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Sitting in my backyard in the sun late this morning, I heard church bells and was reminded of days like this when I was in my carefree 20s, working irregular hours, and enjoying the good weather when we had it. On a day like today I could grab a book and read under…
Read More »MAYA ANGELOU PAPERS ACQUIRED; REMEMBERING HER IN LOWELL This is a re-post from Oct. 27, 2010, offered today in remembrance of Maya Angelou’s life and writings. The post began with a head note: Today’s NYTimes includes this article about the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the NY Public Library…
Read More »I’ve posted this prose poem from 1978 on the blog before. It was written soon after the experience that provided the brief story thread. In those days, I was constantly on the lookout for images and incidents that could feed a new composition. I wanted to write, write, write. It’s a slight piece, but…
Read More »From the Pacific Rim and the richardhowe.com western desk comes a new poem by Tom Sexton, occupier of poetry precincts on both coasts of America and distinguished alumnus of Lowell High School. — PM . Leaving Lowell, Mass. for San Francisco, 1915, a Postcard Standing beside Mayor Murphy on the…
Read More »(re-posted from Sept. 14, 2008) “Thomas Fitzsimmons was born in Lowell in October 1926. He entered WWII as a young merchant mariner following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and left the US Army Air Force after the bombing of Hiroshima. He taught for many years at Oakland University in Michigan…
Read More »MassMoments reminds us that writer Lucy Larcom – one of Lowell’s iconic Mill Girls in her youth, died on this day April 17, 1893. In her autobiography A New England Girlhood, Lucy Larcom wrote: “From the beginning Lowell had a high reputation for good order, morality, piety, and all…
Read More »We had more than 50 people at the Whistler House Museum yesterday for the poetry reading with Joe Donahue and me offering work angled toward the Acre neighborhood and Aegean Sea in honor of our hosts, Lowell’s Hellenic Culture & Heritage Society. We ranged through tragedy and memory and mystical…
Read More »Joe Donahue, c. 2000 Paul Marion, c. 1986 (photo by James Higgins) At 2 p.m. today, there’s a poetry reading with these young guys pictured above at the Whistler House Museum of Art, Parker Gallery, 243 Worthen St., downtown Lowell. The program is called “The Cultural Lines of Poetry,…
Read More »Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, I lived in a mostly French-Canadian ethnic world. Two sets of my first-cousins had an Irish-American mother and father respectively. St. Patrick’s Day for my father meant a green tie with a shamrock for Mass on the Sunday closest to March 17. My…
Read More »Today March 15, is the infamous Ides of March, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman Senators led by Brutus and Cassius. The murder became the subject of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Consequently, most high school students readily remember the eerie…
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