Author Archive

Here are the Lowell results from last Tuesday’s election: President Kamala Harris won statewide with 2,073,389 votes to 1,234,533 for Donald Trump. In Lowell, Harris won with 20,071 to Trump’s 12,313. US Senator Elizabeth Warren won statewide with 1,990,182 (59.6%) to John Deaton’s 1,347,732 (40.4%). In Lowell, Warren received 20,593…

APPOINTMENT NO MORE  A short essay By Jerry Bisantz It was February 9, 1964. The black and white television was aglow with the family ritual. All seven Bisantz children and my Mom and Dad were crammed into my small living room, vying for space  to watch our Sunday ritual, The…

New at the White House – (PIP #46) By Louise Peloquin      L’Etoile covered the elections so extensively that we were hard put to choose among all of the century-old articles. Here are a couple of items from a weekly column called Au fil de la plume, literally translated on the thread of the…

The great American novelist Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I thought of that Tuesday night while watching the Lowell City Council once again debate whether the method of selecting Lowell’s mayor should…

Martha Sparks: Chelmsford’s Accused Witch By Ron Sykes Certainly, there are many stories of injustice in Chelmsford’s past but, the story of Martha Sparks seems to be particularly cruel. On July 10, 1676 Martha, the daughter of Thomas Barrett Jr., married Henry Sparks from Exeter, New Hampshire. Henry purchased 1…

Register to vote! – (PIP #45) By Louise Peloquin Registering to vote is a duty and voting a sacred right. Nothing has changed over the years. L’Etoile, October 5, 1924 Urgent Call from the Permanent Committee of Naturalization May all those who are citizens by birth, by naturalization or by…

A joint motion by Councilors Erik Gitschier and Corey Robinson that “the law department draft necessary language to facilitate residents’ ability to select our mayor via ballot before the 2025 city council election cycle” generated some discussion at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting. However, like so many of the motions…

The onset of this year’s World Series and the recent deaths of Luis Tiant and Pete Rose revived my memories of the 1975 World Series which Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy calls The Greatest World Series Ever. The two teams that played that year were Tiant’s Boston Red Sox and…

Overheard Conversations: Be Careful, A Writer Could Be Listening By Stephen O’Connor James Joyce was certainly not the first writer whose pockets were full of scraps of paper on which were scrawled bits of conversations. Any writer worth his or her salt is continually listening to other people’s phrases, stories…

WHY DO IT? A hiker’s confession By Jerry Bisantz OK, so this is the newest in my “try to figure out why Jerry does stupid stuff all the time” writings. And this one will be about my passion for climbing. I must blame my buddy Steve for this one.  I…