History

‘Common’

Common . Nineteenth-century designers saw parks as breathing spaces whose trees would pump oxygen through tenement and mansion alike. Even the vocabulary of green spaces freshens speech—grove and bee, clover and pebble, pine cone and jay.  Seagulls on the common across the street from my family’s house stand as stout…

Read More »

Edith Nourse Rogers

As Marie points out in her earlier post, today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Edith Nourse Rogers who represented Lowell in Congress from 1925 to 1960. She is buried alongside her husband, John Jacob Rogers, who preceded her in Congress (serving from 1913 until his death in…

Read More »

Remembering 9/11

A friend who is retired from federal law enforcement and who worked at the World Trade Center in the 1990s returned to lower Manhattan a few weeks ago for a special tour of the site and of the “Tribute WTC Visitor Center” which is filled with artifacts from that fateful…

Read More »

National “Blue Ribbon Schools” Honor for Lowell’s Ste. Jeanne D’Arc School

U. S.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has notified Ste. Jeanne d ‘Arc  School of Lowell that it has been designated as a 2010 National Blue Ribbon School – a distinction awarded to only fifty private schools in the nation. Principla Sr. Prescille Malo notified parents that these Blue Ribbon Schools are…

Read More »

Lowell’s Edith Nourse Rogers: “Fight hard, fight fair, and persevere.”

MassMoments reminds us this morning that on this day – September 10, 1960 – U. S. Representative Edith Nourse Rogers died. Mrs. Rogers was the longest serving woman in the U. S. Congress having replaced her late husband John Jacob Rogers upon his death in 1927. The heroine of Veterans and their families…

Read More »

Uncle Dave’s Provocative Idea of the Week

He’s back with another brain-stretcher of a mega-concept. David Brooks is writing about a national “gentility shift,” a long-term trend in how Americans are organizing their society, that he suggests may be a root cause of today’s new kind of economic pain. This has to do with younger people mostly—what those with more…

Read More »

Kristof Praises ‘9/11 Healers’

In today’s NYTimes, columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes about Susan Retik and Patricia (Fleming) Quigley, who co-founded Beyond the 11th after their husbands were killed in the 9/11 attacks as a way to reach out to women in Afghanistan who, like them, lost their husbands in violent incidents. Patti (Fleming)…

Read More »

Globe Touts Lowell’s “Banjo and Fiddle” Contest on September 11th

We are reminded by an article in today’s Globe here, that on this Saturday September 11th the 31st Annual Banjo and Fiddle Contest holds sway at Lowell’s premier outdoor concert venue – Boardinghouse Park in the historic downtown.  Imagine it has been 31 years since Park Ranger and musician Alex Demas put…

Read More »