5 THINGS: Finding The Town’s Center, Your Academic Center and More!

Here are the Five Things for Thursday, January 19, 2012:

“Ou est le ville?” Tonight, a local advocacy group will meet at the Maury Loontjens Memorial Library to discuss how to bring about a more vibrant town center. According to the group’s website, ‘Where’s the town?’ is a grassroots effort that grew out of Marie Younkin-Waldman's great concern for the condition of the Narragansett Pier marketplace area and the fact that there is no viable center of town or sense of community. The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m., and Edward Mazze, the director of the Economic Development Committee, is scheduled to speak.

Ch-ch-ch-changes! Also on Thursday night, the Narragansett High School Parent-Teacher Organization will be holding a meeting at 7 p.m. in the high school’s library. For more information, visit the PTO’s website here. NHS principal Dan Warner and department heads will be giving an overview of what’s new in each department.

A light day for sports. The only thing on the sports schedule is the boys’ basketball (5-7, 3-5 Division II-South) home game with the Tolman Tigers (6-4, 4-4 Division II-Central). Tip-off is at 7 p.m., with junior varsity starting at 5:15 p.m. In action Wednesday night, the girls’ basketball team improved to 8-0 in Division II-South play with a victory at East Greenwich (6-5, 5-3 Division II-South). According to a box score from The Providence Journal and reports from players on Twitter, the Mariners won a rock fight 39-36 in overtime against the Avengers. Mercedes Harris led Narragansett with 17 points, and Abby McKanna had 11.

Awwwww! Have a 2 or 3-year-old, and you don’t know where to bring them for storytime? Well, the library is hosting one today at 10:30 a.m.! Swing on by for , which will include stories, songs and a craft. Registration is required, and as a note, this is not free babysitting – the activity is for children and their parent / caregiver. If you can’t make it this week, the event repeats every non-holiday Thursday in January and February.

Happy 66^th birthday, Dolly Parton! While you might be 66, I’m sure certain parts of you are celebrating their 21^st, and other parts are celebrating their 30^th and 18^th, so congrats to all of you! Your new movie looks absolutely dreadful, like Glee with gospel, so let’s focus on the good days instead, like your repartee with Johnny Carson. “I have certain guidelines on this show, but I would give about a year’s pay to peek under there.”

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