Year: 2011

That Ten Pound Island Light is an historic lighthouse in Gloucester Harbor that was built in 1881 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988?  Common lore says Ten Pound Island got its name from the amount of money the local Indians received from the early settlers for the property. Cape Ann historian, Joseph Garland, believed it was more likely named for the number of sheep pens (also known as pounds) on the island.

The actual light is 30 feet high with a focal plane of 57 feet above Mean High Water.  The island is open to private boaters, but there is no landing facility except a small sandy beach. The lighthouse is not open to the public and is best seen by boat.  It is an active U.S. Coast Guard aid to navigation, with the grounds managed by the City of Gloucester.

E.J. Lefavour

http://www.khanstudiointernational.com/did%20you%20know%20book.htm

Here’s a random post for you that doesn’t involve Rockport, festivals, home design, opossums, or any of my other favorite subjects for posting. It involves a question, one I have been pondering for quite some time now…

Why do so many people post about their family health issues on facebook? I’m not talking about using facebook as a convenient means of updating a whole bunch of people about an illness or accident. I mean updating everyone in your network with general musings about you and your offspring’s general state of health, usually a few minutes into your day.

A typical status update goes something like: “Feeling under the weather today. Hope I can get in to the doctor’s”.  Then, four hours later: “Feeling a little better. Took Tanner to his grandmother’s house and she gave me some Codeine she had left over from her last surgery. Yippee!”. Then, in another four hours: “Too sick to get up from the couch to make supper. Hope it’s just a 24-hour thing. Just grateful I managed to type in this status update with my aching flu-ridden fingers.”

I realize these examples are a little…over the top. And I realize I could just avoid reading these status updates, and I realize that one could question pretty much everything people choose to post on facebook. But — as far as I’m concerned anway — I understand updating people on major events, posting photos from the school concert, a vacation, et cetera. But providing all of your friends, family, colleagues, old boyfriends and that girl you knew for a few months in the 5th grade with a blow-by-blow account of your physical ups and downs — with a brief narration of taking your kids to the doctor thrown in for good measure? This something outside my range of comprehension. Which might speak to my limitations, and, if so, I’m sorry, facebook friends. I will try to be more sympathetic.

And on that note, I thought I’d let all the readers of GMG know that I’m sort of feeling like I have a cold coming on. I’ll let you know how it goes.

That the Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial (also known as the Man at the Wheel statue) is a tribute to the more than 10,000 Gloucester fishermen who have lost their lives at sea over the centuries and a reminder that fishing is our country’s most dangerous occupation? The statue is the work of sculptor Leonard Craske (1877-1951) and is based on a 1901 painting by Gloucester artist A.W. Buhler.  It is an 8-foot-tall bronze statue positioned so that the fisherman is looking out over Gloucester Harbor. The fisherman in the sculpture was modeled after Capt. Clayton Morrissey, a prominent Gloucester fisherman, once the captain of the Effie M. Morrissey.  A small plaque on the north or street-facing side of the base reads, “Memorial To The Gloucester Fisherman, August 23, 1923.” A larger recessed panel on the harbor-facing side of the base holds an inscription of bronze letters taken from the Bible’s Psalm 107:23, which reads: “They That Go Down To The Sea In Ships 1623-1923.”

I know that everyone in Gloucester knows this, but there may be some GMG readers out there that don’t.

E.J. Lefavour

http://www.khanstudiointernational.com/did%20you%20know%20book.htm