Life is all about contingencies. In this story, legendary baseball writer Chaz Scoggins explains how a former major league player, frustrated in his effort to purchase the professional baseball team in Lowell, settled into a scouting job with the Red Sox and helped bring Babe Ruth to Boston. Ruth and…
Read More »
Still Kickin’ Dust By David Daniel One dark night in my junior year I sat up in my bed and declared, “Since coming to college I’ve lost all interest in baseball whatsoever.” This was reported to me next morning by my roommate. I had no recollection of the incident.…
Read More »
The arrival of summer doesn’t seem the same without baseball. I confess to not being a regular watcher but I do love to read about the sport. From Casey at the Bat to Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, baseball stories have long had a special place on my bookshelf. To…
Read More »
A Review of John Boyle O’Reilly: The Apprentice from Drogheda by Kevin Gallagher (Red Fox Press, 2020). $26 USD/22 Eu By Paul Marion Drawn back from history’s mist in the form of a splendid rose-colored chapbook made in Ireland, John Boyle O’Reilly is a substantial Boston writer who needs a…
Read More »
This month Trasna is featuring writers participating in Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme. Every year, 22 emerging writers are selected for the program in the areas of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, children’s/YA fiction, and poetry. Each writer is paired with a mentor. Featured this week is poet Enda Wyley, an accomplished Irish literary figure,…
Read More »
Five years ago Fred Faust contributed a series of blog posts about people in Greater Lowell who have taken initiative and achieved special things. In the following post which first appeared here on October 5, 2015, Fred wrote about Francey Slater and Lydia Sisson, the founders of Mill City Grows.…
Read More »
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. When I found myself agreeing with President Trump that the media were making too much of his super-cautious walking down a ramp at West Point, I knew I needed a break from media coverage. Yes, he might well…
Read More »
Linda Hoffman on her blog Apples, Art and Spirit, has a new post on an outdoor art show now on display in Brookline, Massachusetts. Here’s what Linda wrote: For those of you who live in the Greater Boston area, here’s something wonderful to see! See Change is Studio Without Walls’…
Read More »
North & South Ireland: Before Good Friday & The Celtic Tiger by James Higgins with an Introduction by Stephen O’Connor, 78 pages, $25 (Loom Press, 2020). A review by Mike McCormick James Higgins’ handsome new book of black-and-white photography captures the Emerald Isle that parents and grandparents of Irish-American baby…
Read More »
Historian Paul Hudon is the author The Valley & Its Peoples: An Illustrated History of the Lower Merrimack and a collection of poems, All in Good Time. A former college professor and museum curator, he lives in Lowell. For nine weeks he has been sending his diary entries to the…
Read More »