson Martin, Chelsea Ordway, Ellie Valliere; Honors: Allicyn Allen, Susan Boyes, Sarah Eigenbrode, Hilary Fox, Gregory Gobin, Emily Holland, Tamara Marks, Shawn McClory, Nichole Mitchell, Kyle Paquette, Rebecca Valente, Molly Walters, Zachary Weber, Gregory Williams

Blood pressure and foot clinic with the Lake Sunapee Region Visiting Nurses and Hospice will be held 9:30 a.m. to noon May 18 at the Grantham Town Hall. Free blood pressure screenings. Basic toenail care – a soak, trim, file, clean and lotion – is $20, unless you have diabetes. In that case, the cost is $25 and you will need a doctor's order for the foot care. Call 526-4077 to schedule a time.

Book sale offers BOGO

A BOGO Scholastic Book Fair sponsored by Beta Sigma Phi will be held from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 19 at Grantham Village School. You know BOGO: buy a book and get another book of equal or lesser value free. This is a great opportunity to promote summer reading or buy gifts!

Aging programs offered

A series of free informative sessions entitled "High Tea & Crucial Conversations about Aging" will be held at Kendal at Hanover, 80 Lyme Rd. in Hanover beginning May 5. All sessions begin with high tea at 3:30 p.m.; presentations begin at 4. Reservations are required by contacting Anna Ballou at 653-8506 or seminars@kah.kendal.org.

May 19: Companion/Caregiver Services: Hiring the Right Person. Learn easy steps for hiring someone privately, using an agency and understanding the law. Speakers: Roberta Berner, executive director, Grafton County Senior Citizens Council; Dana Michalovic, director, ServiceLink Resource Center of Grafton County; Diana Cox, director, Resident Health Services, Kendal at Hanover.

June 2: Getting Rid of the Stuff: How to downsize to a new home or de-clutter your current home. Speakers: Marie LeBlanc, Transition Liquidation Services; Kathy Ashton, Home Transitions.

The 22^nd annual Lebanon Project Graduation BBQ will be held from 5 to 7:30 p.m. May 21 on the Lebanon Green. Catered by Bloods Seafood, dinners available include 1 ¼-pound lobster ($25), 10-ounce center cut NY strip steak ($22), and BBQ chicken leg quarter or Black Angus hamburger or cheeseburger ($15). Dinners include vegetable pasta salad or garden fresh green salad, corn on the cob, dinner roll with butter, watermelon and drinks. You can eat there under the tent or take it home.

There will also be a bake sale and dessert table, hot dog stand, live music and activities.

Pre-sales required by May 14 due to the limited number of tickets available. If there are tickets available at the park, there is no guarantee for the type of dinner. To purchase tickets, contact any Lebanon High School Senior, including Shawn McClory (863-0850), Greg Gobin (863-5726) and Kyle Paquette (863-5726).

Grantham Town Wide Yard Sale will be held all around town and inside the town hall from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. May 22. Contact Laurie Field at 863-9143 or field83@comcast.net to place your location on the map. For those who would like to be centrally located space is available inside the Grantham Town Hall for $5 per table or outside the town hall for free. This is sponsored by "Our Town," Grantham's Activities Department.

Camp Invention comes to Grantham!

Grantham will have its own Camp Invention this year, a wonderful, national, summer program that's been around for years (www.campinvention.org). Stacy Hogsett will be the camp director, which promises to make it even more fun.

Camp Invention will be July 12-16 at Grantham Village School and is for children going into third through seventh grades in the fall. The half-day (noon to 4 p.m.), week-long program is $119 per child.

This year's theme is "In The Wild Blue Y'Under™" with the following scenario: important documents must be delivered to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and Y'Under, Incorporated knows just who should deliver them! The children of Camp Invention will design and build methods of transportation to safely take them around the world and protect the documents from spies who want to swipe them. They fly high, dive deep, and travel the globe, exploring physics concepts such as buoyancy, lift, density, friction, propulsion, and water pressure to complete the secret mission. Children then apply these concepts to invent their own method of futuristic travel!

Stacy is hiring two instructors (or more depending on sign up levels) to implement the program where all the materials, right down to the paper are supplied and two camp counselors who will be responsible for supporting the teaching staff. She also needs two volunteers to check in the kids and see that things run smoothly.

The program is open to children from any location, including vacationing children and grandchildren, anyone with an inventive streak is welcome!

For more information, contact Stacy at 603-236-9084 or goodyhog@gmail.com.

Reminders

• Selectmen meet at 5 p.m. the second and fourth Wednesdays each month.

• Storytimes are held at Dunbar Free Library at 10 a.m. Wednesdays for babies and toddlers with an adult, and at 10 a.m. Thursdays for preschool-aged children with an adult.

• Grantham United Methodist Church offers Sunday service at 10 a.m. each week.

• The town has a food collection box in the town hall foyer. Food donations are brought alternately to The Listen Center and the Newport Food Pantry.

• Burn permits are required for any outdoor burning. For a permit application, visit www.granthamnh.net. Click on departments, click on fire, and click the link for the application. It takes a few seconds to download.

• Visit www.granthamnh.net for official minutes, meeting dates and more.

As we look forward to a summer of fun and barbecues, the Grantham Fire Department would like to remind you of some safety tips while using your grill.

• Before using your grill, check to be sure the grill is in good shape. On a propane grill, hoses should not be crushed, connections should be tight, and the burners should provide an even, blue flame.
• Grills should only be used outside, never under an overhanging roof, on an enclosed or screen porch. The heat from a grill will dry the nearby and overhead wood after repeated uses of the grill, then the wood will easily ignite if there is a grease fire or other problem. Grills should be at least 2 feet from any surface that can catch fire, including walls, deck railings or trees and shrubbery.  Again, the heat will dry the surface to the point of a very easy ignition.
• Keeping grills clean reduces any risk of an out of control fire, including emptying the grease trap (yuck).
• Never let children play with or near a grill.  A child playing BBQ on a cold propane grill and turning a knob can accidentally cause the risk of a fire or an explosion.  A child near a hot grill can suffer very painful burns.
• While the grill is lit, do not leave it unattended. Very rapidly the situation of sizzling steaks can change to flames coming out of the grill from a grease fire (or on a propane grill from a damaged hose), and if no one is there to take action, the situation can get very bad quickly.

By following common sense safety rules, you can have a safe and happy summer.

• Find news and events for Grantham and surrounding towns at www.sunacom.com. PS: All the Grantham Sunacom columns are still active. They can be retrieved on the Archives page.

Don't forget to send your news or events at least two weeks in advance to grantham-news@comcast.net. Let your neighbors know what's going on.