Menu
The outstanding performers of Actors Inc. last night raised the figurative curtain on Jack Neary’s funny and moving play “The Porch” at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. Set in a place like Lowell’s Sacred Heart neighborhood in 2004, the play gives voice to the people whom we shop…
Read More »For details on Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s life, see the Wikipedia entry.
Read More »Lowell Riverfest, Saturday June 11th, 2 pm to 6 pm, at Middlesex Community College and the Concord River Greenway Park The Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust, The Cultural Organization of Lowell, and WXRV 92.5 The River radio station invite the community to join this year’s Riverfest: Culture Flows. Enjoy this…
Read More »When the Vancouver crowd sings the Canadian national anthem in Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, think “Lowell” because the man who composed “O Canada” lived in Lowell and married a Lowell woman. Distinguished musician Calixa Lavallee (1842-1891) was born in Montreal, but lived for years in the US.…
Read More »Families are children’s most important educators. Our society must invest in parental education, prenatal care and preschool. Of course, schools must improve; every one should have a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources and a balanced curriculum including the arts, foreign languages, history and science. If every child arrived in school…
Read More »Our friend and colleague David Blackburn, who leads the Cultural Resources and Programs unit at Lowell National Historical Park, sent a link to a Los Angeles Times article by James Rainey via the Sacramento Bee and a listserv of David’s. He writes, “It places Lowell National Historical Park themes and our stories on…
Read More »Read Nancye Tuttle’s advance report in the Sun on the Actors Inc. production of “The Porch,’ an insightful comedy by Jack Neary. Both Nancye and Jack are regular contributors to this blog. Read her article here, and get the Sun if you want more. The shows are set for June 2, 3 and 4…
Read More »Holy Poets, Batman! Lowell’s own Tom Sexton is in the New York Times today. The front page of the Arts section/C1 includes an image of the cover of his newest book, “I Think Again of Those Ancient Chinese Poets” (Univ. of Alaska Press), and his paragraph of attention is on…
Read More »I wrote this poem one Memorial Day in the late 1970s. I was living in Dracut, where I had attended an early morning tribute to veterans. Afterwards, I drove to northeast Maine to see a friend from high school who had moved to the Bangor area. I roughed out the poem…
Read More »Here’s the text of the famous 1884 Memorial Day speech by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the Boston-born Civil War veteran who served on the US Supreme Court. His parents were the doctor-poet Oliver Wendell Holmes and abolitionist Amelia Lee Jackson. He enlisted in the army in his senior year at Harvard…
Read More »