Joey working on a camera upgrade.
Will the deal go down? Part III on Tuesday at 3PM.
Author: paultmorrison
Rockport Rotary Club Wine Tasting
This Saturday! Get your tickets online now! 100 wines in three hours. You can do it.
The Rotary Club of Rockport will hold one of its major fundraisers, a Wine Tasting at the new Shalin Liu Performance Center, on Saturday, October 16th. The event, from 5:00-8:00pm, will feature live entertainment, hors d’oeuvres and over 100 wines to sample. Tickets are available for $30 from any Rockport Rotarian, or through the Performance Center box office at 978-546-7391 x102, and on their website at www.rockportmusic.org. Wines are provided by Seabreeze Liquors of Gloucester.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
GMG: Behind The Scenes Part I
How it works behind the scenes at Good Morning Gloucester:
CLICK HERE >>>I don’t wanna.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Ace Hardware in Rockport
Ace Hardware in Rockport has always been known for helpful and friendly service but their new head cashier goes above and beyond the call of duty. Meet Dixie Lee Ludwig behind the register:
She’ll even come home with you if you have a problem with squirrels or cats. Hardware prices might be dropping soon since she works for dog biscuits.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
The Great Gargoyle of Rockport
My first stop on this past weekend’s Cape Artisans Tour was Leslie Bartlett’s studio. I purchased a booklet of old photos Les put together in 1999 called “Rockport Timeline”. Leafing through I found “The Great Gargoyle” of Rockport. I had heard of this and knew it was close by. To find it I walked to where I thought it was, “if you get to Andrews Point you’ve gone too far” and bingo! Turns out my daughter and I named the cleft in front of the gargoyle “King’s Throne” a couple of years ago because you can sit tucked in there facing due east on a nice seat and be warmed by the morning sun.
If you can’t figure it out I drew a picture:
and Sharon posted about Hipstamatic for the iPhone which oldifies your shot so I took a B&W polaroid circa 1980 (or maybe 1880):
What is amazing is every crack and seam is as it was a hundred years ago. There is a slab of granite that may weigh about twenty tons perched in front which could have been moved into place in the Blizzard of 78 or the Perfect Storm but otherwise identical.
Should I post exactly where it is? Naah, no fun in that.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Cape Ann Artisans Tour: Day 2
Fueled up with Joey and the crew at Passports in the morning Joey told me a must see on the tour was Marty Morgan. Something about a pulley sending her pots into the river. Sounded crazy and it was. She has a great way of winching her loaded kiln shelves into her big gas fired kiln but I am getting ahead of myself.
To reiterate some of my Day 1 post. Fifteen artists, go here to download pdf map so you can follow the numbers.
1) David Montgomery 2)Marty Morgan 3) Leslie Bartlett 4) Kurt Ankeny 5) Judith Wright, 6) Margaret Rack, 7) Mi Robertson, 8 ) Anni Melançon, 9) David Archibald, 10) Cynthia Curtis, 11) Pam Stratton 12) Eileen Mueller, 13) Scott Place/Erin O’Sullivan, 14) Marilyn Swift 15) Bart Stuyf.
We did 3,8,9 Saturday and I wanted to finish with all the pottery so did 2) Marty Morgan, 10) Cynthia Curtis, and 13) Scott Erin and Erin O’Sullivan today.
2) Marty Morgan; Pottery and Sculptural Tile, 428 Washington Street, (just past where Washington crosses Mill River.). If I had this studio I am afraid I wouldn’t get much done since you could have a kayak into the Mill River off the back porch in a second. If you want to find that wedding gift that they are going to remember you have to check out the tiles and pottery here. I’m drinking coffee as I type from a very large mug I just picked up at Marty’s.
10) Cynthia Curtis, Stoneware Pottery, 80 Pigeon Hill Road, (head to the Paper House and just keep going up the hill to the end.) A huge assortment of styles and what better place to learn pottery but from someone who does something of everything. I want to poke holes in pots and make a berry dish. (Just rinse and put in the fridge and it drains right out. I’m not describing it well you have to check them out.) Cynthia teaches tons of classes in pottery all levels, kids (catch them early) to adults (play in clay, it’s fun). We picked up a beautiful blue lamp from Cynthia on the tour two years ago which goes well with our daughter’s perrywinkle painted room.
13) Scott Place and Erin O’Sullivan; Pottery and Sculpture, 52 South Street , Rockport. I was drawn to the more entertaining pieces on display here. Complete life size busts of some very strange characters. Fish heads, lots of fish heads. A whole school of fish heads seemed to be having a conversation on one wall. One of them is going to be speaking to me in my kitchen. Since I forgot my camera I brought my fish head home and stuck it on a block of clay. Maybe I will make the rest of the fish.
I think I will call him Spot. You can talk to Spot in my kitchen.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Cape Ann Artisans Open Studio Tour: Today, Sunday, and Monday!
Click here for Map and brochure. That way you can follow the numbers. Fifteen artists open their studios this long weekend 10AM to 5PM.
1) David Montgomery 2)Marty Morgan 3) Leslie Bartlett 4) Kurt Ankeny 5) Judith Wright, 6) Margaret Rack, 7) Mi Robertson, 8 ) Anni Melançon, 9) David Archibald, 10) Cynthia Curtis, 11) Pam Stratton 12) Eileen Mueller, 13) Scott Place/Erin O.Sullivan, 14) Marilyn Swift 15) Bart Stuyf.
A high concentration of artisans in Lanesville so I figure I will start there and pick off number 3, 8, and 9, to start the weekend.
3) Leslie Bartlett; 1033 Washington Street, Natural Light Photography, and around here that means Quarries. These prints are amazing. You think you’ve seen quarries but this must be one of those “you got to get up pretty early in the morning” to see them like this. Les has a huge printer which makes enormous prints, paper and cloth. The studio was a Catholic Church– while we were there a couple came in to see what had been done to the place where they were married. Amazing space. I extracted quite a lot of information about Lanesville and Rockport quarries from Les that I will follow up in future posts.
8 ) Anni Melancon; Dogtown Studio Pottery, 1181 Washington Street, broad range of pottery and porcelain from the fine to primitive. Sue and I met Anni two years ago on the tour and she is getting me all amped up about actually turning on my own kiln. She makes it sound easy, (I know it isn’t), but at least she has convinced me I won’t burn my house down. Anni does terracotta with white glaze that is just amazing. Works of art out of which you can eat. Felt like having some soup in a big bowl but we had to get one more artisan done or we would fall behind.
9) David Archibald; 9 Woodbury Street, Plum Cove Pottery (turn up the hill right before Folly Cove). We met David the same tour two years ago and quickly figured out he knew David Platt (prior owners of our house). This time around he was telling stories of drinking a beer in the kitchen. David has been working on his glazes applied to porcelain and stoneware for fifty years and he has figured out a few things. Not exactly sure what he is going to pull out of the kiln but the depth and richness of the cobalt blues, the copper reds, the celadon, make pieces you have to just stare at for a while. Galaxies and waterfalls are in there. We escaped with just one white milk pitcher that has a light red glow to it that I might post a photo of (when I find my good camera).
And my cell phone only took one good shot the whole day. Tomorrow onto a dozen more artisans.
Then it was on to Alchemy for some French Onion Soup to refuel.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Seasonal Closings
Did I already miss one last time for the fried fish with cheese at The Cupboard? Say it ain’t so. This is my shout out for request of all closings of seasonal places on Cape Ann. Post to this thread or email me and I will blog a comprehensive list.
The only three I have:
Top Dog closes Wednesday October 27 Bearskin Neck.
The Rudder, Wed, Thurs, Frid, Sat, through October 30th. (What happens then?) On the Neck, Gloucester
The Lobster Pool, Monday December 13. Halibut Point, Rockport
Of special interest is any closing extravaganza. Finish all the ice cream, eat all the fired clams from the bottom of the Frialator! With the way this weather is going I think we should postpone all summer closings until after Santa arrives in Rockport.
Summer isn’t over until question of gender sign comes down!
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Pick Your Own Apples at Russell’s Orchard
It’s that time of year. Joey in 2008: “Have you picked apples this year?” If you haven’t now is the time. Russell’s Orchard in Essex (Follow signs for Crane’s Beach) has trees loaded with crispy tasty apples that just taste ten times better than apples that have been sitting around in a grocery store. You think Gaia are flavorful? Taste one right off the tree.
If you have small children who need to pick their own pumpkin, take a hayride out to the fields, eat cider donuts fresh out of the machine, or pet a bunny you need to go next weekend to Russell’s Orchard. Click here for how Pick your Own. Hayrides are thrown in free on the weekends.
Find them on Facebook.
If you are an old curmudgeon who thinks a hayride is just for kids think again. The tractor drivers are comedians.
I take this guy’s photo and as he pulls even with me, “Hope my face didn’t break your camera!”
Go early on the weekend as this is very popular although Russell’s is set up to handle a crowd. Plenty of parking and plenty of stuff to do. I didn’t even make it to the winery. This time. Meanwhile I have homemade apple crisp with vanilla ice cream on the menu this week. 298 days until the Blackburn Challenge. Plenty of time to fit into the kayak.
Open 9-5 every day. You miss out on the hayride if you go during the week.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
News Flash: Talk Like a Pirate Day: Sunday, September 19
How did my favorite holiday sneak up on me and with me Parrot at the dry cleaners? Arrrrgh.
This is not fluff. Talk Like a Pirate Day is in Wikipedia so it’s as real as Good Morning Gloucester or seagulls.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Homey in Wikipedia
Laridae, or the gull family is well represented in Wikipedia here. Everything you wanted to know about Homey. Although well filled out with citations it needs a little more work. The first problem I had with the page is the second photo depicting two homies playing tug-of-war or possibly waiting for a third to play jump rope:
Click to embiggen.
Do you think it is disrespectful to homey to have this photo contained on the official Wikipedia page of the gull?
A quick additional edit since the first three voters want the photo removed. If you examine the large photo it is clear this ground squirrel has been pinin’ for the fjords for some time. A flat squirrel, run over by something large, maybe a truck, and baked on the tarmac. I think either homey would say, “crispy, tastes like bacon!”
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Cape Ann Museum: Worth more than one visit.
Joey posted about the Cape Ann Museum months ago and I thought I would take the family. Turns out this past Saturday was family day and so the visit was free. Normally $8 for an adult I think I am going to pay the $50 for a family membership next time I stop in because I found it to be a place I need to check out more than once. A few shots from my iPhone:
Do you know Harriet?
Daughters of a local artist, Harriet is the one on the left. Are they still in town?
Next time you go swimming at Steel Derrick or any quarry, think about what is under the water:
This is a big photo of Steel Derrick as a working quarry. Next time you’re stuck in traffic think about getting home from the bottom of this pit when the whistle blew. Lilja might be in that photo and when he heard the whistle blow it was off to Pigeon Cove to cut some more rock for extra cash.
This painting is familiar to all:
Did you ever wonder how Joan of Arc got up there? I knew Alpheus Hyatt had lived in Annisquam at 704 Washington Street. He was the founder of the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole where I grew up so when I saw that Anna Hyatt Huntington sculpted Joan of Arc the connection was made. She made a lot of very large statues sprinkled around Washington DC and New York but she did not have to travel far for this one.
Then there are all sorts of tidbits of info on the walls next to the paintings of all the local artists. Sam Hershey was a big part of the Rockport Art Association but did you know he helped organize wild annual parties at the RAA? They had to call in the State Police in 1937 and from then on they were small private affairs only. To the 1938 small gathering he wore a tombstone costume, “RIP Annual Ball, dead at 18.” (There were 18 big ripping parties before the wet blankets won). It was the same year they banned naked swimming at the quarries. Boo.
So go. Even if you were born at Addison Gilbert Hospital and the last time you went to the Cape Ann Museum was on a 4th grade field trip. You’ll find a few things out about fishing, art, granite, that you didn’t know. And you also might find that the people who populate Cape Ann haven’t changed all that much and that’s a good thing.
Shoot, I didn’t even get to Howard Blackburn. His boat is in there.
Cape Ann Museum
Guided tours are offered Thursday through Saturday at 11:00 a.m.
and on Sunday at 2:00 p.m., included with the price of admission to the Museum.
27 Pleasant Street Click address for map, right behind City Hall.
This just in: Every Saturday 10AM to 5PM is Family Free Day. So go for an hour then walk down to the Lonesome Lone Gull for a Coffee Latte to fuel up for another hour.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Confirmed: 25th Blackburn Challenge is Saturday July 23, 2011
Mark your calendars. Donna Lind of the Cape Ann Rowing Club has confirmed today that the Silver Jubilee, 25th running of the Blackburn Challenge will be on Saturday, July 23, 2010. (I had posted a tentative date of July 16, make sure and scratch that out.)
The Blackburn Challenge is a twenty plus mile open water race around Cape Ann using any seaworthy oar or paddle powered craft. There were 300 craft that made it around in this summer’s race and likely more will be entered on the magic 25th running.
There are only 316 days, and 15 hours to get ready. I have a countdown timer for motivation here.
I made a google map of the course with notes here.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
74th YMCA Around the Cape 25K Road Race
Waiting for the first runners to take the turn at Halibut Point this morning.
I noticed a rock on the side of the road.
It looked exactly like a gastrolith. You can find these pretty easily in Southern Utah. Dinosaurs are birds and they ate rocks which then crunched up the food in their gizzard. Once they were all shiny they would go down to the stream to gobble some more rocks up but puke the shiny ones up first. Sure looked like a gastrolith.
Then the runners arrived.
The run is to benefit the Cape Ann YMCA. Next year it will be the 75th running. Lots of famous people have run this race, Billy Rogers for one. I always liked Rogers since he said he enjoyed potato chips with mayonnaise. So do I.
I kept the rock.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
The Market, Annisquam Where good food comes from.
When I was a teenager I read “The Magus” by John Fowles. A strange and fascinating book with the main character named Nicholas Urfe and his girlfriend called him Nico. I thought that was the coolest name and have used it on occasion. Then Joey interviews the couple behind “The Market” restaurant in Annisquam and I run into a name that is even better. Nico Tuesday. I won’t steal that name but maybe if you find Nico Sunday up to no good you might know who it is.
After powdering my nose I quick shot of Nico Monday and Amelia O’Reilly sharing a laugh in the kitchen before they get down to making some dishes that I felt no embarrassment licking the plate.
OK, the two bottles of wine we brought helped too. A week earlier we tried breakfast and the fish cakes were very good but luckily a little homemade bread allowed me to clean my plate without embarrassing my family. Now all that is left is lunch with their homemade potato chips.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Where Am I?
Secreted off island I took this shot at dawn.
I won’t be back for another week and then I am going to try to find out where the Rockport Gender sign went!
Did one of those sixteen homeland security cameras see anything? Was the sign being paddled down the Annisquam? If all of Paul F’s rocks can be found we can certainly find our gender signs.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
One Fish, Two Fish, Fake Fish, Real Fish
The small one is obviously not a keeper and so has to be the Fred Bodin ceramic striper and will be going back up on the wall. The bigger one will be going into the oven.
I was fishing for blues for the smoker but this one showed up to dinner.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Rockport Anadama at Lattof Farms
Monkey Bread at Lattof Farms comes out of the oven around 9:30AM on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So what am I to fuel up on if I am leaving town on Monday morning? Chrissy at the farm stand tells me to try the Anadama Bread. She said it was perfect toasted with tomato and some mayo. Since I was picking up tomatoes and native corn I went for it.
It was still warm from the oven and it never made it into a tomato sandwich. We ate the whole thing on our drive to Wayland. Lattof Anadama seems to crank up the mollases and tone down the cornmeal to make something that is great torn off and stuffed in the pie hole all by itself.
Fun Fact: Anadama Bread has its own wiki page. Does anyone believe the origin of the name story on that page? Sounds a tad hokey:
“A fisherman, angry with his wife, Anna, for serving him nothing but cornmeal and molasses, one day adds flour and yeast to his porridge and eats the resultant bread, while cursing, ‘Anna, damn her.'”
Next week my own tomatoes will be coming off the vine and they are going to find a home between two slices of this bread with some Hellman’s. (I know not using Cains is Cape Ann sacrilege but I spent too much time in the midwest to shake my addiction to Hellman’s)
Sorry, no photos, I ate it.
[edit] Forgot to say where Lattof farm is. You know when you go by the “new” Rockport police station and you are putting your car in neutral so you can coast all the way to Dock Square? Lattoff farm stand is on the left hand side as you start down the hill to five corners.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Good Morning Gloucester Sunrise Kayak: Sunday 5:30 AM Pavilion Beach
I’m trying to cover some of the shoreline I missed on the Blackburn Challenge circumnavigation. This morning I did Gloucester Inner Harbor. Tomorrow on Sunday it is over to the Paint Factory up behind Ten Pound Island, over to Niles Beach and maybe out to the Eastern Point Lighthouse before heading back.
Sunday 5:30 AM Pavilion Beach put in. Meet me there with a kayak and we will head out into the sunrise.
Essentials: PFD onboard, water. Non-essentials: a doughnut for the tour director.
If we get two other kayaks or more we might even schedule this for next Saturday with another put in.
Spread The GMG Love By Sharing With These Buttons:
Homie and the new Google
New Rockport stories next week but meanwhile have you noticed that Google has changed? Type seagull in and check images. Then mouse over a nice homie and select similar.
Or google Melissa Theuriau but don’t tell my wife. You can actually select her in a green dress and it will come back with Melissa in a lot of green tops.
Good Morning Gloucester 