Book launch for
Phoenix of the Seas, by Chester Brigham

The saga of the Gloucester schooner
Ernestina-Morrissey, State Ship of Massachusetts

The Cape Ann Museum is pleased to welcome author Chester Brigham to the Museum on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. Brigham will be reading from and signing copies of his latest book, Phoenix of the Seas (books will be available for purchase in the Museum Gift Shop). This program is free for members or with Museum admission.

Phoenix of the Seas recounts the journeys and travails of the Ernestina-Morrissey, State Ship of Massachusetts. The schooner, repeatedly written off as doomed, is now undergoing complete restoration thanks to a combination of state and private funding,

The Ernestina-Morrissey’s story is one of wide-ranging maritime adventures, lived by a remarkable cast of captains, crews and voyagers. Launched in Essex in 1894, she sailed to the Grand Banks from Gloucester for cod in the 1890s, voyaged to the Arctic every year for almost two decades on scientific expeditions, served under both the U.S. Army and Navy in the Arctic during World War II, crossed the Atlantic a dozen times as a packet ship, linking Cape Verdean-Americans in New England with family members on their home islands, then back in America under sail out of New Bedford she was a floating schoolroom where boatloads of school children learned about the wonders of their ocean environment.

Behind it all has been the ship’s indomitable spirit, sensed by all who have sailed her: Gloucester fishing captains Bill and Clayton Morrissey, Arctic navigator Bob Bartlett, Henrique Mendes on Cape Verde, round-the-world captain Dan Moreland. And by those whose lives she has touched: dory-trawling fishermen on the Grand Banks, hardy field scientists, Inuit hunters, GIs at remote weather stations, Atlantic islanders, volunteers who have sacrificed much for love of the ship.

Gloucester author Chester Brigham has written three other books relating to the maritime and cultural history of Cape Ann: On Opposite Tacks (2011), Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea (2007) and The Stream I Go A-Fishing In (2003).

Saturday, June 13, 7:00-9:00 pm
261 Main Street, Gloucester, MA

Join Eastern Point Lit House in welcoming local authors J.D. and James Scrimgeour for a special father and son reading of their work. There will be an open mic at 7 pm, followed by the Scrimgeours at 8 pm. Everyone is invited to read!

For more info: http://www.easternpointlithouse.com 

I am by no means a germophobe, but I have an issue with having anything on my hands….so I wash them all the time.  That having been said, I’m pretty tolerant about what I do with my bare hands…as long as I can then run to the sink and wash them immediately upon completion.  So, for example, I can change the classroom guinea pig’s cage with my bare hands…and then run to the sink.  I can help get a baby chick out of its pretty yucky membrane….and then run to the sink. I used to shovel herring into fishing totes and help dress tuna fish with no problem whatsoever…but, I was constantly running to the hose.

My dirty hand issue, however, has not trickled into my parenting ways.  While my boys are typically clean and neat…they’ve probably had more meals than not without washing their hands first.  Shudder…I know.  When they were babies I passed them around readily to anyone who was interested in holding them without asking, “Did you wash your hands?” first.  And, I never use hand sanitizer.  What’s more is that I swear that my boys are very rarely sick thanks to the mere fact that they have built up some pretty sweet immune systems by actually getting dirty…and sometimes relishing in those germs.  Sound strange? Maybe.

Likewise, I have little issue when the “five second rule” turns into a “10 second rule”…when the food in question has landed somewhere that I trust.  However, I have literally lost sleep thinking about the fact that our shoes sometimes have to suffer the reality of walking on FILTHY public bathroom floors….and then walk across our same carpets or floors at home.  I will never recover from the day that the boys were walking through some pretty heinous puddles on the floor of an unfortunately miserable public bathroom and then came home and immediately jumped on my bed…flip flops still on.  The horror.

So, last night, after doing some errands, I drove home past a pretty popular ice cream joint. Oddly for that hour, there were only two people in line. With the car in front of me turning into the parking lot, my eyes lingered on the pair just long enough to see one of them digging something nasty out of the bottom of his shoe (ok…that may be a bit of an assumption…but, how could anything stuck in the bottom of a shoe be anything BUT nasty?) And, then, just as I was about to look away…he stopped, reached up, and grabbed his newly scooped ice cream cone from the window…with the SAME hand.  I can’t even.

I spent the rest of my drive home thinking about where those shoes had been in their lifetime. My issue, not his. Maybe he doesn’t actually eat the cone?  That would make me feel better.