This is a shout out to City Manager Bernie Lynch, Assistant City Manager Adam Baacke, the Police Department, and the rest of the City Hall team who helped synchronize the traffic signals between the Thorndike-Dutton streets blend up through the intersections of Dutton-Broadway, Dutton-Market, and Dutton-Merrimack. As a regular on that…
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I have been reading essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, specifically his treatise on History, which he denies the existence of, but he does mention that Biographies are real. He compares man to mosquitoes, leaves, and other forms of life. He argues that all history is subjective because it is formulated…
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My father, Marcel R. Marion, was an enthusiastic observer of American politics and world affairs. He never ran for anything except union steward when he worked in a textile mill in Lowell in the 1940s. He was a wool sorter, meaning he classified types and quailty of wool by examining…
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This is from Bob Dylan’s memoir “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004). Thanks to Jim Cook for the tip. We know all these guys by one name: Dylan, Bono, Kerouac, . . . and Cook. . “One night, Bono, the singer from U2, was over for dinner with some other friends. Spending…
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UMASS LOWELL STUDENT POSTERS ARE GREAT!!! On Thursday, October 25 at 6:00PM – Room 222 O’Leary Library, UMass Lowell celebrates the Centennial of the Bread & Roses Strike. Check out the incredible poster work of UMass Lowell students, hear music, eat some soup, and listen to a talk by historian Ardis Cameron…
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Thanks to the Lowell National Historical Park’s Facebook post for reminding us a bit about the history of the Lowell Connector. This citation comes from bostonroads.com: The Lowell Connector was opened officially on October 24, 1962. However, the ramps to I-495 did not open until one year later, when the…
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Recent days have seen a lot of U. S. Senate campaign activity in the Merrimack Valley with multiple visits by both Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren and GOP incumbent Scott Brown. The race is tight but it appears to be trending Warren. Last week Warren spoke with a group of women small…
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I went deep into the vault for this poem that I wrote more than 20 years ago. I thought about the poem around 5:30 p.m. today, when I was walking Ringo-the-dog on the South Common in perfect October weather. The scent of dried leaves was all around. The air was…
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On Saturday afternoon October 13, Cardinal Sean O’Malley visited the Franco American School in Lowell to say Mass and re-dedicate the refurbised and restored one hundred year old Stations of the Cross at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. Over 500 people attended the outdoor mass. The Cardinal remarked…
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MassMoments reminds us today about the Millerites and the view that the end of the world was nigh. I’m struck by the comments attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Reverend Theodore Parker when asked about the coming end of days. The Millerites – nearly 100,000 of them – were so…
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