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The Arrival of the Europeans The Virginia Company established a settlement in Jamestown in 1607. That same year, a related company created another settlement at the mouth of the Kennebuck River in today’s Maine. Called Sachadehoc, this place was abandoned a year later after a fruitless and deadly winter. According…
Read More »The Massachusetts legislature by Special Laws Chapter 112 of 1825, considered and enacted “An Act to Incorporate the Town of Lowell” to be effective March 1, 1826. In recognition of Lowell’s approaching bicentennial, today I begin a series of blog posts called Lowell200. Over the coming months, I hope to…
Read More »This essay appears in the 2023 issue of The Lowell Review, just released this month, which includes a 55-page feature on Climate and Nature as well as writing about baseball, The Beatles, Jack Kerouac, and everything else in the world. The Climate/Nature section has essays, articles, and poems about Rollie’s…
Read More »Review of Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life, by Elizabeth D. Leonard Review by Richard Howe Scrolling through a list of books about Lowell’s Civil War General Benjamin Butler discloses a number of unflattering titles including The South Called Him Beast, When the Devil Came Down to Dixie, Army…
Read More »I suppose you could pick any day of the year and find many important things that happened through the years on that day. Perhaps because April 19 has local significance due to the 1775 battles at Lexington and Concord, and the 1861 riot involving soldiers from Lowell at the start…
Read More »Over the past few years, many people have grown concerned about home title theft. The increased worry is driven mostly by extensive advertising by companies that provide services which, for a fee, monitor home ownership records. This weekend, in “Are title protection services worth the expense?”, the Boston Globe asks…
Read More »Living Madly: Just Friends By Emilie-Noelle Provost In the 1989 film, When Harry Met Sally, Harry Burns, the character played by Billy Crystal, famously says, “. . . men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.” I know some people believe this, but…
Read More »Boarding School Blues: Ch. 56 By Louise Peloquin Ch. 56: An elixir and a frappe Blanche’s head was a Tilt-A-Whirl. Buzzing voices extracted her from stupor. “Andy, get Marieanne! PF’s bleedin’ all over the place. Madeleine, help me turn her over. One, two, three, go!” Blanche didn’t need to open…
Read More »The Moth of Literary Fame: A Tale of Two Writers By David Daniel Emerson likened literary fame to a “flitting moth.” The recent imaginative-biodrama Emily reminds us what an uncertain thing a writer’s legacy can be. Dead from tuberculosis at 30, a mere year after her lone novel appeared to…
Read More »In my Substack newsletter a few weeks ago I suggested the city should conduct an after-action review of its policies for dealing with the Covid pandemic, mostly to learn lessons that might better prepare the city for the next public health crisis. I included an observation that I found it…
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