August 2025, Issue 209
Writers: Your Schooner Family | Editor: Sue O’Brien
🌺 There Are so Many Beautiful Reasons to be Happy.
Special events, day trips, cookouts and exciting entertainment events have been in abundance this summer, as usual!
📝 In This Issue:
- Seafood BBQ
- Welcome
- Word Search
- Tenant Profiles
- Our Creative Group
- Play Pool
- Favorite Pictures
- All About Sunflowers
🦞 A Taste of the Coast: Our Seafood BBQ
August will feature our third barbecue of the season, a Seafood Barbeque, on Wednesday, August 13th. This meal promises to be brimming with flavor and perfect for seafood lovers!
- Time: Show up at your regular lunch time, 11:30 or 1:00.
- Location: Held outside (weather permitting) on our Castine front lawn.
- Enjoy!
📸 A Few of our Favorite Pictures
- Our July Americana BBQ
- Schooner at the Moxie Day Parade!
- Thank you to all who helped put these events together!
🌻 SUNFLOWERS, Beautiful August Blooming Perennials
No flower can lift someone’s spirits like a sunflower. They are bright and cheery and as warm and inviting as the sweet summer sun. With brilliant yellow petals, also known as “rays”, sunflowers have the unmistakable sun-like appearance that has made them a crowd favorite.
Fun Flowery Facts
- Sunflowers come in a number of varieties, ranging from small to very large, and have petals that range from yellow to red.
- Sunflowers symbolize adoration.
- Sunflowers display a behavior called heliotropism. The flower buds and young blossoms will face east in the morning and follow the sun as the earth moves during the day.
- As the flowers get heavier during seed production, the stems will stiffen and the mature flower heads will generally remain facing east.
- Sunflowers in their cut form tend to be thirsty, so check the water level daily.
- The flowers not only look like the sun, they need a lot of it.
- Like potatoes, tomatoes, and corn, the cheerful plants didn’t originate in Europe. They were cultivated in North America.
- In the summer of 2014, Veteran green-thumb Hans-Peter Schiffer toppled the Guinness World Record for the tallest sunflower for the third year in a row. The sunflower measured 30 ft 1 in. The local fire brigade lent its help in measuring the sunflower, which required its own scaffold.
👋 Welcome to our Community
- Jim Balicki, apt. 526
- Claude Poulin, B106
“People will never forget how you made them feel.”
Schooner Tenant Profiles
Please give these folks a warm Schooner welcome!
Note: Some of our profiles do not have photographs included – it all depends on a tenant’s preference.
Jim Balicki, apt. 526
- We are excited to officially welcome Jim Balicki to apartment 526.
- He sadly lost his wife about a year ago.
- He has a brother who lives in Livermore Falls.
- He decided to move to Schooner knowing sooner or later he might not be able to drive safely.
- Before his retirement, he was an Electrical Engineer and taught an Electrical college course.
- His main hobby is fishing, and he enjoys it a lot!
- Jim is looking forward to making new friends here in our community.
Claude Poulin, studio B106
- Let’s all welcome Claude Poulin. He resides in studio B106.
- Before moving to Schooner, he lived in Lewiston.
- Claude lost his wife several months ago.
- They have 2 children, one great-great-grandchild, and two grandchildren.
- Before retirement, he was a salesman.
- His hobbies are PlayStation 5, Nintendo, and Bingo.
- He is easy to get along with and enjoys meeting new people.
- He quoted, “I am handsome!”
- We are so happy to have Claude here!
🎨 JOIN OUR CREATIVE GROUP
- From garden to holiday crafts, paper crafts to fabric creations, we have easy handmade ideas for everyone.
- You don’t have to be an expert!
- Come on down and enjoy a fun hour with your friends and neighbors.
- Check your monthly calendars for dates and times.
- An enjoyable project will be chosen and all supplies needed are provided for you.
- In case you haven’t already, stop by and give it a try.
🎱 Play Pool
- Take time out from your everyday routine and play a game of pool!
- Our pool room also contains game tables and a large screen television.
- It’s the perfect place for a friendly get-together.
- Location: 2nd floor, Searsport building.