Author Archive

Visited: Boott Cotton Mills Museum – With out of town guests expressing interest in Lowell’s history, we all headed to the Boott Cotton Mills Museum this week. Admission is $6 for adults and $4 for seniors. A demonstration in the weave room takes place every 30 minutes and lasts for…

Les Bleus in Boston By Louise Peloquin       Excitement is in the air as the World Cup kicked off on June 11th giving the word “football” a whole new meaning in America. Our very basic soccer expertise excludes valid sport commentaries or prognoses on the 2026 World Cup. Nonetheless, since…

Lowell Mayors, Part I The Lowell City Council is now on its summer meeting schedule. From June through September the council will meet on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month rather than weekly as is the case the rest of the year. For the non-meeting weeks (and due…

Lowell’s 2026 Franco-American Festival Week begins Sunday, June 21! Sunday, June 21: 12:00 pm Mass in French honoring St. Jean Baptiste. (French/English worship aid provided.) At Immaculate Conception Church, 144 E. Merrimack St., Lowell, MA. Refreshments and naming of the Greater-Lowell Franco-American of the Year will follow in downstairs church…

A Tribute to the LRTA By Leo Racicot Due to a series of nerve-wracking experiences driving on the Wild West streets of Las Vegas for three years followed by working for a woman in Cambridge who wanted me to ride her autistic son around the city while he screamed at the top…

In which I write about interesting things that I have read, heard and seen during the past week: Destination: Concord Museum – Located at 53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord Museum is not far from downtown Concord, Massachusetts. The mission of the museum is to share objects and stories about the many…

Wind rips through la Caverne By Louise Peloquin      After an 8-day, record-breaking heatwave at the end of May stifled Paris, June 2nd brought torrential rain and, as the French say, un vent à décorner les boeufs – a wind to rip the horns off a bull. As far as…

On Thursday, June 11, 2026, at 6pm in the Luna Theater (in the former Mill No. 5), students at Lowell Community Charter Public School will present a “Reading Frederick Douglass Together” event. In recent years, many communities have come together to perform public readings of Douglass’ historic speech, “What to…

After nearly six hours of deliberations spread over two meetings, the Lowell City Council on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, adopted the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget of $577,861,191. Although the council cannot increase the budget proposed by the city manager, I believe the final amount was higher than what was…

Things We No Longer See in the Culture By Leo Racicot I’m enough of an old fuddy-duddy to actually miss some of the daily fixtures of life as we knew them in the culture of the 50s, 60s and beyond.     I miss the convenience of the neighborhood mailbox, the…