Lowell is noted for its textile history. It’s a great setting for the New England Quilt Museum’s 2011 Quilt Festival. Opening today, this three-day city-wide event offers a feast for the eye in venues from the Lowell Memorial Auditorium to the Whistler House. Festival presenters beckon visitors with this invitation…
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With the plans to remake the classic 1987 film “Dirty Dancing” now public, there will be lots of chatter about the original starring Patrick Swayzey and Jennifer Grey. Who should play the parts of Johnny and “Baby”? Should there be a remake at all? There are mixed feeling about the…
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Poetry is front-page news online tonight. That’s different. The NYTimes tonight reports that Philip Levine is the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Read Charles McGrath’s article here, and get the NYT if you want more. Phil Levine was one of my poet-heroes when I started writing in the mid-1970s. I admired…
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On this day August 9, 1852, Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” was published. “Walden” details Thoreau’s experiences over the course of two years living in a woodland cabin he built near Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. Notes about the author from The Thoreau Society – which…
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“River Board” by Richard Marion (c) 2011
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Paul Marion Photo from a recent Yankee Magazine article “Paul Marion: Poetry, community outreach, and a great love for his city” Today’s Sun has a story about fellow blogger Paul Marion and his “on assignment” role with Lowell National Historical Park to write a modern history of Lowell. Paul is…
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Last night, I watched on cable TV the 2010 award-winning French film “Of Gods and Men,” which is based on real events involving a small community of Trappist monks in Algeria in 1995. It is a period of civil war with Islamic extremists trying to impose their will on the local population.…
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Last week we posted a connection here to an interview with George Price – current Superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore Park and formerly a Deputy Superintendent in Lowell. Today MassMoments reminds us that it was on this day fifty years ago – August 7, 1961 that President John…
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At the end of last week I had to make a quick drive down and back to Washington. The morning I left, I noticed a review of an exhibit that recently opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum called “The Great American Hall of Wonders: Art, Science and Invention in…
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