Word
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Good Harbor Beach
Bordering Rockport's Nugent Stretch
By: - May 26th, 2016Great Uncle George Nugent's vast pig farm included Gloucester's Good Harbor Beach. After lawsuits that went on for years the city got it for a pittance. Then a lawyer who landed in jail cheated his heirs of their inheritance. On the priceless land developers created Nugent Farms a condo village. Only the name remains of the family legacy.
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Rockport
Footsteps of Nugent Ancestors
By: - May 26th, 2016A bright sunny Monday morning in Rockport the ancestral home of the Nugent clan. On the cusp of the summer season there were just a few gawkers scattered about.
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Breakwater
Rockport Granite
By: - May 26th, 2016My grandfather, James Flynn, was a saloon keeper and bootlegger. His family settled in Canada and worked the quarries. To find work they made their way first to New Hampshire then to Rockport. The helped to cut the granite that was used to construct the vast breakwater that shelters Sandy Bay from the damage of winter storms.
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Twin Lights
Room with a View
By: - May 25th, 2016Visiting ancestral turf in Gloucester researching Nugents of Rockport. From our room a view of the historic Twin Lights. There ancient lights and lenses long dismantled. One in Cape Ann Museum the other dashed to rocks below by indifferent blokes from the Coast Guard. Lights now automated as signifiers of direspect for the colorful past.
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Steeple Town Minus One
Knocking the Spire Off St. Francis
By: - May 19th, 2016Finger pointing. The blame game. Vacant since 2008 St. Francis of Assisi fell into disrepair. Once condemned as a hazard razed to the concern and shame of a city once so proud of faith that it was known as Steeple Town. Now minus one.
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Future Shock
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
By: - May 18th, 2016Vivid memories as a child during the war years of the 1940s. Yet what happened yesterday or even an hour ago at best a blur. So much of life, time and memory under my belt. Both sharply etched and well defined as well as utter chaos. Looking back and trying to make sense of a life lived with an eye to tomorrow.
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Dissent
Unearthing Ruins
By: - May 17th, 2016From the bonfire of dead art rises the hope of new ideas. One must destroy, refuse to obey, not follow in the footsteps in order to find a true self. In art that's all the matters for which it is specious to expect praise or understanding. Tear down temples and museums in order to rebuild them. The only relevance is art of our time and what comes next.
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Transportation
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Encyclopedia vs. Wikipedia
Knowledge as Trash Talk
By: - May 13th, 2016During the Age of Enlightenment the French philosophes, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, attempted to commission, edit and compile a number of essays gathered into the first Encyclopedia. Our set of the Encylopedia Britannica was a daunting marvel of my youth. It was there to consult as I plodded through school assignments. Now it's all on line. Once a treasure my precious encylopedia is reduced to trash. It's broad shelf space is replaced by a computer and cell phone.
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Topsy Turvy
What Goes Up Must Come Down
By: - May 12th, 2016Watching the nest egg boom and crash is a sure ticket to terminal agita. Best to walk the beach and fuggeddhaboutit.
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Common Irish Values
Them's the Breaks
By: - May 12th, 2016In show biz they say Break a Leg. But for our Annisquam poet it was an arm. We welcome her back after a winter of discontent.
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Reasonable
Sisyphus at the Super Market
By: - May 12th, 2016Starting a transaction tne cashier, waiter, telemarketer asks "How are you?" It is not an invitation to discuss day to day challenges and miseries. We utter good or fine with no sincerity. It is meant to be reassuring. I'm ok and you're ok. Not I'm in debt up the wazoo or recovering from surgery. Often my response is "reasonable." It conveys coping as best I can under the circumstances. Now and then it initiates an actual human interaction.
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Yo Muthah
You Be Cool Man
By: - May 08th, 2016Yo man happy muthah's day. Layin' back in the hood.
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Curioser and Curioser
Chumping America
By: - May 07th, 2016Scorched earth campaign The Donald has divided and conquered leaving his party and presumptive nation in tatters. What stands between him an making American great again is Hillary, who nobody seems to like, and another stint of a Clinton White House. Just when it couldn't get worse it is by a long shot.
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Jamin' the Jive
Mingus Cutting Brubeck
By: - Apr 25th, 2016With great artists gathered for Festivals entrepreneur George Wein liked to match them up for impromptu jam sessions. They didn't always work like when Charles Mingus on bass joined pianist Dave Brubeck for a hilarious cutting contest. Brubeck would lay down a lick which Mingus then took apart and reassembled like a bop crossword puzzle.
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Guggenheim Installs Golden Potty
All That Glitters Is Not Art
By: - Apr 22nd, 2016In the current art world nothing succeeds like excess. The venerable Guggenheim Museum has installed a golden potty an alleged work of art by Maurizio Cattelan. In the Dada tradition of Duchamp it appeals to New Yorkers sitting on the throne who believe their shit is gold.
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Royals in the News
Prince Dead All Hail the Queen
By: - Apr 21st, 2016A bitter sweet day of Royals in the news. Champagne toasts for the Queen now 90. Posed with her brood. While the artist known as Prince pronounced dead at 57.
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Alpine Hotel
View of Central Park
By: - Apr 21st, 2016Come Labor Day, back from Boston, gallery gig started. In transition stayed in hot sheet Alpine Hotel at Columbus Circle. From its eventual penthouse awoke to view of Central Park.
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Stonehenge
Great Circle of Stones
By: - Apr 21st, 2016The great circle of stones vividly evoke pre-Christian Britain when Druids worshiped the gods in harmony with earth and the passage of time.
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Royal Flush
Grouse Hunting at Balmoral
By: - Apr 21st, 2016I was just eight when that other Charles was born. From then on he seemed like a younger brother. Over the years in the darkest hours we have roamed the highlands during holidays at Balmoral Castle. Now seniors we wonder when or if he will be King.
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Brandenburger Tor
When the Circus Came to Town
By: - Apr 20th, 2016Visiting Berlin some years ago we stayed at the apartment of Horst and Bettina Hiemer the actor cousin of Astrid. From the balcony of their apartment we looked down at Cirque de Soleil a short distance from the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of the city.
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Watson and the Shark
Conflating Havana and Boston Harbor
By: - Apr 20th, 2016During a celebration of Tall Ships ancient square riggers anchored in Boston Harbor. It inspired conflating the setting the dramatic Copley masterpiece Watson and the Shark. The event occurred in Havana but it has been reenacted in Boston. Copley created three versions of the amputation which has now been upgraded.
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Amalfi Coast
To Catch a Thief
By: - Apr 18th, 2016The cliff line drive, high above the Mediterranean, from Sorrento to Amalfi is spectacular but terrifying. It was the setting for the enduring Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief (1955) which paired Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. She later quit Hollywood to marry Prince Rainier and share the rule of the tiny Monaco. The Princess was 52 when she died on September 14, 1982, a day after suffering a stroke while driving, causing her to crash. Her daughter Stephanie survived the accident.
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Artist Rafael Mahdavi
School of Paris
By: - Apr 17th, 2016With family in Wellesley the artist Rafael Mahdavi commuted to a studio in the Marais arrondissement of Paris. He is fluent in several languages including Farsi and has had numerous exhibitions in Europe and America. In 2000 we met in his Paris studio to plan a tandem of exhibitions for New England School of Art & Design/ Suffolk University as well as Boston's French Library. With a shoestring budget we shipped large paintings to and from Paris rolled in a tube sent by Fed Ex as table cloths. This was a means of avoiding prohibitive French taxes. Sight Unseen proved to be an ambitious and insightful international exhibition.
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Al the Arab
Hipster Wizard
By: - Apr 15th, 2016We knew the consummate hipster Albert Hamway by the colorful sobriquet Al the Arab. But may, in fact, have been Armenian or Lebanese. Mentor and friend he was a running mate while on the lam in the Lower East Side.
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