22 Jun Lively Livin’ in Lowell

“So…Dani…what is it that you do?”, my friend asked me last night when we met up at my favorite downtown cafe for Spring Alive smoothies. “Well. Umm. A little bit of everything, I guess…” I said, as the guys next to us played 80s pop on their Iphones and painted psychedelic mandalas on portable canvases. It started with training when I: 1. rode the trolley to the office 2. armored up with a safety hat and googles to power plant sites 3. toured public art and historical monuments as well as local museums 4.put out a fire 5.saw one of Thomas Edison’s original phonographs in the conservation lab 6. took a boat ride through the historic canal system 7. practiced rescuing someone on the off chance he/she falls into the historic canal system 8. explored the city, mills, and canal/river walkways 9. met the people who made the candles for Pirates of the Caribbean 10. learned how to operate a 1920s power loom, and safely might I add Then this week, my first official week, I attended community outreach meetings, met with the festival leaders, learned how to use a cash register, staffed the museum, researched the city and its history at our NPS library, and starred alongside industrial revolutionary, Kirk Boott, in an NPS Oscar-worthy video  coming soon…. to our Facebook page. Safe to say that Lowell is keeping things really interesting and explaining “what I do” might take me a minute or two. Check out some pics from last week:

Lower Locks Gatehouse

Inside Swamp Locks Gatehouse

View from canal walkway

Colleague at the ENEL power plant

Whistler House Museum of Art studio space

Granite spool sculpture by Robert Cumming