Here's a little different topic than you may be used to here (i.e., it's not about baseball).

I grew up in Pawtucket, RI. Pawtucket is pretty much your typical Northeastern mill town. Many of the mills and factories that drove the economy closed after World War II as they moved South, then overseas in search of cheaper labor. Pawtucket, and many towns like it, have been trying to recover ever since.

In recent years, Pawtucket, especially the downtown, has become home to artists and theater companies, starting to revitalize the economy. I found this video on YouTube, produced by The Pawtucket Foundation, which talks about this and ongoing efforts to make the city a better place to live and work. It runs about eight minutes and is pretty interesting, especially to a native like me.



One thing that I found really interesting was the talk of revitalizing the Pawtucket-Central Falls train station. I realized that I didn't remember any train station in Pawtucket - any time we took the train or picked someone up we would go downtown Providence. A quick Google search showed that the train station closed in 1959, five years before I was born. Check out the link - you can see that it was probably a beautiful building once. Reopening the building and running the commuter rail through there would be a great thing for the city.

See, no baseball. I didn't even mention the Pawsox!