Thanks to Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! on Facebook and the blog Reader’s Almanac of the Library of America for this film clip and commentary about Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg. The footage is from November 1975 in Edson Cemetery in Lowell, when Bob Dylan was in the city with…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. It was vintage Barney Frank at last Friday’s meeting of the New England Council. He was savagely funny, insightful, acerbic and provocative. This was particularly true when he discussed the federal deficit and lifting the debt ceiling, the…
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UMass Lowell today announced a donation valued at $5 million from alumni Robert and Donna Manning. A new home for the university’s College of Management will be named the Robert Manning School of Business. Read the Boston Herald report here, and get the Herald if you want to read…
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There’s nothing that will match Jack Kerouac bobble head night at the Lowell Spinners, but a mailing I received yesterday with this year’s special event schedule discloses some interesting choices: Carl Yastrzemski (June 18) Rich Gedman (June 27) Bobby Doerr (July 1) Terry Francona (July 20) Ryan Kalish (July 25)…
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One hundred fifty years ago today, just two days after taking command of Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, Lowell’s Ben Butler made a decision that changed history. Sometime during the night of the 23-24 of May, three slaves who had been digging gun positions for the Confederate forces besieging Fort…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Mark Twain knew it to be true. The underlying message is no less true today, despite how communications technology has changed the nature of the media.…
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I, too, wondered at the dearth of commentary about Speaker Boehner’s commencement speech given at Catholic University and especially the letter written by a group of Catholic academics, including some leading members of the Catholic University faculty. I find Washington Post columist E. J. Dionne’s recent column interesting as he…
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“THE PORCH is to eastern Massachusetts what Steel Magnolias is to northwest Louisiana. A deceptively tender play that is also very funny. It’s an inviting place to set a while and will leave you feeling right neighborly.” Broadway World Tickets are moving fast for the four performances of Jack Neary’s…
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On this day – May 23, 1900 – Sergeant William Harvey Carney was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery on July 18, 1863. He fought for the Union cause as a member of the fabled 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. Recruited from freed slaves – it was the…
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On this date 150 years ago, Lowell’s Benjamin Butler took command of Fort Monroe, a massive installation at the southern tip of Hampton, Virginia that remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War. Very early in his tenure at Fort Monroe, Butler was confronted with the novel problem of what…
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