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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…
Read More »Book launching for HISTORY AS IT HAPPENS: Citizen Bloggers in Lowell, Mass. Saturday, August 5, 2017, 11:30 am to 1:30 pm, at Lowell Telecommunications Corp., 246 Market St, Market Mills, Downtown Lowell. The book has writing and pictures from the first ten years (2007-16) of the RichardHowe.com blog. Forty contributors…
Read More »We have a new poem from Tom Sexton today, which he sent from his home in Alaska. In this new composition Tom recreates an extended moment in his Lowell youth, reflecting on a kind of confusion most of us have experienced. The details are just right in this self-portrait of…
Read More »This is the third batch of those who contributed works to History as It Happens: Community Bloggers in Lowell, Mass. our forthcoming book of community writing by more than 40 contributors to this website over the past ten years. (See the first group of contributors here and the second group…
Read More »I’m pinch-hitting for Dick this week while he is otherwise occupied. Instead of his usual round-up of major happenings and ongoing issues, I will share some observations about life in the city. It’s helpful to step back and look at the big picture. I had an opportunity to walk through…
Read More »I have a 15-year-old white T-shirt with teal blue lettering on the back that reads “Partners in Progress, UMass Lowell & the Community.” The Hanes Beefy-T has been washed maybe 700 times, but the fabric has not frayed and the words are not faded. There’s a slight tear under the…
Read More »Happy Independence Day! To commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War One, each week I’ve been posting a summary of that week’s newspaper headlines from the corresponding dates in 1917. This week’s post included July 4, 1917. I noticed that there was little mention of Independence Day celebrations that year.…
Read More »Tomorrow’s Lowell walk will be led by Dave McKean and Rosemary Noon. The topic will be churches of Lowell. We will visit St. Anne’s and St. Patrick’s, inside and out and also learn about the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, The First Congregational Church (now known as Smith Baker Center)…
Read More »Today is Bunker Hill Day, the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill which was fought on June 17, 1775. The anniversary used to have much more significance than it does now, which I suppose becomes the fate of most such anniversaries over time. That’s unfortunate, because history has so…
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