For May’s Young Gloucester Scientists Club field trip, they have teamed up with Rick Roth and the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team to learn about the link woodland creatures, such as salamanders and frogs, have to ponds in Gloucester. Suitable for 4th-8th graders.
Join in on the fun on Friday afternoon, May 19 from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. `Location details will be sent after registering.
The event is free but you need to register at SawyerFreeLibrary.org.
Sawyer Free Library is pleased to offer Baby Sign Language with Baby Keands on Monday, May 15 from 10:20 – 12 noon at 21 Main Street in downtown Gloucester.
Learn about the benefits of signing with babies from Sheryl White of Baby Kneads. During this free class, caregivers will learn how to teach American Sign Language to their little ones, practice several signs and more.
This event will be held at Sawyer Free Library at 21 Main Street. Register at sawyerfreelibrary.org. Questions? Contact: jvitale@sawyerfreelibrary.org.
Make a donation this weekend without leaving home!
Residents of Gloucester, Ipswich, Manchester-by-the-Sea, and Rockport: please leave non-perishable, unexpired food donations in a bag by your mailbox this Saturday to be delivered by your local letter carrier to The Open Door!
PLEASE, NO GLASS!
MOST NEEED ITEMS:
IF you live outside the above communities, please contact your local post office to learn if they will be participating in the National Association of Letter Carrier’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive this year.
Thank you! Your support helps stock the shelves and connect local people to the food they need to thrive.
In 2022, The Open Door helped stabilize the lives and health of 8,486 people from 4,872 households through the distribution of 1.78 million pounds of food.
More information about The Open Door and its programs available at FOODPANTRY.org
As a part of May’s Memoir Month, the Sawyer Free Library is pleased to welcome local author Stella Nahatis on Thursday, May 11 at 5:30 to discuss her newly released memoir, Taxi to America: A Greek Orphan’s Adoption Journey. All are welcome to attend this special event at the Library located at 21 Main Street in downtown Gloucester. To register click HERE or for more information, visit, sawyerfreelibrary.org.
Stella’s journey from Thessaloniki, Greece, to America begins with a pre-dawn taxi ride that she and her sister share while the coffin holding a loved one rides along in the taxi’s trunk. Orphaned and separated from her younger sister “for her own good” as the culture dictated at the time, Stella ends up being adopted by a Greek couple that had emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. At age 11, she overcomes multiple losses and cultural differences to find a place in her new homeland while finding ways to stay connected to those she loved in Greece.
This story of resilience and perseverance follows Stella’s journey of becoming an “Amerikanaki” and eventually reconnecting with her sister, who had stayed in Greece with her own set of adoptive parents. Even as Stella embraces her new life and culture in America, she rebuilds her loving relationship with her sister after an eight-year separation. Later in life, the sisters take another taxi ride together, this time to recover important details of their birth parents’ life stories that mirror the determination to survive and thrive that marks their own.
To register, or for more information, visit, sawyerfreelibrary.org.
A morning of unstructured play for little ones and their caregivers at SFL at 21 Main Street. Books and toys will be provided. Best suited for ages 0-2.
No registration needed. Questions? Contact: jvitale@sawyerfreelibrary.org
Seaside Garden Club members will be selling Teacups in front of Manchester Post Office on Saturday, May 13, to benefit the club’s 2023-2024 season. This is our only fundraiser of the year. Just in time for Mothers’ Day, pick out a fancy teacup with a flowering plant tucked inside.
| Nominate Your Favorite Local Businesses for the Gloucester Zip Trip August 4th! |
| Boston 25 News, in collaboration with the City of Gloucester, is bringing aZip Trip to Gloucester on August 4, 2023! The Zip Trip team wants to showcase some of Gloucester’s locally-owned restaurants and small businesses, and we want to hear from you — which businesses do you consider staples of our community? Nominate your favorite restaurant, and your favorite business inthis nomination form, and the top 3 in each category will be shared with the Zip Trip team to highlight in August! Pleasesubmit your nominationbyWednesday, May 10 at 12:00pm. |
Sawyer Free Library will welcome EMILY FRANKLIN—poet and award-winning author who has appeared in the New York Times and the Boston Globe—for a discussion of her new book THE LIONESS OF BOSTON on Tuesday, May 9 at 6:00 pm. The event will be at the Sawyer Free Library at 21 Main Street in downtown Gloucester. Registration is required at sawyerfreelibrary.org. Please note that space is limited.
A novel of historical fiction, “The Lioness of Boston” tells about the life of daring visionary Isabella Stewart Gardner, who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself. It is a portrait of what society expected a woman’s life to be, shattered by a courageous soul who rebelled and was determined to live on her terms.
A misfit who befriended other outcasts to rise into art and intellectual society, Isabella used her own collections to open the now-famous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
By the time Gardner opened her home as a museum in 1903 — to showcase her collection of old masters, antiques, and objects d’art — she was already well-known for scandalizing Boston’s polite society. But when Isabella first arrived in Boston in 1861, newly married and unsure of herself, she was puzzled by the frosty reception she received from stuffy bluebloods.
At first, she strived to fit in. Then, following tragedy and upper-society rejection, she set out on a new path.
Franklin describes how Isabella discovers her own outspoken nature and infiltrates the Harvard intellectual world. Then, as she explores the larger world, she meets artists and kindred spirits — Henry James, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent. A worldwide traveler, she attends the first Impressionist exhibit, collects a wide range of paintings and objects, and forges an important relationship with Bernard Berenson, who will become her art dealer/confidante.
Freed by travel, Isabella explores the world of art, ideas,L and letters. From London and Paris to Egypt and Asia, she develops a keen eye for paintings and objects, and meets feminists ready to transform 19th-century thinking in the 20th century. Isabella becomes an eccentric trailblazer, painted by John Singer Sargent in a portrait of daring décolletage, and fond of such stunts as walking a pair of lions in the Boston Public Garden.
Franklin, whose award-winning work has appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Globe, Guernica, JAMA, and numerous literary magazines, has also been featured and read aloud on NPR and was named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. A lifelong visitor to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, she lives outside of Boston with her family, including two dogs large enough to be lions.
Click HERE to register. Space is limited. Questions, 978-325-5500.
“The Lioness of Boston is a captivating story of a significant woman in Boston’s history who left that city a cultural legacy to last the ages. This beautiful novel will appeal to those who love masterful historical fiction, and stories of triumphant women who leave an indelible mark.” – New York Journal of Books
Sawyer Free Library is pleased to present a series of local authors reading and discussing their memoirs this May at 21 Main Street in downtown Gloucester. All events are in person and open to the public. To register, or for more information, visit, sawyerfreelibrary.org.
Thursday, May 4, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Book Reading with local author GAIL BRENNER NASTASIA
Join local Author and Gloucester native Gail Brenner Nastasia, who will speak about her newly released memoir, The Fruit You’ll Never See.
Gail learned early on that some people mattered and others didn’t. Despite moving away from Gloucester in her early twenties and becoming an attorney, it wasn’t until she began to appreciate the value in her criminally-charged clients, those with whom she shared similar struggles, that she was finally able to recognize her own worth. This new understanding gave Gail the courage to embrace her history fully and to stop hiding. A candid look at the things we inherit, Gail’s memoir reminds us of the value intrinsic in every human being and the responsibility we all have to each other and ourselves. After practicing criminal defense for sixteen years, Gail received her MFA from Emerson College in 2021. She is currently working on her second book while continuing her work in the legal field. Now in recovery from drug addiction for twenty years, Gail’s primary goal is to help others to recover from addiction. She is also the proud mother of three.
Thursday, May 11, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Author Talk with STELLA NAHATIS
Local author Stella Nahatis will discuss her newly released memoir, Taxi to America: A Greek Orphan’s Adoption Journey.
Stella’s journey from Thessaloniki, Greece, to America begins with a pre-dawn taxi ride that she and her sister share while the coffin holding a loved one rides along in the taxi’s trunk. Orphaned and separated from her younger sister “for her own good” as the culture dictated at the time, Stella ends up being adopted by a Greek couple that had emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts. At age 11, she overcomes multiple losses and cultural differences to find a place in her new homeland while finding ways to stay connected to those she loved in Greece.
This story of resilience and perseverance follows Stella’s journey of becoming an “Amerikanaki” and eventually reconnecting with her sister, who had stayed in Greece with her own set of adoptive parents. Even as Stella embraces her new life and culture in America, she rebuilds her loving relationship with her sister after an eight-year separation. Later in life, the sisters take another taxi ride together, this time to recover important details of their birth parents’ life stories that mirror the determination to survive and thrive that marks their own.
Thursday, May 18, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Author Talk with VIRGINIA MCKINNON
Virginia McKinnon as she reads from her newly released memoir, A Fisherman’s Daughter: Growing Up Sicilian-American in the Oldest Fishing Port in America.
At age 93, this first-time author shares short stories of her heritage growing up in Gloucester, spanning her lifetime, including her late husband’s WWII experiences in the Asiatic Pacific. Drawing on her vivid memories from throughout her life as a child when she could hop fishing boat to fishing boat during St. Peter’s Fiesta in Gloucester Harbor to the joyful celebrations of marriage and family life, to her community and public life work as a social worker, eucharistic church minister, lector, and writer, Virginia’s book documents a cultural history of a way of life in Gloucester and America.
For more information and to register all events, visit, sawyerfreelibrary.org.
Join us for an incredible evening with the Sinfonietta Cracovia, one of the premiere chamber orchestras of Europe as they present their flagship project combining film music and concert music of two great composers: Wojciech Kilar and Philip Glass, as part of the international tour Kilar 90.
The portrait that emerges, that of a composer’s voice, as applied to both realms of concert as well as commercial music reveals each composer’s musical identity. The concert will feature performances with the young Polish pianist and composer Aleksander Dębicz, and the orchestra’s principal conductor, Katarzyna Tomala-Jedynak.
Program
Philip Glass – Suite from The Hours (2002)
Philip Glass – Suite from Dracula (1931)
Wojciech Kilar – Orawa (1986)
Wojciech Kilar – Certain Light from The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
Wojciech Kilar – The Brides from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Aleksander Dębicz – Sideways
Partners and patrons of the tour: The tour is co-organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute within the “Programme of events accompanying the celebration of Wojciech Kilar’s 90th birthday (2022) and the 10th anniversary of his death (2023)” As well as the Polish Cultural Institute New York, PWM Edition, Supertrain Records and the City of Krakow.
Tickets are available at: https://bit.ly/GlassKilar
Cape Ann Community 