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Knowing now that City Manager Lynch resigns effective March 10, 2014 towards the end of this meeting, the rest of this seems a bit anticlimactic but here it is for posterity. Given the debate that immediately proceeded Lynch’s announcement, it’s my sense that none of the councilors were aware of…
Read More »Lowell City Manager Bernie Lynch submits his letter of resignation, effective March 10, 2014 UPDATE: Here’s a video of CM Lynch reading his letter of resignation. Video taken by Jack Mitchell of Lowell Live Feed from balcony of council chamber. [youtube]zFNbvh1_ajc[/youtube] Paul Belley shares his thoughts on his blog, Captain’s…
Read More »I’m transcribing the discussion at tonight’s Lowell City Council meeting and the first hour was taken up by a motion to restore the city’s manger (i.e., nativity scene) to city hall. It was an interesting discussion so I decided to post it separately here. Be sure to read all the…
Read More »[youtube]A0jha147lE4[/youtube] Garment workers in Cambodia who earn pennies to make many of the high cost clothes we all wear here in America recently went on strike for higher wages. Their job action earned a violent response from the government. Several days ago, four protesters were killed in confrontations with the…
Read More »Here’s a great story from Lowell’s past from Mehmed Ali and Beth Brassel: Moody Gardens By Mehmed Ali and Beth Brassel Between 1950 and 1970, Lowell, Mass., saw its status as an industrial dynamo erode. The textile industry shrank to almost nothing and many residents quit on the city, moving…
Read More »Welcome – or welcome back – to Jack Mitchell. He’s rejoined the Lowell blogosphere after a very brief hiatus by launching his own site called “Lowell Live Feed.” His first post, “Inaugural”, lays out his objectives for the site and also breaks some news with a story about an erroneously…
Read More »Starting a new trash program on January 1 might be necessary, but the unpredictability of the weather always makes it a risky proposition. Such was the case with the launch of Lowell’s new single stream recycling system last week. My normal trash pickup day is Thursday, so with the New…
Read More »It’s been nearly a month since there’s been a city council meeting, we’ve just emerged from a major blizzard and arctic temperatures, and a new council gets sworn in on Monday morning and meets for the first time on Tuesday night. Depending on one’s perspective, Monday will be the birth…
Read More »With Wednesday being the New Year’s Day holiday and with the blizzard that closed the courthouse early on Thursday and all day on Friday, it was a mixed week in Lowell real estate. There were some noteworthy transactions: On Tuesday, a large mill complex on Jackson Street sold for $2mil…
Read More »I just finished reading Frederik Logevall’s Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2012. A professor of history at Cornell, Logevall uses recently released diplomatic archives from several countries to paint a comprehensive portrait of…
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