RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Future Prospects

FUTURE PROSPECTS

By Terry Downes

High school athletes fight to play
While pros will only play for pay;
The question then is rendered clear:
Do we the game, or gold revere?

With players’ salaries on the rise
The owners scramble to devise
Ways to raise the money needed
Then to pay contracts completed.

Ticket prices are sent soaring
Commercial breaks are long and boring,
The cost of hot dogs and of beer
Has grown prohibitively dear.

A trip to bring a youngster there
Sends parents into corporate lair
To have their pockets picked with glee
To pay for owners’ spending spree.

So what is baseball after all:
A game of joy, or business brawl?
A field for millionaires-to-be,
Or happy days of reverie?

The nation’s game is sliding slow
Down a slope it shouldn’t go,
Away from hearts of average folk
Who on the cost of tickets choke.

Is baseball only for the rich?
Shall we be forced to pay-per-pitch?
Baseball’s fans must make their choice:
To lose the game, or raise their voice.

****

Terry Downes is an attorney and retired District Court Clerk/Magistrate who went on to found and direct the MCC Program on Homeland Security, and long served as an adjunct professor at Suffolk Univ. Law School and UMASS-Lowell. He lives in Lowell with his wife Atty. Annie O’Connor.

This is the last in a series of nine poems about baseball (nine, like in nine innings of a game, or nine players on the field, etc.) which will appear on the first Friday of each month through the baseball season. Here are the previously posted poems in this series:

March – Spring Training

April – Opening Day

May – Early Season

June – Postponed!

July – In the Minors

August – Pitchers’ Duel

September – Building Year

October – Pennant Fever

The Tiger

The Tiger

Stephen O’Connor

Come here and listen to me, now. I’ll tell you, but don’t go blabbing it all over the place. It’s you and me. That’s it. Okay, I have a tiger, or to paraphrase John Lennon on the Norwegian girl, he has me. You can’t really own a tiger any more than you can own a cloud, or a star, or a person. So the tiger doesn’t have a name. I’m not going to clap some human word on him as if I had the right to gift him an identity, but if I did, it wouldn’t be Tabby, I’ll tell you that. And if I were to tell him that as a human I have “dominion over the animals,” and if he could understand me, he would laugh. And if he could talk, he would answer: “Like to see you take a walk through my domain. We’d show you dominion. And your big human brain wouldn’t do you any good.”

Don’t worry, though. He’s under control. I trust him. I can’t say I really trust him one hundred percent. I trust him like ninety-nine percent. Or maybe ninety percent. Sometimes, like sixty percent, which means I trust him more than I don’t trust him, but it’s still nerve wracking, even when I trust him ninety percent. You see, if you have a human friend you don’t completely trust, you think maybe if you leave him alone with your wife while you go to the men’s room, he may flirt with her, particularly if he’s had a couple of drinks. But if you don’t trust the tiger and the mistrust is warranted, he may rip your throat out and eat you.

It’s difficult not to consider this possibility when I study his paws. They are enormous, and they are equipped with retractable and sadly extendable claws. They are also enormous, maliciously curved and razor-sharp. His head is the size of a large watermelon, and full of ripping teeth and cruel fangs. Even without those accoutrements, the tiger would be more than a match for me. I weigh 180 pounds; he weighs 610.

But no, he’s fine, in general. Except, a couple of times he’s gotten out of the enclosed and fortified yard. Okay, a few times. One escape was quite bad. Civilians were fleeing. Sirens were screaming. Luckily, I found him in the parking garage. The beast had this poor guy cornered, and he was just sitting there watching him. The guy was sobbing a bit and there was a puddle at his feet. Naturally. I was nervous too, checking my watch and counting the hours since I had fed him. I acted like a brave passerby. “Oh, my God! A tiger!” I cried. “What in blazes? I’ll draw him away! You walk calmly to the exit.” The tiger turned and followed me to my Land Rover. so gracefully, you wouldn’t know how much he weighs if you didn’t notice the rear tires compress.

Yes, that was stressful. Having an apex predator as a friend can be trying. Especially one of the feline variety. You know how your cat sometimes comes home with a mouse in its little jaws? The tiger got out one night and came home with a dead German Shepherd hanging from its bloodied maw. Of course he meant it as a gift. Thank you, tiger. I had to dispose of the dog body down by the river. There was an article in the paper in which the reporter theorized that a gang of coyotes had killed the dog. Someone mentioned a chupacapbra. There were reports of a tiger seen prowling among midnight shadows, but most people regarded those with the same jaundiced eye with which they regard reports of UFO’s hovering over the pines. They prefer the coyote explanation. But no, between you and me, it was the tiger.

He’s a lot of work. But he is so beautiful, so grand, so beyond the human scale. He lies there like King Solomon the Wise, calmly assessing me with those amber eyes, his face an explosion of golden orange, black and white concentric stripes. I look at him and think there’s just no way this complex, magnificent creature evolved from a crap-pile of inorganic matter in some hydrothermal vent in the ocean. William Blake must have been nearer the truth when he wondered: Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Sometimes I awaken in the night and see him in the moonlight that streams through the window, watching me, his thick hawser rope of a tail coiling behind him like a serpent, and I will admit it troubles me. But he would never….

He’s my pet, and my best friend, while it serves him. I rise cautiously and creep to the bathroom, wondering, if the wild exerted itself, how long would the bathroom door hold against him?

The author (left) and the (likely?) subject of this story (right)

2025 Lowell City Election Results

Lowell voters ousted two incumbent city councilors in yesterday’s election. In District 4, Sean McDonough defeated incumbent Wayne Jenness, and in District 7, Sidney Liang defeated incumbent Paul Ratha Yem. With incumbent Corey Belanger having lost in the preliminary election in District 3, there will be three new city councilors in January. For now, that third new city councilor will be Belinda Juran, but her margin of victory over Dan Finn was just four votes, so there may be a recount. While recounts generally don’t change the initial vote count, the final result of that race may not be determined for another week or two.

On the school committee, new comer Danielle McFadden topped the ticket in the at large race, however, incumbent Jackie Doherty did not run and all other incumbents were reelected.

As for voter turnout, it was slightly higher than two years ago but still historically low. Yesterday, 8,494 of 77,624 registered voters cast ballots, whereas in 2023, turnout was 7,516 of 75,294.

Here are the unofficial results from yesterday’s voting:

City Councilor At-Large (top three elected)

Vesna Nuon (incumbent) – 4,889
Erik Gitschier (incumbent) – 4,705
Rita Mercier (incumbent) – 4,173
Sixto DeJesus – 2,987
Emile Kaufman – 1,237

City Councilor District 1 (top one elected in all districts)

Daniel Rourke (incumbent) – 799

City Councilor District 2

Corey Robinson (incumbent) – 550

City Councilor District 3

Belinda Juran – 1,143
Daniel Finn – 1,139

City Councilor District 4

Sean McDonough – 410
Wayne Jenness (incumbent) – 358

City Councilor District 5

Kimberly Ann Scott (incumbent) – 610
Sherri O’Connor Barboza – 163

City Councilor District 6

Sokhary Chau (incumbent) – 504

City Councilor District 7

Sidney Liang – 397
Paul Ratha Yem (incumbent) – 303

City Councilor District 8

John Descoteaux (incumbent) – 724
Marcos Candido – 685

School Committee At-Large (top two elected)

Danielle McFadden – 4,526
Connie Martin (incumbent) – 3,889
Robert Hoey – 2,323
Zoe Dzineku – 1,723

School Committee District 1

Fred Bahou (incumbent) – 1,864

School Committee District 2

Eileen DelRossi (incumbent) – 1,007

School Committee District 3

David Conway (incumbent) – 2,214

School Committee District 4

Dominik Lay (incumbent) 976

Down . . . in history

Down…in history. (PIP #85)

By Louise Peloquin

Another Lowell landmark is turned into rubble. Yet, within the heap of red brick, traces of the countless Franco-Americans ushered into eternity at 201 Pawtucket Street seem to rise from the dusty ruins. The most famous of these Francos was Jack Kerouac.

Archambault Funeral Home is down. But its history will never be obliterated.
____

AD in L’Etoile:

NEW YEAR’S CALENDARS

We have received our 1926 calendars and we invite all of our clients and friends to come and get theirs at our new office, 201 Pawtucket Street.

AMÉDÉE ARCHAMBAULT & SON
FUNERAL DIRECTORS
201 Pawtucket Street.
Tel. 109

____

L’Etoile – January 5, 1926

NEW VISITATION ROOMS

OF MESSRS. ARCHAMBAULT and SON 

_____

Their new installation will allow them to meet all of their clientele’s demands.

_____

     Messrs. Amédée Archambault and son, funeral directors, have moved their Merrimack Street office on the corner of Decatur, to an annex they constructed between their two buildings at 197 and 205 Pawtucket. Their new office carries the number 201 Pawtucket Street.

     By special arrangement with the telephone company, they will keep the number 109 for clients to obtain prompt service at any hour of the day or night.

     Their new offices and visitation rooms complete the grand improvements undertaken to offer their clients the most satisfying service at all times.

     Their new, modern visitation rooms provide all of the desired amenities. Among other enhancements is a salon, separate from the main body of the building, where the deceased can be exposed in a chapelle ardente to receive parents and friends in an intimate, consoling atmosphere for mourning.

     By calling 109, clients will be able to be in communication with Mr. Amédée Archambault or with his sons Messrs. Henri or Dewey Archambault at all times for everything pertaining to funerals and also for limousine services for weddings or for compering events. (1)

****

1. “Compering” is the British English term for acting as a host or a master of ceremonies at an event.

Translations by Louise Peloquin.