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When I was growing up a lame riddle often repeated was: “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.” Looking back on it, I can see the question and answer are just kind of daffy, but also hear a little bit of a Merrimack…
Read More »Ray Manzarek, one of the giants of 1960s rock and roll, died yesterday at the age of 74. The co-founder of The Doors performed in Lowell once with The Doors, at the Commodore Ballroom in 1967, and twice with poet Michael McClure at the Smith Baker Center for the annual…
Read More »Acclaimed author Paul Theroux visited Lowell a few months ago on assignment from Barron’s online journal. The Medford native rode the train to Lowell, retracing his mother’s route to college in the late 1920s. She earned a teaching degree from Lowell Normal School. Theroux spent a day in Lowell, hosted…
Read More »Merrimack . We live thirty miles inland along the old road to the coast, a road laid down on an early wagon track, which followed the Indian trace—a long day on sure feet giving way to oxcarts that took half the week to return from the sea with their burdens…
Read More »“South Campus Sailing” by Richard Marion, Copyright (c) 2013 See more artwork at www.richardmarion.net The conditions were much better this past weekend for the big rowing competition on the Merrimack. Congratulations for a successful event to the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau (including Tom Golden and Deb Belanger),…
Read More »Read Dominique Browning’s NYTimes review of Elinor Lipman’s two new books: a novel, “The View FromPenthouse B,” and a collection of essays,”I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays. She is a graduate of Lowell High School and a past recipient of the LHS Distinguished Alumni Award. There is a rumor…
Read More »The website brainpickings.org recently posted on Facebook this list made by Kerouac in the 1950s. The document is titled “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose.” The editor prefaced the list, saying, “With items like ‘No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge’ and ‘Accept loss…
Read More »Congratulations to the recipients (see image above for names) of this year’s awards for exemplary work in historic preservation and cultural heritage conservation, including this blog’s executive editor, Dick Howe Jr. Well over 100 people attended the reception and ceremony for the honorees. This event has become one of the…
Read More »Gary Snyder portrait (web photo courtesy of seapoetry.wordpress) One of my early poetry heroes was Gary Snyder, who turned 83 this month. Not only was I drawn to Snyder’s concise and precise back-country poems of the 1960s and ’70s, but I was also in tune to his thoughts about repairing…
Read More »More than 30 earnest readers of Jack Kerouac books gathered tonight upstairs at The Old Court Irish pub at Middle and Central streets to listen to a reading of excerpts (start to end) of Kerouac’s novel “Visions of Gerard.” The story is a bleak and sweetly candid remembrance of his…
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