This poem is from Matt Miller’s new prize-winning collection of poems called “Club Icarus,” published by the University of North Texas Press. Matt is a Lowell High School graduate who earned degrees at Yale University, where he also played varsity football, and Emerson College. He teaches English and coaches football…
As a follow-up to my earlier post on a Patrick Keely-designed church that was saved – unlike Lowell’s St. Peter’s Church – here’s a link to a New York Times article about the re-opend St. Brigid’s Church in New York’s Lower East Side ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/nyregion/st-brigids-church-on-lower-east-side-celebrates-a-new-beginning.html?nl=nyregion&emc=edit_ur_20130128 History lived in that sacred space. Immigrant families found faith,…
Record-setting NFL kicker Tom Dempsey played rough and tough in his football days, including a stint with the semi-pro Lowell Giants whose home for a few years was Cawley Stadium. The NYTimes reports that 66-year-0ld Dempsey is suffering from dementia, which may be linked to the hard knocks he took…
A reader just left a comment to a two-year old post on the origins of radio station WLLH. This comment contained a link to a 14 minute long YouTube video created back in 1986 at the studios of WLLH-WSSH which were located in the former Giant Store at the corner…
In 1995, the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, published Lowell Then and Now: Restoring the Legacy of a Mill City by Charles Parrott, longtime historic architect at the LHPC and then Lowell National Historical Park, with contemporary photographs by Gretchen Sanders Joy, a planner at the LHPC.—PM…
MassMoments reminds us today that when Asa Mercer of Seattle set out to recruit young women of good character to travel to the Northwest and fill the need for teachers in the Washington Territory, he came first to Lowell, Massachusetts. Why New England? Why Lowell? His reasoning was pretty straightforward:…
Jim Sampas grew up on Wilder Street in the Highlands. His aunt Stella married Jack Kerouac in the 1960s. These days, Jim is a producer of music recordings and movies, the latest project being a feature film based on Kerouac’s 1962 novel “Big Sur.” The movie premiered at the Sundance…
Another excerpt from John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Stranger in Lowell” (1843).—PM . “As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their representatives in Lowell. The young city is dotted over with ‘steeple houses,’…
In response to my request earlier today for a correspondent to report on tonight’s meeting on the future of the Rourke Bridge and vicinity, someone kindly took up my offer and sent the following: The subject of tonight’s meeting was the many intersections in the area, what the current status…
Tonight is the informational meeting on the Rourke Bridge, Wood Street, Westford Street and Drum Hill Road Corridor Study and Feasibility Analysis. This public meeting – i.e., open to everyone – goes from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM at Lowell General Hospital’s Clark Auditorium, 295 Varnum Avenue, Lowell, MA. Due…