Menu
July 4th in Lowell: Music, Fireworks, Riverfront Celebration
Celebrate the Fourth of July in Lowell at the Sampas Pavilion on the north bank of the Merrimack River. Here’s the schedule of music and fireworks.
Read More »Author Archive
And Now, the Merrimack Valley Jazz Festival
Coming to the Sampas Pavilion on the Vandenberg Esplanade along the Merrimack River in Lowell on Saturday, August 13: The Merrimack Valley Jazz Festival. Read all about it on weshareacommonthread.org
Read More »Montreal’s Cultural District: Ideas for Lowell
Speaking of Canada Day, bbc.com today has a Travel article about the cultural district in downtown Montreal, which covers one square kilometer and is home to 80 cultural venues and hosts 40 festivals each year. The Montreal Jazz Festival that draws hundreds of thousands of people is on this weekend.…
Read More »Creative Economy Central: UMass Lowell
From the UMass Lowell Public Affairs Office: UMass Lowell strengthened its reputation as a hot-spot for creative economy research in the state when all of its proposals seeking funding from the UMass President’s Creative Economy Initiative were approved this spring. Faculty from UMass Lowell scored big in the 2011 round of Creative Economy…
Read More »Comix Twist
My nephew Philip Marion is a writer, illustrator, and practitioner in other media. He invented a comics universe called “Spoon & Packet” that he describes as “a miniature parable fora larger world”— Meet Spoon and Packet, the unlikely duo whose rebellious spirits cause them to journey from a 1950’s diner through Hell…
Read More »‘Softball Game, Down East Maine’
Here’s another softball poem from the vault. This one was first published in the literary journal “Kennebec” at the University of Maine, Augusta. I spent many summer days in Maine during the 1970s and ’80s, visiting a friend who lived near Ellsworth. I brought this poem to a writing workshop…
Read More »‘Cassini-Huygens’
I wrote this sketch several years ago just after the Fourth of July. The Cassini-Huygens space probe, according to Wikipedia, “entered into orbit around Saturn in July 2004,” and it is expected to transmit data about Saturn and its moons until 2017. In January 2005, the vehicle landed on the…
Read More »‘Jimmy Allen at the Library of Congress’
Last week, one day around suppertime I was walking our family’s Boston Terrier on the South Common and I had what I can only describe as a sense memory. The strong sun, bright sky, dry air, grass underfoot, and voices bouncing through the park made me think that the evening was perfect…
Read More »Maureen’s ‘I Love NY’ . . . & Its Gov.
In today’s NYTimes, opinion writer Maureen Dowd smooches Gov. Andrew Cuomo big-time for what he did. Read her column here, and get the NYT if you want more.
Read More »Depp-Corn-Four
Popcorn, that is. The movies. “Pirates,” specifically. The likely conclusion to the highly entertaining and profitable quartet of films from Disney’s fun factory, with an assist from Jerry Bruckheimer. This past Sunday, my wife and I went to the cinema at the Methuen Loop to see Johnny Depp in “Pirates of…
Read More »