The Associated Press via the Sun on Jan. 27 reported that the local corporation Raytheon Company had fourth-quarter revenue of $6.9 billion in 2010. The net income for the period was $459 million, down 9 percent from one year ago. The decline was attributed to pension costs and debt retirement,…
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“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers…
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Lowell-rooted poet Joe Donahue is one of the subjects of an essay titled “Apocalypticism: A Way Forward for Poetry” in the Chicago Review. Read the essay by Peter O’Leary here. Donahue has spent years mastering long serial poems that combine elements of mysticism, esotericism, protest, and the alienation of the…
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American Kennel Club lists most popular dog breeds in the nation. This one looks like our guy at home. Read about it on boston.com.
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Death Comes Home in the Morning . Rosemary said the Shuttle had exploded. Donna turned on the office radio. News came in the same tone as the spoken news From Dallas when President Kennedy was shot. The pub TV played without commercials. The flying machine shattered. It wasn’t the biggest loss…
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The Hubble Space Telescope has produced another wonder, a view of what may be the oldest galaxy in the universe yet to be seen by humans. Read the NYTimes article here, and get the paper if you want more. It is a smudge of light only a tiny fraction of the size of…
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Picking up on Tony Sampas’s documentary photographs of Cote’s Market on Salem Street, here’s an excerpt from a poem by Marie Louise St. Onge that was published in the book “French Class: French Canadian-American Writings on Identity, Culture, and Place” (Loom Press, 1999).—PM . from One Vegetable and Silence for…
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The NYTimes today reports on dismal results in a recent national test on science knowledge administered to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders (the 12th grade sample is much smaller than the elementary school samples). Read the results here, and get the NYT if you want more. But the results showed…
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NYTimes columnist David Brooks today says it’s imperative that 21st-century America be a talent magnet to stay at the front of the pack in the global economic and social long-distance race. For our purposes on this blog, substitute Lowell and/or Merrimack Valley every time he mentions America, and think about…
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“. . . There was at the time of the Civil War, a group of young men and women hardly more than boys and girls, who frequented our house, played croquet on the lawn and bowled in the long, low bowling alley; old when I remember it, and covered from…
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