July 4th, 2010
by PaulM
All this writing and opinion-giving about our economic problems and what’s needed to get the nation out of the financial ditch sent me back to the writings of young Jack Kerouac in the collection I edited, “Atop an Underwood.” In 1941, when he was 19 years old, Kerouac wrote a short story titled “The Birth of a Socialist,” which is based on his short-lived job as a factory worker at the Megowan Educator Food Company at 27 Jackson Street (The business was also known as Educator Biscuit or ”The Crax”—one product was “Beer Chasers” crackers. Passersby on Market Street could smell the latest batch of goods being baked.) He saw enough on the cookie-and-cracker production line to make him imagine a better way for the workers. In a related document called “Kerouac’s Socialism,” not included in “Atop,” he proposes a plan for structuring the working world.
Here’s a section of my headnote to the short story:
He even devised a plan called Kerouac’s Socialism in which he argued that shorter working hours would create more jobs. With a two- or three-hour limit per worker, there could be three working shifts in an eight- to ten-hour day. He wrote, ‘Shorter hours will provide the laborer with a new desire to live, not to be a productive animal, but to have time to be a man, to have time to enjoy the rights of man in the use of his divine intellect, a gift of God that is overlooked by our overlords of the present Industrial Era.’
If Kerouac was going to have to earn a living by doing work that looked like what most other people did for a living, he wanted to be sure that the system he worked in would accommodate his desire to be a literary writer, an artist. My guess is that he was reading Massachusetts native Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” at the time, which my father knew all about. My father was three years older than Kerouac and shared the same background, so it’s not a leap to think bright young people in Lowell had read Bellamy.
Culture, Education, History, Lowell | 
2 Comments »
July 4th, 2010
by Marie
I couldn’t resist the urge – this photo of Rachel Maddow – fellow resident of Massachusetts – not ”in mufti” needs to be seen as “captioned.” Maddow with her crew and NBC correspondent Richard Engel is currently in Afghanistan where she will spend the next couple of days reporting in and from the field. The Rachel Maddow Show seen nightly on MSNBC at 9:00pm will be coming to her audience live from Kabul on Tuesday and Wednesday. I admit it – I’m a fan.
Culture, Current Events, Education, Politics | No Comments »
July 4th, 2010
by Tony
I always wished I had been born on the fourth of July…can you just image your birthday being filled with parades, fireworks and barbeques every year?. Who cares that the celebration is not for you…it doesn’t matter. It would be a blast anyway (excuse the pun).
Below is a list of people born on the July 4…
President Calvin Coolidge
Columnists Ann Landers and her sister Abigail van Buren (Dear Abby)
Playwright Neil Simon
TV personality Geraldo Rivera
Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne
Flamboyant billionaire Leona Helmsley
Musician Mitch Miller
Basketball coach Digger Phelps
New York Yankee’s owner George Steinbrenner
Daughter of Robert Kennedy and Former Lt Governor of Maryland Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
No writer George M Cohen was not born on the 4th of July. He was born on the 3rd!
Please feel free to add to this list…
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July 4th, 2010
by Marie
Yankee Magazine arrived the other day. There are a myriad of stories and articles pertaining to summer in New England. Learn the history and “art of the sail” with Robbie Doyle a Marblehead sailmaker. Follow seasoned kayakers along the Coast of Maine’s Island Trail. Enjoy Rhode Island natives Casey and Garret Roberts’ home in Jamestown along “cliff and cove.” Get tips for trapping then cooking the iconic Maine lobster. Get lost in Richard Schutz’s photographic odyssey along coastal Maine as he shares his sense of people and place.
There are New England statistics. For instance – did you know that 15,000 gallons of slush are consumed annually at Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire? There’s a state-by-state July-August events and history calendar. Look for the Riverfront Music Festival in Newburyport on July 10th and the Latin American Festival at City Hall Plaza in Worcester on August 21st. Did you know that a tornado cut a swarth of destruction killing eight in South Lawrence on July 27, 1890? And on August 2, 1943, JFK’s PT boat was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer in the South Pacific – leaving him and 10 crewmates stranded for days. Learn about puttting up tomatoes, “rosarians,” sharks and ice cream and much more.
Amid this issue of tales, instructions, facts and tidbits is this gem on the “Knowledge and Wisdom” page from none other than Lowell-born painter James Abbott McNeil Whistler:
“You shouldn’t say it’s not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you’re perfectly safe.”
Whether this advice was meant as an answer when asked by an artist about his work, I can only surmise. Whistler’s most famous work was “Arrangement in Grey and Black” – commonly known as Whistler’s Mother. It may in fact be the most recognized painting in the world. By the way, by all acounts the model in the painting is the artist’s mother – Anna McNeill Whistler.
Purchase Yankee magazine at a bookstore or better yet get a subscription for this really good bi-monthy publication. Read some of the current edition of Yankee on-line at http://www.yankeemagazine.com. Enjoy.
Culture, Current Events, Greater Lowell, History, Politics | 2 Comments »
July 4th, 2010
by PaulM
The web isn’t called “the web” for nothing. Like no other tool, the internet both displays and helps us plug in to the vast connectedness of daily life. In recent days the writers on this blog have put their words around the economy, the future of cities, university happenings and faculty, and so forth.
Today’s NYTimes offers a special section on the Op-Ed page with four writers from around the country sharing personal takes on the quicksand of a recession from which we can’t extract ourselves. One of the writers invited to contribute today is Ann Hood, a Rhode Island native, who writes about a restaurant in Providence. Author of “The Red Thread” and other books, Ann will be in Lowell on October 2 for the Jack Kerouac Literary Festival, an expanded version of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival that has been produced annually since 1988. The bigger, better festival will have Kerouac programs at the core, but will now include a variety of writers and literary programs, such as the Children’s Book Illustrators exhibition at the Brush Art Gallery, which opens the same weekend (Sept. 30 – Oct. 3 are the Kerouac Festival dates).
Ann Hood
Ann was invited to be part of a panel discussion by Andre Dubus III, who has been helping to “grow” the Kerouac Festival. On Saturday, Oct. 2, at 4 p.m., Andre will moderate a panel discussion about “Art and Commerce” with Ann Hood, Anita Shreve, and Tom Perrotta. The three authors will be around after the panel to sign books and meet with people.
Read Ann Hood’s essay here, and consider subscribing to the NYT if you appreciate the writing.
Culture, Education, History, Lowell | No Comments »
July 4th, 2010
by DickH
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .
read full text at National Archives website.
History | No Comments »
July 4th, 2010
by PaulM
Speaking of TIME magazine, the new issue has a spread about the summer reading lists of some well known people. Judd Apatow mentions “The Garden of Last Days” by Andre Dubus III, who teaches writing and literature at UMass Lowell. Apatow’s list also includes heavy hitters Dave Eggers and Dostoevsky.
Culture, Education, Greater Lowell, History, Lowell | No Comments »
July 4th, 2010
by PaulM
Just to add to the back-and-forth about Andrew’s post on “austerity” and the economic mess, note that the TIME cover story this week is about the power of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., a major factor working against any serious budgetary reform. Remember how Ross Perot was going to lift the hood of the Congressional pick-up and get in there after the dat-burnt lobbyists? Here’s the link for the TIME report. Consider subscribing to the magazine if you appreciate the wriitng.
Current Events, History, Lowell, Politics | No Comments »
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