Tinkertoys By David Daniel Lucy is in Boston for a three-day conference on commercial architecture. She grew up in the city’s suburbs, and although she has not been back in twenty-five years and no longer has family in the area, she nevertheless finds herself experiencing an unexpected sense of return.…
That’s a lot of “l’s” in the headline. Lowell has a new bookstore, “lala books,” named for owners Laura and Greg LaMarre Anderson. They worked with local real estate consultants at The Edge Group to get established at 189 Market Street close to the city parking garage. The bright interior,…
Under the Same Sun By Mark Cote I watched a young boy play in the sand at the beach the other day, never growing tired of the shifting waterline as it took with it his attempts at building sand castles and sand dinosaurs. All day long, wrestling with his brother,…
Boarding School Blues By Louise Peloquin Ch. 17: On the Agenda In the run-up to Thanksgiving, testing set the beat as teachers were bent on evaluating performance. Students seemed to resist the temptation to daydream in study hall and even Andy filled her Oxford copybooks with school notes rather than…
Congratulations to LaLa Books which had its grand opening last Friday (July 23) at 189 Market Street (next to Warp & Weft). I visited on Saturday and was impressed with what I saw. It’s spacious and well laid-out and from its appropriately-sized inventory of books on the shelf, I found…
Langston Now By David Daniel He was the original marijuana maven. Gastronome of ganja, raja of reefer, sultan of spleefs, hipster of hemp . . . the sobriquets pile up. Skoobie doobie, Puff buff. Not that anyone called him by anything other than his name. Langston. No tie-dyed hippie, he…
Boarding School Blues By Louise Peloquin Ch. 16: Parlez-vous? The rooftop escapade created a special bond between Titi and Blanche. Their comings and goings had gone undetected but Titi often made conspicuous references to a cigarette shared in the middle of the night. With a pencil between her fingers, she…
From Paul Marion, a co-editor of The Lowell Review: Readers will notice something new in the left column on the main page of RichardHowe.com, an image of the cover of issue #1 of The Lowell Review, a literary magazine that we have spun off this blog. In the tradition of American literary magazines, The…
Fresh off the writing table at the Tom Sexton base camp in Alaska, here’s a poem that Tom says is exact in each detail. He and his wife, Sharyn, recently did a road trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks to Delta Junction and around to Lake Louise. Like Robert Frost picking…
Boarding School Blues By Louise Peloquin Ch. 15: In the Night Blanche’s vision sharpened that October Saturday. People she thought she knew by heart were no longer what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Her mother, for instance, was always in control and made lemonade out of life’s lemons. But seeing her mute and compliant with…