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Catching Perfect Spirals Trees change at night to yellow, orange, brown. On warm afternoons my friends and I, boys and girls, Raced downfield to catch every perfect spiral. We tackled each other as if trying to hurt one another When all we wanted was to be good at what we…
Read More »Although I was born in Lowell (est. 1826), in the Centralville section, I grew up in Dracut (est. 1701) from the age of two through my college years. My neighborhood’s colonial-era name was New Boston Village, but that wasn’t used when I was there. We didn’t have a name for…
Read More »The New Old New England Halloween Blues by Dave Robinson Their quiet root hairs floss the rocky soil, these paper birches slouching in brownfield sun. Industrial dyes reduce to dregs of lead and mercury to be swept up to sway in pent-up buds. An unofficial flag of urban areas—the shredded,…
Read More »Today, we have two posts about recent Nobel Prize-recipient Louise Glück of Cambridge, Mass., who won the award in literature for her poetry. There has been a flurry of reporting about her success by media outlets in Boston, the nation, and the world. We’ve got a more personal angle. I…
Read More »Geo’s Manifesto Reduce consumption of fossil fuels as much as possible; drive e-car or no car (if possible); solar panels; rain harvest system; reduce lawn size (plant wildflowers instead, good for birds & bees). Eat vegetable-based protein diet; stop eating meat, uses 10X more water and soil than veggies per…
Read More »Tom Sexton is the author of Cummiskey Alley: New and Selected Lowell Poems, which will be published by Loom Press next week. To order, please visit www.loompress.com Autumn by Tom Sexton What is it about a late autumn afternoon with birch and sumac leaves drifting down, that…
Read More »Spurred by our Texas friend Frank Wagner’s essay about meeting Patti Smith in the late 1970s, an encounter with a cranky, thirty-something, tightly wound artist, we’re reprising this review-essay about Patti Smith’s most recent book, Year of the Monkey, just out in paperback. Note that former Lowell Sun journalists Nancye…
Read More »Frank Wagner of south Texas is an occasional contributor to this publication. Today he writes about meeting the singer-songwriter Patti Smith after a 1978 performance in south Texas. Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1978 but she’s also a poet and author. In 2010,…
Read More »Joe Blair of Iowa posted this lyrical prose on Facebook today. He allowed us to reprint it here. He’s got roots in Greater Lowell and is a past contributor to the Howe blog. Joe is the author of By the Iowa Sea: A Memoir (2012), which O, The Oprah Magazine…
Read More »From his home hub in downtown Lowell, writer, scholar, and teacher George Chigas covers a lot of territory on foot. Like Henry Thoreau who “traveled a good deal in Concord,” George will send us occasional reports on his movements and what he sees, hears, and feels. Walking Home from Market…
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