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Susan April, a writer in the “Literary Lowell +” catalogue on the home page of this blog (top right), sent us these compositions about three diners in Lowell. Here’s her profile in our catalogue. Susan says she grew up in Lowell in Jack Kerouac’s shadow: “My father went to…
Read More »Last night, students from the UMass Lowell Honors College First-Year Seminar in all things Lowell went on the road in Kerouac’s Lowell. I teach one section of the 22 sections of this required course in the Honors College. Nearly 400 students are learning about Lowell in a directed way this…
Read More »At the New Bedford Whaling Museum yesterday, Rosemary and I found in the gift shop a collectible mug whose design features about 20 memorable first lines of books, including Melville’s “Call me Ishmael.” from MOBY DICK, which is why they had it on sale, but the mug also had “I…
Read More »Happy B-day to the old man writer of Centralville who was old at six years and never got younger because he could see over the edge of the horizon and got a glimpse of the void, making it more or less indefensible to get a job in a factory when…
Read More »Julie Mofford, a former staffer at the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, who currently lives in midcoast Maine where she writes and works as a museum and historical society consultant, shares her memories of the 1950s . . . “The Un-Fabulous Fifties or How I Became Beat” by Julie Mofford Years…
Read More »Been listening to Billy Joel in the car this week and remembering his visit to UMass Lowell in 2011—can it be that long ago already? Turns out the student who played “Leningrad” was not a Lowell student, but I didn’t know that when I wrote the post.—-PM HISTORY, LOWELL JOEL-LOWELL RHYMES…
Read More »While On the Road is still the most widely read of Jack Kerouac’s works, Mass Moments reminds us that the highly autobiographical The Town and the City was his first novel. On this day March 23, 1948 he noted in his diary or “writing log” that he had written 2500 words and was…
Read More »Today is officially Jack Kerouac Day in Massachusetts. It’s the author’s birthday, March 12 (1922). The Governor will issue a proclamation in recognition of the day. The legislature put this on the books in 2001, thanks to state Sen. Moore of Worcester, Lowell’s Statehouse delegation at the time, local citizen…
Read More »The Winter 1996 issue of BOMB includes an interview of Patti Smith by musician Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. She performed at the Smith Baker Center in Lowell on October 6, 1995, for the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival. The band stayed overnight at the Stonehedge Inn in Tyngsboro. Following…
Read More »In my 2013 re-cap, I should have included the major feature film “Big Sur,” directed by Michael Polish and produced by Lowell native Jim Sampas, whose aunt Stella married Jack Kerouac in the 1960s. “Big Sur,” based on the 1962 novel by Kerouac, was screened at the prestigious Sundance film…
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