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This Sunday, October 29, 2017, at 11 am, I will lead a walking tour of Lowell Cemetery. This just-scheduled event will be a combination of the spring and fall tours and will cover some of the most notable monuments in this very historic cemetery. Sunday’s tour will begin at the…
Read More »I happened to be at the Kerouac Commemorative public artwork in Kerouac Park at Bridge and French streets yesterday, Jack’s Death Day, where I stopped while guiding a group of 17 arts administration master’s program students from Boston University around Lowell’s historic and cultural district. The flawless blue sky played…
Read More »The annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! literary festival is coming up, October 5-9. Here’s the schedule of events. My writing colleague from Somerville, Mass., Doug Holder, sent us this poem by his fellow faculty member at Endicott College, Dan Sklar, who teaches creative writing. Dan’s latest book, Flying Cats, Actually Swooping, was published…
Read More »What follows is another excerpt from Charlie Gargiulo’s memoir “Farewell, Little Canada,” in which he describes growing up in tumultuous times in the mostly French Canadian-American neighborhood that once existed close to the big bend in the Merrimack River. This is the second excerpt published on this blog, which we…
Read More »Elected to the Lowell City Council in 1971 as a 20-year old Lowell State College student, Gail Dunfey lost her 1973 reelection campaign, but as this brochure from that 1973 election makes clear, she went down fighting. Although she only served one term on the council, Dunfey is a key…
Read More »Today’s Globe has a great story about August 18, 1967, the night the Red Sox star right fielder and Massachusetts-native Tony Conigliaro was hit by a pitch, a fastball, in the face and suffered a devastating injury. I still have clear memories of that night and even wrote about it…
Read More »Why are reporters from the N.Y. Times and other media outlets using the term “left-wing” to describe people who oppose racists of all kinds, Nazis, anti-Semites, anti-LGBTQs, christian fascists, and other hate-mongers? Isn’t it the American way to denounce these forms of inhumanity? Isn’t the American creed about pursuing liberty,…
Read More »Yesterday the square at Nesmith and Chestnut Streets ( at the north end of Kittredge Park) was dedication by the City of Lowell in honor of WWII Navy aviator ~ Navy Cross, Silver Star and Air Medal with three stars recipient ~ James W. Sweeney. Before family, friends, Mayor Kennedy,…
Read More »The following is an excerpt from Charlie Gargiulo’s memoir about growing up in Lowell’s Little Canada neighborhood in the 1960s during the time when political leaders had targeted the area for wholesale destruction in service of an economic redevelopment policy fueled by government money. The process was called Urban Renewal,…
Read More »Lowell Walks resumes tomorrow after taking last weekend off for the Lowell Folk Festival. The walk begins at 10 am at Lowell National Park Visitor Center. The topic is the Northern Canal Urban Renewal Project and it will be led by Chris Hayes and Aurora Erickson. Completed in the late…
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