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Boarding School Blues: Chapter 30 By Louise Peloquin Ch. 30: The Chapel The boarders, all itching to hear about one another’s Thanksgiving break, were dispatched to the chapel at 4:30 that Sunday afternoon. The two-by-two march to the Almighty’s SFA residence was less than orderly but the girls knew that…
Read More »Contemporary readers might be surprised to learn that of the 47 individuals who have served as President of the United States, at least 15 of them have visited Lowell. Below is my list of the names and dates of these visits. If anyone knows of anymore, please let us know…
Read More »From the Pollard Memorial Library’s “Library History” webpage: Lowell’s public library was founded on May 20, 1844 by an enactment of the Lowell City Council. At the time, the idea of “free” public libraries supported by solely by municipalities was a relatively new one, but the leaders of Lowell clearly…
Read More »The entry below is bering cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Promise by Damon Galgut won the 2021 Booker Prize. A family saga set in South Africa, it focuses on the Swart family from 1986 to 2018, mirroring the country’s emergence from apartheid to the uncertain promise of the present. …
Read More »Living Madly – Women’s Work By Emilie-Noelle Provost My maternal grandmother had a sewing room in her house that she jokingly referred to as her “sweatshop.” Once a spare bedroom, the space was home to her two sewing machines and hundreds of yards of fabric of all types and colors. Throughout…
Read More »“Little child won’t you dance with me” Lennon-McCartney, 1963 By Louise Peloquin The Ed Sullivan Show was a family entertainment staple. Across the narrow hall from the kitchen, my parents would settle into their armchairs and my brother and I would sit crossed-legged on the floor while our two younger…
Read More »If Lennon Were Here By David Daniel He’d be a different guy. Older, face bonier, nose sharp as a box-cutter, hair like thin grass. He’d be wiry and spry, from yoga and walking everywhere (like Hemingway and Kerouac, he was never one to drive). And he would still need glasses.…
Read More »Creamer’s Field Wildlife Refuge by Tom Sexton Beyond the wide fields planted with barley for the cranes, a speck of boreal forest with nature trails, wild strawberries, pale iris, seasonal marsh crossed by boardwalks now jumbled like pick-up sticks thrown down by a witless hand. The permafrost is melting.…
Read More »Four stories about Cambodian Americans of Lowell have been prominently featured in the Boston Globe in recent weeks: A changing of the guard in Lowell as a diverse leadership takes office (Dec 26, 2021) Lowell city councilor is nation’s first Cambodian American mayor (Jan 4, 2022) I said to myself,…
Read More »Patrick Kavanagh: a Reader’s Experience For generations of Irish readers—for this one certainly—the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh is inextricably associated with Soundings, the anthology of prescribed poetry for the Leaving Certificate English curriculum that was a staple of Irish secondary education from the end of the 1960s until the mid-1990s.…
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