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Poet, publisher, and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away this week at the age of 101. A friend and publisher of Jack Kerouac’s, Ferlinghetti in the late 1980s visited Lowell at least twice as a guest of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! group. He began writing the poem below on a…
Read More »I wrote this appreciation of Roger Brunelle at the request of Dave Moore in England, all-around Kerouac wiseman and founder of a Kerouac Group on Facebook with thousands of members worldwide.–PM Au Revoir, Roger Brunelle (1934-2021) By Paul Marion Au revoir, Roger. Let’s hope we do see you again in…
Read More »Recycling this bulletin from 2010 when I regularly walked around Lowell. My habit was to walk and then write about what I’d seen for the Howe blog. This area is close to where I lived for 24 years, Highland St near the Rogers School. I was acquainted with Peter Danas…
Read More »In recognition of Black History Month, this week Trasna features an excerpt from a new publication by Joann Malone, Awake to Racism. Malone, an Irish-American, shares her experiences as a Catholic nun in Alabama in the 1960s. There, while teaching, she begins a lifelong involvement in the Civil Rights movement.…
Read More »George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at his parents’ estate on the south bank of the Potomac River in northeast Virginia. Congress made the day a Federal holiday in 1879 and nearly one hundred years later in the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971, Congress changed the name…
Read More »This week Trasna is pleased to feature the work of K.T. Slattery. A native of Tennessee, who now lives in the West of Ireland, Slattery is a familiar with Transatlantic crossings. “My biggest regret / Moving across the wide ocean- / I missed that glorious day / Red Sox World Champions!!!!” We commend Slattery not…
Read More »George Chigas’ Review of On Earth Beneath Sky by Chath pierSath In the aftermath of genocide, survivors undergo a lifelong process of healing in an attempt to make sense of the traumatic events that ruptured their lives. They strive to come to a new understanding of themselves and the…
Read More »Atlantic Currents is an anthology of sixty-five writers from Ireland and the United States. The book grew from the efforts of John Wooding, a former Provost at UMass, to have Lowell designated a UNESCO Learning City. Working with co-editors Paul Marion of Loom Press and Tina Neylon of the Cork…
Read More »When I visited Washington, DC in the summer of 2011, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was still under construction. It would officially open just a few weeks later on August 22. When I returned to DC two years later, a visit to the Memorial was high on my To…
Read More »Protecting the Capitol: 1861 & 2021 On April 19, 1861, about 200 soldiers from Lowell were attacked in Baltimore while en route to Washington, D.C., to protect the U.S. government from those who sought to overthrow it. The Lowell men were part of the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment that…
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