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Here’s an essay from Henri Marchand from just-before the 2008 Presidential Election. It was done for the UMass Lowell “Sunrise” radio program. It Could Be Worse by Henri Marchand A Sunrise Essay from Monday, November 3, 2008 I wrote the following essay in 2008 for the Sunrise radio program as…
Read More »Anxiety about the outcome of Tuesday’s Presidential Election is high for everyone. At such a time, history can often provide some context. Here are the results of each Presidential Election since 1972: 1972 – Richard M. Nixon. Nationally, Republican incumbent Richard M. Nixon (520 electoral votes/47,168,710 votes) defeated Democrat George…
Read More »A friend from Western Massachusetts with access to outstanding scenery shared a series of photos that capture the changing of the colors in the Berkshires this fall.
Read More »Throughout October, Trasna will focus on the Celtic festival of Samhain, better known to Americans as Halloween. The holiday originated in Ireland and celebrates that time of year when the veil between this world and the next grows thin, and life seems more mysterious. This week we feature two poems by Bernie Condon, as…
Read More »When I saw some “Why can’t we get guys like that?” comments on my Twitter feed when I awoke yesterday morning, I assumed it was Pats’ fans talking about Tom Brady. But no, it was baseball fans tweeting about former Lowell Spinner Mookie Betts who had led his Los Angeles…
Read More »The Massachusetts Poetry Festival came to Lowell in 2008 and again in 2009. It was a great success but a venture of that scale requires prodigious money and effort, so after two years a break was needed and the Festival moved on to Salem where it has found a long…
Read More »Although I was born in Lowell (est. 1826), in the Centralville section, I grew up in Dracut (est. 1701) from the age of two through my college years. My neighborhood’s colonial-era name was New Boston Village, but that wasn’t used when I was there. We didn’t have a name for…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Somewhere Robert Bork is chortling. In 1987, his honest articulation of his extremist originalist philosophy was deemed so frighteningly outrageous that, despite his excellent paper qualifications, he was deemed unfit to serve on the United States Supreme Court.…
Read More »The New Old New England Halloween Blues by Dave Robinson Their quiet root hairs floss the rocky soil, these paper birches slouching in brownfield sun. Industrial dyes reduce to dregs of lead and mercury to be swept up to sway in pent-up buds. An unofficial flag of urban areas—the shredded,…
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