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My friend and mentor Charles Nikitopoulos of Lowell, Mass., passed away a few days ago. His obituary is here. I want to share my thoughts about what he meant to me as well as to the community and university of which he was a part for decades. He came to…
Read More »Yesterday at noon 80 people gathered at St. Anne’s Church on Merrimack Street in Lowell to listen to and participate in a public reading of “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” a speech originally delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852 to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery…
Read More »Joan Baez and Bob Dylan singing in Costello Gym, Nov. 2, 1975. Web photo courtesy of UMass Lowell. The media is full of reports about a new movie and music release tied to the legendary Rolling Thunder Revue tour of Bob Dylan and friends in 1975-76, which made an earthquake…
Read More »When I began contributing to this blog many years ago, I often would post links to opinion pieces in national media that I believed were worth sharing locally. I shared a lot of David Brooks’ columns, which may have surprised people. He’s on the NY Times commentary list as a…
Read More »Yesterday at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, I delivered the following remarks at the Greater Lowell Veterans Council Memorial Day service. For the past several years on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, we’ve made frequent mention of World War I in recognition of the centennial observance of that conflict. That war…
Read More »If You See Something, Say Something It’s Memorial Day weekend. My father, Marcel Marion (1919-1982), born in Lowell, fought the Nazis on the ground in Germany with the US Army in the brutal winter of 1945, the final months of the war in Europe. He knew a fascist when he…
Read More »After reading today’s New York Times article about Ohio supporters of President Trump who are staying the course with him despite all the chaos associated with his presidency, I’m re-posting my thoughts about his victory that appeared on this blog on Nov. 16, 2016. It would be a mistake for…
Read More »Web photo courtesy of Matthew Shepard Foundation He Continues to Make a Difference: The Story of Matthew Shepard All are welcome to attend this program which uses poetry, photographs, and creative visualization to explore the impact of Matthew Shepard’s murder on the world .Monday, May 19, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.,…
Read More »On the last day of National Poetry Month, we have a poem by writer and painter Chath pierSath who lived in Lowell many years and earned a master’s degree in community social psychology from UMass Lowell. He’s based on a vegetable-and-fruit farm in Bolton now and regularly travels to Cambodia…
Read More »A special poem for National Poetry Month. Thomas Fitzsimmons (1926-2017) was born in Lowell and attended Lowell High School (he left to join the Merchant Marine but later earned a diploma elsewhere). Here’s a bit about his life from his obituary in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper: “He is…
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