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Seen & Heard vol. 14

Seen & Heard: Vol. 14

Movie Review: Nuremberg – This 2025 historical drama is now on Netflix. It’s about the war crime trials of German leaders that were held at the end of World War II in the German city of Nuremberg. The movie stars Russell Crowe as Hermann Goring, who ranked just behind Hitler in the Nazi hierarchy, and Rami Malek as a US Army psychiatrist assigned to assess Goring and the dozen other defendants for their competency to stand trial, their risk of suicide, and to covertly obtain information about their defense strategy. In supporting roles are John Slattery as the warden of the jail in which the defendants are held, and Michael Shannon, as US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who was the lead American prosecutor. At first, I had a hard time separating what I thought were the dramatic liberties that had been taken with the story, but in my subsequent reading, I was surprised to learn the movie hewed closely to what actually happened. Even with my (unfounded) skepticism, it was an excellent film, especially Crowe’s performance. Knowing now that it was mostly accurate made my memory of the film that much better. Although not completely clear from the movie, after the war, the psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, published a book, 22 Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist Examines Nazi Criminals. His conclusion: there was nothing unique about the Nazi defendants. They were all mediocre, narcissistic men, who latched on to a charismatic leader (Hitler) to advance their own standing, and were willing to say or do anything to stay in the good graces of that leader. Kelley argued that these types of men exist in every society, even in America, and that the same thing could happen here. Published in 1947, his downbeat message was not what Americans wanted to hear and the book was poorly received, although looking back from today, it seems remarkably prescient. 

YouTube Author Interview: America’s Bookclub: Historian Beverly Gage – Hosted by philanthropist David Rubenstein and produced by CSPAN, America’s Bookclub features Rubenstein interviewing American historians about the books they have written. A recent edition featured Beverly Gage, a professor of history at Yale, who won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for her 2022 book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. Gage explained that her field is 20th century American history and that Hoover’s career, which began under President Calvin Coolidge and ended under Richard Nixon, spanned much of that period and was deeply involved in the Cold War which was a dominant circumstance of that era. She talked much about Hoover and her writing process. She also said her next big biography will be of Ronald Reagan, not because there are a lack of Reagan biographies, but because the Cold War was also dominant throughout his political life, including the end of the Cold War, so his biography would allow her to tell the full story of that conflict. Because writing a big biography takes a decade or more, she fit in a shorter project in honor of the US 250th birthday. That book, This Land is Your Land, describes visits to 13 historical sites in America ranging from Independence Hall in Pennsylvania to Disneyland in California. Here’s a link to the interview: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MycpJL6uUQ&t=1988s

Newspaper Article: “70s Oil Shocks Altered Global Finance. Will This One?” New York Times, March 29, 2026. In my recent book chronicling the history of Lowell, I repeat the oft used phrase that in Lowell, the Great Depression came early and stayed late. I usually set 1978 as the pivot point when things changed, but more likely it was a year or two later. An event that extended the city’s economic plight was the twin oil shocks of the 1970s. The first happened in 1973-74 in the aftermath of the Six Day War; the second in 1978-79 with the Iranian Revolution. I was in high school during that earlier episode (Bishop Guertin in Nashua) and recall having Christmas vacation extended a week and then having all Mondays off in January and February, all to conserve heating oil. In the later oil crisis, there was gas rationing – if your license plate ended in an even number, you would only get gas on an even numbered day of the week and vice versa for odd numbers. I also recall spending the summer of 1978 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for ROTC training camp, and worrying about access to gasoline during my 750 mile drive back to Lowell that August. It turned out not to be an issue but it was a cause for concern. The article cited above reviews both of those crises and their consequences. Besides squeezing the US with oil shortages, the embargos also fueled further inflation that wracked the US economy in that decade which forced the incredibly high interest rates (18% home mortgages) of the early 1980s that were needed to tame inflation. But the oil shortages also strengthened the US dollar as the world’s currency which caused billions to flow to oil exporters in the Middle East. That countries like Saudi Arabia are now central to global finance is a direct result of those oil shocks of the 1970s. The article also invites readers to speculate how the global system of finance and commerce might be fundamentally reordered if the current war drags on.

A Franco Poet Graces National Poetry Month

A Franco Poet Graces National Poetry Month

By Louise Peloquin

In 1996, the Academy of American Poets declared April as National Poetry Month. For the 30th anniversary, we remember a great Franco-American poet of the 20th century – Normand C. Dubé.

Maine native Normand Camille Dubé (1932-1988) was a proud Franco-American, an educator, an academic, a curriculum creator, a cultural leader, a published writer, a friend. For detailed biographical information, consult:

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=findingaids

We celebrate April with a poem included in an article Normand wrote for a French academic journal whose advisory committee gathered renown university professors from France, Canada, Switzerland, and England. For the first time in its history, indeed, for the first time in France, a special issue was devoted to French-speaking enclaves in the United States. (1) Publication was in 1988, a short time before the poet’s passing.

Normand knew this would be his last appearance in print. Perhaps knowledge of the inevitable shaded his verses? The reader is the judge.

Franco-American culture and identity make up his music and the “mystical lily.”

LA MUSIQUE SUR LES EPAULES

Je jouerai ma guitare                                      Je jouerai la musique

Par les rues des grandes villes_                    D’un poème à la vie

Dans la fumée des bars                                   Écrit en vers classiques_

Où les jeunes garçons                                      Comme ceux qui vivent et meurent

Boivent la vie aux sons                                    Dans l’âme de mes soeurs

De leur printemps fébrile.                               Qui les auront écrite.

     Mes ballades parlent d’amour                            Puis, je laisserai ma guitare

     Nourri de ses complications;                              Entre les mains d’un parvenu,

     Comme au temps des troubadours,                   Au seuil d’un hall ou d’un bar,            

     Elles se chantent à répétition.                             Ayant joué les coins de rues.                              

Je jouerai par les halls                                           Lys mystique    

Les chansons oubliées                                           Au refrain que le coeur frôle_

Au fond de vieilles malles.                                    C’est ma musique

Les fantaisies du coeur                                          Que je porte sur les épaules.

Rajeunissent les valeurs

D’un folklore retrouvé.

     Mes chansons parlent toujours

     Deci-deça, de va et vient;

     Comme au temps de tous les jours

Elles parlent de tout et parlent de

rien.

THE MUSIC ON MY SHOULDERS (2)

I shall play my guitar                                I shall play the music

Through the big-city streets_                  Of a poem to life

In the smoke of bars.                                 Written in classical verses_

Where young men.                                     Like those which live and die

Drink life to the sound                               In the soul of my sisters

Of their feverish spring.                             Who will have written them.

My ballads speak of love                                          Then, I shall leave my guitar

Fed by its complications;                                         In the hands of a chancer,

Like at the time of the troubadours,                      At the threshold of a hall or a bar,

They are sung repeatedly.                                        Having played on street corners.

I shall play through the halls                           Mystical lily

The forgotten songs                                           Whose refrain the heart kisses_

At the bottom of old trunks.                             It is my music

The fantasies of the heart                                  Which I carry on my shoulders.

Rejuvenate the value

Of rediscovered folklore.

My songs always speak

Of this and that, of coming and going;

Like everyday times

They speak of everything and speak of

nothing.

****

1. Number 70 of Études de Linguistique Appliquée (Applied Linguistics Studies) is called Foyers Francophones aux États-Unis (French-Speaking Foyers or Centers in the United States). The preparation, coordination and editing of the April – June 1988 special issue was entrusted to Louise Peloquin. 13 articles by French heritage Americans from New England, Louisiana, the Midwest, and a contribution from a journalist at France’s daily newspaper LE MONDE, make up the issue.       ELA is a publication of DIDIER ÉRUDITION, 6 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005, Paris.       Louise Peloquin can provide the translation of Normand Dubé’s complete article should readers be interested in discovering his last poems as well as insights on his creative inspiration and work.
2. English version, respecting the original layout, punctuation and syntax, translated by Louise Peloquin,

Lowell Politics: April 5, 2026

On Tuesday, March 31, 2026, the Lowell City Council authorized the city manager to execute a land disposition agreement that would transfer a large parcel in the Hamilton Canal Innovation District (HCID) to Wexford Development to construct a 75,000 square foot research and development facility that will be used by Draper, one of UMass Lowell’s primary partners in the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) project. The parcel being conveyed is Lot 15 on the HCID subdivision plan, but most would recognize it as the former surface parking lot of the National Park Visitor Center. Located between Dutton Street, the Merrimack Canal, and the trolley tracks to the west, and the HCID parking garage to the east, this is the most important undeveloped parcel remaining in the HCID.

The purchase price to be paid by Wexford to the city is $1.5 million with the closing to occur this October. Construction is to begin the following month with the building substantially completed in mid-2028 and the facility fully operational later that year.

Headquartered in Kendall Square in Cambridge – in what has been called the most innovative square mile in the entire United States – Draper was founded in the 1930s by Charles Stark Draper at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop aviation and military navigation and guidance systems for aircraft, submarines, rockets and the Apollo space craft. Now organized as a nonprofit R&D company, Draper remains a leader in the most advanced technologies used by the military and in related fields.

Given their business and the world today, it’s safe to say that Draper is in a growth phase. In fact, the company representative who spoke at the council meeting said demand for Draper products is explosive and the company is desperate to find new employees. One of the primary attractions for Draper, I believe, is the existing educational system here, from pre-K through post graduate degrees, a system that can be a pipeline for the company’s employment needs. This creates a great opportunity for the young people of Lowell to obtain highly valued jobs right here in the city.

The original vision of the Hamilton Canal District that was conceived a quarter century ago emphasized mixed use development. If all development in the district was commercial, the place would be deserted on nights and weekends when the businesses were closed. On the other hand, if it was entirely residential, everyone would leave in the morning to go elsewhere for work and return at night, making the place deserted during the day. By mixing the two uses, the place can always be vibrant and support ancillary amenities like restaurants and retail stores that add to the quality of life of the neighborhood and support small businesses ownership which is foundational to the city’s economy.

Despite the lofty ambitions of planners, except for the Lowell Justice Center and the two parking garages, all projects in the district thus far have been residential, which makes this use even more significant.

However, because so much residential use has been created in this vicinity, councilors questioned the developers about ways this project, which also includes a manufacturing component, might adversely affect the quality of life of residential neighbors. Councilors specifically asked about the number of heavy trucks making deliveries and the volume of noise emitted by the manufacturing process. Neither should be cause for concern, assured Draper representatives. Other than the usual stream of FedEx trucks, the number of tractor trailers arriving at the place will be only a few a month. (After all, they are making tiny computer components, not heavy machinery.) As for noise from the manufacturing process, at a similar facility in Cambridge, when one stands on the sidewalk immediately outside the building, no noise from inside can be heard, and even inside the building, any machine sounds are barely audible.

With their questions answered, councilors voted unanimously for the project to proceed.

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Two motions dealt with the admission process at Greater Lowell Technical High School, something not within the official purview of the council, but something of concern to some constituents. Councilor Sean McDonough requested the city council “send a letter to our state delegation, the state Secretary of Education, the commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the governor, expressing our strong opposition to the mandated change to lottery admissions for our vocational and technical high schools.” The second motion, by Councilor John Descoteaux, requested the city manager “forward a letter to DESE and the governor’s office asking to reconsider the Greater Lowell Technical High School’s new lottery policy.”

After considerable discussion, the combined motions passed by a 9 to 1 vote with Mayor Erik Gitschier abstaining since he is employed at the vocational school. Councilor Belinda Juran was the lone vote in opposition.

Unless you’re the parent of a child who wants to attend a vocational high school, or someone employed at a vocational high school, you probably haven’t followed this issue very closely. To give a sense of how it arose, here is a sample of Boston Globe coverage of the issue:

March 28, 2021 – “Fighting for fairness in vocational tech school admissions” – In this editorial, the paper argued that the state should require a lottery system, citing a just-released study by DESE that identified “opportunity gaps” in the admission process. Specifically, the existing admissions process, although it varied by school district, mostly relied on middle school grades, attendance, disciplinary history, and recommendations. The DESE report found that this system resulted in disproportionately low admission rates for students of color and for economically disadvantaged students.

April 20, 2021 – “Under pressure, state education officials pass preliminary admissions changes for vocational schools” – In the face of complaints (and data) that the current vocational school admission process was “unfair to students of color, low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities, depriving them of an important career pathway” the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted unanimously to change the vocational school admission process to give “disadvantaged students a better chance of attending.”

(In case you think this is a partisan issue, recall that when this all started, Republican Charlie Baker was governor. He was succeeded by Democrat Maura Healey in January 2023.)

February 5, 2024 – “Vocational-technical school admissions should be based on lottery” – This Op-Ed points out that up until 2003, vocational schools used a lottery for admission, but in that year, the MCAS exam became a high school graduation requirement and the state’s vocational schools persuaded the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to permit vocational schools to select students using grades, attendance records, discipline records, recommendations and interviews. The writers observe, “This dramatic admissions policy change enabled voc-tech schools to select the highest performing applicants into their schools. Is it any wonder that, by self-selecting their student body, voc-tech schools suddenly became high performing on MCAS tests and other measures?”

May 2, 2025 – “Mass. House moved to block vocational school lottery admissions” – At the urging of vocational school administrators and others wishing to maintain the status quo, a group of state representatives moved (unsuccessfully) to prohibit the Department of Education from making any admission changes before the 2027-28 admission year. Advocates for the current system questioned the accuracy of studies showing admission disparities and contended that the answer is to create more seats in vocational schools. (No one opposes that but it’s not feasible given the cost of doing it.) Proponents of a changed admission system, including Governor Healey, respond that the proposed changes do allow attendance and discipline to be used as weights in an admission lottery while retaining a lottery as the primary means of selection.

May 20, 2025 – “Mass. Education board approves vocational school lottery admissions, temporary graduation requirements” – The new rule prohibited vocational schools from ranking applicants based on “selective criteria like grades, recommendation from guidance counselors, and personal interviews” but does allow schools to use evidence of interest and a lack of severe discipline violations as weights in an admission lottery while also using middle school attendance and “student awareness” (i.e., attending a tour of the vocational school) as a pre-condition for entering the lottery.

According to the Greater Lowell Technical High School website, the admission lottery for the class entering the school this September was held on March 20, 2026. Presumably, people unhappy with the outcome of the lottery complained to city councilors, hence the timing of these two motions.

In voting against the motions, Councilor Juran said that this year, 848 middle school students from Lowell had applied for 428 Lowell-allocated seats, which meant roughly half got in. Councilor Juran continued:

“So no matter what, somebody was going to be disappointed. And if their option is Lowell High School, to me, that’s a great option. And we should not treat it like a second-tier school. Every few days I learn about teachers who are doing amazing work there. We have the teacher of the year in Massachusetts at that school. And it’s the kind of high school I went to, a diverse, large, you know, inner city school. It offers a variety of programs. It’s within walking distance of most of, or many of our students’ homes and it has classes ranging from remedial all the way through AP and early college.”

“I appreciate that no family wants to be disappointed from their first choice, but demand here is higher than supply, so somebody will be disappointed. And the issue here is one of policy: should we as the city council put our thumb on the scale to change the result for a few students to go to this school while others who did get in are not complaining to us?”

“We know the students whose parents have reached out who have said, ‘I wish my student had gotten in’ but the students who now were fortunate enough to get in are not complaining. So I think, sort of saying, that we are trying to change a policy when it’s really the reaction of some families, I think, is something we have to take seriously and I’m not sure this is what we should be doing.”

Ted Leonsis owns the NHL’s Washington Capitals, the NBA’s Washington Wizards, and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics. He made his fortune as a senior executive at America Online (AOL) back in the 1990s. He’s also a graduate of Lowell High School, class of 1973.

In his remarks at his induction ceremony as a Lowell High Distinguished Alumni in 2005, Leonsis recalled that he was not a great student. In fact, when he told his guidance counselor he wanted to go to college, the counselor disabused him of that aspiration, saying he should consider a job at a grocery store instead.

However, in the summers during high school, Leonsis earned money by mowing neighborhood lawns. One of his customers was also one of his high school teachers, a teacher who apparently recognized the young man’s potential because this teacher guided Leonsis through admission to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Leonsis thrived there and, as they say, the rest is history.

No one in Ted Leonsis’ family or in the official school hierarchy was advocating for him. Instead, he won the lottery in the form of a perceptive teacher who helped.

There are many ways to learn. Some students who don’t do well in middle school would perhaps thrive in a more hands-on, vocational education setting as is offered by Greater Lowell Tech. But if admission to that school is governed by their grades, attendance and behavior in middle school, they would never get in and that opportunity would be foreclosed. This new lottery system injects randomness into the equation and consequently makes it more equitable.

That’s the “glass is half full” take on this issue. In contrast, a “glass is half empty” view would say that public schools are supposed to take everyone, not just those who have good grades, good attendance and good behavior. Certainly, those who run the Vocational School would like it that way and, if it were a private school, that would be their prerogative. But they are a public school which means they have a responsibility to educate all. Every student with poor attendance or poor discipline that was excluded from the Vocational School under the prior admission policy ended up at Lowell High School. Students with those types of issues demand a disproportionate share of a school’s resources, so when Lowell High takes in more than its share of challenging students – which it must since it is a public school – it dilutes the resources available for most other students in the school, and everyone at LHS pays a price for another public school’s exclusionary admittance practices.

But that’s all theory. The vote Tuesday night was about politics. A Venn Diagram of this issue would find the circle of people upset with vocational school admissions completely within the slightly larger circle of people who vote in city elections, hence the lopsided outcome of the vote.

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My newsletter of two weeks ago featured an essay about Lowell in World War II. At the end of it, I mentioned that I am now researching the 440 names of servicemembers from Lowell who died during World War II, a project I hope to complete by this Memorial Day.

One thing about this research that has struck me is the staggering number who were killed as infantrymen in the push across Europe from D-Day in June 1944 to the surrender of Germany in May 1945.

Last week, I reviewed a book that covers this period. Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army, 1889-1963 is a biography of the general who commanded the 4th Infantry Division through most of that stretch of combat. With at least six of the Lowell’s war dead having been members of that division, the book provided valuable context in understanding their experiences. If you’re interested in the history of World War II, please check out my review.

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In this week’s Seen & Heard column, I wrote about the obituary of Shigeaki Mori, a Hiroshima survivor who helped highlight the story of Lowell’s Normand Brissette, a POW who was killed by the atomic bomb; I reviewed the movie A Complete Unknown, which is a Bob Dylan biopic; and I reviewed two books, Book and Dagger which explains how professors and archivists helped create a functioning intelligence agency for the US during WWII, and A Short Stay in Hell, a thought provoking fantasy novella about the hereafter.

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Save the Date: This spring’s walking tours of historic Lowell Cemetery will be held on Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, both at 10 am, both beginning at the Knapp Avenue entrance next to Shedd Park. The same tour will be conducted on both days. Just show up and enjoy.

Poet Maggie Dietz of UMass Lowell: New Book

Poet Maggie Dietz of UMass Lowell

In her weekly Substack newsletter, ‘New England Literary News,’ writer Nina MacLaughlin shares her view of a new collection of poems by Maggie Dietz of the UMass Lowell Dept. of English. Readers can subscribe to New England Literary News here.

Here is the brief review:

In her searing new collection, If You Would Let Me (Four Way), poet Maggie Dietz breathes new heat into the story of Persephone and Demeter. Dietz, who teaches at UMass Lowell and lives in New Hampshire, writes of the tumult of adolescence, the moment when innocence begins its dissolve, secrets on a riverbank, picking hyacinths before the earth cracks. Then it’s hair dye and botched piercings of the face and a pick-up stick laddering of slice marks on the arm. There’s exile and outcastery and wilder violence, too, a smashed mirror, a hurled stone. Dietz captures a mother’s helplessness and the bone-deep need to help: if only the girl would let herself be held, “Your broken eyes would see how much you need me.” It’s the mother’s ungrantable wish, and a bashing fury results. “I let you I gave you I held / You I made you but I couldn’t / Save you.” And what can a mother do? Demeter “let small children starve and cows / with calves I am not proud but what choice did I have / like corn and barley they were mine to kill.” Remember: Demeter’s rage came from the simple question, where did my daughter go? Dietz reminds us, “It isn’t safe to love.”