It has been a long, wet and cold winter. Now it is time to have some fun. The 12th annual Rifle Rendezvous Festival kicks off at the Garfield County Fairgrounds Friday night, May 16 with a bang.

A newly-formed initiative at the University of California, San Diego will host a workshop to draw up a roadmap for the development of software studies as a new movement and field of academic inquiry.

DARTMOUTH — A four-week, 2009 Summer Teacher Institute at UMass Dartmouth will use Winslow Homer’s paintings as the point of departure for a voyage of discovery about maritime history in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Education calendar is published weekly. To submit information email awidmer@record-eagle.com; fax (231) 946-8632; or mail to 120 W. Front St., P.O. Box 632, Traverse City, MI 49685-0632. Items should be received at least two weeks in advance.

Four noted poets will read during an upcoming UC Santa Cruz and Poetry Santa Cruz celebration of Robinson Jeffers, an environmentalist poet whose once-unpopular political views of people's egotism have regained a large following.