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I’m thinking about stories this morning, when media waves around here are dominated by reports about the capture of criminal Whitey Bulger near Los Angeles. What about all the people whose lives are entwined with this man’s almost stranger-than-fiction life story? Consider the trail of death and destruction he dragged behind…
Read More »MassMoments reminds us that on this day – June 23, 1831 – the Legislature granted the Massachusetts Horticultural Society permission to purchase land to establish an experimental garden and a rural cemetery.This decision led to the creation of the landmark Mt. Auburn Cemetery – the first large-scale designed landscape open…
Read More »On this day in 1944, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the “GI Bill of Rights’’ – an unprecedented act of legislation designed to compensate returning members of the armed services–known as G.I.s–for their efforts in World War II. Edith Nourse…
Read More »The Doors played the Commodore Ballroom in Lowell on August 15, 1967. Chris Simondet of The Doors site on Facebook provided that information to me. He said the show is a “phantom show” in The Doors chronology of performances and that nobody knows or remembers much about it other than…
Read More »Those of us who grew up watching The Rat Patrol harbor a latent interest in desert warfare of World War Two. While The Rat Patrol was entertaining TV, it also took some historical liberties. The series was loosely based on the British Army’s Long Range Desert Group, an elite unit…
Read More »The “Week in Review” section of this Sunday’s New York Times reported that only “only 12% of a representative sample of the nation’s high school seniors demonstrated proficiency in the subject last year” according to recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test results. While it’s critically important that we improve…
Read More »It’s Sustainability Week in Lowell, and although we don’t live on the coast in Lowell our state is a coastal state—and everything is connected even if you live in Kansas. There’s a new report from international scientists sounding the alarm about threats to ocean life and possible severe consequences if conditions…
Read More »In his most recent column for the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne posits that the wide-spread state laws ostensibly enacted to combat voter fraud are really an attack on the right to vote. Claiming that study after study found no major voter fraud problems, Dionne sees that : “Their greatest…
Read More »Poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder returned to his alma mater Reed College for the school’s centennial. He was profiled recently by Jeff Baker of The Oregonian newspaper for oregonlive.com. Snyder was one of my poet-heroes when I started out on the writing trail. He’s 81 years old and still traveling…
Read More »“On the Road” goes to an iTunes app. If you are into Kerouac, check this out. See a video of the new app.
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