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On Presidents’ Day, my wife and I met friends in Boston to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Fenway, which is a case study in museum revitalization. The venerable, distinctive museum building dates from the early 1900s. Inside is the extraordinary and eclectic collection of an amazing woman,…
Read More »The 2nd Annual Lowell Writers and Publishers Winter Roundup is set for this Saturday, Feb. 23, 12.30 to 4 pm, upstairs at the Old Court Irish pub, Central and Middle streets in downtown Lowell. See who is behind the books and pick up the newest publications by area authors. Among…
Read More »Here’s a hat tip to the climate-change demonstrators in Washington, D.C., who are speaking on behalf of the planet this holiday weekend. Lowelltown is as white tonight as the monuments in the capital city. I wrote this poem after a family trip to Washington in the summer of 2004. There…
Read More »Following is an excerpt of a 1994 interview (oral history) of M. Brendan Fleming, professor emeritus of UMass Lowell and former mayor and city councilor of Lowell. The interviewer was Maryrose Lane. The full transcription of the oral history is available on the website of the UMass Lowell Center for…
Read More »Here’s the full text of a message sent by UMass Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan to the alumni: OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR Dear Alumni: We have achieved so much on this campus in the past six years – record-breaking enrollment growth, pioneering research, shovels hitting the ground for seven new buildings…
Read More »The Lowell Poets reading at the Gloucester Writers Center has been rescheduled for Saturday, April 6, at 1 pm, in the fishing hub of the North Shore. Also, with Winterfest pushed ahead to Saturday, Feb. 23, that means the 2nd Annual Lowell Writers and Publishers Winter Roundup at the Old…
Read More »In February 1978, I was living with my parents in an apartment off Mammoth Road in Dracut. We and the neighbors rode out the historic blizzard as best as we could. We monitored events on the radio and TV. I kept a journal in those days and made notes about…
Read More »The 2nd Annual Lowell Writers and Publishers Winter Roundup is set for Saturday, February 23, 12.30 to 4.00 pm, upstairs at the Old Court Irish pub at Central and Middle streets in downtown Lowell. Publishers and writers attending include playwright Jack Neary, poet and memoir-writer Judith Dickerman-Nelson, Sweeney-and-Seawell creator Dave Robinson, John…
Read More »Martha Norkunas is a scholar, a folklorist, who was the director of cultural affairs at the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission in the early 1990s. Her book “Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts” was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 2002. In it she catalogues the various…
Read More »Between 1990 and 1993, a very different kind of public-art project happened in the power house of the Boott Cotton Mills. This was part of the growing Lowell Public Art Collection. UMass Lowell art students and dozens of volunteers joined San Francisco-based artist David Ireland (since deceased) in his effort…
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