We want to thank all our wonderful “friends” who donated, sorted or purchased books over these past 10 years since we opened for business. Our Friends Book Shop will be closing temporarily for the renovation of the SFL Monell Building and Annex, which is tentatively slated to begin in early 2023 and reopen again in 2025.
Here are a few key dates to keep in mind.
June 15 Book donations will no longer be accepted.
July 1-31 Bonanza book sale will be held – 50 % off all books!!!
Mid -August Book Shop will cease operations until the SFL reconstruction is completed in 2025.
Please stop by the Book Shop to stock up on your summer reading while we still have an abundant supply of “gently used books”. We appreciate your many years of support and look forward to seeing you in our new library location in 2025. If you have questions, please email us at friendsofsawyer@gmail.com.
ARTIST RENDERING – FUTURE BUILD
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
The Cape Ann Y is launching their first ever all ages Performance Camp. This four-week performance camp for young people age 5 to 17 years old runs from June 27 through July 22 and culminates in two public performances of the classic beloved musical The Wizard of Oz at the Cape Ann YMCA at 4pm on July 21 and July 22.
Participants will have the opportunity to learn from theatre professionals in all areas of production including acting, music, dance and scenic, prop and costume design while developing self-confidence, communication and teamwork skills as they are introduced to the skills necessary for professional theatre. The production offers a wide range of roles for all actors to discover their creative potential and shine. Based on the classic novel and award-winning motion picture, The Wizard of Oz follows the story of Dorothy, a young girl from Kansas, as she travels to the magical land of Oz to find the true meaning of “home.”
Production Team Director: Harvard University graduate and award winning actress Gloucester’s Heidi Dallin
Music: West Parish Music Teacher, Gordon College graduate and accomplished musician Rin Wolter
Set, Costumes, Props: Tufts University graduate and Wellesley College Theatre Director Sarah Vandewalle
Choreography: Summerstage alum and Manchester Elementary School Teacher Tyler Garofalo
Stage Manager: Manchester native Emerson College graduate and Summerstage alum Jenny Hersey
Production and Choreography Assistant: Gloucester native and recent Dean College graduate is…Ts Burnham
“Many of you remember Ts as a longtime student of Heidi Dallin and the daughter of Holiday Delights choreographer Carol Burnham known for creating the Holiday DelightsNutcracker Football Dance! I’m so excited to have Ts on the team this summer! Plus other special guests!”
Contact Camp Director YMCA of the North Shore Theatre Specialist Heidi Dallin for more information: Email: dallinh@northshoreymca.org Phone: 978-729-1094
Heidi Dallin | YMCA of the North Shore Theatre Specialist
The individual signs for the Class of 2022 students lining the boulevard are alphabetized A-K on one side of the Fisherman at the Wheel and L-Z on the other.
Teachers on the left of the 50 yard. Students on the right. Docksiders in the back at the left.After receiving diploma, each student progressed down an aisle lined by their awesome Gloucester Public School district teachers!
Love the customized scoreboard
Caps!
Beautiful diplomas sponsored by Cape Ann Savings Bank
Great notice and wonderful Paul Bilodeau rehearsal photos in the Gloucester Daily Times today! Performances this week on Thursday, June 9, and Friday, June 10, at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are FREE but reservations necessary dbiondo@gloucesterschools.com
Plum Cove Elementary School: Spring 2022 musical performed by 4th and 5th grade students under the direction of Heidi Dallin. The photo caption notes Miss Hannigan played by Evelyn Taplett and Annie played by Bianca Numerosi.
Can you remember an elementary school performance or arts educator*? Chances are if you attended elementary school in Gloucester, you can. Gloucester has a long, strong and colorful history of professional theater artists enriching community theater for young and old, and prioritizing arts education in area schools. It’s no surprise that East Gloucester Elementary School (EGS)– only blocks away from Rocky Neck and former sites of Atwoods’ Playhouse-on-the-Moors, Little Theater, and Bass Rocks Theater–included a theater and stadium seating for little ones right in the school. Productions have been mounted in all the schools, and evidence shows year round activity in some decades. Poets and playwrights, choreographers, industry professionals (stage direction, lighting, costume design, etc), and insiders engage and collaborate. Nan Webber inspired generations at the GHS drama department and on Cape Ann. Heidi Dallin has devoted 30+ years to youth theater development.
Congratulations to all involved with this Annie Kids production! Enjoy this magic time.
*note: I don’t, but I did not grow up here. A couple of early memories that come to mind are the children’s museum recycle arts and crafts shop (fill a shopping bag), and seeing the Fantasticks at Priscilla Beach Theater, Plymouth, MA, summer vacation ca.1972-74.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
We hope you can join us in Gloucester this summer for a great performance opportunity. We are launching The Cape Ann Y’s first ever all ages 4 week Summer Performance Camp. All participants(age 5-17) will be in a production of The Wizard of Oz at the CAY. There will be two public performances at the end of the final week.(July 21 and July 22 @ 4pm)
The camp will be led by a professional adult production team and participants will learn about all aspects of professional theatre and producing a show!
Heidi Dallin
Director: Gloucester native and award winning actress Heidi Dallin
Music: West Parish Music Teacher Rin Wolter
Choreography: Manchester Memorial Teacher Tyler Garofalo
Set, Costumes, Props: Danver’s Sarah Vandewalle
Stage Manager: Manchester’s Jenny Hersey
Production & Choreography Assistant: Gloucester’s TS Burnham, recent college graduate with a degree in theatre
Opening Reception on Saturday June 11th from 3-6pm.
Artists working in Gloucester, and more broadly on Cape Ann, have a unique vision of the promontory. What is their feel for our place along the sea? And how do they wish to present it to us, the viewers of their thoughts? Each exploration of light, land, sky, stone, architecture, industry, and countless other features is singular. There is communication between artist and place; and we sense, we hear, those conversations in their art. Participating artists include: Coco Berkman . Ann Conneman . Celia Eldridge . Paige Farrell . Erin Luman . Jeffrey Marshall . Adin Murray . James Paradis . Michael Porter . Christopher Pullman . Esther Pullman . Beverly Ripple . Caleb Hershey Rulli . Juni Van Dyke.
My interest lies in how artists living and working in Gloucester, and more broadly on Cape Ann, express their vision of the promontory. What is their feel for our place along the sea? As they encounter it, and closely observe it, how do they wish to present it to us, the viewers of their thoughts? Each exploration of light, land, sky, stone, architecture, industry, and countless other features is singular. There is communication between artist and place; and we sense, we hear, those conversations in their art.
The New York Times recently penned the phrase to see it all anew, an apt phrase that could easily have been the title for this show.
After giving the gallery to regional artists for their own exhibitions these past months, I am happy to be back at JDG for the summer season. Join me for this first show which celebrates seeing and hearing anew this place of home.
Jane Deering, June 2022
Gallery hours: Friday & Saturday 1-5pm; Sunday 1-4pm; and by appointment @ 917-902-4359 . 19 Pleasant Street, Gloucester. janedeeringgallery.com
photos: Poppies bloomed before lilacs in Gloucester, Ma. 2022 (Salt Island Road, Eastern Ave., elsewhere)
I wrote about the poet and his poem, In Flanders Field, in prior posts. Republishing excerpts with links:
“Veteran of the Boer War and WWI, a teacher, and doctor, Canadian John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields in the spring of 1915 while still at the bloody battlefront in Ypres, Belgium, in an area known as Flanders. The Germans had already used deadly gas. Dr. McCrae had been tending to hundreds of wounded daily. He described the nightmare slaughter: “behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed.” By this time he had already devoted his life to art and healing. He couldn’t save his friends. How could anyone?
Twenty years prior, he sketched poppies during his medical residency in Maryland. He published poems and stories by the time he was 16. I’m not surprised he noticed the brilliant fragile petals and horror. He wrote for those who couldn’t speak and those who had to see.
Meningitis and pneumonia killed him January 1918 after several months battling asthma and bronchitis. His poem and the emblematic poppy continue to inspire and comfort…”
“In Flanders Fields was penned by Lieut. Col. John M. McCrae, Canadian physician and soldier, during the First World War, following the first German chemical attack, early spring 1916, Second Battle of Ypres. Bonescattered, torn and trampled fields germinated scarlet poppies and so many, many simple white crosses.
The fallen went from war to peace.
In Flanders Fields was first published in London Punch December 1915. By March 1916, American newspapers carried the poem ( including Norwich Bulletin, and KY Citizen, June, 1916)
McCrae died in France in 1918, and there rests in peace and vitality.
The common poppies sway by design, are tall and reaching; their architecture flings the seeds further and their flowers appear to open and close, intermittent as firecracker displays. (Individual flowers bloom for (mostly) a day, but the one plant will produce hundreds of flowers over the season.) The large translucent blooms indeed blow, glow and grow. Those adjectives in the first line opener of McCrae’s poem have swapped around in different versions. “Blow” it is.”
Cape Ann Veterans Services does a masterful job hosting and facilitating Memorial Day commemorations as well as partnering and offering year round support. Their office is located on 12 Emerson Ave.
The service was beautiful. If I find a video link I’ll add it here. Take a moment to listen to the youth involved–stunning National Anthem rendition sung by Alessandro Schoc, Governor’s proclamation red by Kinnery Muniz, ROTC Missing Man Table Ceremony, and more
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
May beauty in nature, art, family, friends, faith — however one seeks comfort — be found.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Longfellow (1807-1882) and Fanny Appleton (1819-1861) had six children. Fanny, their third child, died at 15 months in 1849. I was thinking about this poem this week.
The Open Window.
The old house by the lindens
Stood silent in the shade,
And on the gravelled pathway
The light and shadow played.
I saw the nursery windows
Wide open to the air;
But the faces of the children,
They were no longer there.
The large Newfoundland house-dog
Was standing by the door;
He looked for his little playmates,
Who would return no more.
They walked not under the lindens,
They played not in the hall;
But shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all.
The birds sang in the branches,
With sweet, familiar tone;
But the voices of the children
Will be heard in dreams alone!
And the boy that walked beside me,
He could not understand
Why closer in mine, ah ! closer,
I pressed his warm, soft hand !
The Open Window. Seaside and the Fireside published 1849
AMANDA GORMAN
New York Times brilliant op ed selection, Amanda Gorman’s guest column, Hymn for the Hurting, published Saturday edition, May 28, 2022.
calling Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
“and in the streets the blood of the children ran simply, like children’s blood.”
Pablo Neruda I’m Explaining a few things
salve after salvo
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
North Shore Chamber of Commerce Honor Scholars 2022 recognition dinner was held in Danvers, MA. The GHS boutonnieres from Audrey’s Flower Shop of Gloucester were beautiful!
North Shore Chamber of Commerce photos click here.
A few snapshots of the Gloucester group below.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Good Morning Gloucester 
