The Friday list goes local

The Hourglass Gallery in Melrose is having a "meet the artists" reception on Saturday, August 27th, at noon as part of their "Arts Alive" series. And one of the artists you can meet at the event is my mom, Diane Sawler McLaughlin. That's her painting, over there on the left.

Two other local artists, Robin Beaty and Ed Rice, will also be showing their work. The gallery is located at 458 Main Street, Melrose (click here for directions). Refreshments will be served.

(Refreshments will be Served, by the way, is the working title of my memoir about my days as the Rockport reporter for the Gloucester Daily Times.)

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I've always enjoyed reading Peter Chianca's column in the North Shore Sunday weekly newspaper. He has a great sense of humor and he's a damn good writer, too. So imagine how happy I was to discover that Chianca has a blog. The At Large Blog is as funny and as well-written as Chianca's columns. In fact, it may be even funnier and more well-writtener. [via Universal Hub]

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Being Jennifer Garrett, always a fun read in spite of (or perhaps because of) the tagline "every day an adventure in mediocrity" plans to read and write about 100 blogs in 100 days. I just went to the post to check that link and--holy crap--it has 124 comments. And, although I didn't read all of those comments, I'm guessing that 123 of them are people asking her to read and write about their blogs. Which means that she's going to have to read a lot more than 100 blogs, because I'm also guessing that 97 of the 124 commenters' blogs are crap. And, so far at least, she isn't picking crap blogs. Then again, it's only day four.
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