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Web photo courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org With purple loosestrife spread across the region, I thought I’d re-post this prose poem from years ago.–PM . Long Purples People write letters to writers, and sometimes the mail is a gift. Not long ago, Bill Martin wrote to tell me that he’d read a…
Read More »My best time for reading books is during vacation, when I can live with a book for hours at a time, maybe come back to it two or three times during the day. I can read news articles and magazine pieces on the fly, but I’ve never been someone who…
Read More »We’re well into the contest for a new president, who will be selected in about 15 months. With a two-term president wrapping up his term and his vice-president apparently not going to run, the scene is pretty much a free-for-all, which we don’t often see. There’s no presumptive nominee among…
Read More »Responding to my colleague Dick’s post on George Charrette, here’s an excerpt from my work-in-progress called “The War Place,” which is an extended meditation and commentary on the war experience in America seen through the personal lens of someone trying to make sense of this piece of the national experience.—PM…
Read More »Our far-flung contributor Tom Sexton has air-mailed a new poem from the Northwest. For those not familiar, Tom is among the Lowell High School Distinguished Alumni, a retired professor at University of Alaska and former Poet Laureate of Alaska, and an all around fine man who has written about 15…
Read More »For about three hours last night, from the anticipation to the grateful applause, there was a thick layer of happiness spread on the front yard of the Boott Cotton Mills in the form of a return engagement by Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. Again, as in past appearances, they…
Read More »Here’s one more outside reading option, the recent “Letter from Iran” by Robin Wright in The New Yorker magazine. I found this helpful in trying to understand what it is like day to day undernearth the bombastic headlines and political artillery shelling here in the U.S. I know very little…
Read More »I’m not a huge fan of Thomas Friedman, opinion writer of the New York Times, but his column today offers a useful overview of the state of affairs in the Middle East. Read it here, and get the NYT if you want more of this kind of writing. While this…
Read More »Murk failed to dampen the spirits of the festival faithful on the second day of the annual cultural extravaganza uttered on the downtown streets of Lowell late every July. The morning sky was murky for sure. It did not look like a promising day for an outdoor party. But the…
Read More »Late yesterday, there were more than 100 young people cooling off in the swimming pool. It was too hot for a basketball game, so the court was empty except for three guys practicing jump shots. This morning at 6.15 am, a personal trainer had 12 people working out on one…
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