Author Archive

Lowell: Downtown & Around By Leo Racicot During my growing up years, downtown Lowell was the epicenter of social life for residents. A thriving, even at times bustling area, especially on weekends and at the holidays but actually most any day of the year, shoppers could be found teeming Merrimack…

Book Review: Poet in High Street Park Book by J.D. Scrimgeour Review by Richard Howe Salem is one of my favorite cities in Massachusetts. In the late 1990s, two evenings each week, I would drive there for classes at Salem State College (now University) in pursuit of my Master’s Degree…

Dazzling Paris Once Again By Louise Peloquin In America, he is considered one of the great painters of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In France, he had fallen into oblivion. And yet, this artist perfectly seized the Parisian society of his time. His…

The agenda for last Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was so brief that councilors had to take a recess 20 minutes in because the rest of the agenda was finished before the 7 p.m. start time for public hearings arrived. However, brevity does not equal insignificance, for the council took…

Jack Kerouac’s baptismal record now an open book By Benie Zelitch (by Annie Powell) When he was seven days old, author Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was baptized at St. Louis de France,  a French-speaking church and parish in Lowell. This knowledge is widely known as a few biographers reviewed his records…

The Happy Accidents That Make Us Who We Are By Stephen O’Connor It’s interesting to consider all of those serendipitous events which bend the tree of our lives to grow in a certain direction, or that set us off, for good or ill, on roads where we find our lives.…

THE RAG MAN By Rocky Provencher My mother’s parents were English and French-Canadian. Both her parents were the first generation of each family to be born in the United States. My mother was born in Lowell. My father’s parents were both French-Canadian. My father was the in the first generation…

This intriguing piece of art recently came to my attention. “Music and beer for two” sounds like fun, but the fact that the standing figure has three tankards in their hand is the first of many mysteries about this print. To be fair, the full version of the above illustration…

Louvre Update By Louise Peloquin Eight pieces of jewelry worth an estimated $101 406 800, including items belonging to Emperor Napoléon III and his wife Empress Eugénie, were stolen from the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery at 9:30 AM on October 19, 2025 shortly after the museum opened to the public. The…

The Lowell City Council met on Tuesday night. The longest and most intense discussion involved a proposed amendment to the city’s “Peace and Good Order” ordinance that would impose a new limitation on already-legal “needle exchange programs” by prohibiting such programs from operating within 1000 feet of a school. In…