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Spaces for Wise Phrases – (PIP #101) By Louise Peloquin L’Etoile – March 1, 1926 __________ The L’Etoile print shop on 24-26 Prince Street had no modern technology to set up newspaper layout. Innovative ways to “meubler l’espace” (furnish the spaces) had to be found as we saw in…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Heart the Lover by Lily King shares some themes with What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, the book I reviewed two days ago. They’re both set against the backdrop of academia. King focuses on four young people in college, their spirit…
Read More »Because the regularly scheduled Lowell City Council meeting this week fell on St. Patrick’s Day, the council canceled its meeting, so instead of writing about local politics, today I’ll share an essay I wrote as part of Lowell’s bicentennial observance. However, instead of the founding of the mills and the…
Read More »Noon on a Monday a Week into War By Bill O’Connell The Carolina wren sings his heart out. Juncos in the cedar respond. A pair of returning hawks circle beneath Air Force jet trails — C-5 transports lifting arms to Bahrain, Israel. On the deck in March sun I dig…
Read More »Born in Lowell, poet Matt W. Miller has published several award-winning collections of poetry. He lives with his family in southern New Hampshire. The prestigious journal Tupelo Quarterly features new work by Matt in the current issue. Here’s the link to the page (note the small arrows to advance to…
Read More »Living Madly: What Time is It? By Emilie-Noelle Provost Contrary to popular belief, Daylight Savings Time was not created by, or to help, farmers. In fact, when Daylight Savings Time was first adopted in the United States, farmers were among its most vocal opponents. After all, the last thing farmers,…
Read More »Seen & Heard: Vol. 11 Television: The Oscars telecast – Sunday night was the Academy Awards show on ABC. I watched it for an hour before moving on with my night (I go to bed early and like to read before that). What I saw was enjoyable. The host, Conan…
Read More »This prose poem appears in my book What Is the City? (2006), which is out of print but sometimes available in used condition on internet sites. Jackie Brady was a champion boxer in Lowell, Mass., in the 1960s. The local scene from the 1980s described here predates the easing of…
Read More »The agenda item that dominated the Tuesday, March 10, 2026, Lowell City Council meeting was a public hearing and vote to amend the city’s Zoning Code to impose a one-year ban on new or expanded data centers in the city. After much public comment and discussion among councilors, the new…
Read More »Mother at the Stove By Leo Racicot “Memories hold the key not to the past but to the future.” Corrie Ten Boom Our mother wasn’t Julia Child but she was no slouch at the stove either, and when she, at a young age, found herself a widow and bereft, she,…
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