Baseball on the Moon

Baseball on the Moon By David Daniel The mercury, when I’d left the guard mount a few hours earlier, stood at 30. The air felt colder now and I was glad I’d zipped the liner into my field jacket. It was New Year’s Eve, 1969. I’d pulled guard duty, swapped…

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Who wrote Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue?

Who wrote Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? By Malcolm Sharps That was the question. Correct. Who wrote Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? The answer would appear to be a no-brainer: George Gershwin did. But it’s a less straight-forward question than it seems. If I ask the question in another way: who wrote…

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Christmas in Lowell 100 Years Ago

December 25, 1922, fell on a Sunday. The weather was seasonal with no storms to disrupt the holiday. Local merchants were happy with their volume of sales, and downtown streets were crowded with shoppers, especially on the Thursday night before Christmas. All the streetcars were packed that evening with people…

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The Perfect Tree

This essay by Henri Marchand was first heard in 2008 as a radio essay on the “Sunrise” program of WUML, 92.5 FM, at UMass Lowell. Today we continue our tradition of reposting the essay each year at Christmas. The Perfect Tree By Henri Marchand We begin the holiday season engaged…

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Christmas with the Kanes

  Christmas with the Kanes By David Daniel The exchanging of cards at the holidays remains a quaint, if vanishing, tradition. For a time, it gave ground to the “holiday letter”—pages of cheery mimeographed minutiae. But even those have waned, the impetus to show lives in perfect balance largely siphoned…

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