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The prestigious Library of America series now includes two volumes of the short stories of John Updike. Born in Pennsylvania, but a long time resident of our region of Massachusetts, John Updike was awarded an honorary degree by UMass Lowell (University of Lowell) in the 1980s. He also gave a…
Read More »One more bit of commentary about the notion of distinctive cities or particular heritage sites as works of art in themselves. Cultural critic Lucy Lippard mentions Lowell’s national park in her book about the power of special places, The Lure of the Local. The following passage is from my manuscript…
Read More »” “Yellow Arches” by Richard Marion (c) 2013 [drawing, 2008] See more artwork at www.richardmarion.net
Read More »Dick’s post about public art in cities prompts me to add this thought from my book-in-progress about the origin and impact of the national park in Lowell. In the early planning phase, advocates used the term urban cultural park for what they were envisioning for Lowell. That terminology changed when…
Read More »Two more bulletins from Martha’s Vineyard by our far-flung correspondent Ray LaPorte. So, the handy Wikipedia tells us that English seaman Bartholomew Gosnold ventured near the Atlantic coast in 1602 and named a smaller island near today’s M.V. for his young daughter who had died—and historians say the name migrated…
Read More »From one end of the continent to the other, here is a poem by Tom Sexton, written on the road last last spring as he and his wife, Sharyn, made their way from Maine back to Alaska for another season. We do have our far-flung correspondents. Tom Sexton is…
Read More »One of our loyal readers and far-flung occasional correspondents, Ray LaPorte of Martha’s Vineyard, sent his reflections in anticipation of this summer’s Presidential visit to the island. Ray has been off shore for years, with his wife, Bernadette, following earlier life passages in Pawtucketville, Worcester, New York City, and Washington,…
Read More »“Garden Path” by Richard Marion (c) 2013 See more artwork at www.richardmarion.net
Read More »There was some buzz and rattle on the web yesterday when the online appliance of a venerable magazine with a Boston root system, The Atlantic, posted a fizzy report about a made-up episode in the life and times of John L. Kerouac, all of it putting Lowell in the news…
Read More »“… Just as he describes it, the Concord narrows dramatically and shallows out over a ‘yellow pebbly bottom’ as it approaches the falls in Billerica, where the Thoreaus went off on the Middlesex Canal and where Kaz and I were to rendezvous with my wife, Yolanda Whitman, in her Odyssey.…
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