The Lowell Justice Center has a stairwell on either side of the L-shaped building. Both go from ground level to the 7th floor. Both are enclosed in glass and provide some excellent views. I was recently in the stairwell on the Dutton Street side of the building and took these…
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A Decade of Digging By John Wooding President of Mill City Grows This year Mill City Grows (MCG) celebrates 10 years of working with the Lowell community to promote food justice, locally grown organic food, and food education. Founded by Francey Slater and Lydia Sisson, MCG has grown from an…
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Two days before the 100th birthday of Jack Kerouac on March 12th, I was asked by poet and musician Roger West in France if I could connect people in Lowell with his tribute to Kerouac planned for the hour of the author’s birth 100 years ago, 5 p.m. at home…
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Some news from DIY Lowell: The DIY Lowell Advisory Committee selected downtown resident Jack Moynihan and the Lowell Litter Krewe among more than a dozen nominees for its annual awards to be given at the fourth annual “Community Chill Night Chili and Stew Contest,” on March 25, 2022. The event…
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Back in the late 1980s, Lowell had its first St. Patrick’s Day breakfast which immediately became the signature political event of the year. Modeled on the much longer running South Boston St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, the Lowell version took place in the downtown Hilton Hotel (today’s UMass Lowell Inn &…
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Mrs. Dalton Lay Teacher & The Urchins of Lowell By Bob Hodge In the fifth grade at St. Patrick’s School, Lowell, MA when I was nine years old I had my first lay teacher Mrs. Dalton. Prior to and after fifth grade my classmates and I were taught by the…
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Paul Tsongas (photo courtesy of the Paul Tsongas Congressional Papers, UMass Lowell Libraries) With our eyes on TV coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine today, I was reminded of past fighting by Russians under the USSR banner at the time in the cities and hills of Afghanistan. The Soviets…
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Little John and the Sherwoods Rocked the House By Paul Marion “. . . the most exciting and memorable days of my teenage years . . . .”—David Arsenault When “Light My Fire” was number one nationwide in August 1967, the Summer of Love, the Doors played the Commodore Ballroom,…
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It Needs Sweeping by Susan April On November 25, 1968, The Beatle’s double LP White Album was released. I was twelve, in eighth grade, and I had to have it. Wish I could say I had been swept into Beatlemania after watching their first Ed Sullivan Show appearance on February…
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The Beatles Land in Little Canada by Charlie Gargiulo An excerpt from Legends of Little Canada: Aunt Rose, Harvey’s Bookland, and My Captain Jack (forthcoming from Loom Press, 2022) Not long after New Year’s Day, we started to hear about a musical group from England called The Beatles. It was…
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