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…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
If You See Something, Say Something It’s Memorial Day weekend. My father, Marcel Marion (1919-1982), born in Lowell, fought the Nazis on the ground in Germany with the US Army in the brutal winter of 1945, the final months of the war in Europe. He knew a fascist when he…
After reading today’s New York Times article about Ohio supporters of President Trump who are staying the course with him despite all the chaos associated with his presidency, I’m re-posting my thoughts about his victory that appeared on this blog on Nov. 16, 2016. It would be a mistake for…
Jane Brox, who grew up in Dracut in the Brox Farm family, will read from and sign copies of her new book “Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives” on Thursday, May 16 at 6:30 PM at the Andover Bookstore, 74 Main Street…