Current Events

Pandemic Journal: Sept 20, 2020

It was six months ago – Sunday, March 15, 2020 – that Governor Charlie Baker ordered schools, restaurants, and bars to close. Courthouses and much else closed too. Although the Covid-19 virus had been lurking in our consciousness for weeks before that, it was the mandated closings that brought home…

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Peace Train: Congressman John Lewis, the Legacy of Nonviolent Resistance, & Richard Gregg

John Wooding, professor emeritus of political science at UMass Lowell, is the author of the forthcoming biography Gandhi’s American Friend: Richard Bartlett Gregg (Loom Press, October 2020). He is a past contributor to this blog and president of the board at Mill City Grows in Lowell.  ‘Cause I’m on the…

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Guilty Pleasures of the Fourth

Guilty Pleasures of the Fourth by Henri B. Marchand An essay from Henri Marchand, updated from its original 2006 version. As another Fourth of July holiday approaches the nightly cannonade of assorted firecrackers and whistling skyrockets has been steadily intensifying.  These illegal blasts and crackles usually reach a crescendo over…

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Pandemic photos from London

Michael Leary-Owhin, London-based photographer and author of Exploring the Production of Urban Space: international comparisons of three post-industrial cities (University of Chicago Press, 2016), a study of Lowell; Manchester, England; and a section of Vancouver, Canada, who we profiled last month on this site, has posted a new batch of…

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