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In Lowell, there’s a debate about the future of the Pawtucket Falls Dam. There’s another debate about allowing alcohol to be served at a business adjacent to a temple. Behind the discussion are people’s feelings about the power of place, the meaning of certain special places. The concept of place is all…
Read More »[youtube]WiQ9bd3t-fI[/youtube] I don’t play or follow golf, but all the stories about the controversial ending to yesterday’s PGA Championship caught my attention. A golfer named Dustin Johnson was leading by one stroke on one of the final holes. All he had to do was shoot par and he would win…
Read More »Here’s the eighth installment of my Twitter “tweets” of Charles Cowley’s “Illustrated History of Lowell.” We’ve almost reached the city’s incorporation in 1826 (as a town). Much happened here before Lowell even existed. In 1819 Moses Hale + Oliver Whipple built a (gun) powder mill on Concord River in Lowell…
Read More »To get from the feature stories in the Sunday Globe “Ideas” section to the editorial page, you have to flip through a couple of pages of want ads. One bearing the UMass Lowell logo caught my eye. Here’s the relevant part: “In order to reduce reliance on part-time instructors, UMass…
Read More »Read this Toronto Star report about this month’s celebration of The Beatles in their hometown of Liverpool, England. The events include a special version of the annual Mathew Street Music Festival (Aug. 29-30), which is billed as “Europe’s largest free music festival.” That description should sound familiar to Lowell Folk Festival people,…
Read More »Back in June at the Democratic State Convention at Worcester’s DCU Center, the speech by Vicki Kennedy during the tribute to her late husband, Senator Ted Kennedy, was the highlight of the convention, even eclipsing Governor Patrick’s very good nomination acceptance speech. At the time I remember thinking “is this…
Read More »Another in my series on recent Massachusetts state elections. For other year’s results, check out our Elections page. 1992 was a presidential election year. The Bill Clinton-Al Gore ticket defeated George Bush and Dan Quayle nationally, in Massachusetts (1,318,662 to 805,049), and in Lowell (14,492 to 12,653). This election was…
Read More »Support local businesses. Can I say this more plainly in the lingering Great Recession? I perambulated the immediate neighborhood late this afternoon, from the JAM district to the edge of Back Central and back to the South Common Historic District. I’d been meaning for a while to go to the Brazilian “bakery…
Read More »(Web photo courtesy of Grand Rapids Press) This isn’t a photo from last night’s show at Boarding House Park (The Lowell Summer Music Series), but it will help anyone who missed the so-far show of the year picture what the stage looked like. At one point, Lyle had 15 musicians…
Read More »We sometimes forget that the Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region with deep historical roots. The flow of the mighty Merrimack River has been a unifying force for the culture, heritage and livelihood of its residents since time of the Pentacook tribes through the Industrial Revolution to this modern era of highway,…
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