Events for: Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center

Sothea Chimruom is the Executive Director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association (CMAA) on School Street in Lowell. His lecture will focus on the CMAA’s programming to commemorate the anniversary of the Cambodian genocide. Beginning in the early 1980s, thousands of Cambodian fled their homeland to escape a communist regime and genocide and resettled in the City of Lowell and other cities throughout the U.S. For many Cambodian refugees, with limited resources, language barriers, and a lack of knowledge about local customs and culture, the resettlement process can be overwhelming. In 1984, CMAA was founded to help alleviate these gaps and provide support to the Cambodian communities in Greater Lowell.

In July 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell, Massachusetts, set off for an adventure they would remember all their lives. Calling themselves “the Merrie Trippers,” they created a journal of their two-week trip to Great Brewster Island complete with entries, illustrations, and photographs, everything but their real names. Volunteers from the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands, led by author Stephanie Schorow, dove into the journal’s mysteries and published “A Boston Harbor Islands Adventure: The Great Brewster Journal of 1891” in 2023. In an illustrated lecture on Oct. 26 at 2 p.m., the authors will explain how they uncovered the women’s identities (and more) and were able to create a portrait of 19th century women’s lives.

Charles Shuttleworth is senior editor of Sal Paradise Press. He is the editor of Desolation Peak, published in 2022; he served as co-editor with Paul Maher, Jr. on Self-Portrait, which came out in July; and he is the editor of The Buddhist Years, due out in October, which focuses on writings from 1954-’58, revealing how Kerouac’s study of Buddhism led to spiritual insights and colored his fiction. Shuttleworth has been teaching classes on Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation for the past 30 years, currently at the Harker School in San Jose, Calif.

On the cusp of being a teenager, Charlie Gargiulo lived through the destruction of his Little Canada community of Lowell in the 1960”s.  His memoir tells that experience through his eyes as he lived it. A legendary community organizer, he later founded the Coalition for a Better Acre, a nationally recognized community development group to prevent other forced displacement efforts from happening to others and to ensure people would have decent housing and a fair chance to earn a living and make a happy life for themselves. Michael Patrick MacDonald, famed author of: All Souls: A Family Story from Southie” said of the memoir, “Charlie Gargiulo has unearthed for us a time capsule of treasures…buried deep by the heartless blows of Urban Renewal’s wrecking ball…”

What is included in "New England's Top Ten Foods" lists, and who made the list? Join Meg Muckenhoupt, author of “The Truth about Baked Beans” for a talk about the history of New England's food, immigration, tourism, and how ideas about identity have shaped our menus from 1825 to today.  Meg Muckenhoupt writes about history and the environment. She is the author of “The Truth About Baked Beans” (NYU Press, 2020) and “Cabbage: A Global History” (Reaktion Books, 2018). She has appeared on NPR’s Radio Boston and WCVB’s Chronicle, and her work has been featured in the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, the New York Times and USA Today.  She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.  Meg Muckenhoupt begins with a simple question: When did Bostonians start making Boston Baked Beans?  Storekeepers in Faneuil Hall and Duck Tour guides may tell you that the Pilgrims learned a recipe for beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans, but in fact, the recipe for Boston Baked Beans is the result of a conscious effort in the late nineteenth century to create New England foods.

Discover the heartwarming tale of the Coughlin family as they navigate three decades of life in a former mill city on the brink of rebirth. Fran will take you on a journey through his family’s experiences, sharing personal and poignant vignettes that capture the joys, sorrows, and laughter of everyday life. From the triple-decker building where they make their home, Coughlin invites you to step back in time and relive a simpler era filled with warmth and humor. This nostalgic collection of stories will leave you with a renewed appreciation for the beauty of ordinary moments.

What was life really like for women in early New England? The answer may surprise you. Historian/author Michelle Marchetti Coughlin (One Colonial Woman's World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit, Penelope Winslow: Plymouth Colony First Lady: Re-Imagining a Life) will explore not only the many challenges and constraints women faced, but also the opportunities they embraced and the important roles they played in their communities. She will also address the unique experiences of Native and African-American women.

"Put It Down on Paper is the charming, poignant tale of Phil Primack’s unflagging search for the woman who would otherwise have been lost to history—and of that woman’s fortitude and passion. Mary Folsom Blair comes to us directly, in her diary, where she speaks with courage and candor of her love of nature and of writing. Part detective story, part coming of age tale, and part journal, this is a chronicle of a writer’s need to know and a woman’s resilience told with grace, wit, and intelligence." - Brenda Wineapple

Through an examination of the history of innovation and precision machinery building in Lowell, Worcester and in cities and towns along the Connecticut River from Springfield, MA to Springfield, VT, I will describe how these places developed enterprises and a regional approach to development that offered workers decent wages and an opportunity to support their families. How did this happen? What took place after the Second World War, which interrupted this virtuous circle of sustained and reasonably share prosperity? Through case studies of several firms, I will tell the story of the wonderful rise and sad demise of one of the U.S.’s most important manufacturing regions. I will also consider if there is a way back for this type of precision manufacturing.

“Untold stories of the women who fought for the right to vote.” A celebrated feminist historian and biographer, Susan Ware is Honorary Women’s Suffrage Centennial Historian at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Ware is also serving as a historical consultant to the PBS program American Experience for a multipart documentary on suffrage and advising singer-songwriter Shaina Taub on a musical based on the life of Alice Paul. Ware tells her story through the lives of nineteen activists, most of whom have long been overlooked.  Ware’s deeply moving stories provide a fresh account of one of the most significant moments of political mobilization in American history.

The Patriots first played in Boston, in the fledgling American Football League before joining the NFL and becoming a team that now represents an entire region as the New England Patriots. But they were born in Lowell, the hometown of their founder, Billy Sullivan. Author Glenn Stout will trace the circuitous route the Pats have taken from their humble beginnings as the last team admitted to the AFL, through their first few decades when they were one of the worst teams in professional football to their place now, as a sports dynasty.   The Pats is a story that is best told through stories, and through people, beginning with Sullivan and his Lowell upbringing, which provided the inspiration for his aspirations. And now the Patriots are stitched into the fabric of the region, the names of their greatest players and figures resonating with generations: Gino Cappelletti, Ron Burton, Jim Nance, John “Hog” Hannah, Steve Grogan, Drew Bledsoe and Tom Brady.  Come hear the story of The Pats, and share some stories of your own.

Harriet Hanson Robinson was a mill girl (author of Loom and Spindle) who later became a women's suffrage activist in Massachusetts. William Robinson was her husband. The readings are broken out into four sections of poems: after an introduction to the letters and program, there is a prologue, a section on Harriet and William's courtship, a section on marriage and work and then the final section on family, politics and history.

Nancy Fox earned her master’s degree in English from Stephen F. Austin State University.  At SFA, she became a Lecturer in 1999 and taught Freshman level composition and argument classes for 15 years while pursuing her love of Jack Kerouac’s writing.  In 2001 she presented her first publication in Lowell: “Twain’s River and Kerouac’s Road”, a comparison claiming that Kerouac’s On the Road will surpass Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as America’s greatest 21st century novel.  Her further writings investigate Kerouac’s theory of spontaneous prose and his religious attitude toward life, especially his personal dream material and their correlation to Carl Jung’s theory of individuation; titles include: "The Soul of Spontaneous Prose", "Kerouac's Dream for America", "Embracing the Spontaneous Mind: Jack Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose", and "Jack Kerouac's Archetypal World".  In the end, Nancy strives to explain Jack Kerouac’s unique world-wide appeal while honoring and raising the integrity of his work to new literary heights.

In 2019 the National Park Service partnered with American Veterans Archaeological Recovery, American Battlefield Trust and Advanced Metal Detecting for the Archaeologist to undertake a study at the Barber Wheatfield, Saratoga National Historical Park where the second battle of Saratoga started during the Revolutionary War. This project collected LiDAR data from a drone, conducted a metal detector study, and collected gradiometric data from an ATV-towed rig. Team Lead Dr. William Griswold will share preliminary results of the project.

Explore the history and lure of electric trolleys at this special film screening of Stephen Low's "The Trolley"! Travel through 39 cities and 16 countries and hear the story of one of civilization's most remarkable inventions! Following the 45-minute film, we'll celebrate our own Lowell trolleys with a presentation and Q&A with Lowell National Historical Park trolley operator, Ryan Boucher. The Lowell trolleys will be in full operation all day so be sure to take a ride! Co-presented by Lowell National Historical Park and the Lowell Film Collaborative.

Jeff Folger, known as Jeff “Foliage,” and dubbed New England’s “Arboreal Oracle,” began documenting autumn 20 years ago and searching New England for iconic images seen on postcards and calendars. His passion for fall colors has been termed “obsessive” by the editors at Yankee Magazine, but they did say “in a good way”. He has been interviewed by magazines, WGBH Boston, AM talk radio, the Weather Channel and the BBC/PBS for his passion of fall color. He was featured in a segment on CBS Sunday Morning, and taking a TV crew along the border of New Hampshire and Maine documenting his efforts to make the best photos during rainy weather. Jeff’s forecasts for the fall foliage have been better than average over the years. His website Jeff-Foliage.com and New England Fall Foliage Facebook page are visited from all over the world to get travel recommendations. Topics discussed will include, What is CFD?, tips for taking better foliage pictures, what this fall will bring, and when to visit his favorite locations.

In early 2018 Tonetti spent a month in Puerto Rico documenting the condition of hundreds of damaged historic structures.  While there he visited Aguirre, a company town with two historic districts: a sugar mill and the town itself. Boston investors owned and developed Aguirre starting in 1900. It was one of the largest and most productive sugar complexes in the 20th century, as well as one of the most technologically advanced mills. The mill slowly declined in the late 20th century until it closed in 1990.  Since then there have been tentative plans to turn the mill into a park.

First published in 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was hailed as the catalyst for starting an American environmental movement.  Today, many continue to regard the renowned work in much the same way.  But, Montrie argues, this is a faulty interpretation of the past, one that rests on a limited understanding of what counts as environmentalism and who counts as an environmentalist.”  What do we find if we reexamine the historical record with this in mind?  Where did environmentalism actually come from?  And, what implications does a new origin story have for preservation, conservation, and environmental activism in the present?

Over the course of a generation, the story of the daily newspaper has been an unchecked slide. The forces killing newspapers are well understood. If newspapers have any chance at survival, it may be through a return to the original model of ownership: the newspaper mogul. In The Return of the Moguls, media critic Dan Kennedy charts the course being set by Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, John Henry at the Boston Globe, and other wealthy and iconoclastic individuals committed to saving the daily newspaper.  

The 1979 movie Norma Rae earned multiple awards and generated a pop icon that people continue to reference. Aimee Loiselle, a historian of women, work, capitalism and culture, will explore the movie as a pop phenomenon that obscured the complex conditions of the global textile and garment industry. Although Norma Rae returned the media spotlight to Crystal Lee Sutton, the inspiration for the movie who used it to call attention to ongoing union organizing by hundreds of mill hands, it was also a studio product intended to make money. Its narrative of an individual woman appealed to American audiences but elided decades of southern labor activism and the vital role of black civil rights activists in the 1960s. The movie's use of the familiar and sentimental poor white southern mill hand also erased the connected twentieth-century labor and migrations of Puerto Rican needle workers, fostering skewed notions of a white American working class and simplistic ideas of deindustrialization.

In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony banned by law the celebration of Christmas as it was deemed to be a time of seasonal excess with no Biblical authority. Though repealed in 1681, it would not be until 1856 that Christmas Day became a state holiday in Massachusetts. In this book Christmas Traditions in Boston, Anthony Sammarco outlines the celebration (or lack thereof) of Christmas in the first two centuries after the city was settled in 1630. During the next century, Boston would see caroling and hand bell ringing on Beacon Hill, a Nativity scene and other traditional New England displays on Boston Common and in the many department stores, as well as the once popular Enchanted Village of Saint Nicholas at Jordan Marsh, New England's largest store. Christmas Traditions in Boston revisits the memories of the past and brings together the shared tradition of how Bostonians celebrated the holiday season. Anthony Mitchell Sammarco is a noted historian and author of over sixty books on the history and development of Boston.

Keeping Americans warm for four centuries, wool has been an essential commodity from colonial times to the present. Its colorful and epic tale has impacted millions of lives, including artisans, inventors, immigrants, merchants, mill owners, millworkers, farmers, slaves and Native Americans. Handcraft production gave way to industrialization, but is now back in the hands of knitters, weavers, felters, and other handcrafters. Wool is a story of technological and social change, marketing forces, and above all, consumer choices.

Come celebrate the 40^th anniversary of Lowell National Historical Park with this slide show of the City’s architectural past, present, and future.  Aucella has led the park’s historic preservation and development division for many years and will share “before and after” images of early building projects from the 1970s to 1990s.  Stowell, administrator for the City’s historic board, will focus on particularly challenging buildings.  Tonetti is the park’s architect and will highlight current and future building preservation projects in Lowell.

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, this story reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age”. Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrages pirates in an early display of colonial solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes of men like Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Edward Low, Dolin provides a wholly original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life.

On a winter day in 2013, Tom Haines stood in front of his basement furnace and wondered about the source of the natural gas that fueled his insulated life. During the next four years, Haines walked hundreds of miles through landscapes of fuel on a crucial exploration of how we live on Earth in the face of a growing climate crisis. Can we get from the fossil fuels of today to the renewables of tomorrow? The story he tells is full not only of human encounters but also of the meditative range that arrives with solitude far from home. Haines writes regularly for the Atlantic and the Washington Post, and teaches at the University of New Hampshire.

This program is part of the 2018 Lowell Celebrates Kerouac festival On this 60^th anniversary of the publication of Kerouac’s novel The Dharma Bums, Dr. Ann Charters. Retired Professor of English at the University of Connecticut will present her thoughts on Kerouac’s Bay Area encounter with Buddhism and poet Gary Snyder. Dr. Charters is the author of the first published biography of Jack Kerouac.

In 1830, Lowell’s school committee faced a difficult decision in light of the growing nativist and common school movements in the United States - whether to establish equity in public education as their community became more culturally diverse. They voted to spend $50 per year to establish an Irish-only school in the Acre, while the remaining parts of town were divided into district schools. Following a viewing of the Tsongas Industrial History Center’s new short film about this historic debate, “A School for Kids Like Me,” historian Gray Fitzsimons will discuss the factors that shaped Lowell’s early school system, including the segregation of Irish students. UMass Lowell professor Patricia Fontaine will provide insight on the city’s current actions to provide a holistic, inclusive education for immigrant students. RSVP by email to: TIHC@UML.edu.

An intimate portrait of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a controversial thinker, and Susan B. Anthony, an indefatigable organizer, whose legendary friendship fueled and sustained the nineteenth-century fight for women’s rights. They waged this fight despite entrenched opposition, daunting conditions, scandalous entanglements, and betrayal by their allies. Their friendship lasted fifty-one years, and, as Susan once wrote they were “busy through every one of them stirring up the world to recognize the rights of women.” They didn’t always agree, and, at times, they were at odds. Nevertheless, Elizabeth once wrote, “Nothing that Susan could say or do could break my friendship with her and I know nothing could uproot her affection for me.”

In partnership with the Lowell Film Collaborative, come and enjoy an eclectic, touching film about Hummus. Secret recipes, a Guinness World Record and the power of Hummus to bring Muslims, Christians and Jews together - in the Middle East, America and around the world. This deliciously smart and funny film takes us around Israel and Lebanon. From Suheila, a single Muslim woman known for her legendary hummus and her obsessively clean shop, to Jalil, a Christian Arab hipster in Ramle who runs his father’s hummus joint, to Eliyahu, a born-again Orthodox Jew who runs a hummus restaurant next to a gas station, the film revels in the joys of hummus and the way it can bring people together. Who’s Hungry?