On Friday, June 10, 2022, at 1 p.m., the Pollard Memorial Library will host a screening of the new film, Jack Kerouac’s Road, followed by an interview with the film’s director, Herménégilde Chiasson, a French-Canadian director, playwright, and journalist who is also the former Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick. Part documentary,…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Two weeks ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a California law that blocked anyone younger than 21 from buying a semiautomatic rifle. In a 2-to-1 decision, two Trump-appointed judges waxed poetic about the importance…
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Boarding School Blues: Chapter 37 By Louise Peloquin Never too many, never too much Sister Claudette wasn’t expecting anyone that evening in the two-hundred-square-foot library adjacent to study hall. The elfin nun in her seventies was bent over a thick black tome and didn’t hear Blanche’s footsteps. Her eyes peered…
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In the middle of St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Lowell, just to the left of the chapel, sits a large rectangular piece of granite inscribed in memory of the graduates of Keith Academy who died while serving in the military during World War II. Located in the former Middlesex County jail…
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William Thomas Callery was born on August 16, 1945, in Lowell. His parents, Francis A. Callery and Mary T. Callery, eventually moved the family to 134 Parker Street which was just a few blocks from Tyler Park. William had four siblings: brothers Francis T. and John J. and sisters Sheila…
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I delivered the following remarks in May 2019 at the Greater Lowell Veterans Council Memorial Day service at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. For the past several years on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, we’ve made frequent mention of World War I in recognition of the centennial observance of that conflict.…
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“Operation Duke” – 1966 in Vietnam By Dean Contover It was 3:00 a.m. in Qui Nhon, Vietnam when we were awakened by the staff sergeant to go to the mess hall for breakfast and to be briefed. One hundred and eighty-seven engineers were hand-picked for this operation which was to…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. My dad was one of the first generation of type 1 diabetics to survive because insulin was available. We worried about him as over the years he developed one after another of the complications of this potentially deadly…
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Madame la Première Ministre By Louise Peloquin On May 16th, Emmanuel Macron named Élisabeth Borne Prime Minister. In 1991, under François Mitterrand, Édith Cresson was the first woman to hold the job. The Élysée Palace put out a late afternoon communiqué: “this is the choice of competence at the service…
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Redemption By Babz Clough The Massachusetts Correctional Institute (MCI) at Norfolk was built by the inmates in the 1920s as a community-based prison in what was then rural Massachusetts. The prisoners learned how to lay bricks, how to weld, and how to plumb the buildings. They planted the gardens and…
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