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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. First, an apology to Mitt Romney. Prior to the 2012 election, then-Presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared that Russia was our biggest geopolitical threat. During the campaign, Barack Obama blasted him for saying Russia rather than Al Qaeda. Obama mocked Romney…
Read More »In 1976, President Geral Ford officially proclaimed February to be Black History Month in the United States. The connection between Black History and February extends back to the early 20th century. As the country approached the 50th anniversary of the passage of the 13th Amendment and the Constitutional abolition of…
Read More »Irish poet Alexander Fhionnuisce’s writing deals with the intersection of technology, alienation, and meaning in modern life. He was awarded University College Cork’s Patricia Coughlan award for his writing in 2017. His work is included in the anthology Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell (Loom Press, 2020). On Invasions (February…
Read More »Paul Tsongas (photo courtesy of the Paul Tsongas Congressional Papers, UMass Lowell Libraries) With our eyes on TV coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine today, I was reminded of past fighting by Russians under the USSR banner at the time in the cities and hills of Afghanistan. The Soviets…
Read More »Lowell received its town charter in 1826 which means the city’s bicentennial is rapidly approaching, especially when you acknowledge that the founding of Lowell as an industrial center occurred several years before that. It just took the official town charter a couple of years to catch up. In honor of…
Read More »Peuo Tuy is a 1.5 generation Khmer-American spoken word poet and educator from Lowell, Massachusetts and New York, New York. Her poetry collection, Khmer Girl (2014), is inspired by the traumas of her life, including her family escaping the killing fields of their native Cambodia and enduring the inequities of…
Read More »Boarding School Blues: Chapter 30 By Louise Peloquin Ch. 30: The Chapel The boarders, all itching to hear about one another’s Thanksgiving break, were dispatched to the chapel at 4:30 that Sunday afternoon. The two-by-two march to the Almighty’s SFA residence was less than orderly but the girls knew that…
Read More »Contemporary readers might be surprised to learn that of the 47 individuals who have served as President of the United States, at least 15 of them have visited Lowell. Below is my list of the names and dates of these visits. If anyone knows of anymore, please let us know…
Read More »From the Pollard Memorial Library’s “Library History” webpage: Lowell’s public library was founded on May 20, 1844 by an enactment of the Lowell City Council. At the time, the idea of “free” public libraries supported by solely by municipalities was a relatively new one, but the leaders of Lowell clearly…
Read More »The entry below is bering cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Promise by Damon Galgut won the 2021 Booker Prize. A family saga set in South Africa, it focuses on the Swart family from 1986 to 2018, mirroring the country’s emergence from apartheid to the uncertain promise of the present. …
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