Archive for January 26th, 2012

January 26th, 2012

Lowell Women Go West As Teacher-Pioneers

by Marie

MassMoments reminds us today that when Asa Mercer of Seattle set out to recruit young women of good character to travel to the Northwest and fill the need for teachers in the Washington Territory, he came first to Lowell, Massachusetts. Why New England? Why Lowell? His reasoning was pretty straightforward: “A scarcity of women existed in those far away and newly settled regions, while a superabundance of the fairer sex abounded in New England.” Lowell must have been seen as an opportune place given the way women had flocked to it in the 1830s to work in the mills. The Civil War and the lack of access to raw cotton caused a wide-spread loss of jobs in Lowell. Economic need and a religious zeal caused a small group to answer his call. The overall results of his mission to bring woman teachers – called the “Mercer Girls” -  to the west had mixed results – in two trips over 700 were recruited – but many did stay to teach…  “about 70% of the women who left New England to be teacher-pioneers remained in the west. Many of their daughters became the teachers of the next generation.”

On This Day...

     January 26 …in 1864, a visitor from Seattle held a meeting in Lowell. Asa Mercer explained to his largely female audience that there was a great scarcity of teachers in the Washington Territory. Jobs — and single men — were plentiful. Both were in short supply in Massachusetts. Any woman who could raise the money for her passage would readily find a teaching position — and soon a husband. Mercer also appealed to the women’s sense of duty: “their presence and influence were so much needed” in the West, he told them. In spite of the opportunities Seattle offered, it was unimaginably far away. Only 11 women chose to accompany Mercer on his journey home. These brave teacher-pioneers were long known as the “Mercer Girls.”
Read the full article here at Massmoments.com.
A century later it is claimed that the Mercer Girls’ tale inspired the 1968-1970 TV series “Here Come the  Brides.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Come_the_Brides)
More information can be read here: http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=1125
Note:
Eight ladies from Lowell accompanied by the father of two (Mr. Pearson) were joined by two ladies and a gentleman from Pepperell and one lady from Boston.
 From the Lowell Courier – Monday March 14, 1864:

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January 26th, 2012

AFN Super Bowl commercial competition

by DickH

Besides being the best fighting force in history, the modern US Army apparently possesses multimedia capability. AFN (American Forces Network – which I used to know as Armed Forces Network) is sponsoring a Super Bowl commercial competition. Because it doesn’t air commercial commercials (which some find to be the highlight of the Super Bowl), AFN must fill those gaps in its overseas broadcasts. Hence the competition. Viewers are invited to submit an original commercial that is either 14 or 29 seconds long. The best of these submissions will be shown during commercial breaks in the actual Super Bowl telecast.

I’m not suggesting any of our readers submit entries – you must be an AFN viewer to qualify – but I think it’s an interesting idea, maybe one we can bring to our own Lowell Telecommunications Corporation. How about a contest for commercials to be shown during City Council meetings? Just a thought. Anyway, here’s a link to the AFN entry page and below is a commercial produced by my old unit, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

CategoryCulture, Current Events | CommentNo Comments »

January 26th, 2012

State-of-the-Union speech paints vision and ignores political realities by Marjorie Arons-Barron

by Tony

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Check it out.

State-of-the-union speeches are supposed to be inspirational, and last night’s by President Obama achieved that goal. It certainly spoke to his Democratic base and evoked a vision of what those center and left-of-center want their country to be and do. The problem is that the President glided over the lessons of the 2011 annus horribilis and even 2010, when many of the ideas he floated last night were soundly rejected.

It’s fine that he portrayed his values, including a more active government role in job creation, supporting renewable energy and eliminating oil subsidies, growing the manufacturing sector, expanding the federal role in financing higher education. But he has to know that it’s likely that little will happen in a Presidential election year, that any of the larger items of his program won’t go through either branch of Congress now that it’s Republican-controlled, or at least dominated by Republican vetoes. Heck, he couldn’t get some of those same ideas through Congress when both branches were Democratic. On many issues, regional politics trumped partisan affiliation. Energy producers on both sides of the aisle are opposed to ending subsidies. And the Republicans see ending subsidies to oil companies as a tax increase, and everyone knows they reflexively refuse to support any tax increase.

Obama’s pitch to reform the tax code and the unfairness of the system will figure prominently as the Presidential campaign proceeds, and there are certainly many inequities that need to be addressed. But fairness for some means an increase for the wealthy, and, again, that’s not going to sail in the current political environment. It’s reassuring that the President is willing to take the criticisms of “class warfare” head on. (Who knew such inequities would also figure prominently in the GOP primaries?)

Obama didn’t just glide over the hugely negative political realities in Washington. He indulged in a kind of magical thinking worthy of Latin American authors. A major part of his approach to financing his programs was to take the money we will no longer be spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, use half to reduce the deficit and the other half to do “nation building here at home.” The fallacy here is that we have been deficit-financing the two wars. Not making the huge expenditures there doesn’t translate into money in the bank. The money was never there in the first place. Those wars plus the Bush tax cuts and an underfunded Medicare Part D together account for the expansion of the federal debt. So in the real world, rhetoric aside, there’s no net savings here to be achieved.

In the end, however, the State-of-the-Union address was an opportunity to paint a vision of values, if not a portrait of political possibilities. And, if the President had watered down that vision, cravenly bending to the negative atmosphere in Washington, he would have unacceptably moved the needle on where potential compromise might start and sold out the dreams of his most ardent supporters before the 2012 game had even begun.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

CategoryUncategorized | Comment3 Comments »