The Dickens, You Say?
Happy bicentennial birthday wishes to one of the most famous visitors ever to Middlesex Community College, Mr. Charles Dickens himself!
(He'd be 200 if he were still alive, but alas, he's most likely consigned to the role of one of his apparitions like those in his famous A Christmas Carol, no doubt.)
Yes, it's true, Dickens had Great Expectations about the Mill City, and spent quite a bit of time as a celebrity of sorts here in 1842 at the age of 29, writing at great length about the mill girls and their living situations at the time. But during his visits, he was known to pop in to visit businessman John Nesmith, who was in the process of building his stately manor at 229 Andover St., the property now owned by Middlesex Community College and its Foundation and known as the Nesmith House! Believe me, the property was anything but a Bleak House! (This pic is from the following year, the closest I could get to his historic visit to Lowell.)
Here's the home this past December, courtesy of Kevin Harkins at www.harkinsphotography.com 
In fact, the next novel Dickens published after his visit to Lowell was indeed, A Christmas Carol!
At MCC, we hearken back to the Victorian era with our own Christmas celebrations, as seen this past season:
To commemorate the famed author's bicentennial year, MCC has teamed up with several other notable Lowell institutions, most significantly, the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Lowell National Historical Park, to help celebrate all year long! Check out the University's terrific event website for tons more info on the upcoming calendar of more than 75 events: http://www.uml.edu/conferences/dickens-in-lowell/
Here's what he had to write about his time here: "Lowell is a large, populous thriving place. Those indications of its youth which first attract the eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of character which, to a visitor from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very dirty winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to me, except the mud, which in some parts was almost knee-deep. The very river that moves the machinery in the mills (for they are all worked by water power), seems to acquire a new character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick and painted wood among which it takes its course."
So grab a copy of Oliver Twist or David Copperfield and catch up on some Dickens reading. And in the meantime, let this modern age blog leave you with the words of the birthday boy himself:
"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."