National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Jane Chu announced 89 awards totaling $6.89 million supporting projects across the nation through the NEA’s Our Town program. The Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Library is the lead organization for a grant of $50,000 to fund five cultural organizations in a project titled “Our Gloucester:  Discovering Who We Are Through the Arts.” The NEA received 274 eligible applications for Our Town this year and will make grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000.

“The arts reflect the vision, energy, and talent of America’s artists and arts organizations,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support projects such as Our Gloucester, to cultivate vitality in their communities through the arts.”

Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken adds: “We are excited and honored to be recommended for a prestigious NEA Our Town Grant. It will provide a great means of bringing all of our communities together to tell the Gloucester Story and to celebrate our diversity, our culture of tolerance and caring, and our heritage in fishing and the arts.”

Five cultural organizations will partner in helping the community of Gloucester answer the questions: “Who are we? What is special about Gloucester? and, What in our culture and heritage is worth protecting and strengthening anew?” The arts, with their power to probe and clarify the deeper truths in society, will be the vehicles for this search and reflection, through both ensemble performances and community-wide discussions. Each partner will engage a broad cross section of citizens through a different art form — theater, music, storytelling, and literature. The answers to these questions can help lay the groundwork for community development initiatives and investments based on the values and assets of “Our Gloucester.”

The partner organizations and their roles in the Our Gloucester project are as follows:

The Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library will present a speaker’s series focusing on innovation in Gloucester. The series will continue a rich tradition of speakers at the library since the founding of the Gloucester Lyceum in 1830.

The Gloucester Meetinghouse Foundation will present four weekend programs of music reflecting Gloucester’s diverse ethnic community at the historic Universalist Church.

The Gloucester Writers Center is planning three storytelling Fish Tales events, featuring Gloucester school children, ages 12–18; fishing, maritime, and schooner stories; and Gloucester neighborhoods.

Mosaic Gloucester is a large-scale community oral history and mosaic mural project. Launched with the support of the Gloucester Arts and Culture Initiative, the Mass Cultural Council, and Americold, Mosaic Gloucester will bring the people of Gloucester together to tell stories, make tiles, and create a visual depiction of Gloucester. The result will be a beautiful, large mosaic panel hanging in public view on Americold’s building at 69 Rogers Street.

The Folklore Theatre Company will bring together a collaborative playwriting circle of local artists and community members to craft a play centered around a historic meal of diverse Church members in Gloucester. Nine performances will take place in April, 2018.

The Gloucester Cultural Initiative, a new non-profit successor to the MCC-funded Gloucester Arts and Culture Initiative, the group which facilitated the Our Town grant application, will play the role of project manager for Our Gloucester.

For a complete list of projects recommended for Our Town grant support, visit the NEA web site at arts.gov.

To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, please use #NEASpring17.

A few video clips below to share of a couple of my favorite Novena songs.

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Happy Flag Day!  #oldglory

A little history from the www.usflag.org website…

The Fourth of July was traditionally celebrated as America’s birthday, but the idea of an annual day specifically celebrating the Flag is believed to have first originated in 1885. BJ Cigrand, a schoolteacher, arranged for the pupils in the Fredonia, Wisconsin Public School, District 6, to observe June 14 (the 108th anniversary of the official adoption of The Stars and Stripes) as ‘Flag Birthday’. In numerous magazines and newspaper articles and public addresses over the following years, Cigrand continued to enthusiastically advocate the observance of June 14 as ‘Flag Birthday’, or ‘Flag Day’.

On June 14, 1889, George Balch, a kindergarten teacher in New York City, planned appropriate ceremonies for the children of his school, and his idea of observing Flag Day was later adopted by the State Board of Education of New York. On June 14, 1891, the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia held a Flag Day celebration, and on June 14 of the following year, the New York Society of the Sons of the Revolution, celebrated Flag Day.

Following the suggestion of Colonel J Granville Leach (at the time historian of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution), the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames of America on April 25, 1893 adopted a resolution requesting the mayor of Philadelphia and all others in authority and all private citizens to display the Flag on June 14th. Leach went on to recommend that thereafter the day be known as ‘Flag Day’, and on that day, school children be assembled for appropriate exercises, with each child being given a small Flag.

Two weeks later on May 8th, the Board of Managers of the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution unanimously endorsed the action of the Pennsylvania Society of Colonial Dames. As a result of the resolution, Dr. Edward Brooks, then Superintendent of Public Schools of Philadelphia, directed that Flag Day exercises be held on June 14, 1893 in Independence Square. School children were assembled, each carrying a small Flag, and patriotic songs were sung and addresses delivered.

In 1894, the governor of New York directed that on June 14 the Flag be displayed on all public buildings. With BJ Cigrand and Leroy Van Horn as the moving spirits, the Illinois organization, known as the American Flag Day Association, was organized for the purpose of promoting the holding of Flag Day exercises. On June 14th, 1894, under the auspices of this association, the first general public school children’s celebration of Flag Day in Chicago was held in Douglas, Garfield, Humboldt, Lincoln, and Washington Parks, with more than 300,000 children participating.

Adults, too, participated in patriotic programs. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, delivered a 1914 Flag Day address in which he repeated words he said the flag had spoken to him that morning: “I am what you make me; nothing more. I swing before your eyes as a bright gleam of color, a symbol of yourself.”

Inspired by these three decades of state and local celebrations, Flag Day – the anniversary of the Flag Resolution of 1777 – was officially established by the Proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson on May 30th, 1916. While Flag Day was celebrated in various communities for years after Wilson’s proclamation, it was not until August 3rd, 1949, that President Truman signed an Act of Congress designating June 14th of each year as National Flag Day.

I’m not saying that they’re not around, but I am saying that this is the first sand dollar that I’ve found in Rockport.

Charters for Sail Boston –Tall Ships Event

Many of our on-the-water attractions are offering charters for the Sail Boston Event in June.  See below for details and links to book your charter today!

• 7 Seas Whale Watch – Tall Ships Sunset Cruise
• Cape Ann Whale Watch- Schedules & link to book
• Capt. Bill & Sons – Schedules & link to book
• Defiance Sail Charters – Private and group sails – call to book
• Frayed Knot Sailing Charters – Schedules & link to book
• Schooner Adventure – Schedule & link to book
• Schooner Thomas E.  Lannon – Schedules & link to book
•  Ardelle http://schoonerardelle.com/special-events.php