RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

‘Frost Land’ by Paul Marion

Frost Land

On the small balcony with purple morning glories and magenta zinnias in pots, I see two eagles flowing west to east, lower to higher, doing whatever they do at a time like this, but definitely showing themselves off in a faded blue flannel sky with a muted sun on a day with rain due. Layered into the distance are the various greens of woods and forest, barely Maine past rolling New Hampshire just off the coast, the greens softened by a damp atmosphere which also tamps down the sound of an occasional truck and the housing construction below on a main road.

With one eye on the eagles, I’m reading a 1946 compilation, 1965 21st printing, of the poems of Robert Frost introduced casually for the average reader by community organizer Louis Untermeyer, the tireless anthologizer of the 20th century, his Bob Frost coming to us in a brisk profile, highlights of the path to Famous Frost, like Famous Seamus of Ireland later:

born in San Francisco; rebel father’s early death there; mother-led return to New England roots territory, mill city Lawrence on the Merrimack River (echoes of cultural cousins Anne Bradstreet, J. G. Whittier, and H. D. Thoreau); in and out of college; part-time jobs teaching, doing factory shifts, and news writing; then a farm in Derry N.H. thanks to a grandparent; ten years of crops and poultry (with poetry on the side); ten years in the dirt before earning his way out of agriculture; selling the land to finance a last-ditch attempt to get noticed as an author by sailing to England with wife Elinor and four kids; walking into a London book publisher’s office and getting a deal to launch his first collection of poems, then another one, the second being “North of Boston,” which lifts him into literary orbit in his late 30s; followed by return to America and the late start of a career. World War I has begun. He steps off the ship and is the talk of the book world in New York City.

On his way forward he collects four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, teaches on numerous campuses, endures brutal family tragedies, makes a friend of a young President from New England, and achieves a commemorative U.S. postage stamp after passing in 1963.

Frost is still the codeword for “poet” in most of today’s America, more than Whitman or even Dickinson for mainstream recognition. “The Road Not Taken,” “Stopping By Woods…” “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” All this in the 75 cents paperback bought in a shop with “used books,” from a time when a regular person could get 200 pages of Frost’s poems for less than a dollar. Almost free. And still in circulation. In his own way he is all around us.

Paul Marion (c) 2026

Music! Music! Music!

Music! Music! Music!

By Leo Racicot

The very first music concert I attended was at Freedomland, an amusement park in The Bronx. My sister, Diane and I, were in White Plains, New York visiting our aunt, uncle and cousins for three weeks in the summer of 1962. One of the acts we saw at Freedomland was The Chad Mitchell Trio. One of the members of that folk group was John Denver though Denver hadn’t yet become John Denver. If I close my eyes, I can still see the fresh-scrubbed college look of these guys singing their hearts out in three-part harmony.

The very first rock/blues I saw was James Montgomery Band on North Campus just outside Costello Gym. Joe and I went together. It must have been about 1970. Up till then, we’d only heard that type of blues roots music on the radio. Hearing it performed live was a thrill. We felt modern and part of our generation. The Band continues to tour in 2026.

It was around this same time that I fell in love with singer Judy Collins; I’d picked up her album, Who Knows Where the Time Goes in a Stuart’s record bin — and listened and listened in my bedroom, the sun and a light summer breeze lifting the curtains in the window as Judy’s crystalline clear soprano lifted itself to the sky. Her music captured me as has no other and I’ve lost count of the number of I’ve been blessed to see her live in many different venues. I was so taken with her, I’d bring friends with me to hear her: David McKean out in Tanglewood at Collins’ Berkshire Music Festival performance in 1968. Joe, at Hampton Beach Casino around the same time. I’ll always remember seeing her at Suffolk Downs; we audience sat on the grounds, the smell of horse dung permeating the air as Collins, lovely vision in prairie dress and guitar, sang, her eyes closed in reverie through most of the concert. A night of pure magic. Judy, at age 87, continues to tour the world, her pristine, ethereal tones miraculously still reaching for the heights.

The great Joni Mitchell was a favorite in those days, too. I listened endlessly to her many hits. When it was announced she’d be participating in the Boston Concerts on the Common Series in 1983, I talked Diane into coming along. (I was forever dragging my poor sister to concerts of performers she wasn’t a fan of, especially if their gigs proved to her why she didn’t care for them. This concert was the one that’s become notorious in music history; Mitchel was not in a good humor that night; she stopped the music more than once to scold an inattentive audience and sang only a couple of numbers before storming off the stage. After a long absence, she was coaxed back but only made it through a couple of more songs before storming off again. I don’t think the concert lasted more than half-an-hour. Diane was incensed when the announcer stated unequivocally that “No refunds will be given”. This bothered Diane no end and years later, whenever Mitchell’s voice came on the car radio, Diane would rail, “That was an outrage; they should have given us our money back!”  In 2000, Joe and I decided we’d give Joni another chance. We saw her at Boston’s Seaport Pavilion. She was older, her voice richer, smokier and well-worth our worship. And — she didn’t flee the stage once, stayed for more than the standard two-hour concert time. An unforgettable evening…

I’ve been around a long time; I can’t possibly list here all the singers and bands I’ve seen.  Some of the more memorable ones come to mind….

I’ve had a lifetime of adoration for Julie Andrews ever since I saw her in The Sound of Music when it first came out in 1965. So indelibly did she captivate me that I walked downtown to The RKO Keith Theater a dozen times to watch that movie. So, when, in 1987, I saw she was to appear in person at New York’s Westbury Music Fair (Andrews never appeared too often, if at all, in person), I didn’t hesitate, bought a ticket on impulse. More than a few people over the years have been skeptical (if not downright disbelieving) that I traveled from Boston to Westbury to see Julie Andrews in concert in a raging blizzard. They also doubted that an international supernova like Andrews would appear in a small circle-in-the-round theater on Long Island. But appear she did. It was November, 1987 and though the snow was looking ominous, I was determined to see the divine Julie in person, even if it meant taking my life in my hands. I would go anywhere for her. And did! The concert was, to say, a thrill. To be able to see this superstar in-the-flesh, not two feet away from me was extraordinary, to say the least. In a gown made of the finest silver, Andrews sang all her hits. One number stuck with me all these years; her rendition of Lerner and Loewe’s Come to Me, Bend to Me from Brigadoon.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over the first time I saw Bette Midler perform on stage. Never before or since have I seen such energy displayed. She was a tornado of performance; The Divine Miss M sang, danced, twirled, even conquered Hawaiian bolo balls with aplomb. That girl never sat still for one second except to stop and sing a heartbreaking ballad or two. In fact, in those early days, pre-fame, even when theater venues weren’t even a third full, Midler worked her tail off, gave it her all, 150 percent, as if she was performing at Madison Square Garden. As with Judy Collins, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve seen her over the years. After that first concert, the real shock was seeing her in the lobby, post-show. She appeared as this very tiny lady, hardly five feet tall, dressed primly, the archetype of a 1950s librarian, pill box on her head, ribboned cameo at her throat, not a bit like the tsunami I’d just seen decimate an audience a few minutes before.

Equally riveting was Nina Simone at Symphony Hall in 2000. I’d always liked Simone’s musical stylings but wasn’t prepared for the full Nina Simone in-person experience. To call her performance intense would be an understatement of the highest order. Her stage presence was theatrical, extremely moving, spiritual. I left the hall in a state of ecstasy, floated home on a cloud of Joy.

You don’t hear too much about them happening anymore but in the 1970s and 1980s, it was common for a performer to stage a pop-up, impromptu appearance around Boston. These were unscheduled gigs, unannounced until the last minute. If you were lucky, you’d be in the right place at the right time. I saw the great Richie Havens at The Prudential Center, seated outside some shops, singing his heart out in his trademark bass tones. I caught Cindy Lauper & Arlo Gurthie on The Esplanade, again just out-of-the-blue. Two dynamic performers, as the song goes playing real good for free.

The folk blues singer/civil rights activist, Odetta, was a favorite of mine from the 1960s when I first heard that magnificent voice, a voice coming at you like a locomotive. I saw her at Harvard’s intimate Paine Hall, at Newport Folk Festival a couple of times during which the Zoom lens on my camera captured a favorite photo I’ve kept for years. One cold, wintry night strolling around Harvard Square, I heard a familiar voice pouring out of Club Passim. I said, “I know that voice”. When I peeked in the window, there was Odetta, her power filling the room, knocking the walls down.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t exactly a concert The incomparable Vanessa Redgrave gave at Boston’s Orpheum Theater In April, 1982. I attended a pro-Palestinian fundraiser featuring Redgrave in a one-woman show. She was riveting. No one else was on-the-bill but from my seat, I could see a man hovering in the wings and said to myself, “That fellow looks like Tennessee Williams”, never in a million years thinking it could be the playwright himself. But it was! At the end of her program, Redgrave said, “Now, we have a very, very special guest speaker. Mr. Tennessee Williams”. Williams advanced to center stage and read from one of his essays the subject of which was the freedom of the artist to speak out about political and social causes and concerns. I was over-the-moon, as was everyone there that night. This story continues — I was filing out of the theater when I ran into my friend, Jane, who worked for the theater management. She said, “Would you like to meet Miss Redgrave?” and pulled me by the hand into the wings. Redgrave was BIG, gave me and others a very lusty, masculine “How do?” handshake. It was then I heard someone say to Williams, “So brave of you to do this, Tennessee” to which the tiny, little writer who had appeared so shy on stage just moments before replied, “Let’s see what kind of blankety-blank mess I’ve gotten myself into this time!”

Rosemary Clooney. The name still resonates. One of the enduring singers to emerge from the Big Band era. I grew up on her music; my parents and relatives were older so that type of music was always on the radio, the record player. When, in 1993, Rosemary came to North Shore Music Circus in Beverly, I was hot to see her. By that time, she was quite large. She was also quite frail. She performed her two sets perched on a stool, center stage. The voice was as strong as it had ever been, singular, sassy. The phrasing as perfect as when she’d started out decades before. One of the great voices. She delighted the audience with three encores. In return, they gave her five standing ovations. They didn’t want to say goodbye.

Whenever I liked an entertainer and his/her work, I’d go to great lengths to see them perform in-person. I was single and anyway, none of my friends shared my musical tastes. I could never get anyone to go with me anywhere so — off I’d go, near or far, to see someone whose work brought me joy. I’ve seen Bette Midler in New York, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Toronto, Providence & Miami, Judy Collins in practically every state in the nation, made my way through a raging blizzard to see Julie Andrews. But for me, the most memorable was the time I, a very green, very shy, scared young man went all the way to New York City to see/hear the truly mesmerizing Miss Peggy Lee. When I got off the bus at Port Authority, I made my way (only God knows how) to the Midtown address listed on my ticket and ended up, to my dismay, in a dark, dirty alleyway. Newspapers and other debris were flying around the windy passage, and I thought, “This is a good place to get murdered or mugged.” The only door I saw was a corroded, old door with a hand-written sign that read ENTER HERE. Nobody else was in the alley with me, no long line of ticketholders, no ticket takers, nobody to ask anything of, no nuthin’. Hmmmm. As The Divine Miss M used to say, “I’m not making this up, you know!” I don’t mind telling you I was one Nervous Nelly as I walked up to the door, hesitantly pulled the handle and yanked. I know now that New York’s many dark alleyway doors open up onto a wonder world of surprises. But this was the first time I experienced this big city phenomenon. For, what opened to me when I flung wide the door was a blinding World of White. Everything was white! The supper club was white. The tablecloths were white. A white cloud of tulle hung in the supper club sky, white lights twinkling throughout it. Peggy, herself, when she emerged, was white. Her hair was white. Her gown. The frames of her sunglasses — white. I thought I died and went to White Paradise. Suddenly, a hush fell over the club. The lights went down. The orchestra went up. Peggy Lee began to purr Fever into her white mic. Peggy was White Hot!

_______________________

Arlo Guthrie

Cyndi Lauper

James Montgomery Band

Joni Mitchell: Boston Concerts on the Common

Judy Collins in 1968

Julie Andrews

Odetta at Newport Folk Festival

Peggy Lee

Tennessee Williams

The Chad Mitchell Trio

Venessa Redgrave

Seen & Heard: Vol. 32

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

Article: “AI’s Market Dominance comes With a Warning” by Jeff Sommer, New York Times, July 12, 2026 – This is the “Strategies” column in the Business section. Despite relatively high inflation driven by tariffs and the war with Iran, the stock market is booming. Most experts attribute this to hopes for artificial intelligence. “Huge sums being funneled into A.I. infrastructure have bolstered returns . . .” The risk is that if those bets turn out to be wrong, the drop in the stock market will be severe. “If the enormous expectations for A.I. aren’t met, those remarkable portfolio returns could suddenly disappear.” The author’s advice is to widely diversify your investments which is difficult given how much everything in the US and around the world seems tied to A.I. My lesson in the wisdom of diversifying came with the collapse of the housing bubble in 2008. I didn’t have a lot of money to invest but half was in an Index 500 stock mutual fund and half was in bank CDs. The return on the stock dwarfed the bank interest and I kicked myself for not shifting that money somewhere with a better return. Then the bottom dropped out of the economy. Overnight, I lost half the value of my stock fund while I still had the same amount of cash in the bank. True, the stock has regained its value since then and has appreciated considerably, but there is no guarantee that will happen. 

Article: “US Eases Rules in Nuclear Deal for Saudi Arabia” by David E. Sanger, et al, New York Times, July 23, 2026.The announcement of a deal selling advanced nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia by the US, technology that might allow that country acquiring a nuclear weapon received so much negative attention that the President added new conditions to the already signed agreement, sabotaging it in the process. My first point: this illustrates why countries will be so hesitant to negotiate anything with the U.S. unless absolutely necessary. Why make concessions to reach an agreement when the agreement is likely to be abrogated by the President if it is poorly received? Second point: Why are U.S. leaders (of both parties) so indebted to Saudi Arabia? After all, Osama bin Laden was Saudi as were 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9-11 attacks. I’m not saying we should be overtly hostile to Saudi Arabia, but neither should we treat that country as our closest and most reliable ally. 

Article: “He is Helping Trump Reshape Washington” by Zachary Small in New York Times, July 27, 2026. The subheading for this article is “Matthew Taylor, an artist and political strategist, is a cultural czar of sorts for the White House.” I had never heard of this guy but this article portrays him as the moving force behind much of the whitewashing of American history emanating from the White House. Enough said. 

Substack: “When Allen Met Tony, Revisited” by Robert Sullivan, August 1, 2026. A Chelmsford native who formerly wrote for Sports Illustrated, Time and LIFE, Bob Sullivans shares wonderful longform prose pieces with us for free via his Substack newsletter. A recent piece recalled his experience interviewing on consecutive evenings the singer Tony Bennett and the poet Allen Ginsberg and the connections between the two. It’s a wonderful, detail-rich piece of writing that was a pleasure to read.

Article: “What Mount Auburn Cemetery teaches the living” by Joan Wickersham. Boston Globe, July 31, 2026. This essay on the Op-Ed page is by a frequent visitor and neighbor of this famous garden style cemetery in Cambridge. She explains that whether you are interested in gardening, nature, history, biography or architecture, there is something for you in this cemetery. I feel the same every time I visit Lowell Cemetery which is modeled on Mount Auburn. When Lowell Cemetery first opened in 1842, there were no public parks in this region. On Sunday’s residents would come to Lowell Cemetery to enjoy the beautiful natural setting and to have a picnic. While I haven’t seen anyone dining within the cemetery recently, there are many who routinely enjoy it. If you’ve never been, you should go someday, park your car and just wander around to soak everything in.

Mother Earth Grumbles

Mother Earth Grumbles – PIP #111

By Louise Peloquin

     “Peeks into the Past” #11 and #54 were a sampling of a local newspaper’s coverage of climate concerns. (1)

     As the summer of 2026 is punctuated by horrifying images of extreme weather all over the globe, these two stories seem timely albeit notably different. The climate change referred to below is not attributed to human activity.

L’ETOILE – January 2, 1926

VOLCANOES ARE WARMING UP ALASKA

__________

Observers say the new eruptions will produce a permanent radical change in temperature. — Warmer in Alaska.

__________

     Anchorage, Alaska. The earthquake two days ago, followed by yesterday’s smoke and vapor from North America’s highest summit, 20,300-foot Mount McKinley, indicated renewed volcanic activity. (2) This is part of a series of widely-observed volcanic phenomena which will cause permanent radical temperature changes in Alaska’s southern region.

     Since the November 11th eruption of Mount Shishaldin in the Aleutian Islands, 300 miles south-west of McKinley, the region’s longtime residents stated that they had never felt such mild, springlike temperatures in November and December. They pointed out that ordinarily frozen watercourses have remained open and that green vegetation has replaced snow on grasslands.

     On a large surface 

     The affected surface extends over many hundreds of square miles, along the Cook inlet north-west of Mount McKinley and far to the north of the Susitna river valley. It was 28 degrees in Anchorage on Christmas Day while 0 is the usual temperature.

     Mount McKinley’s smoke seems to indicate that Alaska’s volcanic activity is moving towards the north. Until now, it has occurred south of the Alaskan mountains. McKinley is in the north of this mountain range. The strongest recent eruption occurred in 1912 when Mount Katmai’s eruption widened its summit to three miles in diameter and gave birth to Ten Thousand Smokes Valley. A year ago, Mount Pavlov erupted and last month, so did Mount Shishaldin. Each one of these eruptions was accompanied by earthquakes and climate changes. Since the eruption of Shishaldin, heat within Cook inlet waters has been melting large glaciers.

     Observers believe that north-bound subterranean fires increase temperatures below the seabed which, like the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio current, spread heat. Geologists consider that in the past, similar forces submerged the peninsula between North America and Asia and, although no considerable changes occurred at the time, it is now believed that Alaska will experience warmer winters in the future.

**********

L’ETOILE – January 8, 1926

Vesuvius Is Not Dangerous

__________

The eruption begun these past days is normal and is a “safety valve” for the villages around the mountain.

__________

     Naples, 8. – Vesuvius is rumbling and spewing smoke and lava, albeit in small quantities. The night before last, this phenomenon amused a large crowd of foreigners gazing at fire leaping from the crater and ash covering the mountain. The present eruption is simply an ordinary one for Vesuvius.

     “It is one of the usual occurrences which take place about three times a year,” Professor Maladra, director of the Vesuvius Observatory, said yesterday. “Last year in April, an exceptional flow of incandescent lava spilled from the crater.”

     The present small eruption, instead of being dangerous, is a “safety valve” for the villages around Vesuvius because an eruption close to the cone allows the incandescent matter to pour out. Otherwise, it could blanket the entire mountain. At the moment, no risk for a large, significant eruption, like that of 1906, is expected. The activity of the volcano, begun yesterday, will probably only last for a few days. And then, Vesuvius will return to its normal state. (3)

****

1) PIP #11 – https://richardhowe.com/2023/12/11/an-eye-on-the-sky/

PIP # 54 – https://richardhowe.com/2025/01/21/snow-was-general-all-over-lowell/

2) Prospector William A. Dickey named the mountain in 1896 in honor of William McKinley who was elected president of the United States later that year.

In 1975, the Alaskan government officially adopted Denali, the traditional name used among Alaska Native peoples.

3) Translations by Louise Peloquin.