The Lowell Summer Music Series charges ahead this weekend with ’90s alt-rockers Cake on Friday and singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading on Saturday night. Think of the presenters for the next couple of days, and give the Woodstock cheer: “No rain, no rain, no rain.” For ticket info and the full schedule,…
From www.truth-out.org, there’s an interesting op-ed essay by Henry A. Giroux titled “The Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism.” He assesses the impact of this trend on public conversation and policy-making in our democratic republic. Giroux really smacks “academics,” whom he says are not as a group responding to the…
Kudos to Glenn Prezzano for making Merrimack Valley Magazine better and better with each issue. As a region, the Merrimack Valley needs this kind of publication to develop and maintain a distinct personality and image. The combination of local content, local writers, local photographers and designers, and business talent is…
Following is the third and final section of my poem “Colorado,” which I hope our readers have enjoyed. I’m working on a new collection of poems and prose sketches whose title is “Stars in the Dark.” The book includes older and new writings, most of which are not related to…
The Massachusetts Office of Tourism has been reminding us by e-mail and on the official web site that last year: “The Special Commission Relative to Designating 1000 Great Places in Massachusetts was created by an Act of the Legislature and signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick on January 15,…
Yesterday at noon I was toiling away in the heat mowing my lawn just so I’d be done in time to watch the final game of the World Cup. Weeks ago, I think I caught a few minutes of the US v England game but my interest quickly waned. But…
Following is the second section of my poem “Colorado,” which I introduced yesterday. The Blood of Christ or Sangre de Cristo Mountains are in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The range is either the beginning of the Rocky Mountains on the way north or the last stretch of the Rockies heading south.…
“Arrangement in Gray: A (self) Portrait of the Painter” James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1872) Just the other day I noted a Lowell connection in the current issue of Yankee magazine – a quote from James A. M. Whistler. And now we note that on this day – July 11, 1834 –…
This being July, I’m offering section 1 of a three-part poem titled “Colorado,” which I wrote in pieces during the early 1980s, when I spent a fair amount of time out west. I later combined the individual poems because together they made a stronger composition.—PM Colorado 1. Heat flashes over the High…
Earlier in this decade I slid into the “give gay couples all the legal rights of marriage, just don’t call it marriage” trap, but when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that a ban on same sex marriage violated the state Constitution (Goodrich v Dept of Public Health – 2003),…