Worcester Rhythms

View From The Room - Interstate 290 Through Middle fo Town

I spent all day yesterday in negotiations with the union.  We’ve reached the nitty gritty stuff but we’re still talking so that’s a good thing.  We had our session down at Union Station in central Worcester and the corner room we were in had some great views – see attached pictures.  I wrote in some of my earliest blogs that I really like Worcester.  It has a really poor reputation in New England but I think it has some real charm.  It was my first work place after I retired from the military and that may have something to do with it, but not all.  It’s a typical New England city with a 19^th century manufacturing base that totally collapsed in the 20^th century and is now trying to re-invent itself.  You see major construction going on all over the place.  It has a wide range of immigrant populations figuring out how to co-exist along with a really vibrant college scene with six different colleges in town – Holy Cross, Clark University, Assumption College, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Becker College, and The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy.  Worcester also has two massive hospital complexes with some of the most cutting edge medical technology in the world.  This literally saved my wife’s life a couple of years ago when they were able to detect and repair, miraculously on an outpatient basis, an aneurism in the middle of her brain.  Worcester has a lot of hidden gems that surprise you as you criss cross the city and climb its seven hills, as my job enables/requires me to do.  Yesterday we walked down the street for lunch and passed a very simple but eloquent memorial to six firefighters who all died in the same fire in 1999.  A fire station was built on the location of the fire and the memorial to these brave men was out front. It’s not without its warts, some of them serious like someone putting an elevated eight lane interstate highway right through the middle of town but I enjoy coming into the city each day.  I like the rhythms and vibrancy of a city and I like being able to leave it behind me each evening.

View From the Other Window - Omnipresent Construction Going On

Fireman's Memorial