Extending the vote to 17 year olds

I’m pleased that City Councilor Patrick Murphy’s motion to extend the vote in municipal elections passed last night. Hopefully our legislators will guide the resulting bill through the home rule process on Beacon Hill until it becomes law. To let it languish there would just fuel the same type of…

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Pat Hughes: “A Lowell Connection”

Categorize this one under the heading “there always seems to be a Lowell connection”… Recently Fallon Community Health has been running a TV Advertisement featuring its CEO, Pat Hughes. When I first saw the Ad I wondered if this Pat Hughes was the same one I remembered as a kid…

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Michalopoulos Square

MICHALOPOULOS SQUARE, Corner of Suffolk and Market Streets: “Private Athanasios C. Michalopoulos Born 1895 Killed in Action France July 1918 He Gave His Life To Preserve Liberty and Freedom” Two of our contributors, Tony Sampas and Eileen Loucraft unintentionally but serendipitously collaborate today to help us remember Private Athanasios C.…

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‘Cut from American Cloth’ (1)

For the next few days I will publish sections of an essay about Lowell. The essay in a slightly different form first appeared in “The Offering,” the literary magazine of UMass Lowell, in 2007.—PM .  Cut from American Cloth      In the middle of the nineteenth century, workers in the red-brick…

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“A Cemetery Walk” by Steve O’Connor

Writer and blog reader Steve O’Connor shares with us an essay for Veterans Day that was originally written for the UML Sunrise program: My daughter plays softball for the Lowell Mariners in the Oliveira League. Her home field is Ventura, tucked in the corner of Lowell at the back of…

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