Month: February 2013
The joys of life
Driving up to Belfast ME, 3 1/2 up and 3 1/2 back in one day is so worth it when all your grandchildren come running out of the house for hugs, laughing and calling our names. Just love it.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Towle’s Candy Shop
I was in your store a few weeks ago. I am looking for a picture with “Towle’s” candy shop located at 118 Main St. in Gloucester (now the site of Franklin Cape Ann). I believe my great-grandfather Ransellear Towle had the shop from around 1928-1948. I am hoping some of the Good Morning Gloucester readers will go through their old photos and be willing to share any of interest with me. I added a picture of him taken about 1914 and his obituary. I think the readers at the very least will get a kick out of the menu with the prices.
Thank you for your help!
Sincerely,
Deborah O’Brien
Essex, MA
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
World’s Greatest Mitten-Glove Design for Photographers
I am just crazy about this mitten design because of the handy flap, which when flipped back, reveals a fingerless glove. If you want to wear it flipped back all the time the button and loop closure keeps the flap securely in place. The mitten-glove even has a convenient separate thumb flap.
The only tweaking this design needs is a slightly bigger button and loop because when your hands are freezing, the small loop and ball button are a challenge to negotiate. For all the knitters who read GMG–these would be wonderful in a cashmere or alpaca blend and perhaps a pretty cable knit pattern.
The mitten-glove is a great design for photographers especially. When wearing gloves, I find it easy to accidentally press the wrong button or get myself into an unwanted mode.
Even with mitten-glove configuration, my pooch and I only lasted about ten minutes in the howling wind when we went for our daily afternoon walk yesterday—straight to the bottom of our hill (Pirates Lane at Smith’s Cove) and straightaway home. Sorry Rosie the Rocket, you’ll have to get your crazy energy out on our next walk!
North Shore Art Association
Pirates Lane at Smith’s Cove
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
March Brings A Variety of Concerts at Rockport Music
Check out all the action at Shalin Liu Performance Center (sent by Karen Herlitz)
March Brings A Variety of Concerts at Rockport Music
Rockport Music presents the highest quality of concerts and presentations year-round at the stunning, seaside Shalin Liu Performance Center. This March provides a variety of musical opportunities for people to enjoy—from classical to jazz to folk.
Classical Concerts
On Friday, March 15, at 8 pm, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra performs in its debut at the Shalin Liu Performance center with:
HOLST: St. Paul’s Suite :: PURCELL: Fantasias in 4 Parts :: STRAVINSKY: Concerto in D “Basle”
MOZART: Divertimento for strings in F major, K.138 :: Bartók: Divertimento for string orchestra, Sz.113
The East Coast Chamber Orchestra features soloist performers, principals in major American orchestras, and award-winning chamber musicians in a democratically organized, self-conducted chamber orchestra that thrives on the energy and camaraderie of classical music. Their fresh interpretations of new and old works have been received by standing ovations and critical acclaim from The New York Times hailing that, “The sound of the ensemble mixed the transparency and coherence of a string quartet with an orchestra’s warmth and heft.” To The Washington Post, “How did ECCO get such a huge sound from 17 instruments? These youthful players are helping form classical music’s future. Long may they ECCO.” The Washington Post Tickets: $39-$58
Classical guitarist Benjamin Verdery performs Sunday, March 17 at 5 pm. Described as “iconoclastic” and “inventive” by The New York Times and “one of the classical guitar world’s most foremost personalities,” by Classical Guitar Magazine, Benjamin Verdery is an internationally performing, prolific classical guitar composer with over fifteen albums since 1980. Chair of the guitar department at Yale University, he still tours internationally as well as records. Curator of New York’s 92nd St Y’s guitar series, he is a master of the serious art music of Bach, Janacek, and Strauss, but also blurs boundaries with his own solo acoustic interpretations of Jimi Hendrix. Tickets: $19-$34
Jazz, Folk, Pop, and World Music
On Sunday, March 3 at 5 pm, the Bill & Bo Winiker Sextet, a Boston musical institution, will perform at the Shalin Liu Performance Center. Bo and Bill Winiker were taught how to play music, and specifically jazz, by their father at a very young age. Now, over 50 years later, they have moved on to record with Billy Joel and perform with Aretha Franklin at President Clinton’s inaugural ball. With a repertoire of over 15,000 songs they cover for special occasions, they are also true jazz musicians. Fred Taylor, founder of Sculler’s Jazz Club, says Bill and Bo Winiker are, “…really underappreciated for their great jazz knowledge and performance.” Tickets: $15-$28
On Friday, March 8, at 8 pm, celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with the world-renowned Celtic ensemble Cherish the Ladies, the most sought-after Irish American group in the country. For nearly 25 years, the six-member, all-female group has been collecting awards and accolades from fans and critics worldwide, including the BBC’s Best Musical Group and Top North American Celtic Group at the Irish Music Awards. They have shared the stage with celebrated entertainers like James Taylor, Emmylou Harris, and The Chieftains. On their latest release, Country Crossroads, they teamed up with stars Vince Gill and Nanci Griffith; and their recording with the Boston Pops, The Celtic Album, led to a 1999 Grammy nomination. “The band brilliantly…exudes a tremendous joie de vivre and deep nostalgia.” (The Irish Times-Dublin) Tickets: $27-$49
Dubbed a “folk-rock goddess” by The New Yorker, singer-songwriter Catie Curtis performs on Saturday, March 9, at 8 pm at the Shalin Liu Performance Center. A Lilith Fair alum and former tour mate of Mary Chapin Carpenter, this urban-folk powerhouse is one of the best singer-songwriters recording today. Many of her recordings have been featured on episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, Dawson’s Creek and other TV series. “With a clear, deceptively gentle voice, she can turn on a dime and thrill the listener with unforeseen power and emotion.” rollingstone.com Tickets: $18-$32
HD Broadcasts
On Saturday, March 2, at 12 pm, Metropolitan Opera Live in HD broadcast of Wagner’s masterpiece Parsifal is aired live with interviews and behind-the-scenes insight. Jonas Kaufmann makes his role debut as the title character in Parsifal, conducted by Daniele Gatti and directed by film and opera director François Girard in his Met debut. Tickets: $20-$32
On Saturday, March 16, at 12 pm, the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD broadcast of Zandonai’s early 20th-century melodrama Francesca da Rimini returns to the Met for its first revival in more than 25 years, in Piero Faggioni’s production. Marco Armiliato conducts Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title role of a noblewoman who is tricked into marrying the brutal Gianciotto, sung by Mark Delavan, instead of her true love Paolo, sung by Marcello Giordani. Tickets: $20-$32
National Theatre of London presents People in a HD broadcast on Thursday, March 21, at 7 pm.
In this hilarious new play, celebrated playwright Alan Bennett (Madness of King George, The History of Boys) takes a stab at modern society by examining the consequences of a self-serving government that turns a once-dignified nation into a “captive market,” with its people “rebranded as customers… available for easier exploitation.” Through satirical social commentary, People offers up “classic Bennett comedy with a Downtown tinge” (Daily Express). Tickets: $22 Adult, $15 Senior
For ticket information and details on these and other 2012-13 Season offerings, please visit our website at www.rockportmusic.org. Tickets are also available through the Box Office at 978-546-7391 or visiting 35 Main Street, Rockport, MA. The Box Office is open Monday-Friday, 10am-4 pm.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
GHS GIRLS HOOP SENIOR NIGHT vs DANVERS OT WIN
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
WHY?
BECAUSE THEY TASTE GOOD!
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Abstract Origami
Each folded from a single sheet of paper following a regular geometric method. I am not sure who discovered these first; I discovered them independently back in the 80’s and published diagrams in the Origami Newsletter of the Friends of the Origami Center of America at that time. I also did a math-based science project about the one in the top middle while in high school; I showed that the spirals in the model are all based on the golden ratio.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Odds this guy gets laid within 30 minutes of shooting this video have to be what, like 1000%?
This guy is diabolical.
The old get your girlfriend a puppy the day she puts her old dog down from a heart tumor trick. Gets ‘em a hundred times out of a hundred. Well played sir. Well played.
Moral of the story?
Go down to Cape Ann Animal Aid and get you one of those cute cats or dogs, bring it home, surprise your girlfriend, get laid.
#Boom!
It’s just that easy.
PS: Shouldn’t I get a be getting Nobel or Pulitzer for this kind of stuff?
PPS: If I don’t get a Nobel or Pulitzer there shouldn’t there be a bevy of advertising firms straight up fighting to sign me at this point? I dare say there’s never been a more effective ad for Cape Ann Animal Aid in the history of Cape Ann Animal Aid.
PPPS: If the grandfather wasn’t sitting right there I would have said 5 minutes propped up on the dryer.
Just makin’ it rain cats and dogs up in this mother.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Community Photos 2/19/13
Anthony Marks Submits-
Hey Joey
I never knew there was a yacht club on Rocky Neck !
Anthony
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
The Latest From Charlie Carroll
Charlie writes-
Have finally caught up with all the Image Processing.
Have been concentrating on producing Images for my up-coming show and failed to keep up with what I gather on a daily basis…
Anyway… here’s the Link to two new gallery’s…
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Updated: If I Don’t Get The Answer To The “Why Aren’t The Windmills Spinning All The Time” Question I May Go Postal
Updated:
The following information is from Rick Johnson, Varian’s Facility Manager.
When winds at 7 miles per hour or less, the Varian turbine will not operate for economic reasons; when the wind speed is 56 miles an hour or greater, the turbine will shutdown for safety reasons.
“economic reasons” is incorrect. The turbine will not spin unless the wind is maintained at more than 3.0 meters/second (6.7 mph).
• The Varian turbine has also been down for the six week maintenance inspection that occurred a couple weeks back.
• We are also experiencing trouble with a couple of relays that are killing power to the turbine. We had service here last Thursday and yesterday working on the issue.
• The turbine can also be down due to icing being detected on the blades. It causes an imbalance and shuts the turbine down until ice is no longer detected.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I just assume there is a logical reason that the windmills aren’t always spinning on days when there is wind but for many folks it drives them up a wall.
What drives me up a wall is not that they aren’t all spinning all the time on windy days but what drives me up a wall is the people who constantly question why the windmills aren’t spinning all the time on windy days.
To my thinking, the people that spent the money, time and energy to get the windmills erected obviously want to generate as much power as they can from them. That’s a logical assumption, right?
So why would anyone complain when they are not spinning as if there is some conspiracy theory as to why they aren’t spinning? Do you really think the people that put up the money to build them are trying to withhold the generation of power from them for some reason?
One of these people is someone I may or may not be related to through marriage who asks the question every time we pass a windmill that isn’t spinning.
Another is one of my lobstermen who looks out the office window every day and gives me the update on how many are spinning on any given day.
So please, anyone with real inside knowledge as to why they don’t spin all the time when there is wind can you please enlighten me so the next time we pass one that isn’t spinning I can give the correct response to the conspiracy theorists out there who constantly harp on about it.
I’m not looking for guesses from ordinary citizens like myself. I’d really like someone from Varian, Gloucester Engineering or the iron workers union who actually knows the factual answer to why they aren’t spinning when there would be enough wind to turn them to enlighten us.
Please and thank you.
signed- Joey C
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
"The Marine Invasion Will Not be Televised! Changes in Gloucester Harbor" Presentation Thursday February 21st
"The Marine Invasion Will Not be Televised! Changes in Gloucester Harbor"
Please join us this Thursday evening, February 21st in the Gorton’s Seafoods Gallery at Maritime Gloucester for the final presentation in our series on Gloucester Harbor. Judith Pederson, Ph.D. MIT Sea Grant College will be the speaker. World reknowned marine scientists have been looking at Gloucester Harbor for invasive marine species over a number of years. Judy will share results from the 2012 Rapid Assessment Survey of Gloucester Harbor for Marine Invasives and Native Species. She writes "Human activities contribute to an accelerating rate of non-native species invasions that are a threat to resident populations and habitats. Yet our knowledge of how marine ecosystems are impacted is limited by few long-term studies and experimental data. With climate-related changes in coastal and marine ecosystems, we anticipate shifts of both native and non-native species northward in response to increased temperatures. In this talk we will explore non-native species in the Gloucester area and explore how communities have changed in response to both climate and human assisted invasions."
The event is free to the public. All programs are held at the Gorton’s Seafoods Gallery at Maritime Gloucester at 23 Harbor Loop. The program begins at 7:00 pm. For more detail about Maritime Gloucester’s winter programming go to http://maritimegloucester.org/visit/events.php.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Gary’s Chocolate Drizzle Bourbon Pecan Pie At Stones Pub Went Right To My Hips Yesterday
So I figured I’d get to the gym.
Do you see yourself as one of these types?
I saw a couple of glimpses of me at the gym in there and I’m not proud.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
LONE DOVE
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Mending the Nets
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
The sand Dunes at Wingersheek Beach
After Nemo the Dunes at Wingersheek tell a story of the ocean and the power of the waves.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Did You Know? (Eastern Point)
Eastern Point is the southern half of the peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern side of Gloucester Harbor. Without the peninsula, there would be no harbor. Eastern Point is about a mile and a half long and stretches from just north of Niles Beach to the Eastern Point Lighthouse and Dog Bar Breakwater, which are located at its southern tip.
The history of Eastern Point is both the history of shipwrecks and efforts to reduce their number and a history of the privileged class which settled and developed Eastern Point. Both facets of Eastern Point’s history are covered in detail by Joseph E. Garland’s excellent book, Eastern Point ( Beverly, MA: Commonwealth Editions 1999).
In 1728, during the heyday of the Commons Settlement in the Dogtown section of Gloucester, fifteen families lived on Eastern Point. After the Revolution, Daniel Rogers, a forebear of Joseph Garland, owned a large farm that took up most of Eastern Point. In 1844, Thomas Niles acquired this 450 acre farm, and in 1859, the “irascible” Niles, as Garland characterized him, won a state Supreme Court ruling barring the public from access to most of Eastern Point. This helped create a mystique of exclusivity for Eastern Point, which even modern visitors can feel as they drive through two gates to reach the lighthouse.
Development of Eastern Point as a vacation spot for the wealthy began in 1887, with the sale of the Niles farm to the Eastern Point Associates. The next year, construction began on what would eventually be eleven “cottages”, many of which can easily be seen today. The magnificence of the interior of these dwellings can also be experienced today by visiting “Beauport,” a 40 room house on Eastern Point designed and built by Henry Sleeper from 1907 to 1934. “ Beauport” is open to the public and operated by Historic New England, formerly The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. In 1892, the Eastern Point Associates went bankrupt, primarily because they could not provide an infrastructure on Eastern Point for the homes they were building. Perhaps the peak of Eastern Point’s caché as a vacation spot came in 1904 with the construction near Niles Beach of the Colonial Arms, a six story 300 room luxury hotel, which unfortunately burned down in 1908.
from http://myweb.northshore.edu/users/ccarlsen/poetry/gloucester/easternpointhistory.htm
During the summer while I am on Rocky Neck, walking Eastern Point is something I do often. It is a small area packed with so many lovely and interesting things to see. This montage only begins to touch them.
E.J. Lefavour
http://www.khanstudiointernational.com/galleryphotomontage2013.htm
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Excerpt from JoeAnn Hart’s Latest Novel FLOAT
Ten Bells’ doors opened at 5:30 a.m. so that dock workers could get a quick snort before work, or to offer amber consolation if there was none. In the past, and perhaps even into the present, the bar was known as a place where captains, short of men for some dangerous journey or another, would troll for crew, make them paralytic with drink, then carry them on board on stretchers and lay them out like corpses in the hold. And that was exactly how Duncan felt the next morning.
“Sassafras,” he croaked, without opening his eyes. Thanks to several more oyster shooters after dinner, Duncan had already reached his waterline by the time they left Slocum’s apartment, then he took more onboard at Ten Bells. Bottom shelf bourbon, $3.05 a shot. He’d ended up, somehow, fully clothed on the sofa in his office and woke to the sound of a rally outside his window. Annuncia’s basso profundo voice blared through a loudspeaker. “A clean sea is a profitable sea!” she shouted. It was 10 a.m.
He curled tighter into the ball he was already in and pulled his windbreaker over his head. He’d forgotten that he’d told her that she could launch her Boat Garbage Project from Seacrest’s loading dock today, but it was coming back to him loud and clear now. He had assumed she meant at the end of the workday, but of course, she would want to do it early enough to catch that evening’s news cycle.
The crowd started to chant, and the steady noise bore through his eardrums like seaworms. “Bring the garbage back to shore! Bring the garbage back to shore!”
Annuncia quieted them down and continued speaking. “We complain about the crap from outfall pipes and pollution on our fish, and then we throw our own garbage overboard. What’s up with that?”
The crowd emitted a low boo, and he could hear Wade’s voice leading the pack. Even though Annuncia was at the microphone, this project was really his baby. On Earth Day that spring, instead of cleaning beaches with the other volunteers, he decided to motor from boat to boat asking for garbage. When they saw how successful he’d been, a group of kids started making the rounds every weekend in a pedal-driven barge built from plastic water bottles, and it wasn’t long before some of the fishermen and pleasure boaters started to bring it in on their own. The problem was, as always, that there was no place to put it. Often the bags were just left on the docks at the mercy of the gulls and crows, and that meant debris scattered everywhere, on land and water. Annuncia hadn’t realized the extent to which everyone had been throwing their trash overboard before that. It was against the law, but they had to catch you first, and the ocean was a mighty big place.
Visit JoeAnn’s website to purchase your copy of Float.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Jenkin’s House No More
Intersection of Bass Ave. and Rt. 128
Davya Jenkins standing where her home of 25 years formerly stood. Coming in its place are three new homes. She was there to reminisce with friends–and shedding more than a few tears. Best wishes in you new home Davya!
Good Morning Gloucester 