President Obama pumped up the volume on his message for the upcoming election in a just-released interview with Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine. I picked up the feed from realclearpolitics.com. Read the RS interview here, and consider buying the magazine if you value the work.
Why isn’t the annual announcement of the MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” for extraordinary creativity in the sciences, arts, engineering, and other disciplines televised nationally like baseball’s All-Star Game? The awardees are the “stars” of intellect, creativity, and insight. The NYTimes today reports on the latest MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grants.” At least three of…
In inky night we crossed New Mexico; at gray dawn it was Dalhart, Texas; in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after another; at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October. We arrived in St.…
Roger Brunelle, inventor of the guided tours of Kerouac’s literary sites in Lowell, will lead a 2.5 hour bus tour on Saturday, Oct. 2, starting at 8.30 am at the National Park Visitor Center, 246 Market St. See the sites written about in “Visions of Gerard,” “Doctor Sax,” “Maggie Cassidy,”…
NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman today writes that “structural unemployment” is a fiction accepted by certain experts as a way to explain why so many people are jobless and repeated by many others who prefer to believe that explanation rather than do something difficult to try to fix the problem. Read Krugman here, and consider getting…
1. Middlesex Community College Friday night drew a large crowd to Lowell Memorial Auditorium for the celebration of 40 years of MCC and 20 years of President Carole Cowan’s leadership there. Congratulations to everyone who helped produce a dynamic event, which had the feeling of a special party more than…
Jennifer Myers of the SUN yesterday wrote about the statewide group called Preservation Massachusetts sounding the alarm about proposed changes to the Pawtucket Falls Dam on the Merrimack River. Read her article here, and consider buying the SUN if you appreciate the reporting.
How many films have been made about a poem? Here’s one. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” isn’t for everyone’s taste, but it did its part to shake up a lot of people’s thinking and sent a shock wave through the literary world. It’s been described as the second most influential long poem of…
Our blogging colleague at Choosing a Soundtrack has a Friday, Sept. 24, post worth about four minutes of your time. He wrote about Hank Williams’ song “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and brilliantly inserted an audio recording by a couple of his musician friends that is so easy to access that I…
This announcement is from www.moveon.org: “On October 2nd, exactly one month before Election Day, hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in Washington, D.C. for “One Nation,” a huge march for jobs, equality, and progress. Can you join us? At the historic Lincoln Memorial, progressives from coast to coast will…