7/21. Women At Work

(Wednesday, 7/21)

Women At Work
Lowell, Ma.

   
We landed at Boston's Logan Airport in the early AM and booked into the Hilton that is at the airport. The Hilton shuttle runs every 15 minutes and a short 5 minute ride gets you to the front door of the Hilton. Check-in is easy to get to from the domestic terminal. The rooms are comfortable  and the quick breakfast ($25 for two with a roll, coffee and juice and granola) is well priced for Boston.


 I connected to the internet over the ATT 3G network in the hotel, but skipped using the Hilton WiFi, which at $14/day is outrageous.

  

Morning. We were up and about by 9:30 and were riding the Hilton shuttle to Budget to rent a car. We set up the Garmin GPS for Marlborough with a stop in Lowell. It's 17 miles to Lowell -  provided that the Garmin doesn't get us lost. 
   
Speaking of lost, I had early doubts about the GPS when the route took us into the Ted Williams tunnel (I-90) under Boston Harbor and immediately dumped us into downtown Boston, well known for losing travelers, but the GPS was only routing us around an uncompleted segment of the multi-billion dollar 'Big Dig'. Only a GPS could figure out a good route through Boston. On my own I'd rather head North from the airport and avoid Boston altogether.
   
Lowell became a mill town because of its location near a river that could be harnessed to power the machinery of the industrial revolution. The web site of the town of Lowell credits President Thomas Jefferson with the plan for factory towns that combine efficient mills with clean workers' living accommodations to avoid the squalor of England's mill towns. It was the height of England's Industrial Revolution and  the president knew that America must build factories if the young country was ever to become economically independent of Europe.

Entrance to Boott Mill Museum

   
Today we know that the workers played an important role in the industrial revolution. Lowell recognized this fact when it dedicated "Homage to Women" in the Market Mills Park near the NPS (Lowell is the only NP in an urban setting) Visitor Center. The park also has a major exhibit of a boarding house where mill workers (mostly young farm girls at first, later mostly immigrants) lived while they worked in the mills.

   

Lowell's web page continues: The Boston Manufacturing Company's search for a site with abundant water for powering its textile mills. In 1821 mill executives were attracted by the potential of the 34-foot drop of the Pawtucket Falls at the confluence of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The company agent Kirk Boott, established a mill for cotton production and calico printing and called the new enterprise the Merrimack Manufacturing Company.

Baxter Loom, 1929,
Power Take-off and Shuttle

   
The Boott Mill, now part of the National Park, has been restored and is now a museum and education center. Today, however, we began our tour of Lowell at Market Mills Visitor Center (Market Mills is the former Bigelow Carpets), which is located in another of the city's original textile mills.  Many of the historical buildings of Lowell are in remarkably good shape because they were strongly built to withstand the fierce shaking of the weaving machines.

   

Lunch in Lowell was soup and half sandwich at Quick Stop, which was recommended by NPS employee in the Visitor Center. The soup was great and the sandwich tasty, but we couldn't tell the difference between tuna salad and chicken salad.
   
We returned to the Visitor Center to watch a 20 minute show, "Lowell: The Industrial Revelation", which describes the growth and decline of the textile industry. We learned that Henry Cabot Lowell, namesake of the city, went to England to steal designs for steam powered weaving and spinning machines. He returned, formed a corporation and began searching for a location for a mill. The Pawtucket Falls caught his eye and soon construction began. As shops and residences grew around the mill site it became the town of Lowell.

   

After WWII the mills shut down because The work moved to cheeper, better mills in the South. Turns out that the owners spent all the mill pofits and failed to modernize the machinery so they lost their competitive advantage.  There was a long period of decline, but the buildings survived in good shape to form the base of modern Lowell, which is a tourist and technology center.

   

A note on Lowell: this may be the world capital for jaywalkers. At one corner we were waiting along with a man in an electric wheel chair when a jaywalker shot past us into the traffic forcing the cars to stop. The man in the wheel chair decided that was a good idea and after a short wait he launched himself into the traffic, which stopped again. We watched and when a woman leading a small child 'took the plunge' we decided to go ourselves.

   

We turned to the GPS to get out of Lowell and headed for Marlborough with no problems, arriving about 4PM. It was hot in Lowell, 94F, but cooler in Marlborough. 
   
We ate fresh corn bought on the way home from a farmer's road-side stand. Yummy. We saw on TV that a tornado and storm had passed through the upper part of NH. Here, we got some lightning, but no rain. 

   
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7/20. SFO to BOS, Delayed

(Tuesday, 7/20)  
  

Empty gate and tarmac
waiting for our aircraft to arrive. 

   

When we arrived at SFO we were 3 hours early for our 1:45 flight, and we saw "flight delayed" on the United announcement screen. The new flight time was estimated to be 3:45 so we were 5 hours early and had only the empty gate and tarmac to look at. Oh well, that's travel these days. 
   
The good news was that our plane eventually did arrive at SFO and we boarded to begin the flight to BOS; we arrived late (1 AM), just happy to be there.
      
   
Let me introduce this new blog by describing the plan for this year's trip to Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. The trip, of course, starts and ends with the flight from SFO to BOS. We did this last year and only the Boston stay entered my blog. This year the airport Hilton is our only stop in Boston; next day we head for Marlborough via Lowell MA. The vacation is to be recorded on my iPad, which I am bringing in place of my MacBook portable. 

View of Boston from
Hilton Hotel, Logan Airport.  

   
Like many, I'm very pleased with the iPad as a travel computer. On the flight I read an electronic novel, eBook, using the iBook app reader software without major eyestrain or losing my place. Overall, it was a pleasant reading experience during the flight and while waiting for United to locate us a functioning airplane. The features of the reader that I liked the most were the illumination control, the highlighting feature, and the full-text search.
  
Taking notes with the iPad Note application is a challenge; the 'virtual' keyboard takes some getting used to. I've found that two fingers and a thumb (for tapping the space bar) is the most accurate way for me to type. I've been a touch typist for more than 50 years, but I'm finding that the return to two-finger mode is easy. Why not use more fingers? The easy answer is that I can't seem to avoid dragging the extra fingers across the virtual keyboard creating interesting garble, but no useful text.
  
This year the town of Lowell, home of the American textile industry, will be the first city we visit after Boston. Last year Lowell was the last city visited. We are returning to spend more time in the historical center. Last year we stopped briefly on the way to catch our return flight from BOS to SFO. I remember that visit because I forgot to put gas in the rental car- causing us much stress as we entered the tunnel on the final few miles to the airport with an empty tank. We didn't run out of gas, but the rental car charge for a full tank was an awesome $125.


The next blog entry looks at the textile mills of Lowell (we'll be sure to have a full tank of gas).


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