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Here’s Paul Marion reading his poem, “Dylan Sings to Kerouac”, at Kerouac Park during this past weekend’s Jack Kerouac Literary Festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. (Video posted on YouTube by “spannedy”) [youtube]uuSfWNu9gMY[/youtube]
Read More »It will take me some time to process the multitude of impressions and facts of this past weekend’s Kerouac Festival, but I want to share some initial observations: 1) We accomplished the goal of drawing a larger and more varied literary audience to the city with a broader menu of…
Read More »Sun writer Angel Roy’s article in this morning’s paper explores the geographical and generational reach of Kerouac. People from Texas, Ohio, California, Rhode Island, Nevada, and elsewhere came for the Kerouac Literary Festival. From Thursday through Saturday nearly 2,000 people attended the events, which continue through late afternoon, with the now-traditional David Amram…
Read More »Trees are changing color on the South Common. The early reds, golds, rusts, and yellow-oranges in every variation multiply by the day. Green leaves still predominate, but won’t last more than a couple of more weeks. I walked the dog this morning in air that was colder than cool. This is…
Read More »This past Thursday night I attended one of the opening events of the Kerouac Literary Festival at the UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center (formerly known as the Doubletree Hotel). Novelist Russell Banks, the author of a dozen major books and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction,…
Read More »There are too many things happening today at the Kerouac Literary Festival to list them. For the schedule, visit www.lowellcelebrateskerouac.org or www.uml.edu/artsandideas The 2.5 hour bus tour of Kerouac sites with Roger Brunelle guiding is already underway. Next event is 11 am at the Kerouac Commemorative, Kerouac Park, at Bridge…
Read More »Rita Savard of the Sun wrote a great background story about Bob Dylan and Lowell in nothing flat so that it hit the streets just as lots of people were talking about Dylan coming back to Lowell. Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at Kerouac’s grave in Edson Cemetery, November 1975. We…
Read More »This has been an eventful week in Lowell, from city-building plans and cultural electricity to the news about CTI moving and some serious gun crimes. And the week is not over. Let’s focus on the epochal first. Following is the link to the Sun’s page one story about the Downtown Evolution plan unveiled yesterday morning by urban…
Read More »AP writer Beth J. Harpaz commented the other day about Mark Bauerlein’s best-selling book “The Dumbest Generation,” which contends “that cyberculture is turning young people into know-nothings… ‘the absence of technology’ confuses kids faced with simple mechanical tasks.” This is a very hot and controversial topic – over two hundred…
Read More »In honor of the Jack Kerouac Literary Festival, Tony Sampas share some photos central to Kerouac’s Lowell. The crucifix shown above is atop the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at the Franco American School on Pawtucket Street. The below photo of a sculpture with the crucifix tucked into a…
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