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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.
Read More »From the Facebook page of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi: “Senate Majority Leader McConnell is so obsessed with blocking votes on commonsense solutions passed by the House, he’s taken to calling himself “the Grim Reaper.” But Americans are tired of waiting – they want action…
Read More »Joan Baez and Bob Dylan singing in Costello Gym, Nov. 2, 1975. Web photo courtesy of UMass Lowell. The media is full of reports about a new movie and music release tied to the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour of Bob Dylan and friends in 1975-76, which made an earthquake…
Read More »When I began contributing to this blog many years ago, I often would post links to opinion pieces in national media that I believed were worth sharing locally. I shared a lot of David Brooks’ columns, which may have surprised people. He’s on the NY Times commentary list as a…
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