LTI – first year memories – WIP – 7-1-14
Bob was repairing carburetors, solenoids, brakes, pistons, axles, transmissions
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Me:
simple engines
water evaporating form a wet floor
radio reception, RC tuning circuits
evaporative cooling
hunting bows
repairing my Schwinn bike, spokes, brakes and alignment
Lionel train set, sparks,
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LTI environment – stark yellow-brown brick, Cumnock Hall, Merrimack River right along the VFW highway
Whom did I know there from before?
Professors: Mr. Hardy for differential calculus
Dr XXX for inorganic chemistry – sophomore stuff
Mr. Harrison for English literature and composition
Mr. XXX for Mechanical drawing – tedious details, three dimensional views, angles and degrees
Physics: Sears and Zemansky
Chemistry: Linus Pauling
Cultural environment: songs, movie stars, Russians, ROTC, drills and wars, technology
Personal Hopes
I hoped to find a good-paying job through these years at LTI – something that might take me out of the dead end world of a former, important, industrial center dotted with ethnic neighborhoods of Greeks, Franco-Americans, Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish, Irish melee of mutually segregated, and suspicious, second-generation, former immagrants – folks with strong backs and frightened backgrounds ready and willing to do just about anything for a buck.
My interest in basic mechanical concepts such as the conservation of angular momentum – one only needs a spinning piano bench, and willing subject capable of extending or withdrawing her arms in the rotation ???
Baseball bat – must hit the ball near the center of mass of that baton to impart maximum kinetic energy to the baseball
A hydraulic press where w1 x h1 equals w2 x h2 – mechanical advantage
Guys from NH, Groton ?, veterans, NY, Buenos Aires, pretty gals in the chemistry department, 13 women with 500 students total.
Me: socially awkward, shy, timid, confused, scared, inadequate, quiet but educationally involved, Was I good enough to be facing competition from all of New England plus Ny? My clothes were clean but not a la mode. I walked everywhere. my lunches ere prepared at home with 50 cent a week for milk from the cafeteria. Consciously, I made no waves passing among and between other more socially adept students unnoticed and part of the background. My disposition was usually pleasant but I felt torn inside for being a lowly, impoverished, Lowell untouchable. if I was to make a mark at LTI, it certainly was not because of quiet, self-confidence and social grace. It would take some time before I gained even a modicum of self respect in that brave and strange new world of future technologists. In a sense, I was more prepared for studies in the classics, Latin, Greek plus the philosophical thoughts of Plato, Euclid, Euripides, Cicero and Julius Caesar than a career in engineering and physical measurements.
Studies: almost every waking hour throughout the entire week – always afraid to get poor grades (less than a 3.0 on a 4.0 scale) and thus lose my scholarship of free tuition and text books.
Then, of course, there was the constant threat of being drafted into the Army.
Love interests: Jacqueline Ducharme from Tynnsboro was usually on my mind although that was a hopeless cause. She was soon to be married to a military guy from down South. Dreams, fantasies, empty hopes filled my infantile brain with equally impossible scenarios. Impossible love was better than no romance at all, and the situation was perfect since I had no spending money, no car and, generally felt rather hopeless except for vague possibly of getting away from Lowell in the years to come. Yes, it was hopeless, but, then, much of intellectual and economic life in Centralville was equally hopeless. I had found the perfect fit!
Reflections on my Household
American dream – a house, a good job, work hard and get your reward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Call the Darkness Light
“[2]
The American Dream is also discussed in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman; the play’s protagonist, Willy, is on a quest for the American Dream. In 1949 Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman, in which the American Dream is a fruitless pursuit.
Similarly, in 1971 Hunter S. Thompson depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey Into the Heart of the American Dream a dark psychedelic reflection of the concept—successfully illustrated only in wasted pop-culture excess.[37]
Lowell Experiment
http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/lowell-experiment
In the early nineteenth century, Lowell, Massachusetts, was widely studied and emulated as a model for capitalist industrial development. One of the first cities in the United States to experience the ravages of deindustrialization, it was also among the first places in the world to turn to its own industrial and ethnic history as a tool for reinventing itself in the emerging postindustrial economy. The Lowell Experiment explores how history and culture have been used to remake Lowell and how historians have played a crucial yet ambiguous role in that process. – See more at: http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/lowell-experiment#sthash.WdKCofi2.dpuf
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Lowell Girls
The Lowell Girls are girls who worked on the mills in the 18th century Industrial Revolution. They lived in boarding homes that were often crowded and had little privacy, but was still nice. Most Lowell Girls worked to help pay their brothers for education.
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Yes, sometime around or after 1975
Lowell Tech actually merged with Lowell State College about 1975 and became the University of Lowell. Years later it became the University of Massachusetts at Lowell or U-Mass Lowell.
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Francis Cabot Lowell developed the first textile mill, combining the spinning and weaving of cotton into one operation.
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Lowell: The Experiment on the Merrimack
http://www.uml.edu/docs/Overview_tcm18-88388.pdf
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Lowell: A Case Study
http://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/cur/Baker_00/baker_1800_soc/baker_ko_ca_mo_p4/lowell__a_case_study.htm
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The Lowell Offering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Offering
The Lowell Offering
http://library.uml.edu/clh/offering.htm
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Me at 18
More philosophical than engineer
Voltaire
The American dream; land of opportunity, hope, success, a house in the country,
Truth, justice and the American Way
A good job, a career, we never spoke of a career back then
Getting out of poverty and hopelessness
Me – emotionally green, filled with unreasonable hope, lost, uncertain, there might be safety in the Army: to have a goal and a purpose even if you don’t believe in it – too much horseshit, all focused on impossible goals, spermal fluids of potential love leading to the entrapment of impossible responsibilities – all crap but we need crap to believe in so that we can bravely face the crap of tomorrow.
Girls about the big city – all very young, beautiful, bountiful and fun to be around – Warning: If all brides are beautiful, where do all the sad, tired and frazzled housewives come from?
Uncle Albert and Aunt Milley: eight children and decades of loneliness and despair to consider and no car to drive in
Aunt Lida and Uncle Georges: five children, a corner lunch cart as work and a third rate apartment to enjoy and live in plus and no car to drive in
Aunt Florence and Uncle Gerry: no children, a neat apartment in a nicer neighborhood all decorated with style including knick-knacks, but with a business truck to drive in.
Aunt Antoinette and Uncle Lucien, the colonel: two university-educated children, a retirement house in state College, PA, and a neat car to drive in.
Why are some people solidly middle-class in their finances with extra money for vacations and nice clothes while all my Lowell relatives were living hand-to-mouth, and also with dead-end jobs? How could they continue year after year hoping that some day “their ship would come in”- a favorite expression heard around the wooden kitchen table?
I could not understand the socio-economic milieu that surrounded me with unanswered questions. All these Lowell people worked hard for years while raising large families – except for Florence and Gerry – and, yet, they were no closer to the American dream than when they started as enthusiastic, young adults.
Who had lied to them then and who was lying to us, now? Why were my relatives so very naive as to believe beautiful stories about promised rewards? How had they all managed to fail in ever getting anywhere when dollars and cents were the measures of success?
These were issues that bothered me as a naive, innocent and credulous young man of eighteen. How does one avoid the major pitfalls when everyone around you is making due with measly crumbs instead of satisfying cookies?
These were the same existential issues that were angrily brewing in the capital cities of Europe after the crumbling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Weimar Republic plus the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
World Events
Dr. Christian Barnard in South Africa –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Barnard
http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ba-Be/Barnard-Christiaan.html
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artificial heart – big deal
http://www.discoveriesinmedicine.com/Apg-Ban/Artificial-Heart.html
