Reporter Patricia Cohen in today’s NYTimes described how folksinger Woody Guthrie will finally get his due in the place of his roots, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Local activists kept the tribute flame alive for the past many years, and now the Kaiser Foundation, based in Tulsa, has put up $3 million to…
Under the title “Dissolves,” the new sections of Joe Donahue’s long poem “Terra Lucida,” are due in January from the publisher Talisman House in New Jersey. Joe is on long-term leave from Lowell, based at Duke University, where he researches eternal questions. The reading public rarely catches up to a visionary poet in…
CNN analyst and Kennedy School big-wig David Gergen offers his latest take on the President’s prospect for re-election. Like many other commentators, Gergen feels that he must throw in a side whack at the Washington DC Democrats for balance as he makes the case about GOP failings on national and…
Buffalo, N.Y., faces the same kind of challenges that most older cities do, but a bright spot is the lucrative local theatre industry built around touring versions of Broadway shows like “The Addams Family,” which earned $995,000 a week in the 3,000-seat Shea’s theatre, according to the NYTimes. Read the article…
NYTimes reports more than 100,000 people today demonstrated against Russian power-holders including Putin, who assumes he can rule without consent. The NYT today has two other articles about the growing protest movement in Russia, especially among young workers in the cities.
This poem is from the winter of 1983-84, when I was living in Southern California just south of Laguna Beach. Dana Point was a small coastal town that has since expanded to the extent that there is now a Ritz Carlton there. When I was there it was the bottom edge of…
Paul McCartney on Tuesday returned to his roots in Liverpool for a concert at the Echo Arena on the dockside along the Mersey River. Read one fan’s report on the concert and hometown atmosphere from the a very active website devoted to McCartney, The Beatles, and their friends. For the obsessives among us,…
I wrote the first draft of this poem in 1976, and worked on it on and off for a long time. I had in mind the extensive outdoor lighting displays in Dracut (the town) and Lowell, but, especially as it evolved, the dense array of Christmas decorations in Pawtucketville, between Mammoth Road and…
For those of us who believe in government as the civilized way to make decisions about matters in life that affect us all, the action at the Lowell City Council this evening is reason for optimism. Our municipal representatives and professional staff in collaboration with the various labor unions in the city found their…