Legendary San Francisco poet and founder of City Lights Bookstore and publishing company Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a baseball fan, too. The card-carrying Beat writer and publisher of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and several books by Jack Kerouac, including “Book of Dreams” and “Pomes All Sizes,” has a most fitting poem for this…
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Read the following from Henry A. Giroux, and get a sense of the outrage on the other side of the political spectrum, the side that hasn’t been given the kind of free publicity by media outlets everywhere that the Tea Party has received in the past six months. A moderate-minded reader might consider…
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Today’s NYTimes includes this article about the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the NY Public Library acquiring a massive archive of papers from author and performer Maya Angelou. The story prompted me to recall Maya Angelou’s visit to Lowell in 1989 as a guest of Middlesex Community College. Following is…
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The Nashua Telegraph is reporting that former president Bill Clinton is coming to Nashua to campaign for Governor John Lynch. The Telegraph’s senior political writer and columnist Kevin Landrigan has confirmed that Clinton will will hold a campaign rally for Gov. John Lynch at Nashua Community College on Sunday –…
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Locally, we know how touchy the subject of public art can be. Over the years various public art installations in Lowell and environs while generally praised have sometimes raised eyebrows and caused comments. When a certain 1980s City Councilor saw a model for a bronze sculpture proposed for downtown, he said it…
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Renowned author and illustrator David Macaulay may be a distinguished winner of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” Fellowship and the Caldecott Medal for children’s literature, but today he came across more like an inspiring junior high-school teacher (he did that for one year) rather than some artist-god who came down…
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Note: This 18th-century portrait could be one of the earliest depictions of baseball in America. The location of the original oil painting is unknown. (The image was originally featured in Apollo.) There’s a fascinating story by Doug Tribou on the WBUR website that originally ran on the station’s show –…
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Author and CNN contributing writer Bob Greene gives us a look into an earlier attempt on the life of President – then President-elect – John F. Kennedy in an on-line story today. He tells of the New Hampshire postal clerk who planned to kill JFK in Florida in December, 1960:…
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You hear in the ads. “I’m a mom.” You see it on the campaign trail. You hear in the speeches – as a virtue for a certain candidate and an accusation against an opponent. Out in Oklahoma – marriage and motherhood seem now to be the dividing line of competence and qualification…
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