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Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the collapse of New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain. The Old Man of the Mountain was a natural rock formation located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. It was a series of five granite cliff ledges that appeared to form the…
Read More »Back on April 16, 2016, in the aftermath of the Lowell City Council vote to revoke the invitation extended to General Hun Manet of the Cambodian Army (and the son of Prime Minister Hun Sen), I wrote the following post that gave a brief overview of Cambodian history. With…
Read More »Review of Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life, by Elizabeth D. Leonard Review by Richard Howe Scrolling through a list of books about Lowell’s Civil War General Benjamin Butler discloses a number of unflattering titles including The South Called Him Beast, When the Devil Came Down to Dixie, Army…
Read More »I suppose you could pick any day of the year and find many important things that happened through the years on that day. Perhaps because April 19 has local significance due to the 1775 battles at Lexington and Concord, and the 1861 riot involving soldiers from Lowell at the start…
Read More »Laid Off By Paul Marion The following story by Paul Marion originally appeared on paulmarion.com with the title, “Laid Off,” a chapter from “Do You Think You’ll Ever Go Back?” (a memory book in progress). ONE OF MY PRE-SCHOOL MEMORIES is a composite of scenes with my father during the…
Read More »While scrolling through the Netflix home page recently, I came upon Notre-Dame, a series produced in France which was “inspired by true accounts from French firefighters” who helped save the historic cathedral from complete destruction in the 2019 fire. While the fire is the through-line of the six-episode series with…
Read More »The United States Veterans Administration (VA) celebrated Women’s History Month with a blog post highlighting women who led the fight for better health care for women veterans. One of those recognized was Edith Nourse Rogers, who represented Lowell in Congress for 35 years until her death in 1960. Below is…
Read More »The bitter cold we endured this weekend brought to mind other weather extremes. For me, the Blizzard of ’78, which struck on February 5, 1978, has always been tops in that category. I lived through it as a 19-year-old student at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. As bad as…
Read More »When Lowell received its town charter in 1826, the “domestic” water needs of most people – water for drinking, cooking, and washing – were met by wells that were scattered throughout the area. Also, anyone living near a river, a stream, or even a canal, could and did draw water…
Read More »Sonic Boom by Paul Marion The plane crashed. The pilot survived. I don’t know if I saw this or was told about it by my parents or remember the incident because I heard others describe it. In my mind I see myself in real time either standing in the…
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