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My West Virginia and Jack Kerouac’s Lowell By Steve Edington This article originally appeared in the online journal WestVirginiaVille. When I graduated from Marshall University in 1967 my known world did not extend beyond southern West Virginia and southern Ohio. Beginning in my early teens, I would make a…
Read More »Budgets, Balances & Briefs – (PIP #67) By Louise Peloquin More money matters… L’ETOILE – October 16, 1924 THE BUREAU OF HYGIENE MUST ECONOMIZE ——- The city auditor’s quarterly report reveals the city’s financial position. ——- Yesterday, city auditor Daniel F. Martin gave…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The azaleas, daffodils and hyacinths are blooming; Passover and Easter celebrate rebirth. Spring blooms, however, are evanescent. We look for more lasting signs of hope, especially in the chaotic political world around us. Dare we see this as…
Read More »Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting led off with a motion by Councilor Erik Gitschier that the council send a letter to “our state delegation” expressing the council’s opposition to House Bill 2347, “An Act to Promote Yes in God’s Back Yard.” The bill’s goal is to promote more housing by…
Read More »Last Voyage of the Sholokhov By Jim Provencher She was a scow really, a defunct dinosaur of the sealanes, shipping out of Vladivostock supplying quick cash flow for the Mother Country when the West had won and things were slow. An odd mix, the motley crew and cheap-fare cruise customers,…
Read More »Robert Frost in Amesbury, Mass. (1897-1898). Who Knew? Well, somebody knew about this but I didn’t even though I’ve been in Amesbury for eight years. Plus, I’ve studied authors of the region since reading Thoreau’s “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” in the 1970s. How did I miss…
Read More »A Classical Education By Stephen O’Connor A woman who I suppose was trying to impress upon me the extent of her minimalism once told me that she could live a perfectly happy life without a television or radio, without coffee and dessert, without wine, and without music. That final bit…
Read More »Lowell First to Protest – (PIP #66) By Louise Peloquin Journalists all over the globe have gone into overdrive covering the latest economic roller coaster rides. 101 years ago, price wars and currency issues made the news. L’Etoile – July 15, 1924 A gasoline price war is suggested ——- …
Read More »This month is the 50th anniversary of the occupation of Phnom Penh by the brutal Khmer Rouge fighters in Cambodia. I was a junior at the University of Lowell in Massachusetts reading newspaper articles and watching TV reports as what we called the Vietnam War expanded in the region. None…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Safekeep, a debut novel by Yael van der Wouden, won the 2024 Booker Prize, and the award was well deserved. Set in the Netherlands in 1961, it focuses on Isabel, the only one of three siblings caring for the…
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