Living Madly: Making Life “Easier” Won’t Make You Happier By Emilie-Noelle Provost Life can be a grind. Working, meal planning, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, paying bills—all of it wears me out sometimes. Even doing activities I enjoy often requires a fair amount of effort and planning. Hiking in the White…
Visited: Boott Cotton Mills Museum – With out of town guests expressing interest in Lowell’s history, we all headed to the Boott Cotton Mills Museum this week. Admission is $6 for adults and $4 for seniors. A demonstration in the weave room takes place every 30 minutes and lasts for…
Les Bleus in Boston By Louise Peloquin Excitement is in the air as the World Cup kicked off on June 11th giving the word “football” a whole new meaning in America. Our very basic soccer expertise excludes valid sport commentaries or prognoses on the 2026 World Cup. Nonetheless, since…
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is the ninth book I have read by Strout. She raises many classic Strout themes: the lives of seemingly ordinary people, how people deal with each other and with their own feelings,…
Lowell Mayors, Part I The Lowell City Council is now on its summer meeting schedule. From June through September the council will meet on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month rather than weekly as is the case the rest of the year. For the non-meeting weeks (and due…
With the annual Lowell area Franco-American week celebration coming up later this month, this seemed to be a good time to re-run this brief essay. There are two million descendants of French-Canadian immigrants in New England. In 2020, I was asked by the hosts of the French-Canadian Legacy Podcast in…
Lowell’s 2026 Franco-American Festival Week begins Sunday, June 21! Sunday, June 21: 12:00 pm Mass in French honoring St. Jean Baptiste. (French/English worship aid provided.) At Immaculate Conception Church, 144 E. Merrimack St., Lowell, MA. Refreshments and naming of the Greater-Lowell Franco-American of the Year will follow in downstairs church…
A Tribute to the LRTA By Leo Racicot Due to a series of nerve-wracking experiences driving on the Wild West streets of Las Vegas for three years followed by working for a woman in Cambridge who wanted me to ride her autistic son around the city while he screamed at the top…
In which I write about interesting things that I have read, heard and seen during the past week: Destination: Concord Museum – Located at 53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord Museum is not far from downtown Concord, Massachusetts. The mission of the museum is to share objects and stories about the many…
Wind rips through la Caverne By Louise Peloquin After an 8-day, record-breaking heatwave at the end of May stifled Paris, June 2nd brought torrential rain and, as the French say, un vent à décorner les boeufs – a wind to rip the horns off a bull. As far as…