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Lowell’s 2026 Franco-American Festival Week begins Sunday, June 21! Sunday, June 21: 12:00 pm Mass in French honoring St. Jean Baptiste. (French/English worship aid provided.) At Immaculate Conception Church, 144 E. Merrimack St., Lowell, MA. Refreshments and naming of the Greater-Lowell Franco-American of the Year will follow in downstairs church…

A Tribute to the LRTA By Leo Racicot Due to a series of nerve-wracking experiences driving on the Wild West streets of Las Vegas for three years followed by working for a woman in Cambridge who wanted me to ride her autistic son around the city while he screamed at the top…

In which I write about interesting things that I have read, heard and seen during the past week: Destination: Concord Museum – Located at 53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord Museum is not far from downtown Concord, Massachusetts. The mission of the museum is to share objects and stories about the many…

Wind rips through la Caverne By Louise Peloquin      After an 8-day, record-breaking heatwave at the end of May stifled Paris, June 2nd brought torrential rain and, as the French say, un vent à décorner les boeufs – a wind to rip the horns off a bull. As far as…

On Thursday, June 11, 2026, at 6pm in the Luna Theater (in the former Mill No. 5), students at Lowell Community Charter Public School will present a “Reading Frederick Douglass Together” event. In recent years, many communities have come together to perform public readings of Douglass’ historic speech, “What to…

After nearly six hours of deliberations spread over two meetings, the Lowell City Council on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, adopted the city’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget of $577,861,191. Although the council cannot increase the budget proposed by the city manager, I believe the final amount was higher than what was…

Things We No Longer See in the Culture By Leo Racicot I’m enough of an old fuddy-duddy to actually miss some of the daily fixtures of life as we knew them in the culture of the 50s, 60s and beyond.     I miss the convenience of the neighborhood mailbox, the…

Magazine: “The Venture-Capital Populist: How David Sacks and the new tech right went full MAGA and captured Washington” by George Packer in The Atlantic, June 2026 – Because of extreme cold, the 2025 presidential inauguration was held inside the U.S. Capital. The smaller venue limited how many could attend in…

La Caverne du Pont Neuf  by JR, Plato and Daft Punk By Louise Peloquin More than 40 years after Christo and Jeanne-Claude literally wrapped up le Pont Neuf, JR is in the process of transforming it into what he calls “the world’s biggest immersive artwork.” (1) From Saturday June 6th…

Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was devoted almost exclusively to the council’s review of the proposed FY27 city budget. The council opted to review the budget department-by-department and worked diligently for three hours until the mandatory meeting stop time of 10 pm arrived. A vote to keep going failed and…