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This on the front page of today’s Boston Globe:

To our readers: Effective tomorrow, rates for home delivery of the daily Globe will increase by 50 cents per day, Monday through Saturday.  The price of a 7-day subscription will be $12.25 per week.

Not to be outdone, the New York Times had this:

To our readers: On June 1, the Monday-Saturday newsstand price of The Times will increase from $1.50 to $2.00.  The Sunday newsstand price will increase from $5.00 to $6.00.  Home delivery prices will go up by $.70 to $1.54 per week, depending upon the days of delivery.

Is there any other business that, when losing customers, reduces the size and quality of its product and then charges more for it? 

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An essay by Paul Hudon:

Eric Cantor, House Minority Whip (VA-7), is saying that “the essence of being a Republican is a belief in free markets, a belief in individual responsibility, faith in the individual, faith in God.”  Not to be outdone boosting the GOP, Mitt Romney says, “We are the party of the revolutionaries. They are the party of the monarchists.”  This is Mitt, still having his way with words.  It’s true that words are not stubborn things.  With words, as with everything human brains concoct, context rules.  Which means that Mitt-talk of revolutionaries and monarchists in the context of American politics is flat-out weird.  It was weird even in the 1790s, when Jefferson obsessed over it.  Talk of revolutionaries and monarchists makes sense in the original set-to that led to American independence – 1764-1783.  It makes sense as history.  Going there to explain our present-day politics is pure myth-making, and myth is the death of history.  Myth is where nothing gets done, where no one can do anything.  You can’t be real in a mirage.

Luckily, Jeb Bush is there to scale down the conversation.  Jeb leaves off  flattery and flim-flam.  He talks issues, highlights education. He calls for a reality-check and talks about the bottom line.  If American students performed at the same level as Finns and South Koreans, Jeb Bush says, American GNP would increase by better than one point five trillion dollars. 

It’s Saturday morning, the second of May.  Three chiefs of the Grand Old Party have met at a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia. A couple dozen local GOP indians are there for the rollout (as they called it) of the National Council for a New America.  A brainchild of Representative Cantor, the Council is backed by Senator McCain of Arizona who describes it as a “forward-looking, grass-roots caucus.”  The Council is a tool, as the Senator sees it, to broaden Republican ranks; he hopes it will move moderate Republicans and “like-minded Democrats” to come together, reformat into what Jack Kempt once called “big tent” Republicanism.  The meeting at Arlington is the start of a national movement.  This is party formation from the ground up. (Cantor and McCain and the others have a long-term learning process in mind.  But here comes a posse of Republicans who call themselves “the base.”  They ride to head-off Republican compromisers at the pass.  Five days after the event at Arlington, the conservative blog Politico headlines, “GOP base rips Cantor’s National Council for a New America”.  So, what is this?  Two GOPs?

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To complete our literary roundup this weekend, note that in today’s SUN Nancye Tuttle has a review of two new books “Set in Lowell.” One is a book of short stories mentioned earlier on this blog (Mrs. Somebody Somebody by Tracy Winn) and the other is a Connecticut writer’s account of retracing the river journey taken by Henry David Thoreau and his brother John in 1839 (Deep Travel: In Thoreau’s Wake on the Concord and Merrimack by David K. Leff). Here’s a link to the full review.

Also, the SUN’s “Column” today reported that Chris Scott, superintendent of schools, will release her illustrated book about the city, Lowell Wonders, this Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m,  at the UMass Lowell Barnes and Noble Bookstore downtown. The book features reproductions of Lowell-scene paintings by long-time Brush Art Gallery artist Bill Giavis. Anyone who has visited Bill’s studio at “the Brush” knows how extensively he has documented life in Lowell over the past several decades. By the way, Bill is profiled in the current issue of Merrimack Valley Magazine. We need more Lowell “product,” and these books are welcome additions to the city’s “cultural capital.”

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Novelist Elinor Lipman

(Photo by Gabriel Amadeus Cooney)

Today’s New York Times Book Review includes a positive review of a new novel by Lowell native and Lowell High School Alumni Hall of Fame member Elinor Lipman. The Family Man (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Elinor Lipman’s ninth novel, is in the vein of her other “social comedies,” with romantic ups and downs for the main characters living in Manhattan this time around. Reviewer Penelope Green writes, “Even as [Lipman] tips everyone into ever more improbable predicaments, she makes sure to gather them all up by the novel’s close and deliver to each a happy ending.” Click here for the full review.

Novelist Andre Dubus III

The Book Review also includes an advertisement for the new paperback edition of The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III of the UMass Lowell Department of English — and a resident of Newburyport. Set in September 2001, the story follows a handful of people in Florida whose lives collide on the rocks of history. Stephen King praised the book, calling it “So good, so damn compulsively readable, that I can hardly believe it.” Writing in the Boston Globe, novelist John Dufresne, who grew up in Worcester, described the work as “storytelling of the finest kind.”

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Thanks to Marie for posting the first notice about the passing of artist David Ireland, who gave us a fascinating chapter in the story of public art in modern Lowell. I was fortunate enough to have had an opportunity to work closely with him in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My wife, Rosemary, had obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Massachusetts Cultural Council to bring several artists to Lowell for a research and development project that was expected to lead to several new works of art in the city. David zero’d in on the power house of the Boott Mills, which he hoped to transform into a kind of industrial chapel by artistically renovating the interior, coating the surfaces with urethane tinted yellow, and making the most of the extraordinary wash of light that pours down onto the three-story space from skylights. It would have amounted to a scenic vista inside the mill complex. The Boott developers who pledged to finance the project were battered by the economic downturn around 1990, and the work was suspended indefinitely for lack of funds. As far as I know, the power house, which Ireland renamed The Generator Room for the new artwork he envisioned, continues to function as an electrical equipment room for the local hydropower company.

With a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, we published an illustrated documentary book about the art-making process that took us to a certain level of completion at the mill. UMass Lowell professor of art and sculptor Jim Coates and his students invested an enormous amount of time in renovating the space, as did dozens of volunteers. David was an inspiring figure, and it was always fun to have him in Lowell for intensive work sessions at the mill. Although we were disappointed that his vision was not fulfilled, I came to think of the project as an ambitious archaeological dig that did not yield the buried, lost city. We all learned a lot. Here is the full obituary from the Los Angeles Times, published in the Boston Globe today.

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I always hoped that artist David Ireland would come back to Lowell some day. I wanted him to finish the project he and a group of art students from UMass Lowell - under the direction of Professor Jim Coates - created in the Boott Mill “Generator Room.” Ireland’s genius was the ability “to peel back layers of material” and reveal the history below. On a “learning how others do it” trip to San Franciso back in the 1980’s with the very important  Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, we got a chance to see some of David Ireland’s work out on Point Reyes. One thing led to another and Ireland became part of the Lowell Public Art project of the 1990’s. I’ll leave others like Jim Coates, Rosemary Noon and Paul Marion to tell the stories and adventures of working with David. But the project will always remain “fixed in time” as artist and master worker and teacher David Ireland died at the age of 78 in San Franciso after a few years of failing health. His obituary here in today’s Globe. RIP

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Poet Anne Waldman

Poet Afaa M. Weaver

(photo: Lynda Koolish)

Poet Louise Gluck

(photo © Star Black)

Poet Robert Pinsky

(Photo by Scott Davidson)

The second annual Massachusetts Poetry Festival (MPF) [www.masspoetry.org] will be even bigger and better than last year’s event. First, the 2009 festival will spread over four days, Oct. 15 - 18. Opening activities across the state on Thursday, Oct. 15, will include a Ford Hall Forum event in Boston celebrating the poetry of Emily Dickinson, as well as readings in Worcester, Western Massachusetts, and Lowell. Highlights for Friday, Oct. 16, in Lowell are an expected 200 high school poets reading at Lowell High School, an intercollegiate poetry showcase with about 12 colleges and universities, and a special MPF edition of the Urban Village Arts Series on Friday evening. On Saturday, Oct. 17, the packed schedule will have a small press fair, readings by regional poetry groups, a Favorite Poem Project session, writing workshops, and a late night poetry slam with notable participants from Massachusetts and New York — and much more. On Sunday, Oct. 18, Harvard University will host a poetry and jazz program with Robert Pinsky and musicians.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will be in Lowell for a reading on Saturday afternoon with another former U.S. Poet Laureate, Louise Gluck.  Anne Waldman will be in town to read and take part in other programs. She is a founder, with Allen Ginsberg, of the Jack Kerouac School of Writing at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she is a Distinguished Professor of Poetics and director of the summer writing program. Afaa M. Weaver is another reader not to be missed. According to www.poets.org, he “has been a Pew fellow in poetry and taught in National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan as a Fulbright Scholar. At Simmons College in Boston, he is the Alumnae Professor of English and director of the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center. In addition, he is Chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference.”

The planning committee received more than 70 proposals for programs from poets and organizations across the state. The full schedule is set to be released by June 15. Again, check www.masspoetry.org for information and updates — and to contribute to the festival. Donations are needed and are deeply appreciated. This is a major event for Lowell to host on a regular basis.

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Foreclosure statistics for May present a mixed message.  The number of foreclosures actually conducted was down substantially, but the number of new foreclosures initiated was way up.

There are two different documents recorded at the registry of deeds that allow us to track foreclosure activity.  The first is a foreclosure deed.  That document is recorded at least a month after the foreclosure auction occurs.  The foreclosure deed allows the foreclosing lender to convey the property from the home owner/borrower to a new buyer.  In almost all cases, the new buyer is also the foreclosing borrower.  The second indicator document is the order of notice.  When a lender first begins foreclosure proceedings, it must first obtain permission from the Land Court and the order of notice is part of that process.  When an order of notice is recorded, it signals the likelihood of a future foreclosure. 

The number of foreclosure deeds for the city of Lowell recorded in May 2009 (11) was down 77% from the number recorded in May 2008 (48).  Under ordinary circumstances, that’s amazingly good news.  The problem, however, is that the number of orders of notice recorded in May 2009 (33) was up 32% from the number recorded in May 2008 (25). 

So what’s going on?  Last week, the New York Times wrote a story about the coming “third wave” of foreclosures.  The first wave were the subprime mortgages that were fated to fail the day they were first executed.  The second wave were the adjustable rate mortgages that began with low “teaser” rates but then had monthly payments spike upward after two or three years.  The third wave are prime mortgages issued to borrowers with very good credit but who purchased when homes were at or near peak value during the real estate bubble.  Those homes are now worth less than the amount owed and the mortgage and the homeowners have lost jobs, or overtime or have otherwise suffered a disruption to their household revenue stream and are now in arrears on their mortgage payments.  Because they owe more than the houses are worth, these homeowners cannot sell or refinance and are therefore unable to extricate themselves from their predicament. 

As encouraging as the steep decline in May foreclosures may be, the rise in new orders of notice – the start of the new wave of foreclosures – is troublesome and bears close watching.

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The Globe has a front page story today about the pending confirmation of  Sonia Sotomayer to the Supreme Court and the unprecedented percentage of  Catholic members it would create. There would be six of nine Justices with Catholic roots. It reminded me of an earlier post of mine this week recounting the 1647 ban against Jesuits in the Massachusetts Bay Colony under penalty of death. There was much anti-Catholic prejudice in this country - revealed in many forms over the years - locally, regionally and nationally. Massachusetts history is dotted with prejudicial examples. A mob treacherously burned the Ursuline convent in Charleston in 1834 where ironically daughters of some of the best families in Boston were being educated. Perhaps the fact of a woman being in such power added to their ire. In 1854 Governor Henry J. Gardner - a Know-Nothing -  disarmed the 9th Regiment of  the Massachusetts Militia because the vast majority of the soldiers were Irish and Catholic. A large group of armed and trained Catholics was thought to be a danger to the Commonwealth. Gardner also engineered the passage of the law banning any future public support of private schools - surely aimed at the Catholic parochial school system. The signs of  “No Irish Need Apply” were not just in shop windows but in newspaper help-wanted ads. In Maine, Father Bapst, one of the Jesuit founders of Boston College, was serious injured in an anti-Catholic attack while he was establishing a Jesuit High School in the state. Some attacks were insidious as when the “Smelling Committee” of the Massachusetts Legislature came to Lowell at the urging of the Know-Nothing Mayor dentist Ambrose Lawrence who along with Protestant vigilantes continually harrassed the nuns at the Notre Dame convent in the Acre. In the 1920’s nation-wide the Ku Klux Klan became a powerful political organization whose theme was “anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew.” A march down Pennsylanvia Avenue in full regalia (hoods and robes) was a highlight of their 1926 national convention. Being a Catholic today doesn’t put you on the side-lines, doesn’t exclude you from the business or corporate world, doesn’t keep you from voting, doesn’t keep you from the Oval Office, the Congress nor obviously the Supreme Court. Regarding the Supreme Court - two current members are educated in the Jesuit tradition. Justice Scalia is a graduate of  Georgetown University - the oldest Catholic and Jesuit University in the United States. Justice Thomas is a graduate of Holy Cross College in Worcester - a top-ranked liberal arts college.

Check out the Globe article for the conventional wisdom about Catholics on the Supreme Court and what Judge Sotomayer’s religious roots and traditions might bring to the make-up of the current Court.

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