After celebrating a wonderful 4th. of July, and overcoming the heat of the first few days of the month we had our meeting for July on the 10th. There was a great deal of planning for this month and the upcoming months of the summer season.
On July 11th we drove to Rockport to tour The Paper House. Mr. Elis Stenman, a mechanical engineer who designed the machines that make paper clips, began building his Rockport summer home out of paper as a hobby. That was in 1922. The paper was meant to be good insulation.
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The framework to the house is wood; it has a regular wooden floor and wooden roof. The wall material, which was supposed to be insulation really, is pressed paper about an inch thick. It's jut layers and layers of newspaper, glue , and varnish on the outside. That keeps it pretty water-proof actually. This was done n 1924 and he lived here in the summertime up until 1930.
After the wall material was made, and he was living in it, he made the furniture out of little paper logs; cut to different size with a knife, then glued together or nailed together. He covered the piano with paper and then there's the mantle of the fireplace.
The furniture consists of tables, chairs, lamps, settee all made in an octagonal motif. A desk made of the Christian Science Monitor, a cot containing some papers saved since the First World War, a piano covered with paper rolls; a radio cabinet made in 1928 during Hoover's campaign.
There is a writing desk made of Col.C. Lindberg's flight; a bookshelf made of newspapers from foreign countries; a grandfather's clock,built in Wakefield Ma, made of newspapers from the capital cities of the then 48 states and a fireplace mantel made of the rotogravure section of the Boston Sunday Herald and New Your Herald Tribune. There are approximately 100,000 copies of newspapers and the work covered a period of 20 years.
There is electricity and running water in the house but no bathrooms. (That's a bit away from the house and not made of paper.).
The cost for the tour was on the honor system; $2.00 to be paid in the mail box next door . The house is small but we came away with a whole lot of new knowledge that if you set your mind to a task you can get it done. A good take-in.
Our lunch was at the Causeway restaurant in Gloucester and it was fish done in as many ways as you would like it. And we did!
What a great Red Hat summer day.
July 21st we were scheduled to see the Lowell Spinners baseball team meet the Hudson Valley team but this did not happen on this day. The temperature soared over 100 degrees and we were lucky to get a date change. Look for this venue next month.
On July 24th, a wonderful sun filled summer day,we headed for Nantasket beach. It was time again for us to act like kids; to ride the Carousel!
We were able to park on the street across from the beach and we headed inside to see the colorful horses parade around the merry go round.
The Carousel is celebrating 91 years of joyful entertainment for so many of us. It is the only surviving element of the original Paragon Park Amusement Park.
Many of us remember the sounds of the music that filled Nantasket Ave. as we walked the street to see the amusements up and down the area. Today it is only the Carousel, but it is so much fun to be able to mount one of the colorful horses and go around and around for about 10 minutes. Well worth the $3.00 cost that brought us back to our childhood years.
We walked across the street to have lunch at Jake's seafood restaurant.
With a view of the ocean and the outstanding food it made for a wonderful, fun filled, child-like Red Hat day.
On July 30 we were off to the Stoneham Senior Center to see Sheryl Fay present her performance of the life of Sally Ride, the first woman Astronaut and Scientist.
Sheryl does a one-woman show performing as Historical Women, and she does it very well. It is amazing the changes in voice and costumes as she moves along right in front of the group.
Her performance was so good, we almost felt as if we were in the rocket with her flying through space.
After the show the group split up; some with prior family commitments or other plans, so four of us went off to a great lunch at the 99 restaurant in Stoneham.
The day was a BLAST!
