Gloucester 400th

GLOUCESTER MEETINGHOUSE NEW ORLEANS JAZZ NEW YEAR’S CONCERT DECEMBER 29TH

~ chasnaz

Celebrate the beginning of New Year’s weekend on Friday, December 29th at 7:30pm in the historic Gloucester Meetinghouse with the Good Old Salty Jazz Band playing New Orleans Jazz tunes of the holiday season.  This group of legendary local musicians will delight you with their fantastic sound!

Robert Tuffley, cornet & trumpet
John Cameron, piano
Jimmy Favazza, drums
John Hicks guitar & banjo
Dave Sag, bass
Robert Landoni, sax & clarinet
Rikki Razdan, sax & clarinet
Ben Tuck, trombone

Last year’s New Year’s concert in the Meetinghouse sold out, so purchase your seats early!  Light refreshments will be served.  The Meetinghouse is located on the green at the corner of Middle and Church Streets. There is a side entrance with an elevator at 10 Church Street. 

Unable to attend in person? The concert will start at 7:30pm and will be simulcast on the Gloucester Meetinghouse YouTube channel, where it will be available afterwards.

Tickets are available online at www.gloucestermeetinghouse.org or at the door by cash, check or credit card.  General seating $30; students $10; children under 12 free.

Equity in the Archives: How History is Told

~ Sawyer Free Library

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12 at 11:00 a.m. at Cape Ann Museum

On Tuesday, December 12 at 11:00a.m. Cape Ann Museum will be presenting a panel discussion, Equity in the Archives: How History is Told with Julie Travers, Local History Librarian at the Sawyer Free Library; Miranda Aisling, CAM Head of Education & Engagement; and Trenton Carls, CAM Head Librarian & Archivist  

Presented in conjunction with Above the Fold: The Photographers of the “Gloucester Daily Times,” 1973-2005, this panel discussion explores how archives, timelines, and historical language have been newly examined and intentionally expanded during the Gloucester 400+ Anniversary in 2023, which marks 400 years since English settlement. 

Julie Travers, Local History Librarian at the Sawyer Free Library and Miranda Aisling, CAM Head of Education are both members of the Gloucester 400+ Diversity & Equity committee. They will share the efforts that went into drafting the Gloucester 400+ DEIA Framework which has been used by organizations across the region to expand their storytelling during the anniversary year. This framework was used by Travers to help guide the creation of the Gloucester Timeline, a massive undertaking from the Sawyer Free Library in association with the Cape Ann Museum, and by Aisling in the development of the CAM Native Initiative.  

They are joined by Trenton Carls, CAM Head Librarian & Archivist who will share the impact of the 2021 acquisition of an estimated 1 million photographs from the Gloucester Daily Times collection to the CAM Library & Archives. The photographs provide a wide lens on the Gloucester community from 1973-2005, bringing photographs into the Museum’s collections that highlight the breadth of the Cape Ann community during those years. 

The event will take place at Cape Ann Museum located at 27 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA.  It is Free for Museum members, $10 for non-members. Click HERE to register. It will also be Livestreamed on Vimeo and Facebook.

For more information about Sawyer Free Library’s digital archives, local history resources, and services, visit sawyerfreelibrary.org.

Congressman Moulton Nominates Sawyer Free Library and Cape Ann Museum for Prestigious National Medal of Museum and Library Services

~ Sawyer Free Library

Salem, Mass. – In honor of the Gloucester 400, Congressman Seth Moulton is proud to nominate two Gloucester cultural institutions, the Sawyer Free Library and the Cape Ann Museum, for the prestigious 2024 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. This award, presented annually by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), is the nation’s highest honor for institutions that make significant and exceptional contributions to their communities. 

“As we celebrate the Gloucester 400, I’m thrilled to be able to nominate two of the city’s impactful and inspiring institutions for this national honor. Both the Sawyer Free Library and the Cape Ann Museum inform, educate, engage, and connect our community every day in immeasurable ways. This recognition is very well-deserved,” said Congressman Moulton. 

“Above all, this nomination is a validation of Sawyer Free Library staff, who make a deep impact on our community every day,” said Sawyer Free Library Director Jenny Benedict. “In recent years, our Library has responded to the unprecedented challenges of our time by fostering belonging and leading by example with our holistic approach to sustainability. To be recognized nationally for our achievement through this nomination is an absolute honor.”

 “We are incredibly honored to receive this nomination from Congressman Moulton,” said Cape Ann Museum Director Oliver Barker. “We are proud to be able to contribute and be a part of such a vibrant and special community like Cape Ann.”

Approximately fifteen libraries and fifteen museums will be selected as finalists by IMLS. From these finalists, a minimum of three museums and three libraries will then be selected to receive National Medals. Medal recipients will be announced in Spring 2024. 


More information about the National Medal for Museum and Library Services can be found HERE.

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.

GLOUCESTER MEETINGHOUSE MLK DAY ANNUAL CELEBRATION JANUARY 17TH!

~ chasnaz

The Gloucester Meetinghouse Foundation will host it 6th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration, live on Zoom, on Monday, January 17th at 2:00pm. Please preregister at http://www.gloucestermeetinghouse.org

The Racial Climate in Gloucester, What Lies Ahead will be the focus of the 2-hour program, including including findings of a new community survey. The keynote speaker will be Brian Saltsman, Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion at Alfred University in upstate New York. He is a leading advocate of addressing community issues between dominant and marginalized racial, ethnic or economic sectors as allies, a process known as “allyship.”

The invited presenting organizations are:

  • The Gloucester Racial Justice Team, reporting on a survey that assessed how much people of color “feel like they have a sense of community and belong in the city, including how race and ethnicity play a role in their daily lives,” according to GRJT spokesperson Gail Seavey.
  • The North Shore Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which most recently has focused on racism issues within Danvers High School athletic teams. A branch leader will discuss the North Shore branch’s activities across a region stretching from Lynn to New Hampshire.
  • The Diversity and Equity Committee of the Gloucester 400th Anniversary Celebration, which is researching narrative stories that accurately depict racial and ethnic relationships since European settlement began displacing the native, indigenous Pennacook-Abenaki peoples. This will include years of slave ownership and maritime commerce in the global slave trade.

A video of this program with be available on the Gloucester Meetinghouse Foundation’s YouTube channel afterwards. The Foundation is a nonsectarian, federally-recognized nonprofit, organized to promote the preservation and community programming of the historic 1806 Meetinghouse on Middle Street, home of the first Universalist Church in America. Tax-deductible donations are welcome and may be made on the website, or by check to “GMF” at 10 Church Street, Gloucester, MA 01930.