How many of you have seen that bumper sticker that says something to the effect of “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the military has to hold a bake sale to pay for one of its bombers”? I felt like I was seeing that bumper sticker come to life last week, when standing outside Dunkin’ Donuts on Friday morning where a lady and a teenage boy holding a sign and a jar. He had a sign that said they were collecting donations so that the high school band could buy a new saxophone, and she was holding the jar to collect contributions from passersby.

There are some pretty die-hard Boston Red Sox fans around here at The Bee, but we didn’t know how dedicated one of them was until earlier this week. Bill Leibold and Frank LaPak have followed the team for years, and Shannon Hicks even went into the belly of the opposing team’s beast this week when she and (die-hard Yankees fan) Kristen Angell went to the Bronx on Wednesday to see the first game of the second Boston-New York match-up this season.

But planning a spring break trip around some Red Sox games? Not too unusual… until you hear that Nancy Crevier and husband Phil did exactly that when son Nate’s spring break came up this year and the Creviers realized how much easier (and cheaper) it would be to travel away from Boston. The Creviers spent two nights in Cleveland this week, watching Jason Varitek and the rest of the Red Sox successfully take down the Tribe Monday and Tuesday. (Daughter Katie Rose was unable to make the family trip… classes at UConn kept her out of the family trip this time around.) Now those are fans!

It seems the dreaded Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport is not only making international news (the recently opened terminal, new home for British Airways flights, has already lost or “temporarily misplaced” well over 15,000 pieces of luggage — including, in separate incidents, luggage belonging to supermodels Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, so it isn’t just “regular folks” like you and me who are losing their clothing, etc, in Dante’s Terminal), it’s also making local news. When Pastor Greg Wismar and more than two dozen members of Christ the King Lutheran Church left Newtown for a trip to Paris recently, they flew from New York to London via British Airways and… can you see where this is going? Yes, ten of the 27 people in that group lost their luggage during the layover in London. Five folks had their luggage returned to them by the time the group was ready to head home, but all of the local travelers made the best of it while they were overseas, adding a shopping trip to their already packed itinerary. “It was great. We got to see the malls of France, which most people don’t bother to do,” Pastor Greg said last week, safely back at home. “We shared each other’s clothing — it was funny to see your T-shirt walking around Paris on someone else — and we kept up each other’s spirits.” Of course, the debacle wasn’t over. On the flight home, two more travelers lost their bags again while going through Terminal 5.

I’m no dog person (dog cat?), but I nod my wise little head when I hear about a canine with good manners. Canine Advocates of Newtown heard from one of their doggy friends this week, when Casey sent a note to CAN, the staff at the town’s animal control facility, and the staff at Mt Pleasant Hospital for Animals. “A hearty tail wagging thank you to everyone who made it possible for me to find my forever home,” he wrote. Casey was recently adopted by the Marschalk family, and it sounds like things are going very well for him and his new humans.

Reed Intermediate School students may have been on spring break this week, but hopefully some of them were getting goodies together to help belatedly Week of the Young Child. While that week was officially April 13–19, students and faculty of the intermediate school — along with all of Newtown’s residents — are invited to visit the school’s lobby (3 Trades Lane) and drop off new children’s pajamas for any season, toothbrushes and/or children’s books appropriate for infants to age 12 any time when the building is open, April 21 to May 1. The collection, the next in Reed’s ongoing Caring Community project, will support Chapman House and The Therapeutic Child Center, both Waterbury-based facilities that care for children in need of shelter from abusive households.

Ray Shaw and Newtown Sandy Hook Vintage Base Ball members will honor their former teammate Kim Harmon, The Bee’s late sports editor, this season, picking up where the first annual Hearts for Harmon event recently left off. Since Kim died last December, his fellow players on the vintage base ball team have affixed memorial patches to their uniforms bearing Kim’s jersey number, and have launched a season-long fundraising effort to infuse the Harmon Family Fund with added support, while creating a vehicle to further donations to the American Heart Association in Kim’s name. The new Hits for Harmon program will involve anyone who wants to pledge any amount of money for each hit the team scores in its 2008 season, which opens April 27.

At the end of the season, the team will call in its pledges and formulate donations to Harmon Family Fund and AHA. Newtown Savings Bank has generously offered to administer the collections and distribution of donations, as well as providing promotional underwriting. Read more about the program in next week’s Sports section, come out and see the Sandy Hook team crank out the hits this season, and support Hits for Harmon.

Try to remember do something nice for the Earth this week, take a moment to honor Earth Day on Tuesday, and then don’t forget to come back and… read me again.