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Each Friday, I try to post a photo from Lowell politics past. Here’s a picture of the late Paul Sullivan inside the Lowell City Council chamber on Inauguration Day sometime in the late 1990s. During his life, Paul was a force in Lowell and Massachusetts politics, serving as the host…
Read More »The recent posts about digging for Irish roots in the Acre and Hollywood gossip about the Ward movie “The Fighter” reminded me of Tom Sexton’s poem from his book “A Clock With No Hands.”—PM . Lowell’s Irish Micky Ward . Round 2. Ward’s left eye is already cut, but he…
Read More »An apple a day is the right thing. An apple plus a carrot is even better. Writing in the NYTimes, Natasha Singer looks into “prescription produce” and the sickness prevention benefits of real food, i.e., fruit and vegetables. Massachusetts public policy gets high praise in this article. Lowell and the surrounding towns offer farmers’…
Read More »The Lowell Quilt Festival continues at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, the NE Quilt Museum, and other locations around the city on Friday (10 am – 6 pm) and Saturday (10 am – pm). For the full schedule and event details, visit www.nequiltmuseum.org
Read More »Mass Moments reminds us that on this today – August 12th – in 1834 the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown lay in ruins. The night before a Protestant mob sacked it and burned it to the ground. The rioters were mostly poor Yankee laborers who feared and hated Irish Catholic immigrants. While…
Read More »The Globe and boston.com include an occasional feature about travels called “Passport” that is written by people in the Boston area, a kind of citizen journalism feature. This article by young student Akshan deAlwis describes a recent trip to Cambodia. The focus is a visit to the Angkor Association of the…
Read More »While we are talking about books, here is the link to an excerpt from Neil Miller’s new book “Banned in Boston” from Beacon Press, which appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine this past Sunday. The book delves into the history of the notorious and powerful Watch and Ward Society that…
Read More »I’m not the first to say this is a powerful book. Filkins won awards from the National Book Critics Circle and NYTimes Book Review. It was a best-seller in hardcover. I lent my first copy to someone, and it went into the book-loan twilight zone, which is why I bought…
Read More »UMass Lowell’s Frank Talty provided the following details about the archaeological project in the Acre. Frank is director of academic programs in the College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. He’s been instrumental in shaping the project in collaboration with administrators and faculty at Queens College in Belfast. Following is an excerpt from…
Read More »The front page of “The Arts” section in the NYTimes has an article about the long and winding road to the cinema screen for the mostly Lowell-filmed Micky Ward bio-pic “The Fighter,” starring Mark Wahlberg as the boxer, Christian Bale, and Amy Adams, among others. The nationwide release date is…
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