The SNHU Millyard building at dusk.
When the days become regrettably shorter in the NH fall, I focus on the things to be enjoyed, despite the impending dark. With cellphone camera in hand, I like to take pictures on the way to the building or car (depending on the time of day) to capture the sun in its respective position. Either way, it tends to be dark by winter, coming in or leaving.
University Square, Manchester, at sunset.
There’s tremendous history that remains in The Millyard District of Manchester, NH. Like its counterpart in England, this Manchester functioned as a hub of the thriving textile industry during the 19th century. Local lore claims that were you to stretch a piece of fabric from one end of the mills to full length alongside the Merrimack River to the other end underneath the sprawling brickyard, it would measure a mile.
My great-grandfather worked at the Belknap Mill in Laconia, NH. He was my maternal grandmother’s father, & their family trekked from Quebec City to New Hampshire, like many many other French Canadian families whose lines still populate this state. Generations later, I worked in what was the last functioning textile mill in New Hampshire, in Ashland, to put myself through college. So, millwork takes on a deeper meaning for me.
The SNHU Millyard building, illuminated from behind where the Merrimack River runs.
What a difference perspective makes. Winter, just like sadness, holds a critical role in maintaining balance. In New England, we need winter to clarify our water sources, limit animal populations, & even to help plants thrive. So, too, sadness carries its own quiet beauty. We need to feel painful feelings of loss, disappointment, abandonment, & even failure to appreciate positive, happy events in our lives. With age, we learn this lesson quite acutely.
In early morning, historic rowhouses, which provided housing for workers in close proximity to the vicinity of the Amoskeag Mills.
The neat thing about working in the Millyard building for SNHU is that thriving, innovative online programs are supported & enhanced in a place once known for growing industry. In a sense, I feel connected to place, but blue collars have been replaced by white collars. I wonder what my great-grandfather would think of me. We wouldn’t communicate all that well since he and my grandmother’s family spoke French (my grandparents were married in a ceremony performed in French).
SNHU Millyard entrance at sunset.
Moon and mill.
I find it so odd but befitting that after 13 years of higher education as a student, and 18 years as an instructor & administrator, I am working in a mill building, just like my relatives those many years ago. I’m grateful to not be working with sorting, blending, carding, & weaving, anymore. People like to romanticize the past, but there were such incredible hardships & very little support for worker’s rights. White lung disease, hearing loss, lost limbs, even children killed by machine accidents. We don’t tend to think about those things.
All this to say, we can find merit in darkness & in winter, appreciation in re-purposed mill buildings, & even beauty in most things, if not all, should we look hard enough & apply our imaginations. It just takes perspective & the time to reflect, absorb, & process.
