New Year's Events in Bar Harbor:

Music, Food and Community Gatherings

Dec 27, 2023

BAR HARBOR—Bar Harbor area businesses will host several New Year’s festivities and events for residents and visitors alike. Bar Harbor businesses such as Havana restaurant, Side Street Café, ArtWaves community art center, The 1932 Criterion Theatre, and Fabricate quilting shop will host events as will Fogtown Ellsworth.

Havana’s New Year’s Eve Dinner:

Havana in Bar Harbor will serve a four-course dinner on New Year’s Eve, including turbot and paella. Reservations can be made by calling 207-288-2822.

Side Street Café’s New Year’s Eve Party:

Side Street Café will hold a New Year’s Eve party with dessert stations, appetizers, a 360-degree photo booth, DJ and hourly prizes. Tickets are available for purchase here.

ArtWaves’ New Year’s Day Celebration:

ArtWaves will host a free open house on January 1 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., offering activities such as fiber arts, botanical printmaking, mosaic crafting and dance. Find the details on its Facebook page.

1932 Criterion Theatre Improv Class:

The 1932 Criterion Theatre invites adults 18 and over to a free improv class on January 1, 2024, from 4-6 p.m. All skill levels are welcome to participate and explore the world of improvisation.

8th Annual Hancock County Ice Quilting Derby:

Starting January 1, 2024, the 8th Annual Hancock County Ice Quilting Derby kicks off, offering free block patterns through March 2024.

Derby cards are available at participating shops: Fabricate (Bar Harbor), Quilt 'N Fabric (Southwest Harbor), Quiilty Biird (Ellsworth), and Bolt (Bucksport). Participants who complete their derby cards can win prizes through drawings.

Fogtown Ellsworth New Year’s Eve Party:

Fogtown Taproom & Kitchen in Ellsworth will host a New Year’s Eve event featuring live music until midnight, outdoor fire pits, hot mulled wine, and a photo station. Details are available here.

The Chamber

The Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce highlighted the New Year's events as a unique opportunity for visitors.

"Bar Harbor offers a serene getaway this time of year. While it may be quieter, our shops, restaurants, and cozy inns are ready to welcome you, and Acadia National Park remains open year-round. It's a perfect time to experience our town in a new light," said Chamber Executive Director Everal Eaton.

For more information on the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, please visit www.visitbarharbor.com.

OTHER EVENTS

The Tremont Fire Department hosts a polar plunge on January 1.

“Please join the crew of Tremont Fire Department on Back Beach in Bernard, New Year's Day at 10 a.m. for a refreshing lunge into Bass Harbor. Members of the public are encouraged to participate and spectators are always welcomed too. Neighboring emergency services are invited as “mutual aid” to make this 10th year of the event extra special.

“The location is 98 Lopaus Point Road and there is limited beachside parking spots.

“Weather permitting, they will have a bonfire and provide hot chocolate. Low tide is 2 hours prior, so expect a short walk down to the water’s edge. Beach footwear is recommended. Enter this event at own risk. A life guard will be onsite via kayak.”

Sand Beach Polar Plunge on January 1.

The Sand Beach Polar Plunge is also January 1 at 10 a.m., but we haven’t been able to verify this other than on Facebook posts. So, you may want to investigate this a bit yourself.

Finback New Year’s Eve Party!

That Maine Band is playing on NYE! Sunday is Finback’s last day open until spring! Let’s boogie! There’s a champagne toast at midnight. Music begins at 10 p.m.

First Baptist Church New Year’s Eve Party!

The First Baptist Church in Bar Harbor is hosting a New Year’s Eve Party for all ages from 5 to 7 p.m. on December 31. There will be games, prizes, inflatables and food.

Congregational Church Offers Prayers and Pancakes!

The Bar Harbor Congregational Church on Mount Desert Street offers prayers and pancakes at 10 a.m. on Sunday.

The Barnacle Welcomes New Year’s Eve with Some Bubbly!

The barnacle is having a New Year’s Eve party until 2 a.m. with $5 bubbly!!!

If we’ve missed an event under “other events” or it wasn’t included in the Chamber release above, please let us know and we’ll add it in!

Some Local Press Releases (these link back to the Bar Harbor Chamber):

Bar Harbor Town Press Releases:

Transfer Station / Recycling Center New Year Holiday Schedule

The Transfer Station/Recycling Facility will be OPEN on Friday, December 29, 8:00 AM-1:45 PM, and Saturday, December 30, 8:00 AM-11:45 AM; CLOSED all day Monday, January 1, for the holiday.

The Municipal Building will be closing at 2:00 pm on Friday, December 29

The Municipal Building will be closing at 2:00 pm on Friday, December 29.

Discarded holiday trees are accepted at Recycling Center & Kisma Preserve-NOT Public Works Facility

Kisma Preserve is accepting discarded trees (with NO decorations attached) at 446 Bar Harbor Road in Trenton. Deposits may be made to the right of the gate. Please DO NOT BLOCK GATE. These trees are used as habitat for the wildlife at Kisma.

Trees will NOT be accepted at the Public Works Facility in Hulls Cove. They will be accepted at the Recycling Center on White Spruce Road.

College of the Atlantic Release:

New Book Explores Artificial Intelligence

Smarter Planet or Wiser Earth?, by College of the Atlantic philosophy professor Gray Cox, calls for a radical rethinking of how we conceive of AI.

In Smarter Planet or Wiser Earth: Dialogue and Collaboration in the Era of Artificial Intelligence (Producciones de La Hamaca, 2023), Cox explores approaches to AI that could contribute to a better world. He challenges the current ways of thinking around AI that strictly prioritize intelligence, or a “smarter planet,” premising that we’re missing out on many powerful forms of reasoning that could help make life more just, convivial, ecologically sustainable, and spiritually nourishing .

With the right kind of framework, Cox demonstrates, AI could help solve existential threats from ecological collapse, climate change, wars of mutually assured destruction, and out of control technology. He describes his book as being for many different audiences and hopes it can inspire people from economists to computer programers to Christians during this critical time.

“We are not just at a pivot point in all of this, we are at a dramatic transition… because these black boxes of AI that we don’t really understand are being adopted by hundreds of millions of people and they are being built into the software people use in their everyday lives,” Cox says. “We must shift to new forms of programming that draw on collaborative dialogue.”

The book draws on contemporary research on conflict resolution and peacemaking including Quaker, Gandhian, Indigenous, and other traditions of collaborative reasoning and ethical choice. As might be expected from anyone who has taken a class with him, Cox also infuses his treatise with many stories, anecdotes, and songs to help illustrate his points. In the beginning, for instance, he asks us to begin wrestling with these dense and challenging topics and invites us with a song to take a deep breath and slow right down.

One of the main themes Cox explores in the book is the idea of dialogical negotiation in contrast to monological inference. Dialogical negotiations, such as those used by the collaborative traditions, use a human-ecological approach, Cox says, that leads to humane solutions within context, while monological inference follows algorithms that are opposed to reaching consensus and instead seek the “smartest” solution. The former can lead to better living conditions for all. Because they focus on just one or a few goals for their “smart” systems, the latter, he argues, most typically only exacerbate the many problems that people face.

“The book is about figuring out what dialogical reasoning is and exploring how we might be able to put that into machines, including a set of principles and examples of how you would do it,” Cox says. “It is something that most people doing research in AI haven’t gotten very far with, in certain respects, because they just don’t have this idea that there is a second kind of reasoning. They grew up in a STEM educational system focused on sciences and they assume that rationality is what logicians do.”

Cox is excited to share and continue to have conversations around the themes he highlights in his book. In the fall 2022, he was invited as the keynote speaker for the 12th Annual NIC.brWorkshop on Survey Methodology in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In fall 2023, he gave talks at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, the Society for Human Ecology Conference in Tucson, Arizona, Quaker Earthcare Witness, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, and six other groups in Mexico including the Cybercrimes Unit for the State Attorney General’s Office in Yucatán.

Cox teaches courses in philosophy, peace studies, language learning, and artificial intelligence at COA. He is a cofounder and current clerk of the Quaker Institute for the Future. His books include The Will at the Crossroads: A Reconstruction of Kant’s Moral Philosophy (University Press of America, 1984), The Ways of Peace: A Philosophy of Peace as Action (Paulist Pr, 1986), and A Quaker Approach to Research: Communal Discernment and Collaborative Practice (Producciones de la Hamaca, 2014). As a singer/songwriter, he has also recorded a series of albums available at graycox.bandcamp.com. He blogs occasional pieces at breathonthewater.com. The music for his latest book as well as a Creative Commons version in PDF is available at www.smarterplanetorwiserearth.com.