RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Portrait of a marriage by Marjorie Arons-Barron

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

Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin was published in 1982 and was recently discovered by a friend, who recommended it to me. It is a well-drawn portrait of the Solo-Miller family, an affluent New York family steeped in tradition and guided by a willful mother, Wendy, who demanded decorum and imposed rules for every aspect of family life.  She sees “the family” as the foundation for society. As Colwin portrays it, marriage is a dynastic institution, a set of obligations passed on from generation to generation. In this novel, the formality for younger generations is suffocating but generally adhered to.

The protagonist, a mother herself, is Polly, the vessel of her mother’s dicta, among them that “a good wife’s job was to create a haven in a heartless world” for others. Like her father (Henry Solo-Miller), her husband, Henry Demarest, is a wealthy, highly successful, driven lawyer, whose priority in life is his work. When he is not in his office or traveling on business, he is in his study at home reviewing cases. Polly sees her role in life as attending to his needs and the needs of other members of the family, always making things nice for everyone else and denying – often not even recognizing – her own emotional needs, including built-up rage at the decades-long repression.

Ultimately, Polly finds herself in a love affair with an artist.  Wracked by guilt at her  personal  failure, she nevertheless comes to understand herself better and manages to open up new lines of communication with her husband. She loves two men, and, for the first time in her life, she becomes free to experience passionate love and deep pain.

This novel still contains lessons regarding the complexity of marriages today, but I would call it a good novel, not a great novel.

The author does write elegant prose. She has a talent for capturing telling details about people and their distinguishing features. Some of her character portraits are both authentically unappealing and laced with gentle humor. Speaking of a new member of the family from Eastern Europe, she writes, “Her English was stiff but close to perfect. It was rather like listening to someone who had learned the language by reading The Origin of Species.” Or, of another character playing the piano at a family gathering, Colwin observes, “the expression on his face was that of an ingenious veterinarian who had quelled a room full of anxious schnauzers.”

As they eventually come to communicate somewhat more, Polly and husband Henry do demonstrate growth, but the overall narrative seems more like a family photo album than a great story well spun out. The author’s empathy for her characters is evident. Family Happiness may resonate most with women who came of age in the fifties, who played by the rules modeled by their parents but discovered truths about themselves as the Women’s Movement evolved.  I just didn’t feel the need to revisit the scene.

If you read it and loved it, please push back.

Lowell Politics: February 1, 2026

This coming Tuesday is the Special Primary for the 1st Middlesex State Senate District which became vacant when Edward J. Kennedy passed away last October. The district includes Lowell, Dracut, Dunstable, Pepperell and Tyngsborough.

In the Democratic primary, the candidates are State Representatives Rodney Elliott and Vanna Howard, both of Lowell. The Republican specimen ballot shows no candidates but may be used for write-ins.

Normally in Lowell, schools are closed on election day since many are used for polling places, but all Lowell schools will remain open on Tuesday (unless weather dictates otherwise). More info about where in the various school buildings voting will take place is available on the city’s website.

****

On Tuesday, January 27, 2026, the city council held a relatively brief meeting. Two issues were discussed at length: the ongoing attempt to create a combined city and schools facilities department; and a proposed moratorium on data centers in the city. Here’s what happened:

Combined Facilities Department – This discussion arose with a motion by Councilor Corey Robinson that requested the city manager “have the proper department provide a draft home rule petition allowing the city to establish a centralized facilities department.”

Here’s some background: Lowell has something like 27 schools serving 14,000 students which makes it one of the largest school districts in Massachusetts. The city owns the schools, and the school department operates them. Many Lowell schools have been plagued by maintenance issues such as broken pipes, no heat and the presence of mold. In recent years, the city council has devoted substantial sums to fixing these problems. Councilors believe (correctly, for the most part) that these repairs costs are elevated due to a failure to perform preventive maintenance and a failure to fix small problems before they become large ones.

Councilors have identified a division of responsibility as a contributor to the inadequate maintenance. Specifically, custodians employed by the school department are responsible for cleaning the schools while tradespeople employed by the city’s department of public works are responsible for repairs. A boundary or seam between two things always is a weak spot and creates a risk of things slipping through the gap, so consolidating maintenance and repairs under a single entity would address that.

Still, the obstacles to the contemplated consolidation are considerable. Massachusetts General Laws chapter 71, section 37M, states that a city “may consolidate administrative functions, including but not limited to financial, personnel, and maintenance functions, of the school committee with those of the city or town; provided, however, that such consolidation may occur only upon a majority vote of both the school committee and in a city, the city council.”

At its May 6, 2025, meeting, the city council adopted this section and asked that the school committee take up the issue which the committee did at its May 21, 2025, meeting. According to the minutes of that meeting, Mayor Dan Rourke voted in favor of a consolidated maintenance department but the other six members of the school committee, David Conway, Eileen DelRossi, Jackie Doherty, Dominik Lay, Connie Martin, and Fred Bahou, all voted against it. There has been an election since then with Danielle McFadden replacing Jackie Doherty (who did not seek reelection) and Erik Gitschier replacing Dan Rourke as mayor. However, unless something else has changed – and I don’t think it has – the school committee would presumably reject the proposal once again.

Perhaps in anticipation of that, Robinson’s motion asks the council to go it alone by filing Home Rule legislation with the legislature seeking an exception to the requirement that the school committee concur with any consolidation. Asked to comment on the likelihood of passage of such a bill, City Manager Tom Golden, who served as a state representative for 28 years, tactfully said it was unlikely that the legislature would go against the wishes of the school committee.

In the end, the council did three things: (1) it asked Mayor Gitschier to bring this issue before the school committee for discussion; (2) it voted unanimously (with Councilor Sean McDonough abstaining) for Councilor Robinson’s motion that a Home Rule petition be drafted (whether it will then be filed is a question for another day); and (3) it concurred with a Councilor Kim Scott motion to schedule a meeting of the joint council and school committee subcommittee to answer whatever questions and concerns school committee members may have.

****

In response to a Councilor Kim Scott motion from earlier this month, a draft ordinance that would impose a moratorium on new data centers in the city was presented to the council on Tuesday night. The ordinance would halt city permissions on new requests for “the construction, expansion and operation of Data Centers” within the city for 360 days to allow the city to study the impact Data Centers might have on public safety, infrastructure, and the ability of the public to peacefully enjoy life in the vicinity of such a facility.

Councilor Belinda Juran asked if the definition of data center in the ordinance might be overly broad with the unintended consequence of applying to someone operating a server out of their home. She requested that the proposed ordinance be sent to the Zoning Subcommittee to clarify that. Councilor Scott objected to that and the discussion continued. The city solicitor and the DPD director both said small operations of the type envisioned by Councilor Juran were not intended to be covered by the ordinance, however, the solicitor suggested that if the ordinance was referred to his office for clarification he could have the revised ordinance back to the council next week. Everyone seemed content with that.

Here’s the Data Center definition contained in the ordinance that came before the council Tuesday night:

“A building or series of buildings that houses and supports the high-performance servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and related computing infrastructure and equipment necessary for storing, processing, and distributing data and applications.”

By that definition, the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds would be a data center. It is in a building and it “houses and supports” (as of the day I retired a year ago) “high-performance servers, storage systems, networking equipment, and related computing infrastructure and equipment necessary for storing, processing, and distributing data and applications.”

If that definition captures the relatively small and benign registry of deeds, what else would be affected? And what impact might this have on companies seeking to become part of the UMass Lowell LINC project? I understand the harm that motivates councilors to enact an ordinance of this type, and I don’t object to it in theory, but the city should be extremely precise with any such ordinance lest the ordinance intended to be remedial instead become a roadblock to desirable economic development.

****

This week in Seen & Heard, I reviewed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum; a podcast interview of author Chuck Klosterman about his new book, Football; a New Yorker review of a new album by singer Zach Bryan (the fiscal savior of Lowell’s Kerouac Center); the movie Sinners which set a record for the most academy award nominations; and the book Disney Adults: Exploring (And Falling in Love With) a Magical Subculture by A.J. Wolfe.

Bullies

BULLIES

By Gregory F. DeLaurier

I was born and raised in a small tough working-class city up in Northern New York. Wrote a novel about the place.

Growing up there, you had two choices—be bullied or be a bully. For the first few years of my life, say from kindergarten to third or fourth grade, really up to middle school, I was bullied. Mercilessly. Physically…punches, shoves, trips, but really even worse, verbally…faggot, queer, girly fat boy (note a theme?). I was indeed fat (for a while), and quiet, and bad at sports, and smart, and so naturally a target.

By fourth grade, I had gotten tired of it all, and I knew what I would have to do: I WOULD BECOME A BULLY. I would no longer be the gazelle, I would be the lion.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about doing this, having little experience, so I looked around to see what kids seemed to get bullied as much as, if not more than, me. And I found him. He was in the third grade. A Jew (not necessarily anti-Semitic, just made him different and that was enough). Wore thick black rimmed glasses. Stuttered. PERFECT.

So…one day walking home from school, I spied him in front of me. Now was my chance. I pushed him from behind and he fell to the ground. He’d been carrying a piece of blue construction paper with scraps of other pieces of paper awkwardly glued to it. The kind of ‘art’ we all made in primary school. I grabbed it from him, tore it up, and threw the scraps at him.

He got up, crying, holding these pieces of paper, and said, That was f-f-for my Mommy.

Oh no. Why did I do that? To this day, some sixty years later, I can still feel the shame and revulsion I felt then for what I had done. It was for his Mommy! Davey Crockett would not do this, Hopalong Cassidy would not do this, the Lone Ranger would not do this, Lash LaRue would not do this, Zorro would not do this. But I had.

I tried to say I was sorry, said maybe we could glue it back together or something. But he just pushed me away. Leave me alone…

He walked home, crying, carrying the remnants of his gift for his Mommy. I walked home a ways behind him, tears of shame and regret welling up inside me. I walked in the house, and just let go, crying and wailing. My Mom, home on an odd day off from her job at Woolworths, ran to me from the kitchen.

What’s the matter?

I…I…I pushed a kid down, tore up his picture he made for his Mommy.

Why did you do that?

I don’t know, I don’t know…

She hugged and held me.

That’s OK, baby, that’s OK. You made a mistake, you did a bad thing. But you are a good, kind boy. You know what you have to do.

I knew and dreaded what she was going to say, so I preempted her…

I have to go to his house and apologize.

            Yes, you do.

My mom grabbed a wash cloth, wiped my face, sat me down at the kitchen table and gave me a glass of milk and a brownie. When I finished, she said,

Are you ready?

I nodded yes, got up, put on my coat, headed to the door.

I’m proud of you.

That helped…a little.

I knew where he lived, just a couple blocks away, in a strange collection of shot gun apartments all connected. There were seven such places and unless you lived at one end or the other you had neighbors’ walls on both sides.

My aunt, my father’s sibling, he the youngest of thirteen, she the oldest, lived in the apartment on the left end as you faced the building. As a very young child, she was one of the many relatives who baby-sat me while my parents both worked to, barely, pay the bills.

She was kind and gentle, but had this way of grabbing my cheek between her fingers. A sign of affection I suppose, but it hurt. Maybe it was a French-Canadian thing as she still spoke in broken English, interspersed with long phrases in the French of her homeland.

She lived with her husband, a giant of a man who was mentally challenged and had worked as a garbage man. They both were illiterate, but together made a life for themselves and were happy.

Hilda and Victor. They must have been in their late seventies at the time, which meant they had been born and came to adulthood in the 19^th century. And here I write as the second quarter of the 21st century begins. Time and space, often an illusion.

My most vivid memory of Hilda is her sitting me down at her kitchen table while she baked cookies. But first she had to put wood in the stove, light it and get it going.

This kid lived in the third apartment from the right. I remember there was a menorah in the window, lit or not I do not recall. I knocked. A short, pretty, dark-haired woman wearing a flowery house dress opened the door.

I know who you are and what you did. What do you want?

I stared down at my feet, nervous and embarrassed.

I…I came to apologize for what I did. It was real mean, and I’m really really sorry.

She folded her arms and stared down at me.

Why did you do it?

            I don’t know, I don’t know, I wish I hadn’t…

            OK, you apologized.

She shut the door. It would have been a nice story if she had invited me in, praised my courage. If I had talked to her son and we had become best friends. But none of that happened. He and I never became friends, never hung out. Actions have consequences. I do know he moved to Israel later in life, and I hope he found peace in that troubled land.

As for me, I was never a bully again. Of course, I have been mean and petty, unkind and cutting, thoughtless and hurtful. In other words…human. But I have tried to be otherwise. I have never again attacked or belittled or dismissed someone who is weak and vulnerable. I remain atoning for what I did so many years ago.

After I retired from my career as a bully, I was left vulnerable. After all, bully or be bullied right? Not necessarily, as I came upon a strategy: find the toughest guy around and become his friend.

His name was Pee-Wee (of course it was). Nobody but nobody messed with him. He was big and strong, from the wrong side of the tracks, with a perpetual scowl on his face. There would be fights after school, this would be high school, and anyone stupid enough to fight Pee-Wee soon found himself ‘asleep’ on the ground.

But, I noticed, he never bullied anybody. Never took his anger or frustration or whatever out on someone weaker. I liked that, I liked him. I respected him. We became friends.

To be honest, this wasn’t some clever scheme on my part, it just happened. I remember I simply talked to him, not down to him. I made him laugh, I listened to the words he did not often say. He was smart, thoughtful, clever. Traits he kept well-hidden. An unlikely friendship, to be sure.

A side benefit to this friendship was that nobody dared bully me. If they did, they would have to answer to Pee-Wee, and nobody wanted that. At times, I would have to grant special dispensation to someone who had mistakenly hit me or hassled me somehow.

Please, please call Pee-Wee off. I’m sorry I messed with you.

So be kind. You never know, it may pay off.

The Knockout Punch

The Knockout Punch

By Jerry Bisantz

I got hit with a bomb. It happened at the supermarket yesterday. As I rolled my cart with the single wobbly wheel up and down the aisle, my eyes fell upon one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

To me, it felt like a major transition in my life.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am 71 years of age, recently retired, happily married to a wonderful woman, and we have two great children, all grown up, successful and living out of town. I consider myself to be a reasonably handsome man, keep myself in very good shape hiking, working out, you know… the usual.

Sadly, sex, passion, and lustful intimacy has been pretty much on the back burner for a long time. And then I saw her. Smooth brown skin, the color of coffee with two creams, please. Round, expressive hazel eyes that held mine. Briefly, for a moment, but that moment was all I needed.

Realizing that the worst thing that could happen to a guy like me would to be considered a “creepy old man,” staring at a woman the age of my daughter, I quickly averted my eyes, muttering “excuse me” as I slowly pushed my cart past her. Perhaps she knew that I was chastened by her presence. I am not sure. But she took a brief moment to gently touch my arm and say, “no problem.” I was rewarded with a furtive moment to look into her eyes once more.

Then, she walked away. Out of my life.

The transition I spoke about? The knowledge that it’s gone. And has been gone for quite a long time. My salad days of acting on an intuition, pursuing a lovely woman, perhaps even being pursued by a lovely woman… done. Finito.

And it stings. It stings because we all remember what we once were. I can harken back to those crazy days of yore when I was free and feeling it. Hell, I was “John Travolta” strutting down the street, swinging those paint cans, so cocky I am eating two slices of pizza to that disco beat.

Now, the best I can hope for is a stolen moment. A moment locked in time. And it only reminds me of who I am.

And makes me long for who I once was.