Following are excerpts from a seqence of poems titled “Purple Ritual” in Joseph Donahue’s first book of poems, Before Creation (1989). The sequence in much longer and more complex than these passages suggest, but today it seemed important to me to share part of this composition for the record. At…
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“Salmon Sky Above the Mills” by Richard Marion (c) 2013 See more artwork at www.richardmarion.net
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[youtube]eih67rlGNhU[/youtube] Someone once joked to me that walking through downtown Lowell was like visiting a casting call for Les Miserables. That was twenty years ago. I’m not sure how much has changed. It’s really in the nature of cities to attract all kinds of people, from the very well off…
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Here’s some information from the city of Lowell office of special events: CITY OF LIGHTS PARADE & HOLIDAY CELEBRATION USHERS IN THE 2013 HOLIDAY SEASON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. IN DOWNTOWN LOWELL Daytime Family Activities, Strolling Carolers, and the 6th Annual Hot Chocolate Competition lead…
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I recently learned that Joe Meehan, a good friend from the Greater Lowell YMCA, writes poetry. I asked him to consider sharing one of his poems with us and he agreed. Here’s what Joe offered as background: The change from September to October has a different look and feel the…
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Last Wednesday it was our privilege to be guests at the UMass Lowell 2013 Flag Raising Ceremony & Veterans Day Celebration held outside Cumnock Hall/North Campus. The flag-raising ceremony paid tribute to UMass Lowell’s more than 1,450 student veterans, 2013 Veterans Alumni Hall of Fame inductees and veterans throughout the…
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An excerpt from “The Lighting Up,” an essay in The Prose Works of John Greenleaf Whitter: Volume II (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866). The essay was first published in book form in 1843 in a collection called The Stranger in Lowell, which brought together several essays that had appeared in a…
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Tony Sampas took this photo of the underside of the old Memorial Bridge (aka “University Ave Bridge”) in the foreground with the underside of the new bridge (which is to be named the “Richard P. Howe Bridge” for my father) in the background. I understand that the new bridge is…
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Today’s Guardian online in the UK has a long piece by David Runciman in which he digs deeply into the ways a democratic system of government can be exasperating to its citizens. But, as others have said, Consider the alternatives. Here’s the essay. The insights here apply to the system down…
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