An old friend of mine last night sent a message on Facebook saying she recently had heard the brilliant filmmaker Ken Burns speak in Brattleboro, Vermont, which got me thinking about my first encounter with Burns. My recollection is that I saw his documentary about the Statue of Liberty that was broadcast in 1985 on public television. His films about the Brooklyn Bridge and the Shakers were made earlier in the 1980s, but I didn’t see those until after I watched the Statue of Liberty movie. I recall being so impressed by the intelligence of the film. His decision to use as narrators people like Barbara Jordan, Arthur Miller, Derek Jacobi, and other notable persons seemed so fresh and smart. The tone was reverent but not piously patriotic. He honored both the idea of the Statue and the achievement of its design and construction. Of the speakers, I was especially impressed by his decision to invite the then-young poet Carolyn Forche to read a passage, the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on the base. She was a favorite poet of mine, based on her first book “Gathering the Tribes,” which had won the Yale Award for Younger Poets (the same award won in 1972 by Lowell’s Michael Casey for his book of Vietnam War poems, “Obscenities”), and her 1981 book “The Country Between Us,” with poems about her time in El Salvador. I thought, This guy is very cool to have included her. From that point, I became a huge Burns fan, anticipating his next project, which he always had because of his extraordinary work ethic. He has been the history hero of our time, using film to bring the American story to us in creative and substantive form. My son and I heard him speak at the Middlesex Community College Celebrity Forum two years ago. Watching him on the Lowell Memorial Auditorium stage, I thought about all the hours I had spent watching his work on TV. I had seen him speak once before, in Manchester, N.H., when he was promoting his “Baseball” film. I like the idea that he is from our general neighborhood, too. There is something very New England about his high-mindedness.
UML ICC Lunchtime Lecture on Presidential Primaries, Nov. 7
Advance interest is high for the upcoming Lunchtime Lecture at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center on the topic of the 2012 Presidential primaries and caucuses. Seating is limited to 100, but a few spaces are available.
UMass Lowell Chancellor Martin T. Meehan will moderate a panel discussion with journalists Jennifer Myers of the Sun, Glen Johnson of the Globe, and Herald contributor Joe Battenfeld, as well as Prof. Frank Talty of the UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion and one more guest political expert to be confirmed momentarily.
The Monday, Nov. 7, program begins at 11.45 a.m. with a free buffet lunch, followed by 90 minutes of political talk and speculation about the presidential race. Don’t miss it.
To register, send email to artsandideas@uml.edu or call 978-934-3107.
The Lunchtime Lectures are presented by the Moses Greeley Parker Lectures and UMass Lowell Center for Arts and Ideas with co-sponsors Middlesex Community College and the Cultural Organization of Lowell.
Tom & Me
Arthur’s Paradise Diner is tucked in along the canal in the shadow of the Boott Cotton Mills. Eating there is like eating inside an old wooden tool box that is perfectly designed, without an inch of wasted space between the griddle and the booths. Tom ordered the cheese omelette and gave in to the cook’s urging to have just a minor pile of homefries while I chose the “small” French Toast breakfast (That’s three pieces for small; the large is six, can you you believe it?) with potatoes on the side, which I didn’t finish. I think he said he hadn’t eaten in the diner since high school. I don’t imagine the decor has changed much since the late ’50s. The place was busy on Saturday morning even though Bridge Street was quiet at 8.15 a.m. It was a good morning for a walk.
From the diner we headed up the Eastern Canal with the sun at our backs, admiring the craftsmanship in the preservation work and new construction at the Boott, the restored boarding house (Mogan Cultural Center), not-so-new Boarding House Park pergola/performance pavilion, Robert Cummings’ three-part sculpture, Canalway path and railings, all the improvements in the area that says “National Park” more than any other except for the Lower Locks Complex between Middlesex Community College’s main building and the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. Tom recounted stories of his extended family that are filled with enough drama for a family saga trilogy. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to see the drama in your driveway.
We crossed French Street at Lucy Larcom Park and paid our respects to the poet, editor, teacher, abolitionist who had her own park before Jack K. got his in 1988. Ellen Rothenberg’s serial public art installation in the park includes an unforgettable quote from Sarah Bagley, editor of the fiery Voice of Industry pro-labor newspaper of the 1840′s: “Truth loses nothing upon investigation.” That would be a good slogan for a politician trying to beat back opponents who treat facts like a twistie that you use to tie up the bread bag. Apparently, no photo or illustration of Sarah Bagley exists. She was a pioneer among women working beyond the farm and village, and became the first female telegraph operator of her day.
Our path turned up Merrimack Street, through Monument Square and the Ladd & Whitney tribute (Luther Ladd was 17 years old when he died on the street in Baltimore on his way to help protect Washington, DC). We stopped to take a good look at the Smith Baker Center, whose exterior red glowed in the early morning sun. I told Tom about the plans for the Kerouac Creativity Center and the prospects for a high-energy community arts program in the building. He liked the location, right across the street from Pollard Memorial Library and City Hall, and within sight of the Whistler House Museum of Art. We kept going up Merrimack, where he pointed out the same liquor store that sold him beer when he was in high school and way under 21. He said he had heard from someone that the pizza was tasty at Brothers Pizza at the corner of Cabot and Merrimack. We cut up Cabot and curled back on Market, passing the CCA, one of the stalwart social clubs that dot the city. It strikes me that most of these gathering places are primed for a generational turn. Maybe with an influx of new members these clubs can be re-energized as the vital “third places” that younger Lowellians say they are looking for.
When we got to Nick’s barbershop across from North Common Village, the owner I presume was dozing in one of the swivel chairs. Somebody has got to document this fantastic shop in photographs and/or video while it has its amazing interior. The walls are completely adorned with posters, snapshots, polaroids, news clippings, tickets, stickers, you name it. No fine artist could do a better job with an installation evoking time and place and culture. There’s a strong Sinatra thread, but so much more. It’s a time machine and wall-mounted archive. My friends at the National Park Service should certify this as a historical site and work with the owner to save it as is to show what Lowell culture is like in this long moment. And let the haircuts continue.
We crossed Market and stepped behind one of the brick housing units at North Common to get in back of Holy Trinity Church, where there was still a topping of snow on the faux temple ruins in the newly landscaped and paved parking lot. From there we headed toward the Whistler House Museum, which has a Lowell-theme art exhibition this month. The opening reception is next Saturday. Tom said he’d wander back in the afternoon to see the show. We looped back on Dutton and turned south on Market to get back to the ICC where he is staying. Tom said the downtown looks wonderful compared to the business sector he had driven through on Rte. 38, going from Lowell to Tewksbury the day before. He said that mish-mash of commercial sites, shopping strip, parking-lot heavy parcels, fast food drive-thru’s, and auto service outfits of all kinds reminded him of nothing so much as Wasilla, Alaska, home of she-who-must-be-heard. Although he winters in Maine now, Tom’s permanent address is still Alaska, and he has his own view of what you can see from there.
BeatleJuice Dance Party at LMA Last Night
The folks at Middlesex Community College threw a party for more than 500 people at Lowell Memorial Auditorium last night with the best music that could be ordered up, All-Beatles-All-the-Time. On stage was the top Beatles tribute band in this part of the country, Beatlejuice, whose players served up note-perfect versions of songs that are the classical music of the past 50 years. The LMA was set up like a music club with a large dance area in front of the stage, round tables on the floor, and additional seating in the mezz level. The audience ranged from kids and lots of college students to a large contingent from the Veterans of Band Battles of the ’60s. If Sgt. Pepper is the Guy Lombardo of the Baby Boomers, we’ll take him. Roll up for the Mystery Tour, and bring on Billy Shears. What creative leaps from “Love Me Do” to “I Am the Walrus” to “Paperback Writer.” Kudos to LMA and MCC for giving us three hours of fun and music, and nothing but fun and music (with a nod to Max Yasgur).
Speaking of BeatleJuice at LMA on March 31
Don’t forget the fab fabs band BeatleJuice is coming to Lowell Memorial Auditorium on Thursday, March 31, a special program of Middlesex Community College. Here’s a taste of music and words from thebeatles.com
Morse Lecture Features Counterterrorism Expert Roger Cressey
March Ahead: Cultural Activities
We’re on the March or in the March or however we want to say it. This month and next month are huge for cultural activities in the city. Here’s a sample and by no means everything this month:
Today and tomorrow: XFest 2011 at 119 Gallery, 119 Chelmsford St (www.119gallery.org)
Today and tomorrow: The Exceptionals by Bob Clyman, Merrimack Rep Theatre (www.merrimackrep.org)
Tomorrow: Garrison Keillor at Lowell Mem Aud (www.lowellauditorium.com)
March 5 through 17: Irish Cultural Week (see Irish Cultural Week 2011 on Facebook for the full schedule)
March 8, 7 pm: Omagh, award-winning film presented by Irish Cultural Week Committee and Lowell Film Collaborative, Lowell Beerworks, Cabot St
March 9, 7.30 pm: University Wind Ensemble Concert, Durgin Hall, UMass Lowell South Campus
March 10, 7 pm: Author Jane Brox at the Spalding House on Pawtucket Street (Seating limited, so RSVP to www.lowelllandtrust.org)
March 11 & 12, 8 pm: Femnoir: Women’s Playwriting Festival, Image Theatre, at ALL Gallery, 22 Shattuck St (www.imagetheater.com)
March 11, 8 pm: Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra featuring young musicians and 13-year-old pianist Kadar Qian, Pawtucketville Congregational Church, 15 Mammoth Rd (www.lowellphilharmonic.org)
March 12: Jack Kerouac Birthday Celebration with films, music, and readings (www.lowellcelebrateskerouac.org and www.cometolowell.com)
March 19, 8 pm: Dropkick Murphys, Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell (www.tsongascenter.com)
through March 25: From the Nile to the Merrimack, Contemporary Art from Egypt, University Gallery, McGauvran Student Center, UMass Lowell South Campus
March 28, 12 noon: Diversity in Health Care Careers, Lunchtime Lecture by UML Nursing Dept. Prof. Margaret Knight at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, 50 Warren St, a Parker Lectures-UMass Lowell-Middlesex Comm College program (reserve seat and free lunch at artsandideas@uml.edu or call 978-934-3107)
March 31 through April 10 (various times): Rent by the Off-Broadway Players, Comley-Lane Theatre, Mahoney Hall, UMass Lowell South Campus
March 31, 7 pm: BeatleJuice, a Middlesex Community College program at Lowell Mem Aud (www.lowellauditorium.com or 978-656-3106 at MCC)
For more info on these and many other events, visit www.uml.edu/artsandideas or www.cultureiscool.org
Author Rebecca Skloot at Middlesex CC, Feb. 8
Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is the fascinating true story of a woman known to scientists around the world as “HeLa.” She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells, taken without her knowledge, became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive. Hear Rebecca Skloot in Middlesex Community College’s “One World Series” on Tuesday, Feb. 8, at 10.30 a.m., in the MCC Campus Cafeteria in the main building downtown at 33 Kearney Square. This event is free and open to the public.
Maya Angelou Papers Acquired; Remembering Her in Lowell
Today’s NYTimes includes this article about the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the NY Public Library acquiring a massive archive of papers from author and performer Maya Angelou. The story prompted me to recall Maya Angelou’s visit to Lowell in 1989 as a guest of Middlesex Community College. Following is an op-ed piece I wrote at the time for the SUN, but which never appeared because of a change of editors.—PM
A Day That Starched Our Backbones
Two writers read and recited their work to a combined audience of almost 1,500 people on an otherwise ordinary Thursday in Lowell. October 19 turned out to be a day of roses and accolades. Renaissance woman Maya Angelou stunned a packed house at a noontime program at the Smith Baker Center, a converted nineteenth-century church across from City Hall; in the evening poet Joseph Donahue launched his first collection of poems at the Whistler House Museum of Art. Maya Angelou sang, recited, preached, acted, and danced her way through a fast-paced 90-minute performance in the crescent-shaped hall ringed in stained-glass. “I have not come for nothing!” she declared, ordering the college students to take out pen and paper to write the names of authors she was about to reveal: Georgia Douglas Duncan, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Mari Evans were a few of the African-American writers whose poems she shared, along with her own work.
Remembering her grandmother’s wisdom, Angelou said, “Poetry puts starch in your backbone.” She described her love of reading and vast appetite for great works, from Shakespeare to Countee Cullen. “All knowledge is spendable currency—read, read, read!” Hers is a message of liberation from the small, mean life that threatens to debase us. “Everyone in this hall has been paid for by ancestors of every color,” she told the students. “Your assignment,” she added, “is to prepare yourselves to pay for those who will come after.”
Angelou scolded, laughed, and clapped, offering bold, musical poems of her own about love and the nature of women and a hilarious piece about a “smoking carnivore” who cannot abide the natural food crowd. She advised writers in the audience to “tell the truth, but not necessarily all the facts.” A professor at Wake Forest University, Angelou is the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and other works of prose and poetry. Selected as the “common book” of the year at Middlesex Community College, her memoir was read by students across disciplines. Television viewers will remember her playing the mother of Kunte Kinte in the television mini-series Roots.
Joseph Donahue traveled to Lowell from New York City to introduce his first book of poems, Before Creation, to his extensive family and old friends. The Whistler House’s Parker Gallery was filled with a crowd eager to hear the words of a poet who is an important voice of his generation of writers. The author’s keen mind and the fine craftsmanship shone through the spoken words. A professor at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, Donahue offered a choice wedge of contemporary poetry: the style of his work, at its best, is a combination of “neo-Language Poetry and high lyricism,” according to a colleague. Standing in a room hung with Don Quixote etchings by Salvador Dali, he delivered his poems very much as is, not cluttering the presentation with extensive set-up or paraphrase.
Beginning with a long prose poem, “Purple Ritual,” he guided the audience on a tour of the American psyche, using the assassination of John F. Kennedy and his own family’s history as an armature on which to fix his meditations about myth, fate, loss, and recovery. Explaining that he had tried to find a way to write about New York City while living there, he then read several poems about the city, works reflecting the edgy and exotic terrain of our most modern metropolis.
Opening Joseph Donahue’s new book is like slicing open a ripe pomegranate—poems filled with brilliant, jeweled, densely packed, sweet, and sometimes acid language and images are as tasty one by one as in clusters. The shape of the whole work satisfies even before the juicy nuggets are chewed to the dry seed. The surprise of the evening was his reading of three deeply moving elegies not included in the book. The local audience took to heart his remembrances of Lowell journalist and family friend Jim Droney, the Droneys’ daughter Sarah, and a figure whom no author with Lowell ties can ignore—Jack Kerouac. These poems telegraph the strength of his next collection.
Donald Hall insists that poetry is not dead, even though, he says, some critics and commentators are trying to murder it. Hall claims, “More people read poetry now in the United States than ever did before.” And their spines are better for it.
—Paul Marion (c) 1989, 2010
Thoughts on Creativity
Why are we starting to talk about a Kerouac Center for Creativity in Lowell? Aside from the facts that Lowell was founded by inventors and entrepreneurs, that the city is a contemporary hub of the creative economy, and that higher education institutions like UMass Lowell and Middlesex Community College demonstrate the positive results of innovation and imagination (creativity by other names), see what others are saying about the importance of creativity.—PM
We live in an age when the most valuable asset any economy can have is the ability to be creative — to spark and imagine new ideas, be they Broadway tunes, great books, iPads or new cancer drugs. And where does creativity come from?
I like the way Newsweek described it in a recent essay on creativity: “To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).”
And where does divergent thinking come from? It comes from being exposed to divergent ideas and cultures and people and intellectual disciplines. As Marc Tucker, the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, once put it to me: “One thing we know about creativity is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other. Intuitively, you know this is true. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist, scientist and inventor, and each specialty nourished the other. He was a great lateral thinker. But if you spend your whole life in one silo, you will never have either the knowledge or mental agility to do the synthesis, connect the dots, which is usually where the next great breakthrough is found.”
—Thomas L. Friedman, NYT, today
Read the complete column here, and consider buying a copy of the NYT if you like the writing.
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. … Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born every day; to feel a sense of self.”
—Erich Fromm (German-born American social philosopher and psychoanalyst, 1900-1980)
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