Author Archive

Lowell’s Mardi Gras

March 17, 2021 – With the pandemic lockdown still upon us, we are deprived of our “traditional” celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. This Paul Marion post from March 17, 2011, captures what Lowell is usually like today. For me, it evokes some nostalgia and brings some hopefulness for the not-too-distant…

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Red or Gray?

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a post from eleven years ago complete with some of the comments left at that time. Even though corned beef is not regularly consumed in Ireland, we eat a lot of it on St Patrick’s Day.  But I have a couple of questions:…

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Timing is Everything

Timing is Everything By George Chigas One day last week, I hoofed it up to UML Lydon Library to get a couple of Inter-Library Loan books for an article I’m working on about how Kerouac actually met Neal Cassady at Columbia in December 1946. The basic facts are generally well-known,…

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Shut Down: Day 365

From time to time through the pandemic, I have posted updates to capture the events and the look and feel of that moment in time. Almost exactly a year ago today I did my first. I called it “Covid-19: March 12 edition” never imagining that I should have included “2020”…

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Boarding House Blues, chapter 7

Boarding School Blues By Louise Peloquin Chapter 7: Beginning to Belong Blanche and her classmates stepped up to the academic pace. Freshmen followed required courses such as English, algebra, biology and social studies. Because the school had been founded by a religious order from Québec, French had a prominent place…

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My Mother, Smoking

My Mother, Smoking By David Daniel A recent editorial in the Sun reports how Massachusetts’ ban on menthol cigarettes has cost the state a lot of tax revenue, while, simultaneously, tobacco sales in neighboring states without such a ban have spiked. I know almost nothing about public tax policy and…

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Boarding School Blues, chapter 6

Boarding School Blues By Louise Peloquin Chapter 6: Settling In The first week at SFA was a whirlwind of adjusting to a new environment. Blanche had left Earth to land on another planet. With her peanut head and tight ponytail – the regulation hairdo for long hair – not only…

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The U.S. Space Program

February 18, 2021 – (above photo from NASA website) – Members of the Perseverance Mars Rover team watch in mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the first images arrive moments after the spacecraft successfully touched down on Mars, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is…

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