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There’s a new section on the UMass Lowell Center for Lowell History website. It’s called “Overseers in Lowell Textile Mills” and it brings to life the stories of a class of management personnel often lost in our focus on the line-working Mill Girls and the wealthy Mill Owners. Written by…
Read More »Our sensibility recognizes the divine in Nature and Ceremony. With vision and voice, Fergus Hogan’s lyrics intensify the connection and set it afire. ****** FERGUS HOGAN READS FROM ‘BITTERN CRY’ ****** Three Stones for a Decision there’s a path through the woods round the lake where I pray that I…
Read More »Ill Wind by Jacquelyn Malone The wind whines wild and compulsive, spreading instability across the land. Shamelessly it contradicts itself, whipping—demented—in one direction, then reversing itself along an already trashed path. No one can forecast a steady state: the wind, a pompous blowhard, has no firm compass, diving into low…
Read More »Historian Paul Hudon sent us the latest from his Diary in the Time of Coronavirus. This week he invites readers into his room overlooking Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River. Diary in the Time of Coronavirus By Paul Hudon *26 April, 2020 Lord Manor, where I write this, sits on…
Read More »Malcolm Sharps is a writer living in Hungary. His account of leaving England is familiar to anyone who has lived in an industrial city whose economy has been upended, something that people living in Lowell experienced during the 20th century. This is Malcolm’s second appearance on RichardHowe.com. The Leaving of…
Read More »Jack McDonough, a returning contributor to our blog, lives in Tewksbury, Mass. His writing is included in the anthology of the first ten years of RichardHowe.com, HISTORY AS IT HAPPENS: CITIZEN BLOGGERS IN LOWELL, MASS. (Loom Press, 2017). For many years he wrote and edited publications in the UMass Lowell…
Read More »This is the second week of “virus” diary entries by Paul Hudon of Lowell, scholar and teacher and keen observer of the locale and wider world. He is the author of The Valley & Its People: An Illustrated History of the Lower Merrimack and All in Good Time, a book…
Read More »As part of my ongoing Virtual Lowell Walks series, I have created three videos on Civil War Lowell. The first, called Lords of the Loom, covers the conflict in Lowell between the city’s cotton-based economy and a strong movement to abolish slavery. The second episode, The Minutemen of 1861, tells…
Read More »Lowell artist and teacher Richard Marion keeps a day-book or journal with observations about life in the city. Following is a recent excerpt describing a walk near the Concord and Merrimack rivers. from “A Corona Day-Book” by Richard Marion April 16, 2020 . . . At the First Street memorial…
Read More »Yesterday was the anniversary of the deaths of Luther Ladd and Addison Whitney, two young mill workers from Lowell who died in Baltimore on April 19, 1861, while serving with the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. (See yesterday’s post for the story of the Baltimore Riot). The Commonwealth of Massachusetts…
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