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Chath lives and works on a small family farm in Bolton, Mass., where he contemplates writing as a form of escape, but he can’t just rid himself of human ties. He paints the American sky thinking of Cambodia’s tyranny and blood. He’s alone, but not lonely, and tries living to…
Read More »Hannah Arendt (web photo courtesy of the L.A. Times) Certain national observers have been saying for some time that America is in a state of emergency, and many of us have felt like that since late 2016. This is no normal time. The policy disruption at the federal level is…
Read More »Web photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons We write about a lot of things here, many under the umbrellas of politics and history. There’s no escaping the religious element in our present political moment when ethical questions about fair payment for work done, equal treatment of all persons, humane responses to…
Read More »The median American household has only about $12,000 in savings. This quotation is from today’s New York Times, a guest essay on the opposite-editorial page by Caitlin Zaloom about the high cost of a college education and the financial impact on families who are not wealthy. Here’s the essay link…
Read More »The Democratic candidates need to argue over the best way to improve health care coverage and settle on a party position before Iowa. Let them have a health care insurance summit in September to sort this out. Come to an agreement and stick by it. Make it clear to the…
Read More »My friend and mentor Charles Nikitopoulos of Lowell, Mass., passed away a few days ago. His obituary is here. I want to share my thoughts about what he meant to me as well as to the community and university of which he was a part for decades. He came to…
Read More »My friend Renae Lias, a former colleague from UMass Lowell, is reporting on the presidential campaign in New Hampshire. Renae is a communications professional who has worked in state government and on government relations for higher education. She attends local events in N.H. and exchanges updates with a small group…
Read More »My new collection of poems is published by Brendan Gaylord of SuperLargePrint.com, a specialty publisher of books featuring extra-large print, twice the size of the large-print books available in public libraries, for people with sight challenges. Brendan takes books and parts of books that are in the public domain, meaning…
Read More »I told my co-blogger Dick Howe that I would write a series of posts about the 2020 presidential campaign because everything is connected: national-to-local, coast-to-coast, global-to-regional. When I lived in Lowell I walked across Highland Street to the Rogers School, the James P. Scondras Memorial Gymnasium, to vote in every…
Read More »What happens in the nation’s capital does matter on the local level, in myriad ways. Peter Wehner served in the Reagan and two Bush presidential administrations. In the Washington Post newspaper, Peter Wehner offers his view of the lying liars occupying the White House at this time.
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