Trivia Night to Benefit Rotary Programs

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

The Rotary Club of Gloucester will host a Trivia Night on Friday, March 23, at the Gloucester House, located at 63 Rogers Street in downtown Gloucester. The doors will open at 6 p.m. and the game will begin at 7 p.m.  Teams of four will compete for the title of Cape Ann Trivia Champions.  Register before March 16 and be entered to win a special Early Bird Registration raffle!

All trivia fans are invited to this fun night of knowledge and laughter. The registration fee is $100 for a team of four players.  Proceeds from this event will support programs of the Gloucester Rotary Club.  The night will also feature a 50/50 raffle, a cash bar, and light snacks for purchase. Registration forms may be obtained any Gloucester Rotary Club member or may be downloaded from www.GloucesterRotary.org or www.Facebook.com/RotaryGloucesterMA.

The mission of Rotary International is to provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through its fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders.

Trivia Night to Benefit Rotary Programs

 

HELLO HEDWIG! WHAT ARE YOU EATING? SNOWY OWL WEEKEND UPDATE -By Kim Smith

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

Hedwig has been seen daily along the backshore, mostly laying low during the day. She has become quite expert in fooling the crows as to her whereabouts.

Fog, snow, rain, or sunshine, she isn’t deterred much from her routine of sleeping, resting, and grooming during the day, in preparation for an evening of hunting.

Early this week I watched in amazement as Hedwig swooped down from her perch and flew hundreds of feet directly to the rocks and in between crevasses. She resurfaced with a small mammal in her mouth and ate it very quickly–from the time she flew off her perch until she gave a satisfied lick of her beak could not have taken more than three minutes. I felt very fortunate to have witnessed a glimpse of her hunting prowess, albeit all too brief.

Perhaps the tail is too long for a mouse or rat and too short for a vole, but perhaps not. Small mammal caretaker Erin Whitmore wrote with her suggestion. What do you think Hedwig is eating?Hedwig eating a black and white sea duck.

Again, tonight she flew off her perch, this time heading out to sea. In mere minutes she returned with a sea duck of some sort and proceeded to eviscerate, much to the thrill of her Sunday evening fan club. The lighting was low and I was mostly filming, but did manage a few stills. The duck was black and white and as she mostly sat on her catch while eating, it was difficult to determine which species. Without a crow in sight (as they had surely settled for the night), Hedwig ate well into the early evening.

The feathers were flying! Hedwig with feathers on her face but it’s almost too dark to see.

She’s finding the eating here in Gloucester excellent, but with the warm weather predicted for the upcoming week, I wonder if Hedwig will stay or that will be a cue to depart for the Arctic.

Please don’t get electrocuted Hedwig, as happened recently to a Snowy in southern Massachusetts!

SNOWY DAY MORNING VIOLET SKIES TO BLUE -By Kim Smith

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

As the snow storm departed the early morning skies shifted from hues of violet gray to brilliant blue. 

Ten Pound Island Lighthouse

 

BEAUTIFUL FISH: FLYING FISH -By Al Bezanson

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

Their most distinctive feature is that their pectorals are so long and so stiff that their owners can plane through the air on them, several feet above the water, which they do mostly in attempts to escape their enemies … this so-called “flight” (really not flight at all, for the flyingfish does not flap its wings)

Voyagers in tropical seas are perhaps more familiar with flyingfishes than any other fishes.

From Fishes of the the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schroeder, 1953

Personal account … For close encounters of the flyingfish kind let me recommend a long voyage in a small, slow sailboat. In the Tongue of the Ocean, an immense blue marlin soaring by with mouth agape in a flock of flyingfish, at my eye level, about 25 feet abeam. That was in 1961 and still vivid. Or becalmed far at sea, dozing at the tiller at night, a flyingfish glancing off my ear. When we picked up a cat (named Scurvy) for the return voyage to Boston, her duty at first light was to gather flyingfish who had gone aground on our deck during the night. (Al Bezanson)

$750,000 #NEH grant opportunity for Gloucester…many possible ideas and projects!

Posted on by Catherine

Archival documentation of a federal grant awarded to Gloucester and nationally recognized for its innovation at the time: reclaiming the City dump for an athletic field at the High School. Photographs of the project included a sweeping vista from atop Hovey Street. 

Innovative public works dump reclaimed as Gloucester High School track WPA Annual Bulletin

Ten years earlier, the same vantage was favored by artist, Edward Hopper, for House on ‘Squam River, 1926. The Hopper drawing was gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1948.

overlay-banner2_originalShared projects and working together are a focus for a new 2018 NEH grant opportunity.

Contact Mayor Romeo Theken’s arts & culture hotline sefatia4arts@gloucester-ma.gov  by Febraury 28 to add to a list of potential projects for Gloucester for this NEH Deadline, March 15, or to consider as other funding opportunities arise.

Mayor Romeo Theken shares the 2018 press release from the Commonwealth:

  • Activities supported by National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant funds include:
  • capital expenditures such as the design, purchase, construction, restoration or renovation of facilities and historic landscapes;
  • the purchase of equipment and software;
  • the documentation of cultural heritage materials that are lost or imperiled:
  • the sustaining of digital scholarly infrastructure;
  • the preservation and conservation of collections; and
  • the sharing of collections.

“The grant below is a new grant from NEH and could be a great opportunity to enhance your local cultural or historical organizations. Please share it far and wide. And let us know if we can provide a letter of support for an application from your community.”  Regards, Rick Jakious

“Good afternoon, 
The National Endowment for the Humanities has just announced a new grant program to support humanities infrastructures. Cultural institutions, such as libraries, museums, archives, colleges and universities, and historic sites, are eligible to apply for grants of up to $750,000.
 
These challenge grants, which require a match of nonfederal funds, may be used toward capital expenditures such as construction and renovation projects, purchase of equipment and software, sharing of humanities collections between institutions, documentation of lost or imperiled cultural heritage, sustaining digital scholarly infrastructure, and preservation and conservation of humanities collections.
 
The application deadline for the first NEH Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grants is March 15, 2018. Interested applicants should direct questions about grant proposals to challenge@neh.govor 202-606-8309. 
 
Please consider sharing this exciting new funding opportunity with cultural institutions in your district.”

Thank you,Timothy H. Robison, Director of Congressional Affairs
National Endowment for the Humanities. 400 7th Street, SW 4th Floor.
Washington, D.C. 20506
(202) 606-8273

Innovative and worthy contemporary Gloucester possibilities abound: shared Archives (NSAA, Rocky Neck, Sargent House, City Archives, CAM, Legion, Libraries, Wards historical societies, etc.); digitize City Archives; Digitize Gloucester Daily Times archives; building and historic landscape projects that are city owned (City Archives, City Hall, Legion, Fitz Henry Lane, Fire Station, Stage Fort, beaches, etc) or in partnership; DPW work; and on and on.

Additional grant opportunities, news, and deadlines:

Continue reading “$750,000 #NEH grant opportunity for Gloucester…many possible ideas and projects!” →

Ducks at the State Pier

Posted on by Donna Ardizzoni

Love going to the State Pier to see the ducks and sometimes seals.  On Saturday the ducks were have a great time.

Soft Glow

Posted on by davefernandes2

Once I saw the hollowed out skiff I knew it needed to be photographed before someone removed it. Long exposure with soft skies and Magnolia Pier as a backdrop.

BEAUTIFUL FISH: SEAHORSE – By Al Bezanson

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

“The sea horse grotesquely resembles the “knight” in an ordinary set of wooden chessmen in its sidewise flattened body, in its deep convex belly, in its curved neck and in its curious horselike head carried at right angles to the general axis of the body. The head is surmounted by a pentagonal star-shaped “coronet,” and the snout is tubular with the small oblique mouth at its tip, like that of its relative the pipefish.”

This exquisite pen and ink drawing from 1883 by H. L. Todd is just one of many by this artist in Fishes of the Gulf of Maine by Bigelow and Schroeder, 576 pp, 1953. The book is available free online courtesy of MBL/WHOI. http://www.gma.org/fogm/

 

 

 

Just A Few Weeks Ago

Posted on by Marty Luster

smith cove frozen

Photographed with Voigtlander-Bessa R3M rangefinder camera, Voigtlander 40mmm lens on Kodak Tri-X ISO 400 film, pushed to ISO 800. Scanned on Plustek 8100 film scanner and lightly edited in Lightroom CC.

Summer Beach Traffic and Parking Part 2 – high tech and common sense Good Harbor Beach, Long Beach, Stage Fort, Great Marsh

Posted on by Catherine

This is a follow up about the public meeting held by Gloucester City Councilor Scott Memhard February 15, 2018 at Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Public Library on beach traffic and parking with a focus on his ward. This post includes Councilor Memhard’s meeting notes, and the Beach & Traffic Ad Hoc committee presentation to City Council. Look for information and maps related to Long Beach, Good Harbor Beach, Stage Fort Park, and more. Chances are your ideas or concerns were mentioned–doublecheck for yourself. Future public meetings to be announced.

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Here’s the presentation packet to the City Council from the Gloucester Beach Parking and Traffic Ad Hoc Committee, January 2017

Here’s Councilor Memhard’s recap of the Summer Beach and Traffic public meeting held at Sawyer Free Library February 16, 2018 (advertised in the Beacon, Gloucester Daily Times, and elsewhere long in advance):

“The Ward 1 Beach Parking Ordinance community meeting last night at the library was well attended. We had a lively airing of concerns and opinions, addressing the specific Parking Ordinance proposed changes, and general, wide-ranging discussion of the problem and various potential solutions, including:

> expanded off-site parking* and trolly/bus service to the beaches;
> better signage notifying drivers that lots are full and closed, with posted directions to alternate parking options; and
> other practical steps to relieve severe safely, access, and disruption from on-street parking congestion in our beach neighborhoods.“

*park n ride options would ease traffic especially with smartphone reservations/options. Locales like Rockport, Manchester, Provincetown limit cars. Several lots mentioned maximizing extant options such as negotiating with Stop&Shop, Shaws, Fuller, Blackburn, schools, etc. Stage Fort Shuttle already established and more train/bike. Train-trolley services have a rich history here.

ENFORCEMENT, HIGHER PARKING TICKETS, JULIE BROE 🙂

Continue reading “Summer Beach Traffic and Parking Part 2 – high tech and common sense Good Harbor Beach, Long Beach, Stage Fort, Great Marsh” →

Artist Kathy Roberts

Posted on by Donna Ardizzoni

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A FUN CLASS THAT WILL NURTURE YOUR CREATIVE SIDE?
NEW SPRING PAINTING WORKSHOP, STARTING in MARCH 2018, MONDAYS, 6:00-8:00 pm. Ongoing class.
Beginner and Intermediate students welcomed. Sketching and Watercoloring painting will be the
focus in a small group setting. A demonstration will be provided at each class. For more information call 978-853-7825.

 

Fog lifting on the inner harbor

Posted on by Bridgette Mathews

The perks of having an office overlooking the harbor is the ever changing views!  When I came in to work in the morning I couldn’t even see the harbor but by noon the fog was lifting and gave us these ethereal views of the FV My Grace coming by Eastern Point Lighthouse and unique panos of our inner harbor.

Voices from the Past

Posted on by Pat D

I just love the way old signs call to us from the past.  Some of these are current establishments and some are long gone, but they each have their own character and story to tell.