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My West Virginia and Jack Kerouac’s Lowell

My West Virginia and Jack Kerouac’s Lowell

By Steve Edington

 This article originally appeared in the online journal WestVirginiaVille.

When I graduated from Marshall University in 1967 my known world did not extend beyond southern West Virginia and southern Ohio. Beginning in my early teens, I would make a yearly weekend trip by train to Cincinnati to see the Reds baseball games with an uncle who lived north of the city. Those Cincinnati trips were my world’s furthermost boundary.

Then, in the spring of my senior year at Marshall, the Thundering Herd’s basketball team made it to the semi-finals of the National Invitational Tournament that was held at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Thanks to an MU campus minister who made the arrangements for the trip, I saw New York City for the first time a few months shy of my 22^nd birthday—and saw The Herd lose to Al McGuires’s Marquette University. That trip let me know that there were any number of roads I could travel beyond the ones I’d known up until then.

Indeed, since then there have been a lot of roads. The first one was my departure, in the fall of ’67, for a theological school in Rochester, New York. The latest stop so far, and with many stopping places in between, has been Nashua, New Hampshire where I was the minister of a Unitarian Universalist congregation for 24 years before retiring.

By now I’ve lived three-quarters of my life in places other than West Virginia. But that opening quarter of my life remains a defining piece of who I am. I thought I was done with WVA as I drove off to Rochester. But while I’ve never lived there again, I cannot shake myself loose from the Mountain State. In thinking as to why this is so, I get some insight from the life and writings of an American author whose hometown is just a few miles south of my New Hampshire home. That would be Jack Kerouac—born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts.

I discovered the writings of Kerouac shortly after he died in 1969, while I was still in seminary. When my wife, son, and I moved to Nashua in 1988 my interest in him was rekindled, largely due to the proximity of his hometown. I learned there was an organization in Lowell that produces an annual literary and cultural festival in Kerouac’s name called Lowell Celebrates Kerouac (LCK). I joined up.

As the saying goes, one thing led to another. A few years later I was the President of LCK, and learning how to produce an annual city-wide arts and cultural festival. I then went on to write a couple of books about Kerouac; and for a time even taught a course at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, as an adjunct faculty member, on “The Literature of the Beat Generation.” As is the case with West Virginia, I never shook off my BA in English from Marshall either.

The name “Kerouac” generally evokes musings of wanderlust, of being a vagabond in search of what Kerouac himself called “joy, kicks, darkness,” and living a rebel life of nonconformity. But Kerouac was a far more complicated and conflicted individual than his cultural image suggests. His was also a life cut short at the age of 47 due to his alcoholism.  As those of us who focus on the Lowell piece of him like to say, “If all you know of Kerouac is what you’ve read in On the Road, then you don’t know Jack!”

The tension Kerouac lived with throughout his life was between his need for his Lowell roots and his equally driven need to break free of those roots and be on the road. He may have been given the title “King of the Beats”—about which he had mixed feelings at best—but he never quite left the French-Canadian, working class, Catholic neighborhoods of Lowell where he grew up. He went on to write five novels based on his childhood and adolescence there during the 1920s and 1930s.

For all of the ways in which he was caricatured as a “beatnik”—a term for which he had little use—his favorite mode of dress was that of a checkered red and black working man’s lumberjack shirt. And for all of the many pictures of Kerouac I’ve seen, I’ve yet to find one where he’s wearing a beret.

Jack’s conflicted feelings about Lowell can be seen in a couple of passages from his voluminous writing. In a letter to a woman in Lowell whom he’d known since high school, and who later became his third wife, he wrote: “My dearest hope is to come back to Lowell and make a home…and walk all I please those hallowed streets of life.” But in another piece of writing, he refers to Lowell as “stinktown on the Merrimack (River).”

As I did a deep dive into the multifaceted, and often convoluted, life of Jack Kerouac I came to see West Virginia as my version of Kerouac’s Lowell. He knew that Lowell was an integral part of his identity, which at times he embraced and at other times sought to cast off. I know that territory well. Unlike Jack, I do not have a “dearest hope…to make a home” in West Virginia, but I’m taken by his writing about walking Lowell’s “hallowed streets of life.” On my family visits to Charleston, I go down to St. Albans, and drive through some of the neighborhoods where we lived as I grew up there. I’m aware of how my early life in those neighborhoods helped shape the person I became. I hadn’t thought of them as “hallowed streets of life” until I read Kerouac’s words, but perhaps they are.

Yes, there is a political angle to what I seek to embrace and what I seek to cast off when it comes to West Virginia. Some of my liberal friends and compatriots wonder how I can feel a connection with people living in one of the reddest States in America. I got at some of this in a piece I wrote for westvirginiaville a couple of years ago about my father, a self-employed house painter with an eighth-grade education that he got in a couple of one-room schoolhouses in rural West Virginia and Ohio. I’ll never know for sure if Dad—now long gone—would have been a Trump supporter or not, but through him I have some insight into the lives of many of the West Virginians who did.

I recently read a book titled Stolen Pride by a retired sociology professor, Dr. Arlie Hochschild. Its subtitle is “Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right.” Dr. Hochschild spent several months in 2016 living in Pikeville, Kentucky. She focused on the lives of a dozen or so Pikeville residents, listening to their stories, their struggles, their hopes and their dashed hopes—of the positive pieces of their lives and the pieces where they felt lost and defeated. If there was a common theme in the lives of these various and varied people, it was that they felt left out, that they had been made to feel their lives didn’t count for much—hence “stolen pride.”

Dr. Rothschild could have written the same book by spending time in any number of West Virginia towns of comparable size and make-up as Pikeville. While I had no way of knowing any of her interviewees personally, on another level I knew who they were. My Dad could have been one of them.

Dr. Rothschild researched her book in the run-up to Trump’s first election as President, and he had a lot of support in Pikeville. She had a revealing conversation with one of his supporters. While the man she was talking with acknowledged Trump’s many shortcomings and personal failings, he went on to say, “But we need a big microphone.” He, and others like him, somehow see Trump as being their “big microphone” though which they can recover some of their stolen pride.

I read that passage with understanding, while also being deeply angry. I understand the desire for a “big microphone” by those who feel they have little or no voice. I get where they are coming from. And I’m furious that a manipulative, hyper ego-inflated, con man has managed to convince so many of those who feel a loss of pride, and the loss of a voice, that he is their “big microphone.”

I’ll have to leave it at that so I can get back to Kerouac and me as I finish up. His phrase, as cited earlier, of “hallowed streets” does resonate with me in ways that go beyond his, as well as my own, childhood and youthful neighborhoods. There is something about West Virginia itself that remains hallowed ground for me—red State and all.

I feel like I’m in a sacred space when I visit the fountain on the Marshall campus where the names of those who perished in the November 1970 plane crash are inscribed—one of whom I knew and hung out with for a time in St. Albans. I sense being in a holy place when I visit the graves of my Edington ancestors in a couple of small cemeteries out in the back country between Buffalo and Point Pleasant. It’s the same feeling I get when I stand by the marker for the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant and recall the hundreds of times I rode, and later drove, over that bridge to spend time with my extended family in Gallipolis before it collapsed into the Ohio River in December of 1967.

On a less somber note, being on the Upper or Lower New River in a whitewater raft is a bit like being on a hallowed river, although I’m probably too old for any more such trips. Just taking in any one of the many vistas around the State offers a kind of beauty that gives one a sense of being a part of something greater than the self, however one may wish to name it.

In On the Road Kerouac wrote that “all of life is holy and every moment is precious.” I know that none of us can live in a state of constant awareness of the holiness and preciousness of life of which Kerouac writes. Too much other stuff keeps getting in the way, just as it did with him. But we all, I would guess, still have our moments when the holiness of life breaks through—even if it’s just a fleeting glimpse. I’ve had such moments in my life, and some of them come when the “country roads take me home.”

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Steve Edington

Steve Edington is the Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, New Hampshire. He is a 30 year member, and a past President, of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac.

He is the author of “The Beat Face of God—The Beat Generation Writers as Spirit Guides,” “Kerouac’s Nashua Connection,” “Bring Your Own God—The Spirituality of Woody Guthrie” and “God Is Not God’s Name—A Journey Beyond Words.”

Steve grew up in West Virginia and is a 1967 graduate of Marshall University. He and his wife reside in Nashua.

Budgets, Balances & Briefs

Budgets, Balances & Briefs – (PIP #67)

By Louise Peloquin

More money matters…

L’ETOILE – October 16, 1924

THE BUREAU OF HYGIENE MUST ECONOMIZE

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The city auditor’s quarterly report reveals the city’s financial position.

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                Yesterday, city auditor Daniel F. Martin gave his quarterly report on the expenses of the various departments over the first nine months of the year and on their balance for the last three.

                The report is particularly interesting because it informs department chiefs about unused funds and of the need to economize in order not to spend more than the allotted budget.

                The auditor warned the Road and Civic Hospital departments to be vigilant given that they have almost reached their limit. Since then however, these two departments have received additional funds to close the year.  The department of Public Welfare Assistance received $35,000; the Road department received $75,000 for sewers and will receive an additional $60,000 for other works.

                The first large department mentioned in the auditor’s report is the Waste Disposal department whose financial position is sound. It received $100,000 for salaries and, up to now, slightly more than $75,000 has been spent. Only  $351 remain for other expenses and provisions but these are under control.

                The Memorial Auditorium spent $28,500 of its $42,500 budget and therefore does not have enough money to cover the next three months.

                The Fire department received a budget of $379,320.26 for salaries. Expenditures reached $277,667.19 and a balance of $101,653.07 remains. This department received an additional $55,409 and has spent $44,516.30.

                Various departments under the direction of the Bureau of Hygiene will have to economize if they do not want to exceed their yearly budget. In the department of milk and vinegar inspection, supervised by the Bureau of Hygiene, a balance of $165.93 remains from a budget of $1,274.22 whereas, for school hygiene, only $51 remain from a budget of $2,006.76. Salary expenditures in these departments is within budget.

                It seems that the Security department has sufficient funds until year’s end. It received a budget of $344,352 with $89,974.18 unspent. It obtained an additional $12,336 for other expenses and a balance of $2,705 remains.

                The School department total expenditure for salaries and books reached  $906,993.95 with a balance of $342,919.56 to finish the year. The Vocational School has spent $68,800 and still has $33,000 untouched.

                The Highway department and the Sewer department have interesting figures. Street maintenance and improvement cost $288,762.20 for the first nine months of the year with a balance of $67,352.31. Maintenance and new sewer expenses have reached $17,635.74 with a balance of $8,864.62.

                The budget for asphalt work was spent but the City Council voted to allocate an extra $60,000 to continue the year’s program. For permanent pavement, a balance of $8,500 remains after expenses adding up to $141,625.

                The hospital for tuberculosis patients spent $47,839.35 over the first nine months of the year and presently has a balance of $10,447.31. Unless all of the provisions for the year are already covered, this department may lack funds.

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PUBLIC ASSISTANCE BILLS

              Yesterday, the Budget and Account Verification Commission approved allocating $6445.75 to Barry’s Market for supplies distributed during the month of August to families registered in Public Assistance. 

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THE PROFESSION OF EXPLORER 

DOES NOT ENRICH 

              London – A Christiania dispatch announced that famous explorer Roald Amundsen (1) is bankrupt. He blames his troubles on the heavy losses incurred by his attempt to reach the North Pole in 1923. It is predicted that Amundsen will definitely renounce the project of flying over the North Pole. (2)

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1. Norwegian explorer Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (1872-1928) was the first person to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
2. Translations by Louise Peloquin.

Spring and a growing handful of stand-ups bring hope by Marjorie Arons Barron

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

The azaleas, daffodils and hyacinths are blooming; Passover and Easter celebrate rebirth. Spring blooms, however, are evanescent. We look for more lasting signs of hope, especially in the chaotic political world around us.

Dare we see this as such a sign? Harvard University has straightened its institutional backbone and is standing up to Donald Trump. So, too, is Boston-based law firm WilmerHale honoring the principle it embraced when its attorney Joseph Welch helped block right-wing Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunt in the 1950’s. We’ve had a winter in which major corporations and other institutions have cravenly bent their knees thinking they could buy exemptions from Trump’s retribution crusade. Now, in spring, just as the rhododendron and hydrangeas will follow the early blossoms, let us hope that other academic institutions, law firms and more will follow the examples of Harvard and WilmerHale.

Late Friday night the Trump administration asserted that this letter to Harvard was unauthorized. But it’s crystal clear that Donald Trump’s weaponizing the agencies of federal government is part of a larger strategy to chill the better impulses of those who disagree with him but are fearful for their own status, economic security and safety. This is thuggery. This is extortion.

Take Paul Weiss, the storied D.C.-based law firm that had gone after participants in the January 6th insurrection. Trump ordered cancellation of all the firm’s government contracts and stripped the firm of its security clearance but rescinded the order when it extracted a pledge of $40 million in pro bono work from Paul Weiss. It also had to alter its employment practices to drop diversity considerations. Since then, well over a dozen law firms have folded, offering hundreds of millions in pro bono work to appease the wannabe dictator. It will be providing such onerous and reputational high-risk tasks as defending the Constitutionality of Trump’s executive orders and policies up to the Supreme Court; whitewashing Trump officials and cronies in ethics, criminal and civil investigations; drafting emergency declarations with dubious legal bases, and assisting in the purging and restructuring of the civil service. Not the usual pro bono service. After Wilmer Hale, a handful are now refusing to get down on their knees.

The situation is the same in academia. Trump yanked $400 million from Columbia University, allegedly for not doing enough to stem anti-Semitism on campus, but it was clear it wanted the federal government to play a role in the university’s hiring, admissions, and curriculum practices. Columbia cravenly gave up its institutional powers and responsibilities, including hiring decisions and admissions, to protect the $400 million. Like the Paul Weiss capitulation, Columbia set a dangerous precedent in the academic world.

This week, Harvard University stood up to the bullies. After the White House froze $2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in government contracts to Harvard, Harvard said it would not bow to Trump’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Nor would it agree to a government-appointed auditor of its educational practices. So Trump directed the IRS to take steps to nullify Harvard’s non-profit status.

PBS is also threatened with serious cuts in its federal funding. At a gathering in Boston Wednesday evening to preview Ken Burns’s upcoming PBS documentary series on the American Revolution, the loudest cheers and sustained applause came when Burns referred to Harvard’s and PBS’s principled stands.

Let’s face it. Harvard’s $53 billion endowment makes it easier to withstand the slings and arrows of the President’s unconstitutional and despicable actions. Smaller institutions with little to no endowments are likely to find Trump’s revenge strategy an existential threat. They may well go out of existence, giving Trump the satisfaction of undermining academic freedom, rewriting history, destroying the soundness of the student learning experience, and reinforcing his authoritarian impulses.

Vampire-like, he has enthralled the GOP congressional majority to ignore its Constitutional responsibilities. Individual GOP members may roll their eyes in private communication with Democratic colleagues or share their disgust in Members Only elevators. But, on the floor of Congress and in town halls, they are controlled by their fears of being “primaried” and repeatedly assume the position of subservience.

It remains to be seen whether federal judges at the highest level will be similarly emasculated  or prove faithful to the language of the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. Dozens of suits have been filed, and there have been some successes in blocking executive orders and other actions, but the Administration is appealing those lower court findings. We hang in limbo as the lawsuits are playing out.

Ultimately, much of this litigation will play out before the U.S. Supreme Court, which last term gave Trump almost unbridled powers. Should the highest court rule against the President and his Administration, how will its decisions be enforced? Order the U.S. Marshals to make arrests? They are under the control of the now acutely partisan Department of Justice.

Trump supporters don’t yet feel any buyer’s remorse, and too many others have clung to the illusion of normalcy, as, little by little, the constitutional foundations of our democracy are eroding under the pressure of arbitrary, illegal tactics. Except for the willingness of some individuals and institutions to stand firm, we are sliding ineluctably toward a strong-man form of government and dark days for our increasingly fragile democracy. Harvard’s and WilmerHale’s defiance of Trump administration demands has sparked some others to resist, suggesting that academic freedom and institutional independence are not dead yet.

Some workers in corporate giants have quit in disgust. Others have begun talking seriously about resistance. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, fight fiercely, universities, law firms, and others. Be it Trump who has the might, nonetheless we have the will.

Lowell Politics: April 27, 2025

Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting led off with a motion by Councilor Erik Gitschier that the council send a letter to “our state delegation” expressing the council’s opposition to House Bill 2347, “An Act to Promote Yes in God’s Back Yard.” The bill’s goal is to promote more housing by allowing religious institutions to bypass local zoning rules and avoid paying property taxes for multifamily housing constructed on land owned by the religious organization. The lead proponents in the measure are Representatives Andres Vargas of Haverhill and Tara Hong of Lowell, although Representative Vanna Howard of Lowell is a co-sponsor of the legislation.

The bill was filed on January 17, 2025, and was referred to the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government on February 27, 2025. A parallel bill in the state senate, Senate 1430, was also referred to that committee. According to the Bill History page on the legislature’s website, no further action has been taken. (The text of the bill is available at the same link.)

Councilors defeated a substitute motion by Councilor Paul Ratha Yem that the matter be referred to the council’s housing subcommittee for further discussion. Only Councilors Yem and Vesna Nuon voted for the subcommittee route with Councilors Corey Belanger, Sokhary Chau, John Descoteaux, Erik Gitschier, Rita Mercier, Corey Robinson, Kim Scott and Mayor Dan Rourke all voting no. (Councilor Wayne Jenness was absent.) The original motion – to send a letter of opposition to the bill – passed with yes votes from Councilors Belanger, Chau, Descoteaux, Gitschier, Mercier, Robinson, Scott and Mayor Rourke. Councilor Yem voted no, and Councilor Nuon abstained.

The title of this bill – Yes In God’s Back Yard – likely comes from similar legislation filed a year ago in the US Senate by then Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) who filed the Yes In God’s Back Yard (YIGBY) Act, “legislation to support faith-based organizations and colleges wanting to build and preserve affordable housing on their land and reduce barriers to the development of this housing.”

YIGBY is a play on YIMBY which stands for “Yes in My Backyard” which is a grassroots movement and a political stance that advocates for increased housing supply in existing neighborhoods. It’s essentially the opposite of NIMBY (“Not In My Backyard”), a common sentiment among some residents who oppose new development in their communities due to concerns about traffic, density, property values, and changes to neighborhood character.

Although I recently heard of the Vargas/Hong version of this bill, I didn’t pay much attention to it since, as someone long wise to the ways of Beacon Hill once told me, in a typical two year legislative session, state senators and representatives file nearly 7000 bills, yet only about 200 of them are enacted, so the odds of this one passing are extremely remote. My advisor also explained that for anything to happen on Beacon Hill, it must be supported by one of the six individuals who “run state government” with those being the governor; the Secretary of Administration and Finance; the president of the senate; the chair of the senate ways and means committee;, the speaker of the house; and the chair of the house ways and means committee. Although it’s still early in the life of this bill, none of those six are supporting it thus far which further diminishes its chance of passage.

Setting aside the inside politics of the legislature, the bill does seek to address a major problem in the Commonwealth which is a lack of housing that is affordable to those who live here. Several multifamily apartment buildings have recently been constructed in Lowell, but not nearly enough to meet the community’s needs. And if you believe that secure, affordable housing is a foundational requirement for reduced homelessness, better health and improved school performance, then building more housing should be a priority.

But as we’ve seen with (1) the outrage generated by this proposal; (2) similar ire at the city’s own effort to permit Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) several years ago; and (3) emerging opposition to the city’s implementation of the MBTA Communities Act, measures to build more housing trigger strong and vocal opposition. Although those speaking out against such measures may constitute only a minority of Lowell’s entire population, they constitute most of the six percent of city residents who vote in city elections, so councilors most likely will side with them. (In 2023, there were just 7500 votes cast in a city of 125,000.) Because that same dynamic is likely stronger in other communities, particularly suburbs, the only way the housing crisis in Massachusetts can be addressed is with a top-down approach from the legislature.

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For those living in densely packed neighborhoods like South Lowell, the lower Highlands, and Centralville, concerns about parking are well-founded. Houses in those neighborhoods were constructed before cars were invented, so parking was never a consideration. Now, in a culture in which nearly every adult in a household needs their own car to function, the lack of space for parking degrades the quality of life in those neighborhoods.

New programs that promote more housing by cutting requirements for parking fall particularly hard on these neighborhoods. Many who own homes there are stretched financially to afford them which make revenue-generating options like ADUs more attractive than they would be to their more affluent neighbors in the suburban-like areas of the city. There are no complaints about a lack of parking in Belvidere, Pawtucketville and the upper Highlands because most homes in those neighborhoods have garages and driveways. While the presence of more vehicles could be more easily absorbed there, the financial incentives to create more housing are lacking (and political opposition to it is strongest). Consequently, the negative consequences of loosening regulations to permit more housing with less parking fall heaviest on the neighborhoods least able to absorb those consequences.

The city council does a disservice to these older, denser neighborhoods by ignoring planning strategies that de-emphasize cars. Houses built in Lowell in the 1800s were constructed on top of each other to make them more affordable but also to allow those who lived in them to walk to work. Granted, few residents work downtown today, but the housing density of these neighborhoods still makes them more walkable.

If you look at the evolution of Lowell’s built environment, the city was like a collection of villages clustered around the downtown. Each “village” (i.e., neighborhood) had its own shopping district, its own churches, its own schools, its own parks, and its own character and allegiances. Walking to work in a textile mill is not coming back; but other aspects of a neighborhood centric life could alleviate some of the parking and traffic problems that plague these neighborhoods.

Making the city more walkable can’t happen overnight. It requires a thoughtful strategy and the discipline to see it through over years not weeks or months. But the current council is so car-focused that anything else is relegated to a forlorn mention of “advocating for all forms of transportation” in reports from the city’s (superb) traffic engineer before councilors flock to their two favorite transportation topics: (1) paving more streets to allow motorists to drive faster; and (2) installing speed humps to slow down motorists who drive too fast.

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The long-term consequences of misguided urban planning were evident at UMass Lowell on Tuesday night at a program hosted by the Greater Lowell Franco-American Digital Archives and the Lowell Franco-American Day Committee. Held at O’Leary Library on the school’s south campus, the program began with the screening of a 1979 film, “Le P’Tit Canada” which was produced by the Canadian National Film Board as part of a series on the music of Franco communities throughout North America. It’s a fascinating snapshot of Lowell’s Little Canada as it was at the time.

The film was followed by a panel discussion that featured children of some of those featured in the film (the panelists were Paul Paquin, Suzanne Frechette, and Dave Ouellette) along with UMass Lowell professor Bob Forrant to provide historical context.

Although the film was mostly about the role of music in preserving Franco culture in Lowell, most of the questions from the audience of nearly 100 dealt with the destruction of the Little Canada neighborhood by the Urban Renewal wrecking ball in the mid-1960s. It was clear that the wounds caused by the obliteration of that neighborhood remain painful and relevant to those who experienced it.

Urban renewal in Lowell is a topic deserving of more study and discussion, for like so many parts of our history, it has important lessons for us as we navigate the future.

The “Le P’Tit Canada” film is available online with English subtitles. It is a fascinating program, well worth 29 minutes of your time.

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This week on richardhowe.com . . .

Steve O’Connor wrote about the importance of music in education;

Paul Marion made a surprising discovery of Robert Frost’s underappreciated life in Amesbury, Massachusetts;

Jim Provencher shared a nautically themed poem from his home in Australia;

Louise Peloquin translated a L’Etoile article from 1924 about protests against the high cost of gasoline.

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This spring I’ll lead several tours of historic Lowell Cemetery:

On Sunday, May 18, 2025, at 10 am, I’ll lead a Memorial Day themed tour that highlights some of the military veterans buried in the cemetery.

On Saturday June 7, 2025, and again on Sunday June 8, 2025, both at 10 am, I’ll lead the traditional Lowell Cemetery spring tour (same tour on both days).

All three tours will begin inside the Lawrence Street Gate (1020 Lawrence Street, Lowell, for your GPS). Plenty of parking is available within the cemetery. The tours are free and require no advance registration. They last 90 minutes and include a moderate amount of walking. The tours will be held rain or shine (but not in thunderstorms or severe downpours). Further information is available on the Lowell Cemetery website.