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Just a few words about the Irish Conference happening in Lowell this week… It was quite an experience attending day-one of the Irish Conference sponsored by UMass Lowell and Queens University Belfast. Themed “The Irish in Massachusetts: Historical Significance, Lasting Legacy.” The excellent cast of speaker/presenters moved us from 1550 Ireland…
Read More »Today UMass Lowell kicked-off its new Author Series with U. S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Before a crowd in the lobby, along the rails up to the fourth floor and on the sweeping stairway of the newly opened University Crossing, the Senator talked about her early life and then read excerpts…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The domino theory, used by the United States to justify military intervention in Vietnam, has always been fallible. In Southeast Asia, neighboring Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy. Thailand is a parliamentary (if unstable) democracy. The Indonesian archipelago is a republic. But…
Read More »On this day September 12, 1953, Congressman John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at a ceremony held in St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island. From the Kennedy Library website: Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and John Fitzgerald Kennedy Wedding Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and John F. Kennedy were married on the morning of September 12,…
Read More »On this day after the Massachusetts Primary where women candidates did so well and are poised to make history, it is fitting to remember Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers. Mrs. Rogers made her own history with – among other things – her support for veterans and her record-holding longevity in the…
Read More »Tornado Warnings Yesterday afternoon’s tornado warning was the fourth of the summer. I don’t remember that many warnings in the previous 40 years. Is the weather getting worse or is weather radar and the ability to quickly report its results just getting better. While the tornado threat faded, a serious…
Read More »Last night in the Lowell Summer Music Series at Boarding House Park, Lyle Lovett and friends performed for the third time on the iconic pavilion stage, giving us a stunning and sterling display of musicianship and joie de vivre—a dose of happiness like others that are supplied over and over,…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Times have changed for Sixth district Congressman John Tierney, and things are looking good. This, though he faces a rerun of the 2012 challenge from Republican Richard Tisei and, in the September primary, four challengers within his own party. Tierney…
Read More »With the 40th anniversary of President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation approaching on August 9, I went to the vault to retrieve this “current events” poem written a long time ago. The complexity of the Watergate scandal unfolding month to month in 1973 and ’74 grabbed people’s attention like one of…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The whole smarmy business makes you want to take a shower, but the racketeering and conspiracy trial of former Probation Commissioner Jack O’Brien and two top aides was more than just your garden variety patronage. As the Globe’s Tom Farragher…
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