2017 Lowell Folk Festival This year’s Lowell Folk Festival kicks off Friday night with a parade at 6:30 pm and the opening ceremony at Boarding House Park at 7 pm. The Festival website provides a full schedule of performances and activities. Musical performers this year include an Afro-Venezuelan group from…
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Please join us this Saturday, July 22, 2017, for a Lowell Walk on Lowell Fires and the Lowell Fire Department. The tour begins at 10 am from Lowell National Park Visitor Center, is free, and lasts about 90 minutes. The tour will be led by Jason Strunk, a captain of…
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This is the third batch of those who contributed works to History as It Happens: Community Bloggers in Lowell, Mass. our forthcoming book of community writing by more than 40 contributors to this website over the past ten years. (See the first group of contributors here and the second group…
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This is the fifteenth weekly installment of my Lowell in World War One series which commemorates the centennial of the entry of the United States into World War One. Since I skipped posting last Monday, this week’s edition features two weeks of headlines from one hundred years ago this week:…
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Thanks to Paul Marion for pinch hitting for me in this space last Sunday. I was away for a few days visiting Washington, DC, and vicinity. In a way, the trip became a hunt for Lowell connections in American history. I found many, which I will write about separately in…
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This Saturday’s Lowell Walk is Kerouac’s Downtown. Led by Sean Thibodeau and Roger Brunelle, this walk will visit places in downtown Lowell that helped shape Jack Kerouac and that were featured in his many books. The walk begins at 10 am at Lowell National Park Visitor Center, 246 Market Street,…
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This is the second batch of those who contributed works to History as It Happens: Community Bloggers in Lowell, Mass. our forthcoming book of community writing by more than 40 contributors to this website over the past ten years. History as It Happens will be released at a book launch…
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Lowell Walks will resume this coming Saturday, July 8 2017, at 10 am at Lowell National Park Visitor Center. This week’s walk, Lowell Poems and Poets, will be led by Paul Marion. Paul plans to visit Lucy Larcom Park, Boott Mills, Kerouac Park, and other downtown sites. At each stop,…
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Lowell-resident Tooch Van, a Cambodian-American and Community Activist, wrote this poem to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Kem Ley. Born in 1970 and educated at universities in Thailand and Malaysia, Dr. Ley became a political activist and vocal critic of the government of Prime Minister Hun…
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Happy Independence Day! To commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War One, each week I’ve been posting a summary of that week’s newspaper headlines from the corresponding dates in 1917. This week’s post included July 4, 1917. I noticed that there was little mention of Independence Day celebrations that year.…
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