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I flew into Massachusetts to attend a family reunion in Lowell. My sister lives there and she wanted me to stay with her, but, I really hate staying in someone else’s home, I just feel like I’m intruding, so I booked a room with a hotel in Lowell. The accommodations were really very nice and not far from where the reunion was to be held. The reunion was with members of my dad’s family, and it’s been years since I’ve seen them. My dad came from a family of 8, so I have 3 aunts, and 5 uncles and they were all in attendance; not many families can say that. Of course, my cousins came in dozens and their children in tow. The reunion was really very fun, we all had a great time.

While I has some spare time in Lowell, I visited the National Historic Park, they have renovated one of the many textile mills and it was great to see that some of the machinery was still in good working condition. They demonstrated how noisy the machines were, which showed me just how tough of a job mill work really was back then. If you’re ever in Lowell, I highly recommend going on a mill tour, it really gives you a feel for the beginning of the industrial revolutions and how dangerous and difficult the work was.

That night, I went to the Merrimack Repertory Theatre and bought a ticket to see ‘Black Pearl Sings!’ by Frank Higgins. It’s performed by two women, Cherene Snow as Pearl and Valerie Leonard as Susannah. The program said ‘Black Pearl Sings!’ is about two women from very different backgrounds are united through song. A search for lost African-American folk music brings Susannah, who is an ambitions song collector for the Library of Congress, to Pearl, a woman with a very soulful voice. After they meet, Pearl being in a Texas jail, Susannah thinks Pearl know a rare song, rare enough to earn her a teaching job at Harvard, a post that has been out of her grasp and her gender. Pearl has dreams of her own and hopes her songs will be her ticket out of jail and will reunite her with her long lost daughter.

The production was magical and the songs were wonderful. I’m really glad I had time to see this marvelous production before heading back home to Columbus, Ohio.

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