Thanks to reader Maxine Farcus for forwarding this great 1949 holiday-time photo showing Lowell’s first and longtime favorite “downtown” Chinese restaurant Chin Lee’s. The sign is at Kearney Square marking an earlier location. By the time it closed it was located on Merrimack Street upstairs on the 2nd floor adjacent to…
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In honor of today’s Inaugural Ceremony and our city’s new mayor, whoever that might turn out to be, here is a list of those councilors elected mayor since 1966 with the councilors who elected them listed in the order of finish in that year’s city election: 1966 – Monday, January…
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January is National Mentoring Month. I’m so thankful for those who mentored me… first it was the nuns – particularly Sister Mary of Charity, GNSH at the Immaculate (she was from Lowell – a Welch, I think) who saw my potential as a would-be teacher… then it was women professors at Lowell…
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There’s a group on Facebook called You Know You’re From Lowell When . . . and it currently has 5308 members who post regularly about life in Lowell in the not-to-distant past. This Saturday, I tossed out a relatively innocuous observation about the Lowell tradition of eating Chinese food on…
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On this day – January 2, 1960 – appearing before the press in Washington, DC in the Senate Caucus Room – Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts – announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Despite his youth and being seen by some as lacking experience in foreign affairs…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Check it out. My friend and colleague Tom Waseleski, editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, always prepares for New Year’s Day an aspirational list of headlines from which many of us could benefit. Here, with my own…
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Here is my own eclectic list of important things that happened in 2011. 1. The local political lineup changed considerably in 2011. Steve Panagiotakos, who was elected to the Lowell School Committee in 1989, the Massachusetts House in 1992, the State Senate in 1996 and had most recently served as…
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South Common Haiku Set . Red bow on blue door sunlit beyond the frost park on a new-year day. . —Paul Marion (c) 2012
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From the Tewkbury Patch and writer Katie Curley-Katzman – I borrowed this interesting chart comparing the unemployment rates in Merrimack Valley communities between November 2010 and November 2011 and between October and November 21011. While there is other data that can be considered, at least the comparison of these numbers from…
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At the end of each month at the registry of deeds, I compile that month’s document recording statistics and post them on the LowellDeeds blog with a comparison to the same month of the preceding year. Because this is December, I was also able to run the stats for the…
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