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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. “In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire” [An address delivered for Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, at Keene, NH, before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic.] Not long ago I heard a young man ask why people still kept up…
Read More »I’ve posted this poem from 1978 on the blog before. It was written soon after the experience that provided the brief story thread. In those days, I was constantly on the lookout for images and incidents that could feed a new composition. I wanted to write, write, write. It’s a slight piece, but has…
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I’m back from a family vacation in Chicago, Illinois, one of the great cities of the USA. It was my first visit to a city that I associate with Carl Sandburg, Barack Obama, Studs Terkel, Albert Halper, Poetry magazine (founded by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin), Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor, the Cubs…
Read More »My blogging colleague Dick posted the list of guided walks on Saturdays this summer. Rosemary and I are leading a walk that will take in the highlights of the Lowell Public Art Collection, one of them being Ellen Rothenberg’s multi-piece sculpture at Lucy Larcom Park. For this artwork, one design…
Read More »Here’s another news story about a fabulously wealthy donor giving a ton of money to a fabulously wealthy institution. A Wall Street titan and alumnus of Yale University, Stephen A. Schwarzman, contributed $150 million for a performing arts center that will be fashioned out of a set of extraordinary buildings on the campus. In reporting…
Read More »“Nine years after moving into its waterfront building, the Institute of Contemporary Art is hoping to expand into an adjacent office tower and increase its gallery space by a third. At the heart of a proposal before the Boston Redevelopment Authority is the museum’s effort to take up two floors…
Read More »“The most important thing a museum creates is an audience.”—Matthew Teitelbaum The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a new director coming, Matthew Teitelbaum. Read about him and the cultural institution he led for 17 years, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), where he has shaped inspiring programs, exhibitions,…
Read More »Rosemary and I had a lively swing through the Farm Market at Mill No. 5 this afternoon, which was busy with people. The Purple Carrot bakers made 54 loaves of bread this morning and sold all of them. The bakers want to open an artisanal shop in Lowell. Right now…
Read More »From the Zinn Education Project on Facebook: “On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Nazis tested their new air force on the Basque town of Gernika in northern Spain. One-third of Gernika’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded. Pablo Picasso exposed the horror of the bombing in…
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