Evening coffeehouse gatherings from 7–9 p.m. with an open mic hour followed by a featured musician, running monthly at the Penobscot United Methodist Church.

This Saturday’s featured artist is flutist Heather Emanuelson

Heather is an accomplished pianist, flutist, and music educator with a career spanning more than two decades. She earned her degrees in Music Performance, Music Education, and History from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, where she built a strong foundation in classical performance, ensemble collaboration, and comprehensive music pedagogy.

Heather has performed extensively in the Chicago area and Midcoast Maine, contributing her talents to numerous musicals, operas, and concert productions. Her performance work includes collaborations with respected organizations such as the Starlight Theatre Group, the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra, and The Grand in Ellsworth, Maine. Known for her versatility, she performs professionally on both flute and piano.

In addition to her performance career, Heather has been a dedicated educator in both private and public school settings since 1998.

Learn how to turn your vegetable scraps into rich garden soil.  There will be a 15-minute presentation followed by Q&A.

Free compost bins and turning forks available to Castine residents (60 bins).  Participants eligible for a free bin will receive a voucher at the event for pick up at a later date at the Transfer Station.

This event is brought to you by the Castine Climate & Natural Resources Working Group and Witherle Library.

In Person & via Zoom

The April meeting will begin with brief business and will feature gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah (in-person) and congressional candidate Jordan Wood (Zoom).

Pre-registration for Zoom participation is required in advance by noon the day before the meeting at www.hancockdems.org. You will receive a unique link that you will need to use to join the meeting.

Join us in the lobby for a fun night with Deer Isle and the Blue Hill Peninsula’s family of local artists.

Are you interested in performing?

Sign up ahead of time for up to a 10-minute or 3-song slot.

Walk-ins also welcome, subject to availability.  

Join us for No Kings in Castine. All ages welcome and for those who don’t want to march, there will be seating on the Common.

The march starts at Fort George (Battle Ave. & Wadsworth Cove Rd.) with singing resistance and ends at the Town Common (Court & School St.) where speakers, including Representative Nina Milliken, music and resilience take place. Parking on nearby streets and designated lots.

On this national day of resistance, come be with us as we stand out for democracy and the rule of law in historic Castine.

The Blue Hill Public Library is sponsoring a screening of the documentary film a Peace of Forest on Wednesday, March 18 at 7PM in the library's Pearson Room. A Peace of Forest is the first-ever feature length wildlife movie filmed and produced in Maine.

Created in Whitefield, Maine, a Peace of Forest is a grand 87 minute film, described by audience members as, “The most beautiful film I have ever seen, exhibiting our natural world,” and “This film is a gift; it is so rich.”  

Touted as a quiet film, a Peace of Forest is a one-of-a-kind cinematic adventure, allowing viewers to experience a wild, peaceful and mysterious world that is filled with complex relationships and ways of wonder. A Peace of Forest celebrates the beauty and intimacy of wildlife in Maine with surprising, tender, and exquisite interactions of wildlife during undisturbed moments in Maine’s natural world. The film makers and producers, Lee Ann and Thomas Szelog, will host a Q&A with the audience immediately following the movie.

The film has a runtime of 87 minutes, and is free and open to all as part of the Robert K. and Linda B. Slaven Events Series, which began in 2020 in recognition of gifts made to the Blue Hill Public Library’s Campaign for Endowment from the Anahata Foundation. The goal of the series is to bring diverse and previously inaccessible events on a variety of topics to the Blue Hill Peninsula. 

For more information, please contact the library at 374-5515 or email Assistant Director Kayleigh Thomas at kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net. 

You’re invited! Join the Word community for camaraderie and conversation. No agenda, just talking writing, reading, and life. Order a drink or some nosh and settle in with like-minded friends, new and old.

Gather, a long-time Maine Writers and Publishers Association program, offers writers at all levels of experience six opportunities a year to get together and takes place simultaneously at various sites around the state on the third Wednesday of alternate months. Gather events are not open readings, manuscript exchanges or organized writing-prompt sessions, but offer opportunities for the literary-minded to meet and plan any of those things and more.

We’ll meet at 6 p.m., Wednesday March 18 at
Marlintini’s Bar and Grill, 83 Mines Road, Blue Hill
No reservations are necessary.

Splish Splash! Do you have what it takes to be a fish farmer? Come join Tess from the University of Maine 4-H to be the next future fish farmer!  On Wednesday, March 18th from 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm at the Blue Hill Public Library, youth will have a chance to test their fish-herding skills with a fin-tastic hands-on activity. We'll collect, test, and decipher if the water quality of mystery samples is good enough for our beloved pet fish. Youth will also walk away with some basic knowledge about fish health! What a way to spend an afternoon!

UMaine Cooperative Extension is your doorway to University of Maine expertise. For over 100 years, they've been putting university research to work in homes, businesses, farms, and communities — in every corner of Maine. Their educational efforts focus on the Maine Food System and Positive Youth Development through 4-H programs with a focus on the STEM disciplines. They are part of the nationwide Cooperative Extension System, which works through the land-grant universities in each U.S. state.

Coastal Kids Science Series with 4-H is a monthly program where youth can dive deep into the natural wonder of water.  From learning about amazing marine animal adaptations, to exploring the roles of Maine's working waterfront - we've got something for everyone!  This program is free and cosponsored by the library and the UMaine Cooperative Extension. For more information, contact Youth Services Librarian Claire at claire.malina@bhpl.net or call 374-5515.

The library is sponsoring a series of discussions with Denis Sweet, a former teacher at Bates College, investigating our current moment by making use of contemporary and classic writings in literature, social criticism, biology, and philosophy.  This session of meetings will take place on Tuesday mornings at 10AM in the library's Howard Room from February 3 to April 28.  

Kairos – a time of impending danger and instability balanced on a knife’s edge that can tip into disaster or into a new resolution. Kairos is a time that demands clarity of mind - our time. To gird ourselves, we study foundational classic and contemporary writings in philosophy, literature, social criticism, and ecology.

Radical Romanticism
Radical Romantic writers and artists in Germany from around 1790-1820 expanded the sense of what it means to be human.  They introduced the unconscious and the uncanny, and discovered profound meaning in nature. We will discuss writings by Novalis, Wackenroder, Friedrich Schlegel, Tieck, Kleist and E.T.A. Hoffmann, and paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, with the films Pan's Labyrinth and Andrei Rublev. 

To facilitate discussion, the number of participants is limited to twelve. Registration can be done through the library's online calendar. For more information, please email Assistant Director Kayleigh Thomas at kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net or call 374-5515.

The Blue Hill Public Library is sponsoring a film and hands-on arts series with local artist and gallery-owner Margret Baldwin. Margret will host an art history film screening followed by a hands-on art project the week after. The series for 2026 will focus on abstract painters and their distinct styles. 

Georges Braque is the subject for March, and everyone is welcome to join us for a showing of Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies, with a runtime of 62 minutes on Thursday, March 12 at 6PM. This film explores the relationship between fine art and early cinema, especially as seen in the works of cubist artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Margret is a certified art instructor with 25 years in the public school system and private teaching experience. She expanded her exposure to art and artists through her curatorial experience during eight years of employment at the Blue Hill Public Library. She has exhibited widely, and in the summer runs her neighborhood “Little Gallery” in Surry.

This program series is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Library, and is free and open to all. For more information, please contact Kayleigh at kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net or by calling the library at 374-5515.

The Blue Hill Public Library and Penobscot Marine Museum are cosponsoring a lecture by Matt Wheeler, Digital Curator at PMM, on women photographers of Midcoast Maine in the late 1800s and early 1900s on Wednesday, March 11 at 7PM in the library's Howard Room. This talk will be accompanied by a display of photographs taken by the women discussed. 

The medium of photography arose in a time of great social change in Europe and the United States, and although women’s social positions at this time would not have included them in its initial development, women were involved in the early popularization and use of the medium. Constance Fox Talbot experimented with photography even as her husband William Fox Talbot was perfecting his process—the calotype, which generated the world’s first photographic negative—before its introduction in 1841. A handful of women began opening daguerreotype studios in Europe and the U.S. as early 1843, and were among the first professionals in this technical field at a time when most women who worked outside the home were employed as domestic servants, schoolteachers, nurses, or laborers in the textile industry.

These photographs, drawn from the Penobscot Marine Museum’s permanent collections, represent the work of five women photographers, all born in the latter half of the nineteenth century and based between Boothbay and Blue Hill. Some travelled the world with their seafaring fathers or well to do husbands; others never strayed far from their origins. Some were amateurs with varying skills; others transformed their talents into income. This exhibit explores the multitude of ways women exercised the latitude of expression created by photography, a medium that’s equal parts technical and artistic. Women incorporated camera work into their daily lives, as artists, amateurs, preservationists, professionals, and as travelers and explorers, while photography altered the way men, women, and children saw the world, themselves, and each other. These are women who helped photography emerge as an egalitarian pursuit: Evie Billings Kimball Barbour of Blue Hill, Harriet Hichborn of Stockton Springs, Joanna Colcord of Searsport, Ruth Montgomery of Boothbay, and Ida Crie of Rockport. 

Matt Wheeler serves as the Digital Curator at PMM and has been working in the Museum's Photo Archives since 2011. His educational experience includes coursework in digital curation from University of Maine, Orono, as well as ongoing professional development in evolving standards and best practices in the industry. He guides PMM in building sound digital collections with an eye to accessibility and sustainability. Matt grew up in Camden and Lincolnville, living on and appreciating Penobscot Bay, and enjoys engaging audiences in the digital age with stories of Penobscot Bay's cultural heritage. His personal photography explores the rich natural settings of the region.

This program is free and open to all, and will be held in the library's Howard Room. For more information, please contact the library at 374-5515, or email Assistant Director Kayleigh Thomas at kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net.

Join Leah from 4-H at the Blue Hill Public Library on Wednesday March 11 from 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm, for a chance to design and engineer your very own mini sailing vessels. Kids will put their boats to the test and in the process learn what makes a sailboat sturdy. We can't wait to see how these deck hands combine creativity with a splash of science!

UMaine Cooperative Extension is your doorway to University of Maine expertise. For over 100 years, they've been putting university research to work in homes, businesses, farms, and communities — in every corner of Maine. Their educational efforts focus on the Maine Food System and Positive Youth Development through 4-H programs with a focus on the STEM disciplines. They are part of the nationwide Cooperative Extension System, which works through the land-grant universities in each U.S. state.

Coastal Kids Science Series with 4-H is a monthly program where youth can dive deep into the natural wonder of water.  From learning about amazing marine animal adaptations, to exploring the roles of Maine's working waterfront - we've got something for everyone!  This program is free and cosponsored by the library and the UMaine Cooperative Extension. For more information, contact Youth Services Librarian Claire at claire.malina@bhpl.net or call 374-5515.