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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.
Read More »Mass Moments – an electronic almanac of Massachusetts history- reminds us today that: …in 1968, four men were sentenced to federal prison for counseling young men to refuse military service. Dubbed the Boston Five, the defendants included famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock and Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin. They had…
Read More »Picking up on Tony’s post about Hemingway, I want to add a Kerouac thread to the discussion. Hemingway’s stories influenced Kerouac’s early work. In early 1942, 19-year-old Jack Kerouac was writing sports articles for the Lowell Sun and at the same time conceiving what he pictured as a trilogy of…
Read More »Locavore Alert! The Annual Lowell Farmers’ Market sponsored by Community Teamwork opens today July 9th at JFK Plaza next to the City Hall with operating hours from 2:00 to 6:00pm. The market will be open on Fridays from today though October 22nd. Check my Farmer’s Market post from last month…
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