September 2nd, 2010
by PaulM
NYTimes columnist Timothy Egan today writes about the “summer home” owned by all Americans, by which he means the vast tracts of public land and majestic national parks around the country. Lowell’s national park is about a place held in common by Americans, too, as well as an idea: the development of an industrialized, ethnically diverse, and more urban nation. Read the op-ed piece here, and consider buying the NYT if you appreciate the writing.
“Glacier National Park in Montana is home to the Going-to-the-Sun Road” (Web photo courtesy of NYT / Anne Sherwood for The New York Times)
Culture, History, Lowell | 
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August 31st, 2010
by Marie
A note in today’s Globe about a vintage postcard exhibit at the Boston Public Library, reminded me of the value of post cards as historical and cultural documents. While this exhibit focuses on early 2oth century Boston, the millions of cards in the hands of private collectors and in local historical societies and libraries have opened a door on the past. Images of pastoral and recreational scenes, cemeteries and gardens hold sway along with those of municipal buildings, bridges, schools, train depots, hotels, street scenes, waterways and much more. Some cards even have multiple images alongs with catchy greetings – all wanting to bring a touch of an area visited to home and family. According to the Globe article, Americans mailed more than 677 million postcards in 1908 alone. Many cards of traditional American scenes were made in Germany back then. Lowell collectors know that’s why the sand-colored stone of Lowell Tech buildings often appear red-brick in color post cards. The German artists must have thought all buildings were like mill buildings!
I wonder what the historical ”post card” resource will be for the early 21st Century. Do we even use postcards these days? What role could “Facebook-ing” greetings and images play? I don’t want to see post card usage become so passe that they disappear!
The Lowell Historical Society has published two post card books that are windows into a past time. Check out these publications here: http://ecommunity.uml.edu/lhs/sales.htm
Culture, History, Lowell | 4 Comments »
August 31st, 2010
by PaulM
From the UMass Lowell Office of Public Affairs:
“First-year students are officially welcomed to the university community at Convocation on Tuesday, Aug. 31 at 10 a.m. at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell. The keynote speaker is Bill Strickland, winner of a MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’ and more than 10 honorary degrees for his work to combine the arts, job training and culture to fuel positive social change.
Bill Strickland (web photo courtesy of mcgyouthandarts.org)
“Strickland began his own personal transformation as an inner-city high school student more than 40 years ago when he saw a talented art teacher spin a mound of clay into a work of art on a potter’s wheel. Strickland, his creativity ignited, used art to inspire other youths from his Pittsburgh neighborhood through the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, an after-school program he founded while still a college student. Today, he leads the Manchester Bidwell Corp., a national model for education, culture and hope that works with both adults and youths to provide market-driven career education and training.
“Convocation also introduces the Class of 2014 to two of the 24 new student organizations founded since the same time last year, the UMass Lowell Gospel Choir and the new a cappella singing group, ‘Hawkappellas.’ A special presentation will be offered by ‘In Your Company,’ in which students will perform spoken word pieces about their life experiences as they navigate young adulthood and life at UMass Lowell. Their stories are used to make connections to the audience by providing avenues to appreciate difference while highlighting commonalities.
“Following Convocation, students are invited to a barbecue outside the Tsongas Center that features a club fair where they can find out about UMass Lowell’s 130 student-run organizations and how to participate.”
Culture, Education, History, Lowell | No Comments »
August 31st, 2010
by DickH
I was astounded to find an Op-Ed by Paul Wolfowitz in today’s New York Times. The content of the piece is unremarkable – he suggests that we should use South Korea as a model for our future involvement in Iraq – but his mere presence in the newspaper is what I found shocking. Wolfowitz served as Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005. In that capacity, he was the prime architect of our disastrous incursion into Iraq and the shameful (and fictional) public relations scam that sold the American people on the necessity of that undertaking.
The ineptitude of Wolfowitz and his co-conspirators in failing to plan for the post-war occupation of Iraq, detailed by Thomas Ricks in Fiasco and George Packer in The Assassins’ Gate, was grossly negligent and led to the death and injury of thousands of brave American soldiers whose sacrifice salvaged the Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz mess in Iraq into the somewhat stable situation that exists today (stable for how long is another story). While Iraq may give the appearance of stability, the progeny of Wolfowitz’s destructive policies persist: if we had kept our focus on Afghanistan – the place where the terrorists who attacked us had come from – instead of shifting the bulk of our resources to the ill-fated occupation of Iraq, we might not be stuck in the quagmire that Afghanistan is today.
It probably should come as no surprise that the New York Times is assisting Wolfowitz’s rehabilitation. The Times, after all, completely abdicated its journalistic responsibility back then and became a willing participant in the Team Bush propaganda machine that so shamefully deceived the American public. All of this is an episode that Wolfowitz, the Times and countless others (especially the spineless Democrats in Congress who knew voting for war was a mistake but who couldn’t summon the courage to go against public opinion polls) would like us to forget. Please don’t.
NOTE: I’ve purposefully omitted a link to the Wolfowitz piece because I don’t want to reward him or the Times with a link. It’s easy enough to find if you want to read it.
History | 11 Comments »
August 31st, 2010
by PaulM
The National Park Service has opened a $27 million visitor center overlooking the famous “Old Faithful” geyser at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Today’s NYTimes reports on the “cathedral to the shrine of nature.” We can be proud that Lowell is on the same distinguished list of important American places as Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, Gettysburg, and the Lincoln Monument. Read Edward Rothstein’s article here, and consider buying the NYT if you appreciate the journalism. To see a slide show about the new visitor education center, click on this link from the NYT.
web photo by Shasta Greinier courtesy of Yellowstone Park Foundation via NYTimes
Culture, Education, History, Lowell | No Comments »
August 31st, 2010
by PaulM
The headline above is the heading of a one-page appeal I received a few days ago from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, whose work around the world is well known. The scale of this catastrophe is staggering. “The worst floods in 80 years have devastated the country….Over 20 million people have been affected. That is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistani earthquake, and the Haiti earthquake combined….vast regions of the country are under water….the UN Refugee Agency, the first relief organization on the scene, is working around the clock to distribute 80,000 tents to families in two of the worst affected provinces, giving at least 560,000 people a roof over their heads….”
Marjorie wrote about the flooding in an earlier post on her blog that we cross-posted. I’ve been following events there via evening radio reports from the BBC World Service. I’m continually impressed by the generosity of people in Lowell and the American people in general. Our community and our nation have their own people who need shelter, food, medicine, and relief from stress. Deciding what to give at home and what to share with others a world away is a personal test. Any of us might feel that what we are able to do is so little in the face of massive suffering, especially when the problems are abroad. In this case, however, the scale of the suffering seems to demand our attention.
When it comes to the United Nations asking for help, I always think of Lowell’s man at the U.N., Brad Morse, who had such a distinguished career as an international leader after serving as a congressman from Lowell and the Fifth District. His humanitarian work around the world continues to inspire people. In Lowell, he is remembered with the Morse Federal Building at Middlesex Community College, the Morse Distinguished Lecture series co-sponsored by UMass Lowell and Middlesex CC, and a walkway near the city auditorium.
F. Bradford Morse
To respond to the emergency request from USA for UNHCR and donate online, visit www.UNrefugees.org
Current Events, History, Lowell | No Comments »
August 30th, 2010
by PaulM
The following link takes you to a pretty useful summary of President Obama’s remarks on Sunday during an interview with Brian Williams of NBC-TV news. The report is by Tom Kavanaugh of AOL. What the President says reverberates in our local and state election campaigns this fall. The agenda put forward by his administration and supported for the most part by the Democrats in Congress affects life in Lowell and the Bay State. Read the summary here.
Culture, Current Events, Election 2010, History, Lowell, Politics | No Comments »
August 29th, 2010
by PaulM
“Swedish actor Warner Oland poses as Charlie Chan in 1937″ (web photo courtesy of time.com)
No week goes by without a mention of Lowell’s Jack Kerouac in the major media outlets. Yesterday, the new Time magazine arrived in the mail. On page 65, there’s a review of scholar Yunte Huang’s book about Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective invented by author Earl D. Biggers whose adventures in Hawaii played out in books, films, and comics. The reviewer raves about the book, titled “Charlie Chan,” hailing it as “irrepressively spirited and entertaining” and calling the author “a virtuoso of curiosity.” Here’s the Lowell link. In the middle of the full-page review is a large quote in bold black type pulled out of the body of the review. It reads,
For Huang, Charlie Chan is ‘as American as Jack Kerouac’ precisely because of his theatrical implausibility and his mixed-up origins.
I think Kerouac would have enjoyed the comparison. He was a big fan of pop culture and mass media, from radio serials and comic strips to the sports pages of newspapers and Hollywood movies. It’s telling that Yunte Huang, an immigrant from China who teaches college English in Santa Barbara, Calif., chose Kerouac to provide American cultural context for the Charlie Chan character—Kerouac, whose parents were born in Quebec, but who has become a quintessential national icon because of his vast, exuberant literary explorations of the American land and spiritual interior and deep mining of his own mixed identity.
Read Pico Iyer’s review here, and consider buying TIME if you appreciate the writing.
Jack Kerouac (web photo courtesty of St. Petersburg Times, sp.com)
Culture, History, Lowell | 2 Comments »
August 28th, 2010
by PaulM
web photo courtesy of washingtonpost.com
I saw the aerial-view pictures of the “restore America’s values” rally in Washington, D.C. The organizers and attendees deserve credit for an impressive looking gathering. A lot of people. They put their shoes on and showed up to make a point and pump themselves up.
The population of the U.S. is somewhere north of 307 million. There are more than 170 million registered voters out of a voting-age population of more than 212 million (figures from answers.com). In our democratic republic all the registered and voting-eligible folks have an opportunity to speak out, hold signs, distribute leaflets, write and publish their views in print and on the web, call talk shows, upload videos to the ‘net, donate to candidates and causes of their choice, vote in primaries and general elections, and otherwise express their political views.
Participation is possible at the local, state, federal, and global levels.
Please discuss.
Culture, Current Events, Election 2010, History, Lowell, Politics | 3 Comments »
August 28th, 2010
by DickH
School Street Cemetery
Thanks to Kim Zunino for her informative tour of the School Street Cemetery this morning. Dedicated 16 years before Lowell was incorporated as a town, School Street, also known as “Lowell Cemetery No. 1″ is the city’s oldest public burial place. Roaming around the markers, names from the pre-Lowell period of our city’s existence are much in evidence such as Spalding, Bowers, Butterfield and Parker. The oldest grave in the cemetery is that of Rachel Parker who was buried in 1811. The most recent burial was in the 1950s.
Otis Allen family lot, School St Cemetery
History, Lowell | No Comments »
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