Photo courtesy of Flickr user Pringle Hill.

Once again this weekend, we have to turn our clocks ahead one hour before going to bed Saturday night. Yes, this is the part of Daylight Saving Time that nobody likes, but it also means that spring is really right around the corner.

For nearly 100 years, Daylight Saving Time has forced us to "fall back" or "spring forward," with the intent of maximizing daylight hours. Train schedules and birth records can get confusing, though, and there's always one clock or timer that we find weeks later, still on "old time." 

Still, we can be thankful that we don't live in Arizona or Indiana: parts of Indiana fall into three different time zones, and only the Navajo Nation portion of Arizona observes Daylight Saving Time. So even though this coming weekend is one hour shorter than usual, spring officially begins in about 10 days and we won't really notice the missing hour a day or two later. Spring forward this weekend -- even warmer weather is right around the corner!

Chanticleer

 Tuesday, April 10th at 7:30 p.m.

St. Mark's Episcopal Church will be hosting Chanticleer, the World's Reigning Male Chorus, as they perform Love Story. All proceeds from the concert will go towards supporting Chanticleer's National Education Program. Tickets are $40 and are available on Chanticleer's website and at St. Mark's Lion's Den Bookstore, Elm Street Books, and Design Solutions.

On Wednesday, April 11th Chanticleer will be at Darien High School for a Youth Choral Festival. Darien High School's choral director, Chris Andrade, along with the support of Darien High School and the Darien Board of Education has hosted this event for the last five years. Students involved in the program have enjoyed a transformational experience.

For more information, please see the flyer.

Main Street is ready for the holidays.

It's beginning to look a lot like the holidays at the Library. Earlier this week, members of the Garden Club of Darien came by to decorate the Library withtrees and wreaths in what has become an annual tradition over the course of several decades. 

“The Garden Club of Darien does do it every year, and obviously we reuse things from year to year, but we added a few more wreaths this year,” said Cyndy Stamm, a past president of the Garden Club. “Because the Library is so big, we’ve gotten big wreaths.”

Some of the wreaths measure 5 feet in diameter, and all were made by hand by members of the Garden Club.

“It probably took us about two days to make all of these,” Garden Club member and past president Sally MacGuire said Monday as she and other members prepared to deck the Library’s halls. She said the Garden Club has been decorating the Library for about 40 years.

There are lots of opportunities to come by and check out the decorations, including this Sunday’s performance by the Princeton Tigertones. 

The Darien Library’s Art Gallery is hosting a new art exhibit, entitled “Seasons and Celebrations: Children’s Art from Around the World,” in the Library’s lower level through Jan. 11, 2012.

The installation brings 35 pieces of art to the gallery; each piece of holiday-themed art is created by a child between the ages of 7 and 15. The artists are located in more than a dozen countries around the world including Chile, Latvia, Russia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States.

 The art is being provided by Creative Connections, a Norwalk-based non-profit international culture exchange that facilitates art-based exchanges throughout the world. It is being co-sponsored by PG Properties.

 The new exhibit takes the place of the collection of abstract paintings of Linda George, which hung in the gallery between Oct. 3 and Nov. 9. As always, the exhibit is free.