Check out this fantastic video created by Dave Rimmer, Essex Greenbelt’s Director of Land Stewardship and Osprey Program. The footage was taken last summer from Greenbelt’s OspreyCam. Watch highlights of the 2020 Osprey season captured from Annie and Squam’s nest in Gloucester. Annie and Squam fledged three chicks, Vivi, Rusty, and Liz, and you can watch their development from egg to fledging.
Our big online extravaganza is tonight at 7:30 pm! Use this link to watch the show. You’ll also be able to add live comments in the chatbox on the right as you enjoy the show.
This show will preview songs from our summer 2021 live production of the beloved musical about everyone’s best-loved, practically perfect nanny, Mary Poppins. Some 50 present and past members of our company, ranging in age from 4-84, will sing favorites like Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious, Spoonful of Sugar, Let’s Go Fly a Kite, I Love to Laugh, Jolly Holiday and Step in Time.
Please join us TONIGHT at 7:30 pm. And since you’ll be watching from home, you can sing along!
We hope to see you TONIGHT!
The Annisquam Village Players
We aren’t able to be on stage at the Village Hall this summer, but as a gift to the community, the Village Players will be presenting an online extravaganza. This happy show will preview songs from our summer 2021 live production of the beloved musical about everyone’s best-loved, practically perfect nanny, Mary Poppins. Some 50 present and past members of our company, ranging in age from 4-84, will sing favorites like Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious, Spoonful of Sugar, Let’s Go Fly a Kite, I Love to Laugh, Jolly Holiday and Step in Time.
Please join us Thursday, August 6, 2020 at 7:30 pm. The show will be broadcast from AVP’s brand new Youtube channel. And since you’ll be watching from home, you can sing along!
We hope to see you August 6!
The Annisquam Village Players
As you all know, we are in unprecedented times. Our planned production this summer of Mary
Poppins cannot take place as planned because of the coronavirus. The good news is we have secured the rights to produce the show in the summer of 2021.
However, we are not going to sit idle. We want to keep the spirit of AVP alive and also honor the many people who are on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus. The AVP creative team has been at work to try to plan a fun event that will be safe for all (both cast, crew and audience). What we are proposing to do is present an online event which will be produced online on our former opening night, Tuesday, August 4. We will produce several songs and dances from Mary Poppins, filmed in people’s homes and solo on the AVP stage, to honor the importance of arts during this pandemic and to keep all of us who love being involved in a show active this summer.
If you have any interest in being involved, please email Terry at sands_a@comcast.net and let me know of your interest. We are working on the program and think it will be fun for everyone. We will also get an early preparation for Mary Poppins next summer. I look forward to hearing from you as we creatively plan our summer program.
Terry Sands, Director (with Mary Curtis Co-Director)
Wishing Amelia and Nico all the best in their next adventure. Thank you for a decade of wonderful nights out at your magical cove-side restaurant.
Amelia and Nico write,
“After a decade, we decided to close our beloved Market Restaurant. Although this coincides with the closing of many restaurants due to the pandemic, this was a decision we made some time ago. Our priority right nw is to create a lifestyle more conducive to raising a family.
…We want to thank our Annisquam and Gloucester communities for welcoming us to the neighborhood and embracing us. Thank you for believing in us and letting us take over the The Market. Thank you for the vases of flowers from your garden, bundles of herbs, plots of land to plant vegetable, paintings, letters of support and of course your patronage over the years.
And to all our customers, we couldn’t have returned year after year without your willingness to visit us on a tiny peninsula on a small (almost ) island in a rickety building hanging over the ocean. We are humbled by your support and love.
Thank you all.
Love,
Ameilia and Nico”
Note – Amelia and Nico are cooking at Sort and Main for the time being and working out details to launch Market Catering. Gift certificates to the Market will be honored at Short and Main
Images Market Restaurant website
Excerpt from the terrific website, LighthouseFriends.com
Annisquam Lighthouse is situated on the Annisquam River, which is in fact an estuary that connects Ipswich Bay to Gloucester Harbor. In 1631, the village of Annisquam was founded on the eastern side of the northern end of the river. The village grew into a fishing and shipbuilding center that during its heyday rivaled Gloucester. For ships traveling the coast, the river was considered an important refuge.
The lighthouse got its start with an April 29, 1800 act of Congress that authorized the erection of a light on Wigwam Point in Annisquam. The act also provided for the appointment of a keeper and other support of such lighthouse at the expense of the United States, provided that sufficient land for the lighthouse be granted to the United States. That land was to come from Gustavus Griffin, who deeded six-and-one-half acres on October 26, 1800, for which the U.S. Government paid him $140. The area was known as Wigwam Point, because it was historically a summer gathering place for Native Americans. Annisquam is a combination of the local Native Indian name for a harbor, “squam”, and “Ann” from Cape Ann, after Queen Anne of England. Originally, it was frequently written as “Anesquam.”
Annisquam Lighthouse c1870. Benham Collection.
In 1801, $2,000 was spent for the construction of the original thirty-two-foot wooden lighthouse, which displayed a fixed white light forty feet above the water. A two-room keeper’s dwelling was erected near the tower. The light’s first keeper was James Day, a Gloucester native, who was provided an annual salary of $200. George Day helped is father mind the light, and when James Day became seriously ill in 1805, George was made the official keeper.
An article published in the Boston Post during the early years of the light provides insight into the life of Keeper James Day and his family. The article, quoted in The Lighthouses of New England, states:
A large milk pan, an iron pot, and a dozen wooden spoons made up the greater part of their housekeeping articles; and their livestock consisted of a cow. It was their custom, while boiling their hominy for supper, to milk the cow into the pan, and after turning in the hominy and placing it on the floor, to gather around with their wooden spoons, and all help themselves from the same dish. On one of these occasions, old parson F., their minister happened to be paying them a parochial visit; and one of the boys, being a bit crowded, thought he could better his position by changing it to the opposite side of the dish. In attempting to do this, by stepping across, he accidently put his dirty foot square onto the milk and hominy, and before he could take it out again the rest had revenged themselves for the interruption by rapping him smartly on his bare leg with their wooden spoons, and without taking any further notice of the affair, went on eating as before…
Read More Here
Goose Cove foggy night, looking towards Lobster Cove
Always a pretty sight from the meadow looking towards Ipswich Bay. This is the view from where our daughter will be married in less than two months!
Click panoramas to view larger.
The top photo was taken with the iPhone 6plus, the second photo with my Fuji XE-1 at 50mm.
