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Here’s one more outside reading option, the recent “Letter from Iran” by Robin Wright in The New Yorker magazine. I found this helpful in trying to understand what it is like day to day undernearth the bombastic headlines and political artillery shelling here in the U.S. I know very little…
Read More »I’m not a huge fan of Thomas Friedman, opinion writer of the New York Times, but his column today offers a useful overview of the state of affairs in the Middle East. Read it here, and get the NYT if you want more of this kind of writing. While this…
Read More »Murk failed to dampen the spirits of the festival faithful on the second day of the annual cultural extravaganza uttered on the downtown streets of Lowell late every July. The morning sky was murky for sure. It did not look like a promising day for an outdoor party. But the…
Read More »Late yesterday, there were more than 100 young people cooling off in the swimming pool. It was too hot for a basketball game, so the court was empty except for three guys practicing jump shots. This morning at 6.15 am, a personal trainer had 12 people working out on one…
Read More »Web image courtesy of amazon.com Get your walking shoes, cowboy boots, sneakers, brogans, flip-flops, loafers, boat shoes, sandals, Doc Martens, slippers, whatever makes your feet happy—get them ready for this Saturday at 10 AM outside the National Park Visitor Center, 246 Market Street. Free parking is available in the…
Read More »From citylab.com, thoughts and findings about what makes a city function best. And the analysis links back to famed urban thinker Jane Jacobs. I see a lot of overlap with the ideas that are the basis for the national park in Lowell or what used to be called “the urban…
Read More »I learned this week that my late mother’s brother, Charles J. Roy, passed away after a long illness. He had been living with his wife, Frances, in Menifee, Calif., the state where he had moved in the mid-1950s. His son and daughter, Charles Jr. and Maureen, are in California with…
Read More »The Boston Globe today reports on the Peabody-Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Mass., planning to expand its exhibition and curatorial space, a major step forward for the already formidable museum. This is worth noting in Lowell because we must keep our eye on the regional competition in the creative economy.…
Read More »For the Fourth of July, Independence Day, here’s a poem from the nation’s capital. I wrote this prose poem after a family trip to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2004. There were John Kerry-for-President signs in the windows. GOP posters for “W,” too. Barack Obama was a figure on…
Read More »At the end of the afternoon yesterday, there were more than 100 people enjoying the South Common—dozens of kids swimming in the blue pool, more young people running in races, small children at the playground, basketball players on the court, older health-walkers from Bishop Markham Village, people taking their big…
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