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David Daniel reminds us that it’s time for baseball with these memories from local sandlots: Triple Play By David Daniel Chatter Surround sound. C’um baby C’um baby No batter No batter On the mound it reaches you from behind, an infield arc of voices. Chuck hard, baby, chuck hard From…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips is a first novel set in the isolated Russian peninsular community of KamChatka, after the demise of the Soviet Union. It’s hard-scrabble living even in its principal city of Petropavlovsk. The story grabs…
Read More »Yesterday I wrote a profile of Gustavus Fox, a Lowell resident who served as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War. In composing that article, I came across a letter from Montgomery Blair to Fox dated January 31, 1861. Blair, who Lincoln would appoint to his cabinet…
Read More »Gustavus Vasa Fox (1821-1883) was born and raised in Massachusetts and spent much of his life in Lowell. He was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and served as an officer in the Navy from 1841 to 1856. After his resignation from the service, he returned to Massachusetts…
Read More »Trasna is pleased to present a work of historical fiction, ‘Hope against Hope’ by Sheena Wilkinson. This is the third outstanding work of historical fiction by the multi-award-winning Sheena Wilkinson. It follows the fantastically successful ‘Star by Star’, which won the Children’s Books Ireland Honour Award for Fiction in 2018…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Will in the World : How Shakespeare became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt This impeccably researched book has been called one of the best books ever about William Shakespeare. I haven’t read them all, or even most. Still, I can…
Read More »One more in my series in the spirit of “Lowell Walks” from the days when I hit the trail each weekend, usually in the morning. Lotta water under the canal bridge since 2009. — PM Scenes From an Urban Redevelopment Zone by Paul Marion Garcia-Brogan’s (web photo courtesy of mami-eggroll.com)…
Read More »Boarding School Blues By Louise Peloquin Chapter 11: Cinephiles The atmosphere during lunch was as icy as the showers. On the menu that day was French-Canadian cottage pie called “Pâté chinois” (Chinese Pâté). Blanche had never understood what was “Chinese” about a layer of ground beef topped with kernel corn…
Read More »The recent death of Academy Award winning and Lowell-born actor Olympia Dukakis at age 89 got me thinking about Lowell’s contributions to American movies and television. There are many. Dukakis, the cousin of former Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis, was born in Lowell in 1931. Her parents, Constantine and Alexandra (Christos)…
Read More »We are pleased to present here the opening scenes from a new historical novel by writer Tom Sigafoos. “The Cursing Stone” is set on Tory Island, off the coast of County Donegal in northwest Ireland. The year is 1884 and the islanders are threatened with mass evictions. What are they…
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