A sleepy Sixth Regiment departed Philadelphia by train at 1 am on Friday, April 19, 1861. The original plan was to leave first thing in the morning, but railroad officials warned Colonel Jones of talk that people in Baltimore planned to prevent any troops from passing through the city. Jones…
In today’s NYTimes, opinion columnist David Brooks dissects the Donald Trump political phenomenon of the moment. He’s just a kooky success says Uncle Dave, who pledges never to vote for The Donald. Unlike Brooks, I don’t think the whole sideshow is harmless. My view is that characters like Trump reveal…
This just in. The 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry goes to Kay Ryan, recent US Poet Laureate, who will be reading her work at UMass Lowell on Tuesday, April 26, at 7 pm, in the O’Leary Library Auditorium, Room 222, 61 Wilder St, UMass Lowell South Campus. Parking is available…
April 18, 1861 was a Thursday. The train bearing the Sixth Regiment rolled into New York City early in the morning after the all-night journey from Boston. The troops marched through the city past great crowds that cheered their passage. At noon, the regiment boarded a ferry that transported the…
On this day – April 18, 2001 – John R. McNamara, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston; retired Bishop of the Merrimack Region; retired Rear-Admiral US Navy, former Chief of Chaplains and winner of the Bronze Star for service with the US Marine Corps – was laid to rest. In…
On the morning of April 17 (a Wednesday), the companies of the Sixth Regiment marched to the Massachusetts State House where the old muskets carried by the troops were replaced with new rifled muskets and each man was issued “an overcoat, flannel shirt, drawers, and a pair of stockings.” Governor…
Here’s a spring poem that was written by my Andover friend Steve Perrin, one of the founding members of the Poets’ Lab that met at Andover’s Memorial Library between 1976 and 1978. Other writers who attended included Ken Skulski, Cynthia Ward, Alice Davis, E.F.Weisslitz, Eric Linder, Wayne Nalbandian, and Tom…
MassMoments reminds us that on this day April 17, 1893 – Lucy Larcom – author, newspaper writer, poet, Lowell mill girl – died in Boston. In her autobiography “A New England Girlhood” – Larcom captured an element of the “Lowell Experiment” seen through the eyes of that Yankee mill girl toiling in the early…