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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…
Read More »This poem is from Matt Miller’s new prize-winning collection of poems called “Club Icarus,” published by the University of North Texas Press. Matt is a Lowell High School graduate who earned degrees at Yale University, where he also played varsity football, and Emerson College. He teaches English and coaches football…
Read More »Record-setting NFL kicker Tom Dempsey played rough and tough in his football days, including a stint with the semi-pro Lowell Giants whose home for a few years was Cawley Stadium. The NYTimes reports that 66-year-0ld Dempsey is suffering from dementia, which may be linked to the hard knocks he took…
Read More »In 1995, the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, published Lowell Then and Now: Restoring the Legacy of a Mill City by Charles Parrott, longtime historic architect at the LHPC and then Lowell National Historical Park, with contemporary photographs by Gretchen Sanders Joy, a planner at the LHPC.—PM…
Read More »Jim Sampas grew up on Wilder Street in the Highlands. His aunt Stella married Jack Kerouac in the 1960s. These days, Jim is a producer of music recordings and movies, the latest project being a feature film based on Kerouac’s 1962 novel “Big Sur.” The movie premiered at the Sundance…
Read More »Another excerpt from John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Stranger in Lowell” (1843).—PM . “As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their representatives in Lowell. The young city is dotted over with ‘steeple houses,’…
Read More »In 1843, the poet, newspaper editor, and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) published a collection of essays titled The Stranger in Lowell. For a time, he published a newspaper called The Middlesex Standard in Lowell. He was born in Haverhill and lived in both Amesbury and Haverhill. Following is an…
Read More »I haven’t dragged David “Uncle Dave” Brooks over here for a long time. He was irritating during the presidential election, trying to find ways to stay on Mitt Romney’s side—every once in a while he gave it up for the President, but I think Uncle Dave was always pulling for…
Read More »I enjoyed watching and listening to the inauguration of President Obama this time even more than the first time. In 2009, we knew we were seeing a history-making event. His election both represented and caused a developmental leap in the American psyche. I never thought his re-election would be easy.…
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