Michael Santorelli

Sean Conway

FYSH

29 October 2013

On the Road

Lots of discussion this year has gone into what is arguably the best and worst thing to come out of Lowell in the past century. Jack Kerouac is known for idealizing the  ideals of the beat movement of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Lots of people were shocked by the radicalism in his writing, and his life embodied these radical ideas. At the time, the young generation was taking on new heights of life, from jazz music, to all kinds of new drugs and sexual experimentation. Being a native of the city of Lowell, Kerouac was exiled for a long time even after his death. People found it hard to cope with the idea that a native from Lowell was at the helm of a radical movement of young people that was frowned upon by the older generation. This was the general consensus throughout Kerouac’s writing career and for a long period of time after his death. The city of Lowell wasn’t always so proud of the Jack Kerouac that was seen by the public. Towards the end of his career, his alcoholism and drug addiction was all too clear in the public eye. Clearly an unhappy man and not coping with fame well, Kerouac spiraled into depression until he died of liver failure at the young age of 47. 

Today things are much different. With the city of Lowell in the midst of another miniature revolution, it’s people have been more willing to accept the history and the accomplishments of one Jack Kerouac. There is even an annual festival in the city, honoring the good that Kerouac put out during his writing career. They have learned to look beyond this man’s own negatives to appreciate what he has brought to the world as a culture. The city itself needs to be treated in a similar fashion. While in recent years, Lowell has had quite a bad reputation, there is a lot of history in this city, and still today there is a lot of potential. People are finally waking up and beginning to realize this. 

This past summer, a film directed by Walter Salles paid tribute to the story told by Kerouac in what is probably his most famous novel, On the Road. The movie parallels the book, following Kerouac and his friends on their journey by road across the country in search of adventure. What they find is nothing short of a spectacular story. Young, drug and alcohol crazed radical people out in search of a larger meaning of life. This story embodied the beat movement of the mid century, from the constant intoxicated way of life, traveling cross country with no money, no place to stay, and a great sense of adventure. 

The movie, from what I could personally tell, was a great representation of the time period, being historically accurate in most cases. The acting was excellent, with a vivid characterization of the main roles of the story. It really is an experience to see what the young beat generation of the time experienced living life in big cities across the country. The lifestyle was anything but glorious, where they would often thumb for rides and sleep anywhere they could catch a couch or a floor to pass out on. What looks to be the experience of a lifetime also contains a sense of incompleteness. Along with the search for a larger meaning of life also comes a sense of yearning for more. Somehow, the feeling comes across that that yearning is still not satisfied at the end of the movie. 

Riverhawk Nation

Michael Santorelli

Sean Conway

FYSH

22 October 2013

Riverhawk Nation

There is no doubt in my mind, I’m a huge sports fan. I rep Boston to the death of me, and there really isn’t a sport out there I wouldn’t go see. For as long as I can remember, my favorite pastime was going to watch Red Sox games with my dad. Growing up I played soccer, baseball, basketball, and ran track. My mom would tell you that I always spent too much of my paychecks in high school on sporting events. I had mini season ticket plans for the Celtics and the Red Sox during my junior year in high school. You could call it a healthy addiction. Find me glued to the television every Sunday cheering on the Patriots and whoever is beating the Jets and the Giants. Any way you cut it, I’m quite the sports fan.

Originally, when I was applying to colleges, I was looking to go to some big name Universities, out of state, with big name programs. Outside of the obvious engineering programs, I was looking for an interesting school community, a big campus, in a big city. Part of that school community I was looking for was definitely a fun sports program, maybe a ranked football team, or a Final Four contending basketball team. Evidently, I didn’t end up with that, but what I did end up with is not a bad alternative at all. What I ended up with was a Frozen Four contending hockey team, a team that held the number one seat in the nation in college hockey. I also got a very young, upcoming D1 sports program. UMass Lowell’s athletic programs are off to a start with their first year in the division 1 America East Conference. I have the chance to see some of my favorite sports played at the division 1 college level. 

The past few weeks have just been packed full of great campus sporting events to attend. I’ve been to every hockey home game so far, and I plan on keeping that streak alive all season. Hockey might be my favorite sport to watch live, full of excitement and energy. There’s no better place than the Tsongas Center either to watch such an event. The student section is loud and rowdy, exactly how a college game should be. Tsongas is also home to many concerts and expos during the year. We are lucky to have such a nice facility on campus at our disposal. My other favorite sport to watch is volleyball. I guess this came from my high school years because my high school’s girls team went undefeated two years in a row, winning the league three out of four of my high school years. I had some of my best friends on the team, and every home game was always a big time school event. Everyone went to support, and I took a huge liking to the fun of the game as well. 

I’m proud to be a part of Riverhawk Nation. Now that I’ve gotten accustomed to the campus life, living in dorms, and going to classes. I’ve taken a liking to this campus community in which I am a part of. All of us are in the same boat when it comes to classes and exams among other things. But the best part about living in this community is being a part of such a fun campus. There’s always events going on to be a part of, from playing intramurals to going to watch the hockey games as an entire school. I’m one proud super fan. 

Boston and Maine

MIchael Santorelli

Sean Conway

FYSH

15 October 2013

Halfway from Boston to Maine

This week I found it appropriate to discuss one of the questions from the beginning of the semester. The question is about the Boston and Maine Railroad Locomotive that sits in downtown Lowell along Dutton Street. This is appropriate this week because this past weekend was family weekend here on campus at UMass Lowell, and I played tour guide on Saturday to show off what I have learned about this city so far. I have only been here a little over a month, so the whole tour guide position title was used very loosely. 

First I took my cousin around campus for his first unofficial campus tour. I showed him all my favorite places on North and East campus. I showed him what eating  at Fox Hall was like. I took him to the Campus Recreation Center, showed him the new construction projects, and showed off my newly cleaned dorm. I’m very proud of the campus I’m a part of, it’s already nice as it is, and the future is even brighter. 

Walking downtown, I showed everyone my favorite place on earth, Wings Over Lowell. We walked into a few shops downtown, and took a break to walk to Lowell Beer Works for lunch. I’m originally from the South Shore, and we have a Beer Works in Hingham which is actually very high on my list of favorite places to eat. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking and the food has always been quite good. Anyway, continuing downtown, my cousin Jake was interested in the history and the artsiness of Lowell. I’m not even sure the word “artsiness” is a word, but it didn’t trip my spell check so I’m going with it. Jake asked me about the Boston and Maine Railroad Locomotive downtown, and I pulled out the best story I could muster up. Turns out, I made up the story, but learning about it now is in fact a very good story. The Locomotive would’ve originally shuttled passengers along the historic Boston and Maine Railway for upwards of fourty years. After that, a quarry company in Westford purchased this particular locomotive and put if to use until 1993 when it was restored by the Lowell National Park Service and The Boston and Maine Historical Society. That brings it to where it sits today, proudly along Dutton street on it’s own little piece of the Boston and Maine Railroad. 

Along another theme, this past weekend was also the Jack Kerouac Festival in Lowell. I actually find the story of Jack Kerouac to be very interesting. I think the story is actually parallel of the story of the city itself. Jack Kerouac’s career took off quickly, bringing fame and prosperity to him, with his amazing creations of art that people cherished. The city of Lowell started in the same manor, a mill town that exploded into one of the largest and most productive cities in New England for it’s production of textiles. Not only did people flood to the city, but economy blessed the city for many years. However, success also became the city’s downfall. While the Industrial Revolution died off, so did the economic boom in Lowell, the jobs, and the city’s reputation went along with it. The city has had a rather bad reputation in recent history. Jack Kerouac’s career paralleled that track. His prosperity was ultimately his downfall. He turned to alcoholism, and didn’t handle the fame well. He was known to show up drunken in public, and his drug problem was no secret either. His reputation was trashed in the public eye, and overshadowed the great work he had once created. Now that the city of Lowell is on it’s own sort of enlightenment again, it’s becoming clear that Jack Kerouac’s history with the city is finally being accepted. The city is on the upswing, people are trickling back, businesses are popping up in the remnants of old mills, and a new sense of culture is coming back. With this, the Jack Kerouac festival celebrates the life of a man who was once the shame of the city of Lowell. Now they look favorably on his work, his interesting personal story, and the impact on the history of Lowell.  

Lowell Boott Cotton Museum

Michael Santorelli

Sean Conway

FYSH 

8 October 2013

Lowell Boott Cotton Museum

Continuing along the quest to learn more about the history of this city, this past week’s excursion took us downtown once again. There is so much to be found downtown, and actually, we found out a lot about Lowell just by walking through the streets one Saturday afternoon. Many of the buildings have been there over a hundred years. Just up the street from our Tsongas Center, the Boott Cotton Museum stands to preserve the history of Lowell by showing visitors exactly how one of the biggest mills in Lowell functioned during the Industrial Revolution. 

Walking inside the museum, the first eye catching thing I noticed was a large scale replica of the city of Lowell. Exploring this interactive map, buildings light up, and you can learn about the different buildings you might not have otherwise known had that much historical significance. Going back to the National Park Visitor’s Center, I can recall that through some of the exhibits there, Lowell is littered with buildings that each tell a different story. In particular, the areas of town where Jack Kerouac left his mark. The Boott Museu, is one of the best representations of what Lowell was all about. 

The coolest part of the museum is the whole floor that shows how a fully functional mill works. The sound of looms working overtime really brings the visitors back in time, putting them in the shoes of the thousands of mill girls who would’ve worked there over one hundred years ago. Even if not every loom was online at the time, the sound was unbelievable, it was the one piece of that mill that astonished me the most. Then touring the living quarters of some of the working girls was also quite impressive. Accommodations were anything but adequate. In their free time, the mill girls might have gone shopping downtown. Not that they had much free time, considering the girls would be worked fourteen hours each day, five and a half days each week. Not only did you get a very accurate view of what a real mill would have looked like in the middle of the nineteenth century, but it also carries a sense of nostalgia with it as well. 

It really makes you think. You look back over the history of this great city and realize where everything began to fall into place. You can see how the city progressed, how the economic boom put Lowell on the map. Then you can also see how the mill industry collapsed. How business fled the city, and how for quite a while, it became a rather desolate city that was almost frowned upon on the north shore of Massachusetts. Somewhere intwined in this history, the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, formerly the Lowell Normal School, took the city by storm. That would bring us to the present day, where UMass Lowell is quickly emerging as one of the best public universities in the state and in the nation. Leading the world in scientific research and producing students that are ready for the modern world. The city itself is in the middle of its own renaissance. The artist community is coming alive, producing plays, concerts, and art shows. There are festivals to celebrate the history of Lowell. There is a returning sense of hometown pride that hasn’t been here for years. What a fun time it is to live in the city of Lowell.  

God of Carnage

Michael Santorelli

Sean Conway

FYSH

1 October 2013


This past Thursday evening, the Merrimack Repertory Theater graciously opened their doors to a couple hundred UMass Lowell Honors students for a free show of their most recent production, God of Carnage. Venturing downtown on a Thursday evening with some friends was actually very enjoyable. The evening was more like a night out rather than a required excursion for a college course.  Meeting up with some friends, we opted to drive downtown rather than make the roughly twenty minute walk from East Campus. The lazy way is always the best way to go. Anyway, we got a small bite to eat downtown before we walked down the street to the theater. It’s a really nice theater, and it was a lot larger inside than I thought it was going to be. From the outside it doesn’t look that big, and they actually have a really nice refreshment bar and very pleasant ushering staff.  The theater was beautiful inside. I always used to love going to small performances around my hometown, with family and friends. I’ve always been into theater. My parents and I have seen shows in from community theater, to Boston, to Broadway. Just this past spring, I saw Chicago on Broadway with the Senior Class on our class trip. So I personally have a great appreciation for theater and was actually quite excited to see this show here in Lowell.  The show itself actually topped my expectations. It was one of the better community theater performances I’ve seen. The actors had me laughing from start to finish, and the story behind it was just catchy. I like the idea of culture returning to Lowell. It’s clear to see there is a great interest in such arts all over the city. It’s evident from campus to downtown. If arts are becoming the next big thing in Lowell, it’s definitely something for the city to show pride in, because from what I’ve seen, the future in arts in this city is promising. I haven’t gone on an excursion downtown that I didn’t enjoy yet.  All the talk in the past about Lowell being nothing more than a run down ruins of the Industrial Revolutions is past. I think that Lowell is on the upswing. That may just be words from an optimist who has only lived here one month, but I can see it. Personally, I may be used to the bad image a city might get, but I’m capable of seeing the bright side. There is a lot for this city to be proud of. UMass Lowell is growing at an incredible rate. Downtown is absolutely beautiful, there’s so much to do. I’d love to be able to check everything out, and given enough time here on campus I’m sure I will be able to get the most out of this great city.  Exactly one month ago yesterday was move in day. Time has already flown by. I have made friends who make me feel like I’ve known them my entire life. I’ve really settled in well to the groove of college life. I’ve gotten used to cafeteria food and community bathrooms. I’ve handled homework and still maintained a social life. I’ve grown fond of the city of Lowell and all it has offered me so far. I cannot wait to see what the future brings for myself here on this campus and this campus here for the city. I hope that I grow alongside this growing school. I intend on being a part of the growing school community. I also hope to see the school continue to be an important part of this city. I definitely can’t wait to see what the future holds. 

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