RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Music & Beer for Two

This intriguing piece of art recently came to my attention. “Music and beer for two” sounds like fun, but the fact that the standing figure has three tankards in their hand is the first of many mysteries about this print.

To be fair, the full version of the above illustration is shown below and offers more information:

Flipping the card over, we find that it is a vintage advertising card for a long-departed downtown Lowell candy store, W. E. Pearson’s Confectionery, at 37 Merrimack Street.

Here’s what Mr. Pearson wrote in the above advertisement:

I have made for the Holiday Trade a large assortment of PURE Candies, Candy Toys, Animals, Baskets, Canes, Broken Candy, Mixtures, Nut and Fruit Candies, Caramels, Chocolates, Bon-Bons, Tree Ornaments, and all kinds of pure, wholesome Sweets. Fill up the little stockings and Make Christmas Merry.

Here’s a photo of the store:

I’m not sure what happened to Mr. Pearson or his store, but the variety of sweets he offered would have made it a regular stop on my holiday shopping trips.

Fortunately, we can still purchase candy and much else at another store just around the corner from the former home of Pearson’s Confectionery. That would be Pop Cultured which is now located at 58 Prescott Street in the former Tutto Bene Wine & Cheese Shop (which was operated by the late Richard Rourke). Originally located in Mill No. 5, Pop Cultured is primarily a gaming and novelty shop, but it also sells candies, art supplies, and collectibles. In fact, it was Pop Culture’s proprietor, Renee Mallett who sent me the Music & Beer for Two card.

This all serves as a reminder of the fine tradition of shopping downtown, one that is still alive and well today.

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For more information about Pop Cultured, check out the store’s website. The store is at 58 Prescott Street but on the canal side of the building, so entry is made from the street through the passageway to the canal walkway.

Louvre Update

Louvre Update

By Louise Peloquin

Eight pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $101 406 800, including items belonging to Emperor Napoléon III and his wife Empress Eugénie, were stolen from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery at 9:30 AM on October 19, 2025 shortly after the museum opened to the public.

Some of the stolen jewels

The news made global headlines. A few days after the heist, three suspects were incarcerated and a fourth was caught on November 25^th. Despite police intelligence efficiency, the bounty is still nowhere to be found leaving art lovers flabbergasted at how the Louvre could so easily be violated. Barely a month and a half after the burglary, questions arise about the security measures in the world’s most visited museum.

European news outlets have covered the astounding account of two young Belgian pranksters who snuck by security guards to illicitly hang up their own picture in the Louvre’s Salle d’État and then post the whole adventure on TikTok.

Theirs was a minutely prepared strategy. At 5:04 PM on November 15th, Neal and Senne were waiting in front of the museum. Contemplating its masterpieces was not their objective. Far from it. The practical jokers had concocted the insane plan to hang up their own “tableau” next to the Mona Lisa. Before succeeding, they knew that the road would be fraught with obstacles.

The first was getting through security. The jokers expounded: “We fabricated a frame that could be assembled like Legos. In order to pass through the security screen, it had to be dismantled into several pieces then reassembled. We also brought the rolled-up canvas.”

Neal and Senne faced another hurdle. Since the spectacular October 19th Louvre theft, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had instructed all prefects to reinforce security in and around cultural institutions.

“Security was increased because of this robbery” the TikTokers pointed out. “The guards separated us because we had a bag. We were hoping it would pass through the scanners without them noticing. When our bag was being scanned, Neal pulled it through the machine.”

Once Neal and Senne cleared security, they proceeded to reassemble the frame. The personnel was on the prowl causing the two Belgians to lose quite a bit of time. As soon as the frame was put together and the canvas placed inside – a portrait of the two young men – all they had to do was hang it on the wall. The chosen location proved to be another complication. “We wanted it next to the Mona Lisa” they playfully announced.

“After having inspected the Salle d’État, the mission seemed impossible” they noted. The attentive guards and the large crowd of visitors forced them to turn back. Furthermore, speakers were announcing the obligation to exit the premises at 5:30 PM.

It was precisely in the midst of this brouhaha that Neal and Senne succeeded in displaying their “work of art.”

“We quickly hung up the frame. It was impossible to put it next to the Mona Lisa. Too many guards around. But still, we got it in the same room!”

On November 17th, 2 days after the TikTok feat, the Campana gallery, dedicated to antique Greek ceramics, was closed to the public for an indefinite period of time. Laurence des Cars, President of the Louvre, had already sounded the alarm about “the dilapidated state of the museum” and about “the distressing deterioration of some areas.” She pointed out the “fragility” of the Campana gallery’s nine rooms, located on the second floor of the south wing, whose last renovation dated back to the 1930’s. The area had been monitored for several years but recent technical studies revealed the weakness of several beams supporting the 3rd floor. Consequently, closing the entire gallery was deemed necessary,  a “precautionary measure” to protect both the artwork and the public. The closure is forcing sixty-five museum agents to vacate their offices.

Campana gallery room

In January 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a plan for a “New Renaissance of the Louvre” prioritizing the “refurbishment and revitalization of the Sully quadrilateral.”

Sully quadrilateral

The Louvre’s “New Renaissance” is in gestation but developments are already seeing the light. On November 19th Laurence des Cars announced that a police precinct would open inside the Louvre.

Here’s hoping that the most visited museum in the world may be “reborn” like its neighbour up the river, Notre Dame cathedral. (1) In the meantime, tourists are far from being put off by the recent events. On the contrary, access lines are longer than ever and visitors are eager to take selfies not only with Mona Lisa but also with an Apollo gallery background. Nothing triggers curiosity and excitement more than a bit of drama, “n’est-ce pas?”

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1. For a glimpse of “reborn” Notre Dame, click the following link:

https://richardhowe.com/2025/05/16/notre-dame-revisited/#comments

Saying thanks on Thanksgiving by Marjorie Arons-Barron

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

During my tenure at WCVB-TV, Channel 5, I would write an annual Thanksgiving week editorial railing at all the turkeys in our lives. Favorite targets were members of the legislature who……., drivers who…….., people in lines at the store who………, teenagers who…………, television advertisers who………… The presentation was dramatically enhanced by the station’s super-talented Creative Services Department, who designed hilarious animations to illustrate all my pet peeves.

Then, on the day before Thanksgiving, another editorial praised some of the unsung heroes of our world, not astronauts like Mark Kelly or pilots like Sully Sullivan, but little-noticed yet profoundly-appreciated heroes who spend their holidays caring for the sick, the local firefighters who daily risk their lives simply because it’s part of their jobs, or the mother of four who joyfully takes on the burden of raising additional foster children.

Viewers liked the latter expressions of gratitude, but they really loved the animations of life’s annoyances.

We were lucky then that, for so many, the issues we bemoaned now seem minor irritants. Today, in the Donald Trump era, life is chaos, and the potholes are not just holes in the road but gouges savagely ripped from decency and long-held norms. The President has weaponized the justice system; exacerbated the hunger and health issues plaguing millions here and around the world; sold out Ukraine and given Vladimir Putin license to move against Poland, Estonia or Finland; sought credit for bringing lasting peace to the Middle East and elsewhere where little exists; handed over once-trusted health agencies to anti-science ideologues; upended the burgeoning renewable energy industry setting back improvements in climate change by decades; assaulted academic freedom; gilded every structure within sight of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and engaged in unchecked predatory self-enrichment and crony patronage. Need I go on?

So this season, I won’t even attempt to portray Trump as just another of my Thanksgiving turkeys. Instead, I’ll just give a full-throated shout-out of profound gratitude for my wonderful husband, my children and grandchildren, my sister, my friends, my home and my garden, my health and the health of my loved ones, the deep joys of symphonic music, the beauty created by gifted artists, the satisfaction of a well-written book. (Should I add the surprising turnaround of the New England Patriots?)  I also give thanks for you, my devoted readers, who send me emails or make occasional comments on my blog. It means so much knowing you are out there and engaged.

So, go. Enjoy your holiday get-togethers. Stop the doom-scrolling and turn off the news. Worrying does not eliminate tomorrow’s troubles. Let’s not let it suffocate the chance for a holiday respite. I wish you all joyous gatherings, bountiful meals, and genuinely happy smiles – no matter who’s around the table.

Lowell Politics: November 30, 2025

The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday night. The longest and most intense discussion involved a proposed amendment to the city’s “Peace and Good Order” ordinance that would impose a new limitation on already-legal “needle exchange programs” by prohibiting such programs from operating within 1000 feet of a school. In the end, the council voted unanimously to send the proposed amendment to the council’s Public Safety Subcommittee for a meeting with the city’s Board of Health and with representatives from the state Department of Public Health.

For a while, the council seemed headed down the “we don’t care what the data show, we’re going to follow our own common sense” approach that we witnessed last week with the pre-emptive “safe injection site” ban, however, the council this Tuesday jumped back onto the rational decision track in sending the proposal to the subcommittee for further consideration.

The problem councilors seek to address is the profusion of used needles scattered about certain parts of the city, especially in public parks like the South Common. Although city health officials questioned on Tuesday could not identify a single instance of a public-school student having been pricked by a stray needle, the fear of that happening is not far-fetched and the potential harm that would come from it is considerable.

While a councilor’s “common sense” might say that a program that hands out free needles to addicts would contribute to this epidemic of used needles in public spaces, experts disagree. Tuesday night, two members of the city’s board of health, Chair JoAnn Keegan and Member Erin Gendron, spoke on this motion and urged restraint in curtailing the needle distribution programs now in place. They, and several councilors, referred to a presentation made by representatives from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health at the last Lowell Board of Health meeting.

At that meeting, Dawn Fukuda of DPH explained that Syringe Service Programs do much more than distribute clean needles to addicts. They also provide a continuum of care that includes treatment of wounds, testing for infectious diseases, and linkage to substance abuse treatment. She emphasized that drug users have personal autonomy and will make better health decisions when provided with accurate information, and often those decisions lead to recovery treatment.

Dr. Alex Walley, also of DPH, said 30 years of scientific data prove that Syringe Service Programs (SSP) are an effective public health tool that reduce the transmission of HIV by 34 percent to 58 percent, depending on the quality of the program. Dr. Walley also cited a Seattle study that showed addicts who participated in an SSP were five times more likely to start addiction treatment and three times more likely to stop using drugs entirely than those who did not use the program. He pointed to another study from Miami that showed a 49 percent decrease in syringe litter after the program opened.

Next, Dr. Walley spoke about an outbreak of HIV in Lowell in 2018 when there was a spike in new HIV cases with most having been transmitted by dirty needles. Infections were not limited to intravenous drug users but spread through the general population, usually due to sexual transmission. However, statistics showed that once an SSP program opened in Lowell, the rise in new HIV infections relented.

At the council meeting, Councilor Rita Mercier who, along with Councilors Corey Robinson, Erik Gitschier and Corey Belanger, attended the board of health meeting, criticized SSPs for lacking a strict one-for-one needle exchange policy. As I understand it, clean needles are typically distributed in packages of ten, however, a patron who turns in fewer than ten used needles still gets a full package.

In response to this no one-for-one policy criticism, both DPH’s Fukuda at the board of health meeting and Ms. Keegan at the council meeting explained that the primary purpose of the SSP is harm reduction among the served population, and that an addict who is unable to get clean needles will just reuse a dirty one which will damage their veins and risk infection.

Besides Councilor Mercier, her colleagues who support this amendment (and those who supported last week’s safe injection site prohibition) have a familiar litany of complaints: the suburbs are not sharing this societal burden; rampant vagrancy drives businesses out of downtown; public spaces are rendered unsafe or uncomfortable for everyone else; the state was wrong to abolish involuntary civil commitments; and so on. In the face of this frustration, curtailing the SSP program might make councilors feel as though they are doing something when, as the public health professionals tactfully explained, such restrictions just reshuffle the deck of pathologies the community faces without solving any of them.

There is no magical solution to this but two things, more addiction treatment and more housing, seem to be the best long-term strategies for addressing these issues. But both are expensive and, with the housing piece at least, require tough political choices that many elected officials are unwilling to make, so instead we have a revolving solution-of-the-month approach from the council.

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The council did give a small boost to creating more housing in Lowell by voting unanimously to amend the 20-year-old “Rebuilding of the Julian D. Steele Public Housing Development” plan. The amendment allows the construction of 16 new duplexes which will create 32 housing units that will be sold to buyers whose total household gross income is between 70 percent and 100 percent of the area median income as defined by HUD.

The state legislation that established this project back in 2000 requires the approval of the Lowell Housing Authority, the Department of Housing and Community Development and the Lowell City Council. With the council’s action on Tuesday, all three entities have approved the plan so presumably construction may now proceed.

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Twelve months ago, when many “best books of the year” lists appeared, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Ganz was prominently mentioned. I bought, read, and enjoyed the book which challenges the nostalgic view of the early 90s as a peaceful “end of history” between the Cold War and the War on Terror. Instead, Ganz argues this period was a turbulent crucible that birthed modern American extremism and the MAGA movement.

Besides authoring this bestselling book, Ganz writes about the writes about the history and ideology of the American Right on his Substack newsletter, Unpopular Front, which I subscribe to. One day last week, Ganz discussed US policy towards Cambodia in 1975, after the Khmer Rouge had come to power and the North Vietnamese had defeated South Vietnam. Because events from that time and place are central to understanding Lowell today, I read what Ganz wrote with great attention.

Ganz explained that to understand US policy towards Cambodia in 1975, one must understand the larger geopolitics of the Cold War at the time: “The Khmer Rouge was aligned with China, which viewed them as a counterweight to Soviet-backed Vietnam. The United States was capitalizing on the Sino-Soviet split to cultivate relations with China and form a bloc against the USSR, so the US was effectively the ally of the Khmer Rouge’s ally.”

In support of that analysis, Ganz cited a now declassified but once Secret transcript of a meeting between US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Foreign Minister Chatchai Chunhawan of Thailand. Here are the relevant parts of their conversation:

Kissinger: Our interest in Southeast Asia remains strong. We appreciate the spirit in which the negotiations for our withdrawal have taken place . . . It is important that we still have a presence in Southeast Asia. We appreciate what you did in Vietnam. I am, personally, embarrassed by the Vietnam War. I believe that if you go to war, you go to win and not to lose with moderation.

We are aware that the biggest threat in Southeast Asia at the present time is North Vietnam. Our strategy is to get the Chinese into Laos and Cambodia as a barrier to the Vietnamese.

Chatchai: I asked the Chinese to take over in Laos. They mentioned that they had a road building team in northern Laos.

Kissinger: We would support this. You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before. (Emphasis supplied).

The full transcript, which makes fascinating reading, is available online (link below).

When Henry Kissinger died two years ago, the Boston Globe interviewed some survivors of the Cambodian genocide who were living in Lowell. Their comments about Kissinger were extremely harsh which surprised me, not because they weren’t deserved (a view that Ganz also shares), but because they were so passionate. Reading this meeting transcript gives me a better understanding of the reasons for that passionate response.

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Links cited in today’s newsletter:

Lowell Board of Health meeting on November 5, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPCaNf4bR0A

Proposed Amendment to Needle Exchange Program ordinance

https://www.lowellma.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/33286?fileID=86916

Transcript of November 26, 1975, meeting between US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Foreign Minister Chatchai of Thailand.

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK-11-26-75.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email