though and welcome to what's going on i'm jan knight and joining me today is linda lou so linda is the chief of interpretation and education at the lowell national historical park in lowell massachusetts thank you for joining us linda thank you so much for having me and now the said tenniel celebration of the national park service is this month so let's begin with a little bit of the history who created the national park service and which was the first part to be designated a national park so woodrow wilson was a president who signed the organic act which allowed for national parks to be designated so for many many years and the role national historic park storable park has a lot to do with that so would you talk about the canal system and all those things that sure there will obviously  lol in itself the mill city was not unique in regards to it being like other mill cities but it was the one of the first to be successful to have everything under one roof but for it to become designated at it as a national park or really made it a significant enough for it to be signed into legislation was that the the canal system so the canal system is the only canal system that still intact in use five point six miles that runs through the downtown of the city of law and powered the mills very interesting thank you and now they're going to be coming events and plans to celebrate the centennial yeah oh yes so we have been planning we planned all year long to celebrate the two thousand and sixteen centennial for the national park so what we have been doing in law is that we've been bringing the par to the people so we've been going to the neighborhoods in the city bringing a pop up museum we're doing a community leaving project we've been partnering with neighborhood leaders to organize events in parks that are in people's backyards and the idea was to get people really excited about the green space that maybe they walk by every day or just kind of are on you know underutilized and just to get people out and to get to know their neighbors and now we're hoping that that will engage them to now bring the people to the park so on august twenty fifth which is the actual founder say so the day that the park was signed into law education is we're doing a flag raising at city hall and then on saturday august twenty there's a big party so we're doing a celebration at boarding house park which is on forty french street we've worked with local artist and different of the ethnic communities and a professor at the university  cambodian instruments and a choreographer from the flat group called flight more productions in the dance troupe which is a can put in classical dance troupe is the lead choreographer are kind of integrating all the different types of dance that sound food trucks and the community partners organizations are going to have informational tables and things and so and another exciting thing that we've been working really hard with another professor at the university ingrid hess who is an artist and illustrator is she we've worked together to create a children's book so it's mr magnifique and magnificence magical merrimac adventure it's a mouthful but it's a beautiful book  and it really is loosely on the story of lol and so it takes the young people from back in time in into the present and they get to learn about history through the book so that should be launching the book the i'm as well as our boat tours have fees with them and so all different all the national parks have different types of fees some have entrance fees some have fees to go into the museums but there are passes and so it annual pass for a person who an adult is eighty dollars and is good for a year and gets you into any national park but then there's also the senior pass which  is ten dollars for anyone over the age of sixty two and it's good for a lifetime and having one of those myself i can tell you it was one of the best investments ever been made and i use it every year  that's called the america the beautiful past yeah yeah but both passive ethnic both the past owner and anyone in the car with them in a regular  vehicle get in free yeah any pass and united states of america there's also another pass that's focused on fourth graders and so there's a program called every kid in the park so president  him in to act two last year and so any fourth grader who goes online and fills out a voucher with the parent obviously and prince it out can go into any national park in the exchange and they get a hard pass and it's good for them and three adults want to get in ten yeah sure park and so so anybody who has a fourth grader in their life to take advantage of that absolutely yeah well this program for the fourth graders there yeah it's really exciting yeah yeah so it's it's the idea is to try to get every fourth grader into a national park and so teachers can also utilize them it doesn't have to be just a parent an individual kid so the teachers can go in and they can unroll all the students in their class and they can get that and use that as a filter and it be the amount of history the person gets going through the national park  is just amazing to me and i have been to several and they be education but they have like an education room and it just covers so much information and then if you walk a trail all along the trail there are signs that give you an exact description of what you're looking at and what the history of it is and it is absolutely fabulous yeah so and all we have obviously we have  visitor so the visitor experience is you come in you come into the visitor center you see the park video and then we are we are kind of embedded into the downtown of the city of law so it's not just one big building so it's multiple buildings throughout the city and so a visitor comes in to the visitor center gets there from asian gets there a map of the city in the park watches the park video as an introduction and then they had their way to the mills museum they go through the weave room they see the looms working they could get a go through them that actual museum itself and then we have a mill girls an immigrant museum to really talk about the the stories of the workers tours go through the canal system me get to see the lock chambers in action where because the way that the water power worked was that because of the created the system so to create more power so they had to have steep drops within the city so in order to do that you have to lock up or lock down to get to different sections of the canal system so we have those tours and that gives you the historic perspective getting in through the canals that were dug by immigrants who came to the city to work and then we we recently got a river boat which is goes on the merrimack river and so people can get on these we have  we call them river rides and they run up and down and you kind of just get to see the view of the river from a different perspective the area that's wonderful and there are lots of other parks  so and some of these some of these parks i have to say incredible this this in and hiking trails and all but they also have as a fiddle a lot of history connected to them so they have many many times the new bedford whaling museum and acadia national park i've been hiking and that's a fascinating way to adams national historic park in quincy massachusetts and the minuteman national park there it's actually conquered lexington and lincoln and the springfield armory which i didn't realize that's also a national park yeah yeah this there's just a lot to explore and  you qualify for it and you don't have one yet you should go out and get one but as those things are just really an incentive to visit pat some of the national parks and with the new pass for fourth graders that opens up yet another door yet to in another incentive to make sure you get out there and he's faced a serious so let's see  know the the experience that i have had from going to the national parks is that they there are some incredible trails that you can hike and you know breathtaking views everywhere you look and the education centers covering ecology and history but also their research programs going on and many of them i don't know if there are lowell well we because we are historical park a lot of the research that's done is really time kind of deep in understanding so people stories so you know sometimes people come in like oh my grandparents or you know somebody they knew worked in the mill so really trying to gather the stories and adding that adding it to the history of you know yeah i i know for instance  the in puerto rico young k they have research teams going in there studying the native foliage and the wildlife of the area and that makes a big difference you know and species that are in danger of being dissed extinguished and they but they they add a lot to our knowledge of what to do to take care of these situations centennial is in august we will continue to celebrate and have lots of other offerings so our bringing the park to the people series will still continue we have a couple more neighborhoods to get to in september and then  our education program that we have at the park is called the songs into service your center and they're celebrating their twenty fifth anniversary this year so in the fall we'll transition into really kind of thinking about education programming and and really getting people of the park as a resource and that way many students come through the park edges for grabs already but really thinking about the other segments of our community so things offering things like weekly cultural workshops in dance and music and cooking genealogy workshops with the local library so they'll be lots of activities continuing on through december and could yeah wow yeah yeah that's very fading well one of the things that we didn't go into very much with getting the passes and now the regular pass the annual pass you can get on line to so you can go on any national park website and the links for passes and you get in there or you can come into any park and i'm not sorry not any park on certain parks but law is one of those parks that you can get you come and physically get them and the thing you're past the ones for people over sixty two you cannot get on line you have to go in person and show proof of age and get your your past there but it's again it's only ten dollars and it lasts a lifetime and anyone that you take your car goes in with you so you can take your grandchildren your  anybody and and they're it's just so worth doing and so easy to do really except they're not it every single part yeah and unfortunately today i don't have a list of which ones for sure do i'm pretty sure they do in lol we do definitely yes and all but yeah and the other ones that i would i mentioned i think  well i would just like to take a minute to to explain my personal experience with the senior passon in the in the past program as i said i had a great number of years and i've been to national parks from puerto rico to alaska to nigeria and i had to california when you know all cross and there's just nothing that i value more i always have it with me and use it a lot and it's it's just something that i think you know our country is has this wonderful wonderful program and we should take advantage of it in the learn from and take our children there and let them celebrate what we have and what our history is and i totally agree and i mean for those who don't know that it's available to them hopefully you know by spreading the word and continue to share experiences will encourage them on to take advantage oh i hope so i hope so and you know again i just can only say if you don't if you qualify and you don't have one yet you go get one so i think we've covered the details we wanted to share so i thank all of you for joining us today and i hope to stay tuned to belmont media center for all the news of what's going on including knows it's going to be coming right behind us on coming up next on the belmont foot pantry which is a very important part of belmont community so again thank you very much and i do say to eight o'clock to nine thirty we do up an eight thirty for people to come in and use the from pantry and vendor second floor with two standing from five to six thirty and we then we open at five thirty for everyone to come and use different pantry and then we've added of them and it was a great success and through the years different people have asked me when are we going to bring it back when are we going to bring it back so we decided to do it again pretty much of the same committee and  a couple of veterans went to it and in their first thought was always going to be a lot of veterans they can't go to washington so they decided that they would build a half size replica of the actual wall