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The Boston Globe today reports on the Peabody-Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Mass., planning to expand its exhibition and curatorial space, a major step forward for the already formidable museum. This is worth noting in Lowell because we must keep our eye on the regional competition in the creative economy.…
Read More »For the Fourth of July, Independence Day, here’s a poem from the nation’s capital. I wrote this prose poem after a family trip to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2004. There were John Kerry-for-President signs in the windows. GOP posters for “W,” too. Barack Obama was a figure on…
Read More »Before Luna Theatre, before the Lowell Film Collaborative, there was FLICKS! (For Lowell Interesting Cinema KaperS!), a local film society that was popular in the early 1980s. The organization screened films, often at the Speare House restaurant on Pawtucket Boulevard (it was near the Dunkin Donuts, opposite the UMass Lowell…
Read More »This past Saturday, eighty people participated in the Literary Lowell edition of Lowell Walks. Tour guide Sean Thibodeau, the Coordinator of Community Programming at the Pollard Memorial Library, prepared a handout that listed many books about Lowell or written by people from Lowell, and added the names of other notable…
Read More »If you are downtown in the next three days and want to talk to an expert about community empowerment, grassroots organizing, neighborhood dynamics, coalition building, and all the good things that make for a competent, healthy, and just society where you live, just look for one of the 660 community…
Read More »It doesn’t take much sometimes. It’s uplifting to see how much people appreciate a positive gesture, no matter what size. In addition to spreading a layer of loam and re-seeding the sports field at the South Common, the good folks at City Hall brought in a pavement company to resurface…
Read More »Lowell Walks/Public Art by Rosemary Noon At the invitation of Dick Howe, my husband, Paul, and I led a group of 110 people on a 90-minute tour of the Lowell Public Art Collection this past Saturday morning. It was the second installment in the Lowell Walks series for the summer.…
Read More »Historic view of the South Common on postcard (courtesy cardcow.com) 100 people of all ages on the South Common at 7 pm. Talk about place-making. These basketball players, dog-walkers, strolling families. blanket-sitters, bike riders, soccer ball kickers, playground kids, circus performers practicing, and others are making the park a…
Read More »With increasing discussion about renovating the Smith Baker Center near Lowell City Hall, I went to the vault to get this essay written in the moment in 1989. Let’s hope we can revive the Smith Baker Center and offer the public inspiring events like Maya Angelou’s appearance there.—PM . A Day That…
Read More »With the nearly iconic role of priests of the Society of Jesus in the Catholic Church – world-wide and here in Massachusetts and long before the election of Pope Francis, would it be a surprise that the Jesuits were banned from the Massachusetts Bay colony? Here’s the story from our…
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