KT does No-Snark Sunday, God Help Us All

Greetings. Since usual Sunday contributor Jim Dowd is incredibly busy with his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah this weekend (GO REBECCA YOU ARE AWESOME) I’ll be doing the Snark Free Sunday post. Forgive me, for I am not sure how to write without dripping sarcasm. It’s awkward and weird and I don’t like it one bit.

CLEAN UP SOME STUFF, WILL YA?

Our first item of the day is giving a thumbs-up to Ward 2 Councillor Melissa Cox for letting us know about the One Hour at a Time Gang clean-up that goes on most Saturday mornings. Melissa says, “We pick a place in the city to clean from 8 a.m. To 9 a.m. almost every Saturday. Sometimes suggestions of a dirty place is sent to us or if there’s an event downtown or in the neighborhood we clean it up prior to the event.” Sweet deal!

lookit all this trash!

lookit all this trash!

The above was from the bowling alley on Gloucester Ave up to Maplewood. 8+ bags of litter! This is why we can’t have nice things, Gloucester, because we throw trash on the ground like jerks. Crap, I just broke the rules of no-snark Sunday.

You can email Melissa for more details at mcoxward2@gmail.com.

 OUR SCHOOLS ARE AWESOME AND HERE’S PROOF

Maritime Gloucester is an amazing resource for this city. City 3rd graders recently took a trip on the Ardelle and learned about sounding tools.

 

3rd Grade at Maritime Gloucester-202 (1)

“Trowing the lead was ONE of the tools. Seeing what came up from the bottom is critical, mostly because if you see Sand and Broken Shell means you’re probably close to shore even if you have good depth. Rich mud would mean there was a river mouth nearby. Clay beds, pebble, all of it would be useful because the Brits logged it all inn hydrological studies- this is what the HMS Beagle did and was the point of her voyage.

And you entered bottom conditions into the log when you took a sextant reading, which would then get added to the charts when you returned so the next person who was in that general area and saw the same conditions would have a better sense of what was going on” – Marty DelVecchio.

 

Dude, our THIRD GRADERS are learning this stuff. Maritime Gloucester also has programs for younger kids – Pathways for Children, for example, has received grants to bring each classroom once a month. It’s an incredible learning experience. Gloucester freakin’ rules.

Okay that’s pretty much all I can muster up that isn’t sardonic for today without a stiff mimosa for brunch. Have a great rest of the weekend, Clamonauts!

Introducing Staff Photographer Stevens Brosnihan

It has been requested that the Gloucester Clam report on more of the day to day goings on in our fair city. That we move past our current beat of intoxicated shouting and wiener jokes. Time to get serious and do some real journalism. To facilitate this, we welcome aboard Staff Photographer Stevens Brosnihan. Stevens received his Post-baccalaureate certificate and Masters Degree in Fine Arts in painting and drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During his three-year tenure at SAIC he took full advantage of The School’s renown inter-disciplinary conceptual framework of competitive heuristic post-structural indifference. Which is a real thing, I guess.

Stevens’ first assignment was to cover Beeman Elementary School’s incoming Kindergarten Orientation on Wednesday. Fresh faced youngsters taking their first step on a long life of learning. The future, personified in lunch boxes, smiles and held hands. He assured us that with his art school background, he was the perfect man for the job.

This is what he gave us.

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We are confused. Where are the kids? How hard was this? In a short text exchange Stevens chided us as boxed-in literalists, asking us to let the images speak for themselves. We argued that they looked like REM album covers from the late 80s we would see when we were a DJ in college and we don’t know what hell those bastards were talking about either. Since The Gloucester Clam is nothing but a media outlet with highest possible standards, we demanded a detailed explanation.

He sent us this:

The camera I chose (the 1930 Welta Gucki) is from photography’s youth. I felt it was perfect to reference the vitality and naive simplicity of children in an unfamiliar setting.

The camera is unfettered——no meter to gauge its surroundings, an uncoupled viewfinder like a child’s fresh, uncluttered take on life.

The 46mm film is hard to come by, so I rolled my own from a bulk package of 1983 Kodalith ortho, type 3 that I saved from a friend’s flooding basement. It was originally intended for newspaper halftone reproductions and can be coaxed into rendering continuous tones by using the wrong chemicals when developing it.

In life and in art alike, the child speaks and is unfazed by trivial parameters such as what is ‘correct.’  Choosing the developer was easy: a dilute ascorbic acid (vitamin C) based formula for 10 minutes at room temperature. I don’t use a thermometer and my darkroom was chilly today, so I let kept it in a few minutes longer. It felt right.

As I approached the school, the thought of photographing the actual children seemed irrelevant in the face of the power of nature. So instead I wandered into the woods and met a beautiful pile of compost.

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The immensity of its potential seemed to poignantly and overwhelmingly speak of the future. It would become the future, from which gardens will take root. Much like the gardens of the mind these children have, ideas spreading forth like so many seedlings planted in the sweet April landscape.

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The horizontal lines in the compositions are scratches likely caused by tiny specs of corrosion on the film path of the camera. Much like these children will have tiny specs of corrosion in their minds as years grow them wiser, more hardened, and less naive to the injustices of the world. 

There you go folks. Kindergarten Orientation Day at Beeman. Thank you, Stevens.

 

Wicked Tuna Recap – “Battle Royale”

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN FOR ME TO FIGURE OUT HOW FISHING WORKS, FOLKS. My Hulu and/or DVR has some more Wicked Tuna episodes to recap, so I’m on it! Apparently the one I did last week was out of order or something, who even knows. Fishes were caught, yelling happened, let’s just get to this episode where more fishes will be caught and more yelling will happen.

We start this week off on the Tuna.com, where Captain Dave catches a fish straight off, to no one’s surprise. This guy must emit an enchanting musk which attracts 800 pound tuna, because there’s no other reason he gets all the fishes. Unfortunately, they get some thick rope stuck somewhere it shouldn’t be (STORY OF MY LIFE RIGHT BOYS) and they end up losing the fish to the ravages of the surly ocean.

The Haaaaahd Merchandise is on its way out to sea, and the show actually gets a pretty boss shot of the cut bridge.

we're always the first car in line trying to get off the island. always, forever.

we’re always the first car in line trying to get off the island with 1/8th a tank of gas when this happens. always.

Now over to the Lily, which isn’t like the rest of the boats that have lines and reels and whatnot. The Lily apparently uses a spotter plane and a guy just javelins the metric fuck out of any tuna close enough. This is a pretty hardcore way to fish, I’m pretty sure I saw Tom Hanks with a two-foot beard on that boat somewhere. Unfortunately, they didn’t spear their fish hard enough and it got away. “That was the best opportunity to dart a tuna in awhile”, explains one of the javelin dudes. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard frat bros say the exact same thing outside a dim bar at 3 AM.

Back to some other boat (the Bounty Hunter I guess), someone’s yelling STAHTTHEMOTAHWEREON. I’m not entirely sure what that means but I’m assuming it’s seamen-talk for “Please, shipmate, I believe we have made contact with the species of fish we desire, shall you move the boat to a more favorable position?” A man with the most ridiculous of hats yells “He’s not coming, he’s tight as hell!” And I laugh, because I have the sense of humor of a twelve year old boy.

Who let you out of the house wearing this hat? They should be ashamed of themselves.

Who let you out of the house wearing this hat? They should be ashamed of themselves.

A fifteen minute portion of this show is now dedicated to how this boat has its fish and line caught in some lobster pots and then another boat’s fishing gear. Literally this is the high drama of this show, some twisted up bits of string. There’s even an INFOGRAPHIC explaining basic physics to the subscribers of National Geographic. I mean the ocean is staggeringly vast, maybe don’t fish 50 feet away from other people and lobster pots? No? Just me? Ok.

I'D HAVE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE DEFINITION OF "TANGLED" WITHOUT THIS THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH

I’D HAVE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE DEFINITION OF “TANGLED” WITHOUT THIS THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH

As always, there’s a long boring explanation about HOW BAD WE NEED THIS FISH and THE SEASON ENDS SOON and I want to gouge my eyes out. Spoiler alert: they catch the fish and yell.

You know who isn’t in this episode yet? Stonerboat, who maybe overslept because mom’s basement doesn’t have windows and all. But we’ve got the Hot Tuna, and they’re close behind in the twentysomething deckhands with awful hair category.

I just assume in the offseason he works at Guitar Center.

I just assume in the offseason he works at Guitar Center.

The Tuna.com catches another fish and ends up trying to reel it in for NINE FREAKIN’ HOURS. Going into labor with my kids didn’t last that damn long but I was drugged up for that so who knows. They miss the thing with the harpoon five hundred times, and for the first time I actually kind of feel bad. Maybe this show is giving me saltwater Stockholm syndrome. Then I realize how much more money they make than I do, and I don’t feel bad anymore. Crisis averted.

This show is interminable. I feel like I’ve been watching it for hours. It’s no Fishing with John, I’ll tell you. Finally they get this stupid fish and the show is over so I can go to bed.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where if a seagull doesn’t steal somebody’s hard-earned sandwich to shake things up, I’m going to scream.

Disclaimer: Despite poking gentle fun at the captains and crew of this show, we actually admire them very much – not only for their hard work, but for helping Gloucester get on the map for something interesting. Please don’t slash our tires.

John Hays Hammond Jr. – True Gloucester Genius

What are you reading this on? A tablet? A phone? A laptop? Was it printed out and offered to you by a cult-like follower on a bejeweled tray? Assuming your wretched supplicant used a wireless printer, in each case you can enjoy this fine piece of infotainment thanks to technology pioneered by Gloucester resident and awesome genius John Hays Hammond Jr.

we can only assume that as the father of remote control, this was a selfie

we can only assume that as the father of remote control, this was a selfie

You have him to blame.

Sure, you’ve driven by Hammond Castle bunch of times and maybe have attended one of the Haunted Halloween things because who doesn’t delight in the sound of tweens from Beverly screaming at the top of their lungs for half an hour straight? Or maybe you went there on a field trip or something, but none of it has ever made much sense. You  probably thought something like this:

“Guy was inventor. Guy built castle. Now is site of Renaissance Faire where dude with leashed ferrets wearing pantaloons capers about playing lute.”

Centaurs and Doritos don't mix, apparently

Centaurs and Doritos don’t mix, apparently

But I beseech thee to suspend thy knavery and listen hence to the tale of John Hays Hammond, Cape Ann’s greatest genius after Chubby Woodman, inventor of the fried clam (and porn actor if his nickname is any indication). Birdseye was pretty good too, and we’re going to do a thing on him later in hopes of getting free tater tots.

But we digress (we are a little shitfaced, sorry). This is one of those stories that looks like it needs to be made into a family movie you never watch on Hulu with the kids on a trip because you wind up watching like nine Sponge Bob episodes on the hotel TV instead. Here is what you missed:

  • Son of a wealthy engineer, John Jr. spends his early childhood years in South Africa at a mining camp, becoming intimately familiar at a young age with the techniques and equipment used to dig ore miles below the ground. Our own kids have trouble getting out the door with two matched shoes.
  • Eventually the family moves to England where he falls in love with castles. In fact, castles are his only friends as they are more penetrable and warm than his British classmates.
  • At age 12 John Jr. goes with his father to meet Thomas Alva Edison at his laboratory in New Jersey. The young Hammond asks perceptive questions of the great inventor who comes to like the cut of his jib and invites him to hang around the lab. Also Edison was trying to motivate his employees to invent the technology that would eventually become the Taser, and as we know from personal experience having a young boy around when you’re trying to do something complicated is the best inspiration for this kind of device.
Or this. This works

Or this. This works

  •  While assisting on an experiment being conducted by Nikola Tesla with a mysterious source of dark energy in the luminescent ether, Hammond miswires a connection sending himself and Tesla back to the 13th Century. They wind up being enlisted by Leszek II of Poland to defeat the invading Huns of the ‘Golden Horde’ using Tesla’s lightening machine, thus paving way for Europe to leave the Dark Ages and enter the Renaissance [citation needed].
  •  Hammond builds his Radio Research Laboratory on Gloucester Harbor. There, he invents over 400 devices patented under his name. How did he manage to get that past the DPA? Getting this structure approved remains the greatest triumph his career, one that has never been repeated to this day.
  •  He also builds a castle. Because fuck yes, when you are a mad scientist (more of a mad engineer, really) you’d better damn well have a boss lair. He uses local materials mixed with the ruins of historical European buildings salvaged from the rubble of WW I. How cool is that? It has a Roman pool in the middle of it. Greta Garbo used to swim in this pool because she was having an affair with Hammond’s brother. Do we think she swam naked in this pool? We do.
The zoning board rejected the first few proposals

The zoning board rejected the first few proposals

  • He had a MASSIVE organ. Oh, come on, a pipe organ. The musical instrument. You people make us sick.
  •  He uses radio control to send a pilotless boat around the harbor freaking people’s shit out all over the place. Using the same system he remotely controls a boat from Gloucester to Boston and back again. Later he would use the same technology to remotely steer an unmanned battleship for the Navy in a demonstration. The Navy can never quite get its head around remote controlled vessels because with no sailors on board the sodomy would have to occur on land, which just seems wrong somehow.
Authors vision of what this looked like

Authors vision of what this looked like

  •  From his castle locals report hearing massive explosions echo across the harbor and seeing weird lights. Do you love this guy or what? How do you not love this guy? He also invents a variable-pitch propeller (the navy likes this better) a magnetic bottle cap remover and a “Hypodermic Meat Baster” which coincidentally was the name of a punk band at our college we would play bass for sometimes.
  •  He turns his house into a museum while he’s still alive so everyone can enjoy his collection. If there was any demand at all for a “Museum of tattered Ikea Furniture Covered in Pet Hair” we’d do the same.

    drone shot of E. Gloucester. Hammond would have LOVED this. Photo M. Del Vecchio

    drone shot of E. Gloucester. Hammond would have LOVED this. Photo M. Del Vecchio

We could go on, but if there is anything we’ve learned from our site statistics is that you don’t want us to go on, you just want funny lists. “Give the people what they want,” is our motto.

To reiterate: Hammond was born rich, could have sailed around the world on a golden yacht full of prostitutes doing little more with his time than firing champagne corks at bargemen. Instead he decided to invent amazing stuff and live in a castle he made into a public museum while hanging around with the coolest people of his day.

A hearty “Clam Huzzah” to John Hayes Hammond Jr.!

Snark Free Sunday: Remember the Maine and everybody else

We just went  down to the area around the Gloucester House to take a pic of one of the the anchors of the USS Maine that is (used to be?) there. If anyone knows which one it is, clue us in because we couldn’t find it. It always surprises us to run into it down there amongst the tourists and fishing gear. Image We think about the Maine on Memorial Day. She was a battleship sunk in Havana Harbor during the revolt there against the Spanish. Why she went down is still unclear. Did she hit a mine? Was there an explosion in her coal bunkers? We don’t know, but it’s important to point out that the exact cause didn’t matter to the guys who were killed or to their families back home. We’ve been to all of the war memorials around Gloucester many times, each of them is poignant in its own way. The WW II memorial front and center on the Boulevard contrasted with the Vietnam one tucked away near the high school have always said more to us more about how the culture absorbed the impacts of those respective conflicts than any poem or song.

The Maine’s bower hits us differently, though, because it is an artifact. It’s an actual thing the guys would haul up and down, probably swear at, bruise their knuckles on. They would worry about it, some of them. “Is it set, is it holding?” But their worries about the anchor, like so many concerns in life, were not congruent with the actual mechanism of the eventual catastrophe.

Like so much of warfare today in the age of stand-off weaponry and even as civilians in a society where lives can be snuffed out in an instant by any number of means intentionally or otherwise, what came at those guys was a surprise. Death came out of nowhere. Everyone one of those guys had plans for that day that didn’t involve what happened, none of them saw it coming.

Humans have always glorified the concept of battle, as our most ancient texts show. But in the end, so many of the people we honor this weekend were struck down not taking a hill or leading a charge, but doing their duty and managing the unexpected in times of unprecedented crisis they did not expect. On the Maine, given the watch schedule of a ship, some of those struck down were even asleep when disaster struck.

Yet, rightfully, we honor them all the same. I think that in this, as in so many things, we have much to learn from them.

With thanks to those who have served,

–The Clam