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Photo Fix By Leo Racicot I’ve always liked taking photos. The idea that you can click a button and capture a person, a place forever (or at least for as long as the photo lasts, appealed to me from childhood. When, as a nine-year-old, I acquired a Brownie camera for…
Read More »A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. Book Review: Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence by Trevor Burnard and Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy (2025). In honor of the US Semisesquincentennial, this book presents the American Revolution from the British perspective. Seen from…
Read More »Two years ago, Louise Peloquin began sharing excerpts from L’Etoile, a French-language newspaper published in Lowell from 1881 to 1957. At my urging, she has agreed to compile some of her previous posts with added contextual information into a book manuscript to be called, L’Etoile: A Star on Prince Street. Starting this week,…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang is a family history and autobiography of three generations of a Chinese family, spanning most of the 20th century in China. Published in 1991, the 650-page tome hadn’t come to my attention…
Read More »The Lowell City Council last met on Tuesday, August 11, 2026. I was away that week, so I was unable to write about that meeting on the following Sunday. However, I have since watched a recording of the meeting on YouTube and will write about it here. The council covered…
Read More »News from Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Graduate Chair, Penn English, Associate Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania, www.jccloutier.com J-C Cloutier is the translator of The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings by Jack Kerouac, edited by Todd Tietchen of UMass Lowell (Library of America, 2016). “Dear…
Read More »Fast Food, Spindle City By Leo Racicot In 1965, when radio and newspaper ads announced that a new type of eating place was coming to town, area excitement was high. The restaurant was called McDonald’s and promised to offer fast, cheap service, new kinds of food flavors different from the diner and…
Read More »A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. Museum Exhibit: “American Stories: Revolution to Rockwell” at Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts until October 26, 2026. Anytime we visit the Berkshires, the Rockwell Museum is a regular destination, mostly because of the interesting temporary exhibits presented…
Read More »Two years ago, Louise Peloquin began sharing excerpts from L’Etoile, a French-language newspaper published in Lowell from 1881 to 1957. At my urging, she has agreed to compile some of her previous posts with added contextual information into a book manuscript to be called, L’Etoile: A Star on Prince Street.…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Years ago, when Martha Raddatz was Martha Bradlee, we were colleagues at WCVB-TV, Channel 5 in Boston — she in the newsroom chasing stories, I in the editorial department, commenting on the news from a safe distance. Millions…
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