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Allen Ginsberg in Lowell By Leo Racicot      A sad irony — the first time Allen Ginsberg came to Lowell, it was to help bury his beloved friend, Jack Kerouac. The two met in 1944 at Columbia University when they were students there. They hit it off instantly, traveled…

The Celtics Game 5 Renews Ties Between Alaskans and New Englanders By Mike McCormick The Boston Celtics were back on their home court at TD Garden for the fifth game of the NBA Championship series. The seventeen-time champions, up three games to one in the series, could hoist an eighteenth…

“The last lap – Paris’s Summer Olympics” By Louise Peloquin      The river Seine has fashioned Paris history since its name was “Lutèce” (1), begun as a small settlement on “L’Isle de la Cité”, one of its two islands. Even today, everyone still refers to its lively Left Bank where thrones the…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Remember when we scoffed at  Richard Nixon telling David Frost that the President couldn’t be prosecuted for Watergate because “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.”  We thought that our Constitution established “a government…

With no City Council meeting last week, today we’ll take another excursion into a part of Lowell political history that intersects with several contemporary issues. In May the City Council held a vigorous debate on whether to unwind the judicial consent decree from the 1980s that still governs the assignment…

In the years before the American Civil War, Frederick Douglass was a frequent visitor to Lowell. Although the city’s entire reason for existence was the production of cloth made from cotton harvested by enslaved Africans in the American south which provided a strong incentive for those in Lowell to remain…

4th of July in Lowell – (PIP #37) By Louise Peloquin A 4th of July throwback announcing an honor roll dedication, advertising an evening of celebration and covering heat elevation. Times have changed and yet, have they? Articles below from L’Etoile, June 30, 1944. Honor roll dedication on Tuesday   …

Sometimes when you watch a Lowell City Council meeting you get a sense that there are two meetings happening simultaneously. One is out in the open, but the other is couched in cryptic language and verbal slips that make clear that the Councilors are privy to more than they are…

The Letter and The Counterculture By Ed DeJesus The red rhododendrons in front of the government building were blooming. The sunny forecast for Tuesday, June fourth, 1968, was great. Ideal weather to take a half-day off from my monotonous mail clerk job at the IRS in Andover, MA. I showed…