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February 18, 2021 – (above photo from NASA website) – Members of the Perseverance Mars Rover team watch in mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the first images arrive moments after the spacecraft successfully touched down on Mars, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is…
Read More »The 2021 Lowell City Election will be the first under the new hybrid election organization that features a mix of at-large and district councilors. This past week, the City posted an announcement that the previously released district map will be used in this year’s election and will not be adjusted…
Read More »In recognition of Black History Month, this week Trasna features an excerpt from a new publication by Joann Malone, Awake to Racism. Malone, an Irish-American, shares her experiences as a Catholic nun in Alabama in the 1960s. There, while teaching, she begins a lifelong involvement in the Civil Rights movement.…
Read More »Below is a narrative account of the 1987 City Election and related events that occurred during that two-year term. To see the order of finish and vote totals of the candidates, visit our 1987 City Election page. On November 3, 1987, voters reelected incumbents Richard Howe, Brian Martin, Robert Kennedy…
Read More »1989 Lowell English-Only Referendum By Charles Gargiulo In 1989, the “English-Only” Referendum was an initiative put on the ballot and championed by George Kouloheras to stoke the same white nativist populism we see fueling Trumpism today. It was in large response to the political gains made by the city’s Latino…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The most bipartisan impeachment in our nation’s history ended up ten brave enough Republicans short of conviction. So we finished in a place that seemed certain from the outset. Still, a majority of the U.S. Senate voted to…
Read More »George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at his parents’ estate on the south bank of the Potomac River in northeast Virginia. Congress made the day a Federal holiday in 1879 and nearly one hundred years later in the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1971, Congress changed the name…
Read More »Friday’s Lowell Sun had a story by Emma Murphy (“Does pocketwatch put Lowellian at Lincoln’s death bed?”) about Jonathan Ladd, a Civil War soldier from Lowell who may have been present in the room where Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865. I’m quoted in the story saying I was…
Read More »“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’ I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes…
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