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The Boston Globe today reports on the Peabody-Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Mass., planning to expand its exhibition and curatorial space, a major step forward for the already formidable museum. This is worth noting in Lowell because we must keep our eye on the regional competition in the creative economy.…
Read More »For the Fourth of July, Independence Day, here’s a poem from the nation’s capital. I wrote this prose poem after a family trip to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2004. There were John Kerry-for-President signs in the windows. GOP posters for “W,” too. Barack Obama was a figure on…
Read More »At the end of the afternoon yesterday, there were more than 100 people enjoying the South Common—dozens of kids swimming in the blue pool, more young people running in races, small children at the playground, basketball players on the court, older health-walkers from Bishop Markham Village, people taking their big…
Read More »Before Luna Theatre, before the Lowell Film Collaborative, there was FLICKS! (For Lowell Interesting Cinema KaperS!), a local film society that was popular in the early 1980s. The organization screened films, often at the Speare House restaurant on Pawtucket Boulevard (it was near the Dunkin Donuts, opposite the UMass Lowell…
Read More »On South Street today, I saw a guy about 25 years old with a shaved head, tattoos, earring, shirt with no collar, pants that were three-quarter length, no socks, and sneakers. He was talking on his phone. Walking toward the South Common. And I realized what I was seeing. The…
Read More »If you are downtown in the next three days and want to talk to an expert about community empowerment, grassroots organizing, neighborhood dynamics, coalition building, and all the good things that make for a competent, healthy, and just society where you live, just look for one of the 660 community…
Read More »It doesn’t take much sometimes. It’s uplifting to see how much people appreciate a positive gesture, no matter what size. In addition to spreading a layer of loam and re-seeding the sports field at the South Common, the good folks at City Hall brought in a pavement company to resurface…
Read More »Jeb Lund lets it fly in ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine, seeing this massacre in South Carolina as part and parcel of the poisonous politics and culture in which we are immersed. There is something very sick upon the land.
Read More »RFK on April 5, 1968.
Read More »Years ago, I wrote a rhyming poem about an incident at Bunker Hill described in Silas Coburn’s “History of Dracut.” The story is that Captain Peter Coburn of Dracut led a company of men from his town in the battle. He was shot by the British three times, in the…
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