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Malcolm Sharps and the Long Road By Stephen O’Connor Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs…                                                                                     —Swinburne It was 1979. I had been on a train all night from Paris to Montpellier, 735 km. This was before the days of the TGV that now flies along the…

Long ago Lowell buys local – (PIP #59) By Louise Peloquin The “buy local” rallying cry is not new. Since the time Lowell was called “The Venice of America” the city has prided itself on promoting its products. (1)  This is the first in a series on the topic. L’Etoile –…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. No Country for Love by Yaroslav Trofimov, the Ukrainian-born chief foreign affairs correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, covers Ukraine from 1930-1954 and is based on the real-life experiences of his own grandmother, whom he interviewed right up to the…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. There’s a new crime boss in town, and he’s the old crime boss with the gloves off. There was plenty of crime in the first Trump administration, but much of it was behind a gauzy veil. It mostly had…

Tuesday night the Lowell City Council endorsed a motion by Councilor Rita Mercier that “the mayor enter into negotiations with the city manager and city council in executive session to discuss extending his contract, pay scale, etc.” As it appeared on the agenda, the motion did not specify the length…

On Friday, February 14, 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance spoke at the Munich Security Conference (MSC). Held each February since 1963 in Munich, Germany, the conference provides a platform for leaders to discuss the most pressing security challenges facing the world and is a venue for diplomatic initiatives and…

A recent Lowell Sun article about the coming rehabilitation of the former Royal Theater building at 484 Merrimack Street recalled a passage from Legends of Little Canada, a memoir by Charlie Gargiulo about growing up in that neighborhood just before and as it succumbed to the Urban Renewal wrecking ball.…

Potions and Powders – (PIP # 58) By Louise Peloquin               Ailments of all sorts have always made people try remedies of all sorts. L’Etoile’s “medicinal briefs” not only informed the readership about popular remedies but also brought in a bit of advertising revenue. Below is…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali is a timely read, a coming-of-age story by the author of The Stationery Store, which also draws on her Iranian background.  Dedicated “to the brave women of Iran,” it is told in the…

The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald has a little bit of Marcel Proust, something of James Joyce, a dose of Freud and a lot of post-WWII PTSD. The landscape is usually desolate, the lighting dark; the often-abandoned buildings are old, dank and soot-stained,…