The Thorndike Factory Outlet: Lowell's Historic Gateway!
(It's near the train station)

The Old Worthen Tavern, haunt of Jack Kerouac and (apocryphally) where Edgar Allen Poe wrote "The Raven"

The tree outside the house in which I grew up

Same view, but slightly to the left, three hours later

The view from the second floor, facing southwest

The Francis Gatehouse and locks, est. 1850, on the Pawtucket Canal

The Pawtucket Canal again, looking north to the Merrimack River

The reflection of the Francis Gatehouse in the canal, what my father referred to as "Die Water" when I was three

The Francis Gate, a several-ton construction of Burnettized wood, dropped in the canal four times since 1852 to save Lowell from flooding. It has been dropped twice in the last five years, and twice over the previous 150.

Another northern view of the Pawtucket

The Stations of the Cross, in French, outside the Franco-American orphanage. This grotto figured prominently in several of Jack Kerouac's Lowell books, including "Visions of Gerard" (about his late older brother, who died in childhood) and "Dr. Sax", a surreal, creepy, stream of consciousness noir sketch of the city.

The Catholics aren't interested in a non-suffering Jesus

The playground beyond the orphanage, and the little Infant of Prague

The Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River. It is because of this 32-foot drop, and the waterpower harnessed thereby for the operation of textile looms via the photographic memory of Francis Cabot Lowell, that my ancestors came to the city that bears his name.

F.C. Lowell went on a fact-finding trip to cotton towns in England, where he memorized the specs of the looms that would soon fill the city. I don't think they called it industrial espionage then.

The Northern Canal branches off from the Merrimack at the Pawtucket Gatehouse. This is the canal I want named after me when I do something worthwhile.

The Northern Canal, facing east. To the right, beyond the wall, is the Franco-American Grotto and Orphanage.

A non-representative statue of my mick canal-digging forebears

City Hall beyond the trees. The yellow building is the Club Diner, where I always bump my head. The last time I visited the waitress had something nice to say to every customer but me. I don't have my accent anymore.

Me and Uncle Frank at his birthday party. Despite my experience at the Club Diner, he still talked to me.