“Whatever you were,” and Other Poems by PETER SIRR
Throughout October, Trasna will focus on the Celtic festival of Samhain, known better 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. This week we feature Peter Sirr, a well-known poet, and…
Read More »Trump debate behavior an embarrassment to the country by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Last night’s despicable mud-wrestling, schoolyard bullying, name-calling event was neither Presidential nor a debate. Thank you, Donald. The President who violates all norms of behavior, tramples science and facts, lies about virtually everything, foments divisiveness, incites violence, savages…
Read More »‘I Remember Waiting’ by Joe Blair
Joe Blair of Iowa posted this lyrical prose on Facebook today. He allowed us to reprint it here. He’s got roots in Greater Lowell and is a past contributor to the Howe blog. Joe is the author of By the Iowa Sea: A Memoir (2012), which O, The Oprah Magazine…
Read More »Charles Bukowski: On the Beat Margins
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-American poet and writer who was a contemporary of Jack Kerouac but never a part of the Beat Generation writer scene. Still, Bukowski, who was known as the “Poet of Skid Row” and was called by Time magazine “the laureate of American lowlife” had a…
Read More »George Chigas on Foot
From his home hub in downtown Lowell, writer, scholar, and teacher George Chigas covers a lot of territory on foot. Like Henry Thoreau who “traveled a good deal in Concord,” George will send us occasional reports on his movements and what he sees, hears, and feels. Walking Home from Market…
Read More »New Essay by Susan April
Susan April sent us a new essay about a time when she was growing up in Lowell in the Highlands neighborhood. I don’t want to give away the turn in the narrative, so I’ll leave it here. Susan is a past contributor to this publication. Her work has appeared in…
Read More »Nature Comes to Lowell
For weeks I had noted the increasing height of the plants shooting up from the untended compost pile in the corner of our backyard. With 20-plus years of accumulated organic matter, there was no telling what was growing. One recent morning when I let our 12-year old Yellow Lab Ivy…
Read More »Cartoons by Nicholas Whitmore
“Towards a Wild Ecology of Being” by Clare Mulvany
Located primarily in the northwest of County Clare, the Burren, is one of the world’s most unique landscapes. It means “great rock” in Irish (Boireann), and is dominated by thick successions of sedimentary rocks, often compared to a lunar landscape. In the following essay and series of photographs, Clare Mulvany take…
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