Community

G400+ Athletic Committee Presents Youth Track & Field Day!

~ g400+events

G400+ Athletic Committee presents Youth Track & Field Day! Join us on June 18th from 10am-1pm for this FREE event for K – 8th grade aged kids; no experience necessary but pre-registration is required! This will be a fun day outside at Newell Stadium at GHS with a number of events, including: 100M & 200M race, softball throw, (soft) javelin, and long jump.

You can register your kiddo’s at this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdZzooz8n2J6tNNbMhzQyXCPzkASVG2OvfyOlS3-i8CfcG4GA/viewform

Sawyer Free Library wants to hear from YOU! Virtual Public Meeting on Friday, June 2nd!

~ Sawyer Free Library

Gloucester’s Public Library seeks the community’s input for its strategic plan: Our Library. Our Future.

The Sawyer Free Library is eager to engage the community and gather valuable input for its 2025-2029 Strategic Plan.

Community Conversations will be held in over Zoom on Friday, June 2, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday, June 13, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Click HERE for meeting zoom links! Or go to the calendar on SawyerFreeLibrary.org

Community Conversation In Person on Monday, June 5 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Sawyer Free Library’s temporary space at 21 Main Street.

Gloucester Conversations will moderate these public forums, which are open to everyone to attend, and share their thoughts, ideas, and insights about how the 2025 Sawyer Free Library can best serve them and the greater community. 

All Gloucester residents and visitors are also encouraged to fill out the Sawyer Free Library’s Community Input Survey. Regardless of how much or how little individuals use its services, everyone’s perspectives are welcome and encouraged.

The online survey is available online at www.SawyerFreeLibrary.org and will be open through July 1, 2023. 

The Sawyer Free Library expects to analyze the results this summer and compile a summary report, which will be shared with the community when the Library Board of Trustees finalizes the new 2025-2029 Strategic Plan. 

Community members can visit sawyerfreelibrary.org for more information and updates on ways to participate in the strategic planning process. The Library will also provide regular updates to keep community members informed and engaged throughout the process.

Sawyer Free Library Wants To Hear from YOU!

~ Sawyer Free Library

The SAWYER FREE LIBRARY is excited to be kicking off the community consultation for its new STRATEGIC PLAN: OUR LIBRARY. OUR FUTURE.

As part of the planning process, Sawyer Free Library wants to hear from the community and gather its valuable input. The 2025-2029 strategic planning process is especially important due to new opportunities that will be possible with the opening of the renovated, modernized and expanded 2025 Sawyer Free Library.

The Library will be hosting a series of 4 PUBLIC COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS, and an ONLINE SURVEY and wants to hear from YOU! The Library encourages individuals from all backgrounds and age groups, community organizations, local businesses, and other stakeholders, to participate and provide their unique perspectives. 

Community Conversations will be held IN PERSON on:

  • Monday, May 22, at Cape Ann YMCA from 6:00 -7:30 p.m.
  • Monday, June 5, at the Sawyer Free Library’s temporary space at 21 Main Street from 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Community Conversations take place VIRTUALLY over Zoom:

  • Friday, June 2, from 6:00-7:30 p.m.
  • Tuesday, June 13, from 10-11:30 a.m.

Gloucester Conversations will moderate these public forums, which are open to everyone to attend, and share their thoughts, ideas, and insights about how the 2025 Sawyer Free Library can best serve them and the greater community.

All Gloucester residents and visitors are also encouraged to fill out the Sawyer Free Library‘s new COMMUNITY SURVEY. The online survey is available online at SawyerFreeLibrary.org and will be open through July 1, 2023. 

Regardless of how much or how little individuals use its services, everyone’s perspectives are welcome and encouraged to participate! This survey is the first piece of research that will help to inform the new strategic plan and will be critical in influencing the Library’s priorities for the next five years.

The Sawyer Free Library expects to analyze the results this summer and compile a summary report, which will be shared with the community when the Library Board of Trustees finalizes the new 2025-2029 Strategic Plan. The Library’s most recent five-year strategic plan was completed in 2020, which runs through 2024. 

Community members can visit sawyerfreelibrary.org for more information and updates on ways to participate in the strategic planning process. The Library will also provide regular updates to keep community members informed and engaged throughout the process.

Memoir Talk: Author Talk with Virginia McKinnon on Thursday evening, May 18

~ Sawyer Free Library

As a part of May’s Local Memoir Series, the Sawyer Free Library is pleased to present 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. All are invited to this special evening on Thursday, May 18, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at 21 Main Street in downtown Gloucester.

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 minister, lector, and writer, Virginia’s book documents a cultural history of a way of life in Gloucester and America.

The event is free and open to the public at Sawyer Free Library at 21 Main Street, Gloucester. For more information and to register, visit, sawyerfreelibrary.org.

Learn Baby Sign Language at Sawyer Free Library on May 15

~ Sawyer Free Library

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.

Help Stamp Out Hunger this Saturday!

~ todtheopendoor

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:

  • Coffee
  • Condiments (ketchup, mustard, mayo, and salad dressings)
  • Cooking oil
  • Peanut butter
  • Tuna

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

Sawyer Free Library to Host Author Talk with Emily Franklin: THE LIONESS OF BOSTON

~ Sawyer Free Library

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 to Celebrate Memoirs of Gloucester Authors in May

~ Sawyer Free Library

Author Talk at SFL with GAIL BRENNER NASTASIA on Thursday evening, May 4

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.

STROKE AWARENESS COMMUNITY EVENT on MAY 2 at SFL at 21 Main Street

~ Sawyer Free Library

The Sawyer Free Library is proud to present this important community event about stroke health, made possible by Encompass Health and Beth Israel Lahey Health.

Join us on Tuesday, May 2 from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. at Sawyer Free Library at 21 Main Street and learn the warning signs of a stroke and how to help prevent one from occurring by knowing the risk factors. The presenter is Chris S. Burke, MD who is a Neurologist and the Stroke Medical Director at Beverly and Addison Gilbert Hospitals. Register at SawyerFreeLibrary.org.