RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Cemetery tours postponed

Due to the coming wind and rain storm, this weekend’s tours of Lowell Cemetery have been rescheduled to Saturday, October 3, 2026, and Sunday, October 4, 2026. Both tours begin at 10 a.m. from the Lawrence Street Gate.

Words

Words

By Leo Racicot

“Expert use of language is to me a perpetual joy.”  Noel Coward

Ever since when in first grade I intuited the Beatrix Potter sentence Mrs. Hare printed on the blackboard, I’ve felt words are pearls of great value. There are writers whose belief is the opposite. The renowned author, Edmund White told me he thought words are a dime a dozen. When working a draft, he thought nothing of slashing beautifully wrought paragraphs if he decided they didn’t contribute to the final product. But that was Ed.

I’ve always felt grateful that I am able to express myself, my feelings, my life stories with words. Words have been there for me when friends weren’t, when health wasn’t, when faith wasn’t.

Words have led me to work with some of the men and women of the Golden Age of Publishing: William Shawn at The New Yorker, the wonderful Stewart Brand and Art Kleiner at Coevolution Quarterly, wise Jean Burden at Yankee Magazine, gentle Winston Leyland at Gay Sunshine Journal. For a young man, it was a thrill seeing my work appear alongside the work of Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harold Norse, E.B. White. And working with and being befriended by writers like Edmund White and M.F.K. Fisher was an unexpected dream come true.

And when at Franco American school, principal Sister Gilberte Durette asked me to design and implement the school’s middle school Advanced Reading class, I jumped at the chance. My belief has been that if a student wants to become a good writer, she/he should read, read, read. Read the masters of the form but also

read anything they can get their hands on. I had a student, Chris Vavra, not too keen on traditional books but loved comic books, as what red-blooded American boy didn’t in those days? My encouragement of this passion was looked down upon by school higher-ups but in his high school entrance exams, Chris scored highest in reading.

For our advanced group, we were given our own classroom, a cubby tucked away between the first and second floors, a reading aerie of sorts; the kids thought of it as a special place and I came to think so, too. On the walls, I hung photos of world-famous authors and encouraged members of the class to bring in pictures of their favorites so we could add them to our writers wall.  I hoped to convey to students that words are a boundless frontier. As with music, words can be sculpted into infinite arrangements. There is no end to the pleasures they bring.

The first thing I wrote was a poem about the assassination of John Kennedy. I, along with others of my generation, was shattered by the public murder of that beloved man, sought ways to assuage my deep sorrow. I composed a poem in commemoration, the stanzas of which, to my surprise, rhymed nicely. I was ten years old in fifth grade and Mrs. Dalton put the poem in the class newspaper. From then on, I wanted to be a writer and work with words.

It wasn’t until the early 1980s that I made any headway; the editors of Coevolution Quarterly liked my essay about a high school/college chum titled, Rachelann: A Remembrance. I actually got paid for it, a real thrill that encouraged me to keep going. I’m still able to see the looks of sheer delight on the faces of a small group of Saint Patrick’s third graders I was tutoring in reading as the rhyming words hearing their first poems struck their ears with a joy so innocent, so new, they giggled in unison.

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A working lunch with Edmund White

Advanced reading classroom

Eric LeMay

Jean Burden

MFK Fisher in her kitchen

My reading tutorial group

President Kennedy

Stewart Brand

Winston Leyland

Seen & Heard: Vol. 38

A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. 

Article: “Keepers of a Shrine to Cable TV Decide to Cut the Cord” by John Koblin, New York Times, September 13, 2026. There was a place in Denver, Colorado, called “The Cable Center” which was funded by the cable TV industry and served as a museum of cable complete with a 75,000 square foot building. The highlight of each year for the Cable Center was a heavily-attended annual conference of cable industry leadership. But things have changed. Just five years ago, 40% of all TV consumed in the US was on a cable network; now that number is just 19%. With the loss of viewers comes the loss of revenue, so things like conferences and expensive museums are the first to get cut. I confess I’m partly to blame. Last month I returned my cable box to the Xfinity store and cut the cable. I haven’t missed it at all. That’s partly due to my interest in football being greatly eroded by billionaire owners sucking up to the regime; the outsized place of gambling; the lack of meaningful efforts to address CTE; and there’s so much else to do. Fortunately, the artifacts and holdings of the cable museum will be mostly preserved albeit in a storage space with much less access. But from a historian’s perspective, it’s important to preserve artifacts from dying institutions. 

Article: “Report says Flock allowed access to city license plate data.” by Yogev Toby, Boston Globe, September 13, 2026. Last year, the city of Boston obtained 45 Flock surveillance cameras as part of a pilot program. Among the conditions under which Boston took the cameras was that only a handful of Boston police employees would have access. That lasted about 72 hours until Flock made the output of all the cameras available to everyone on their national network. Someone in Boston figured out what had happened and complained, and the system was supposedly locked down again. At a Lowell City Council meeting several weeks ago, the city’s police chief assured residents that data from Flock cameras in Lowell are only accessible by authorized Lowell Police officers. I certainly believe that the Chief as speaking truthfully but I’m skeptical he was speaking accurately, because this company’s record for limiting access to the data collected by its cameras is, as reported in the media, problematic.  

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour – September 10, 2026 – “Colin Kaepernick, Ten Years After Taking a Knee” – In this episode, New Yorker editor David Remnick interviewed former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick who burst on the scene as a star dual threat quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers but who chose to protest for social justice by kneeling during the National Anthem at the start of football games. A year later he was cut from the team and, despite his considerable skills and the need of many other teams for quarterbacks, no other NFL team would sign him. Kaepernick has a new memoir, “The Perilous Fight.” As is also the case with many big corporations, whenever an NFL team did something for “social justice” it was completely performative and a marketing strategy when that seemed an effective strategy. But with the resurgence of MAGA and its racism, there aren’t a lot of social justice efforts underway by pro football teams which is unsurprising given how most of their billionaire owners were and are big backers of the current regime. I immediately purchased Kaepernick’s book, mostly to show my support for him and the cause for which he sacrificed his career. But memoirs are perhaps my favorite form of literature so I look forward to reading it, as well. 

Article: “Sept. 11 played a role in paving Iran’s way to Mideast power” by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, September 18, 2026. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of studying history. This article illustrates that by linking key events from the Iran v. Iraq War of the early 1980s up to our present quagmire in the Middle East. When that war began, we were still in the midst of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union so our primary concern was to keep the Soviets from establishing a presence in that part of the world. And to ensure the continuous flow of oil to the western world. Eventually, the two combatants exhausted themselves and the war relented but when the Soviet Union fell, Saddam Hussein sought to become the main power player in the region, hence his invasion of Kuwait. The first President Bush led the coalition that expelled Hussein, but he wisely left that regime intact as a counterweight to Iran. But then, the second President Bush sought to overthrow Hussein using the 9-11 terrorist attacks as a pretense. Hussein was deposed by American forces but that created a regional power vacuum that was filled by Iran which spread its influence around the region through proxies. Then, the ongoing war against Iran which shows no signs of relenting and which has caused a precipitous increase in fuel costs and has invested Iran with far more strategic power than it had with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, is one of many factors contributing towards America’s ongoing isolation and strategic retrenchment.

Patchett’s newest book: love, loss and identity by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Whistler by Ann Patchett is another confirmation of the author’s elegant writing style, her adroitness at weaving narrative threads into a compelling tapestry, and acuity in probing the complexity of human character and emotion. Her stunning use of metaphors and incisive imagery lasts long after the last chapter has ended. It is a gentle story.

A chance meeting at the Metropolitan Museum in New York reconnects Daphne Fuller with Eddie Triplett, the second of her mother’s three husband’s. School teacher Daphne, now in her fifties, has not seen Eddie since she was nine years old, when, in a car he was driving, went over an embankment, threatening both of their lives. As a result of the accident, Daphne’s mother, Abigail, had divorced Eddie. Daphne and Eddie had had a loving relationship, and the reconnection plunges Daphne into the circumstances of the crash. As Whistler evolves, she brings her younger sister, Leda, into contact with him and eventually mother Abigail.

Daphne always assumed that she was responsible for the accident and indeed for the divorce. Like the peeling of an onion, the narrative explores Daphne’s guilt, her relationship with her biological father, a Gloucester fisherman,  and even her mother’s newest husband (Daphne’s second stepfather.) Gradually, we learn the dark secret about Eddie  – or rather Eddie and Skip, his college roommate – that was the real reason for her mother’s rejection of him.

Why “Whistler?” It all goes back to the snowy night of the accident, as Eddie and Daphne, who had been headed for a blackberry farm to look at the stars, wait to be rescued in her mother’s car, both injured.  He tells her a story about a strong and loyal horse named “Whistler,” and how Whistler stayed with his injured owner, Mary, who was lying on the ground on a cold dark night, certain she would die. The horse is a metaphor for caring and courage, and Eddie’s spinning out of the story helped 9-year-old Daphne face what had to be done the night of the accident. The flashback to the accident occurs intermittently throughout the book, as if to undergird the courage it takes the characters to face truths about their past and present. Patchett brings in other reminders: a painting of a horse at the Met and, later, the discovery of a small metal horse from Daphne’s husband’s childhood, all reinforcing the underlying themes of love and caring and loss in these people’s lives. By the second horse reference, I must admit to thinking, Okay, I get it.

This is not a book about great tragedy, nor even piercing conflict. It is self-contained, generally optimistic and well executed. At a time of societal rage and ugliness, a rather lovely book is a welcome read.