The SUN story this week about performers for the upcoming 25th Lowell Folk Festival sent me to the vault to find a non-web “log” entry before the blog days about the origin of the Festival. I was cultural affairs director of the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission at the time. After…
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All writers, non-writers, and anti-writers, please take notice. This estimable hyper-local blog will host the Third Annual Community Haiku Project in April as one of Lowell’s contributions to National Poetry Month. Start your creative engines, and put on your haiku shoes because we’ll be looking for the choicest of the…
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NYTimes columnist David Brooks today has a stark warning for all readers: We are on track to be financially consumed by our own federal government debt. I’m copying a large chunk of his column below because he spells out the situation clearly. Reading this, I’m reminded of the late Paul…
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See Forbes Magazine’s recent list of the 20 most miserable cities in the US. Lowell didn’t make this list. California looks bad here. Number one on the list is Stockton, Calif., where I lived for about six months in 1967 when my father was working as a wool grader for Cal…
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UMass Lowell Provost Ahmed Abdelal checking news from Egypt. (Web photo courtesy of CBSBoston.com and WBZ Radio) UMass Lowell Provost Ahmed Abdelal has been following the news from Egypt closely. He was born in Egypt and has relatives and colleagues in Cairo. UMass Lowell will be hosting an exhibition of contemporary…
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Harvard economics scholar Edward Glaeser today looks at the environmental pros and cons of city life in a column in the Boston Globe. Read his column here, and get the Globe if you want more. Glaeser’s new book is called “Triumph of the City.” He’s on the list for an invitation…
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From Director Judith Boccia, Office of School Partnerships, UMass Lowell Graduate School of Education, in the first issue of the OSP electronic newsletter: “November marked the completion of the first year of the U.S. Department of Education-funded Teaching American History (TAH) Project, titled “Imagination, Invention & Innovation: The Making of…
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The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, Feb. 9, 1964
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George Koumantzelis photographed this historic event at the Smith Baker Center in June 1988, on the eve of the dedication of the Jack Kerouac Commemorative. More than 1,000 people attended what was described as the most important poetry reading in America of that year. Shown here on stage are Allen…
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Some of our readers may remember that Michael Millner, a professor in the UMass Lowell Dept. of English, and I are working on a new Kerouac project for Lowell. Last year, we received a $35,000 Creative Economy Initiatives grant from the UMass President’s Office to create (1) a small permanent…
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