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Yesterday morning I attended two events of the Franco-American Week Festival: the annual memorial ceremony at the Little Canada Monument near the corner of Aiken and Hall streets and the traditional flag-raising ceremony at City Hall. The Little Canada Monument has been re-landscaped so that the granite stone with bronze…
Read More »Pawtucket Falls post card image /UML Center for Lowell History The other day it was people from Lawrence weighing-in on the Enel North America plan to regulate the flow of water over the historic Pawtucket Falls with a pneumatic crest gate, or “inflatable bladder,” installation system on the Pawtucket Dam. As…
Read More »Thanks to Dick for his report on planning guru Frank Keefe’s nutshell version of the Lowell revitalization story and success recipe. Bill Lipchitz’s comment about the Center City Committee being formed in 1972 added a key benchmark. Since he was there, maybe Bill can clarify the connection between the CCC…
Read More »The concluding session of the 2010 “Public Matters: Empowering Lowell’s Leaders” program took place this evening at Middlesex Community College. Urban planning guru Frank Keefe (Lowell’s chief city planner a long time ago) was the keynote speaker. I found his remarks fascinating, uplifting and, to anyone interested in Lowell’s developmental…
Read More »Speaking of Franco-American Week, in the new New Yorker (June 28) the Talk of the Town section has a piece called “In the Stacks” about a recent display at the New York Public Library. It turns out that librarian Anne Garner specializes in “marginalia,” that is, comments and marks made…
Read More »We’re halfway through Franco-American Week. Here’s a quick update on remaining events: Thurs, June 24, 9.15 am—Memorial ceremony at Little Canada Monument, Aiken St, opposite UMass Lowell Recreation Center; 10 am—Flag-raising at Lowell City Hall; 7 pm—Prayer service to honor St. Jean Baptiste at Franco-American School Grotto followed by wine-and-cheese…
Read More »Well, if we had a Campaign for Local Literature, I’d propose ‘Support the Books’ as one of the Campaign’s bumper stickers, but we don’t. What the readers of the region can do, though, is show up en masse at the next available local book launching, which happens to be this…
Read More »Sunday morning I did a quick post about the two stray dogs that wandered into my life. They’re gone now, but they left quite an impression. Here’s what happened. Early Sunday we were just getting home from walking our own dog when we spotted two strays down the street sniffing…
Read More »I have cities on my mind because of the recent Innovative Cities Conference in Lowell. This morning, I turned on the TV and while looking for something to watch I came across the Sunrise Earth series on Discovery HD Theater, an amazing set of documentaries that capture the sunrise moment…
Read More »While driving to the Y at 5 this morning, I was met with this view as I passed through the intersection of Wilder and Pine Streets in the Highlands. I pulled over and snapped this picture with my cell phone. Even though the car was stationary, the picture is a…
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