15-Minute Field Trip

I was walking by the  Cape Ann Museum when I realized it wouldn't be closing for another 15 minutes, so I ducked in for a quick visit with one of my favorites. 

Sea serpent billet head from the schooner Diadem, built in Essex, 1855.

I learned today that, in 1817, more than 50 people in Gloucester, many of them "prominent members of the community," reported seeing a serpent in the sea off Pavilion Beach. The entire incident was written up in a pamphlet published that year by the Linnaean Society. read it here 

Love those 15-minute field trips! 

Earth Day = Ocean Day ....for me

I observed Earth Day*  by rowing out to Ten Pound Island in Gloucester Harbor this morning. Feeling wealthy, and humbled by this gift of a PLACE. And compelled to take care of it every day. 

                           
                 These barely perceptible swells show how wild it got out there this morning. Flat calm.

 The Paint Factory at Rocky Neck, which I love because it was NOT destroyed to make way for condos!
http://www.whale.org/the-mission/about-us/headquarters/



* April 22 is the day for the Americanized  Earth Day , but I know that Earth Day was meant , by its founders at the United Nations in 1971, to be observed at the time of the Equinox which, this year in the Western Hemisphere, was March 20.

http://enduringgloucester.com/2015/03/19/equinox-earth-day-2015-is-march-20/

And just for some perspective- here's what the Grand Banks Dory was made for.....

photos courtesy Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts

Lobster Boat Two-fer!

I walked down to the docks this morning and stopped to take some pictures of a lobsterman I know,  with his crew getting ready for a day of setting traps.......and learned of a great new book he is promoting.

Jay Gustaferro of Gloucester, captain of the Jean Elizabeth,  has been catching lobsters and fighting nukes since the 1970s and he is nowhere near done.

Looking up in Gloucester, Massachusetts