5 Things You Need to Know Today, 3/9

1) Today we'll have a chance of showers, mainly before 9am. It will be cloudy through mid-morning, then gradually clearing, with a high near 46. Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low around 31.

2) The is pleased to announce a series of workshops focusing on specific areas of needs encountered by students of art. Each workshop will include a demonstration as well as time to paint. Today's class, from 9am-noon, will be "It’s Not Easy Being Green with Hilary Osborn." The workshop will focus on the challenge of creating the right shades of green. For more information and to register, visit the website at falmouthart.org or call 508 540-3304.

3) The Woods Hole Film Festival's Dinner and a Movie Winter Film Series continues in the Waterfront Dining Room at the . The series will host an encore screening of the feature documentary Charlotte: A Wooden Boat Story by Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte. For $25 per person, select from a preset menu; the price includes entree and movie, but does not include beverage, dessert, tax or tip. Dinner is served from 5:30-6:45pm and the screening begins at 7:30pm. Reservations are required; call (508) 548-8563 to reserve your table. For more information, call (508) 495-3456 or email info@woodsholefilmfestival.org.

4) Ambassador Robert Pelletreau, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, will examine the extent of popular uprisings throughout the Arab world in an MBL Falmouth Forum talk titled “The Arab Spring One Year After.” The lecture is scheduled for tonight at 7:30pm at the . Sponsored by the MBL Associates, it is free and open to the public. In his lecture, Ambassador Pelletreau will discuss the causes and relative success or failure of recent uprisings in various Middle Eastern countries, and the role and response of the United States to these historic upheavals.

5) This day in history: U.S. forces land at Vera Cruz (1847); the Barbie doll debuts (1959); and comedian George Burns dies at age 100 (1996).