Simply At Year-End

While some of us are resting and vacationing between Christmas and New Year's Day, the Capt. Novello is still at work.

Capt. Sam Novello sits in the wheelhouse of the Capt. Novello.

Photo from the June 8, 2008 edition of the Gloucester Daily Times.
Read Peter K. Prybot's Ebb & Flow column: At-sea events have made captain superstitious article for more information on Captain Sam Novello.

A New Year's Prayer
Anonymous

May God make your year a happy one!
Not by shielding you from all sorrows and pain,
But by strengthening you to bear it, as it comes;
Not by making your path easy,
But by making you sturdy to travel any path;
Not by taking hardships from you,
But by taking fear from your heart;
Not by granting you unbroken sunshine,
But by keeping your face bright, even in the shadows;
Not by making your life always pleasant,
But by showing you when people and their causes need you most,
and by making you anxious to be there to help.
God's love, peace, hope and joy to you for the year ahead.

Whether you'll be shouting Felice Anno Nuovo! or Onnellista Uutta Vuotta!,
or whether you'll be jumping into a sauna or preparing pork and lentils,
I wish you all the best in the coming year!

Simply At Year-End

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Simply Gullible!

It was a quiet Saturday morning, just after Christmas. The weather was nice, yet the sky was still overcast. There was very little boat traffic and most of the city seemed to be sleeping in.

Even the seagulls were in a subdued mood.

Click an image to enlarge.

Here's one little guy (gull?) coming in for a landing.

These two homies were keeping a lookout for Joey of GoodMorningGloucester fame. I could have sworn that I heard his voice but couldn't see him.

Simply Gullible!

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Simply A City Hall Castle

A recent trip to the Jodrey State Fish Pier presented an interesting view of City Hall. Sorry about the grainy quality. It was very overcast this day.

It almost appears to be part of a castle from here!

Click on the images to enlarge.

Especially, once I "posterized" the image.

(I did center the tower just a bit!)

Simply A City Hall Castle

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Simply BarnStorming

Not all pictures of Cape Ann need to be "seascapes". Here's a beautiful barn just constructed at the Blue Sky Farm in Essex. More details and pictures during it's construction can be found on GoodMorningGloucester.

Simply BarnStorming

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Simply Tranquil

A quick stop at Hodgkins Cove provided these tranquil images. Once again, I am showing these pictures as both a digital capture and a "rendered painting".

Be sure to click on each pair of images to see the larger versions.

The first pair is called "Out to the Bay".

This next pair is called "Wait 'Til Next Year"

Simply Tranquil

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Simply Majestic!

Here are a few more pictures from Stage Fort Park. Even without their spring and summer clothing, the trees stand regally by the harbor.

Click on the images to enlarge.

A perfect day for a walk with Tablet Rock ahead.

Reach for the sky! How high can you reach?

Tablet Rock surrounded by the trees.

Simply Majestic!

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Simply Ten Pounds

A walk through Stage Fort Park provided these glimpses of Ten Pound Island. And to think that it was "purchased for only ten pounds". Truly a bargain!

The following description of Ten Pound Island is from the National Park Service.

Ten Pound is a small island located at the eastern end of Gloucester Harbor with shoals between it and the mainland to the east. The island allegedly received its name from the amount of money the early settlers paid the local American Indian tribe for it or for the number of sheep pens (pounds) that it could hold. Ten Pound Island Light Station was established in 1821 to safely guide mariners into Gloucester's inner harbor.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Ten Pound Island Light

Simply Ten Pounds

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Simply Magnolia

The Hotel is long gone and most visitors only travel through Magnolia to stop at Hammond Castle. Imagine looking out at these sights every morning!

Click on each image to see a larger version.

Simply Magnolia

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Simply November

The final weekend of November brought nice days and clear skies. Here are a few images of Little River as the calendar page flips.

Be sure to click on each image to see the larger version.

November
by William Cullen Bryant

YET one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds ran,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue Gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skim the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

November
by Hartley Coleridge

THE mellow year is hasting to its close:
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast --
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows; --
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed,
Hangs a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows; --
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine;
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define,
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine.

Simply November

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Simply Waiting

We have just entered the Advent season of the Christian year, a time of waiting and preparing. This season is overlooked by many as the sales seasons jump right from Halloween to "Holiday Gift Purchasing" season.

Henri Nouwen describes spiritually oriented waiting as “openended.”

“Openended waiting is hard for us because we tend to wait for something very concrete, for something we wish to have… We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes… Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just just according to our wishes. Therefore, hope is always open-ended.”
(H. Nouwen)

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? (Tao Te Ching)

Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?
(Tao Te Ching)

“I have found it very important in my own life to let go of my wishes and start hoping. It was only when I was willing to let go of wishes that something really new, something beyond my own expectations could happen to me… To wait openendedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life… The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy, or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
(H. Nouwen)

Simply Waiting

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Simply Grateful

Nothing like a walk (or a surf!) on Good Harbor Beach to take the stress out of preparing a Thanksgiving Feast.

It is very difficult not to take a real look around and be grateful for the beauty of Cape Ann and its community.

Simply Grateful!

Simply Wingaersheek Thinking

The weather forecast for Cape Ann appears rather bleak for this weekend. Here are a few pictures from last weekend to hopefully brighten your days.

Once again, I am showing these pictures as both a digital capture and a "rendered painting".

Be sure to click on each pair of images to see the larger versions.

First pair is called "Rock Pillar".

Next pair is called "Yacht Club Through The Porthole"

The final pair is called "Wingaersheek Vista".

Simply Wingaersheek Thinking

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Simply Red Boats

A peaceful time spent at the Boat Landing in the Jones River Watershed provided me a opportunity to watch these four red rowboats dancing in the tide.

As always, clicking on an image will display a larger version.

An excerpt from Nine Horses by Billy Collins.

We are busy doing nothing—
and all we need for that is an afternoon,
a rowboat under a blue sky,

and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge,
or, better still, nobody on that bridge at all.

An excerpt from The New Freedom by Woodrow Wilson.

What it liberty? You say of the locomotive that it runs free. What do you
mean? You mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted that friction
is reduced to a minimum, and that it has perfect adjustment. We say of a
boat skimming the water with light foot, "How free she runs," when we
mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how
perfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her
sails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and
stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her whole frame be shaken, how
instantly she is "in irons," in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is
free only when you have let her fall off again and have recovered once
more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy.

Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of human interests and
human activities and human energies.

An excerpt from First you have to row a little boat by Richard Bode.

I sat in the center of the dinghy, facing the stern, my destination somewhere behind me, a landfall I couldn’t see. I had to judge where I was headed from where I had been, an acquired perception which has served me well --- for the goals of my life, and especially my work, haven’t always been visible points of light on a shore that looms in front of me. They are fixed in my imagination, shrouded and indistinct, and I detect them best when my eyes are closed. All too often I am forced to move toward them backward, like a boy in a rowboat, guiding myself by a cultivated inner sense of direction which tells me I’m on course, tending toward the place I want to be.

Simply Red Boats

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Simply Painting Wingaersheek

Robert Frost wrote in Mending Wall that "something there is that doesn't love a wall". A corollary might be "something about an ocean makes people stare into it". A walk along the shoreline at Wingaersheek Beach gave me the opportunity to witness many people with this "affliction", myself included.

I mistakenly thought that "Wingaersheek", like so many other names of locations in New England was Native American in origin. Yet, the United States Geological Survey describes "Wingaersheek" in this manner on its GNIS website.

Name described by Professor Trumbull as "not Indian" but stated by Professor E. N. Horsford to be "an undoubted corruption of the German (Low Dutch) name, "Wyngaerts Hoeck", which occurs on many maps between 1630 and 1670, especially in Ogilby's "America." Wyngaert's Hoeck was derived from Wyngaerton (Vineland) (BGN Files). Also called Coffins Beach for Peter Coffin whose farm was located alongside this beach (MGB 1932).

Regardless of its derivation, we are surely blessed by its beauty. I've shown my images today in two ways. The first image of each is the digital capture. The second is a "painting render" of the same image.

Be sure to click on each pair of images to see the larger versions.

First two images are called "Family At Play".

These two are called "Soul Searching".

These last two are called "Squam Light".

Simply Painting Wingaersheek

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