WATERVILLE — Colby College has planned several April events. The following listings are free and open to the public:

* Colby Wind Ensemble: Vocal Influence from Song, Vocalise, Opera will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Lorimer Chapel.

Poetry and verse have inspired a wealth of works for winds. This concert will visit some of these compositions from the 18th century, when arrangements of famous operas were all the rage, the 19th century, when Civil War tunes were performed in town squares across the United States, and today, with arrangements of traditional songs. Concert includes Mozart’s own arrangement of “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” (The Abduction from the Seraglio), Sousa’s opera “El Capitan” and his “I’ve Made My Plans for the Summer,” Brian Holmes’s arrangement of “Asleep in the Deep,” Frank Tichelli’s arrangement of “Simple Gifts,” Voelker’s “Jagd im Shwarzwald” (A Hunt in the Black Forest), Puccini’s “Tosca Fantasy” (arr. Ralph Hermann), selections from Turandot arranged by Yo Goto, and Verdi’s Manzoni Requiem (Dies Irae). Eric Thomas, director

For more information, email lwood@colby.edu, or call 859-5671.

* A talk, The Future’s in the Dirt: Digging Into the Potential for Local Food Systems to Revitalize Community and Economy, will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Page Commons, Cotter Union.

For decades, the rural Vermont town of Hardwick (pop: 3,200) grappled with a challenged economy. Like so many small towns, the once-thriving regional industry had died, and the majority of the working population was forced to commute far beyond the town line to find work. Enter the “agripreneurs,” a group of ambitious young agricultural entrepreneurs with big ideas about how regionalized food-based enterprise can be used to create sustainable economic development and wean our nation of its unhealthy dependence on industrial food. In The Town That Food Saved, Ben Hewitt explores the contradictions inherent to producing high-end “artisanal” food products in a working class community.

For more information, email lmmorris@colby.edu, or call 859-5356.

* Regulation of Environmental Threats to Human Health: Policy Successes and Challenges will be discussed at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Room 100, Lovejoy Building.

Gail Carlson, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies, will be featured speaker.

For more information, email clessard@colby.edu, or call 859-4420.

* A noontime art talk: “I Was Wonder Woman: On the Video Art of Dara Birnbaum,” will begin at noon Wednesday at the Colby College Museum of Art.

Hollis Griffin, Mellon postdoctoral fellow in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies will lead the discussion.

For more information, email museum@colby.edu, or call 859-5600.

* Herbicides and amphibians’ decline will be the topic at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday in the Fairchild Room in Dana Dining Hall.

Visiting Assistant Professor at Bates Megan Gahl will discuss interactions between herbicides and amphibian disease in causing amphibian declines. Gahl is a broadly trained ecologist whose field work focuses on aquatic ecosystems, including community interactions and ecosystem responses to stressors. Most of her recent work has used amphibians as a model system, though she has extensive experience with other vertebrates (fish, seabirds, bears), invertebrates (meiofauna, marine and aquatic invertebrates) and plants (macrophytes, algae, and phytoplankton). She particularly likes fieldwork that is mucky, wet, incredibly scenic, or difficult to get to.

For more information, email lmmorris@colby.edu, or call 859-5356.

* Kay Jamison, author of “An Unquiet Mind” will be featured at 7 p.m. Thursday at Page Commons, Cotter Union.

Jamison is recognized as one of the foremost experts on bipolar disorder; she has also experienced it firsthand. As a clinical psychologist, author and professor, she works to promote mental-health awareness and speaks out against the stigma of mental illness. Her talk will be followed by a book signing in the Pugh Center.

For more information, email djkissin@colby.edu.

* Hebrew Culture and Jewish Text will be the subject at 7 p.m. Thursday in Room 105, Keyes Building.

Ruth Calderon is one of Israel’s leading figures spearheading efforts to revive the Jewish bookshelf, Hebrew culture and a pluralistic Israeli-Jewish identity. In 1989, Calderon was a pioneer when she established, with an Orthodox colleague, the first Israeli secular, pluralistic, and egalitarian Bet Midrash for women and men. In 1996 she founded ALMA-Home for Hebrew Culture, where she now serves as the chairperson. Calderon is the author of “The Market, the Home, the Heart, a personal homiletic reading of Talmudic legends.”

For more information, email Isaacs, risaacs@colby.edu, or call 859-4271

* A talk, Plastic Ocean: How A Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans, will begin at 4 p.m. Thursday in Ostrove Auditorium, Diamond Building.

Captain Charles Moore was on a return voyage from Hawaii after testing a new mast in the Transpacific Yacht Race when he began to notice scraps of trash floating by every time he came on deck. His now famous discovery led Moore to become a scientist-activist investigating what others had passed over — the “confetti” created from our floating plastic discards by ultraviolet sunlight and the turbulent waters of a salty sea. In his presentations and book, “Plastic Ocean,” Moore chronicles his scientific investigations of the ocean’s plastic load aboard ORV Alguita. An acclaimed speaker and international authority, Moore explains in vivid detail his firsthand experience of the alarming consequences millions of tons of our persistent plastic waste is having on the marine environment, and ultimately, on us.

For more information, email bspangle@colby.edu, or call 859-5319.