Even though the weather is still chilly and overcast you can see the signs of Spring.
Egrets on Kettle Island

Parents and their Goslings

My View of Life on the Dock
Even though the weather is still chilly and overcast you can see the signs of Spring.
Egrets on Kettle Island

Parents and their Goslings

Description
Saturday, May 13 2017 – Wind turbine tour.
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, but please RSVP!
Join us for pizza and a tour of the Gloucester wind turbines! Hear their stories and go inside the towers.
We’ll also have an electric vehicle showcase before each tour!
Due to popularity of this free event, we’re planning to offer two tours—one starting at 10:30am (EV showcase & food–then the actual tour will start by 10:50), the next at 11:30am (EV showcase–actual tour will begin at noon). Please indicate your preference when you RSVP.
Contact anna@massenergy.org or 800-287-3950 x5 with questions.
Gloucester Wind Turbine Tour & Electric Vehicle Showcase 2017
Blackburn Industrial Park
(Gloucester Engineering parking lot)
Gloucester, MA


Line up is subject to change
Details
Katrina’s Bar & Grille presents their second $1,000 Singer-Songwriter Challenge: an 8-week, performance event open to all musicians. Starting on Tuesday, May 2nd, this weekly event will select a finalist at the end of each night for 7 weeks. On the 8th week, all of the weekly finalists come together and perform for a piece of the $1,000 cash prize.
Sign up by emailing your name, phone number and whether you are a solo artist, duo, trio, etc. to clangathianos@me.com.
How it works:
This weekly event, hosted by Chris Langathianos, will showcase musicians – solo performers, duos, trios & bands (no drums as setups must take less than 5 minutes) – allowing them to perform up to 3 songs. Performers will play before a panel of judges. The judges panels will change from week to week and will be made up of local musicians, business owners, etc. After each performance, judges will provide their live feedback to the performer and audience. A confidential score card will be kept, and a weekly winner will be announced at the end of the evening.
After the 7 weeks of preliminaries, all 7 finalists and 1 wild card will return for week 8 to perform 3 songs – at least 1 MUST BE AN ORIGINAL – before a panel of celebrity judges. 3 winners will be selected and will go home with a piece of the $1,000 cash prize. 1st place / $700, 2nd / $200, and 3rd / $100.
Other details:
1. Performers may participate on a weekly basis but may only win one week.
2. In the event of high demand for performance spots, the event host reserves the right to move previous performers further down the list.
3. All audio equipment is provided – PA, microphones, stands, and monitors.
Sign Ups:
Performers may register for a performance slot by emailing Chris Langathianos at clangathianos@me.com or through this Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/events/290128601426632/
If you have any questions, they may be directed to Chris at the email above.
From the new gallery’s press release:
“Hudson Gallery – Opening Gala and Inaugural Exhibit Driven by Technology
Fields of the Mind: Images, Spaces and Feelings from the Subconscious Mind
Interactive Sound Sculpture and Experimental Art
May 13 to May 29, 2017, Gala May 13th from 7-10pm
Hudson Gallery announces an opening gala and inaugural exhibit showcasing creative technologist MJ Caselden and experimental artist Donna Caselden. Fields of the Mind is a mother and son synthesis of visual and aural artwork exploring sound, magnetism, self-reflection and contemplation. May 13 to May 29, 2017 with a gala reception on Saturday, May 13th from 7-10pm. A participatory Mother’s Day weekend event. MJ Caselden’s sound-generating sculptures use varying magnetic fields to induce vibrations in
metal and wood. Viewers cast shadows while electromagnets and vibrating metal strings on
wooden sculpture create resonance and sound. Participants improvise and interact controlling
the sound through motion. “So the vibrations are acoustic, coming from organic materials, but The experience is driven through contemporary technologies,” MJ Caselden said.
Magnetic sound sculptures can provide a fully immersive, transcendent experience. MJ has
collaborated with teachers from long-standing healing arts practices such as Asana Yoga,
Tibetan Tummo breathwork, acupuncture, and Ch’an meditation. He leads group listening
rituals and innovative technology workshops exploring integration of meditative sound into
healing arts and lifestyle. His sculptures have been featured in art, meditation, and retreat
spaces worldwide, including the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Times Square.
Donna Caselden is an experimental two-dimensional artist. She works with acrylic, watercolor, Encaustic and oil. Sensorial memories and experience render her canvases deeply personal.
“The imagery is born of feeling, as my brush marries the canvas I wonder what it will birth,” Donna Caselden said. The featured works engage via layers, depth and color baths. Donna is an Active member of Cape Ann’s Experimental Art Group at Rockport Art Association, Society for Encouragement of Arts, Rocky Neck Art Colony, and National Association of Women Artists.
MJ and Donna are natives of North Andover and Andover, Massachusetts, respectively,
suburbs north of Boston. They both approach art abstractly guided by either irrational actions or emotion. “We both prioritize the feelings that our works inspire over conceptualization or Analysis. So, we are both “feelers”, like that, although our mediums are totally different,” MJ Caselden said. A connection exists in that sound meditation is about tapping into oneself, and
often involves accessing internal mental visions from subconscious places. “Our creative Energies collide in similar realms. Painting abstractly entails drawing imagery from the Subconscious and projecting it onto the canvas,” Donna Caselden said.
MJ studied electronics at the University of Southern California and New York University,
sound design at Berklee College of Music and signal processing at Tsinghua University in
Beijing and at USC’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI). His interest in energy exchange through technology led him to prototyping and electronics design. MJ presently directs a team Of engineers and designers creating innovative prototypes, products, and works of art for
entities such as Intel, Lexus, and the Microsoft Music x Technology program with Listen.
Donna’s formidable design background includes interior space, experimental painting and Wearable art. One wearable design was awarded the Certificate of Excellence by ManneqArt for recycled art. The dress was on public display in the greater D.C. area, and at the Peabody Essex Museum as part of the World of Wearable Art exhibit. Her work is shown in northeast museums and galleries. Donna attended Boston College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. Hudson’s mission is to create community through art, education, and social activism. The
gallery is part of a collaborative national initiative celebrating the Science Art Movement and the aesthetic, intellectual and political impact of technology on artistic practice and discourse.”
Two games….GHS VS Beverly..big loss….and then a great bounce back win vs Everett.
The tulips and Fisherman’s Wives Memorial have finally been uncaged for all to enjoy on their daily walks! I took advantage of the dreary weather after work last night to get a few shots of the vibrant, dewy tulips! Thank you to all who put in endless hours of planting and preparation. The result is just gorgeous!!

Bearskin Neck is coming to life. Some old favorites are thankfully back for another season, some new places are popping up, and…in this case….some surprises are coming. All are reasons to make your way to Rockport to spend the day soon!

Documentary filmmaker Jared Flesher, “The Red Knot has been on my list since the very beginning,” he says. “As a species, it has all the elements of a dramatic story.” The bird is charismatic and attractive, particularly in its red-breasted summer plumage, and it makes one of the longest annual migrations on Earth, flying up to 9,000 miles each way from the southern tip of South America to the northernmost reaches of the Arctic where the species nests. Every May, as Red Knots make their long trek north, they pause at Delaware Bay in southern New Jersey to refuel, gobbling down the fat-rich horseshoe crab eggs that coat the shore.
At least, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Red Knots already have to overcome numerous challenges on such a long migration, but today they also face new threats. Climate change puts the species’ Arctic nesting sites at risk, and there’s trouble with their main food source at Delaware Bay, where in the early 2000s horseshoe crab over harvesting led to a Red Knot population crash. Since then, the subspecies that migrates through Delaware Bay has been listed under the Endangered Species Act, and the crab harvest has been limited. Red Knots seem to be slowly rebounding, but conservationists are worried that the population is still fragile.
As a storyteller, a species disappearing from earth forever—that’s just about the most dramatic hook there is,” Flesher says. And as he explores in Birds of May, which was partly funded by the Washington Crossing Audubon Society, a new threat may be lurking for the far-flying birds at their New Jersey stopover site.”
See the trailer below and watch the film exclusively at Audubon here only through May 7th.
On the sandy beaches of the Delaware Bay, in New Jersey, a visitor arrives each May from the southernmost tip of South America. Name: Calidris canutus rufa. The rufa red knot.
What makes the red knot remarkable is its epic journey: 19,000 miles per year, from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic Circle and back again, one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom.
The Delaware Bay serves as the most important stepping stone during the red knot’s long spring migration. Famished knots, having flown without rest for as many as seven days straight, arrive on the bay having lost half their body weight. For two crucial weeks, the birds gorge on the eggs of horseshoe crabs. Red knots that gain enough weight will survive the final leg of their journey to the Arctic. Others perish.
In 2015, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service listed the rufa red knot as a federally threatened species—it faces threats throughout the Western Hemisphere, from habitat loss in South America to the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. The calamitous overharvest of horseshoe crabs on the Delaware Bay last decade was another major driver of the red knot’s decline—when the starving birds arrived, there weren’t enough eggs waiting for them.
Most recently, in 2016, state and federal regulators approved a plan to permit a 1,400 percent increase in oyster farming on the Delaware Bay. The oyster farms operate on the same tidal flats used by hungry red knots at low tide.
Birds of May, filmed in May 2016 on the beaches of the Delaware Bay, is filmmaker Jared Flesher’s ode to the natural spectacle of the red knot’s annual visit. It’s also an investigation of potential new threats to red knot survival. Not everyone is sure that expanded oyster farming and red knots can happily coexist. Against the scenic backdrop of the bay, Flesher interviews both oyster farmers and the shorebird biologists who fear that an oyster farming boom here could push the rufa red knot closer to extinction.
Read more about filmmaker Jared Flesher here:
A tiny shorebird inspires N.J. filmmaker and a flock of poets

Jason Burroughs
Anna Nicole Pisani
Giulia Davis-Casale
Lexus Ortiz-Melo
Veronica Palermo
Vincent Esposito
Opening Reception:
Wednesday. May 10. 5-8PM
Montserrat |
301 Gallery
301 Cabot Street. Beverly MA
May 8 – May 12
No peeking till the show!


The Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce will be hosting a reception and information meeting for new and prospective members at Cruiseport (lower level) on Wednesday, May 3 from 5 to 7 PM. Representatives from the Chamber’s Board of Directors and Ambassadors Committee, together with Chamber staff, will be on hand to provide information and answer questions about Chamber programs, services and member benefits.
Anyone interested in learning more about the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce is invited and encouraged to attend a special night of networking. This will be a great opportunity to meet other Chamber members and get to know the Chamber better.
The event will feature information stations staffed by members of the Chamber’s Committees and Councils, including Next Generation Cape Ann, and a brief Chamber overview presented by CEO Ken Riehl and Board President Sara Young of Schooner Adventure. There is no charge for admission and light…
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Fresh from a National Academies of Sciences talk and before taking flight to the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival (hyperlinked because I know you’re going to want to Google it), multi award-winning author Deborah Cramer will give a lecture about the making of the Narrow Edge on Thursday May 4th from 7-8:30PM at Sawyer Free Library, 2 Dale Avenue, in her hometown, Gloucester, MA. The talk is sponsored by the library, Eastern Point Lit House, Kestrel, and The Gloucester Writers Center.
Red knots and horseshoe crabs–and Deborah Cramer— inspired artists Susan Quateman, Michael DiGiorgio, Janet Essley, Patty Hanlon, and George Textor. Their art is featured in a special group exhibit in Sawyer Free’s Matz Gallery alongside photographs from Cramer’s journey. As far as architecture, identity and culture go, a gallery threshold for a library in Gloucester is pretty perfect.
Susan Quateman writes about her “silk paintings, horseshoe crabs and red knots: Lee Steele, Susan’s 91 year young silk painter friend and former Folly Cove Designer, gave her horseshoe crab shells she’d found on Folly Cove 25 years ago. They’re no longer found there. Susan used them as models to interpret with Jacquard dyes on silk, and painted the red knots from photographs.” Quateman’s Narrow Edge series premiered at Cedar Tree Gallery in Essex.





DEBORAH’S TALK THIS THURSDAY 7PM
The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab and an Epic Journey
Order: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Powell’s | IndieBound
The Narrow Edge
Best Book Award from the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering
Rachel Carson Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists
Reed Environmental Writing Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center
2017, participant in PBS American Experience film “Rachel Carson”
Piping plover fans local author Deborah Cramer on sandpipers is a must read and oh and dogs
Deborah Cramer upcoming Talks:
National Academies of Sciences, April 30th
Sawyer Free Library, May 4th
Indiana Dunes Birding Festival, May 6th
Northeast Migration Monitoring, May 17th
Salem Literary Festival, June 25th
Thoreau Society, July 12th
Best Deal on the Harbor.“Water Shuttle Seasonal Passes”
Only $60 before June 30th.
email us at harbortours@gmail.com
http://www.capeannharbortours.com/shuttle.html

Greater Yellowlegs foraging in the marsh.
I have loved this past month’s atmospheric and textured, misty April weather. Do you recall an April as foggy? I don’t. Whenever out and about and a spare moment was mine, I grabbed my camera and had a go at capturing beautiful fog-shrouded Cape Ann.
Trying out the new teleconverter–note the little tiny figure fishing on the breakwater in the photo on the left, which was shot at 18mm, and then with the 400mm lens plus tele.
Same focal lengths with Ten Pound Island.
Cape Ann Shave to Save
To Benefit St Jude Childrens Hospital
May 19th, 2017 6:00pm to 8:00pm
St. John the Baptist Church 52 Main St., Essex, MA 01929
Shave your head to help children with cancer. At St Jude families do not have to pay for treatment. The hospital helps children and their families all over the world. Follow the link to join the shave or make a donation. Mail donations to P O Box 74, Essex, MA 01929.
http://fundraising.stjude.org/CapeAnnShave
Join us at these restaurants. They will donate a portion of the night’s sale to the Shave.
Monday, May 8th @ Jalapeno’s, 86 Main St, Gloucester
For more information email dawnburnham_pchef@comcast.net
Jane Shaw janegrayw@comcast.net
CAPE ANN SYMPHONY
THE 65th ANNIVERSARY SEASON
Yoichi Udagawa, Music Director
SCANDINAVIAN SPECTACULAR
CLOSES CAPE ANN SYMPHONY65th SEASON On
SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2017
Concert Features CAS Debut of RemarkableBlind Pianist
Yoo Jin Noh
Cape Ann Symphony wraps up the orchestra’s 65th Anniversary Concert Season on Saturday, May 20 at 8 pm with a Scandinavian Spectacular featuring stirring music from Scandinavian composers Carl Nielsen, Jean Sibelius and Edvard Greig and the CAS debut ofextraordinary blind pianist Yoo Jin Noh at the CAS performance venue at Manchester-Essex High School Auditorium on 36 Lincoln Street in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. Manchester-Essex High School Auditorium is handicapped accessible. The Scandinavian Spectacular concert program features Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1;Sibelius’ Finlandia and piano phenom Yoo Jin Noh performingGreig’s gorgeous Piano Concerto. Maestro Udagawa is eager to bring the young soloist to Cape Ann, “Rockport Music’s David Deveau first introduced me to Yoo Jin Noh and I was so impressed with her ability. There is an incredible amount of musical talent in the Greater Boston area. All you have to do is hear some one like pianist Yoo Jin Noh to know that is true. We are looking forward to presenting this unique talent to CAS audiences.” Ticket prices for the Cape Ann Symphony Scandinavian Spectacular concert are $40 for adults, $35 for senior citizens and $5 for Youth age 18 and under. For tickets and information, call 978-281-0543 or visit www.capeannsymphony.org.
Pictured: Guest Soloist Pianist Yoo Jin Noh
Courtesy Photo

Earlier posts outline the engineering. The photograph above details the subgrade that was re-established for irrigation (note ditch alongside walkway), loam and sod. The photo also emphasizes the lengthy short wall on the right which was removed for access during construction. “The excavation was deep enough that the angle of repose was into the old wall.” The wall in the photo is rebuilt.

Spacing and symmetry were important design considerations for Stacy Boulevard construction. The old benches were surveyed. Most were returned relative to where they were sited before the build out. The memorial benches on the boulevard are full. This one shows a tribute to Al Swelka.



Photos Nov-Dec 2016. Video caption: Stacy Boulevard construction minute – stroll before January, and sod. Upcoming posts in this Stacy Boulevard series include: disasters, the cultural landscape, and Blynman.
Series:
Part 4 – Gloucester’s majestic public works construction stats: bringing the Stacy Boulevard plans to life
Part 2: Stacy Boulevard Public Works stunner | Gloucester is an early client for the Harvard and Olmsted trained landscape designer, Thomas Warren Sears. His 1908 photos are a must see!
STACY BOULEVARD NEARING THE FINISH LINE Part 1 – Walk this way: Gloucester’s stately Stacy Boulevard public works project is breathtaking and one for the ages!
September 12 2016- Stacy Boulevard construction update: historic Blynman the Cut Bridge project scope plans and engineering details
August 2016 Stacy Boulevard construction details. Gloucester DPW is impressive
Fun time at Stage Fort Park on Sunday, April 30, 2017.
The volunteers on this committee are terrific.
Alicia Unleashed Episode 59 taped 4/30/2017 with B-Side, Kyle D, Kim and Hostess Alicia Cox
Episode 59-Taped 4/30/17
With B-Side Special Guest Kyle Danikas and Kim
Alicia’s “Hot Plate” topics. We welcome back Kyle and she explains where she has been and what she has been up to. She also brought along her friend Kim who is incredible in her own. Kyle and Kim sit down with us to describe what it is like to live with EDS and the daily struggles they endure. We’re sure you will not want to miss a second of the episode.
May is EDS Awareness month and we are helping get the information out.
Kyle is doing a Walk with the Marfan Foundation June 11th in Boston Common. All money raised for her Team (Team Zebra) will go to research for EDS.
Every little bit helps, if you would like to make a donation to help Kyle’s Team please go to the following link:
https://give.marfan.org/fundraise?fcid=962256
Kyle Danikas-Team Zebra
The Marfan Foundation
Also we apologize for the recording quality and echo…and the crunching. (We’re a work in progress)