Good Morning Gloucester

We are ready for the return of the hummingbirds to our area. I understand from the migration map that they are close by. Honestly I thought I saw one zipping by just yesterday. We put our feeders out about 2 weeks ahead of the earliest expected return in case there are some over-achieving hummingbirds heading our way. You may be aware that Joey and I have a friendly competition over visiting hummingbirds–to be honest, it’s not even a competition any longer. Our Magnolia backyard dominates his East Gloucester neighborhood.

*fun fact Jim played a huge win in the Mets World Series uuuuuge!

Make Way…

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We will be OPEN Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday 10am-4pm!

We cannot wait to see everyone on campus this week.

April Vacation Programs

April 21-25

We still have some space in all our programs this week. You don’t want to miss these, they are Bailey’s last week of Vacation Programs

Register Here

Our Winter Lecture Series is coming to a close with Michael O’Leary on April 24th

 Get your Tickets Here

Summer Internships

We are now accepting applications for our High School and College Internships. 

Maritime Gloucester offers 3 unpaid internship tracts. Descriptions for our education internships, aquarium internships and high school junior internships can be foundHere

$13.99 +tax Lobster Roll served with Chips $4.99 Cheeseburger served with Chips

Half Off Large Pizzas

*excludes gluten free*

APRIL 20, 2025 ~ SAM ~ EDIT

DOUBLE POINTS MONDAYS

Earn two times the points on every dollar you spend when you dine at any Serenitee Group Restaurant on Mondays

+ 

SURPRISE REWARDS EVERY WEEK

Each week we are giving EVERYONE who dines on Monday at one of two surprise restaurants a bonus $10 Serenitee Bucks!

with two new surprise locations chosen each week – keep an eye out for an email or message in your Serenitee App on Tuesday morning to see if you’ve won

Join us for Rewards Member Mondays, now through June – only at Serenitee Restaurants

***BREAKING NEWS*** Minglewood Monday just got twice as good with a new program to double your Serenitee points AND Surprise Rewards! Check the images for details…

We have a new weekly can’t-miss appointment with Minglewood (Rogers St) on Mondays for buy one get one half off sushi along with fine musical entertainment. I don’t personally prefer sushi, but Jim does. I like the way bartender Ryan takes good care of us each and every time. Plus we usually get to say hello to the beautiful Heather! If you’re there on Monday, stop by to say hi! Perfect ending to Patriots Day.

Offices will reopen at regular business hours on Tuesday, April 22nd.

🗑♻️Trash and recycling will not be collected on Monday, April 21st and collection will be on a holiday schedule for the remainder of the week.

We’ve been really enjoying our time in Rincon PR. It’s a funky, rain foresty, laid back area with friendly people, excellent food, it’s relatively inexpensive and has great beaches. Not everything is pristine like Naples, but that’s OK. It’s not dirty, it’s just maybe all the building codes are, you, know….whatever, lol. But it’s cool like that. Everyone is super chill and relaxed. It’s a little off the beaten path, almost a 3 hour drive from San Juan airport but that may be the thing that keeps it affordable and the masses from coming and making it unaffordable. Where Naples and Aruba you hop off the plane and can get to your spot within a half hour, Rincon PR is a little more work. We also feel super safe and the locals and tourists alike are fun loving and friendly. Happy hours abound, laid back beach bars abound, although you’ll probably want to rent a car because there’s lots of beaches and different restaurants that are not far away from each other but the roads are not walkers friendly and spaced out a couple miles from each other other than the heart of downtown Rincon.

I can see why people would fall in love with the place and choose to stay here for a couple of months.

Naples continues to be an incredibly easy to get to place where there’s lots to do, checking off all my boxes of easy to get to, clean, great beaches, restaurants and shopping. If there’s a knock on Naples it would be that it’s gotten a little expensive and you need to drive a lot because everything is so spread out unless you stay your entire trip down off 5th in Old Naples, but no one really does that. Delray and Downtown St Pete are great Florida places where you can go there and never have to drive. Tampa has a ton going for it as well but January and February are usually pretty cold and they don’t have the beaches unless you want to drive.

Aruba to me was good across the board but didn’t win my heart in any categories except one- The easy category. You get there and if you’re staying close to the beach, and you’re a beach person, everything you need is right there- easy, easy, easy. There were some god restaurants and a couple great restaurants but everything is a little pricier and not much is really “Spectacular”. You get spectacular food in Naples, you get spectacular food in Rincon. Mark Lebowitz described Aruba perfectly to me- everything is an 8. the food is good, the beaches are good,nothing is outrageous. But what it does excel at is simplicity. Get off the plane, check in grab a beach chair and a frozen drink easy peasy. The weather you can also count on in January and February being warm which is a MAJOR positive. Naples you can get 50’s. Although people will say “better than home when it’s 20 degrees”, that’s aggravating to me. If I’m going for a beach vacation I want it minimum 70 degrees. HUGE for the win column for Aruba in January or February.

Naples remains my go-to but I could see us coming back to Rincon.

Aruba, only if there was a crazy deal for a place on the beach in January or February but I’d prefer St John in those months. Kate liked Aruba more than me. I liked it but for the money I think there’s spots that are much prettier.

Rincon is pretty unique in its authenticity and beauty and perfectly unperfect charm. It’s not spit-polished, but that’s OK. It’s chill with great beaches, great food options and warm friendly people.

Audrey Hill shared this gem with me from her deceased mother Lydia Hill’s files a few months ago. Audrey and I and her six siblings were neighbors on Page Street in East Gloucester, and were fifth and sixth graders at the Eastern Avenue School in 1970 with Tory Bagshaw, Lenny Richardson, George Gale, Joey Bertolino, Anita Gillie, a whole bunch of other East Gloucester children.

Mr. Joseph (of Four Kings and a Queen at GHS hockey games in the late 1990’s (Herb Joseph, David Richardson, my dad Len Bolonsky, and Tommy and Sandy Spinola)) was our teacher. 

Mr. Joseph’s punishment for classroom transgressions was for the miscreant to copy out and hand in an entire dictionary page. Andrew Gleason got the most dictionary pages, I think. He was fearless and never really seemed to mind getting in trouble.

Audrey and her friends – all girls – protested to the principal, Mr. White, that they didn’t have as much playground equipment as the boys. 

GHS class of 1978 members will recognize the names of Eastern Avenue girls who became jocks in their own right (Judy Salah and so on) as well as the children of a local firefighter, the daughter of the owner of Brown’s Yacht Yard, the daughter of a local Coast Guardsman transferred to Gloucester from Hawaii, the daughter of the owner of one of Gloucester’s largest charter boat companies, and the daughter of one of Gloucester’s many, many artists, and the circulation manager for the Gloucester Daily.

It looks like one of the girls typed the petition: ome of the girls’ names are spelled wrong, and some girls’ last names are missing. 

Later, emboldened by their success, the girls likewise petitioned for equal access to the lower playgrounds and ballfied. 

Audrey and I had a brief romance in the 7th grade at the O’Maley. Audrey was a quite fickle girlfriend though, and within two weeks she had broken up with me and shifted her attention to someone else. But I already had my eye on Theresa Glenn, Janine DeCoaste, and a couple of other girls.

Here’s the text of the letter:

Dear Mr. White, 

You should do something about the fact that the girls only have one ball. You should get another ball for them. IF you do, I am sure that they would thank you for it.

It really is not fair. The boys get 5 or 6 balls, but the girls, one.

YOURS TRULY,

Isabel Hamor

Audrey Hill

Francina Monel

Susan Jedrey

Mary Roudolf (sic.)

Regina Mikinnon (sic.)

Judy Salah

Kathy Brown

Cindy Hadley

Cindy OLeary (sic.)

Susan Myett

Deana Brown

Denise Oliver

Peggy Bagshaw

Christa Hern (sic.)

Carol Howard

Dede Chaisson

Jodi Cunningham

Shirley (Stottlemyer) (?)

Elizabeth Fish

Grace (Moceri) (?)

Louice (Louise)

Susan Dodge