Thread Drift

[Crankin]

Well, Deb answered your question, Zen. Lowell is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the US. It's been through many re-inventions, always on the verge of being a "cool" place. There's lots of lofts and condos and artist's studios, but still a lot of hard core down on their luck residents. There's a large Cambodian population, as well as a significant Puerto Rican contingent. Lowell was originally settled by French Canadian and Irish immigrants, and many of them have stayed. When I moved back to MA in 1990, my DH worked for Wang Labs, which played a large part in revitalizing the city after decades of poverty, when they built their headquarters there. When Wang went bankrupt, in the '90s, 2 guys in their twenties bought the towers where the company was located for less than I bought my house for and leased it out to companies and put in a movie theatre. They sold the building a couple of years ago, and made like a 2 million dollar profit!
The best thing, is that it only takes me about 35 minutes to drive there, mostly over the same beautiful back roads I ride on and right past the local x country ski center.

[Tuckervill]

Crankin, Lowell MA sounds so familiar. What is Lowell known for?

Of course, it's known for being the first place I took my son to see Weezer. Of course.

Karen

[OakLeaf]

Well, that just reminds me of this song.

Not Weezer. The association.

[Bruno28]

The other side of Scottish culture:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...st/8516387.stm

How depressing is that?

[bmccasland]

Happy Mardi Gras



Off to Mardi Gras Mambo Mambo Mambo....
For the first time in years, to see the Rex Parade, King of Mardi Gras
Throw me something, Mister!!!

And it's cold

[Tuckervill]

Well, that just reminds me of this song.

Not Weezer. The association.

That's funny. I'm going to learn it on my uke. But that's a different thread.

K.

[Bruno28]

That's funny. I'm going to learn it on my uke. But that's a different thread.

K.

No, no - the uke must come here. This is it's natural home. (I'm stalking you now I know you play btw).

I was impressed by your signed uke. I've only been playing seriously for a month but already I've outgrown my plywood Mahalo with the plastic strings.

I'm going to look for a half decent one on Wednesday. I will report back.

[Tuckervill]

Okay, so I found most of my uke songs on alligatorboogaloo.com. That was back in the day before the ukulele really exploded on the scene. There are a lot more websites now. I did find a very very useful site recently. www.chordie.com. It indexes all the lyrics and chords from all the *other* sites (not just uke sites) and lets you transpose them or get chord charts for almost any common stringed instrument, including the uke. It's very cool.

Karen

[Zen]

How depressing is that?

Very.
I wonder if socioeconomics had any part in those findings?

[Wahine]

The other side of Scottish culture:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...st/8516387.stm

How depressing is that?

Ugh. That is depressing. Zen, it would be very interesting to see if there is a correlation between socioeconomic status and children's impression of violence against women. I would guess that it would but sometimes the results of such studies can be very surprising.

[Bruno28]

Very.
I wonder if socioeconomics had any part in those findings?

Most definitely. The study was done in Glasgow -

'Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city, with a population of over 585,000. The health of these residents is not good compared with the rest of Scotland and indicators of wealth, health, crime, employment and educational attainment reveal the scale and extent of deprivation in Glasgow to be much greater than in any other area.'

[Tuckervill]

Bruno...here's another one: www.ukulizer.com. Very nice.

Karen

[OakLeaf]

How depressing is that?

Very depressing. But I really doubt it would be any different in the US.

[Bruno28]

Well - I seem to have temporarily killed this thread with my depressing post.

And now for something completely different -

here's a picture of my new ukulele that I bought today:



It has koa top - traditional Hawaiin wood. The make is Kauai which os the island where we spent our honeymoon ...so it kinda had my name on it when I walked into the shop.

It sounds sweet as a bell too.

[Selkie]

Bruno---that's a pretty uke! Do you know "Tiny Bubbles?" ;-) Yes, I'm a cretin--that's the only uke song I know!