Lowell Walks/Public Art by Rosemary Noon At the invitation of Dick Howe, my husband, Paul, and I led a group of 110 people on a 90-minute tour of the Lowell Public Art Collection this past Saturday morning. It was the second installment in the Lowell Walks series for the summer.…
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City Councilor Dan Rourke is urging the City Manager to pursue funding for a new public art initiative in Lowell. Blogger Gerry Nutter wrote about this effort and cited the facts behind the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge for Cities: Bloomberg Philanthropies is launching a new program to support temporary…
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Here’s another excerpt from the book about the origin and impact of Lowell’s national park that I’ve been working on for the past two years. With luck, the book will be available by the end of 2014. The search is on for a publisher that can distribute the book widely,…
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Following is an excerpt from an interview with Fred Faust, who has worn a lot of hats and coats in Lowell since he came to town as a radio reporter at WCAP. In 2003, historian Mehmed Ali, then on the staff of Lowell National Historical Park, sat down with Fred to…
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The death of George McGovern is something of a milestone for me. I cast my first presidential vote for him in November 1972. The voting age had been lowered to 18 that year in deference to the 18-year-olds who were being drafted to fight in Vietnam. Sen. McGovern opposed the…
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We Built This City by Alex Duran Placed next to the canals that powered the city, paid for by the leaders who bettered it, and honoring the people who helped create and continue to transform it, agápetimé is a symbolically intricate contribution to the Lowell Public Art Collection. In 1988,…
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Writing quite moderately about Mitt Romney today, NYTimes opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof reviews past charges of flip-flopping candidates and reminds of us of Paul Tsongas calling Bill Clinton “a pander bear” in 1992—there are photos of Paul holding up a stuffed panda bear at campaign rallies. I don’t know who came…
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Today we combine photos by Tony Sampas with a poem by Paul Marion in a tribute to Paul Tsongas and the UMass Lowell Tsongas Center. Tsongas Steel I view my approach as compassionate realism. Can you imagine a bumper sticker with those words on it? —Paul Tsongas 1. It’s January…
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The concluding session of the 2010 “Public Matters: Empowering Lowell’s Leaders” program took place this evening at Middlesex Community College. Urban planning guru Frank Keefe (Lowell’s chief city planner a long time ago) was the keynote speaker. I found his remarks fascinating, uplifting and, to anyone interested in Lowell’s developmental…
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