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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. This time the pollsters were right. They had held all along that the election outcome was within the margin of error. It could go either way. And so it did. But in the wrong direction. Donald J.…

APPOINTMENT NO MORE  A short essay By Jerry Bisantz It was February 9, 1964. The black and white television was aglow with the family ritual. All seven Bisantz children and my Mom and Dad were crammed into my small living room, vying for space  to watch our Sunday ritual, The…

New at the White House – (PIP #46) By Louise Peloquin      L’Etoile covered the elections so extensively that we were hard put to choose among all of the century-old articles. Here are a couple of items from a weekly column called Au fil de la plume, literally translated on the thread of the…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. The Hunter by Tana French is a murder mystery set in the hardworking village of Ardnakelty  in Ireland during an abnormally dry, searingly hot summer, oppressive to humans and animals alike. Nerves are on edge. The only relief for…

The great American novelist Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I thought of that Tuesday night while watching the Lowell City Council once again debate whether the method of selecting Lowell’s mayor should…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Kamala Harris pledges, “We won’t go back.” Tonight, however, we all will. At 2 a.m. tomorrow morning we set the clocks back an hour. Sure, it means an extra hour of sleep, but, for many of us,…

Martha Sparks: Chelmsford’s Accused Witch By Ron Sykes Certainly, there are many stories of injustice in Chelmsford’s past but, the story of Martha Sparks seems to be particularly cruel. On July 10, 1676 Martha, the daughter of Thomas Barrett Jr., married Henry Sparks from Exeter, New Hampshire. Henry purchased 1…

Register to vote! – (PIP #45) By Louise Peloquin Registering to vote is a duty and voting a sacred right. Nothing has changed over the years. L’Etoile, October 5, 1924 Urgent Call from the Permanent Committee of Naturalization May all those who are citizens by birth, by naturalization or by…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by journalist Nathan Thrall won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction this year.  The core of the narrative is simple: in 2012 a rickety school bus carrying…

A joint motion by Councilors Erik Gitschier and Corey Robinson that “the law department draft necessary language to facilitate residents’ ability to select our mayor via ballot before the 2025 city council election cycle” generated some discussion at Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting. However, like so many of the motions…