And hula hoops?! Thank you Garrett Coler, Sports and Recreation Director at the Cape Ann YMCA, for giving Good Morning Gloucester the scoop on the details. Sounds like something will be going on for all ages! From Garrett:
“This Saturday at Newell Stadium at Gloucester High the YMCA will be hosting a Family Activity Day where kids of all ages can come by and play pick up sports games with our staff as well as participate in parachute games, face painting, water balloon baseball and more. The event is free for all and will be followed up by a hula hoop show!
Come on down to Newell Stadium from 9:30-12 and join us! Parents welcome!”
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Enjoy a birds-eye vista of Gloucester. The Fiesta at St. Peter’s is to the left of the new Beauport Hotel, the former site of Birdseye, and the Greasy Pole to the right. Finding Fiesta from the next birds-eye vantage point is a challenge, but if you have keen eyes…
Look in this direction.
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On June 17th, the last day of school, the classic 17 piece Cape Ann Big Band hosted a Spring/Summer Concert at the O’Maley Middle School, A Swing Extravaganza. Listen to some of the songs in the clip below! The band was formed in 2010. The band leader for this super professional, top-notch, sought after band is Carlos Menezes Jr. He just happens to be the director of the O’Maley music department! Our students have access to astonishing and creative visual arts, performance,and music teachers. The members of the Cape Ann Big Band, Gloucester Education Foundation, O’Maley Band Parent Organization, Captain Hooks, Supinos, Paula Burns, and others are making this music happen to inspire the kids in our community.”80% of all ticket sales went to help fund new instruments and band room renovations at the Middle School.” Plus Cape Ann Big Band announced during the concert that they are donating those sweet stands to the music department.
Here’s two minutes of video snippets including classics Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and ‘S Wonderful with vocalist Katy Geraghty. You’ll hear a huge round of applause for Carlos Menezes Jr solo, and stunning vocals from Kate Barry, Scott Parisi and Nathan Seavey. I loved the rendition of “Me and Mrs. Jones” the 1972 song by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Cary Gilbert. My phone battery died so I didn’t grab from that song. I also missed the O’Maley Jazz ensemble who played a big set of 10 songs with many solos. They were incredible. Next time you hear that the school band or Cape Ann Big Band are playing a gig make it a point to see them.
The true one and only ‘Cat’ in Gloucester, Cat Barbagallo with the Sayess family, other parents and GEF helping out with fundraising.
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Overland employees from across the country cycle together for a summer leadership trip. Looks like a great group. Overland is based in Williamstown, and cycling started in Salisbury. They camped at Cape Ann Camp Site (see where to stay Gloucester). Photo op at Wolf Hill while they had a quick water break.
from their website: “Overland offers adventurous summer experiences worldwide for 4th to 12th graders”
Happy travels! Thanks for riding in Gloucester!
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Congratulations, Pauline! She is one of the inspiring women to be honored today at the State House in the 13th Annual Unsung Heroines Award from the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. Gloucester can watch it live on app Periscope at 1pm! This will be the first time the Unsung Heroines event is livestreaming, and the first time Pauline has been inside the State House.
Open the Periscope app in your phone or tablet. Search for “MassCSW” 1pm live feed.
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“Fishing is going to be our heritage and first priority,” Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said. But she added, “We’re moving forward.”
Kathleen Conti describes Gloucester Biotechnology Academy and Beauport Hotel as meaningful catalysts. In addition to the Mayor’s quote, there are comments and points of view shared by several: Sherri Zizik; Vito Giacalone; Gregory Verdine; Ken Riehl, Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce (nice quote); Lee Dellicker, Winhover Construction (Beauport); George Marsh (architect Gloucester Biotechnology). Oh, and the former Mayor of New Bedford, John Bullard. chimes in.
Other new businesses downtown beyond this article include goodlinens opening July 1, Jane Deering Gallery on Pleasant Street, the new bicycle rental shop, and Tonno restaurant. And there’s a new gallery coming to Rocky Neck. More on that later!
They paddled beyond the breaking waves to stop and watch the sunrise.
Surf and awe (technically known as rapid peace- is a lifestyle doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power of appreciation, and spectacular displays of force and beauty in nature)
Motif Monday.
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Gordon Parks, “Gloucester, MA. Frank Domingos kissing a vessel representing remains of a saint, during ceremonies at his father’s home…” Library of Congress
full title for the Gordon Parks photograph above: “Frank Domingos kissing a vessel representing remains of a saint, during ceremonies at his father’s home, part of the tri-annual fiesta of Pentacost. The celebration–including the chosing of an Imperator, and visiting, eating, drinking, and worship in the home, culminates in a parade and blessing by the priest–originated with ancient Portugeese fisherman, drought-stricken, who prayed for assistance and received it.”
John Hays Hammond with daughter, Natalie Hays Hammond. collection Library of Congress
Captain’s Courageous was published in 1897. “During the winter of 1897-98 I made another trip to South Africa, and on the same boat with me were Rudyard Kipling (Rudyard was named after a place where his father and mother first met), his wife, and his father, Lockwood Kipling, the artist. They proved excellent traveling companions and we have maintained our friendly contact ever sense.” – John Hays Hammond
John Lockwood Kipling and Rudyard Kipling
The Kiplings collaborated: the artist John Lockwood Kipling illustrated many of his sons’ books.
John Lockwood Kipling, The White Seal
Cecilia Beaux, portrait sketch of William Foster Biddle, Pennsylvania Academy Fine Art, gift of Sandwith Drinker (Biddle like a father to Cecilia)
William Morris Hunt, Prodigal Son, Brattleboro Library
Hunt purchased a former barn and adjoining carpenter’s shop in Magnolia. “…in three weeks the old, unsightly buildings were converted into a picturesque structure with galleries on the outside, one of them ending in a seat in an old willow-tree. The carpenter shop was turned into a studio, the chief light coming from the wide-open door…The barn was two stories in height, the lower portion being occupied by the van, a phaeton and a dog-cart, as well as by stalls for two or three horses. The upper room was known as the “barracks”, and half a dozen cot-beds were arranged around the sides, as seats by day and beds by night…In a single afternoon his celebrated Gloucester Harbor was painted, and he returned to Magnolia aglow with enthusiasm. “I believe,” he exclaimed, “that I have painted a picture with light in it!…Go out into the sunshine, and try to get some of its color and light. Then come back here, and see how black we are all painting!”
William Morris Hunt, Gloucester Harbor, 1877, MFA Boston
John Singer Sargent portrait of the artist’s father, Sargent House Museum
Family portrait: Isabel Manship, Sara Janet, Elizabeth, Pauline, John Paul, Paul Manship
Lee Kingman, Peter’s Pony, 1963, with illustrations by Fen Lasell
Leon Doucette, portrait of the artist’s father
Milton Avery 1933 drypoint (March, his daughter)
Winslow Homer captures the waiting and watching experienced by so many families in Gloucester. Homer’s father, Charles Savage Homer, left for extended start-ups: to California for gold, to Europe. Winslow Homer’s mother was a professional and gifted artist who raised three stellar boys solo, a lot. The Homer family remained tight knit.
Winslow Homer, Dad’s Coming, 1873, National Gallery of Art
Friday Nights at the A&P
By Ruthanne “Rufus” Collinson
When I was a kid
there were Friday nights to get lost in.
There was Mama
to take me shopping,
the smell of outdoors on her wool coat.
There was the A&P on Main Street,
the long spread out time
to wander the rolling floors
and smell the oranges and the coffee grinding.
There was no talking with Mama and me
She chose the food and I thought,
the long time of thinking away from Mama
in the A&P.
I watched the women
with heavy faces and deep frowns
weighing out their fruits
I thought about how bad they looked,
but I knew they didn’t want to die
because of the way they cared
about stacking the apples.
Sometimes I lost Mama and her sadness
but she would find me and take me
to the check out
where I picked up Daddy’s Pall Malls
and then stayed close to her wide sleeve
as we carried our lumpy brown bags
past Paul T. Reddy’s Dancing School.
I heard people dancing upstairs
Shadows in the window suggested music
and the end of time laid out like that.
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Worcester, the host city for the Ma Smart Growth Conference, is Massachusetts’ second largest city and pretty pumped with a 500 million investment in their ‘city square’ area. The city invested 8 million dollars into their ‘streetscapes’, including a skating rink. “10,000 came out for themed skate nights!” I’ve heard skating rink wishes mentioned once or twice in Gloucester: discussions pro I4C2 or somewhere on Middle Street (“a scene nearly Currier and Ives!”) and why isn’t the O’Maley skating rink used by the students? “We used to use it for gym? It’s an amenity right there.”
Other conference talks focused on investment in public space and public health. Worcester aims to earn the distinction Healthiest Community in MA by 2020. They have the first and only accredited public health department so they’re investing in a core culture. The conference speakers spoke about housing, planning, walk-ability, return of multi-generational family households, and diversity. Millennials say: “Where do I want to live?” and then go. Their parents’ said “Where is the job?” and relocated. We were told many times that millennials are different than boomers: they don’t like traditional offices and buildings for work. They would rather walk, bike or commute by train. Ideally their life radius would fall within one mile, a neighborhood scale. How does that affect consolidating schools vs neighborhood schools and other debates ensued.
From a planning perspective: “Does the investment action help to encourage sprawl or does it invest in your community?”
The session “Is Housing a Municipal Budget Buster” was led by Mayor Donna Holaday of Newburyport and panelists included former Gov. Glendening and Umass Dartmouth Director of Public Policy, Michael Goodman. Most questions went to Mike Hogan, who gave a talk about Oceanspray’s residential venture in Plymouth, Redbrook Village. Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce brought him here to speak to our communities a couple of years ago. He said to say hi to Peter Webber :).
The second session I attended focused on arts and planning and was led by artist (ceramicist) and planner, Jennifer Erickson with Kenneth Bailey, Design Studio for Social Intervention (D24SI) and others. A projected slide loop featuring model national art projects scrolled continuously. I was so caught up in the briefs that I nearly missed one picture from Gloucester: the monumental Parsons Street mural by James Owen Calderwood. Congratulations James!
Cruz Ferreras took the photograph during a block party; there’s a Cape Ann Art Haven painting in progress and kids leaping. Since that photo, street lighting and more art was added, a second monumental mural, painted by children, under the direction of Cape Ann Art Haven. The Gloucester Fish Net mural was a temporary commission that is lasting because the road is primarily used for walking. (Also, the artist painted it over a second time, and widened it.) With funding, Cape Ann Art Haven art center or an individual artist like Jason Burroughs (who assisted James Owen Calderwood) could re-paint the mural. With funding and fresh sealcoating, we could issue a Call for a new work of art. There are several more walls along Parsons Street that could be a wonderful matrix for murals, or the streetscape for a dance or theater production.
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Pauline Bresnahan shares a screenshot–and a Save the Date 11/26/16 Thanksgiving Pop Up @ The Hive
Will you look at that? An original portrait commission because of the 2015 Thanksgiving Pop Up Fair at the Hive where we featured local younger artists! You can find out more about the artists and see examples of their work on the young artist directory of the Hive website. Which reminds me–artists send in your updates!
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A rare Edward Hopper drawing of East Main Street, Gloucester, is part of a comprehensive exhibit, “Marks of Genius”, masterpieces from the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) through June 19th. These wonders of process traveled to the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan before Raleigh. The next stop will be the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. The Hopper is featured at every venue, and so is Gloucester.
The NCMA installed the drawings in their largest special exhibition space by subject rather than chronologically, the design choice of other venues.
How do I know? Exhibitions Assistant, Margaret Gaines, was kind enough to share details and photographs of the museum and its beautiful Meymandi Exhibition Gallery in the East Building so that we could all armchair art gawk. (I smiled when I read that East Main Street is in the East building of this East coast museum.) “Gloucester” is written on the museum label along with my research and color photograph.
Here’s another photograph pulled back to compare the house with the Hopper sketch and choices.
“American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isle of Shoals”is up at the same time.Childe Hassam has Gloucester and Massachusetts ties, but I didn’t ask to see pictures of that exhibit. Though “Marks of Genius” won’t be coming any closer to Massachusetts than North Carolina, the Hassam show is coming to the Peabody Essex Museum on July 16th, 2016. The North Carolina Museum of Art partnered with PEM. I wouldn’t miss it.
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You may have been reading about Design Museum Boston‘s exhibit because there has been so much advance press and articles about play. The show opened last week at the Boston Society of Architects venue and will be on view all summer. I’m not sold on the term ‘playscapes’ but I’ll definitely see this exhibit. I’m expecting plans and ideas rather than actual playground equipment. There’s a party favor: a playground passport your kids can leave with as they head out to play for real in Boston parks.
A trending topic the show may cover is the idea of opening up all those schoolyard playgrounds for use by the community when the schools aren’t using them– at night, off days and hours. Here’s a recent article making the rounds from the Atlantic Monthly magazine and the trailer from the documentary The Land.
A cemetery budget is no walk in the park (and neither is a cemetery)
Swinging wildly through the stages of life: historic cemeteries, ‘gardens with graves’, are inspiring multi use discussion of a different sort. Cemeteries established in the 1800’s were rolling landscapes, beautifully designed to welcome the general public. Massachusetts’ first one:
“Mt. Auburn is more like a park than a crypt. It is 175 acres of winding paths, dignified trees, whispery breezes, and shimmering lakes. The land, called “Stone’s Wood,” used to be beloved by Harvard students as the perfect place to take respite from the bustle of 19th-century life, and the Cemetery was created in 1831 to ensure that the growing cities of Cambridge and Watertown would not envelop the forest’s beauty. The founders were successful in their efforts.” read more from this Harvard Crimson article.
In Gloucester, renewed attention for care in several cemeteries is under way. Sign up for the Oak Grove cemetery tour June 25th or July 2 to learn more about one of our own ‘Mt. Auburns by the sea’. The tours will be led by Courtney Richardson.
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A draft of the coveted 10 year master arts and culture plan for the City of Boston dropped in May a dud, despite– or because of –its $1.2 million price tag. There’s a lot of pressure riding on Boston Creates final report, postponed until this coming Friday, June 17th. Boston is not alone in its struggles over funding and competing demands. Boston Creates and the ‘Art Czar’ fever did contribute to a climate of planning mana mania that found its way into Gloucester and other cities and towns. Boston Magazinewriter Patti Harrigan profiled the year of Boston Creates, warts– no all in the article, “Boston’s Creative Crisis”:
“Marty Walsh’s $1.4 million Boston Creates plan was supposed to turbocharge the city’s arts scene. A year after its launch, are we ever going to get anything other than a series of kumbaya sessions and generic platitudes?”
She does a good job covering some of the reasons. I can add more. Another perspective was an op-ed piece penned by Clara Wainwright for the Boston Globe. You may know her work with the celebrated 1998 quilt series: “Protecting the Oceans That God Has Created,” by Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association members including Lena Novello, Angela Sanfilippo, Fino Sanfilippo, and Nina Groppo. I am confident you have heard about another iconic project she established.
First Night founder and artist with Gloucester ties, Clara Wainwright, weighs in on Boston Creates. Her column “A Way Forward for Boston Creates” was published on June 2, 2016, excerpt below:
“Members of the arts community are praising Mayor Walsh’s Boston Creates, a 10-year master plan for the city’s cultural life, but are concerned about funding. The result of interviews with leaders of large and small arts organizations, and of community brainstorming in Boston’s neighborhoods, the Boston Creates report was directed by Julie Burros, the Mayor’s new cabinet-level chief of arts and culture. In presenting a draft of the report (the final is due to appear June 17), Burros pointed out the broad, rich scope of the plan, but warned that there was minimal funding to carry out some of its goals. I was again reminded of the recent Boston Foundation report that placed Boston last of 10 major cities’ support for the arts. Why such a sad warning, when Boston’s arts organizations and artists have been so clever and resourceful over the years?
In 1970 the Institute of Contemporary Arts invited city agencies and community organizations to come up with projects. The parks commissioner wanted a huge bell on Boston Common, which children could ring by swinging on its rope; a community health center wanted a mural for its waiting room. Artists were invited to choose one of many project ideas or submit a dream of their own. A large array of their ideas were exhibited in City Hall, which then had an art gallery. Mayor White’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the city’s financial community were encouraged to fund those selected. Boston Gas saw Corita Kent’s proposal for a billboard and commissioned her to paint a mural on one of its tanks.
Currently, Artists for Humanity provides instruction and small salaries to 200 high school students in a state-of-the-art building in South Boston. Zumix gives East Boston children musical instruction, the opportunity to perform, and a recording studio and a radio station. Both organizations were initiated by dynamic young women in the 1990s on minimal budgets. Some of their funding today comes from corporate commissions for murals, graphic work, and performances.
Here’s a map of the Gloucester hotels, motels, resorts, bed and breakfast and you name it lodging that I whipped up in 2014 when I was serving on the tourism commission. I was curious where all these places were in relation to downtown. Laura Dow of Vista Motel and Laura Baker of Castle Manor Inn booked very full dance cards for us: two days of back-to- back lodging tours (any that signed up), speed dating style. Conclusion: there are great places to stay to suit anybody’s needs and preferences. I included some that we did not see.
This year, I added Beauport Hotel — which can handle a 400 person conference capacity!
Other news this year: Vista Motel has a new pool; Cape Ann Marina Resort initiated Boatsetter (‘Uber on the water’) and… send in updates and I’ll add it to the post.
Cape Ann SUP (Stand Up Paddleboard ) is right in there by Beauport and Long Beach for visiting guests.
embedded below
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Congratulations Gloucester’s Mark Nestor. Last year it was GMG Joey Ciaramitaro, “longtime co proprietor of Captain Joe and Sons Lobster Company in Gloucester and the creator and driving force behind the blog GoodMorningGloucester.”
read more about the four 2016 winners from the Gloucester Daily Times article:
Great reading at the library on Thursday. Mila and Tessa, two O’Maley awardees, prerecorded their winning entries as they were on a class field trip on the Lannon. Justine Vitale photo captured one of the great moments after a student reading and Mayor Theken’s reaction.
Congratulations!
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The Book Store 61 Main Street in Gloucester is readying for an upcoming Sebastian Junger author event that they’re hosting, and Fiesta!
They have filled one of their windows and the walls behind the check out counter with Alice Gardener’s art. Super-star selling author of War and The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger, will be in town with his new book The Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging on June 21, 2016, 7pm. Note the venue for the book reading as it will be held in the Amvets on Prospect Street rather than the Book Store in order to accommodate more guests.
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Good Morning Gloucester 