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“As a country, we used to respect knowledge that was earned over knowledge that was cherry picked.” —Dennis Lehane, Boston Globe,4/1/9/14 In today’s Boston Globe, author Dennis Lehane thinks aloud about the Boston Marathon Bombing, knowledge vs. opinion, intellectual relativism, bad narratives, and his belief that good ideas will prevail.…
Read More »On a small patch of grass wedged between two busy streets in front of Lowell City Hall sits a twenty-five foot high granite obelisk. Few passersby know that this monument commemorates nineteen year old Luther Ladd and twenty year old Addison Whitney, two Lowell mill workers who, along with Sumner…
Read More »For those interested in the history of the American Civil War, there are a number of iconic places that just have to be visited. One of them is Fort Sumter, the place where the shooting part of the Civil War began on April 12, 1861. Although I’d spent 20 years…
Read More »(re-posted from Sept. 14, 2008) “Thomas Fitzsimmons was born in Lowell in October 1926. He entered WWII as a young merchant mariner following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and left the US Army Air Force after the bombing of Hiroshima. He taught for many years at Oakland University in Michigan…
Read More »MassMoments reminds us that writer Lucy Larcom – one of Lowell’s iconic Mill Girls in her youth, died on this day April 17, 1893. In her autobiography A New England Girlhood, Lucy Larcom wrote: “From the beginning Lowell had a high reputation for good order, morality, piety, and all…
Read More »If you think that the Congress of today has always been this way, well just remember Massachusetts Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill – the way he served, his work ethic and the way he ran the House of Representatives when he was “Mr. Speaker.” A man of the 20th Century, he believed that government…
Read More »The South Common was created for the enjoyment of all the residents of the city. The South Common is not an empty lot waiting for a better use. The South Common is functioning well for its designated purpose, thank you. The South Common is scheduled for a major renovation, based…
Read More »Education has always been a high priority in Massachusetts even back to its “Bay Colony” days. So it’s important to go back to the archives to remember this important day. MassMoments remind us that on this day – April 14, 1642 – the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the first law in the…
Read More »We had more than 50 people at the Whistler House Museum yesterday for the poetry reading with Joe Donahue and me offering work angled toward the Acre neighborhood and Aegean Sea in honor of our hosts, Lowell’s Hellenic Culture & Heritage Society. We ranged through tragedy and memory and mystical…
Read More »My association with the town of Tewksbury is long, and I like to think deep. Many, many years ago I remember attending an event in which several dignitaries from the town of Tewkesbury, England were the featured guest. Honestly, I was there for political reasons, more than historical. At that…
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