My View of Life on the Dock
GloucesterCast Podcast Taped 4/26/13 With Host Joey Ciaramitaro and Guest Brianmoc
Click to listen- 
Topics Include: Web Design For Mobile, Being A Local Politician, Local Gas Prices, Self Serve vs Full Serve, Flanagan Square Gas Station, Skip Montello
Check Out www.brianmoc.com
Dinner Dealer guru Jessica Brand writes-
You’ve been driving by it day in and day out, waiting patiently for the "season" to start. Well, it’s here folks! Riverside Bistro is officially open for business. Nestled along the Essex River, you get an unadulterated view of the landscape (arguably the best on Rt. 133). Go for the drinks. Go for the food. Go for the vista. Go for the sunset. Seriously, what more could you ask for? Dinner Dealer is proud to offer a $10 off coupon to the Riverside Bistro — and it’s valid on weekends too!
Here’s what you should do . . . Call up some friends and make reservations for 6:30 p.m. on the deck. Bring your Dinner Dealer coupon with you. Order the individually crafted mojitos along with their new coconut shrimp appetizer (with the mango dipping sauce). If fresh mojitos aren’t your cup of tea, their Professional Mixologist can design a specialty cocktail to your liking. Their Cruzan (infused rum) drink list is killer.
As you and your loved ones enjoy the ultimate Riverside Bistro dining experience out on the deck with the boats going by, let the beauty of the sunset take your breath away. Pause, and savor this moment.
Riverside Bistro • 112 Main Street
978-890-7019 • www.facebook.com/RiversideBistroEssex
Don’t have a $10 off coupon to Riverside Bistro yet?
Jump online now, and get your Dinner Dealer deck of discount cards • www.DinnerDealer.com
Dine Out. Dine Local. Dine Often.
Hi Joey,
Long-time fan of the blog, infrequent commentor and Captain Joe’s customer here. I’ve contacted you a few times before….
As part of Earth Day Clean Up week my husband Sam & I are going to pick up some bags tomorrow morning at Stage Fort Park and try to make a dent in the atrocious amount of litter along Thatcher Road. We’re going to start at our house around 9 am (couple houses down from Rockport line) and work towards the corner of Thatcher Road and Barn Lane. We’ve got afternoon plans, but hope to get in 2 hours or so of pick up.
I was hoping you might be able to share these with the GMG community. Maybe some of the other folks that live in the area will join in! We’re going to try to get 4 to 6 bags. If anyone is interested, I’ll be the person in the reflective vest picking up litter while trying to avoid being hit be a car!
Cheers,
Erin Rulli
Fred Bodin Writes-
Good lighting is of prime importance to an art gallery, and here at Bodin Historic Photo lighting burns huge amounts of electricity. I have 36 track and ceiling lights in the showroom and windows, and each used a 75 watt halogen spotlight. Do the math, and that’s 2700 watts burning 7 days per week, 8 to 10 hours a day. About ten years ago I experimented with CFL fluorescent lights, which use less energy and last longer than the halogens, but produce an ugly green or blueish light. CFLs made my artwork look awful, so I stopped buying them.
Five years ago I jumped on the LED bandwagon, which promised large energy savings and a 10 to 20 year bulb life. But the light’s color still wasn’t right: either too pink or too cold white (like a hospital OR). Last year I found the perfect LED: the GE PAR 30 2700K warm floodlight. I use the long neck version because of the size of my fixtures. I discovered this light at ACE Hardware for about $50. They also have a larger version (PAR38) for recessed ceiling lights: GE Dimmable 12W LED Bulb (66529) – LED Light Bulbs – Ace Hardware. As my halogens and CFLs burned out, I replaced them with my new favorite LEDs.
Last year I found the same LED product at The EFI Mass Save Catalog Product Offer | GE LED PAR30 for $35 each. So I ordered 6 of them and now have 10W LEDs in 21 of my 36 gallery lights. My electric bill is already drastically lower, dropping from $100–$120 per month down to $50–$60 per month, saving $600–$720 per year. The savings will be 85% when all of my fixtures are re-lamped with LEDs. (360 watts with 10W LED vs 2700 watts with 75W halogen). Below are some comparisons.
Halogens: GE 75W halogen warm spotlight: $15–$20. 1,500 hour life (vulnerable to vibration**). Dimmable. $9.03 operating cost per year.
LEDs: GE 10W LED warm floodlight. $35–$50. 25,000 hour life (not vulnerable to vibration**). Dimmable (check dimmer compatibility). $1.20 operating cost per year.
*CFLs: Not a contender because of the yuk color. **Vibration is a major cause of failure for filament bulbs, such as halogens, and is caused by shipping, handling, or a rockin’ party.
My advice: Come into my gallery and see the LEDs first hand. Buy one or two LEDs with the warm 2700K color balance to fit your light fixtures. Compare the color with what you’re using now. Then start re-lamping and saving money!
Here’s my favorite LED, lit by the same LED in my gallery track light.
Dear Joey,
Fans of C. B. Fisk might be interested in the time lapse photography of our
recent installation at Indiana University in Bloomington. It is an
instrument we built in the 1980’s in California in a concert hall that the
client built onto the back of his house. He died a couple of years ago and
we were asked to find a new home for the organ. Last year we disassembled it
and moved it to Indiana where it’s been in storage waiting for preparations
to Alumni Hall to be completed. I went out in March with a crew of five and
we worked 60+ hours a week for more than five weeks to put it all back
together. It’s 30 feet tall, weighs more than 30,000 pounds, and is the
third Fisk instrument at the Jacobs School of Music, which boasts the
largest organ department in the country. It has been a particularly
interesting project for me personally because the original 1987 project was
one of the first times I served as project manager. How fortunate I am to be
able to revisit some of my early work and see what has changed and what has
remained the same. I have a great job.
Here’s what it looked like in California, below, and what it looks like now
in Indiana. This the link to the YouTube time lapse video
shot by an IU student. Note the incomparable walnut carvings by Gloucester’s own Morgan Faulds Pike.
Regards, Greg Bover
Thanks to your support, next Tuesday at 10 am at Atty Deborah Eliason’s Gloucester office, the Rocky Neck Art Colony will purchase the former Christian Science Church. We have raised enough since last May to fund our $200,000 down payment. We will finance the remaining $250,000 with current owners Steve and Kathy Archer, and continue to energetically seek funds to reduce the debt in short order, pay for renovations, and fund our reserves.
We invite you to our ribbon-cutting/key passing/check-writing celebration at the Cultural Center between 6-8 pm on Tuesday April 30. I hope you will join us to celebrate this community investment for the cultural enrichment of future generations!
Yours,
Karen Ristuben
President
Rocky Neck Art Colony
Back on Sept 11, 2011 Karen Ristuben Explained The Dream that has now become a reality!
On Thursday, May 16th, from 6:15 to 8:30 pm, Karl’s Sausage Kitchen and European Market will be hosting a beer tasting event at their new Peabody location. The guest speaker will be Internationally known beer expert and author Horst Dornbusch. He has written for several publications, including All About Beer, Brewers’ Guardian, The New Brewer, American Brewer, and Ale Street News. He is a regular columnist for BeerAdvocate.com, and he has given public speeches and held tastings internationally in venues large and small.
Mr. Dornbusch will present an entertaining lecture, “Ten (Dirty) Secrets of German Beer,” as participants sample seven distinct German beers, including Altbier, Kölsch, Märzen lager, Urbock and more. Authentic German tasting plates will be prepared in Karl’s Sausage Kitchen to be perfectly matched with the wide variety of beer served. Mr. Dornbusch will highlight different beer varieties and explain to the participants why certain beers pair well with different foods, along with touching on the vast history of brew crafts.
Of the event, Mr. Dornbusch said “The guided pairing of German beer and food presented is a perfect choice. It showcases Karl’s Sausage Kitchen’s key strengths: a broad and authentic selection of both German beer and German delicatessen. I am happy to bring the relationship between the two to life in both theory and practice, by serving and explaining the characteristics of very different German beer styles, each matched with contrasting or complementary food”
Karl’s Sausage Kitchen & European Market is well known throughout New England for its authentic, old-world European sausages, cold cuts and smoked meats, made on the premises with the finest meats and spices. They also stock imported products jams, jellies, chocolates, cheeses, pickles, cookies and bread in their grocery. The move to the larger Peabody facility has enabled owners Anita and Robert Gokey to add a European Café, where customers can now enjoy sandwiches, grilled sausages, traditional German fare and imported beer and wine before stocking up on meats and imported goods to take home.
Pricing is 69.00 per person. Seating is very limited. Stop into the store or call Brooke at 978.854.6650 to purchase admission.
GloucesterCast Podcast Taped 4/25/13 With Host Joey Ciaramitaro and Guest Kim Smith
Click to listen-
Topics Include:
Spring, Planting, Mayor’s Poll On Good Harbor Beach Footbridge, Kim’s Black Swallowtail Butterfly Movie, Community Milkweed Planting Project, Kim’s Prius, Paul Morrison and Coyotes, Duckworth’s Bistrot, Craig Kimberley’s Bikini Speedo Dodgeball Premiere at The farm Bar and Grille, Feeling Like Your Live On Vacation In Gloucester
Hi Joey,
The verdict from the poll is in but it really isn’t as simple as saying, well 64% voted for the aluminum fix and 36% voted for the wooden fix so we’ll put up the aluminum span. As with just about everything, it’s way more complicated than that. If you would allow me to,
I’d like to share some of the feedback we’ve received and how we plan on proceeding from here.
In addition to the polling results, there have been many thoughtful email and Facebook messages and phone calls that have come through my office or DPW. An artist sent a picture of the beautiful Milton Avery painting of a couple walking across the footbridge. Another person sent a picture of what was thought to be the actual wooden bridge that washed away and into the marsh by Stop & Shop. Turns out, that was the section of the bridge that washed away in 2006!! This past winter it has moved into a position where it can be retrieved and DPW will remove it.
People sent links to other “synthetic” solutions, and links to other wooden bridge examples. And of course, your display today was beautiful. A lot of questions have come up as well, and I will do my best to answer them.
Cost is clearly a factor that is on people’s minds. $65,000 seemed to be outrageous for the wooden fix. That estimate is for an outsourced solution, i.e., not using our DPW.
The timetable seemed troubling to some people. We were required to go through a Conservation Commission review, and that takes a number of weeks in addition we had to wait to get the estimate and plan for the fix before proceeding to ConCom.
The way we put the poll out there, it wasn’t clear if we were talking about temporary fixes or permanent fixes. Basically, ConCom has said, “this is the last temporary fix (however we do it).” The city is encouraged to come back with a permanent plan that addresses the resource area, takes into consideration the structural integrity of the rest of the bridge, and perhaps is redesigned to withstand the types of storms and tidal surges we are experiencing. Neither choice in the poll addressed these issues.
Then the question of the Magnolia Pier came up. This is one of those quirky things about how our waterways are governed. The city has responsibility for the Good Harbor Footbridge, but the Harbormaster and the Waterways Board have responsibility for the Magnolia Pier!
And then of course, some people wanted the best of both worlds – New England charm and Yankee ingenuity which I take to mean a more cost effective solution that preserves the iconic character of the footbridge.
A couple of people suggested a “buy a plank” program where if you got married on the bridge or the beach, you could buy an engraved plank to help offset the cost of the repairs. Sort of like a memorial bench or brick program.
So – here’s what it’s come down to. DPW Director Mike Hale and I met today, and we’ve decided to use our DPW guys to do a wooden repair. I have directed him to retask some of his staff, order the materials and start immediately. While this will save the city about $60,000 it reduces the manpower that DPW can devote to all those other things citizens find important (which is why outsourcing was an attractive option).
We will formulate a Building Committee as required by the City Charter and pursue a permanent redesign. The Committee can take the time to go through all ideas, and do this right.
Joey, thank you for allowing me to pose the poll to the GoodMorningGloucester readers. Most importantly, I appreciate the spark of discussion and ideas that ensued.
Mayor Kirk
Heading down to take pictures and came face to face with this Coyote back in 2008-
Wow. Just wow. Perhaps Father Green Will Give Us More Details
Some interesting designs!
Click below to view-
I came across this in my grand dad’s glass plates..
I also have many shots taken ca. 1900-1908 of folks and a few of the Gloucester harbor…
My Grandfather was Edw Como, who for many years, sold men’s suits at the Empire Clothing Store and was a hobby photographer..
Thanks for all you do..
Eloise Como Brown, formerly of Beverly Farms and now in NCarolina..
Lowell Peabody submits-
I am sure this event was well covered by Father Green. I want to be sure he doesn’t overlook his part in the celebration of William Shakespeare’s 449th birthday. All the world’s a stage and he took it!!
Lowell
more info- www.catcollaborative.org
Greg Gibson reads from his new crime novel, The Old Turk’s Load
For Immediate Release
When: Wednesday, May 8th at 7:30 PM
What: The GWC and the Bookstore of Gloucester are sponsoring a reading by Greg Gibson. Gibson will read from his new crime novel, The Old Turk’s Load. Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings, had this to say of the new novel: “A marvel of Chandleresque plotting, with a deeply felt and utterly real ‘60’s setting and a heart as big as all outdoors.”
Who: Greg Gibson is a writer, publisher, a member of the Gloucester Writers Center’s Board Directors, and has been an Antiquarian book dealer since 1976, specializing in old and rare maritime books, documents, manuscripts and ephemera, and in the Literature of Cape Ann, about which he compiled a lengthy bibliography in 1978. His publishing house, Ten Pound Book Company, has published 30 books, including Vincent Ferrini’s autobiography Hermit of the Clouds and Peter Anastas’s Maximus to Gloucester. He is the author of Gone Boy (Random House), Demon of the Waters (Little Brown) and Hubert’s Freaks (Harcourt) as well as numerous small press publications.
Where:
The Harbor Room at 8 Norwood Court, Gloucester Massachusetts. To find out more about the Gloucester Writers Center visit http://www.gloucesterwriters.org.  To find out more about the Bookstore of Gloucester visit http://www.gloucesterbooks.com.
Hi Joe,
I was hoping you could help get the word out about a fundraiser we are holding at Espresso Italian Grille & Pub. It will be a pizza buffet on Monday, April 29th from 6-9:30. The cost of the buffet is $10per person and 100% of all buffet sales will be donated to the One Fund Boston. We appreciate any "shout outs" you can give to make this event a success.
Thanks So Much!
Espresso Management and Staff
The Five Wishes Program at the UU Church
On Sunday, May 5th, at 4:00 pm, the Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church on 10 Church Street (on the corner of Middle and Church) will host a showing of the Five Wishes film downstairs in the vestry. Ginny Cohen, RN, whose ministry is devoted to end of life issues, will lead a discussion afterwards. The Five Wishes is a Living Will that incorporates emotional and spiritual needs along with medical wishes. This document is a way for individuals and families to plan ahead in order to better cope with serious illness or accidents. This program is free and is open to the public. The Five Wishes material will be available for a small fee. For more information, please call 978-283-3410.
Mayor Kirk is asking for community feedback-
Hi Joey,
We have a bit of a dilemma regarding the Good Harbor Beach footbridge.
The estimate we have for repairs is $65,000. This is basically a temporary fix and carries the risk of being washed away during the next big storms. Also, the Conservation Commission is throwing down the gauntlet on any more temporary fixes.
An alternative would be to have the broken section be replaced with an aluminum boat ramp-like structure. It would have a synthetic decking, four feet wide with railings, and hook in on just the ends (no pilings necessary). Total cost of this fix is $20,000, the ramp would be made here in Gloucester by a Gloucester company, and could be finished within 3 weeks. It could be removed in the event of a hurricane as well.
So I gotta ask GMG readers, which would you rather?
New England Charm? ($65,000 wooden temporary repair)
Or
Yankee Ingenuity? ($20,000 aluminum repair on broken section, rest would remain wood).
Your readers probably photograph / paint this view more than most so we thought we’d start here to gather feedback.
Host Joey Ciaramitaro and Guest Fr Matthew Green Taped April 23, 2013
Click to listen-
Host Joey C and Guest Ed Collard Taped April 22, 2013
Click to listen-
Host Joey Ciaramitaro and guests Peter and Vickie Van Ness taped April 21, 2013
Click to listen-
Host Joey Ciaramitaro with guest City Councillor Melissa Cox taped April 20th, 2013
Click to listen-
Podcast Host Joey Ciaramitaro and guest Bill O’Connor taped April 18th, 2013
Click to listen-
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Hi Joey,
Here are some pictures of West Parish students planting salad greens as part of the first annual, district-wide salad planting day. What a great way to celebrate Earth Day!
Featured here are Ms. LaCoste’s and Ms. McKechnie’s classrooms. All five elementary schools participated–more pictures to come!
Thanks – Lara
Join us for a GREAT night of food, drinks and helping kids… can there be a better combo? Okay, maybe all of that on a tropical island, but a top notch distillery located on our little island isn’t a bad spot either!
Enjoy chef hosted interactive cooking demonstrationsof sustainable local seafood,
along with wine and cocktail tastings
Your evening includes heavy hors d’oeuvres by Turner’s Seafood, beverages including beer and wine, entertainment by DJ Tony, "Instant Wine Cellar" raffles and silent auction.
Cheers! Alexandra Lorenzano & Kathi Turner, event co-chairs
$65 per person, $75 at the door
Click here to purchase online or call 978-283-1700 to request tickets payable by check
Proceeds from the evening benefit the scholarship and financial aid programs of Eastern Point Day School.
Check us out online at www.easternpointdayschool.org.
Call us at (978) 283-1700 or email at info@easternpointdayschool.org
for information or to arrange a tour.
Good Morning Gloucester 