Lowell City Councilor Franky Descoteaux The MassINC Associate Board presents: The New Faces of Politics in Massachusetts Roles and Responsibilities in a New Political Landscape Keynote Address At-large City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, Boston City Council Panel Discussion Featuring Councilor Brendan Crighton, Lynn City Council Councilor Franky Descoteaux, Lowell City Council…
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From the NYTimes: WASHINGTON – The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, proposed legislation on Monday to continue the Bush-era income tax cuts indefinitely, even for the wealthiest Americans, testing the willingness of Democrats to vote for a tax increase in a weak economy and making clear that the…
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Russell Banks (web photo courtesy of cmu.edu) After 22 years of the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival on the first weekend of October, the long-time organizers and new allies and partners came together to boost the festival to a higher orbit. The re-named Jack Kerouac Literary Festival will open on…
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The NYT today has an article about the current exhibition of photographs by poet Allen Ginsberg at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The article in the paper includes a photograph of Kerouac making a goofy face on the street in NY in 1953. Read the article by…
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Voices are getting louder and more anxious as the country openly re-examines its value system. I have a sense that some key brick in the wall of national identity has come loose, leaving us with a very shaky structure that is causing widespread instability. I had an encounter today with an…
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I know our readers can get national opinion columns elsewhere on the web, from the sources and other aggregators, but I feel compelled to bring some of the ones that make a lot of sense to me to our site for easy access. Also, any day now this growing controversy…
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Lowell is a generous community. You can say the same for the region: Greater Lowell and the Greater Merrimack Valley. The people, businesses, organizations, foundations, and institutions give and give to those in need and to important causes that benefit many of us. Here are a few upcoming fund-raising events from my…
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Common . Nineteenth-century designers saw parks as breathing spaces whose trees would pump oxygen through tenement and mansion alike. Even the vocabulary of green spaces freshens speech—grove and bee, clover and pebble, pine cone and jay. Seagulls on the common across the street from my family’s house stand as stout…
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As Marie points out in her earlier post, today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Edith Nourse Rogers who represented Lowell in Congress from 1925 to 1960. She is buried alongside her husband, John Jacob Rogers, who preceded her in Congress (serving from 1913 until his death in…
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A friend who is retired from federal law enforcement and who worked at the World Trade Center in the 1990s returned to lower Manhattan a few weeks ago for a special tour of the site and of the “Tribute WTC Visitor Center” which is filled with artifacts from that fateful…
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