Salt Island

Posted on by Donna Ardizzoni

The light on Friday at Good Harbor Beach was so beautiful.  Could not stop myself from getting my camera.  Looking forward to be able to sit in my chair and taking a swim.

 

Cape Ann Museum’s Summer Schedule of Outdoor Walking Tours Beginning on June 2nd

Posted on by James Eves

Get Outside this Summer on a
Guided Walking Tour

Take in some Gloucester history
through the lens of art, history and culture

The Cape Ann Museum is again offering a series of guided walking tours on Friday and Saturday mornings during the months of June, July and August. Tours begin at 10:00 a.m. at the Museum, 27 Pleasant Street in Gloucester and last about 1½ hours (participants should be comfortable being on their feet for that amount of time). Tours are held rain or shine. Cost is $10 for Cape Ann Museum members; $20 for nonmembers (includes Museum admission). Space is limited; reservations required. Signup online at Eventbrite or call (978) 283-0455 x10 for tickets and information.

Robert Stephenson (1935-2015), Our Lady of Good Voyage, Gloucester, 1996, oil on canvas. Gift of Richard J. Stephenson and family, 2016. Collection of the Cape Ann Museum [2016.056]
The Saunders House, now part of the Sawyer Free Library, in the early 1880s. Photo by Edward Corliss & J. F. Ryan House Photographs, c. 1882-85. 4″ x 6″ cabinet cards. From the collection of the Cape Ann Museum Library and Archives.
Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument framed by towers of Gloucester City Hall.

Scheduled Tours – 2017 Season

The Bones of Homes

June 17, July 14, August 12 & 25

An architectural overview of Gloucester building styles from the mid-18th to the mid-20th century. On this tour through downtown Gloucester participants will learn about architectural elements and styles that arose out of specific socioeconomic and cultural circumstances during this critical 200-year period in the City’s development.

Edward Hopper’s Houses

June 2, 10 & 30, July 1, August 5, 11 & 26

Explore the area surrounding the Museum on this walk past select Gloucester houses made famous by American realist painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Hopper is known to have painted in Gloucester on five separate occasions in the first decades of the 20th century. His paintings from this period capture the local landscape and architecture in a loosely rendered, light filled style and are considered by many to be some of his finest works.

Art for All: Sculpture in the Public Sphere

June 3, July 8 & 21, August 4 & 18

The City of Gloucester is awash in outdoor sculpture and public art commemorating those who went to sea, those who fought in wars and those who changed the artistic landscape of Cape Ann forever. Learn the stories behind these works, including how they came to be and the unique processes of the artists who created them, on this wide ranging tour through the City.

Patriots & Patrons

June 9 & 24, July 7 & 28, August 19

Take a tour through the heart of Gloucester’s Historic District to see the houses and monuments of some of Cape Ann’s most influential residents. Hear stories of war heroes and sea captains, merchants and religious visionaries, artists, community leaders and even a few quirky characters, and find out how their contributions changed Cape Ann both publicly and behind the scenes.

Fitz Henry Lane on Foot and Online

June 16 & 23, July 15

Delve into the 19th century on this tour through the neighborhoods and waterfront areas that inspired the artwork of native son Fitz Henry Lane. Learn how Lane rose from modest beginnings in the pre-Civil War era to worldwide recognition as a marine painter and why, even today, numerous artists journey to Cape Ann to capture its unusual light. Participants are encouraged to bring a smart phone or tablet in order to access the rich sources of information available at Fitz Henry Lane Online and to connect specific locations to the paintings they inspired. 

Churches of Gloucester: The Evolution of Spiritual Communities

July 22 & 29

Learn about the histories and complex relationships among the spiritual communities that evolved in Gloucester over its 400-year history on this tour to eight places of worship (or their former locations). From the time of the earliest English settlers, the church was the center of community life, yet for nearly two hundred years there was only one denomination to choose from: Congregational. In a very short period of time, as immigration patterns shifted in the 19th century, choices blossomed as people of many different religious preferences—among them Universalists, Unitarians, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and Jews—established themselves on Cape Ann.

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The Cape Ann Museum has been in existence since the 1870s, working to preserve and celebrate the history and culture of the area and to keep it relevant to today’s audiences. Spanning 44,000 square feet, the Museum is one of the major cultural institutions on Boston’s North Shore welcoming more than 25,000 local, national and international visitors each year to its exhibitions and programs. In addition to fine art, the Museum’s collections include decorative art, textiles, artifacts from the maritime and granite industries, two historic homes and a sculpture park in the heart of downtown Gloucester. Visit capeannmuseum.org for details.

The Museum is located at 27 Pleasant Street in Gloucester. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission is $10.00 adults, $8.00 Cape Ann residents, seniors and students. Youth (under 18) and Museum members are free. For more information please call: (978)283-0455 x10. Additional information can be found online at www.capeannmuseum.org.

 For a detailed media fact sheet please visit www.capeannmuseum.org/press.

Gloucester’s gorgeous Stage Fort Park Welcome Center opens May 24th with tourism biz kick off party

Posted on by Catherine

SAVE THE DATE! Join tourism friends and colleagues at the Stage Fort Park Welcome Center, 24 Hough Avenue, May 24th, from 5:30-7:30PM to gear up for the public.  

Please join Mayor Romeo Theken

the Gloucester Tourism Commission, Discover Gloucester, Welcome Center Volunteers, and businesses to celebrate the opening of the Stage Fort Park Welcome Visitors Center and the beginning of the visitor season to our city! We encourage you to join us as we come together to share exciting plans and rev up for the 2017 season. This is the perfect opportunity to bring your brochure, rack cards and business printed matter to market and share your business news to the tourism community. Contact Elizabeth at Discover Gloucester if your business would like to donate an appetizer tray or samples for the party. Contact Kathie Gilson if you have questions about your marketing material–there’s a lot already there. 

6 TOURISM VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

Kathie Gilson says that they are looking for six more volunteers for the Welcoming Center at Stage Fort Park. The City needs people who have a general knowledge and love of Gloucester & who enjoy talking with and helping visitors learn about our city. Please consider volunteering for a 3 hour shift – once a week, Memorial Day to Columbus Day. Training will be provided. Contact: Kathie at 978-325-3558 or 978-290-9860.

 

Photos from tourism kick off 2016 and throwback ca.1910 (Library of Congress) looking across the baseball field area to Tablet Rock (the Cupboard on the left is just out of view and the harbor on the right)

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YANKEE MAGAZINE FEATURES SCOTT MEMHARD AND CAPE POND ICE!!

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

YANKEE MAGAZINE FEATURES SCOTT MEMHARD AND CAPE POND ICE!!

Behind-the-Scenes Factory Tours | The Best 5

 

Article and photo by Kim Knox Beckius

Want to see Yankee ingenuity in action? Go behind the scenes on a factory tour. “Made in New England” pride thrives at factories that produce everything from frozen commodities to cuddly gifts guaranteed to melt hearts. As a piano or a naval destroyer takes shape before your eyes, you’ll realize anything built to last requires one component that can’t be manufactured: passion.

Cape Pond Ice
Gloucester, Massachusetts

When Cape Pond Ice was founded in 1848, Mother Nature provided the refrigeration. These days, giant blocks of ice aren’t harvested from local ponds; they’re manufactured. On ice house tours year-round, you can watch the “coolest guys around” turn water into cold, hard cash. Inside this frosty factory, where 300 tons of ice are produced daily, antique hydraulic block upenders are everyday tools, and ice sculptures survive for decades. Cape Pond’s diverse product line includes everything from ice shot luges to three grades of chopped ice critical to Gloucester’s fishing industry. Plus, more than 15 years after actor John Hawkes wore a Cape Pond Ice T-shirt in The Perfect Storm, sales of logo wear still account for nearly 10 percent of revenues.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Jane Deering Gallery Adin Murray Horizon paintings reception May 20

Posted on by Catherine

ONE DAY ONLY

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JDG may adin murray

from the gallery’s press release:

‘In Celtic tradition, there is a belief that heaven and earth are three feet apart — except in “thin places,” where the space between the physical world and the spiritual collapses, and we’re able to glimpse the transcendent, or the infinite, or the divine. The space where the sky and water meet — sometimes gently blurring together, sometimes crisply forming the horizon — is such a place for me. It can be beautiful or foreboding, tumultuous or calm, light or dark, and always it speaks to the universal truth of constant change. Tides flow and ebb, light shifts as the sun tracks across the sky, the atmosphere transforms with the weather and the seasons. The space is powerful, profound, and humbling, yet often in the busyness of life it is overlooked. The aim of these paintings is to present this space alone in all its myriad manifestations, to allow the gaze to focus on the “thin place” that is the horizon.’ — Adin Murray . 2017
Adin Murray was born in 1974 in Manchester, Massachusetts. He received his BA in Art/Biology from Tulane University in 1997, and his MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008. In 2008, he had a solo exhibition at the Savannah Hilton Head International Airport, and in 2009, his work was shown at the Woodruff Art Center in Atlanta, the Rymer Gallery in Nashville, and the Pei-Ling Chan Gallery in Savannah. His work has been featured in Faultline, the University of California, Irvine’s literary and art publication, and it also appeared in both Southern Living and North Shore magazines. Murray currently lives and paints on Cape Ann in Massachusetts. This is his third show with the Jane Deering Gallery.
917-902-4359 . info@janedeeringgallery.com . janedeeringgallery.com

 

Edward “Hoppy” Hopkins part of Gloucester’s History

Posted on by Manuel F. Simoes

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Gloucester Smiles

Edward F. “Hoppy” is the son of  the late Edward B. Hopkins, the last person to be born on Ten Pound Island.  His grandfather Edward H. Hopkins was the Lighthouse keeper during the 1920’s.

“Hoppy” operates Ed’s Oil Burner Service.  Forty Years servicing Gloucester and surrounding area.

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Gloucester Smiles-608 In the Garden

Posted on by Manuel F. Simoes

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IMPORTANT NEWS TO PREVENT RANSOMWARE

Posted on by Donna Ardizzoni

There is currently a lot of media attention regarding a particularly nasty form of computer viruses or Malware known as Ransomware. Strictly speaking, it is not a virus in that it does not break into your computer on its own … it tricks you into allowing it in using social engineering. It then uses features of your operating system to encrypt your documents, pictures, music and other data. You then get a rather rude message demanding payment for the key to return your data to a usable state.

Ransomware has been around for a few years now. The current furor over the use of stolen NSA “tools” is about how the thing spread so fast … not the basic concept of holding the encryption key hostage for payment. There is nothing wrong with encrypting portions of your data. It is a preferred way of ensuring privacy so that only those with the authorized keys are allowed access. In fact, it is a requirement of much legal, medical and government communication. The crime here is to do it to someone else’s data and then hold them up for the key to decipher the data.

The only thing you can do to PREVENT getting the Ransomware type of Malware is to be careful what you open (attachments). Use common sense … UPS and FEDEX state that they DO NOT send you attachments about shipments. Basically, beware of ZIP attachments as this is the most common infection vector. Attached PDF files about invoices and overdue payment demands should also be avoided. If you really owe somebody money and they want it bad enough, eventually they will pick up the phone and call you. The IRS never sends you an e-mail demanding payment or Credit Card information. Banks never ask you for your password or PIN. Never follow a link to reset a password … log into the site directly and go into your account management to make any changes. If in doubt, call the institution using a known good number … not something supplied by an e-mail. Another common tactic is to send out a blind message implying that your mail account is overfull and you have to make some change to it or re-establish your account. Most likely you don’t even have any such account. But if you log in to do what they requested, chances are you are going to use the same password as some of your legitimated accounts or the same PIN. They then use that information to try to hack your other accounts.

To protect your data, use a good cloud-based backup system that does versioning. We recommend and use CrashPlan by Code42. There are personal, family and business plans available. Each time a file is opened and then closed it is backed up. This way you can retrieve a copy from the last hour, day, week, etc. until you get the desired result. If your data has become corrupted and the bad files now backed up, you simply go back to the day BEFORE the infection and get the version to restore. Carbonite is another such online backup plan. We have used both and while we prefer the interface to CrashPlan, they both work well.

If your system should get infected, it will have to be rebuilt anyway. That can always be done if you have copies of all of your programs … it is the DATA that makes your system unique. Using Acronis or another disk imaging product will get the system up to a usable condition faster and then the restored data is applied over that. We have done this several times for our customers in the past. It is aggravating … but it works. We will be glad to help anyone who has further questions.

A common rule of thumb is that if seems too good to be true, it probably isn’t. Same holds true that if it seems too BAD to be true, it could well be a scam. In today’s world of “IoT” (Internet of Things), the more skeptical you are, the better.

That … and backups, Backups, BACKUPS …

How much energy did we produce with Cazeault Solar? National Grid Owes Us Money! Check Out Our Bill! 

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Call Tim Sanborn from Cazeault Solar to find out how you can help the environment and be cash flow positive right off the bat with Solar. Total no-brainer, and Tim’s company makes it look natural on your home.

Call Tim (774) 228-3411

Here’s the proof, and our house is all electric baseboard heat. We’re making money baby! 
I especially like this part-

 “Please do not mail payment. You have a credit balance on your account.”

If you don’t like money, then don’t call Tim. 

Brunch at the Sea Glass Restaurant

Posted on by Nichole S.

Mother’s Day morning I slept until almost 9:00 and woke up to find my boys dressed in button-down shirts and ready to go.  Turns out we had 10:30 reservations over at the Sea Glass restaurant at the Castle Manor Inn.

While the weather wasn’t perfect….brunch was.  When asked, we were fine sitting outside on the tented and enclosed deck.  I’m all in for eating with a view whenever possible and the heaters made it warm enough for us.  The Mother’s Day Buffet was loaded with with a variety of dishes and was really delicious. There were several traditional breakfast choices alongside dishes such as chowder, chicken parm, stuffed eggplant, steak tips, and more.  While eating, the staff also walked around with platters of stuffed clams, shrimp cocktail, and stuffed mushrooms.

To sweeten the deal, the dessert table included chocolate mousse cake and creme brulee!

Much thanks to the staff for helping to make Mother’s Day pretty lovely….even in the torrential rain.  I look forward to going back in the warmth of the summer for a less windy meal.

Learn more about THE CASTLE MANOR INN and SEA GLASS RESTAURANT HERE

I wish I had taken more photos to share in this post, but I was happy to be enjoying the time with the family.

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Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team Update

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

We will have a display at Motif No.1 Day in Rockport on Saturday, May 20.

  • It will be somewhere down there near T Wharf. Exact location to be determined when we get there.
  • The event is from 9 am – 5 pm.
  • We need to be set up by 8:30 am.
  • We’ll have a tent, display panels, tables, live animal exhibit…
  • We need lots of volunteers for this event.
  • Please get in touch if you can help out – cavpt@yahoo.com

We will be at the Crane Estate Sunday, May 21st at 2 pm with Snakes of New England and the World one hour live animal presentation.

  • Also a great volunteer opportunity in a lovely setting.
  • Set up at 1ish.
  • Again email cavpt@yahoo.com if you can help.

Don’t miss our Annual Yard Sale on Saturday, May 27, 9 am – 1 pm (Rain date Saturday, June 3)

  • In the lot behind St. Peter’s parking lot at Rogers and Main Street in Gloucester.
  • Please bring all your donations over there on the day of the sale by 7 am… so we have time to sort and price.
  • We will need lots of volunteers. Many of us will need to be there early, like by 5:30 am.
  • The finishing crew will need to stay until everything is picked up and cleaned up.
  • Maybe you can do a couple hours. All help is appreciated.

This is a big fundraiser for us, so gather your stuff and please help us out at the sale.

Gardens Survive Rain and Winds on Stacy Boulevard

Posted on by Manuel F. Simoes

The Flowers in the gardens on Stacy Boulevard survived the heavy rains and winds on Mother’s Day May 14, 2017.  Not even a Spring Nor‘easter  stops us from enjoying Mother’s Day in Gloucester.

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HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who make our lives more beautiful with their love and kindness each and every day. The wish is for today but the love is for always. Rock On Moms!

YOU DIDN’T THINK I’D ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE IN THAT DUMP DID YOU?

Posted on by Kimsmithdesigns

YOU DIDN’T THINK I’D ACTUALLY WANT TO LIVE IN THAT DUMP DID YOU?
Dad Piping Plover spends considerable time showing Mom how good he is at nest-building.

Mom nonchalantly makes her way over to the nest scrape.

She thoroughly inspects the potential nest.

Dad again rearranges the sand. Mom pipes in, “Honey, I think I’d prefer that mound of dried seaweed over there, nearer the blades of seagrass. And can you please add a few seashells to the next one, rather than bits of old kelp.”

Rejected!
Here we go again!

Five Piping Plovers have been observed at Good Harbor Beach. They are battling over territory and beginning to pair up. The male builds perhaps a dozen nests scrapes in a single day–all in hopes of impressing the female. Hopefully, within the next week, they will establish a nest; the earlier in the season Plovers begin nesting, the greater the chance of survival for the chicks.

Dave Rimmer from Essex County Greenbelt reports that although many nest scrapes have been seen, no nests with an egg on any of Gloucester’s beaches have yet been discovered. He suggests that perhaps the cooler than usual spring temperatures are slowing progress.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUCcXh0FaWp/

Not one, but two, potential nesting sites have been roped off for the Piping Plovers. The second site is near the Good Harbor Beach Inn.

C.B. Fisk

Posted on by Donna Ardizzoni

When C.B. Fisk has their open house, Rick and I always try to go.  As many times as we have been there, we always learn something new.  Thank you C.B. Fisk and FOB Greg Bover for opening your wonderful shop.

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