RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Junk Mail

Junk Mail

By Jack McDonough

When I was growing up in Dover, N.H., in the middle of the 20^th century, our mailman was Tom Bell. In those World War II years, we actually knew the name of the person who slipped mail through the slot in our front door – twice a day!  With a mailbag over his shoulder, Tom would walk to our house at the end of the street, rain or shine, six days a week. No mail trucks or scooters in that era. We kids would greet him with “Hi, Tom,” and he’d smile and say hello. He knew our names. What Tom delivered were bills and letters. The correspondents seeking money were asking for payment of goods or services they had provided. There also were the usual greeting cards – birthdays, Christmas and other special days – and sometimes a hand written letter!

How times have changed. Those who deliver our mail these days are mostly anonymous and, so as to be politically correct, we no longer call them “mailmen.” They are now “letter carriers” despite the fact that they deliver few if any actual letters.

The majority of what the postal service delivers today is guilt. On average, my household receives twenty-five requests for money each week. But these petitioners are not seeking payment for goods or services provided. They just want me to give them money for their school or hospital or endangered animals or disadvantaged children living half a world away. While most are probably worthy causes, their aim clearly is to instill guilt in the recipient.

Enough already. Some of these petitioners crowd into my mailbox two or three times a month. Maybe more. I shout at their envelopes, “I just sent you a check last month! Leave me alone.”

Their plea often includes a “gift.” I know it’s there because the envelope announces, “Free Gift inside.” Nothing better than a “gift” that’s free. These presents run the gamut — tiny note pads with five sheets of paper, greeting cards, ersatz jewelry, dimes or nickels, and the two favorites, calendars and return address stickers. Before the end of June this year, I received four 2026 wall calendars! And hardly a week goes by that I don’t receive enough return address stickers to last a lifetime. (This strategy is especially puzzling in an age when no one writes letters and most bills are probably paid online.)

Other envelopes get a little testy. These, in bold face capital letters, demand, “Open Immediately” or “Reply by” some date or “Matching Gift Offer” or they instruct the Postmaster to handle this important envelope according to such and such a Postal Regulation. As if any postmaster needs it, heeds it or even reads it.

This constant barrage of unsolicited mail leads one to wonder if the expense is worth it to those seeking my money. I suppose the answer must be “yes,” or they wouldn’t keep doing it.

Alas. There’s no relief in sight. I’ll just get tennis elbow slitting open those two dozen pleas a week. You never know. I don’t have a calendar for 2027 yet.

Specks of beauty amidst dark period in U.S. history by Marjorie Arons Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins is a mighty book, in length (544 pages) and in the majesty of the natural world that is its backdrop.  The writing is often captivatingly poetic and deeply philosophical. Each of the major characters is sui generis and memorable. The sometimes stream-of-consciousness method giving voice to each of their perspectives is laced with humor, often dark.  And the conclusion will leave you thirsting for what the next, unwritten chapter might be.

Briefly, the narrative is launched in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. An Interior Department lawyer named Schiff is tasked with designing and building Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp in a valley north of Los Angeles. A Jew born in Chicago, he is an intellectual and a humanist who understands the violative nature of the policy and seeks to soften its sharpest blows. But, for Schiff, it is the war against Hitler that ultimately drives him to sign up for active military duty.

The internment camp’s immediate neighbor, an iconoclastic Manhattan transplant, is Rockwell (Rocky) Rhodes who has built an enormous ranch (named “Three Chairs”) in defiance of his railroad tycoon father’s East Coast status and wealth. Rocky is in an existential battle with the predatory Los Angeles Water Corporation diverting water to support its growing population (humorously and savagely exemplified by film makers who visit the ranch periodically to make movies on location.)

Rocky’s wife, Lou, was a doctor caring for indigenous people and also a gourmet cook. After her death from polio, her cookbooks pass down to her daughter Sunny, an independent young woman who opens a small restaurant in nearby Lone Pine to carry on her mother’s tradition. Schiff is romantically drawn to Sunny. Her twin brother, Stryker, is a pusher of boundaries, who enlists in the Navy and, sadly, is based at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. For the reader, Stryker exists only as he is recalled by the other characters. Particularly memorable is Cas, Rocky’s unmarried twin sister, who leaves her musical career as a harpist in Europe to move to the ranch to care for Sunny and Stryker when Lou dies. Like Rocky, Cas is towering in height, but she is off-putting as a rough-hewn spinster.

The narrative is driven not just by the force of personalities but by power clashes: Rocky’s lifelong battle against the L.A. water authorities who divert the water crucial to the survival of Owens Valley; Schiff’s struggle between carrying out his government responsibilities and his personal mission to treat the 10,000 wronged Japanese internees as fairly as possible within the unconstitutional mandate imposed in the name of national security; Sunny’s struggle to create beauty in a harsh world thrust upon her by loss after loss; Cas’s friction with people disdaining her because of her looming and unattractive appearance. Tension builds when rigid bureaucracy fails to provide information about Stryker’s death and the whereabouts of his Japanese wife and two children. There are minor characters too, each drawn with clarity and revealing some truth about human nature.

There is love, loss, war, murder, wealth, injustice, resilience and more, all reflecting the breadth of the human experience. The metaphor of thirst is woven throughout: thirst for water, thirst for power, thirst for love, thirst for freedom. Prior to completing the book, author Wiggins had a massive stroke. Over three years, it was completed with the help and persistence of her daughter, photographer Lara Porzak. In the end, the reader is left to ponder: will the mysterious shooter ever be found and held accountable? Will Sunny be reunited with Schiff after the war? Will Cas find lasting love? Will the beloved family ranch be able to survive? Can an individual stand up to government power and prevail?

There are moments when Wiggins belabors certain details, especially around food and the recipes for preparing it, but the memorable characters, beautiful writing, striking landscape and contemporary relevance make Properties of Thirst exceedingly well worth the immersion.

Lowell Politics: October 19, 2025

The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday night. Mayor Dan Rourke was absent and Councilors Wayne Jenness and Corey Robinson participated via Zoom. The brief agenda yielded a 58-minute-long meeting that handled business expeditiously and without controversy. Rather than dig into this week’s meeting, today I’ll revisit an item from the October 7, 2025, council meeting, a report on the city’s 311 system.

The document presented to councilors was in response to three previous council motions. It explained that much of the 311 team’s efforts over the first six months have been identifying and fixing bugs and improving the flow of information through the system.

The 311 system consists of a non-emergency phone number, a website interface, and a mobile application that allows residents to request services or report quality of life issues. The system also harvests data from these requests that can be used to better manage city operations.

The 12-page report provides a lot of statistical information about the system. I’ll highlight three items:

Method of Submission:

53% of requests are made by phone
27% are made through the website
19% are made on the mobile app
and a handful are from email or walk-ins.

Top Ten Types of Requests:

Pothole – 1108
Pothole (DPW/INT) – 897 (I assume someone in DPW submitted these)
Broken recycling cart (DPW/INT) – 799
Missed trash pickup – 621
Broken recycling cart – 547
Broken trash cart – 524
Missed recycling pickup – 260
Missed yard waste pickup – 181
Bulk items/dumping – 125
Streetlight repair – 98
Trees in public way – 98

Request by Council District:

District 5 (Scott) – 985
District 3 (Belanger) – 969
District 7 (Yem) – 963
District 2 (Robinson) – 822
District 1 (Rourke) – 743
District 8 (Descoteaux) – 713
District 4 (Jenness) – 700
District 6 (Chau) – 633

The report closed by stating that the 311 system will eventually be integrated into the new Enterprise Asset Management system that’s supposed to be operational by the end of 2025. This will allow school and other building work orders to be integrated into the same 311 system and its reporting and data functions.

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The Lowell Sun reported this week that the Markley Group has withdrawn its petition to increase the amount of diesel fuel and diesel fuel generators it maintains at its South Lowell facility (“Markley withdraws diesel-fuel petition from council agenda”). At a previous council meeting, Attorney Bill Martin, who represents Markley, asked the council to delay scheduling the public hearing to give Markley more time to complete some of the remediating tasks they had promised, but with a strong tail wind of neighborhood opposition to the proposal, the council went ahead and scheduled the public hearing for this coming Tuesday, October 21, 2025.

Procedurally, Markley has the right to withdraw its petition without prejudice which means it can refile it at any time with no penalties due to the previous submission.

When this came up two weeks ago, councilors refrained from stating how they would ultimately vote on the petition, but their comments that night, taken as a whole, suggested the petition would be rejected. By withdrawing it, Markley lives to make its case another day, with that day, not coincidentally, falling sometime after the November 4, 2025, city election.

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This week’s example of “there’s always a Lowell connection” can be found in an October 10, 2025, Boston Globe article, “N.H. lawmaker calls for removal of Hannah Duston statue, which memorializes violence against Native Americans.”

Just east of Concord, New Hampshire, on a small island at the confluence of the Contoocook and Merrimack Rivers, there is a statue dedicated to Hannah Duston. Here’s the story behind the statue: In the spring of 1697, 39-year-old Hannah Duston lived with her husband and their children on the family farm on the north bank of the Merrimack River in what is now Methuen but was then Haverhill. One day while Mr. Duston and the children worked in the fields and Mrs. Duston remained in the house, caring for the couple’s thirteenth child, a weeks-old infant, a Native American raiding party attacked the farm. Mr. Duston and the children escaped to a neighboring garrison house, but the attackers captured and kidnapped Mrs. Duston, her infant, and a local woman helping with the child. The attackers and their captives then proceeded on foot north through the wilderness bound for Canada. Along the way, the Native Americans murdered the captives who could not keep up, including the infant who was fatally slammed against a tree after he wouldn’t stop crying.

Eventually the group rendezvoused with other Native people, including the families of the raiders, on a small island at the juncture of the Merrimack and Concord Rivers. Most of the Native fighters departed on another raid leaving two behind to guard Mrs. Duston and two other captives (another woman and a 13-year-old boy who were both captured elsewhere). Approximately eight Native American women and children also remained on the island.

That night, as the Native people all slept, Mrs. Duston awakened her fellow captives, seized a hatchet from one of the sleeping Native men, and used it to kill him and all the other Native people on the island. Next, Duston destroyed all but one of the canoes that the Native people had left behind and then fled downriver in the remaining canoe.

To put this in historical context, this was 21 years after King Philip’s War, a fight between English colonists and Native Americans, which was the deadliest conflict in the history of the North American continent in terms of the percentage of the population killed on both sides. As is evident from the Duston story, violence and brutality continued after the war ended with the colonial government even offering cash bounties to anyone presenting the scalp of a Native person. In this context, before escaping the island on which she had been held, Duston scalped the Native people she had killed and took those gruesome artifacts with her in the canoe.

The escapees encountered English settlers in Dunstable and eventually returned to their homes. Duston redeemed her scalp bounty but then returned home and lived in relative obscurity until she died at age 97.

Nearly two centuries later, in 1874, the City Solicitor of Lowell, Robert Boody Caverly, launched an effort to memorialize Hannah Duston by erecting a statue of her on the Merrimack River island from which she had escaped. Caverly raised $6,000, mostly from affluent Lowellians and then hired William Andrews, another Lowellian who was by profession a cemetery monument carver, to create the statue of Duston which is now the center of controversy. Attorney Caverly was also a poet, playwright and historian. Among his works was a book, The Heroism of Hannah Duston Together with the Indian Wars of New England.

It’s no coincidence that Hannah Duston’s renaissance came at a time when American expansionism caused brutal conflict with the Native Americans in the west (the battle of Little Bighorn came two years after the unveiling). By equating Hannah’s ordeal with the conflict in the west, it provided a more virtuous context for the United States government’s genocidal campaigns against Native people in the post-Civil War era.

However, my purpose in relating this story here today – besides highlighting the Lowell connection – is to remind readers that history is messy and is best understood in shades of gray rather than in black and white. Duston’s violence towards her captors can only be assessed in the context of the murder of her infant by those captors or their colleagues just hours earlier.

To see photos of the Duston statue and related items, check out this item on richardhowe.com.

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Charlie Gargiulo’s memoir of growing up in Lowell’s Little Canada neighborhood (Legends of Little Canada) was recently reviewed on the Literary Titan and Readers’ Favorite websites. Also, on March 4, 2026, Charlie will give a talk on the book at Boston’s West End Museum. More about that when the date comes closer. Legends of Little Canada which I previously reviewed on my website, may be purchased online from Loom Press.

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The latest volume of Resonance, the Franco-American literary journal based at the University of Maine includes translations to English from the original French of five poems by Lowell physician and poet Joseph H. Roy (1865-1931). The translator of the poem was Louise Peloquin, a frequent contributor to richardhowe.com, and the biographical essay accompanying the poems was written by Paul Marion and Janet (Roy) O’Neil, the poet’s granddaughter. Here is a link to the article.

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The group striving to save the Smith Baker Center is holding a fundraiser on Thursday, October 23, 2025, from 7 to 9 pm at the Worthen House Café at 141 Worthen Street in Lowell. More information about the event is available here.

Hannah Duston Memorial, Boscawen NH

Here are some photos of the Hannah Duston Memorial in Boscawen, New Hampshire.

Robert Caverly grave, Lowell Cemetery. He was the person primarily responsible for the Hannah Duston Memorial in New Hampshire.

William Andrews grave, Lowell Cemetery. Andrews carved the New Hampshire Hannah Duston Memorial.

Example of stone carving talent of William Andrews. The grave of Horace Ebert at Lowell Cemetery.