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In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration used the job-creating vehicle of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to employ artists in a marketing campaign called “See America,” which promoted the beauties and treasures of the national parks of America. This year, the Creative Action Network, made up of designers…
Read More »Overnight, I heard the BBC report that Peter Seeger had died, a man whose life became absorbed in the music of our nation both as a singer of traditional songs and a composer of new works. I was lucky enough to hear him sing when I was a high school…
Read More »In the 1980s I played some serious softball with the Burgess Construction team in the Dracut Softball League. “Richie” Burgess, as I knew him, played on some of those teams, including the championship team in 1988. I wrote a poem, “Bragging Rights,” to commemorate that winning season, and following is…
Read More »Readers of this blog know that I’ve been writing a book about the origin and impact of Lowell National Historical Park. Titled Mill Power, the book is expected to be available this coming summer. Following are a few paragraphs about the roots of the park, discussed in much greater detail…
Read More »“North Chelmsford” by Richard Marion (c) 2014 [original 2010] See more artwork at www.richardmarion.net
Read More »I watched the local broadcast of the Lowell City Council meeting last night. To my surprise, a woman who offered to serve as a Trustee of the Pollard Memorial Library and whose appointment by City Manager Lynch was before the Council for a vote of approval was denied an opportunity…
Read More »Jean LeBlanc is an Assistant Professor of English and Developmental Studies at Sussex County Community College in northwestern New Jersey. She was raised in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and still identifies as a New Englander with pride (especially, as she writes, “being so close to various New York sports teams that shall…
Read More »An excerpt from Cotton Was King in a chapter written by historian Mary H. Blewett, longtime professor at now-UMass Lowell: ” . . . The movement for the adoption of Plan E [city manager-council government] was headed by Harvard-educated Yankee lawyer Woodbury F. Howard. City government under Plan E would…
Read More »In my 2013 re-cap, I should have included the major feature film “Big Sur,” directed by Michael Polish and produced by Lowell native Jim Sampas, whose aunt Stella married Jack Kerouac in the 1960s. “Big Sur,” based on the 1962 novel by Kerouac, was screened at the prestigious Sundance film…
Read More »I did not want to let the Academy Award nomination moment go by without acknowledging the vigorous film culture emerging in Lowell and environs. For 2013, the two remarkable motion-picture projects that I want to single out are (1) the documentary Lost Child: Sayon’s Journey, directed by Janet Gardner and…
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