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Governor Patrick has ordered that the flags of the United States and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that fly over public buildings be lowered to half-staff today in honor of Firefighter Jon D. Davies of the Worcester Fire Department, who died in the line of duty on Thursday, December 8, 2011.
Read More »Paul has a terrific review of last night’s visit by iconic performer Billy Joel to UMass Lowell last evening. In his piece, Paul vividly describes how a UML student found his way to the stage to perform a duet of Joel’s song “Leningrad”. Here’s some video of that: [youtube]h39hgyW6fdU[/youtube]
Read More »I’ve been a lifelong fan of Boston’s professional sports teams, but my enthusiasm has its peaks and valleys. While I don’t consider myself a “front runner”, when teams are playing well, they are more interesting to watch. These days I’m very bullish on the Bruins, catching most of their games…
Read More »Photo by Tony Sampas
Read More »Thirty-four years ago today, ten students died in an early morning fire in Aquinas Hall at Providence College. The following is a post I wrote several years ago. The original post along with the comments it received, is located here: Early in the morning of December 13, 1977, a fire…
Read More »On Op-Ed in today’s New York Times by Helen Ladd, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke, and Edward Fiske, a former education editor of The New York Times, tackles the issue of the lagging performance of urban schools in America today. Entitled “Class matters. Why won’t we…
Read More »While in Washington this past summer, I finally made it to the National Postal Museum (pictured above and below) which is part of the Smithsonian Institution and is located right next to Union Station in what was once the city’s main postal building. Although small, the museum was inspirational, showing…
Read More »My 17 days of face-down recuperation from an eye injury ended yesterday. Vision is gradually returning and it’s now OK to resume normal activities. Just in time; I was becoming addicted to daytime TV. A webcam projecting the television image onto a flatscreen monitor on the floor handled the mechanics…
Read More »Middlesex Street, Lowell. Photos by Tony Sampas.
Read More »After electing five new city councilors in 1969, the voters continued to make changes in 1971 when 33,000 voters went to the polls in heavy rain and ousted three incumbents, Sam Pollard, Armand LeMay and John Mahoney while overwhelmingly defeating a proposal to change the city’s Plan E form of…
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