Every year, hordes of volunteers and artists from my small town of Cambridge, N.Y. gather to produce a Christmas puppet show, starring local people and their children. Volunteers and town residents prepare a special breakfast, serve the food, work on the set, clean up.

It is amazing what happens all the time in my small town, it is a community-minded place, community still matters and it always a joy to see anything produced in the gorgeous old opera house in the middle of town, now the Hubbard Hall Art and Education Center. There are two Christmas breakfasts with puppet shows, both were sold out, as usual.

Above are the Hot Chocolate Dancers, doing a Christmas dance on the big old stage. (I am excited about my short staged play, “Last Day Of A Dairy Farm,” to be shown in Hubbard Hall in late January as part of Hubbard Hall’s Winter Arts Festival.