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Yesterday morning I attended two events of the Franco-American Week Festival: the annual memorial ceremony at the Little Canada Monument near the corner of Aiken and Hall streets and the traditional flag-raising ceremony at City Hall. The Little Canada Monument has been re-landscaped so that the granite stone with bronze…
Read More »Thanks to Dick for his report on planning guru Frank Keefe’s nutshell version of the Lowell revitalization story and success recipe. Bill Lipchitz’s comment about the Center City Committee being formed in 1972 added a key benchmark. Since he was there, maybe Bill can clarify the connection between the CCC…
Read More »Speaking of Franco-American Week, in the new New Yorker (June 28) the Talk of the Town section has a piece called “In the Stacks” about a recent display at the New York Public Library. It turns out that librarian Anne Garner specializes in “marginalia,” that is, comments and marks made…
Read More »We’re halfway through Franco-American Week. Here’s a quick update on remaining events: Thurs, June 24, 9.15 am—Memorial ceremony at Little Canada Monument, Aiken St, opposite UMass Lowell Recreation Center; 10 am—Flag-raising at Lowell City Hall; 7 pm—Prayer service to honor St. Jean Baptiste at Franco-American School Grotto followed by wine-and-cheese…
Read More »Well, if we had a Campaign for Local Literature, I’d propose ‘Support the Books’ as one of the Campaign’s bumper stickers, but we don’t. What the readers of the region can do, though, is show up en masse at the next available local book launching, which happens to be this…
Read More »I have cities on my mind because of the recent Innovative Cities Conference in Lowell. This morning, I turned on the TV and while looking for something to watch I came across the Sunrise Earth series on Discovery HD Theater, an amazing set of documentaries that capture the sunrise moment…
Read More »Massachusett State Senate Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos Greater Lowell Area Democrats (GLAD) announced yesterday that Massachusetts State Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos will be honored as the 2010 Distinguished Democrat at the Annual Fall Brunch on Sunday October 24, 2010. From Greater Lowell Area Democrats Chair Marie Sweeney: A few years…
Read More »We were fortunate to hear from the National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis at the Innovative Cities Conference. He and many other US Interior Department officials have been on duty in the Gulf of Mexico region responding to the oil pollution disaster. I think his visit was evidence of how highly Lowell…
Read More »Mayor Terry Bellamy of Asheville, N.C., yesterday spoke about her city at the Innovative Cities Conference. One of the important attractions is the Thomas Wolfe House, the childhood home of the author immortalized in his novel “Look Homeward, Angel.” Read about the memorial and programs at the Wolfe House here.…
Read More »Occasional New York Times columnist Bono offers his thoughts on the extraordinary report about the killings of civil rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland in 1972. A few of the Catholic-side leaders during the long and brutal “troubles” in that place stopped in Lowell over the years, in particular, Gerry Adams…
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