Lowell 2009
Created by DickH on 31 Dec 2008 | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Welcome to Lowell-2009, our effort to capture Lowell’s history as it happens. To produce our “chronological record of events” about Lowell in 2009, we will devote at least one blog post each day portraying life in our city. We hope to capture the variety of life in Lowell including contributions from our readers.
Join us in this community documentation experiment. A year from today, we expect to have a remarkable, unique account of one year in the life of a city known for its history. We are asking you to be self-conscious as a group, as Lowellians, to see what we can make together.
Writing Prompts
Neighborhood Issues
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Great looking yards, streets and parks
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Special projects and good deeds
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Traffic and public transportation
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Trash pickup and recycling
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Jobs well-done
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Potholes and light poles
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Reflections on an obit
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Reflections on a retiree
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Reflections on an honoree
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Reflections on an unsung hero
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Reunions
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The doers, the movers and shakers, the curmudgeons
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Events
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Places
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Buildings
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Characters
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Denizens of the Downtown and other neighborhoods
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Quirky things
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Lowell – isms in speech, habit or action
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Runners and walkers
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Dogs
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Streetscape
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Nightlife
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The Rivers
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The Forest
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The Parks
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The Environment
Quality of Life
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The Theater
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The University
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The Community College
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The Dining
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The Learning, Sharing and Exchanging Venues
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Health and Welfare
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Food for the Soul and Psyche
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Do Unto Others
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Volunteering
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Art and Music
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Family Favorites
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Seasonal / Calendar - Rituals and Revelries
Work, Jobs, Business
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Training /Re-training
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Internships, volunteering
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Innovation
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Where to shop, buy and trade
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Public schools
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Private/Parochial schools
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Higher education
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Live Long Learning
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Tutoring. Mentoring, Coaching
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Teams
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Watching, Coaching, Learning
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Stats, Observations
Media
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The newspaper
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The radio
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The local cable access
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Blog and bloggers
It’s the first day of the new year, and there’s already a mention of Jack Kerouac in the national media. This week’s New Yorker (Jan. 5 issue) has a long story by Louis Menand about the Village Voice newspaper, founded in 1955. Anyone blogging will find the description of the Voice’s approach to reporting and opinion-giving familiar: “…the Voice was doing what the Internet does now long before there was an Internet. The Voice was the blogosphere—whose motto might be ‘Every man his own Norman Mailer’—and Craigslist fifty years before their time. The Voice helped to create the romance of the journalistic vocation by making journalism seem a calling, a means of self-expression, a creative medium.”
The Kerouac mentions have to do with JK’s relationship with Adele Morales before she married Norman Mailer, one of the founders of the Village Voice. There’s another K reference in a script for a vintage Jules Feiffer comic strip from the Voice.
My one complaint about the story is the omission of Kerouac in the description of the rise of New Journalism, which as usual is associated here with Tom Wolfe, Lillian Ross, Mailer, and others. Menand puts the Voice as a strong root of New Journalism, if not THE root. Kerouac’s personal “true-story” novels and maverick magazine writing of the ’50’s and ’60’s should be credited in the genesis story for New Journalism. He was imaginatively merging fiction and non-fiction and reporting on his life prior to New Journalism being coined and long before the term “creative non-fiction” came along.
January 2, and downtown had an after-holiday feeling when I headed to Brew’d Awakening for a meeting at mid-afternoon. Each corner of the coffee shop had somebody reading or tapping on a laptop, but the atmosphere was subdued. Not much coming and going at the Market Street spot. I even found a parking spot on the first floor of the garage. The owner, Andy, is supporting writers and musicians in the city by selling their books and CDs at the counter and on a display rack. I heard there’s an artist at Western Avenue Studios (open studios on first Saturday tomorrow) who rigged up an old cigarette vending machine to sell miniature artworks. We need something like that on a broader scale for the artists, musicians, and writers in the city. How about a Lowell creative economy stainless steel vending machine that takes $10 and $20 for small-scale art and craftwork, books, and discs with music, films, even games? Has this been done elsewhere? We have to make it easier for people to find and purchase local creative products. Let’s bring the work right to the people.
It’s Rex McManamy at Western Ave who does the Vendzart machines that are scattered around the studios. I hear that after his show at the Loading Dock Gallery opens in March that he is going to work on a new line of Vendzart machines.