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BOOK REVIEW: The Hikes into a Higher Consciousness: A Mental Map of Then to Now

Chath pierSath is the author of several books including the poetry collections “Echoes Lost to the Wind,” “On Earth Beneath Sky: Poems & Sketches,” and “This Body Mystery: Paintings and Poems.” His paintings have been exhibited in Europe, Asia, and North America. He holds a graduate degree in community social psychology from UMass Lowell. Chath lives and works on a family farm in the Nashoba Valley of Central Massachusetts. He is a past contributor to this blog.

 BOOK REVIEW: The Hikes into a Higher Consciousness: A Mental Map of Then to Now

By Chath pierSath

Paul Marion’s “City Hikes: Field Notes” is a profound journey into the memory of a place. The book explores a landscape of sweeping changes across American cities—a landscape where the present (“Now”) is inseparable from the past (“Then”). In its pages, one can revisit childhood villages and memories: the taste of an icy lime rickey drink, the excitement of baseball, hot dogs, and riding in a parent’s car, all set against a backdrop of window shopping among fellow pedestrians searching for deals and a good place to eat.

This nostalgia is central to Marion’s work. He guides us through Lowell, his beloved birthplace, which has endured centuries of transformation. Lowell is known for its constant revival, having overcome decades of physical and psychological depression. Its historic rocks, stones, and New England bricks stand as enduring monuments. When the light shines on the cobblestones, it clearly evokes childhood memories for Marion, and perhaps, thoughts of his predecessor author, Jack Kerouac—the constant traveler, philosopher, and dreamer, whose words are inscribed on stones in the downtown park dedicated to Jack.

A Walk Through Memory and Change

“City Hikes” is a form of meditation, almost twenty thoughtful strolls through the city’s industrial past and present. Those who have traversed its grounds will fall in love with its history—both the good and the bad. Like the changing seasons, the city evokes potent recollection. Though the streets and neighborhoods remain, the inhabitants are new, speaking different languages, practicing diverse cultures, and working to be absorbed into this new environment. Over time, these new generations claim their right to shape and reshape Lowell, their acquired memories defining what the city means to them. Shops, cafés, and restaurants now display signs in multiple languages and scripts, welcoming visitors to a flowering city. In this urban garden, more flowers mean greater shine and vibrancy—from the rainbow dust of its canals, dug by the sweat and tears of Irish laborers, to the old pubs serving lagers and ales.

As a Cambodian-born resident who lived in Lowell for seven years, I recall the map, the streets, and some of the neighborhoods Marion mentions during his walk. The book is a document, a poet’s search for purpose and meaning in the ordinary yet extraordinary presence of the Merrimack River, forever flowing and rising against the stone banks of its beautifully architected mills. As Marion points out, some mills are abandoned outside the national jurisdiction, much like the ancient ruins of Cambodia, left for tourists to wander in awe of the great Khmer empire.

I picture Marion walking, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, asking the same questions I’m asking: Why was this then? Why is this now? I walk with him page by page, following a map divided into distinct sections: The scrappy Acre, the better-off Centralville, the French Canadians descended from Little Canada beside the later Greeks, and now, the Cambodians, Africans, Indians, and Vietnamese. The sound is now a plurality of new languages and cultures, replacing the almost too well-known echoes of the past, when the noise of the looms drowned out the simple sound of young girls giggling down the hall about prom dresses and boys.

I mourn with Marion, yet I am more in awe than despair. I welcome the changes from then to now and embrace the seven years of literary memories I acquired learning at UMass Lowell. I remember the bank on Merrimack Street and nearby café where I felt free to love any man—black, white, red, or brown. Everyone there was my friend until 2 a.m., when we’d head to the train car diner for breakfast before the Saturday noon sleep.

“Fait divers”

“Fait divers” – (PIP #87)

By Louise Peloquin

Daily news coverage has always included briefs about accidents, crimes and unexpected events. These human interest stories fed reader curiosity much like social media does today. Here are examples of L’Etoile’s “faits divers.”

L’Etoile – December 24, 1924

TWO LOWELL WOMEN 

ARRESTED YESTERDAY IN LAWRENCE

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     Following a car accident in Lawrence last night, Mrs. Georgiana Grenou, 34, and Mrs. Jennie Sweet, 30, both Lowell residents, were apprehended on charges of theft in the Lawrence store J.F. McGrath.

     Both appeared in Lawrence District Court this morning and both were sentenced to pay a $10 fine.

*****

L’Etoile – December 30, 1924

A WOMAN WHO KILLS FOUR

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Mrs. Emma Hobough, 30, kills her father, her mother, her 22-year-old brother and her own child of 3 with a lead-charged rifle. – Terrible battle in the house. – She alleges mistreatment.

_____

     Logansport, Ind., 30. – Refusing to respond to questions concerning the death of four family members but speaking volubly of alleged ill-treatment received at their hands, Mrs. Emma Hobough, 30, widow, was in county prison last night.

     She was arrested yesterday by Sherif Bowyer at the request of Thomas Sheets about 4 miles from the Bassler residence where, shortly after noon, her father Henry Bassler, 69; her mother Catherine Bassler, 60; her brother John Bassler, 22; and her little girl Viola Hobough, 3, were each found, heads partially smashed by a rifle discharge of lead.

     Mrs. Hobough was going to Lyman Yantis’s residence early yesterday and called Rev. Mullins, pastor of Wesleyan Methodist Church in town. Yantis said that Mrs. Hobough told the reverend that her brother had thrown her to the ground and that if she had a rifle, she would kill him. Yantis said that he had paid no attention to Mrs’ Hobough’s threats because the family was constantly quarrelling.

     Yesterday, when the neighbours noticed that there was no sign of life around the Bassler residence, they inspected and discovered the body of Bassler senior and of his granddaughter Viola in the house. Shortly afterwards, the bodies of Mrs. Bassler and her son John were found close to the barn. It is believed that the four were killed inside the house where traces of a horrific battle were found.

*****

L’Etoile – Front page March 2, 1925 

SHE SHOOTS HER BROTHER WHO  ATTEMPTED SUICIDE YESTERDAY

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An English vicar tries to commit suicide. – His sister, who saw him dying in agony, ends his suffering.

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     Leicester, England, 2. – An extraordinary tragedy, which reopens the question of justifying taking away life in special circumstances, took place in a Hungarton, Leicestershire vicarage. 

     Reverend William Jettison, vicar, returned to the rectory for his breakfast yesterday after having distributed communion. Later, he retired in his study where a pistol shot resounded a few moments later. The vicar’s sister, Miss Jettison, who, with a maid, lives with her brother, went to the study and found him on the floor.

The rectory does not have a telephone so Miss Jettison ran to the post office and called a doctor who lived four miles away. She immediately returned to the rectory and prevented anyone from entering the study.

     A short while later another shot rang out and Miss Jettison came out of the study.

     “I asked him if he would survive and he did not respond” she said. “I saw that he was dying in agony so I shot him to relieve his suffering.”

     Miss Jettison was arrested.

*****

L’Etoile – March 2, 1925

50 PEOPLE LEAVE A HOTEL IN FLAMES

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Guests and employees came very close to being imprisoned in a Salem fire.

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Salem. – Fifty guests and employees at Hotel Essex on Essex Street in Salem came very close to getting caught in the building early this morning when a fire broke out in front of the Daniel A. Donahue clothing store located on the ground floor.

     The guests, dressed only in night gowns, fled into the streets leaving their belongings and suitcases in their rooms while two employees, an elderly man and a woman, were rescued from the third floor corridors by firefighters.

     A great many guests exited the hotel by the fire station ladders but most of them managed to force their way through corridors filled with smoke.

*****

L’Etoile – March 2, 1925

A MYSTERIOUS DEATH

Houlton, 2. – Ralph Burleigh, brother of lieutenant Albert R. Burleigh, U.S.N. who was found in his cabin aboard a naval transport in Wallego, California with a hole caused by a projectile to the head, denied that he had received a letter from the young lieutenant announcing his intended suicide.

     “The last letter I received from my brother was joyous and made no mention of any trouble” said Mr. Burleigh. “I did not know, and I only found out after my brother’s death, that his friend lieutenant Kennedy was in trouble. I heard that my brother wanted to defend lieutenant Kennedy but that is all I know. I still think that my brother’s death was accidental.”

*****

L’Etoile – March 2, 1925

1. POTHIER AND MR. SOUCY GUARDED BY AGENTS

     Woonsocket, R.I., 2. – The news spread that governor Pothier and mayor Soucy of Woonsocket are guarded by detectives and that their residence is “under police surveillance day and night.”

     Chief of police Côté refused to give details on the subject saying that it was police business and of no one’s concern.

     Nevertheless, we know that there are detectives close to both residences and that they politely request lingering passers-by to move along.

     The reason would be, rumour has it, that the two may have offended whiskey salesmen and gambling establishment owners with the cleanup campaign they undertook and that the detectives stand guard to avoid all attempted reprisals.

Neither side has provided details. 

*****

L’Etoile – March 2, 1925

SAD DEATH  OF A RENOWN AVIATOR

——-

     Bayonne, 2. – Roger Rousserail, the aviator known as the Périgord avenger, was killed yesterday close to Mont-de-Marsan during a flight.

     Since the armistice, Rousserail was at the service of a travelling circus for which he performed acrobatic stunts. Despite a violent storm, the aviator wanted to execute his flight as usual. At an altitude of 1500 feet, a wing of his plane was ripped off at the moment that he closed the loop. The plane crashed to the ground and the aviator died instantly.

     In October 1915, Rousserail had downed famous German aviator Adolphe Pégond.

     Rousserail’s wife and two children were present at the moment of the accident. (1) 

****

1) Translations by Louise Peloquin.

A child survives the Holocaust by Marjorie Arons-Barron

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

Remembering & forgetting: a memoir and other pieces of my life by Miriam Spiegel Raskin is a short but impactful book by a woman who, in 1939, at the age of eight, fled Germany with her parents, Julius and Fannie Spiegel, in the wake of Kristallnacht. Most of the rest of her family did not survive the war. The trauma of Nazi Germany and brutal persecution of Jews left lasting scars for the rest of her life.

Relocated eventually to St. Louis, Missouri, Miriam, a refugee, always felt an outsider, different, in pain and insecure. She grew into a deep thinker – a published writer, poet and essayist. She wrote beautifully, grappling for most of her life with the question of why she survived when so many millions of others were sent to their deaths in the Holocaust.

Full disclosure: Miriam’s sister Susan, born in this country and 15 years younger than she, is a longtime friend of my husband (who also knew Miriam), which is how I came to this book. It was published in 2008.

Safe in America, Miriam never felt secure as a child, too often left alone to cope with her anxieties because both parents worked long hours. Childhood behind her, she married “the first decent man that was willing to gamble on” her.  They were together until his death in 2019. But contemplating her life as homemaker, she wondered “was it for this that I was saved?”

For decades, Miriam struggled mightily with depression, exacerbated by exhaustion from chronic sleeplessness, unable to take pleasure in ordinary things or block out the dark cloud that kept sunshine from her life. She kept wondering,  is it better to remember or is forgetting the key to survival. For decades, the key to her mother’s adjustment was not dwelling in the remembering, which Miriam saw as denial. Miriam herself could not forget, and so, she wrote, the sadness continued unabated. It would take decades for her to learn to use her memories in ways to heal herself and help educate others.

In 1965, at the age of 35, Miriam returned with her mother to Hamburg, Germany, where she had lived as a child.  Thanks to obsessive record-keeping by the Germans, she was able to reconstruct what had befallen her beloved grandparents, but finally knowing did not bring peace. She struggled with the concept of God and what it means to be Jewish. For a long time, she couldn’t bring herself to attend religious services though she remained engaged in Jewish organizations and spent many years writing about her experiences and contributing to Holocaust memory projects.

Clearly Miriam was a survivor, though she herself reserves the term for those who actually survived the camps. But she bore the guilt of having been saved, and for decades it defined her life. She had three children but wrote that, when she had a granddaughter, she found a new kind of love, one that she could lavish on the baby as  she dearly wished to have been loved as a child.

The poems she includes at the end of the memoir have their own soft rhythms, rich language, and honest sentiments. Several essays are crisply laid out. The book ends with a surprise, which I will not spoil for you readers. It has to do with a letter from a Christian friend from her Hamburg days, bringing even more poignancy to Miriam’s memoir.  Miriam Spiegel Raskin died on October 13^th at the age of 95. In Remembering & Forgetting, she leaves behind a legacy of understanding and empathy for all those who were touched, either directly or indirectly, by the world’s most terrible genocide.

Lowell Politics: November 16, 2025

There was no city council meeting this week due to Veterans Day falling on Tuesday, so I’ll do another dive into Lowell history.

In two recent city council meetings, City Manager Tom Golden has talked optimistically about redevelopment plans for the former Lowell District Court and its neighbor, the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. Today I’ll share some history of the ICC and what came before it.

Central to the site’s history is the Pawtucket Canal which was constructed as a transportation canal in the 1790s to allow cargo-carrying barges and rafts of timber to bypass the Pawtucket Falls where the Merrimack River drops 32 feet in less than a mile. Previously, all cargo heading downriver, including giant logs to be used for masts of sailing ships, had to be hauled out of the Merrimack above the falls, dragged along the bank to a point below the falls, then refloated to continue the water journey to Newburyport and the Atlantic Ocean.

Once dug, the Pawtucket Canal allowed river traffic to bypass the falls by using four lock chambers to handle the change in elevation of the river. The last of these lock chambers, known as Lower Locks, is located at the end of the canal where it flows into the Concord River. The Pawtucket Canal opened for business in 1797 and at first was quite successful, but the opening of the rival Middlesex Canal a few years later took away all the toll-paying traffic and the Pawtucket Canal ceased operations.

Although the Pawtucket Canal had fallen into disuse, in 1813, two local residents, Phineas Whiting and Josiah Fletcher, erected a cotton mill alongside the canal on a portion of the land now occupied by the ICC. In 1818, Whiting and Fletcher sold their mill to Thomas Hurd who converted it to a woolen mill which became one of the first in America to manufacture satinet, a fabric that used cotton for the lengthwise threads and wool for the crosswise threads. This yielded a smooth material with a satin-like finish which was extremely durable and water-resistant. Hurd’s operation was so successful that in 1820, he replaced the original wooden mill building with a larger one made of brick.

Hurd’s success was short-lived. An economic downturn in 1828 forced him into bankruptcy and the newly formed Middlesex Company purchased his mill in 1830. By then, Lowell was already the center of textile production in America with the Merrimack Manufacturing Company having opened in 1823; the Hamilton Mills in 1825; the Appleton Mills in 1828; and the Lowell Mills in 1828. However, the Middlesex was the only major Lowell mill to manufacture wool cloth, and it quickly became the largest establishment making woolen fabric in America. (Among those bringing their wool to Lowell to sell to the Middlesex was an upstate New York sheep farmer named John Brown who later became famous for his abolitionist activities – there’s always a Lowell connection.)

Although the Middlesex Manufacturing Company thrived during the Civil War when there was great demand for woolen cloth for army uniforms and for a few decades after, it struggled as the 1800s came to an end and ceased operations entirely in 1914. Ownership of the large physical plant was divided and sold off to smaller companies that used the mill buildings sporadically, however, by 1939 almost all industrial activity on the site had ceased.

In 1955, the city of Lowell took the combined Middlesex Manufacturing site by eminent domain for use as a municipal parking lot. Tragedy struck in 1956 when the chimney of one of the mill buildings being demolished by the city’s contractor collapsed, killing one of the workers, 23-year-old Walter B. Smith. The following year the city named the new parking lot for Smith.

The parcel remained a city-owned surface parking lot until April 11, 1984, when the city conveyed most of the site to Lowell Inn Associates, a corporation led by hotel-developer Arthur S. Robbins of Providence, Rhode Island. Although Robbins was initially skeptical of the viability of a large hotel in downtown Lowell, the city, led by US Senator Paul Tsongas, sold him on the concept with the aid of substantial incentives from all levels of government and from other area businesses.

Among the incentives that drew the hotel here was the city’s promise to construct an $8.5 million, 1000-space parking garage at Lower Locks with 320 of its parking spaces dedicated to hotel use, and a footbridge across the Pawtucket Canal connecting the hotel site to that of the proposed $12 million corporate training center to be constructed by Lowell computer giant Wang Laboratories.

Perhaps the most important incentive came from Wang. This new building, which is now the home of Middlesex Community College’s city campus, was built to be Wang’s corporate education center which would provide training for Wang’s customers, management, and marketing personnel. Wang executed an agreement with Robbins guaranteeing that Wang personnel and customers would occupy at least 60 percent of the rooms in the hotel year-round. With that cushion, Robbins commenced construction of the $22 million hotel.

An advertisement in the March 26, 1985, Boston Globe said much about the new hotel which opened soon after May:

THE NEW LOWELL HILTON: A magnificent new hotel set in the heart of Lowell National Historical and Heritage State Park

Why settle for an ordinary hotel?

• 251 superb guest rooms
• 18 suites
• Concierge Level with private lounge, honor bar and luxurious accommodations
• Banquet and meeting space for 10 to 800
• ASHLEY’S, an unforgettable gourmet dining experience
• VIBRATIONS, a magnificently appointed lounge offering top live entertainment nightly. Dedicated to Dancing, Drinking and Conversation
• ARTHUR’S, a sophisticated “quiet” lounge. Relaxing Atmosphere, subdued piano and your favorite cocktails or wine by the glass
• Indoor/outdoor pool
• Health Club with Whirlpool and Saunas
• Game Room
• Gift Shop
• Tourist and National Park information desk
• Laundry facilities and Valet service

Initially, the hotel did well, hosting events such as a three-day conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in the summer of 1986. Many similar events came to the hotel.

But the good times for the Lowell Hilton ended soon. The biggest wound came from the collapse of Wang which lost its high-tech dominance to companies like Microsoft and Apple. Soon Wang abandoned the training center and occupancy of the hotel plummeted, never reaching the levels needed to support the place.

In February 1990, the struggling Hilton asked the Lowell city council to forgive a $2.7 million second mortgage held by the city (on behalf of the Lowell Development and Finance Corporation) so the hotel could renegotiate its first mortgage and continue operations. The council rejected this effort by a 5 to 4 vote (it needed six votes to pass). As a result of that vote, on June 21, 1990, Coast Saving, which held the first mortgage on the hotel, foreclosed and bought the property at auction for $16 million.

Two years later, Coast sold the property to SAI Hotels Inc. for $1.8 million. This outfit operated the hotel under the Sheraton brand, but they couldn’t make it work. In 1997, SAI sold the property to another hospitality outfit, LHG LLC, which tried to make the Doubletree brand work, without success. Since running a traditional hotel seemed unfeasible on the site, there was often discussion about converting the building into a long-term care facility.

Finally, UMass Lowell stepped up and purchased the Doubletree Hotel from its private owners for $15 million with the deed being recorded on July 31, 2009. The University saw the acquisition of the building as a great opportunity to expand the school’s presence in downtown Lowell. Renaming the building the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, the school made it a dormitory for students in its Honors Program and a conference center that hosted public events like the school’s Lunchtime Lecture Series and an Irish American History Conference. The ICC also set aside some rooms for paying guests in a traditional hotel setting.

The ICC was an integral part of downtown life and the hub of civic and social activities, especially those related to the creative economy. But that changed in August 2023 when UMass Lowell announced that in the face of budget cuts, declining enrollment, and a surplus of dormitory rooms, it would close the ICC immediately and relocate the students who had been assigned there for housing to dormitories elsewhere on the school’s campus.

Concurrently, Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency due to rapidly rising numbers of migrant families arriving in Massachusetts, mostly from Haiti and Venezuela, who needed shelter and services. That is how the ICC was utilized until this spring when it was converted to a short-term emergency shelter for families. According to City Manager Golden, that use is supposed to come to an end next summer, or perhaps as early as the end of next month. What will happen to the building after that is unclear but will be a topic of debate in the coming months.

Back in 2013, I participated in a TEDx event here in Lowell. The title of my talk was “Failure as opportunity: The founding of Lowell, Massachusetts.” My premise was that throughout Lowell’s history, whenever a plan or project didn’t work out as intended, rather than give up, the people of the city tried something else, and that this perpetual persistence is what elevated Lowell above so many other struggling mid-sized cities in Post Industrial America.

My talk, which was 14 minutes long, is still available on YouTube.