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Charles Bukowski: On the Beat Margins
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-American poet and writer who was a contemporary of Jack Kerouac but never a part of the Beat Generation writer scene. Still, Bukowski, who was known as the “Poet of Skid Row” and was called by Time magazine “the laureate of American lowlife” had a…
Read More »Nature Comes to Lowell
For weeks I had noted the increasing height of the plants shooting up from the untended compost pile in the corner of our backyard. With 20-plus years of accumulated organic matter, there was no telling what was growing. One recent morning when I let our 12-year old Yellow Lab Ivy…
Read More »Cartoons by Nicholas Whitmore
Did Someone Say ‘Coffee’?
Did Someone Say ‘Coffee’? By Jack McDonough Early in my married life I made coffee in a Proctor Silex which, if I’m not mistaken, consisted of an arrangement whereby the coffee flowed from one glass section to another, up or down, I don’t remember. I probably used Maxwell House coffee…
Read More »A Different Kind of Dying
A Different Kind of Dying By David Daniel Once a year, in late September, the town holds a drop-off at the DPW garage for used electronics. In advance of the event, notices appear in the community weekly newspaper, and on flyers affixed to telephone poles: UNWANTED TVS, COMPUTER MONITORS, PHONES…
Read More »Pandemic Journal: Sept 20, 2020
It was six months ago – Sunday, March 15, 2020 – that Governor Charlie Baker ordered schools, restaurants, and bars to close. Courthouses and much else closed too. Although the Covid-19 virus had been lurking in our consciousness for weeks before that, it was the mandated closings that brought home…
Read More »Cartoons by Nicholas Whitmore
Old Frog Pond Farm update
It’s harvest time on Old Frog Pond Farm so Linda Hoffman reports being busy with raspberries, butternut squash, and tomatoes. But the farm is not exclusively a working farm; it is also a cultural site and this week, Linda did a post on the upcoming arts events. Here are the…
Read More »From the Archives: The Revolving Museum
The Revolving Museum was founded by Jerry Back in the 1980s in Boston. At first, it consisted of outdoor art installations but in 1995 it gained a physical space in a vacant building in the Fort Point neighborhood. But as that decade came to an end, real estate prices in…
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