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Erin McKean tells us in today’s Boston Globe “The Word” that spelling bees are no longer just the realm of students in grammar school. You remember those days. Every school – both public and private – in the Greater-Lowell area had a spelling bee that sent the winner to a…
Read More »Jacquelyn Malone’s new book of poems, “All Waters Run to Lethe,” will be released at at book party on Sunday, July 17, at 2 p.m., at 153 Sanders Ave. in Lowell. The publisher is Finishing Line Press of Kentucky. Jackie’s work has appeared in many literary journals, including Poetry Magazine, Ploughshares,…
Read More »Who knew? There’s a sustainability trap in the cable TV box. Front page report in NYTimes today about the energy-sucking cable TV boxes and allied home entertainment gadgets that are not designed with “green” in mind at all “because nobody asked us to use less [energy],” according to one “box…
Read More »Mass Moments, the electronic almanac of Massachusetts history, reminded us that yesterday was the 336th anniversary of the start of King Philip’s War which, when measured by the percentage of population killed, was the deadliest war in the history of North America. Although the fighting broke out in Plymouth, it…
Read More »Frequent contributor Jim Peters shares his thoughts with us . . . I promise to have an article about Native Americans in this area in the next installment. I have been doing quite a bit of thinking lately, mostly about my father who is wrestling with cancer, mesothilioma, if I…
Read More »Last night, when New York became the sixth state in America to legalize same-sex marriage, it was an event of great historic import, but from this Massachusetts perch, it was a bit anti-climatic. Contrary to all the predictions of Western Civilization as we knew it collapsing back in 2004 when…
Read More »The Globe’s writers have stepped up their game for the crime saga unfolding in real time in Boston. In today’s paper, commentators James Carroll and Kevin Cullen have their say about the James Whitey Bulger horror show. Carroll has a masterful essay that puts the crime story in perspective, both…
Read More »In today’s NYTimes, opinion writer Charles Blow thinks about poverty. Read his column here, and get the NYT if you want more. I’ve never heard of unemployed people voting to limit how many weeks they’ll be eligible for unemployment checks or people without medical insurance voting to deny themselves access…
Read More »To celebrate St. Jean-Baptiste Day in 1880, the Lieutenant Governor of Québec, Théodore Robitaille, commissioned Calixa Lavallée to compose O Canada to a patriotic poem by Adolphe-Basile Routhier. Born in Quebec – in 1857, Lavallée moved to the U.S. and lived in Rhode Island where he enlisted in the 4th…
Read More »In 1996-97, there was a lot of activity in Lowell around a concept called “Lowell: The Flowering City.” At the Gorham Street/Back Central branch of Enterprise Bank you can see a tall sign with the logo from the project, a gesture meant to help shift the nickname of the city…
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