Congratulations to the recipients (see image above for names) of this year’s awards for exemplary work in historic preservation and cultural heritage conservation, including this blog’s executive editor, Dick Howe Jr. Well over 100 people attended the reception and ceremony for the honorees. This event has become one of the…
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Gary Snyder portrait (web photo courtesy of seapoetry.wordpress) One of my early poetry heroes was Gary Snyder, who turned 83 this month. Not only was I drawn to Snyder’s concise and precise back-country poems of the 1960s and ’70s, but I was also in tune to his thoughts about repairing…
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Beautiful weather is forecast for this coming weekend, so please consider coming on a tour of Lowell Cemetery. The tours begin this Friday at 1pm and this Saturday at 10am. Both tours begin at the cemetery’s Lawrence Street entrance and last about 90 minutes. The tours are free and no…
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Earlier this week there was a wave of stories in the mainstream media announcing that the foreclosure crisis in Massachusetts had ended. That came as news to me. As I wrote last week in the aftermath of my speech at the annual meeting of the Lowell Housing Partnership, the real…
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Flashboard: “a board or boarding that is placed along the top of a dam to increase its height and capacity. Also called stop log, stop plank” Photo and caption by Tony Sampas.
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Today’s Globe story that a deal is near for developer John Rosenthal’s Fenway Center is good news for all concerned. The idea that this project would have a 99-year lease on air rights over the Turnpike between Beacon Street and Brookline…
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[youtube]OSjbdufL828[/youtube] I finally got a chance to see the 2012 movie version of Les Miserables starring Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. I’d seen the stage version of the musical several times and always enjoyed it so I was curious how it would translate to the movie screen. Very…
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[youtube]_FMvNrkwmi0[/youtube] The above video from the US Navy’s YouTube channel shows the first-ever launch of an unmanned drone from the deck of an aircraft carrier using the same steam catapult that thrusts traditional Naval aircraft into the sky. This aircraft, the X-47B, looks huge for a drone. Just compare it…
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More than 30 earnest readers of Jack Kerouac books gathered tonight upstairs at The Old Court Irish pub at Middle and Central streets to listen to a reading of excerpts (start to end) of Kerouac’s novel “Visions of Gerard.” The story is a bleak and sweetly candid remembrance of his…
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