HERITAGE OF PAWTUCKET

 As the Pawtucket Preservation society has re-named itself as the Pawtucket Heritage Society I am inspired to think about what Pawtucket Heritage might include.

1. Beautification--

 this can mean many things.  Natural beauty is gained by planting blossoming trees along the streets.  Begin at the entrances to the city : Newport Avenue, Main Street, Prospect Street and Broadway and Pawtucket Ave should be the first  streets to be planted.

Beauty could be increased in the neighborhoods. So many of the little  local parks and playgrounds have been  decreased in size or built over entirely. One good example of this would be  what was once Novelty Park in Pawtucket, There are other examples. Another thing would be to identify any still existing local space that is open in Pawtucket. Concentrate on the area that borders the Blackstone River especially around the Division St Bridge.

Another effort could center around improving neighborhoods. With an emphasis on  improving house exteriors and yards and gardens. There could be a series of contests with  prizes .

2. Commemoration  

This would include and require a  serious historical understanding of how Pawtucket was settled and built. I would like to see  Neighborhood History  investigations that would enable us to characterize and identify the key Neighborhoods and also to  discover symbolic  house types and styles that are connected to each neighborhoods.  I am thinking of  Neighborhoods like Fairlawn and Woodlawn and Darlington  and Quality Hill. Create a map of the neighborhoods and  find a style for each. This would allow for distinctive and different items like signage and  street lights etc. Don't forget often forgotten neighborhoods like Pinecrest and Bishop's Bend.

3 Recognition and Appreciation of the Demographics of Pawtucket

There has been an increase of  Hispanic residents in Pawtucket. There should be some  recognition and appreciation of this. Use of Spanish language and Hispanic restaurants .Learn more of the style of the countries of origin like Colombia and Guatemala.

Also celebrate the people who have improved and  gained fame from Pawtucket.

I am thinking of founders like Joseph Jenks, more about his foundry and also Samuel Slater. What about the Dunnells and millionaires like Joseph Ott? But what about those who served in the Revolution from Pawtucket and those in the Civil War.  Oak Grove Cemetery has many graves that date from the Civil war era and so does the Mineral Spring Ave Cemetery.  Do some historical research into these figures. Include artistic figures.  writers like poet Galway Kinnell. Make it a high school project and give prizes to the best historical figure essays written. Give scholarships.

4.     Place greater emphasis on  education 

Can we induce an institution of higher ed. to locate in Pawtucket? Perhaps Salve Regina  could open a program here. Education should be improved as the school buildings themselves are improved.  This could be a 20 year project. Also schools should encourage the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. Need more stress on history and the living history that remains of Pawtucket's past.

 5.Preserve what we do still have.

Think again about preserving Memorial Hospital. So much of Pawtucket was lost in the building of Route 95. And perhaps create something exotic like a Chinese  Garden and Tea room on the Apex and riverside sites.   Should make a serious inventory of all mill buildings in Pawtucket and try to see how they could be used now. Lorraine Mills come to mind but there are other large complexes like Darlington Fabrics on Central Avenue and the   mills on the Riverfront near the YMCA  on the river that was once the Reserve Station.

MAKE PAWTUCKET A DESTINATION!

AMOR SINE MODO

The Sisters of Mercy who taught me  until I graduated from High school each had two secrets. 

 One was a hidden pocket  that often was made of a bright and patterned cotton and was the only thing that was not black or white in their habit.

  The second was  that they each had chosen a motto and it was inscribed inside the wedding ring that they wore as Brides of Christ.  My favorite teacher showed me hers . It was  three words in LATIN -- AMOR SINE MODO.

The Sister translated them as LOVE WITHOUT MEASURE.

   She said that was the motto of her life.  And  from my experience she lived it to the full. She as the most loving of people and she had a deep cheerfulness that brought forward even when I had done something wrong and was sent to the Principal's Office.  

This sister's love for her students, her  religious sisters and her Lord never faltered.

Everything that exists speaks of God, reflects that love energy of God. But God is more than anything that exists. God is always the more of our lives. We can’t contain God. If we try to control God, that’s not God; God always spills over our lives.

 So, God is our future. If we’re longing for something we desire, it’s that spilled-over love of our lives that’s pulling us onward, that’s luring us into something new. But we don’t trust this God [of implanted desire] often. We were pretty sure that God’s there, [and] we’re here, and we just need to keep [on] the straight and narrow path. . . .

What Francis [of Assisi] recognized is God is in every direction.

 That you might arrive, you might not arrive. You might arrive late; you might arrive early. It’s not the arrival that counts. It’s God! It’s not the direction that counts. It’s just being there, trusting that you will be going where God wants you. In other words, God is with us. Every step of the way is God-empowered love energy. But we tend to break down and start controlling things: “If I go this way, I’m going to get lost. Well, what if it’s wrong? What will happen to me?” Well, what will happen to you? Something will happen. But guess what? Something’s going to happen whether or not you go; that’s the whole point of life. So, it’s all about love.

So, it’s not like we’ve got this, “Here’s God; here’s us. God’s just waiting till we get our act together and then we’ll all be well.” That’s a boring God; that’s not even God. God is alive. God is love. Love is pulling us on to do new things and we need to trust the power of God in our lives to do new things. . . . We need to unwire ourselves to recognize that the God of Jesus Christ is, you might say, the power beneath our feet, the depth of the beauty of everything that exists, and the future into which we are moving. . . .

Every one of us is written in the heart of God from all eternity, born into the stars, born, you might say, into the galaxies, born on this earth in small forms, developing and coming to explicit form in our lives, given a name. It’s a fantastic mystery of love.

THOMAS ASHE DIES ON HUNGER STRIKE AFTER 1916 EASTER RISUNG

 

Colour lithographic print, featuring the original 1917 painting by Leo Whelan of Thomas Ashe, wearing a kilt, made of green material and playing the uileann pipes.Photo: National Library of Ireland, PD ASHE-TH (1) III

Thomas Ashe dies on hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail

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• thomas ashe
 
• hunger strike
 
• mountjoy prison
 
• mater misericordiae
 
• easter rising
 
• ashbourne
 
• dingle
 
• lusk

Dublin, 26 September 1917 - Thomas Ashe has died.

The 1916 rebel leader, who was serving a one year prison sentence in Mountjoy Jail, died at 10.30pm yesterday in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, where he had been admitted five hours earlier in a very weak condition. Diminished by hunger strike, the damage to his system was exacerbated by forcible feeding by the prison authorities. 

The deceased had been taken by cab to the hospital at 3pm yesterday and was attended to by the hospital staff, alongside the Sisters of Mercy and the hospital chaplain, Rev. T.J. Murray, who administered the last rites to Ashe before his death.

A police report outlining incendiary sentiments being expressed at Sinn Féin meetings in the days following Thomas Ashe's death. At Kells on 26 September, Frank Thornton said: 'Commandant Thomas Ashe was murdered in Mountjoy Prison. We intend to see this matter out. We want an Irish Republic in Ireland - we mean it and we will have it. Let England beweare. There are thousands of men in Ireland ready, not alone to go to gaol, but to take the rifle and do as they did in Easter Week.' Click image to enlarge. (Image: National Archives, UK)

Ashe’s death is certain to further inflame an already volatile political atmosphere. An Irish Independent editorial is adamant that should ‘more ill-feeling’ arise as a result of the shock death, ‘the authorities... will, to a great extent, be responsible’.

The ‘forcible method’ by which Mr Ashe had been fed was ‘revolting’, the editorial claimed:

‘It is obvious that long before his removal to hospital he was in a critical condition. So much is clear from the fact that he survived only five hours after his admission to the hospital.By their negligence in not removing him sooner to a place where he would have been humanely treated the authorities have incurred a grave responsibility.’

Life and work
The 35 year-old Ashe was the son of a farmer from Lispole in Dingle, Co. Kerry, but has been teaching in Lusk, Co. Dublin, for several years.

A member of the Coiste Gnótha of the Gaelic League, he was an accomplished piper and singer who possessed a deep knowledge of folk songs and airs.

He was also central to the development of Irish separatist politics in recent years. Most notably, he commanded the Volunteer forces at Ashbourne during the 1916 rebellion, for which he was tried by court-martial and condemned to death – a sentence that was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life.

The exemplary Thomas Ashe, Irish

 revolutionary who died for Ireland in this

 month in 1917

Thomas Ashe was only 35 when he died on September 25, 1917, after a so-called “botched” force-feeding while on hunger strike in Mountjoy prison.

Cahir O'Doherty

Reading "I Die in a Good Cause," originally published in 1970, is to connect with the great national narrative that once electrified Ashe himself. Author O Luing was born only a few months before Ashe's death in 1917, and his book reminds us of the enduring power of a legacy.

Thomas Ashe was only 32 when he died (after a so-called “botched” force-feeding while on hunger strike in Mountjoy prison). Ashe and his fellow revolutionary inmates had insisted they be categorized as political prisoners, and their hunger strikes had commenced in the hope of conceding the point.

But as so often in the story of the struggle for Irish independence, much of Ashe's legacy now comes to us from the lingering questions over who he would have been, what part he might have played in the wider national story, had his promise not been so cruelly cut short.

There is more than a hint of reverence in this clear-eyed but celebratory telling. As long as there is an Ireland it's a story that will not age and a book that will never be out of print.

Knowing the PEARL OF GREAT PRICE When you see it.

A POEM BY A WONDERFUL WELSH POET.

 The Bright Field

 
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
 
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
   —R.S. Thomas

This poem amazes me. I read it  several times a day. I find it so simple and so sublime.

This poet tells us that each moment hold treasures and wonders but we pass them by.

We don't recognize the pearls of our lives when they are right before us.

I think this is one of the gifts of old age. I find myself thinking of people, friends, lovers,  even relatives that I loved but did not cherish enough.

Surely my father was one of those people.  He left us when I was just nine years sold and I sought him. I looked for him .  I went to the tracks near  us  Narraganset Raceway  and Lincoln Downs in Lincoln, Rhode Island. I even went to two bars that I knew he frequented  to play the horses and play poker.  I asked for him and I go the same answer. 

"You know.  Your Dad Norm follows the horses."

And I got this image of my father walking down a country rode following a pack of horses.

There were other amazing people-- great teachers who were Sisters of Mercy like Sister Michaeleen and Sister Audrey, and Sister Madonna  and Sister Incarnarta, and Sister Marjorie, They gave me so much and I wonder if I gave them back enough of a sense of how special they were.  They gave me my love of teaching and learning. They actually gave me my calling.

They were the pearls of great price in my life.

My mother was  God's greatest gift to me. She gave me poetry and her boundless love and good nature. She was  so loving and accepting of my two sisters and she loved them without measure.  I cannot imagine a better mother or role model. She had it all  and yet she had so little in the material world.

Another great poem by Mary Oliver that puts things

 in perspective---

 The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

PRAYER AS AN ACT OF PAYING ATTENTION.

And PAYING ATTENTION AS  THE HIGHEST FORM OF PRAYER.

THE LEGACY OF OAK HILL CEMETERY

 

The living owe it to those who no longer

 can speak to tell their story for them.Czeslaw Milosz

These words sum up what has become my attitude towards the place where my paternal ancestors are buried .  Oak Hill Cemetery is a  forest style resting place that was  set aside in the 1850s in anticipation of the  dead who would lose their lives in the  oncoming Civil War to end Slavery.

My family' s connection with this  sacred grove is long and intimate. Job Jenckes is the earliest of my ancestors in the Jenckes  plot. The Jenckes family  donated some of the land which was mainly  augmented by several acres donated by Edward Harris. These men were all staunch Abolitionists, and they  could foresee the coming battle that must  be waged to gain  the emancipation of the slaves.  I have been brought there since early childhood by my Aunt Grace Jenckes.  Our family has a large plot and monument  set just before the hill begins to ascend.

Although my Aunt  explained to me that these were my family members and later in my own life time my grandfather Oscar Jenckes was buried there in 1956 and my father, Norman Jenckes,  was buried there in 1970. I did not really know the illustrious  history of the men who  developed the industry of Woonsocket and  published a news paper THE WOONSOCKET PATRIOT .

Maybe Grace did not know their history  and their distinction. I have learned more of that through the great work and scholarship of the woman who presently cares for the cemetery and is completing a book about the illustrious inhabitants of that  hidden place  near downtown Woonsocket.

As more of their stories emerge, I am convinced of the truth of  Milosz' words--they do want their stories to be told. I hope to be able to describe  these  illustrious lives in the future.