Good Morning Gloucester

Here are some of the many Mallards at Niles Pond.

Drift Cafe announced on their Facebook page that they plan to reopen June 8 at 10 AM.  That’s only 5 days from now, by my count!! This seems a very positive sign of hope to me. Sharing their menu from the Facebook page.

They are also looking for help: Servers, cooks, bartenders, Hosts. Rick@driftgloucesrer.com. Tell him about yourself. Experienced only please.

(Image borrowed from Facebook page)

Plays Written in Class will be chosen for production in annual Young Playwrights Festival in Fall

Gloucester Stage Education Director Heidi Dallin recently announced the Young Playwrights Workshop, will move online for 2020. The Young Playwrights Workshop is a professional training program for ages 9 to 18 designed to introduce or cultivate a passion for storytelling through play writing. Four online sessions will give students the opportunity to write and refine scripts through a multi-draft process with input from professional playwright and Newburyport resident Deirdre Girard. The Young Playwrights Workshop four online sessions  begin Monday, June 8. Pre-Teen: Ages 9-12 years old: 2pm-3:30pm and Teen:: 13-18 years old: 2:30pm -4pm.  Sessions will be recorded in case your child can’t make a lesson, or wants to go back and watch it again. Class size is limited. Participation in the Young Playwrights Workshop will give students access to submit their ten-minute plays to the 2020 Young Playwrights Festival. Selected plays submitted by workshop participants will be cast, rehearsed and performed over zoom in the 2020 Young Playwrights Festival. The Young Playwrights Festival will be streamed September 10th -September 13th . For more information and to register for the  Young Playwrights Workshop at Gloucester Stage go to https://gloucesterstage.com/youngplaywrights/   or call Heidi at 978-283-6688.

Playwright Deirdre Girard completed her MFA in Playwriting at Boston Universit and has had dozens of one-act plays produced nationally and internationally. Most recently, she completed a commission from Peabody Essex Museum for two one-act plays, won the Susan Glaspell National Short Play Award at QC Theater, Iowa for her one-act play In the Buff, and had readings of her plays Shaken and Dollar for Dollar in Boston and Chicago. She is a visiting playwright/instructor for Boston University’s Massachusetts Young Playwrights Project. To hear a message about the workshop from Playwright Deirdre Girard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPoX63xTsi0&feature=youtu.be

The Trustees have annnounced the scheduled reopening of a number of properties on Thursday June 4; these include Ravenswood! Other Trustees properties will also reopen Thursday including Appleton Farms Grass Rides in Hamilton and Greenwood Farm in Ipswich. Some of the properties such as Appleton Farms Grass Rides will now implement parking fees for non-members in order to offset cost of added staff to monitor the grounds and prevent overcrowding, so check before you go. 

I recently stopped by the Crane Beach for the first visit of the year.  Visitors need a timed day parking pass which you can obtain online herewhich I did not realize.  It was explained that capacity is limited to 650 vehicles per day and even membership does not guarantee  you will be able to visit Crane Beach as expected. So be sure to check for that pass (they go very fast and you cannot request further than one week ahead). I am hoping those restrictions lift soon as well.

But, if you miss Crane Beach yourself, here’s what I saw recently:

The Cherry Hill Cemetery’s location adjacent to the Addison Gilbert Hospital makes it somewhat more intriguing than some others, especially in light of the report on FindAGrave.com come which states, in part: Its proximity to the Addison Gilbert Hospital was convenient during times of epidemic when large numbers of bodies were reportedly buried in a common grave. Epidemics and pandemics are on our minds lately and it did seem that many of the burials were for the 1918-19 time period, but that was likely my imagination……..

The cemetery is very steep and uneven. Sections are not easily identified, except for the Firefighters’ Memorial. It is currently a bit overgrown, but so are we all these days.  Despite hospital busy-ness and nearby traffic, I found it peaceful there on this beautiful morning.  However, I was a bit winded by the climb and careful stepping.  The worn sign seems to indicate it was established in 1865, but the Guide to Cemeteries in Essex County, Massachusetts (by the Essex Society of Genealogists) indicated it may have been established around 1823. There is a nice variety of stones, not many slate ones though. It’s not very easy to determine the growth of the cemetery as stones dated many years ago find themselves among more recent ones.

As I have mentioned before, FindAGrave supplies family historians with a place to search cemeteries for loved ones as well as to request photos of gravestones. It was with this purpose that we went today. “Cemetery Stomping” is a great activity during virus isolation. Armed with the FindAGrave list of about 55 photo requests, we started off in search of them. We were VERY lucky on this trip to have been able to fulfill 7 of those requests. It is not uncommon to leave a cemetery empty handed in the photo department, but today we were blessed with extraordinary luck.

I was even able to recognize some names from my own tree and took a couple of extra photos to add to the FindAGrave database.  Coincidentally, two of the names that we were not able to find on this trip included Nellie and Frank Tyne, the grandparents of my featured soldiers Jeffrey Gordon Tyne and Gordon A. Tyne. I guess we’ll be going back! I’d really like to locate the Tynes.