Across the United States June 14th is celebrated as Flag Day to honor the nation’s flag and reflect on the flag as a symbol of the nation’s ideals. Although Flag Day is a nationwide observance, it is not a nationally recognized legal public holiday. Some history: On June 14, 1777, the Continental…
In 1868, Lowell resident Charles Cowley wrote the “Illustrated History of Lowell”, a book filled with fascinating facts about our city. Earlier this week I began “tweeting” these facts on Twitter, one each day. Here’s a compilation of this week’s tweets: June 7 – My new project: a daily Tweet…
It’s been a while since I wrote about my Sunday walks. This morning I was back in Back Central or, as I like to call it, “the Garden District.” Every house, it seems like every house anyway, has something growing, from heavy-duty dark-red roses in front yards and flowers in…
John Whelan and Donna He’bert: The Irish-French Connection will perform Wednesday, June 23, at 7.30 pm, at Immaculate Conception School Hall, 218 East Merrimack Street, as part of Lowell’s Franco-American Week. The performance, honoring Lowell’s French-Canadian and Irish-American heritages, is sponsored by Lowell National Historical Park. All are invited for…
Don’t miss the most exciting book launching event of the season. Dave Daniel’s “Coffin Dust” and Steve O’Connor’s “Smokestack Lightning” will be in the spotlight on Friday, June 25, at 7 pm until whenever at the Old Court at the corner of Central and Middle streets in downtown Lowell. Most…
The entry below is cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. At 64 years old, an affluent and successful businessman and philanthropist, Steve Grossman could hardly be faulted if he wanted to play golf and winter in Palm Beach rather than subject himself to media scrutiny and today’s increasingly acerbic…
Those of us of a certain age remember Len Berman, who I erroneously thought was the older brother of ESPN’s Chris Berman, who was the main WBZ-TZ sportscaster from 1973 to 1978 when he moved to New York and the big time. Len Berman did nightly sports for more than…
This recent SUN story by Dennis Shaughnessey is about my uncle Tom, Thomas Brady. Somehow I missed it in the paper on Wednesday, but my brother mentioned it tonight, so I looked it up. We had a crowd of first cousins when I was growing up, and all the uncles…
A selection of the letters exchanged by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg between 1944 and 1963 has been published by Viking Penguin. Bill Morgan, long associated with Ginsberg, and David Stanford, who worked on Kerouac projects at Viking (he was my editor at Viking for “Atop an Underwood,” too), co-edited…