Blue Hill for the Holidays

I can only hope you are having as luscious a holiday season as I am. For me, the highlights are music, people, and food.

Blue Hill is lucky to have the Bagaduce Chorale, with 80-plus voices. They perform two concerts a year at the Congregational Church. Their winter concert included a newly commissioned piece by Anna Dembska. The spring concert, schedule for April 30 and May 1, will include new work by Paul Sullivan.

High school concerts can be scary but not when you have an award winning music department. George Stevens Academy, directly across the street from the inn, has a wonderful array of musicians and their winter concert includes a band, various steel drum combos, a handful of jazz combos, and an acappella vocal ensemble. Guests have asked about George Stevens. The history of who he is and how the school acquired his name can be found at the school's website. One of the great things about living in a small town--the cast of characters is small, even with a history that goes back to the early 1800s.

Ellacappella is another Blue Hill treasure.
They've been out in their bright colors for the tree lighting and at the library for my favorite Christmas event of all--the reading of Dickens' Christmas Carol. As you may know, our library is beautiful, with its central room flanked by fireplaces. In front of one is where three local gents read out the carol, with appropriate chain rattling and hat changing to cover many characters. We laugh, we cry, we eat more cookies.

For me, too, part of the charm of the season in this small town is the proximity. The inn is just around the corner from the Congregational Church and the library and shops on Main Street. We can walk to three bookstores! For me, that describes a great town perfectly. The fact that you can get great espresso in one and fresh bread in another and the third has the best, smartest inventory of a bookstore ten times its size is just like frosting on the cake.

On Last Night, we wander the streets listening to live music and being entertained by an impressive array of locals. This year, Noel Paul Stookey began the evening to a standing room audience. Guests staying at the Cape House, where there are two options of rooms for you, had a great time. One couple ventured to the Arborvine for a fabulous dinner and then walked about town in the snow, to return to the Suite before midnight to enjoy a cozy fire.

If you stayed with us at the inn, you know that we don't have televisions in the rooms in the inn, just in the Cape House next door. But we have books, boy, do we have books. Just in the last month I've added a new one by Rebekah Raye, Bear-ly There. Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City is finally out (I had the pleasure--O so pleasurable!--of hearing him read from an almost final copy with a small group tucked into the East Blue Hill Library). You can borrow it when I'm finished.

Then, too, I've added some art to the inn's collection.
But I'll have to tell you about that another time as the snow is still falling and I'm the snow shoveler today. I do hope you are making snow angels and enjoying the winter wonderland. (Sand angels, for you folks a bit more south, sound painful... You should just visit us and bring your snowsuits).

Happy, happy 2010 to you!
Sarah Pebworth