Paul Frontiero posts photos of his paintings of Cape Ann seascapes, along with other interesting stuff he finds in Gloucester and environs.

Via Good Morning Gloucester.

The Rockport Legion Band, an established community concert band founded in 1932, will begin its seventy-sixth year of music-making by holding a series of reading rehearsals at the Legion Hall on Beach Street, Rockport.* These rehearsals will begin on Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 7:30, and continue every Thursday evening until April 30.

Material will consist of music from the band's library, new music under consideration for programming, and a series of pieces from the turn of the Twentieth Century. The latter group includes rags, marches, galops, and popular songs from the period.

Tom captures the moment.

Little known fun fact: There are four areas in the U.S. considered to be at risk for potentially devastating earthquakes: the Pacific coast, southern Illinois and Missouri, Charleston, S.C. and Boston.

The main reason we should stop making fun of people who move to California is the Cape Ann Earthquake of 1755, which, Michael informs us, happened 250 years ago today:

In Boston, hundreds of walls and chimneys collapsed and fell to the ground. John Adams, one of many people who reported on the quake, noted that the tremors lasted for about four minutes. In Pembroke and Scituate chasms opened in the earth and sand reached the surface. Sailors on the sea felt as if the ships were striking land. The earthquake was felt from Lake George, New York to 200 miles east of the cape and from Chesapeake Bay to Montreal and Nova Scotia. ...

It also knocked the grasshopper off Faneuil Hall and, as Michael adds, was blamed on Benjamin Franklin, because God was expressing his ire at Franklin's attempt to stop divine lightning from smoting sinners with his newfangled lightning rods. Modern scientists estimate it between 6.0 and 6.3 on the Richter scale.

Also see:

The Cape Ann Earthquake of November 1755, by John Ebel, director of BC's Weston Observatory and a great person to be around during a major earthquake (because during a quake, Ebel wobble but he don't fall down).
Why does the Earth Quake in New England?
Stanford chuckles at the possibility of widespread devastation in Boston
Minor quake shakes Plymouth