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The campaign to succeed U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas in the Third Congressional District next year has gone from start to overdrive in no time. Lately, poking around in a pile of old journals at home, I found this account of a political moment in Lowell in 1992, during another hot…
Read More »MAJOR GRANT & AWARD FOR WATERWAYS VITALITY PROJECT The Lowell Heritage Partnership’s Waterways Vitality Initiative surged forward this month with several milestone achievements. The initiative’s recent successes include receipt of a $100,000 grant from the Theodore Edson Parker Foundation of Boston; a MassINC Innovation Award to be presented on November…
Read More »After the blizzard of campaign lit that we’ve seen in our mailboxes for the past week or so, it was refreshing to get the fall newsletter from the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust (LP&CT), one of the powerhouses in the nonprofit community. The last time I heard a figure for…
Read More »There must be a comic out there who wrote this already, but I will suggest it for consideration. In the contest of political language and with humor in the face of swamp gas, the inconvenient media should use the term “droppings” instead of “tweets” for early morning emissions from Trump’s…
Read More »I happened to be at the Kerouac Commemorative public artwork in Kerouac Park at Bridge and French streets yesterday, Jack’s Death Day, where I stopped while guiding a group of 17 arts administration master’s program students from Boston University around Lowell’s historic and cultural district. The flawless blue sky played…
Read More »Captured this image from LHS Downtown Facebook site. Click on the image to enlarge for easier reading.
Read More »My friend Juan Carlos Rivera posted this notice on Facebook, which I am sharing here. The people of Puerto Rico need a lot of help to recover from the fierce hurricane that hit them. People are suffering in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, the Virgin Islands—all part of the American family. And…
Read More »The annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! literary festival is coming up, October 5-9. Here’s the schedule of events. My writing colleague from Somerville, Mass., Doug Holder, sent us this poem by his fellow faculty member at Endicott College, Dan Sklar, who teaches creative writing. Dan’s latest book, Flying Cats, Actually Swooping, was published…
Read More »What follows is another excerpt from Charlie Gargiulo’s memoir “Farewell, Little Canada,” in which he describes growing up in tumultuous times in the mostly French Canadian-American neighborhood that once existed close to the big bend in the Merrimack River. This is the second excerpt published on this blog, which we…
Read More »Why are reporters from the N.Y. Times and other media outlets using the term “left-wing” to describe people who oppose racists of all kinds, Nazis, anti-Semites, anti-LGBTQs, christian fascists, and other hate-mongers? Isn’t it the American way to denounce these forms of inhumanity? Isn’t the American creed about pursuing liberty,…
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