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Fifty years ago yesterday Harper Lee published To Kill A Mockingbird. The book and subsequent movie hold a unique memory for me, which I will explain later. Harper Lee was born and raised in Alabama during a time of extreme, racial discrimination in the United States. Strangely, she only published…
Read More »Yesterday at noon I was toiling away in the heat mowing my lawn just so I’d be done in time to watch the final game of the World Cup. Weeks ago, I think I caught a few minutes of the US v England game but my interest quickly waned. But…
Read More »Really. Op-ed columnist Ross Douthat says the US needs a better targeted class fight that should pit “savers v. speculators, outsiders v. insiders, the industrious middle class v. the reckless, unproductive rich.” Read Douthat here, and consider subscribing to the NTY if you appreciate the writing.
Read More »Following is the second section of my poem “Colorado,” which I introduced yesterday. The Blood of Christ or Sangre de Cristo Mountains are in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The range is either the beginning of the Rocky Mountains on the way north or the last stretch of the Rockies heading south.…
Read More »In 1868, Lowell resident Charles Cowley wrote the “Illustrated History of Lowell”, a book filled with fascinating facts about our city. Here’s my fifth weekly compilation of “tweeting” from Cowley’s book: July 3 – Chelmsford always gave tax breaks & land grants to millers, mechanics & traders so they would…
Read More »“Arrangement in Gray: A (self) Portrait of the Painter” James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1872) Just the other day I noted a Lowell connection in the current issue of Yankee magazine – a quote from James A. M. Whistler. And now we note that on this day – July 11, 1834 –…
Read More »This being July, I’m offering section 1 of a three-part poem titled “Colorado,” which I wrote in pieces during the early 1980s, when I spent a fair amount of time out west. I later combined the individual poems because together they made a stronger composition.—PM Colorado 1. Heat flashes over the High…
Read More »Earlier in this decade I slid into the “give gay couples all the legal rights of marriage, just don’t call it marriage” trap, but when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that a ban on same sex marriage violated the state Constitution (Goodrich v Dept of Public Health – 2003),…
Read More »Well, it really must have been something to be at Radio City Music Hall the other night when Ringo Starr and friends celebrated his 70th birthday in NYC. The evening ended with a massive sing-along on “With a Little Help From My Friends” and then came the extra candle on…
Read More »NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert weighs in today with thoughts about the role of organized labor in the national conversation, when the rich-poor gap keeps widening. Read him here, and consider subscribing to the NYT if you appreciate the writing.
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