JULY 5, 2023
Graphic © Bing McGilvray.
COSMOS Salutes the Gloucester 400+ Quatercentenary!
Gloucester 400+ COSMOS Culture Folio
Co-Edited by Chris Munkholm and Bing McGilvray
Design by Meredith Anderson
Photo credit: Antony Ohman
July 5, 2023
Dear Cultural Community of this Gloucester Realm,
We hereby present our Gloucester 400+ gift of the COSMOS Culture Folio.
A paean to the inspired predecessors of these past 400 years on the promontory, and to the inquiring habitants of the prior millennia, we salute all who have contributed to the cultural mantle enriching our lives today.
The COSMOS Folio offers a compendium of fifteen essays, covering some of the most intriguing stories in Gloucester’s illustrious cultural heritage.
We invite you to enter the fifteen portals, created by writers who animated their subjects with historically accurate narratives and many rare photographs. May you experience these bygone and mysterious eras, which still echo across time, with the lore and images we absorb today. Many of the eccentric characters in these tales are more like our temporal soulmates and questing companions.
The next time you enter Cape Ann Museum, give a nod to Dr. Herman E. Davidson who hosted the formative 1875 gatherings, in his front parlor, to discuss the intellectual ideas of the times. Or, when you next step into the Great Hall of Hammond Castle, thank those dapper gents who built the mansions of their imaginations, which embellish our lives today. Or when you look to the stars, think of the skywatchers of 3,000 years ago, searching the same stars we see today.
It has been our honor, privilege, and slightly mad overreach to produce this Folio.
But an immersion of endless fascination as well.
To Gloucester with Love,
Chris Munkholm & Bing McGilvray
Co-Editors
Meredith Anderson
Design Editor
CONTENTS
Greek philosopher Heraclitus’s maxim “character is destiny” applies to this most famous and intrepid Yankee privateer Captain in America’s War for Independence, and to his …
My father’s rigging loft in the 1940s and 1950s was right at the foot of Sherman Ruth’s wharf, where the Americold freezer plant is today. He had learned his trade on Swedish sailing ships …
The Cape Ann Museum, which plays such a prominent role in the cultural heart of Cape Ann today, has a history which reaches back into the 19th century when few museums existed. …
In September, the Dry Salvages Festival celebrated T. S. Eliot's early years summering in Gloucester, and their influence on his body of poetry. Included in the program was a collection of …
My dad, Ed Niles, was born in Cambridge, Mass. His father was alcoholic and had left the family. But my father had a marvelous Uncle Jim who took him sailing out of Gloucester on his …
Ever visited the shores of Cape Ann and noticed people lugging around boatloads of air tanks (they’re not oxygen tanks), lead weight-belts, and tangles of gauges, computers, …
Charles Olson left a large footprint in Gloucester, with his stature of 6’8” far exceeded by the size of his poetic voice which arose from this city. Olson’s life, from the earliest to the …
If one walks along any of the narrow boulevards which girdle downtown Gloucester, all manner of historical markers and architectural embellishments announce the glory of the …
Since the late 19th century, it was a tradition of established, successful New York sculptors and their allied artist friends to escape from the heat of the city and head north to the …
A few years back, I lived downtown on Prospect Street. Life had come full circle. The scene that enchanted me as a teen, when I had a poster of Edward Hopper’s Sun on Prospect Street …
One day during my junior year in high school, a short kid with slicked down black hair and a flashy yellow linen sport jacket stopped me in the corridor between classes. His name was …
It is Saturday afternoon at 16 Rogers Street, where Jeff Weaver holds court from a corner in his gallery. People drift in and out of the space, a mix of old friends and passersby, with Jeff …
I met with artist Ruth Mordecai on December 13, 2022, at her home and studio on Rocky Neck. This oceanside community located in Gloucester, MA, is one of the oldest …
In the early years of the 21st century, my camera and I roamed through Gloucester harbor at night, taking color photographs illuminated by the lights on the ships, docks and …
Thank you to the following businesses, artists, organizations, and individuals for your support!
Anonymous (2)
Nubar Alexanian
Dan Bacon
Sheila Carrassi
Donna Caselden
Nicole Cohen
Linda Collins
Cheryl Dyment
Tamsen and Dominic Endicott
Ricardo Fernandez
Melissa Fisher
Judith & Harry Hoglander
Peter Littlefield
Jim and Judi Masciarelli
Leslie Nicholson
Samuel and Elizabeth Otis
Miriam Pett
Sara Stotzer
Trish Roach
Judith Walcott
Miriam Weinstein
June Wulff
So, this was "Wonasquam"! I was standing at the corner of Wheeler St. and Apple St. on Gloucester's Riverview Peninsula, gazing at a rock-ringed pocket park called Brown's Field. …