I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, POPS Saturday is one of my favorite days of the year! And this year was maybe my favorite year of all the years I have gone. On POPS Saturday, everyone seems to be in a better mood from the second they wake up in the morning because they are so excited for the evening’s festivities. On POPS Saturday, 7,000 people gather on Jetties beach with their picnics, beach chairs, family, and friends to enjoy a night spent together eating yummy food, singing, dancing and most importantly giving back to their community, specifically the Nantucket Cottage Hospital. As always, the Boston POPS orchestra comes over to the island to play a fantastic benefit concert for us. Along with the orchestra comes a guest performer and this year Nantucket welcomed an ABBA cover band called Arrival from Sweden! They were outstanding. If you closed your eyes, you would have thought it really was ABBA up on that stage. We just had the best time and I already can’t wait for next year. I wonder who the guest performer will be!
^^We spotted Tim in a crowd of thousands! How could you miss him?
^^Holly Finnegan of The Nantucket BlACKbook hosted the preshow and was kind enough to ask us to be her interviewees! She asked us what POPS means to us and Emily gave a beautiful response. She said that the Nantucket Cottage Hospital is everyone’s hospital. Whether you live on the island year round like she does, or you live on Nantucket in the summertime like me, or you are just vacationing on the island for a few days…the Nantucket Cottage Hospital is our one and only safety net. Everyone’s safety net. Without them, we would have to somehow get off island to the nearest hospital in the case of an emergency. We are so happy that we are lucky enough to have such a wonderful facility so close by. That’s why this event that supports the hospital is so important to us.
^^There we are on the big screen! Ah! Thanks for the pictures, Steve!
^^We had a cheese plate, some veggies and hummus, and my mom’s famous corn bean salsa dip to start.
^^Then, we had some fried chicken, orzo salad, and kale salad.
^^There was some flying fried chicken involved too!
^^And for dessert we had a variety of cookies and cheesecake in little mason jars! (Be sure to check out the recipe that will be posted next week!)
^^ To end the night, we watch fireworks light up the sky right above our heads. It’s pretty magical.
In last years post, I warned everybody that this event was not for the faint of heart with a disclaimer saying this:
**Warning: This event is not for the faint of heart. Preparation begins in the morning with cooking food. Then, around 3 o’clock you need to head down to the beach (and park about a mile away because streets around the concert are blocked off) to score a spot for a concert that starts 4 hours later. And then after the concert, you have to lug all of your belongings back to your car parked a mile away. But, it’s totally worth it!
Well, I thought I should let you all know that the boys take their jobs of staking out our spot very seriously. There is a written plan of attack and everything. They also spent all year looking for the perfect wagon to help them maneuver through the crowd and the sand. And they have found it! Here it is in all it’s glory.
^^Photo Credit: Tom Olcott
Thank goodness for those boys. What would we do without them?!
