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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson is a spellbinding journalistic revelation of the innermost thinking and maneuvering of key players in Iran and the United States leading up…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. About a month ago I wrote a blog asserting that, unless some new major scandal erupted causing Graham Platner to leave the race, Maine voters would be faced in November with two bad US Senate choices—but for different reasons.…
Read More »There was no Lowell City Council meeting this week so I will return to my biographical sketches of the mayors of Lowell. This is the third installment which covers the first 18 mayors who served under the Plan E form of government (1945 to 1983). For those who missed the…
Read More »Here’s a story, a memory from my early days in Dracut, Mass. When I was growing up, high-speed aircraft often broke the sound barrier even over residential areas. The enormous boom results from a massive shock wave caused by the aircraft moving faster than the speed of sound. This is…
Read More »Between the Covers By Leo Racicot The Golden Age of magazines was still going strong when I was a kid. Popular publications like LIFE and LOOK Magazines still held their popularity with readers. As someone who’d been weaned from a young age on movies and movie-going, thanks to my father’s…
Read More »A weekly report on things I’ve read, heard and seen since last Wednesday. Article: “Inside Trump’s Great American State Fair” by Jim Puzzanghera, et al, Boston Globe, June 29, 2026. The Great American State Fair is a 16-day event on the National Mall in Washington, DC that runs from June…
Read More »A Bigger Splash in a Bigger Heat (1) By Louise Peloquin After an unusually early record-breaking heatwave at the end of May, June 15th temperatures started rising past the three-digit mark to top 106 in Paris on the 24th making the City of Lights the hottest spot on the planet.…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Four hundred thousand people attended the July Fourth Bicentennial Boston Pops Esplanade Concert in 1976. I was one of them. It was a gorgeous summer night, a peaceful crowd enjoying the music and spirit of post-Watergate comity. A…
Read More »The Lowell City Council met on June 30, 2026. Today I’ll comment on several issues they covered. A joint motion by Mayor Erik Gitschier and Councilors Corey Robinson and Sean McDonough to “place the Lowell Fire Chief position back into civil service prior to filling this anticipated vacancy” was discussed…
Read More »David Daniel, a longtime contributor to this blog, passed away on May 5, 2026, from pulmonary fibrosis. Raised in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Dave was a prolific writer with more than ten novels, more than 200 short stories, and countless essays, reviews and columns. Dave’s obituary recounts more of the fascinating life…
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