Archive for November 2nd, 2011

November 2nd, 2011

‘My Back Pages’: Paulson on Income Inequality

by PaulM

In the category of “The More Things Change”—While cleaning in the home office last weekend, I found a batch of old news clippings, including one from the Christian Science Monitor of August 3, 2006. In his first big speech, Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson listed growing income inequality as one of the four top economic challenges facing America. His other three were energy policy, global trade and investment, and entitlement program reform. [Note that he missed the stock market and housing mortgage stuff that he had to clean up in 2008; see "Too Big to Fail," etc.]

“Amid this country’s strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren’t feeling the benefits,” said Paulson. “Their increases in wages are being  eaten up by high energy prices and rising healthcare costs, among others.”

According to Monitor report Mark Trumbell, “A sharp rich-poor divide augers poorly for achieving the political unity needed to keep the nation on solid economic footing.” [Note well for Occupy-ers] 

Paulson said the solution in part lies in giving people access to ”first-rate education and retraining opportunities.”  In the same article, John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recommended “raising the minimum wage, creating a workplace climate friendlier to labor union organizing efforts, and making Medicare  available to all employers.” [Note well for Wisconsin and Ohio Labor activists].

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November 2nd, 2011

From the Lowell Historical Society Collection

by Marie

This is a cross-post from the Lowell Historical Society blog.

Original Old Residents' Association Book Cabinet

Original Old Residents’ Association Book Cabinet

The Lowell Historical Society maintains numerous collections of writings, documents and photographs which are open for public research. The collections are comprised of the Society’s original archives as well as those of the Lowell Museum. The holdings of the Society, which differ in size and scope, are located at two neighboring facilities and use of the collections should be coordinated in advance of visitation. Most of the books, photographs, maps and documents are housed the UMass Lowell / Center for Lowell History while the remainder of the collection is in the Society rooms at the Boott Mill site.

Here are two collections that might interest a researcher – one recalls an well-known entertainment venue and the other an effort to preserve the information on very old local grave stones.

Commodore Ballroom Collection

Originally built as the Kasino, the Commodore Ballroom opened in 1924 to become the preeminent Lowell dance club under the ownership of Carl Braun and his family. This collection includes business records from 1936 to 1950 as well as tax filings and payroll information from 1937 to 1945. Also in the collection are song books, sheet music and over 200 autographed photos of musicians including Ray Anthony, Les Brown, Clooney Sisters, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Sammy Kaye, Vaughn Monroe, Artie Shaw and Jack Teagarden.

Cemetery Gravestone Rubbings

A project financed by the Lowell Historical Society, Lowell State College ( now the University of Massachusetts Lowell) undertook to document and preserve pre-1850 slate stones. The project was directed by Dr. Mary Blewett and involved the work of her students. The collection of imprint rubbings are from many of the oldest graveyards in the city including the Clark, Edson, Hildreth, Lowell, Mammoth Road, Old English, Pawtucket, Saint Patrick’s, School Street and Woodbine Cemeteries.

More collections will highlights will be over the coming weeks.

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November 2nd, 2011

NYT’s ‘Disunion’ Series Author on Fort Monroe’s Importance

by PaulM

Adam Goodheart in the NYTimes wrote about the Fort Monroe designation as a new National Park. Read his article here, and get the NYT if you want more.

Fort Monroe, the president said as he prepared to sign the order, “was the site of the first slave ships to land in the New World. But then in the Civil War, almost 250 years later, Fort Monroe also became a refuge for slaves that were escaping from the South, and helped to create the environment in which Abraham Lincoln was able to sign that document up there.” Mr. Obama pointed to a framed, autographed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation hanging opposite his desk, not far from a portrait of Lincoln.

In a conversation after the ceremony, Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar called Fort Monroe “a crown jewel in the history of America’s march toward a more perfect Union.” He added, “I can’t think of a place that has more national historical significance than Fort Monroe.”

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November 2nd, 2011

Pres. Obama Announces New National Park at Fort Monroe, Praises Civil War Gen. Benjamin Butler of Lowell

by PaulM

Lowell National Historical Park Supt. Michael Creasey and Asst. Supt. Peter Aucella have both called attention to the President Obama’s announcement of the newest National Park at Fort Monroe in Virginia, which mentions the historic decision by Lowell’s own General Benjamin F.  Butler to declare Southern slaves as contraband of war and “served as a forerunner of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.”—PM

THE WHITE HOUSE, Office of the Press Secretary: For Immediate Release November 1, 2011

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FORT MONROE NATIONAL MONUMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Known first as “The Gibraltar of the Chesapeake” and later as “Freedom’s Fortress,” Fort Monroe on Old Point Comfort in Virginia has a storied history in the defense of our Nation and the struggle for freedom. Fort Monroe, designed by Simon Bernard and built of stone and brick betweenm1819 and 1834 in part by enslaved labor, is the largest of the Third System of fortifications in the United States. It has been a bastion of defense of the Chesapeake Bay, a stronghold of the Union Army surrounded by the Confederacy, a place of freedom for the enslaved, and the imprisonment site of Chief Blackhawk and the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. It served as the U.S. Army’s Coastal Defense Artillery School during the 19th and 20th centuries, and most recently, as headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.

Old Point Comfort in present day Hampton, Virginia, was originally named “Pointe Comfort” by Captain John Smith in 1607 when them first English colonists came to America. It was here that the settlers of Jamestown established Fort Algernon in 1609. After Fort Algernon’s destruction by fire in 1612, successive English fortifications were built, testifying to the location’s continuing strategic value. The first enslaved Africans in England’s colonies in America were brought to this peninsula on a ship flying the Dutch flag in 1619, beginning a long ignoble period of slavery in the colonies and, later, this Nation. Two hundred and forty-two yearslater, Fort Monroe became a place of refuge for those later generations escaping enslavement.

During the Civil War, Fort Monroe stood as a foremost Union outpost in the midst of the Confederacy and remained under Union Army control during the entire conflict. The Fort was the site of General Benjamin Butler’s “Contraband Decision” in 1861, which provided a pathway to freedom for thousands of enslaved people during the Civil War and served as a forerunner of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Thus, Old Point Comfort marks both the beginning and end of slavery in our Nation. The Fort played critical roles as the springboard for General George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign in 1862 and as a crucial supply base for the siege of Petersburg by Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant in 1864 and 1865. After the surrender of the Confederacy, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was transferred to Fort Monroe and remained imprisoned there for 2 years.

Fort Monroe is the third oldest United States Army post in continuous active service. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It provides an excellent opportunity for the public to observe and understand Chesapeake Bay and Civil War history. At the northern end of the North Beach area lies the only undeveloped shoreline remaining on Old Point Comfort, providing modern-day  visitors a sense of what earlier people saw when they arrived in the New World. The North Beach area also includes coastal defensive batteries, including Batteries DeRussy and Church, which were used from the 19th Century to World War II.

WHEREAS section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431) (the “Antiquities Act”), authorizes the President, in his discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected; . . . NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK  OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by section 2 of the Antiquities Act, hereby proclaim that all lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States within the boundaries described on the accompanying map, which is attached to and forms a part of this proclamation, are hereby set apart and reserved as the Fort Monroe National Monument (monument) for the purpose of protecting the objects identified above. . . .

All Federal lands and interests in lands within the boundaries of this monument are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from all forms of entry, location, selection, sale, leasing, or other disposition under the public land laws, including withdrawal from location, entry, and patent under the mining laws, and from disposition under all laws relating to mineral and geothermal leasing. Lands and interests in lands within the monument’s boundaries not owned or controlled by the United States shall be reserved as part of the monument upon acquisition of ownership or control by the United States. . . .

Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke any existing withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; however, the monument shall be the dominant reservation. Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument and not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMA

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November 2nd, 2011

City Rhythm

by PaulM

I walked our family’s Boston Terrier in the leftover dark this morning before the sun edged over Wamesit Hill and the far treeline that loosely follows the path of the Concord River. The hem of the sky showed lighter blue, but above the night held. Heading toward Gorham Street I passed the backs of the hardy City Life program hosts in the glowing front window of the McDonough home satellite cable TV broadcast studio. Not quite like being in front of the ”Today” show studio’s plate glass in New York City, but the closest thing to it in Lowell. An impossibly early-running yellow school bus rode by. Warmly wrapped sidewalk people made their way in ones and twos to the Gallagher Terminal trains. Entrepreneurial commuters grabbed parking spaces one by one on Highland, beating the daily garage fee. Near the entrance to the Edith Nourse Rogers School the top of one of the tall trees snapped off and is spread on the ground in the last stage of green. At the corner of South Street and Highland stands a robust fully crowned tree that’s always a prize-winner of autumn color—no storm damage, but the color is a slightly less flaming this year. Wednesday is garbage pick-up day, and the maroon wheelie-bins, as they call them in London, line the street. The weather report calls for a warmer day. Two hundred thousand people in Massachusetts still wait for electrical service.

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