Today is Ash Wednesday ~ the day that marks the beginning of the Lenten season that guides the believer to the celebration of Easter Sunday. While its been many years since the churches of Lowell had pews overflowing with those waiting their turn to be marked on the forehead with a cross of…
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(top photo by Jen Myers) I appreciated the farewell remarks of City Manager Bernie Lynch at his final City Council meeting as Manager last night. Especially this part, according to my colleague Dick Howe’s notes: Through all of that, I was hoping to build a sense of community. Lowell is…
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Nocturne: Blue and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge (1872-75) James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1905) was nine years old when his family left Lowell and traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father helped the Czar build a railroad. In Lowell, his father, George Washington Whistler, and mother, Anna Matilda McNeill, lived at…
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The blog posts and Facebook notes about Lowell Historical Society curator Ryan Owen and his finds in the Society’s collection must have raised his profile. Owen and the collection are front and center, front-page, above the fold in today’s Lowell Sun. As with the find of the Solon Perkins Civil…
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State Representative Tom Golden has been out front and leading on public policy responses to the widespread opiate abuse that is claiming too many lives. In 2013, his advocacy led to the re-opening of Tewksbury Hospital’s Alcohol and Drug Detoxification Center and working with the Greater Lowell Health Alliance he…
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Louise Griffin of Lowell is speaking out about the addiction crisis that is destroying so many lives around us. Her son died recently, after struggling for several years with addiction that began with taking pain-killing pills in high school after a hockey injury. Read about Zachary and Louise and two…
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As Curator Ryan Owen delves more into the Lowell Historical Society’s old and diverse collection, he will be reporting about the oddities and curiosities that abound. His most recent find has us remembering a Lowellian and former Mayor and Lowell City Councilor. This is a cross-post from the LHS blog…
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Bob Weible was the staff historian during the formative years of Lowell National Historical Park. Today, he is State Historian of New York and Chief Curator of the New York State Museum. During his Lowell years he was also unofficial Commissioner of a men’s-and-women’s softball league composed of teams from…
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In response to Marjorie’s grim assessment of the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, I went to the rh.com archives for this post I wrote in 2010 titled “Who Gets Hurt?” There’s no way to add up all the pain out there—and it rolls on day to day in…
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Mr. Nason Skating on the Merrimack . In March of the year we were in kindergarten, Mr. Nason told us how on one cold night he skated from Lowell to beyond Manchester where we knew the river vanished with a sigh and the moon’s breath was frozen to the ground,…
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