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The Massachusetts Poetry Festival came to Lowell in 2008 and again in 2009. It was a great success but a venture of that scale requires prodigious money and effort, so after two years a break was needed and the Festival moved on to Salem where it has found a long…
Read More »Although I was born in Lowell (est. 1826), in the Centralville section, I grew up in Dracut (est. 1701) from the age of two through my college years. My neighborhood’s colonial-era name was New Boston Village, but that wasn’t used when I was there. We didn’t have a name for…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Somewhere Robert Bork is chortling. In 1987, his honest articulation of his extremist originalist philosophy was deemed so frighteningly outrageous that, despite his excellent paper qualifications, he was deemed unfit to serve on the United States Supreme Court.…
Read More »The New Old New England Halloween Blues by Dave Robinson Their quiet root hairs floss the rocky soil, these paper birches slouching in brownfield sun. Industrial dyes reduce to dregs of lead and mercury to be swept up to sway in pent-up buds. An unofficial flag of urban areas—the shredded,…
Read More »Today, we have two posts about recent Nobel Prize-recipient Louise Glück of Cambridge, Mass., who won the award in literature for her poetry. There has been a flurry of reporting about her success by media outlets in Boston, the nation, and the world. We’ve got a more personal angle. I…
Read More »The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Donald Trump apparently listened to his advisers not to be the rabid beast he was in the previous debate. This may have firmed up some Trump voters who had been wavering. But the fact that he was reined…
Read More »Throughout October, Trasna will focus on the Celtic festival of Samhain, better known to Americans as Halloween. The holiday originated in Ireland and celebrates that time of year when the veil between this world and the next grows thin, and life seems more mysterious. In the medieval village of Tulsk, in County Roscommon is…
Read More »Geo’s Manifesto Reduce consumption of fossil fuels as much as possible; drive e-car or no car (if possible); solar panels; rain harvest system; reduce lawn size (plant wildflowers instead, good for birds & bees). Eat vegetable-based protein diet; stop eating meat, uses 10X more water and soil than veggies per…
Read More »Everybody Goes Home in October By David Daniel In Jack Kerouac’s classic novel, On the Road, his protagonist, setting off on yet another road journey, heading back to the East Coast this time, tells us, “The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.”…
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