It’s a new year. There’s a new Lowell City Council. And I’m trying a new thing, a weekly newsletter on Lowell politics.

Some background: The richardhowe.com blog was born 15 years ago. Its mission was to cover “Lowell politics and history” which we did with thoroughness and regularity. But by 2019, for a variety of reasons, I took a break from politics. At the same time, I and others felt that Literary Lowell, the great work being created by local writers and poets, was under-appreciated and underrepresented online. Consequently, with help from Paul Marion and many contributors, I shifted the focus of the blog and changed its subtitle from “Lowell Politics and History” to “Voices from Lowell and Beyond” and allowed the content to reflect that change.

But local politics is too important to ignore so now I’m back, just in a slightly different form. My plan is to write a weekly electronic newsletter on Lowell politics that will be delivered to subscribers early each Sunday via a platform called Substack. Please subscribe to my newsletter which is free, and please share it with others.

The first issue went out today, but you can read it on the Substack site.

As for the richardhowe.com blog, please keep reading, and if you haven’t already done so, purchase your copy of The Lowell Review 2021 which features the best writing and poetry from the blog from 2018 through 2020. Also, watch for The Lowell Review 2022 which is due out in March, just in time for Jack Kerouac’s 100^th birthday. We have a special section on the Kerouac Centennial with essays, poems, and an interview, plus a surprise guest contributor with a little known link to Lowell.  Here’s a sneak look at the cover of issue two. Fiction, nonfiction, poems, and interviews for our readers. Fifty contributors in this issue.