Ann & Hope

Ann & Hope has so many connections to me. It’s probably the first place that I saw Santa Claus in the flesh. It’s definitely where I bought my first record: The Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits. My brother Tim worked at Ann & Hope for a while. My father grew up around the corner. What Ann & Hope is, is a huge red brick building in my

Gun Factory

It must have been an odd transition for the Lynches to relocate from farming the oceanfront bog lands of Cahersiveen, Kerry, Ireland, to the factory life in the small industrial city of Norwich, Connecticut, in the 1800s. Among the places that my ancestors worked, was here, at the big now-empty firearms factory downtown. Connecticut has

Mill Workers

I grew up in a mill town. Massive red brick structures like this one sat abandoned along the Blackstone River in Cumberland, Rhode Island. They were the beached whales of the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, some have been converted to condominiums with wonderful loft spaces. Some are scrappy artists’ studios. Others wait and rot.  Norwich, Connecticut,