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In recognition of Labor Day, here is the lead editorial from the September 7, 1992 edition of The New York Times – A Labor Day piece about the then-recently opened Boott Cotton Mills Museum. The Boott Cotton Mills Museum is open daily from 10am until 5pm, especially on Labor Day. …
Read More »The House That Stavros Built By Steve O’Connor Stavros Panagiotopoulos is at his customary table at the rear of the Athenian Corner on Market Street. At the age of 87, he still drives to his restaurant every morning, unlocking the door at 6:00 AM. He puts on the coffee, and…
Read More »I Was a Teenage Bibliophile By Pierre V. Comtois This story originally appeared in River Muse: Tales of Lowell and the Merrimack Valley. It’s hard to believe now, but at one time Lowell was a veritable Mecca for lovers of the written word with books and magazines available almost everywhere…
Read More »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,…
Read More »This article originally appeared in the Summer 2021 edition of The Epitaph, the quarterly newsletter of Lowell Cemetery. Dr. Gilman Kimball (1804-1892) During the second half of the nineteenth century, Lowell became the center of the lucrative patent medicine business. Three of the primary purveyors – James C. Ayer, Charles…
Read More »For my fellow Lowell, Mass., nerds, please note the fabulous cover on this new collection of poems by the late Michael McClure. The editor is Garrett Caples of the City Lights Books team in San Francisco, who has roots in Lowell. Here’s what he writes about the cover: “When [Michael]…
Read More »Nina MacLaughlin of The Boston Globe (6-6-21) reviews Matthew W. Miller’s new book of poems, cover-to-cover about the Merrimack River and Lowell: “In his hewn and forceful new collection of poetry, “Tender the River” (Texas Review), Matthew W. Miller makes a coursing book-length portrait of the Merrimack River, its…
Read More »WEARING A FEATHERED WIDE-BRIMMED GRAY HAT, Bob Dylan could’ve been a Mexican balladeer with a new Durango song, bouncing on stage and stamping his whole leg in time to the drum. Ramblin’ Jack Elliot dedicated “Me and Bobby McGee” to Jack Kerouac, who as a kid had played King of…
Read More »One more in my series in the spirit of “Lowell Walks” from the days when I hit the trail each weekend, usually in the morning. Lotta water under the canal bridge since 2009. — PM Scenes From an Urban Redevelopment Zone by Paul Marion Garcia-Brogan’s (web photo courtesy of mami-eggroll.com)…
Read More »The recent death of Academy Award winning and Lowell-born actor Olympia Dukakis at age 89 got me thinking about Lowell’s contributions to American movies and television. There are many. Dukakis, the cousin of former Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis, was born in Lowell in 1931. Her parents, Constantine and Alexandra (Christos)…
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