A Gloucester of another century, when fishing was king, returns in pictures
Blatchford started photographing in the 1890s, and the 27 photographs in 'Down to the Sea'(drawn from more than 250 in CAM's collection) date from that decade and up through 1913. This was a time when some 350 fishing vessels were working out of Gloucester.
Ernest L. Blatchford, "Launch of the schooner Helen Miller Gould at John Bishop's Shipyard, Vincent Cove, Gloucester," 1900.
Cape Ann Museum
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Blatchford was an amateur photographer. Amateur can mean more than just not a professional. It tends to get forgotten that the word derives from the Latin 'amator,' 'lover,' and Blatchford's feeling for his subject matter can be felt in every image. Even more important than the obvious knowledge and experience he brought to bear was a sense of emotional connection.
Ernest L. Blatchford, "Tugboat Startle in Gloucester's Inner Harbor," circa 1900.
Cape Ann Museum
Gifted
amateur would be a more precise description of Blatchford. Although he was less concerned with form than content, his work has a lot going for it formally. Blatchford was a member of the Cape Ann Camera Club. One of the club's goals was 'to show the rest of New England that we can keep abreast of the times.' This Blatchford did. The graceful plume of steam from a tugboat in Gloucester Harbor evokes Pictorialism, the most artistically ambitious photographic movement of the era.
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Elsewhere one notes the elegant spindliness of the bare masts of an iced-in schooner; the foamy wave raised by the launch of a schooner; the way Blatchford nearly fills the frame with the pile of salt that two sailors are shoveling in the hold of a ship. The removal of any larger context adds to the in-drawing unreality of the scene.
Ernest L. Blatchford, "Shoveling salt in the hold of a salt bank in Gloucester Harbor," circa 1900.
Cape Ann Museum
Salting fish was crucially important in preservation. It was the reality of the fishing industry as well as its romance that drew Blatchford. The variety, too. He photographed not just fishing schooners, but also barks, sloops, shipwrecks, lighthouses, ferries, tugboats, and a US Customs launch. It was later used during Prohibition to chase rumrunners. That kind of detail is representative of how informative and thorough the wall texts are.
'Down to the Sea' honors Blatchford's documentary impulse with an ample selection of items relating to the industry. Three dozen objects related to fishing are in display cases. They lend a three-dimensional immediacy to the world we see in two dimensions in Blatchford's photographs. The items are marvelous as objects — many could be works of vernacular sculpture — and bear names no less marvelous. There are thole pins (to support oars), baggywrinkles (woven coverings for cables), wooden fids (a tool of conical shape used on rope and canvas), a heaver (a lever), a marlinspike (for rope work), a monkey's fist (a kind of knot used to secure the end of a rope).
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Less esoteric are net-mending needles, glass floats, a wheelbarrow, a block with swivel hook and tackle, and both a fog horn
and
a speaking horn. Two insurance maps of the harbor area in 1917 give a rich sense of how much was going on there commercially. Of special note are a full-size in-shore dory, circa 1900, and two models. One is of a fishing schooner, the John Hay Hammond. The other, and it's truly a thing of enchantment, is of a steam ferry from the early teens, the Little Giant.
Ernest L. Blatchford, "Waterboat Aqua Pura in Gloucester Harbor," circa 1900.
Cape Ann Museum
So much of the fascination of 'Down to the Sea' is the window it offers on a now-distant world. There's one photograph, though, that feels depressingly prophetic. It shows the Aqua Pura, a water boat that serviced the fishing fleet. Ads cover its sail. Baggywrinkles and wooden fids are all well and good, but even 125 years ago you couldn't get away from branding and marketing.
DOWN TO THE SEA: The Photographs of Ernest L. Blatchford
At Cape Ann Museum, CAM Green campus, 13 Poplar St., Gloucester, through Sept. 28. 978-283-0455, www.capeannmuseum.org
Mark Feeney can be reached at
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National Geographic
4 hours ago
- National Geographic
Just how bad was Bad King John?
THE PLANTAGENETS King Henry II (at right) is followed by his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (also crowned), and some of their children, perhaps including the future King John, in a fresco from Sainte-Radegonde Chapel in Chinon, France. By Julio Rubén Valdés Miyares John I, known as John Lackland, has been depicted as the most villainous king in the history of England. In accounts of his reign, the monastic chroniclers emphasize John's score-settling, even sadistic, temper and his blatant contempt for the church. Any positive qualities he may have had as a king have been obscured. The figure of King John also contrasts sharply with that of his brother Richard the Lionheart, the quintessential English hero. Richard has gone down in history as one of the most glorious kings of England, even though he spent only six months of his reign in the country. John, on the other hand, is often labeled as Bad King John, and no subsequent English king would bear his name. John's reputation for cruelty was cemented by Sir Walter Scott's historical novel Ivanhoe, which recounts how John takes advantage of Richard's imprisonment in Germany to usurp power. The negative image of John is closely related to the dynasty he belonged to: the Plantagenets. This was a lineage of the French feudal aristocracy that dominated the county of Anjou. Their moniker was derived from the sprigs of yellow broom (planta genista in Latin) that their knights wore when going into battle. John's grandfather—Geoffrey, count of Anjou—married Matilda, heir of Henry I of England and granddaughter of William I, the Norman knight who'd conquered England in 1066. In 1154, after a long succession conflict, the son of Geoffrey and Matilda, also called Henry, was crowned Henry II of England. PILLAR OF STRENGTH The White Tower of the Tower of London was built roughly a century before John's birth. It was a potent symbol of royal power following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. As well as being king of England, Henry II also received the dominion of Normandy through his mother. From his father, he inherited the region of Anjou. This inheritance gave Henry II control of northwestern France, and these vast estates were increased further when Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine, heir to an extensive domain in central and southern France. This collection of territories,which included much of Wales, Ireland, and later Scotland, constituted the so-called Plantagenet Empire. A century before John's birth, William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066 bound English politics and culture to France. For John, like his brother Richard I and his father Henry II, the dominions they held in France were more significant than those in the British Isles. As Plantagenets, their dynasty was rooted both in the Norman heartland of their ancestors and the county of Anjou just to the south. The term that historians later used to describe this composite state, the Angevin Empire, is taken from the name of the capital of Anjou, the city of Angers. The empire, however, was built on shaky foundations. The Angevin territories were vulnerable to rivals to the east, specifically Philip II, the self-styled king of France and the feudal ruler to whom the Plantagenets were officially subordinate. In 1202 Philip II exercised his power to remove the lands of Brittany, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou from John as punishment for not responding to a summons to appear before the French court in a land dispute. John's vain attempts to avenge this humiliation led to costly, futile wars, fueling his unpopularity at home. The fact that Henry and Eleanor controlled such extensive dominions stirred the greed of many, not least their own children. When John, the youngest son, was born, his father had already distributed the titles among his three surviving older sons: Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey. For this reason, the king gave John the title Jean Sans Terre. The Norman French was translated into English as John Lackland. The mocking nickname and rivalry with his siblings might seem a plausible reason for John to want to claw back some territory and compensate for this unequal treatment from his father. But the truth is that Henry II had no intention of marginalizing his youngest son. In fact, John soon became the king's favorite, and Henry II spent a lot of time with John in his infancy. After trying in vain to educate John for an ecclesiastical career at Westminster Abbey, Henry planned to secure extensive lands for him by negotiating a future marriage to the daughter of the powerful Count of Maurienne, who ruled a swath of what is today eastern France around the city of Grenoble. But this prompted dissent from John's older brothers. A DYNASTY BLOSSOMS The seal of John's father, Henry II, the first of the Plantagenet dynasty. Plantagenet means 'blossom of the broom plant' (genet in French), a symbol associated with Henry's father, Geoffrey of Anjou. Later Henry II made the Anglo-Norman-Welsh barons who held his dominions in Ireland pay tribute to John for their fiefs, or feudal land. However, John had to return to England after only six months in Ireland, having sparked multiple conflicts with leaders there. He was already getting a reputation for being an irresponsible and capricious politician. A contemporary chronicler, the monk Gerald of Wales, portrayed Prince John at the age of 19: "Caught in the toils and snared by the temptations of unstable and dissolute youth, he was as wax to receive impressions of evil, but hardened against those who would have warned him of its danger; compliant to the fancy of the moment; more given to luxurious ease than to warlike exercises, to enjoyment than to endurance, to vanity than to virtue." (Who was the first king of England?) Another trait that characterized John from a young age was his lack of loyalty. Henry II experienced this in a bitter episode at the end of his life in 1189. Bedbound after a serious jousting accident, King Henry had ordered his faithful adviser William Marshal to prepare a list of traitors who were plotting against him. But when William began to read the list, Henry saw that the first name was that of his own son, John. The king told him,'You have said enough,' and died three days later. Richard ascended to the throne and John, despite the bitter disputes he'd had with his brother in the past, went immediately to see him to confirm his inheritance. Richard the Lionheart, now King Richard I, received John cordially in Normandy and showed his characteristic generosity. Far from leaving his brother lacking land, Richard immediately granted John all the territories their father had wished him to receive, including the earldom of Nottingham and incomes raised on Sherwood Forest, home of legendary Robin Hood. Richard also conferred on him the important title of count of Mortain. When John married his cousin, Isabella of Gloucester, later that year, he gained the title of marcher lord, and with it control over land on the Welsh border (Marches). To this was added the lordship of Ireland, inherited from his father. PLANTAGENET ROYAL PANTHEON The tombs of Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, lie in front of those of their son Richard I and John's second wife, Isabella of Angoulême, in the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, Chinon, central France. Less than a year after acceding to the throne, King Richard was among the leaders of the Third Crusade who marched to the Holy Land with the aim of liberating Jerusalem from the control of Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt, Syria, and much of the Near East. Aware of his younger brother John's ambition and lack of scruples, Richard left the government of England in the hands of Chancellor William Longchamp. But John immediately began to plot against Longchamp and succeeded in getting him removed. Meanwhile, John was also traveling the country making his presence felt and implying that Richard would never return. It is also said that John made a deal with the king of France, Philip II, upon the king's return from the Crusade he'd fought with Richard the Lionheart. Eleanor, in France at this point, tried to rein in her son John, fearing that, with his malleable character, the young man might listen to the advice of the French and plot the ruin of his brother. Richard left the Holy Land after negotiating a treaty that recognized Muslim control over Jerusalem yet allowed Christian pilgrimage. Later, while passing through Vienna, he was captured by the Austrian duke Leopold V, whom Richard had offended during the Crusades. Leopold handed Richard over to the Holy Roman Emperor. A huge ransom was demanded for Richard's release. John took advantage of his brother's captivity to try to take full control of England, but his efforts failed; the Lionheart inspired loyalty even in his absence. Fourteenth-century miniature of King John. Hunting had long been the sport of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England. The Norman Conquest in 1066, however, brought important changes to the way land was used for hunting. Prior to 1066, English kings hunted in open countryside, but the Normans brought with them a new idea: the forest. Although in modern English forest means an extensive woodland, the Latin roots of the word are related to legal ideas of land set aside for royal use. Royal forests were subject to strict rules about who could and could not use their resources, leading to discontentment among both nobles and common people. King John certainly made use of the royal forests established by his predecessors, as depicted in this 14th-century miniature held in the British Library. It shows the crowned king on horseback with hounds in pursuit. An official in the court of King Henry II described the importance of the forest to the monarch: 'Setting aside the turmoil of serious matters intrinsic to the court, they breathe fresh air freely for a little while; and that is why people who violate the forest are punished solely at the king's will.' After the ransom was paid, Richard was finally released and back in England. Initially, Richard stripped his brother of his lands, but a year later they were reconciled. Just a few years after that, in 1199, Richard died unexpectedly from gangrene in a wound suffered during the siege of a French castle. On his deathbed, at the urging of his mother, Eleanor, Richard forgave John's treacheries and named him his successor. Many people, however, believed that Arthur of Brittany, son of John's older, deceased brother Geoffrey, had a more legitimate claim to the throne, although he was only 12 years old. (How a teenage girl became queen of England for nine days) The supposedly impulsive and vindictive character of King John contrasted with the cordial generosity of his brother and predecessor the Lionheart. Being seen as bad was a fatal trait in a world where monarchs needed to forge alliances and maintain loyalties. As soon as John acceded to the throne, he annulled his marriage to Isabella of Gloucester, with whom he had no children, in order to marry Isabella of Angoulême. It was a sudden decision that has sometimes been presented as the result of an infatuation for a 12-year-old girl. In reality, the match was a political calculation. Isabella brought with her rights and allies in the territories of Angoulême. Above all, by marrying Isabella, John prevented her marriage to Hugh IX de Lusignan, a match that had already been arranged and would have brought Lusignan enormous power in the west of France. The Lusignans protested to their liege lord, the king of France, who summoned John, his vassal in the French territories, to settle the dispute. But John ignored the summons, refusing to recognize Philip II as his superior. So Philip, exercising his feudal power, condemned John as a traitor, stripped him of his territories in France, and gave them to John's nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Open warfare between Philip and John followed for the lands John held on the continent. State crime Despite the nickname Softsword, John demonstrated real military prowess in this conflict. The troops of the Lusignan dynasty invaded Poitou and laid siege to the castle of Mirebeau, where Eleanor of Aquitaine was staying. Upon learning of this, John ran with his army almost 80 miles in two days, broke the siege, and took more than 200 prisoners. Among them was his nephew Arthur of Brittany. John knew that Arthur was seen by many as the rightful heir not only to the French Plantagenet lands but also to the English crown. Arthur was removed to a prison in Rouen, and the unfortunate 16-year-old prince was never heard from again. Some said that John, drunk in a fit of rage, killed him with his own hands; according to others, John commissioned William de Braose, a nobleman who specialized in shady tasks, to do the deed. Arthur's older sister was imprisoned for life in Bristol Castle. This was not John's only demonstration of his ruthless and cruel character. He also had a score of the prisoners from Mirebeau transported to Corfe Castle in southern England with a letter to the governor there ordering him to starve them to death. The order was followed. This setback did not, however, prevent the French, who had far superior military resources, from conquering Normandy in 1204 and two years later conquering Anjou, Maine, and parts of Poitou. The Plantagenet Empire was breaking up. (This battle lasted just one day—but forever changed England) CORFE CASTLE This fortress was built by William I shortly after his forces arrived from Normandy and conquered England in 1066. John used it as a prison for his political enemies. DAVID NOTON PHOTOGRAPHY/ ALAMY/CORDON PRESS After these territorial losses, John moved his main residence to England, something he probably did willingly; John was the first king since the Norman Conquest to speak English well. Determined to take his revenge on France, John reformed the administration, increased taxes, and launched an inquiry into the feudal titles of knights. This provoked resentment among the nobility, but John paid them no heed. A chilling example of how John treated his barons is shown in what happened to William de Braose, who had been a favorite of John's for years. In 1206 William fell into disgrace, supposedly for not having handed over some money he'd collected from his fiefs to the king. William fled first to Ireland while John confiscated his estates. He then took refuge in Wales, where he helped Prince Llywelyn the Great rise up against John. William eventually escaped to France, but John tracked down his wife and son and locked them in the dungeons of the castles of Windsor and Corfe, where he starved them to death. It was said that William's wife, Maud, devoured the corpse of her son before dying herself. All against John TURBULENT PRIEST Archbishop Stephen Langton holds the Magna Carta in a stained glass window in Canterbury Cathedral. As if this were not enough, John's decision in 1207 to reject the appointment of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury set the king on a collision course with the papacy. For six years England was placed under papal interdict, which meant that no church services could be held in any church in the country. John took advantage of this situation to fill his coffers with the rents from the vacant ecclesiastical offices. But the papacy's excommunication of John in 1209 laid the king open to being deposed by his enemies. In 1211 the leading barons of the country organized a plot to kill John during a campaign against the Welsh attempt failed. John tried to wriggle out of this situation by engineering a reconciliation with the church. He declared the kingdom of England a vassal of the papacy and committed to paying it a large sum of money every year. MONUMENT TO THE CHARTER The American Bar Association's monument to the Magna Carta in Runnymede, England, was inaugurated in 1957 and features a Roman-style, domed roof. British and American lawyers attended the ceremony, reflecting the importance of the 1215 charter in the legal system of both nations. Near where King John reluctantly placed his royal seal on the Magna Carta in 1215, the monument indicates where the event took place: 'in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines.' Today, on the outskirts of western London, the spot has acquired enormous significance as the birthplace of modern democracy. Even in 1215, Runnymede was charged with symbolism: Situated near a major crossing of the Thames River, its name is derived from Old English, meaning 'meadow of the meeting.' It was the site of open-air councils held by the Anglo-Saxon kings from the seventh century. The later significance of the Magna Carta to the Constitution and legal system of the United States prompted the American Bar Association to erect a memorial at Runnymede in 1957. North American ties to the site were further strengthened in 1965, when Queen Elizabeth II established a memorial to John F. Kennedy. It stands on an acre of ground formally bequeathed to his nation, making this most English meadow a part of the United States. In return, he hoped the pope would become an ally in his struggle against the barons and against the king of France. But events did not play out as he had hoped. In France, John suffered a definitive defeat against Philip II at the Battle of Bouvines. On his return to England, many nobles rallied against him, marched on London, and finally forced him to sign the landmark charter known as the Magna Carta. Through this document King John put to rest various grievances that the nobility, the church, and other sections of the population had against him. One key demand of the Magna Carta was that his subjects would be judged by courts and not by the arbitrary will of the monarch. Should a monarch violate the terms of the charter, there was provision for a committee of barons to condemn them as a tyrant and depose them. Magna Carta, 1215 version, British Library, London. The Magna Carta is a mixture of a peace treaty between the king and his barons and a charter of rights. Its clauses reflect the role of the clergy in its drafting: The first clause, for example, guarantees freedom to the church. Other clauses respond to the concerns of the barons, such as clause 39, which establishes the obligation for every free man to be judged 'by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land' and not by the sole will of the king. The most radical was clause 61, in which the king agreed to accept a committee of 25 barons dedicated to guaranteeing 'the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.' If the king or his officers 'offend in any respect against any man, or transgress any of the articles of the peace or of this security,' those 25 barons have permission to 'distrain upon and assail us [the king]...by seizing our castles, lands, possessions.' Soon after its signing, the Magna Carta was annulled by Pope Innocent III. But its ideas were returned to again and again, and they became gradually enshrined in English law. John repudiated the charter as soon as he'd managed to regain the support of the pope. He died of dysentery soon after, in the middle of a war against his barons, who were trying to impose a French prince as the new king. John was succeeded by his son Henry III, age nine. The unwavering loyalty of a few barons, in particular royal adviser William Marshal, saved the throne of Henry III and the legacy of the Magna Carta. The former king, on the other hand, remained fixed in English collective memory as Bad King John, the odious tyrant immortalized by Sir Walter Scott. The extremely negative depiction of John was propelled by the chroniclers who wrote about his reign a few years after his death. Most of them were monks, and their works reflected the resentment the church felt for the abuses committed by the king against the clergy. Possible portrait of William Shakespeare circa 1600, National Portrait Gallery, London. The first chroniclers to write about the reign of John did not suggest his misdeeds were especially unusual. The Barnwell Chronicle, written anonymously in the 1220s, portrays John as an unlucky prince who had lost many territories, although it does censure the late king for 'stealing' from the English at the expense of his foreign allies. Among the first depictions of John as a notably malign ruler appear in the chronicle of the Benedictine monk Roger of Wendover, written around 1230, which recounts John sleeping with the wives of his barons, taking the Lord's name in vain (swearing 'By God's teeth' and 'By God's feet'), and forcing an archdeacon to wear a robe of lead until he died. This final accusation is known to be false since the archdeacon in question, Geoffrey of Norwich, was still alive in 1225. Two decades later, a younger colleague of Wendover added more lurid claims about John's reign: Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk and chronicler from St. Albans, suggested that John sent a delegation to the Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nāsir in North Africa offering to convert to Islam and turn England into a tributary of the caliph. The most serious accusation against John was that of having killed his nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Many historians believe the king did indeed have Arthur killed; the boy had a strong claim to the throne and could have been the focus of a revolt by the barons. Kings purging their dynastic rivals was not exceptional at the time. The mystery around the prince's disappearance, however, gave rise to gruesome stories. One suggests that John ordered a servant to blind and castrate the prince, another that John himself murdered the prince in his cell while seized by alcohol and a fit of rage. Neither story has any historical foundation, but both have contributed to the malicious reputation of the monarch, amplified by Shakespeare's play, King John. The bard and the life of John In the play King John, composed around 1595, William Shakespeare takes up the rumor of the murder of Prince Arthur, modifying it to change John's role. In the play, John entrusts Hubert, a citizen of Angers (today in France), with the secret mission of killing Arthur by gouging out his eyes. But moved by the boy's innocence, Hubert spares Arthur's life while lying to the king that he has carried out the order. The news of Arthur's death provokes general indignation, and John decides to accuse Hubert of the murder. Hubert then reveals that he did not kill Arthur, but in the meantime the boy dies while trying to escape by jumping over the castle wall. Upon seeing the corpse, many believe the king is guilty. 'Prince Arthur and Hubert,' oil painting by William Frederick Yeames, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England. This story appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of National Geographic History magazine.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Boston Globe
A Gloucester of another century, when fishing was king, returns in pictures
Blatchford (1868-1947) was a Gloucester native. After a few years living in Boston and Kittery, Maine, he returned home and never left. He spent four decades working as a bookkeeper for the New England Fish Company. His workspace overlooked the inner harbor. Think of his office window as a much larger version of a viewfinder. Blatchford started photographing in the 1890s, and the 27 photographs in 'Down to the Sea'(drawn from more than 250 in CAM's collection) date from that decade and up through 1913. This was a time when some 350 fishing vessels were working out of Gloucester. Ernest L. Blatchford, "Launch of the schooner Helen Miller Gould at John Bishop's Shipyard, Vincent Cove, Gloucester," 1900. Cape Ann Museum Advertisement Blatchford was an amateur photographer. Amateur can mean more than just not a professional. It tends to get forgotten that the word derives from the Latin 'amator,' 'lover,' and Blatchford's feeling for his subject matter can be felt in every image. Even more important than the obvious knowledge and experience he brought to bear was a sense of emotional connection. Ernest L. Blatchford, "Tugboat Startle in Gloucester's Inner Harbor," circa 1900. Cape Ann Museum Gifted amateur would be a more precise description of Blatchford. Although he was less concerned with form than content, his work has a lot going for it formally. Blatchford was a member of the Cape Ann Camera Club. One of the club's goals was 'to show the rest of New England that we can keep abreast of the times.' This Blatchford did. The graceful plume of steam from a tugboat in Gloucester Harbor evokes Pictorialism, the most artistically ambitious photographic movement of the era. Advertisement Elsewhere one notes the elegant spindliness of the bare masts of an iced-in schooner; the foamy wave raised by the launch of a schooner; the way Blatchford nearly fills the frame with the pile of salt that two sailors are shoveling in the hold of a ship. The removal of any larger context adds to the in-drawing unreality of the scene. Ernest L. Blatchford, "Shoveling salt in the hold of a salt bank in Gloucester Harbor," circa 1900. Cape Ann Museum Salting fish was crucially important in preservation. It was the reality of the fishing industry as well as its romance that drew Blatchford. The variety, too. He photographed not just fishing schooners, but also barks, sloops, shipwrecks, lighthouses, ferries, tugboats, and a US Customs launch. It was later used during Prohibition to chase rumrunners. That kind of detail is representative of how informative and thorough the wall texts are. 'Down to the Sea' honors Blatchford's documentary impulse with an ample selection of items relating to the industry. Three dozen objects related to fishing are in display cases. They lend a three-dimensional immediacy to the world we see in two dimensions in Blatchford's photographs. The items are marvelous as objects — many could be works of vernacular sculpture — and bear names no less marvelous. There are thole pins (to support oars), baggywrinkles (woven coverings for cables), wooden fids (a tool of conical shape used on rope and canvas), a heaver (a lever), a marlinspike (for rope work), a monkey's fist (a kind of knot used to secure the end of a rope). Advertisement Less esoteric are net-mending needles, glass floats, a wheelbarrow, a block with swivel hook and tackle, and both a fog horn and a speaking horn. Two insurance maps of the harbor area in 1917 give a rich sense of how much was going on there commercially. Of special note are a full-size in-shore dory, circa 1900, and two models. One is of a fishing schooner, the John Hay Hammond. The other, and it's truly a thing of enchantment, is of a steam ferry from the early teens, the Little Giant. Ernest L. Blatchford, "Waterboat Aqua Pura in Gloucester Harbor," circa 1900. Cape Ann Museum So much of the fascination of 'Down to the Sea' is the window it offers on a now-distant world. There's one photograph, though, that feels depressingly prophetic. It shows the Aqua Pura, a water boat that serviced the fishing fleet. Ads cover its sail. Baggywrinkles and wooden fids are all well and good, but even 125 years ago you couldn't get away from branding and marketing. DOWN TO THE SEA: The Photographs of Ernest L. Blatchford At Cape Ann Museum, CAM Green campus, 13 Poplar St., Gloucester, through Sept. 28. 978-283-0455, Mark Feeney can be reached at
Yahoo
6 days ago
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Harry Paidas: Counting the ways we live life by the numbers
The other night, while lying awake at 3 a.m., as I am prone to do, rather than counting sheep, I tried to comprehend how important numbers have become in our lives. I will only scratch the surface in the following paragraphs, but it is fascinating how numbers rule our lives. It is also fascinating to think how life would be different had we stuck to the Roman numeral system rather than converting to the Arabic system in the 16th century. We Boomers might remember that the educators of our time were insistent that we learn Roman numerals as well as other now nearly obsolete things like Latin, writing in cursive, diagraming sentences, using a slide rule and long division. Today's students, products of the Age of Technology, have their share of requirements but because of technology, their tools have taken them to a new frontier. The only common usage of Roman numerals has been relegated to designating which Super Bowl is being played. I think NFL brass thinks it is classier to use Roman numerals. Unfortunately, anyone younger than 65 needs to consult Google to figure it out. Meanwhile, Arabic numerals dominate in all facets of our lives. (For the purpose of consistency, I will deviate from the journalistic practice of using the word for a number under 10 and use numerals throughout). Let's look at my typical day. I look at the clock: 6:30 a.m. I immediately put my Apple Watch on to begin measuring what I hope will be 10,000 steps. I look at my July calendar with its 31 days and realize I have a 10 a.m. doctor's appointment. I go to the kitchen where I put 4 scoops in the coffee maker to make 5 cups of coffee. I pour 4 ounces of juice and stick 3 prunes in my cereal. Then I take my nine pills and supplements. I'll skip over the parts that include the numbers 1 and 2. I get in the car and see the odometer is just over 50,000 miles. On my way to the doctor, I have to stay under 25 mph, then 35 mph, then up to 55 mph, then quickly back down to 25 mph. Kathe calls my phone number to remind me to stop at the grocery store to pick up 12 eggs. When I get to the doctor, the front office staff wants to confirm my Social Security number, my Medicare number, and the account number for my supplemental insurance. When I get to the inner doctor's office, they want me to know I am still 5-foot-6 and now weigh 175 pounds and remind me that I should be about 15 pounds less. Then it's time to check blood pressure, which ideally should be 120 over 75. Mine tends to be in the 130s over something in the 60s, which suggests I have both high and low blood pressure. Go figure. The week before, I had some bloodwork. Doc and I look at my numbers and if anything is out of range we discuss why and what to do about it. This day, she says, 'Your numbers look good.' Even though I don't feel so well, it's great my numbers are good. So, I leave the doctor's office and go to the grocery store. I can't believe I am paying $5 for 12 eggs. And, holy cow, bananas are 64 cents a pound! I think to myself, it's a good thing they aren't taking my blood pressure now. Everywhere I look in the grocery store, I see prices and realize that inflation is real. I return home and the mail has arrived. Electric bill, gas bill, water bill, cable bill and Visa bill have all arrived at the same time with various dollar amounts in Arabic numerals. They are also due by certain dates. I go to the newsfeed on my phone and see a full slate of baseball games are to be played. The Guardians and Pirates are both under .500 and hardly anybody bats .300 anymore. The Pirates have a pitcher, Paul Skenes, whose ERA, incredibly, is under 2.00. There was a time when I knew nearly every Major Leaguer's batting average, but my RAM has been jammed by the aging process. I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. And I hope you will take the time to pause and appreciate the works of our ancestors to bring us to this point. I know that ever since that near all-nighter when I came to the realization that numbers dominate our lives, I have accepted and even embraced the importance of numbers. Even when I go to the doctor and I am not feeling well, I love to hear her say that my numbers are good. In fact, in what I hope are many years from now, if you happen to be strolling through city cemetery and see my name, I have left instructions for the headstone to read: 'But his numbers were good …' Harry Paidas is faculty emeritus at Mount Union and writes a periodic column for The Review. He can be reached at paidashp@ This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Harry Paidas: Counting the ways we live life by the numbers Solve the daily Crossword
