Month: August 2012

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If you haven’t already, meet Eric Smith, who moved here from Westland, MI and started his new job as Gloucester’s Fire Chief on July 16.  And he’ll now know all there is to know about Gloucester once he subscribes to Good Morning Gloucester.  Welcome Eric, very nice to meet you.  

 E.J. Lefavour

www.khanstudiointernational.com

Look at who got the last two!!!

Only small jars left….still a great time to be had!!

The streets of Manchester by The Sea are setting up for a great festival today!! Lots to do on Cape Ann.

Entering The Harbor

Dogtown Poetry Lecture at the Cape Ann Museum

The Cape Ann Museum is pleased to present "Marsden Hartley and Charles Olson: Two Poets of Dogtown," on Saturday, August 11 at 1:30 p.m. Peter Anastas, Gloucester writer and president of the Charles Olson Society, will discuss how painter and poet Marsden Hartley and poet Charles Olson were inspired by their encounters with the wild center of Cape Ann. This program is free for Museum members, $10 for nonmembers (includes Museum admission). Reservations are required, call 978-283-0455 x16.

This lecture is offered in conjunction with the special exhibition Marsden Hartley: Soliloquy in Dogtown, on display at the Cape Ann Museum until October 14, 2012. Peter Anastas wrote the essay Marsden Hartley: Painter as Poet for the exhibition catalogue. In it, he declares that Marsden Hartley is the only significant twentieth-century American painter who can claim equally to be a writer of poetry. In his illustrated talk on August 11^th, he will compare Hartley to Gloucester poet Charles Olson, who was also inspired by Dogtown.

Peter Anastas was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1937 and attended local schools. He holds degrees in English from Bowdoin College and Tufts University. Among his publications are Glooskap’s Children: Encounters with the Penobscot Indians of Maine (Beacon Press), Landscape with Boy, a novella in the Boston University Fiction Series, At the Cut, a memoir of growing up in Gloucester in the 1940s (Dogtown Books), Broken Trip, a novel of Gloucester in the 1990s (Glad Day Books), and No Fortunes, a novel set at Bowdoin in the 1950s (Back Shore Press), along with fiction and non-fiction in Niobe, The Falmouth Review, Stations, America One, The Larcom Review, Polis, Split Shift, Cafe Review, Sulfur, Art New England, Architecture Boston, and Process. Anastas is also the editor of Maximus to Gloucester: The Letters and Poems of Charles Olson to the Editor of the Gloucester Daily Times, 1962-1969 (Ten Pound Island Books). He also writes frequently on his blog “A Walker in the City.”

Funding for this program was made possible through a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which promotes excellence, access, education and diversity in the arts, humanities and interpretive sciences, in order to improve the quality of life for all Massachusetts residents and to contribute to the economic vitality of our communities.

The Cape Ann Museum is located at 27 Pleasant Street in Gloucester. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The Museum is closed during the month of February, on Mondays, and on major holidays. Admission is $10.00 adults, $8.00 Cape Ann residents, students, and seniors. Children under 12 and Museum members are free. The Museum is wheelchair accessible. For more information please call: (978) 283-0455. Additional information can be found online at www.capeannmuseum.org.

An open letter to the person who stole my rear bike wheel at the Gloucester Train Station yesterday:

Dear Douchebag;

So, I stepped off the train yesterday to find you had run off with my real wheel. Really, Douchebag? Really? I was coming home from work… wait, I should explain. Work is this thing I do- It’s sort of cool. I go into Boston and do interesting stuff with technology and science and then they pay me money so I can buy the goods and services my family needs. You should go to your local library and check out this whole “having a job” business, you will learn all kinds of neat things. Many of the most famous people in history, for instance, had jobs. The Roman Emperor Valarian, (253-360 AD) had one and so does Snoop (1971-Present).

As you do your research you’ll find that not everyone has a job all the time, but even folks that don’t have one usually find other useful things to do like volunteer or get additional training. Based on what your skill set is probably like maybe you could offer to serve as ballast on a ship or as a large, lumpy thing to put in front of a door to keep it propped open. The point is, doing most anything is better than just sitting around, though that in and of itself is preferable to making a public nuisance of yourself as you have done.

It’s important to note that I had to purchase this bike last September after somebody stole my previous one (the beloved Madeline) from the exact same place you took my wheel. You’d think I’d wise up and not park my bike there, but I sort of don’t have a choice, that’s where the locking station is. I secure the front wheel to the frame with that great big chain you probably noticed, but I didn’t think anybody would be enough of a massive pestilent ass-boil as to unship my rear wheel, detach it from the bike and stagger off as you did. But here you are, proving me wrong. I guess in some weird way that’s a kind of public service you’re providing, sorta. Maybe you should still try out for the doorstop job though, just to keep your eyes on the prize.

So its drugs right? Maybe I’m still in denial, but I just can’t imagine that any non-impaired human mind has the potential to be this profoundly lame. Though I don’t have much experience myself I hear from some of the musicians I like speak frequently about how much fun drugs are. One time I even got stuck on a bus in a snowstorm next to this guy who for some reason found it necessary to spend seven hours explaining the supreme excellence of various specific types in exquisite detail, so, I get it. Drugs are fun. I too enjoy a number of recreational activities such as reading, boating and electronics. But, key difference here my man DB, if at any time I find myself thinking, “I should commit a petty crime so I can make a circuit board for this hobby project,” I will drop my soldering iron and seek help immediately. See the difference?

And it was a petty crime, wasn’t it? That’s another key point. Besides obviously having nothing to do in the middle of the day than steal people’s stuff, you haven’t even put very much effort into being a criminal. You took the back wheel off an unattended bike at the train station. Not exactly Professor Moriarty are we? (your local library will have information as to who Professor Moriarty is and why that’s funny.) Cool criminals from literature typically live by an internal code that define an alternate, but rigidly defined morality. You, on the other hand, live by a large pile of scratched lottery tickets and empty Natural Ice cans.

Yeah, I know poverty is endemic and addiction is a disease. I’m Irish and I grew up in Lynn, I didn’t need a sociology course to teach me that. I have plenty of sympathy for people in need and have been in need myself. But my rear wheel and hub are not a loaf of bread. Most people are able to make their way, even in the face of extreme hardship, without resorting to nuisance crime. You, on the other hand, are the kind who not only does, but also who will do so in such a brazenly stupid manner as to have a number of witnesses call the cops on you. Way to go, Lux Loser.

The harshest fact is this: if you’d come up to me at the train station and told me that you needed a rear wheel, I probably could have gotten you one (and one not one drilled out for Schrader valves with that goofy trailer-hub I have one there. Good luck figuring that out!). I have three of them at home; I know a bunch of people who have spares. People help each other out like that all the time. Dude, I got like ten emails after I posted the picture of my wheel-less bike on Facebook offering me a new one: “Just go take one out of my garage” said a friend on vacation in Utah.

In summary: A). Your life has become a waste of time and energy for the rest of us. B). This could be ameliorated somewhat if you were to find some useful task, like being dragged on the end of a line behind a boat to serve as bait for the shark over in Truro. C). You are even bad at crime. D). You gargle dog testicles.

Thank you,

Jim