River Muse Responses

For our Honors Seminar class we had to read a few short excerpts and respond to them. The first one was a short story called Collecting by David Daniel. The second was Cut from American Cloth by Paul Marion. The last was The Mascot by Chaz Scoggins. All these short stories represent Lowell. In the foreword of this collection of stories the author says that Lowell can be described in two words: bricks and books. Bricks for the the red bricks of the Lowell mills, and books for Lowell avid Literary works and authors such as Jack Kerouac.
The first short story by David Daniel was my favorite of the three excerpts. In Collecting an unemployed man, Ed Oliver, is the main character. He has too much pride in himself to go to the unemployment office and register for it. So, after he drops his two daughters off at school, he goes to a local bar. At this bar he is always hoping and listening for any job opportunities that might pop up. One night, instead of going straight home after he finished with his time at the bar, he saw a man on the corner selling drugs. He attacked the man and robbed him to make away with $782. He lied to his wife about where he got the money, and tried to be as stingy as possible with it. He ended up wasting the last of it on alcohol. When he thought another job opportunity would open up, he'd prepare and be let down. After this happened, he went to rob a another drug dealer in Boston, but he failed. After that failed attempt he realized that his life was miserable. He went to his wife and surrounded his pride. He went to sign up for unemployment. This story tells the misery of some people in Lowell, and how it has rough parts.
The next story Cut From American Cloth basically describes the influential people who hailed from Lowell or spent some time in Lowell. Marion talks about how people such as Congresswoman Edith Rogers lived in Lowell, married into a prestigious industry family in Lowell, and served the longest uninterrupted term in congress for a woman until this day. He goes on about people like this who made Lowell a place on the map in Massachusetts like Tsongas who had a red phone for Lowell in his office in Washington D.C. He makes reference to famous figures like Jack Kerouac to symbolize how Lowell can be described by bricks and books. The bricks are symbolic because of industry and the mills, while books are symbolic because of Kerouac and other powerful figures who wrote about Lowell in their books.
The last excerpt called The Mascot starts with the introduction of Lowell's baseball history. Scoggins talked about how Lowell had the chance to be part of the Major League's when it was first starting but they declined, because they didn't believe that it would survive. Obviously, they were wrong. He then talks about a story about a young boy, George Diggins, who at the age of 10 years old was the youngest professional baseball player in the sports history. He played for the Concord Marines, when they didn't have enough subs to sustain the game, and since he was the mascot their coach put him in.  However he wasn't signed to a contract at this point, but after his three innings debut , he was signed as a publicity thing. This story exemplifies Lowell's background in baseball.
The collection of stories called River Muse shows the history of Lowell, and gives examples to support their claims. In the foreword, the author says that Lowell can be described by bricks and books. He exemplified that by these three articles.