The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. If President Obama loses his reelection bid in 2012, it may be because he has disappointed so many who had such high hopes for him in 2008. This surely is not true for a relative handful of individuals,…
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The Doors played the Commodore Ballroom in Lowell on August 15, 1967. Chris Simondet of The Doors site on Facebook provided that information to me. He said the show is a “phantom show” in The Doors chronology of performances and that nobody knows or remembers much about it other than…
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Those of us who grew up watching The Rat Patrol harbor a latent interest in desert warfare of World War Two. While The Rat Patrol was entertaining TV, it also took some historical liberties. The series was loosely based on the British Army’s Long Range Desert Group, an elite unit…
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The “Week in Review” section of this Sunday’s New York Times reported that only “only 12% of a representative sample of the nation’s high school seniors demonstrated proficiency in the subject last year” according to recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test results. While it’s critically important that we improve…
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It’s Sustainability Week in Lowell, and although we don’t live on the coast in Lowell our state is a coastal state—and everything is connected even if you live in Kansas. There’s a new report from international scientists sounding the alarm about threats to ocean life and possible severe consequences if conditions…
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This year ten schools from across the Commonwealth have been rated a spot in Newsweek’s top 500 best high schools: Boston Latin (63), Hopkinton (95); Belmont (110); Mystic Valley Regional Charter, Malden (116); Westwood (134); Manchester/Essex Regional (138); Longmeadow (241); Sturgis Charter, Hyannis (301); Tahanto Regional, Boylston (449); Sandwich (484)…
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In his most recent column for the Washington Post, E. J. Dionne posits that the wide-spread state laws ostensibly enacted to combat voter fraud are really an attack on the right to vote. Claiming that study after study found no major voter fraud problems, Dionne sees that : “Their greatest…
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The Acre in the foreground. Smokestacks and the Eliot Church steeple in the background. —by Tony Sampas
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In advance of the upcoming release of “The Fighter” on DVD in the United Kingdom, two English tabloids sent reporters to Lowell about a month ago to write about the city that was central to the film’s story and production. Deb Belanger of the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitor’s…
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Poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder returned to his alma mater Reed College for the school’s centennial. He was profiled recently by Jeff Baker of The Oregonian newspaper for oregonlive.com. Snyder was one of my poet-heroes when I started out on the writing trail. He’s 81 years old and still traveling…
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