Families, students, and individuals are welcome to gather at Beeman Elementary School’s sensory garden bed with Backyard Growers Garden Educator Hailey Small to learn more about incorporating plants and flowers into their garden that stimulate all five senses. Sensory gardening is a movement focused on child growth and development to help kids access the natural world and is often used as a healing tool that can provide a sense of calm and restoration.
FREE admission to Backyard Growers Program Participants (e.g. 2022 Community Garden, Backyard Garden & GrowBag Garden) as well as Backyard Growers Community Consulting Clients
The Sawyer Free Library will host an important presentation about end of life options on Saturday, June 18, 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. A nurse and a subject matter expert will explore the end-of-life choices, and ramifications, available to individuals. Â The pending legislation in Massachusetts about Medical Aid in Dying will be explained and a status report on the bill will be given. Â The nonprofit organization, Compassion and Choices, will discuss their work on behalf of all wishing to chart their end-of-life path. Â An extensive list of resources, will be provided.
The event will take place on the Main Floor of the Library, located at 2 Dale Avenue in Gloucester. It is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit sawyerfreelibrary.org or 978-325-5555 or contact: compassionandchoices.org or 978-325-5500.
In an initiative to support Gloucester small businesses, Mayor Greg Verga has launched the Retail Signage Improvement Grant Program and released application guidelines.
The City of Gloucester’s Retail Signage Improvement Grant Program is intended to assist commercial property owners or tenants in eligible buildings improve their storefront signage, awning, and/or sign related lighting. The purpose of the program is to improve the visual quality of the city’s retail business districts and to enhance the districts as a place to visit, shop and work.
“The City of Gloucester Retail Signage Improvement Grant program provides support to our local small businesses as they prepare for a busy summer and road ahead. We are grateful to the Baker-Polito administration for their continued support of Gloucester’s small businesses,” said Gloucester Mayor Greg Verga.
The target locations for this grant program are the retail business districts, neighborhood business districts, village, and extensive business districts located in Downtown Gloucester, Magnolia, Lanesville and Rocky Neck. All signage improvements must comply with the City of Gloucester’s Sign Ordinance.
The City of Gloucester is working with the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce to facilitate the application process. Applicants can download an application on the Chamber’s website capeannchamber.com, or pick up a copy from the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce office located at 24 Harbor Loop in Gloucester. Interested applicants are encouraged to apply no later than Friday, June 17, 2022.
“We are excited to be partnering with the City of Gloucester on this important grant program and helping the selected businesses better promote their business through improved signage,” said Ken Riehl, Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce. “This grant opportunity will help revitalize the city’s business districts, encouraging visitors and residents alike to shop and do business locally which is something the Chamber strongly believes in and supports.”
If businesses have questions regarding the Retail Signage Improvement Grant Program or would like additional information, please contact the Project Manager, Olivia Perez-O’Dess by email at olivia@capeannchamber.com.
The City of Gloucester Retail Signage Improvement Grant Program is funded by the Massachusetts Office of Business Development and the North Shore Alliance for Economic Development.
The Sawyer Free Library hosted the 2022 Poetry Without Paper Contest winners Thursday evening, June 9th.
Children’s Librarian Christy Rosso, PWP Winners Olivia Hogan Lopez, Kathleen Rowe Joyce, Jack Frishsen, Emma Wilt, Esme Sarrouf, Riley Cavanaugh, Aleena Brown and PWP Judge John Ronan
The award-winning students read their poetry to a standing-room-only crowd filled with friends and family and then recognized for their achievements. John Ronan, former Poet Laureate of Gloucester, and Christy Rosso, the Sawyer Free’s Children’s Librarian, presented the awards. Ronan, who serves as one of the contest judges and co-conceived the contest 20 years ago, stated, “I believe that there are probably future Nobel Poet Laureates among tonight’s winners. The caliber of creativity and writing this year was outstanding. We should be proud of all the students that participated.”
The Sawyer Free Library’s Poetry without Paper Contest has celebrated thousands of local students’ outstanding writing for the past 20 years while engaging the community’s youth in the art form and encouraging them to use poetry as a creative expression.
Winners were chosen from each age group: high school, middle school, and elementary school. First-place winners in all categories received $150 Cape Ann gift certificates, second-place winners a $100 gift certificates, and third-place winners a $50 gift certificate with Honorable Mention awarded a poetry book. All winning poets receive a certificate and an invitation to appear on 1623 Studio’s production, The Writer’s Block with John Ronan.
The 2022 Winning Poets:
High School:
First Place: “Tears of the Chrysanthemum” by Olivia Hogan-Lopez, GHS, 12th Grade
Middle School:
First Place: “Ascending like Icarus” by Emma Wilt, O’Maley, 8th Grade
Second Place: “The Wrong Picture” by Esme Sarrouf, Homeschool, 8th Grad
Third Place: “Cracked, but Never Broken” by Aleena Brown, O’Maley, 7th Grad
Honorable Mentions: “The Owl” by Riley Cavanaugh, O’Maley, 7th Grade
On Thursday, June 16 from 5:30 – 7:00pm, the Sawyer Free Library is hosting a presentation by local author and long-time music industry insider Schuyler Traughber on Soul Music’s history in pop culture focusing on a “Study of the Soul Music Environment” by Harvard Business School for CBS/Columbia Records in 1972. “The Harvard Report” has contributed to a powerful era, musically, while controversially contributing to the demise of Stax Records in the mid-1970s and Motown being sold to Boston Ventures/MCA Records in the 1980s, enriching corporate America’s distribution-control of Black Music.
 Schuyler Traughber has worked as a road musician, arranger, producer and label executive for We Produce/Stax Records, CBS Records, Motown Records as well as U.S. Business Rep for King Records/MCA, Tokyo. After fifteen years as a Music Business/Management faculty member at Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Sky currently resides in Gloucester and is co-author of an upcoming book: “POWER 101, The Harvard Report, Soul Music, & The American Dream.”
The event will take place on the Main Floor of the Library, located at 2 Dale Avenue in Gloucester. It is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit sawyerfreelibrary.org or 978-325-5555.Â
The Sawyer Free Library will be presenting an engaging and informative evening with Nick Sullivan -the author of The Blue Revolution on Wednesday, June 15, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
The New Bedford author will discuss his research and ideas on the “Blue Revolution, the rapid development of aquaculture in recent years. He will offer a new way of thinking about fish, food, and oceans by profiling the people and policies, transforming a challenged seafood industry into one that is fueled by fishermen, locavores, and local seafood supply chains interested in sustainable, traceable, quality seafood. He will share how the practices of 30 years ago that perpetuated an overfishing crisis are rapidly changing and the global challenges to preserving healthy oceans.
Sullivan is a writer and editor who examines the impact of business and technology on international development. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Maritime Studies Program and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Emerging Market Enterprises, both in the Fletcher School at Tufts University. The Blue Revolution is his fourth book.
The event will take place on the Main Floor of the Library, located at 2 Dale Avenue in Gloucester. It is free and open to the public. For more information, please visit sawyerfreelibrary.org or 978-325-5555.
On Thursday, June 9 from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m., learn more about Gloucester Marine Railways at the Sawyer Free Library.
Marine Railways Director Viking Gustafson will give a presentation on the marine railways in Gloucester in the Library’s Friends Room this Thursday evening. She will then offer a tour of the railways on site in Rockport on Saturday, June 11, at 10:00 a.m.
Both the presentation and the tour are free and open to the public. The Sawyer Free Library is located at 2 Dale Avenue. For more information visit, SawyerFreeLibrary.com or 978-325-5500.
The Gloucester Rotary has named Tony Corrao as a Paul Harris Fellow, the prestigious award named after the Chicago lawyer who founded Rotary in 1905. Corrao was selected by a committee of previous recipients of the award, and will be honored at a special dinner on Monday, June 27, 2022, at Cruiseport Gloucester, located at 6 Rowe Square in downtown Gloucester. The social hour will begin at 5:30pm, followed by dinner at 6:30pm.
Corrao, perhaps better known as Uncle Tony, was born and raised in West Gloucester. He graduated from Gloucester High School with the Class of 1977, and then spent 3½ years in the Army—serving at NASA’s Space Center in Alabama, Homestead, Florida, and Fort Bragg in North Caroline with the 82nd Airborne Division.
Upon his return to Gloucester, Tony founded Precision Roofing Services of New England in 1984. The company has been an important part of the Cape Ann economy for almost 40 years, providing solid jobs to several generations of laborers. In 2007, Corrao was the recipient of the Northeast Roofing Contractors’ Association President’s Award. After being nominated by his staff, he was named “Best Boss” of the year by the National Certified Contractor’s Network.
Corrao joined the Gloucester Rotary in 2002, and served as its President in 2011-2012. He is an active member of the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce, working on several key committees and serving two terms on the Board of Directors. Tony is also a longtime member of the Friends of the Rose Baker Senior Center. His reputation as a volunteer is legendary, as is his willingness to put his trucks and his men to work on behalf of the City and numerous community organizations.
Tickets to the Paul Harris Dinner are $53 per person, and may be reserved by contacting event Chair Steve Kaity at 978-879-1051. The dinner is open to the general public, and friends and colleagues of Tony and Joanne, his wife of 25 years, are encouraged to attend.
Cape Ann Community 