You get a loaf of Italian bread and stand infront of the stove dipping the bread in the sauce and you might not leave until every last peice of bread is gone- trust me on this one. Video tomorrow night!
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My View of Life on the Dock
Hi Everyone,
As a newbie to Gloucester, Joey asked that I share my view of things, so here’s my first post…
My first visit to Gloucester was through scuba diving. I fell in love with the area and starting spending more time here, not just diving, but exploring other things.(the diving here is amazing!) I had no preconceived notions of Gloucester, all I really knew was that it was a fishing town and close to the beach. I remembered thinking Cape Ann was so confusing to navigate, which is funny now.
I was tired of life in the North End, driving around for 45 min. just to find a parking space, lugging groceries and gear up 4 flights of stairs to our tiny apartment. By searching for more information on Gloucester, I found the GMG blog and that became my daily read. After bombarding my boyfriend, Mike, with real estate listings for over a year, we actually started viewing homes and in March found the one for us. I have now been a resident of Gloucester for 10 months!
I am discovering all the great restaurants, shops, artists, nature spots, etc and I feel like I am always finding something new. I can honestly say that the Italian food in the North End has nothing on Gloucester’s! My neighbors are kind, helpful and considerate, which reinforces the strong community this city has. I have friends who come to visit and they can’t believe that people actually stop their car to let you cross the street.
My weekdays are filled with a job in advertising and a long commute. When I come home from a bad day, I remind myself, “hey, look where I get to live”. On weekends you can find me on Good Harbor or the Blvd. walking Coconut, downtown eating and drinking with Mike, taking photographs, antique hunting, diving, attempting to surf, riding my ’89 Sportster and working on the house.
I am excited to share my discoveries with you and look forward to you educating me on Gloucester. I promise my next post will be shorter!
Attached is a picture of the urchins on the wall at folly cove.
Alicia
Only 190 more days to the Blackburn Challenge. That is when people row or paddle from Gloucester High School Parking lot up the Annisquam around Cape Ann and then finish by calling out their boat number as they cross under the Greasy Pole.
Saturday, July 17, 2010. I am telling as many people as possible that I am going to do it in a kayak so that when it comes time I will not be able to weasel out. Last year I caught a wee bit of bronchitis and bailed. Â Not this year.
I have made a page with some links to info about the race, Howard Blackburn and a google map I made of the circumnavigation of Cape Ann. Check it out.
If anyone wants to try out a chunk of the race in the spring or anytime before the race I might be looking for someone to paddling with. Give me an e-mail. My goal is to finish in time before the beer runs out on Pavilion Beach. I don’t care if granny is ahead of me.
All the best,
Gar, Doug, Dan, Frank, Walter &Â Â Jeff.
For more information, visit www.myspace.com/garfishband or www.garfish.net
HOW PUMPKIN PIE IS REALLY MADE!!
These Photos were shot undercover at one of the most Popular Bakeries in the United States. What a disgrace! To Think Grandma’s homemade recipe has been reduce to this Mass Produced pile of crap. You’ll thank me for not posting the photos of how these Chefs added the Whipped Cream Topping! Thanks to a Cape Ann Online poster for bringing this to my attention. I hope you did’nt know about any of this Laurie!
Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Study for Whale’s Jaw, Dogtown Common. Ink on paper, c. 1931.
Cape Ann Museum collection.
[Signature]Reviewed by Joyce Carol Oates
This is a work of narrative nonfiction in which I attempt to tell the story of a landscape—Gloucester, Massachusetts’s Dogtown. The author’s succinct description of her fascinating, richly detailed and remarkably evocative exploration of a long-deserted colonial village amid a 3,600-acre woodland doesn’t do justice to the quirky originality of Dogtown. Part history of a most unusual region; part commentary on the art of the American Modernist painter Marsden Hartley; part murder mystery/true crime police procedural; and part memoir, East’s first book is likely to appeal to a varied audience for whom Dogtown, Mass., is utterly unknown.East was initially drawn to Dogtown through the landscape paintings of Hartley—a gifted and undervalued contemporary of Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove and John Marin. Led to investigate the landscape Hartley painted, East soon finds herself, like the protagonist of a mystery, ever more deeply involved with the colonial ruin—is it a place of mystical wonder, or is it an accursed landscape? In colonial times, Dogtown was a marginal area of Gloucester said to be a haven for former slaves, prostitutes and witches; in the 20th century, it was largely abandoned and became a sort of uncharted place where, in a notorious 1984 incident, a mentally deranged sex offender murdered a young woman teacher in the woods.East is thorough in her descriptions of the attractive young victim and the loathsome murderer—a devastating portrait of the type of predator of whom it’s said he would never hurt anyone. Though the true crime chapters—which alternate with chapters presenting the tangled history of Dogtown—are inevitably more interesting, East gracefully integrates her various themes into a coherent and mesmerizing whole. In her admiration for Hartley, East kindles in the reader a wish to see his works, as well as the allegedly mystical landscape that inspired them; it would have been a good idea to include color plates of some of Hartley’s work, juxtaposed with the landscapes. Also, the true crime chapters—written with appalled compassion—and the detailed portraits of individuals involved—the murderer, the victim, the victim’s husband and his family, several police officers—would benefit from photographs as well. Late in Dogtown, as if the author’s inventiveness were flagging and her material running thin, there are digressions into local politics that will be of limited interest.Dogtown is surprisingly spare in personal information. We learn only a few facts about the engaging young writer whose life was so changed when she first saw Hartley’s paintings that, five years later, she was led to the adventure of Dogtown, which would involve her for 10 years. This is most unusually self-effacing, particularly in our rabidly confessional times. Some readers will appreciate the author’s vanishing into her subject, which is certainly strong enough to stand alone, while others might feel an absence in this evocation of, as Hartley described it, one of these strange wild places… where the chemistry of the universe is too busy realizing itself.Joyce Carol Oates’s latest novel is Little Bird of Heaven (HarperCollins/Ecco).
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