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Lowell’s Big Plans By James Ostis Lowell was the most significant planned industrial city in the early United States. In the 1820s, a group of Boston investors set their sights on the water power potential of the Merrimack River and systematically created a new community based on maximizing the development…
Read More »Carrying a Torch for ‘Ti Jean’ We were talking about Bob Dylan getting the Nobel Prize for Literature last week and ole Jack Kerouac having received nothing in his life by way of awards and prizes, and so my friend and I went to the famous gravesite in Edson Cemetery…
Read More »Rick Sherburne, Julie Mofford, and Tom Mofford (photo courtesy of Rick Sherburne on Facebook) We lost a poet today, Tom Mofford, husband of our occasional contributor Julie Mofford, both of them long-time friends of mine. Tom passed away this morning, I learned from Julie’s message to our mutual friend Rick…
Read More »MSNBC’s journalist Rachel Maddow presented this clip of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter warning about the real peril to our democracy, the arrival on scene of a “strong man” who will be given control of our government. He said this will only happen as a result of “civic ignorance.”…
Read More »Moses Greeley Parker Lectures, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2 PM Kevin Gallagher – Poetry Reading: Lords of the Loom Lowell National Historical Park Visitor Center, 246 Market St., Downtown Lowell Gallagher will read and discuss his new book, “Loom,” which traces how the men who built the backbone of American capitalism—the…
Read More »I’m more convinced than ever that the artists complex called Western Avenue Studios (WAS), with its base of nearly 300 resident artists, should have an easily accessible route to and from downtown and the city’s historic district. I was there yesterday with my UMass Lowell faculty colleague Adam Baacke and our…
Read More »The latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature performed at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell in 2013. He’s been to Lowell a few times before. Here’s a replay of my report.—PM Bob Dylan in Lowell, Another Side I’m glad I went down to the river last night. The…
Read More »Today’s Nobel Prize-winner Bob Dylan in Lowell in November, 1975, is seen below with fellow poet Allen Ginsberg at the Edson Cemetery grave of Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), whose writings influenced the young Dylan. Bob Dylan brought his Rolling Thunder Revue to Lowell in tribute to Kerouac and performed with his…
Read More »Artist Michio Ihara of Concord, Mass., is in the city this week with his team working on the renewal of his “Pawtucket Prism” sculpture at the Lower Locks canal complex overlooking the Concord River and Pawtucket Canal, right by the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center. Here are some in-progress…
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