RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Seen & Heard: Vol. 20

Event: Lowell High Civics Day – On Monday, May 18, 2026, I attended the Lowell Public Schools Civics Fair at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. More than 300 middle and high school students participated. Organized in teams of four, each group identified and researched a public policy issue then devised an advocacy strategy to implement their objectives. The four sessions I was briefed on were on improving literacy; making health care more affordable; educating younger students on resisting and reporting sexual assault; and improving the English Language Arts curriculum now in use in Lowell. All of the students I heard from were eight graders. They were uniformly impressive in their mastery of their topic and their ability to passionately convey their position on the issue.  

Book Review: “True Yankees: The South Seas and The Discovery of American Identity” by Dane Morrison (2014). When writing about the founding of Lowell, I always say that Francis Cabot Lowell and his colleagues made the money they invested in the new textile mills from trading with China and India. Beyond that simple assertion, I didn’t know much of the backstory, but I’m trying to learn more about it. In True Yankees, Dane Morrison explores how the “Great South Sea” trade (1784–1844) served as a crucible for American identity. Beginning with the Empress of China in 1785, these voyages transcended commerce; they functioned as vital evidence of a unified nation. Lacking the resources for a state-backed monopoly like the British East India Company, the U.S. relied on independent traders, several of whom published accounts of their journeys. This “China Trade” literature helped shape a national character of American exceptionalism. However, when European wars ended in 1815, the trading advantage held by the neutral Americans vanished and merchants sought other investment opportunities which is the origin of the funding that built the mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. 

Obituary: Philip Caputo – “Philip Caputo, 84, Author of Blistering Vietnam War Memoir, Dies” by Joseph Berger, New York Times, May 10, 2026. Having been born in 1958, I was too young to have served in Vietnam, too young to have even worried about it. But I was fully aware of the war. Each night’s TV news broadcast brought the war into our house. That exposure, and the continuing importance of the Vietnam War on our culture and politics, has made me a lifelong student of that conflict. 1977 was a remarkable year for Vietnam books: Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War were both published that year. Despite having just graduated from high school, I bought both in hardcover and devoured each. Herr’s book still sits on my bookshelf, but I lost Caputo’s memoir although that had a bigger impact on me. 

Newspaper article: “Beijing Views Trump’s America As Sinking Empire” by Li Yuan, New York Times, May 14, 2026. This was truly an astonishing article to read. The reporter reviews various papers, speeches, and comments by Chinese leaders and academics over the past year. For most of its recent history, China has seen itself as striving to catch up to the west, but more recently, it sees itself as a superpower poised to surpass it. “Chinese nationalists and state-linked commentators say they have Mr. Trump to thank.” Whether it’s January 6th, violent immigration raids in Minnesota, erratic decisions on tariffs, irrational hostility towards longtime allies, and most recently, the war of choice against Iran, Trump has repeatedly done things, in the eyes of the Chinese, that have weakened America, all to the benefit of China. 

Podcast: “The History Wars and America at 250” New Yorker Radio Hour podcast. Historian Jill Lepore interviews fellow historians Beverly Gage and Jelani Cobb about the semisesquicentennial of the United States. Both Lepore and Cobb are staff writers at the New Yorker. Lepore teaches at Harvard and won a Pulitzer Prize for her book on the US Constitution. Cobb is the dean at the Columbia School of Journalism. Gage teaches at Yale, won the Pulitzer for her biography of J. Edgar Hoover, and is just out with a new book, This Land is Your Land: A Road Trip Through American History. Much of the podcast compared the feeling in the country about the 250th anniversary to the experience 50 years ago at the 200th anniversary. They agreed that each generation often feels that their time is the worst of all, but if you look objectively at the past, things have always been bad (and good). But they also agreed that there is something different about this era, mostly because the Trump regime is promoting a story of US history that excludes so many.

Motors and Maintenance

Motors and Maintenance – (PIP #106)

By Louise Peloquin

 Here are two articles with  “Peek into the Past” #105 topics. (1)

The first announces an invention claimed to radically transform engine efficiency.

The second covers a road maintenance question followed by an editorial on the issue.

Inventions and infrastructure will always be topical.

L’Etoile – Front page January 12, 1926

A Fabulous Invention

     Rock Island, IL., 12 – Yesterday, C.C. Herman and J.F. Herman announced that they had invented a means to eliminate lethal carbon monoxide gas, render transmission gearboxes useless, do away with carburetors and finally, thoroughly revolutionize the functioning of automobile or airplane internal combustion engines.

     They claimed that their invention will increase gasoline energy efficiency by 200% and give engines 45% more power whilst radically reducing oil dilution.

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L’Etoile – January 14, 1926

REPAIRS TO THE BOULEVARD FOR THE CENTENNIAL

__________

A Lowell delegation supports, before the Public Works Commission, Mr. Achin’s project for State maintenance of  Pawtucket Boulevard.

__________

WHAT THE COMMISSION WILL DO IS STILL UNKNOWN

__________

     State House, Boston, 14. – Yesterday, Mayor Donovan, along with a delegation of Lowell civil servants and representatives, stood before Public Works Commission members to support a call, proposed by Representative Henri Achin Jr.,  for the State to take charge of Pawtucket Boulevard from Varnum Avenue to the Lowell aqueduct.

     The Lowell delegation gave a very good impression and Commissioner William F. Williams, president of the Public Works Department, had to admit that he truly found no reason why the Committee for Main Roads had omitted including Pawtucket Boulevard as a State thoroughfare.

     First to take the floor, Representative Achin stated that the segment in question is mentioned in every report and is, without a doubt, to be included as a State road. It should therefore be maintained by the State.

     “It is one of the most picturesque thoroughfares along the Merrimack river” specified Mr. Achin. “This road is traveled by hundreds of thousands of tourists. There are hardly any houses along the two-mile segment. The boulevard is an ‘orphan’ located on the site of an old race track acquired by the city. It is horrible to see it in its present state.”

     City engineer Stephen Kearney then provided technical details on the present condition of Pawtucket Boulevard and spoke about Lowell’s roadworks in general. He agreed that the boulevard, a main artery from one city to another, should be maintained by the State. Mr. Kearney pointed out that the city spends $360,000 a year on its roads, a fortune.

     Commissioner Williams responded that the sum was not extraordinary for a large city. Mr. Kearney persisted in disagreeing.

     Commissioner Williams remarked that the Lowell delegates were possibly right but added that many similar situations remain in many other areas of the State. The Public Works Department receives a set annual sum to maintain the 1,500 miles of State routes including certain Lowell roads, he declared.

     City solicitor Reynold, Mayor Donovan’s spokesperson, then explained how Lowell was preparing a link at Fletcher Street between roads coming from the north and the south. This will cost a great deal. Pawtucket Boulevard is virtually outside of the city and mainly used by tourists or motorists passing through. Additionally, it is situated in a picturesque area and the State should be proud to transform it into a principal State artery.

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L’Etoile – Editorial, January 8, 1926

URGENT WORK

     By submitting the question of Pawtucket Boulevard to the Public Works Commission, Representative Henri Achin, with reason, calls public attention to a state of affairs which should not exist in a city which prides itself in being progressive.

     The section of the boulevard which extends from Varnum Avenue to the aqueduct buildings has been, for many years, in terrible condition and city officials do not seem to want to do anything to rehabilitate it. Although motorists obliged to pass through this area grumble about the defects in the road, the council remains deaf to their valid recriminations. Mr. Achin did not fail to point out to Commission members that Pawtucket Boulevard follows an ideal scenic route and that something should be done to prevent its natural beauty from being irremediably spoiled by the bumpy road to access it.

     The Lowell Representative would like the State Department of Public Works to take charge of the reconstruction and maintenance of this section of the road as it does for the others leading to the aqueduct buildings at Tyngsboro bridge. Certain members of the Commission point out that it is against State policy to take charge of road construction or maintenance within city limits. Mr. Achin affirms that Lowell hardly receives any revenue from this part of the city and that consequently, his request would not constitute a precedent by which other cities could claim State coverage for roadwork.

     Representative Achin’s suggestion must be discussed once again during next Wednesday’s meeting. Hopefully, measures will be adopted to finally give satisfaction to the many motorists who take Pawtucket Boulevard every day, especially during the summer.

     However, while waiting, maybe it would not be a bad idea for the authorities to examine the question in case the Public Works Commission refuses to act as suggested by Mr. Achin. (2)

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1. “Wheels for Lowellians” posted on May 5, 2026.                                                     https://richardhowe.com/2026/05/05/wheels-for-lowellians/
2. Translations by Louise Peloquin.

The invisible woman who took on the Third Reich and saved art for the ages by Marjorie Arons-Barron

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

The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland by Michelle Young is a richly researched account of an apparently nondescript art historian who rose from a low-level volunteer job just prior to the Second World War to a preeminent curatorial position at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. There, her photographic memory, attention to detail, immaculate record keeping and steely courage fortified her commitment to keeping Hitler and his legions from looting priceless French masterpieces during the war.

Rose Valland’s reserved demeanor belied her ferocity as a courageous protector of the nation’s cultural patrimony. As the war in Europe ramped up, she devised a complicated plan to surreptitiously ship sculptures and paintings to various chateaus in the Loire Valley and beyond. Many of the treasures would remain hidden until Germany was defeated. Some have yet to be found.

When the Germans occupied Paris and the Nazis seized the Jeu de Paume, Valland stayed in place. Her official assignment became monitoring the facility, its heating system, plumbing and infrastructure. The Nazis used the museum as a repository for art treasures they were stealing from France and across Europe, not just from museums and galleries but from private collections like those of the Rothschilds, Paul Rosenberg and Adolphe Schloss. They systematically plundered the collections of Jews who had fled or been killed, their possessions now conveniently labeled “abandoned property.” The booty was destined for Hitler’s planned Fuhrermuseum in Linz, Austria, but the Fuhrer’s henchmen, especially Reichsmarschall Herman Goering and other high-level Nazis, were skimming thousands of irreplaceable works of art from the Jeu de Paume, the Louvre and elsewhere.

Rose Volland was required to curate exhibitions for visits by Goering and other powerful Nazis seeking to add to their personal collections.  Secretly, she kept meticulous notes, often just on small scraps of paper, cataloguing the provenance of art works, recording the specific locations to which the Germans were shipping their selections. She was thus able to track the movements of German officials and convey the information to the French resistance.

The Germans (Hitler especially) viewed modern artists (e.g., Picasso, Matisse, Braque) as “degenerate,” but they didn’t hesitate to confiscate many of those works because they could be sold for money to help finance Germany’s war efforts. Other works, sadly, were mutilated or burned.

Periodically, Rose would be interrogated, and occasionally she was ejected from the museum, only to talk her way back in. She often slept on a straw mattress in the museum to protect its holdings. Overnight, she would secretly copy German inventory. Her life was increasingly in danger toward the end of the war though, as a closeted lesbian, she would all along have been a target for elimination by the Reich.

Some of her subversive activities are worthy of a LeCarre novel, and they are cinematically told by author Young.

Valland’s efforts did not stop after 1945. After the war, she was made General Secretary to the Commission for the Restitution of Art. Her work took her to Germany to locate the pillage. She held the rank of Captain. Thanks to her record-keeping, she was able to facilitate the return of many stolen art treasures to their rightful owners. She was also able to provide concrete evidence of the crimes at the Nuremberg trials.

Rose Valland became one of the most decorated women in French history. There are streets and squares named after her, as is a non-profit institution dedicated to restitution of stolen art. She appears in The Monuments Men (film and book.) Valland is one of the characters in Lynn Nicholas’s book The Rape of Europa. The Art Spy is distinguished by Michelle Young’s deep dig into Valland’s life: her professional battles against misogyny blocking her advancement in the art field and muting her post-war recognition, the perils she faced as a spy, her ingenuity in outwitting the enemy, her infinite patience and seemingly bottomless reservoir of courage.

The depth and breadth of Young’s research is stunning, and a reader would do well to examine the notes in this important book. Beyond Rose’s own copious notes, she had exchanged many letters with prominent figures in the art world, government officials, friends and family. Her correspondence with Jacques Jaujard, head of France’s national museums, was voluminous. Young found historians’ reports and bureaucrats’ papers, public and private, court records, transport records, museum catalogues and library archives, personal diaries and magazines, in Europe and from America. The book’s details are put together seamlessly, with intrigue and revelations at every bend in the narrative.

Lowell Politics: May 17, 2026

The most important actions at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting were brief and procedural with the council formally accepting the following items and scheduling them all for public hearings at upcoming meetings. These include:

• Accept timely submission of FY27 budget
• Appropriate the money to fund that budget
• To borrow $25 million for capital improvements
• To borrow $5 million for parking garage repairs
• To create a Lowell Water and Sewer Department by combining the Lowell Regional Wastewater Utility and the Lowell Regional Water Utility and created the new position of Chief Utility Officer to lead the new department.
• To amend the sewer rate for FY27
• To amend the water rate for FY27

The public hearing on the budget is scheduled for Tuesday, May 26, 2026. In recent years, council budget sessions have been relatively brief affairs with councilors mostly deferring to the judgment of the city manager. While there are fiscal challenges with every budget, this one seems like it will be particularly painful, especially with the elimination of existing positions and employees, so councilors may question this budget more aggressively than has been the case in recent years.

Related to that, the lead story in Friday’s Lowell Sun carried the headline, “Major layoffs hit Lowell: Proposed budget cuts 50, including police and fire” by Melanie Gilbert. Among the jobs to be cut immediately, according to the article, are six firefighters, five police department employees, six from DPW, 13 from Health and Human Services, and six from MIS. Additional jobs are to be eliminated through attrition, which I take to mean when someone retires or leaves for another job, their position will not be filled.

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The most controversial topic that arose on Tuesday was funding for nonprofits. A report from the council’s Non-Profit Organizations Subcommittee from its May 5, 2026, meeting, and a handful of council motions that flowed from that meeting brought the matter to the floor. The issue is that local nonprofits that believed they were to receive funding this year ultimately had that funding denied by the city. The loss of the expected funding has left these organizations in precarious financial condition and has angered city councilors who on Tuesday were questioning the competence and veracity of city officials.

Like so much of the chaos that engulfs the world today, the proximate cause of this crisis is the Trump regime. Let me explain:

The funding in question is the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, a mechanism for the federal government to provide annual grants to state and local governments to help them deal with the challenges of urban communities. The program was established in the 1970s and is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Lowell receives its annual funding directly from HUD and has significant flexibility in how it uses those funds. For example, for two decades a major expenditure of CDBG funds by Lowell has been to pay rent for the Senior Center (with the technicalities of CDBG funding a big contributor to the ongoing controversy surrounding the Senior Center, but that’s a topic for another day).

The city has also allocated CDBG grants to nonprofits in the city. However, when President Trump took office in January 2025, he immediately issued an executive order barring any federal money from going to organizations that supported DEI programs, equity plans, environmental justice, or many of the other values that are at the core of the mission of many nonprofits.

In the past, I’ve written about the moral dilemma this poses to nonprofits: Do they stand by their values and lose federal funding that allows them to keep operating; or do they erase banned words, concepts and terms from their mission statements, websites, and grant applications to access essential funding. Because the loss of funding would pose an existential threat to their continued existence, some nonprofits chose the latter course.

These organizations prepared grant applications that were on their face in compliance with the Trump executive order and then submitted them to the city for a type of pre-review. The feedback from the city to the nonprofits seemed to have been mostly positive but also conditional. However, when the city’s Department of Planning and Development, which administers CDBG funding locally, sought further guidance from HUD (the federal agency that oversees the program), none was forthcoming. The city received no answers from the feds.

The city faces twin dilemmas: First, Lowell is essentially a guarantor of these grants. If the city disperses money to a nonprofit and then HUD, after the fact, deems the nonprofit to have been ineligible, the city will have to pay back the money to HUD. Perhaps the city could also pull back the money from the nonprofit, but by the time HUD acted, it’s likely the money would already be spent so the chances of the city getting reimbursed by the nonprofit would be slim.

The second dilemma is that it is not enough to simply “scrub” current applications, websites, and other materials of the “offending” DEI-type language. It is my understanding that HUD and other federal agencies retroactively search for “obscured” DEI language, meaning grant recipients that may have changed the language they use post Trump executive order, but which had previously used such language. Since it’s almost certain that the nonprofits now scrubbing DEI language formerly embraced it, especially in prior grant applications that would still be on file with HUD, the risk that new grants would be disallowed by HUD for past DEI language is high, further increasing the fiscal jeopardy the city would face.

With that in mind, City Manager Tom Golden’s response to councilors was that he took a more conservative approach and “erred on the side of caution” in not approving any of these CDBG grants at the city level. As much as this harms the nonprofits and the people they serve, it seems like a prudent course for the city from a fiscal stability perspective given the erratic and harmful course of the federal government these days.

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The council received an update on the portion of the Riverwalk that runs along the Merrimack behind the Massachusetts Mills. Back in March 2024, a portion of the Main Power Building collapsed onto the Riverwalk which has been closed ever since for safety reasons. A letter from Mullins Real Estate Development which owns Mass Mills (and has, since it was first renovated in the 1980s), explained that reopening the Riverwalk is directly linked to the redevelopment of the Power Building and that construction is not expected to begin until next spring. Although disappointed in that timeline, councilors seemed to accept there is no alternative under all the circumstances.

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This week in my Seen & Heard column, I wrote about last weekend’s Doors Open Lowell; the obituary of Dean Tavoularis, an Oscar-winning native of Lowell; an article on the success of two print publications when so many others are failing; and commented on a review of the Venice Biennale, a big international art show.

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In observance of Memorial Day, this coming Saturday, May 23, 2026, Bob Forrant and I will lead a free walking tour of downtown Lowell on the topic of Lowell in World War II. The walk begins at 10am from the National Park Visitor Center at 246 Market Street. The tour will take approximately 90 minutes and requires no advanced registration. Just show up.

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Also related to Memorial Day, my latest book, Regret to Inform You: The Human Cost of WWII in Lowell, Mass. is now available. The book examines the lives of the 441 servicemembers from Lowell who died during World War II, whose names are inscribed on bronze tablets in the Lowell Memorial Auditorium.

The book is available for purchase online here and lala books on Market Street is expected to have several copies for sale.

A PDF version is also available for free on my website for those who prefer an ebook.