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Geoffrey Douglas is an American author, journalist, and former adjunct professor of writing at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. His most recent nonfiction book is The Grifter, The Poet, and The Runaway Train (2019), a collection of his stories in Yankee magazine. Other books include The Game of Their Lives (1996,…
Read More »Suzanne Dion: She Loved the Game By Prudence Brighton LeLacheur Park was Suzanne Dion’s summer haven–a place to celebrate the Lowell Spinners’ victories, to grieve their losses and to simply enjoy nearly 20 summers of minor league baseball just 10 minutes from her home. Suzanne was a highly intelligent woman…
Read More »A Review of John Boyle O’Reilly: The Apprentice from Drogheda by Kevin Gallagher (Red Fox Press, 2020). $26 USD/22 Eu By Paul Marion Drawn back from history’s mist in the form of a splendid rose-colored chapbook made in Ireland, John Boyle O’Reilly is a substantial Boston writer who needs a…
Read More »The Federal Writers’ Project was a New Deal program that provided jobs to unemployed writers during the Great Depression. The writers produced hundreds of publications including guides to states and cities and a variety of history projects. The best-known product of this effort was the American Guide Series which featured…
Read More »Here’s a post from eleven years ago as the country was trying to recover from the Great Recession. In the midst of the pandemic and its resulting economic distress, it seems a timely reminder that the old saying “in crisis there is opportunity” applies to city planning too. Is Lowell…
Read More »Today is Flag Day which observes the June 14, 1777, vote by the Second Continental Congress adopting a national flag of the United States which was to be “thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.” In…
Read More »This month Trasna is featuring writers participating in Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme. Every year, 22 emerging writers are selected for the program in the areas of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, children’s/YA fiction, and poetry. Each are paired with mentors. Featured this week is poet Billy Fenton. On participating in Words Ireland, he…
Read More »The weather in Lowell was mostly sunny and warm on Monday, June 5, 1944. Across the Atlantic Ocean, things were quite different. In the English Channel, high winds caused heavy seas and low clouds enveloped the coast of France. The forecast caused General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, to…
Read More »Here’s a post I did on June 14, 2007, with some background information added at the beginning . . . Background On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court announced its decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (440 Mass. 309). Here are the opening lines of the…
Read More »Diary in the Time of Coronavirus (7) by Paul Hudon 24 May, 2020 ‘The fitful apprehension of history’ is a phrase I picked up four years ago come September. Apparently it was coined by Fredric Jameson, “an American Marxist philosopher.” This poses a problem because the phrase could be very…
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