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Here’s a throwback thing to the pioneer days of festival-making in Renaissance Lowell. This was “Expo ’79, Art/Music” at Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Lowell CityFair was part of the federal jobs program (imagine that) called C.E.T.A. (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) wherein a dozen or so Lowell artists were hired to…
Read More »If you are downtown in the next three days and want to talk to an expert about community empowerment, grassroots organizing, neighborhood dynamics, coalition building, and all the good things that make for a competent, healthy, and just society where you live, just look for one of the 660 community…
Read More »Following are excerpts from “The Lowellian,” a newsletter for alumni and friends of the University of Lowell, volume 1, number 1, from Spring 1981. Director of Alumni Relations Catherine Quinn conceived of the new publication, which was written and edited by me and designed by Leo Panas of the Art…
Read More »With the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon in late April 1975 getting near, the media reports and conversation in our own city are turning more often to that awful time in Southeast Asia. The suffering all around was immense. I was in my junior year at the then-University…
Read More »University Orchestra to Perform Free Concert for Valentine’s Day Friday, Feb. 13, 7:30 p.m. Compositions that convey a sense of triumph and world travel will be the focus of the University Orchestra’s annual, free Valentine’s Day concert for the public. Under the direction of UMass Lowell music faculty member Mark Latham, the ensemble…
Read More »The new issue of the biannual events tabloid is out at UMass Lowell. To see what’s coming, check this link. Highlights include a benefit concert by pop star Melissa Manchester, an Oscar Wilde play, a reading by a poet recently nominated for a National Book Award, a production by the…
Read More »In April 1998, UMass Lowell hosted what I believe was the first public forum to discuss what the web could or would do in the city. The event was billed as a town meeting and featured guest speakers, a panel discussion, a demonstration of a new online cultural magazine called…
Read More »I lived in Pawtucketville for several years, from the late 1970s to early ’80s. I often write in response to a place or to make sense of a place, and that neighborhood was no different. I lived on the top floor of an old triple-decker, a sea-green block on a…
Read More »The late Nelson Mandela with Christo Brand (web photo courtesy of nelsonmandela.org) UMass Lowell’s Office of the Provost cordially invites the community to a special event on Thursday, Dec. 4, at 4 p.m. in Moloney Hall at University Crossing featuring Christo Brand, author of “Mandela: My Prisoner, My Friend.” Brand was Nelson Mandela’s…
Read More »I left Tom Brady and the Patriots with their halftime lead to hear how a crowd of UMass Lowell music students would interpret some of my favorite music. And now, I’m just back from a beautiful and complex performance of music of The Beatles, presented by the UMass Lowell Dept of Music,…
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