Menu
Globe staffer James Reed delves deeper into what the Lowell Folk Festival is really all about in today’s edition. It’s an obvious but overlooked fact about folk festivals: In the truest sense, they’re not just about singer-songwriters wielding acoustic guitars or dancers kicking up their heels to Cape Breton fiddlers.…
Read More »The NYTimes today reports that the US is falling behind in college completion rates when compared to other countries. It’s good to note that UMass Lowell is bucking the worrisome national trend. Between 2007 and 2009, the student success rate increased by about five to eight percent in various measures,…
Read More »Lowell is in the Universe. This stuff just blows my mind. The latest cosmic discovery will make anyone pause and consider his or her own place in space. A little more humility would go a long way among the inhabitants of Earth. Makes you wonder why it took so long to…
Read More »Timothy Egan checks in with his latest NYTimes column, this one about heat waves, extreme weather, the reality of global warming, and the desperate need for smarter federal policies on energy. Read his views here, and consider subscribing to the NYT if you appreciate the writing. My household gets the…
Read More »While nobody was looking, writer-actor-director-baseball wiseman-cultural commentator-allied blogger Jack Neary packed his stuff and moved from Lowell to southern New Hampshire, just over the border in Derry. After Robert Frost trying to run a farm in that town many years ago, this is probably the biggest literary news in Derry. Jack’s…
Read More »The ritual has been going on since the late ’80s now, but anyone with a feeling for the pulse of the city can feel the urban heart pumping at a faster rate starting mid-week of Lowell Folk Festival weekend. It’s always the last full weekend of July—full weekend—which is why…
Read More »If you are in downtown Lowell for the Lowell Folk Festival this weekend, and everyone reading this should be going to the Festival for at least a few hours, then walk to the intersection of Market, Central, and Prescott streets and look for the Printer on Prescott Artists Research Center.…
Read More »As the trustees of the University of Massachusetts commence a nationwide search for a new president to replace the retiring Jack Wilson, the Springfield Republican on Sunday weighed in with its candidate: Former U.S. Rep. Martin M. Meehan, now chancellor of UMass-Lowell, has worked diligently to transform his alma mater…
Read More »The 2010 Lowell Folk Festival is just a few days away. Driving home from work this afternoon, I heard Ted Panos on WCAP interviewing Kathleen Pierce who is producing much of the social network content on the festival’s official Facebook and Twitter pages. If you are active on either of…
Read More »Well, we said this blog is about History, and there were people in Lowell dancing to disco, so this item fits. All-Star writer Dave Daniel from Westford and, let’s face it, Lowell, too, has a new review of a history of disco on the “Internet Review of Books.” Literature is…
Read More »