April 2nd, 2012
South Common Earth Day Event, April 22, Rogers School
On Sunday, April 22, some interesting people will gather at the Rogers School on Highland Street, on the edge of the South Common, for Earth Day activities. We will have a guided tour of the South Common Historic District by Dick Howe Jr, unplugged music by Joe Darensbourg, a display of design plans showing what the Common will look like in a few years, and a book-making workshop (don’t think gambling) where everyone will go home with a collection of my South Common haiku in a book that he or she made on the spot. Artist Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord will lead the book workshop. Allegra Williams of the City’s planning office will be on hand to talk about plans for upgrading the Common.
The guided tour begins at 2 pm in front of the school and ends where it started at 3 pm; the indoor activities also start at 2 pm and run through 4.30 pm. Everything is free and open to the public. Take a close look at the Common, talk to some people who care about the future of the big green space along Thorndike Street, and learn how to make a book that will fit in your pocket.
April 2nd, 2012
John Prendergast, Greeley Peace Scholar @ UMass Lowell
John Prendergast of the Enough Project starts his Greeley Peace Scholar residency at UMass Lowell today. He will visit the campus three times between April and November. Several of the events will be open to the public. The first public events are tomorrow:
“The Day Without Violence Lecture,” sponsored by the UMass Lowell Peace & Conflict Studies Institute. John’s topic is “Good News Peace Stories from Africa.” Introducing John will be Executive Vice Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney. Tuesday, April 3, 12:30-1:45 p.m., O’Leary Library Auditorium (Room 222). UMass Lowell South Campus, 61 Wilder St. (parking available for visitors in the Wilder St. Visitors Lot). This venue is accessible.
Greeley Peace Scholar Open Conversation with Students, Tuesday, April 3, 2-3:30 p.m., O’Leary Library Auditorium (Room 222), UMass Lowell South Campus, 61 Wilder St. Students are invited to meet and speak with international human rights activist John Prendergast in an open forum. He has most recently been seen in an interview on the “Kony 2012” video by Invisible Children. Talk to John about his work in Africa, about his organization the Enough Project (enough.org) or his work with organizations like Invisible Children.
For details about events next week and to learn more about the Greeley Scholar for Peace Studies Program and related activities, visit the PACSI website.
April 1st, 2012
‘Innovative Cities: Lowell, Mass.’ Group on Facebook
I’ve been using Facebook since January 2011, and this online communications tool continues to impress me. Corey Sciuto, a fellow Lowell blogger and member of this year’s class in the Public Matters leadership development program of the Lowell Plan Inc and Nat’l Park Service, wrote to me on FB and said he enjoyed the many messages I was posting under the title of “Innovative Cities Stuff.”
Some of our rh.com readers will recall the 2010 Innovative Cities Conference in Lowell, presented by UMass Lowell, the Park, Lowell Plan, Middlesex Community College, City of Lowell, and others, including the office of US Rep Niki Tsongas. UMass Lowell’s Continuing Studies unit managed the conference registration and operation in a first-rate way. Major sponsors included businesses (AECOM, Trinity Financial, Nobis Engineering, Winn Companies, Enterprise Bank, and more), community organizations like Acre Family Child Care, Coalition for a Better Acre and Lowell Heritage Partnership, and the Parker Foundation of Boston.
Over three days, more than 250 people attended sessions where city planners, business people, elected officials, community activists, educators, and others shared their experiences, often successful experiences, in places ranging from Portland, Ore., and Milwaukee, Wis., to Chapel Hill, N.C., Belfast in Northern Ireland, Ann Arbor, Mich., and Lowell. The keynote lunch speaker was National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, who talked about the way urban parks fit in to the National Park system. UMass Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan gave a keynote dinner address describing a development concept for Lowell as a ”university and college town.” Congresswoman Tsongas conducted a hearing in partnership with a Washington, DC, research institute on best practices for city growth and sustainable social and economic policies. All of these activities took place at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. In the two years since the conference the topic of Innovative Cities continued to engage lots of people in Lowell, some of them who work on urban issues in their jobs and others who are passionate about city life.
When I started using Facebook, I “Liked” a number of news and informations FB pages related to urban issues and community development. Gradually, I picked up more sites and began Sharing the postings to my circle on FB—which brings us back to Corey. He suggested that I create a FB group on Innovative Cities so all the info would be in one place and not interspersed with postings or sharings on every other kind topic. I told Corey that I could not take on one more task at this time and asked if he would set it up and keep an eye on the group. About ten minutes later, he wrote back to me and said it was done and live on FB. We both started pushing info to the group page and rounding up members. There are more than 200 members now. Everyone can contribute. I see it as an effective and efficient activity to follow up the 2010 conference. It amounts to a virtual, open-ended conference where we can share with the world the innovative activities in Lowell, pose questions about challenges for which innovative solutions are needed, and learn from people all over the country and globe about what they are doing in their communities to make life better.
If you are on Facebook, you can join the group. We look forward to your contributions, comments, and insights.
March 31st, 2012
Dickens in Lowell National Park
At about 6 pm on Friday, March 30, Chancellor Martin T. Meehan of UMass Lowell spoke to an audience of more than 100 people in the Moody Street Feeder multi-purpose room on the fourth floor of the Boott Cotton Mills Museum. Behind him, through tall east-facing windows of Boott Mill #6, segmented like rectangular-blocked graph paper, behind him the late-day light of early spring gave the rose-red bricks of the Massachusetts Mills a familiar warm glow—and all we could see from that fourth floor height, from a certain angle, was the uppermost sections of the mill and the old Napping building, an industrial ridgeline under the pale blue sky.
Someone listening to the Chancellor talk about the extraordinary partnership between Lowell National Park and the University and how projects such as the new “Dickens in Lowell” museum exhibition enrich the community, this exhibit whose opening we were there to celebrate, someone listening and looking out the windows could imagine the surprise of Charles Dickens when he arrived in Lowell in February 1842 and noted the “fresh buildings of bright red brick and painted wood,” a scene matched by what we were seeing outside the windows in the historic mill district of downtown Lowell, in the middle of Lowell National Park. Dickens visited factories, mills, that produced cotton cloth, carpets, and woolen fabric. He saw the city when it was still new, about 20 years old, the span of time from 1992 to now.
The rose-red structures yesterday, thanks to careful preservation and useful renovation, hardly looked older than those that Dickens saw 170 years ago. The view-shed began above street level, so there were no utility poles, street signs, or moving vehicles to distract from the vista. There may have been a wire or two that I filtered out. It was a view out of time, or timeless, a fitting backdrop for the commentary we were hearing about Dickens and the nineteenth century, about crossing the Atlantic in a small ship in a winter storm, and the boarding house outfitted with a piano. When Florian Schweizer, director of the Dickens Museum in London, spoke to the crowd, his English accent only added to the retro quality of the moment. We could imagine Dickens himself speaking with the Lowell movers and shakers who escorted him around for the half day whose experiences made for the lasting account in the author’s travel book “American Notes for General Circulation.”
Merrimack Prints web image courtesy of Lowell Historical Society
March 30th, 2012
File Under: All Sea Roads Lead to Lowell (The Titanic)
Our frequent contributor author Steve O’Connor sent along a bulletin of interest regarding Lowell and The Titanic, that doomed ocean liner much in the news with the centennial of the sinking due next month. Here’s the message received by Steve via a friend who grew up in Lowell and has lived in Virginia for 30 years, and who got the word from his own friend in Manchester, England:
Hi… I thought you may be interested to hear your hometown has been mentioned in our local newspaper—–The Manchester Evening News, in relation to a survivor of the Titanic. There is a lot of press and television coverage at the moment with regard to the sinking of the Titanic and the 100 year anniversary on April 15th. It seems a Manchester born teenager Thomas Whiteley who survived, went on to give ‘value for money’ reviews, dramatic accounts of his experience to theatre goers at the Merrimack Theatre in your hometown of Lowell!!! Hope all goes well.—Mary
March 29th, 2012
Neary, Grande Kickstart a Musical Theater Venture
Jack Neary, Lee Grande, and company have “kick-started” their musical theater venture that will begin with a production of “The Music Man” at UMass Lowell’s Durgin Hall in August. Using the online Kickstarter tool to raise capital, Jack and friends have reached their goal of $7,600 ($100 for each of the play’s familiar trombones). There is still time to top off the contribution cup, however, because there will be additional costs and the Kickstarter opportunity is live through April 15. To date, almost 100 donors have chipped in to help. Read more about the Greater Lowell Musical Theater and connect to Kickstarter here.
March 29th, 2012
Howl: Charles Dickens as John Lennon
Howl in Lowell has a lively report on the Charles Dickens museum exhibition opening at the National Park’s Boott Mills Museum on Friday, March 30, at 5 pm. The media coverage has been outstanding for this project, from the Sun and Boston Globe to the Washington Post and WBUR-FM radio in Boston.
March 28th, 2012
Meet UMass Lowell’s Greeley Peace Scholar John Prendergast
Human rights activist John Prendergast will be at UMass Lowell for four days in early April. Several of his presentations are free and open to the public. Everyone is welcome.
Tuesday, April 3, 12.30-1.45 pm
“Good News Peace Stories from Africa: The 2012 Day Without Violence Lecture.” Sponsored by the UMass Lowell Peace and Conflict Studies Institute and Greeley Scholar for Peace Studies Program. O’Leary Library auditorium, Room 222, 61 Wilder St., UML South Campus. Parking available in Wilder St. lot.
Monday, April 9, 7.00-9.00 pm.
Film screening and community conversation. Sponsored by PACSI and the Greeley Scholar Program. John will present a short film about his international human rights work and discuss current issues in Africa. UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, 50 Warren St., downtown Lowell. Parking is available in the Lower Locks Garage.
For more information, visit www.uml.edu/centers/pacsi, send email to artsandideas@uml.edu or call 978-934-3218.
March 28th, 2012
‘The Observed and Painted City’ Lecture
Last night, nearly 20 people gathered at the Moses Greeley Parker Library in Dracut for an illustrated lecture by Richard Marion, who showed in Powerpoint format about 25 images of Lowell places, buildings, and scenes from among the hundreds that he has created in the past 40 years. The talk was organized into sections: Mills, Downtown, Rivers and Canals, Neighborhoods, and Bridges. Many of the images have been seen on this blog in the past year, from the Greenwood Bros. building on Lawrence Street to the remembered float planes on the Merrimack downriver from the city.
Interspersed with his comments about composition, line, form, and color were anecdotes like one about a recalled episode in family history when a man’s pay envelope went missing from the third floor of a tenement in Little Canada along the Northern Canal. The envelope with cash and coins had gotten scooped up with bread crumbs on a tablecloth and “lost” when the man’s wife shook the tablecloth out the window. There’s a happy ending to this story: the envelope that had gone in to the canal and had sunk to the bottom because of the coins was retrieved the next day when the canal was drained of water to allow for maintenance of the system.
Recent Comments