RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Lowell Politics: October 26, 2025

On Thursday night, October 23, 2025, I attended Lowell Public School Superintendent Liam Skinner’s State of the Schools address at the just-renovated Lowell High Little Theatre. The evening began with a reception in the school lobby that featured musical, dance, and poetry performances by students. Then LHS student ambassadors led the 100-plus attendees to the Theatre.

After being introduced by Mayor Dan Rourke, the life-long educator Skinner did not so much give a speech as conduct a master class. The early part of his talk reached back into history for important context. He explained that 250 years ago as the form of government our new nation should adopt was being debated, many feared making it a democracy because in a democracy, important decisions would be left to uneducated voters. Skinner then quoted Thomas Jefferson who said the solution to that problem was to educate the people. Consequently, public education was one of the core principles upon which our nation was founded.

Skinner next acknowledged that 250 years ago, public education for all really wasn’t for all. If you were Black, you were excluded. If you were a woman, you were excluded. If you were an immigrant (in many cases), you were excluded.

Lowell, however, was at the forefront of making public education more inclusive. When Lowell High School was founded in 1831 it admitted female as well as male students, making it the first coeducational public high school in the United States. A few years later, Lowell High admitted Black students, making it the first integrated high school in the United States.

Does an educated populace still matter in a democracy? Superintendent Skinner said emphatically that it does, citing studies that show that educated citizens are more likely to vote, volunteer, and get involved in civic decision making than the less educated. He said that strong schools build strong families, create more stable neighborhoods, and cause crime rates to decrease. Strong schools have economic benefits. They attract businesses, create upward mobility, and decrease the need for social services. Spending money on public schools yields an excellent return on investment.

Next, Skinner shared some important demographic information about the Lowell Public Schools. He started with the racial/ethnic makeup of the students:

Total – 14,689
Hispanic – 6,269
Asian – 3,717
White – 2,665
Black – 1,405
Mixed – 582
Amer Indian – 34
Pacific Islander – 17

Regarding the economic and educational circumstances of those 14,689 students:

69% are from low-income families
10% are homeless
20% have disabilities
30% are English Language Learners

Superintendent Skinner then observed that if you ranked the 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts by income level in one column, then ranked the same 351 communities by academic performance in a second column, the position of the cities and towns would mostly match.

But when it comes to educational achievement, “student poverty is not a determinant of ability to learn,” Skinner forcefully said. He cited research that’s been repeatedly validated that proves the single most important factor in the educational achievement of a child is having a great teacher. And that – helping to create great teachers in Lowell – is at the center of Superintendent Skinner’s strategy for improving the Lowell Public Schools.

Skinner next cited evidence that this approach is paying off: The state’s 2025 assessment of the Lowell Public Schools gave an overall classification of “not requiring assistance or intervention” and that LPS was showing “substantial progress” toward its targets. The same assessment found just four schools in the “requiring assistance” category whereas that number was eight before Covid and eleven in 2024. Progress towards obtaining English Language Proficiency was “met for non-high school and exceeded by high school students.” The LPS dropout reduction rate exceeded its target overall. And the Lowell Public Schools showed “high growth in both English and Mathematics for non-high school students.”

Notwithstanding these good grades, Skinner emphasized that the Lowell Public Schools still face great challenges.  Among other things, more early childhood seats are needed. So is air conditioning in all classrooms and more after-school programs with transportation.

Skinner commended City Manager Tom Golden and the city council for their strong commitment to the new Lowell High School and for their diligence in improving the physical plant of all the other schools. But he did make a plea for more local funding. He conceded that while the city has met its “net school spending” requirements (the minimum amount of support for the schools from local government that is mandated by the state), Skinner explained that a larger and larger percentage of that funding comes as “in kind” services rather than an explicit outlay of cash to the school system. Being deprived of that cash allocation prevents the school system from implementing its strategies. He recommended that at least one-third of net school spending should be granted as cash which I believe he said would equal $23 million whereas in this current fiscal year, the city provided just $12 million in cash to the public schools.

Superintendent Skinner closed his remarks by urging everyone to become a vocal advocate for the Lowell Public Schools. He also invited everyone to check out the LPS strategic plan and to consider donating to the Lowell Schools Fund, an initiative of Project LEARN that seeks donations from alumni, foundations and corporate sponsors to help fill the gaps in public funding.

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In last week’s newsletter, I mentioned a Lowell Sun report that the Markley Group had withdrawn its application to amend the fuel storage license issued by the city for Markley’s South Lowell datacenter. This past Tuesday, City Solicitor Corey Williams provided councilors with a brief memo confirming the Markley withdrawal, adding that since there was no longer anything pending before the city council, there would no longer be a public hearing as was scheduled for that evening (October 21, 2025).

Councilors quizzed Williams on some related issues, perhaps most importantly, whether there was a waiting period that had to pass before an applicant could resubmit a once-withdrawn application. Williams said No, explaining that unlike this situation, if an application to the Planning Board is rejected or withdrawn, a state statute specifically says that the same application may not be resubmitted for at least two years. However, when it comes to license applications such as the Markley proposal, state law carries no comparable delay on refiling.

Councilors asked if the council could create a time limit on the refiling of a withdrawn petition. Williams said he would have to research that topic to answer the question but as he continued speaking, he left the impression that such a rule might be invalidated by a court. Under the normal rules of statutory interpretation, a court would likely conclude that the legislature’s failure to include a limit on resubmitting a withdrawn license application was an intentional omission by the legislature and not an oversight, especially in light of the inclusion of such a limitation in the statutes governing planning board matters.

In any case, I believe Williams will get back to the council in the future with a more detailed explanation.

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On Tuesday, the council received a memo from Will Rosenberry, the Director of Elections and Census, in response to a council motion requesting Rosenberry “take steps to help increase voter turnout in the general election.” The memo reviews a multipart strategy by the Election Office to help with turnout including:

• Regular press releases and social media posts
• An improved website
• New options for people to receive text and email alerts from the Election Office
• Frequent appearances on local media
• Tabling at local events such as the Puerto Rican Festival and Volunteer Fair
• Placing flashing sign boards and A-frame signs at busy intersections
• Continued collaboration with local nonprofits

Besides the memo, Rosenberry also answered council questions at the meeting. He said that despite the low turnout in the preliminary elections, he has seen some encouraging signs of greater interest in the November election. He identified the number of mail-in ballots – 300 – that had already been received back to the Election Office as greater than the entire number of mail-in ballots cast in recent elections.

Rosenberry also answered questions about the ability of “inactive voters” to participate in this election. He explained that if someone fails to answer the city census, they are automatically marked as inactive on the voter rolls. If a person in that status shows up to vote, they can still cast a vote but for their ballot to count without limitation, they must produce evidence of residency in the form of a utility bill or something comparable. If they cannot do that, their ballot would still be accepted “provisionally” which, if I understand this correctly, means that their ballot would be counted but would somehow be segregated so that in the event of a recount, that ballot and other like it could be challenged as part of the recount process.

If you have voted by mail, the Secretary of State Bill Galvin maintains a handy webpage called “track my ballot” that allows you to determine if the election office has received your ballot back through the mail. After you enter your name and address, the webpage shows you the date the ballot was mailed, the date it was received back at the election office, and its status. The four status categories and their meanings are:

• Accepted – submitted to be counted
• Pending – application received, ballot not yet mailed
• Rejected – ballot rejected
• Not Returned – ballot not yet received by local election official

While this website is maintained by the Secretary of State’s office, questions about it should be submitted to the Lowell Election Office at (978) 674-4046.

Finally, in-person early voting commenced yesterday. All early voting is done at the Lowell Senior Center at 276 Broadway. Here are the dates and times when early voting is available:

Monday, October 27, 2025, from 9am to 3pm
Tuesday, October 28, 2025, from 9am to 8pm
Wednesday, October 29, 2025, from 9am to 3pm
Thursday, October 30, 2025, from 9am to 3pm
Friday, October 31, 2025, 9am to 3pm

Election Day is Tuesday, November 4, 2025, with all polling places being open for in-person voting from 7am until 8pm.

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This week’s installment of there’s always a Lowell connection comes from Major League Baseball. In his “Sunday Baseball Notes” column last week, the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier wrote about the magnitude of the transition of Mookie Betts from a centerfielder to one of the best shortstops in baseball. Speier points out that at age 33, Betts is “the first player in major league history to start at least 140 games at short in his age-32 season after making fewer than 100 career appearances at the position prior.” (see “Mookie Betts’s stellar play at shortstop another part of his game that escaped the Red Sox.”)

For several years, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that (1) we saw Mookie Betts play for the Lowell Spinners at Lelacheur Park in Lowell; and (2) he was terrible at the time. My basis for saying that was that he made a lot of errors, at least that’s how I remembered it. And my purpose in saying it was not to criticize Betts – I’ve always been a big fan of his – but to highlight the unpredictability of judging a baseball player’s abilities at the start of his career.

But until Sunday, no one else ever mentioned the sketchy defense of Betts while in Lowell. I was beginning to doubt the accuracy of my memory. Fortunately, Speier backed me up. Here’s what he wrote:

After the Sox took Betts in the fifth round of the 2011 draft, he started his time in the minors at short. It didn’t go well. He made three errors in his one-game pro debut, then another six in 13 games at short for the Lowell Spinners in 2012.

Seven of those nine errors were throwing. He misfired three times on July 6, 2012, including on back-to-back ninth-inning plays in a walkoff loss. . .

When the Sox needed to create Betts a path to the big leagues in 2014, they moved him to the outfield, where he rapidly emerged as one of the best defensive players in baseball — and, for that matter, one of the best overall players in the game.

This year, Betts and his Los Angeles Dodgers are back in the World Series, playing the Toronto Blue Jays in a best of seven series that began Friday night.

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Paul Marion is out with a new book, City Hikes, which I reviewed this week on richardhowe.com. Please read the review and consider buying the book which recounts nearly two dozen walks around Lowell.

Review of “City Hikes”

City Hikes: Field Notes by Paul Marion

Review by Richard P. Howe Jr.

A city is more than a collection of streets and buildings; it’s a shared space we call home. The concept of “place” is central to building a strong community. When we feel a deep connection to the physical environment we inhabit, we forge stronger bonds with our neighbors. This connection doesn’t happen by accident; it’s nurtured through shared experiences.

In-person events like guided historical walks transform abstract history into a tangible reality. Walking the same paths as the Mill Girls or standing where pivotal events occurred creates a powerful, collective memory. Similarly, written accounts provide the stories and descriptions that color our daily landscape. They give us a new lens through which to see a familiar street corner or an old factory building. By exploring our city through both footsteps and stories, we deepen our personal and shared sense of place, reinforcing the very fabric of our community.

That is why the newest book by Paul Marion, City Hikes, is such an important addition to Lowell’s literature. The book captures written accounts of nearly 20 walks around the city that Paul took, sometimes alone but more often with a companion, that capture the look, sound, and feel of each place. That Paul is such a superb writer elevates the prose to a higher level.

Here is a sampling of the hike topics, most written between 2009 and 2011, usually with several different walks for each neighborhood:

• Hamilton Canal District
• Downtown
• Back Central
• Christian Hill
• Lower Highlands
• South Common Historic District

Anytime I’ve led an urban walk around Lowell, inevitably someone will say about a place I’ve pointed out, “I’ve driven past here hundreds of times but never noticed that.” While everyone should get out of their car and walk the city with open eyes, the business of life can make that difficult to do. In City Hikes, Paul becomes our proxy on walks in sections of the city perhaps distant from our home neighborhoods, or since many of the essays were written a decade or more ago, revives memories of landmarks and institutions that exist no more.

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City Hikes is available from Loom Press.

“Ma” by Leo Racicot

Ma

By Leo Racicot

Our mother was Edna Nemer, the youngest child of Adele Kalil, a Lowell mill girl and Raef (Ralph) Nemer, a Lowell barber. Her older siblings were Marie, Helen and George. Being the youngest earned our mother the nickname, Topsy. When she was six-months old, her father, Ralph died suddenly of a heart attack. Unable to see how she could raise four, young children and work to feed and clothe them, Nana placed them in Franco American Orphanage on Pawtucket Street where they remained until they were of legal age to strike out on their own. Once free of an institution she hated (Ma once told me that whenever peas were served with meals, she disliked them so much, she’d hide them under her mashed potatoes until one day, one of the nuns caught her and boxed her ears till they bled. She and her sisters and brother carried the scars of the orphanage with them their whole lives. They loved their mother but always harbored a resentment towards her that she had put them “in that awful place”.

But, as I started to say, once released from “that prison”, Ma led a carefree life. She took work as a soda fountain girl at Teddy’s Variety in Cupples Square (her first job), loved it, often talked so fondly of her time there and made many friends in that neighborhood, including Prior who managed The First National grocery store, Mr. Page who ran Page’s Drugstore and George and Angie Malapanis and their sons, Costa (Dino) and Jimmy, of Terminal Fruit Co.  Dino now operates the Speedy Check service out of the former Palmer News on Appleton Street. I’ve known Dino and Jimmy since we were little boys.    Ma’s favorite activities were singing in her church choir and going with her gal pals to the races. She ran around with a crowd that liked to play the horses but more so than this, loved dog racing and would spend all their free time, weekends, and their money at Rockingham Park up in New Hampshire and Suffolk Downs in Boston. One boast Ma could make is that she hardly ever lost on bets. This caused her friends to dub her Lucky Edna. These gals would also get together for girls’ night every Thursday (eat out, go to the movies, shop for clothes and shoes), and this ritual continued well after all or most of them had married and started families. I still remember watching mother doll herself up on a Thursday night, seeing how excited she was to be going out on the town. Sometimes Diane and I would pout to our father that we wanted to go, too but Papa would patiently explain, “This is your mother’s special night out…You’ll see her in the morning….”  One of her friends, Therese (Tessie) Proulx continued to keep these outings going long after Ma got sick and after the other ladies had died, and I remember her coming over to the house, gently taking Ma’s arm and leading her out to the car for their nighttime adventures. Madame Proulx lived to be 98 and at that age was still living by herself, doing her own chores and gardening, still driving a car! An amazing soul. I found her to be so inspiring.

Ma’s single lifestyle came to an end when she met and married our father when she was working at The Abbott Worsted in Forge Village and he was a soldier stationed at Fort Devens up the road. As she liked to tell it, Leo was a big hit with the ladies and she was wary of going out with him even though he kept pursuing her. When she finally agreed to go out on a date with him, she got cold feet and stood him up. “Do I want to go out with a Casanova??” Well, that only served to draw him in more and he finally promised “no more fooling around  for me.”  They fell in love, married in 1945, as WWII was ending. Not long after, Ma gave birth to me but had an extremely difficult childbirth, nearly died, and the doctor told my father, “No more children!”.  But Papa wanted a girl and got his wish when two-and-a-half years later, my sister, Diane, was born. Ma had an equally touch-and-go time delivering Diane and once again, came close to dying. For one thing, Diane was a whopping 11.5 pounds at birth and came into this world with a full head of dark, wavy hair and eyes wide open. Ma always felt she and Papa should have heeded the doctor’s warning because the cancer no one knew Papa had and was to kill him four-and-a-half years later was transmitted to Diane, setting her on a path of multiple lifelong hospitalizations and ailments.

Papa became very sick very fast and passed away in November of 1960, leaving Ma bereft and torn. She resolved though to do for us as a single parent what would no longer be possible not that her husband was gone.

Edna May was a wonderful, wonderful mother, and I know all or most kids say that about their own moms. But Ma was even more wonderful than the most wonderful of mothers. Ma never had much but always saw to it that Diane and I had all we needed, many times going without what she needed to ensure that we thrived.

Ma knew how to do a lot with a little, and be resourceful.    She never got her driver’s license (she liked to tell the story that the first time she got behind a wheel, she drove the car straight off the road into a ditch and said to herself, “Never again”) but saw to it my sister and I went everywhere she could take us. She’d walk us downtown, to eat at Lowell’s popular places: The Epicure, the Olympia, “The Chicken Place” on Central Street, to clothes and toy stores. Along with our aunts on our father’s side, Yvonne and Marguerite, and her Acre pal, Lillian Bourassa, she’d walk us from North Common all the way up to South Common for that park’s Fourth of July festivities.  When she could afford it, she’d spring for a taxi cab to take us to places too far away to walk. In those days, Lowell sponsored lots of fun bus trips, and we went to Our Lady of LaSalette Shrine in Attleboro and made a great trip into Boston for a spaghetti meal in The Theater District. After, we went to The Paramount Theater (still there) to see How The West Was Won, filmed in a brand new mode of production, Cinerama whereby a movie was shot by three, separate cameras which when screened had the action happening all around you, making you feel you were in the movie. Thrilling!  Most memorable of our trips, which I’ve written about before, was the week she treated Diane and me to a stay in a hotel at Hampton Beach. That trip I have never forgotten.  When Ma was this age, she had the most striking features: large, brown, soulful eyes, a kewpie doll mouth and a voluptuous head of hair, so black it shone blue in the sunlight. I loved being out with her, walking with her, holding her strong, reassuring hand. She was not going to let anything bad happen to us, not after what had happened with Papa.

One morning in 1968, Ma didn’t get up early, as she usually did, and go into the kitchen to make breakfast.  I went into her room and found her slumped half-in, half-out of her bed. The right side of her mouth was drooped and drooling. She was having trouble speaking. I called an ambulance and she was taken to Lowell General Hospital. She’d suffered a stroke in the night, a serious one. She was treated at Lowell General, then transported to Spaulding Rehab in Woburn, for recuperation. She was there for six weeks. She was so brave, worked hard to get better and came home fully rehabilitated.  But, every time she brought herself back to herself, she’d have another stroke. These became very hard years, for her, for Diane, for me. I didn’t know then what I’ve learned since, that a stroke can and will alter a person’s behavior radically. Ma simply wasn’t herself anymore. We bickered a lot. Painful arguments destroyed the deep and loving bond we had.  I’d always been painfully shy, almost pathologically so (some people had the affrontery to ask her, “So, is Little Leo retarded??”). I had trouble finding a job and this upset Ma a great deal. I’d always loved to write creatively. Beneath my inability t express myself verbally, I believed I was destined to become the next Hemingway, an American Proust. Of course, that wasn’t about to happen. So, we bickered and bickered and she had stroke after stroke. I tried very hard to help her through her situation. As she had taken Diane and me on all kinds of excursions, I did the same for Ma: I took her to the movies: E.T. (too long) and Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (its plot hit too close to home and triggered a fight). I drove her into Boston to see Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller in their hit musical, Sugar Babies. This seemed to brighten her spirits for the afternoon but I could see the trip exhausted her. The most telling sign of how bad our lives got was when she sold her wedding set (diamonds and band) so we could eat.

In November, 1984, I walked downtown to catch a bus on Bridge Street. It was snowing quite a lot — a storm was starting up. But I’d scored a rare job interview, out at Tewksbury State Hospital. Long story short, the bus never showed up.  Fate had to have stepped in because I headed back home and when I walked in the house, I found Ma on the floor, her body half in the hallway, half in the living room; she was shaking/quaking, was snorting/gurgling heavily. She’d been trying to reach up to the phone. I called 911 and the ambulance came. It was Thanksgiving Eve. The doctor told us Ma had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. We were told there was nothing we could do but go home and wait for his call. Half in a state of shock and half not knowing what to do with ourselves in the aftermath of this shock, we began to prepare the foods for the next day’s holiday meal. I was chopping the onions for the stuffing when the phone rang. It was the hospital. The doctor said, “I’m sorry, Leo; your mother has passed away.”. Ma was 63 years old.

Looking back, I can see that my mother never recovered from the death of her husband after only eight brief years of marriage. Surely, the stress and worry of having to raise two, young children alone led to her strokes. I did my best, in my own kid way, to cheer her, lift her spirits, and make her laugh. One New Year’s Eve, I remember I made a small party for her — complete with pretend highballs and lots of confetti rigged to rain down on her at the stroke of midnight. But she just wasn’t interested.  None, or few, of my efforts could wrest her from the deep depression she’d fallen into for years. She missed Papa too much and had taken herself way beyond all attempts made to comfort her.

The world is never the same after our mothers leave us. Ma had given us Life and now that Life had to go on without her. She was truly the bravest soul I’d known and taught me the lesson of perseverance in the face of adversity. I think of a maxim she would often say, “It’s a great Life, if you don’t weaken.” She also demonstrated that love, real love, is selfless. I think of her every day of my life, more so when the Fall of the year comes around….

In the backyard, 1957 from left (myself, Aunt Marie holding Diane, Ma and Nana peeking out from behind Papa’s green Plymouth

Ma all dolled up & ready to hit the town with her Gal Pals.

Ma and Dad at Christmas

Ma on Halloween 1984, a month before her death

Front row from left: Nana and Diane; back row from left: Aunt Helen, Aunt Marie and Ma

Ma and Paps outside the church after their wedding, Nana is wearing the giant corsage

October Dreaming

October Dreaming

By David Daniel

October is a month of mystic meanings. Of marigolds and wild asters and the ripe-honey scent of Concord grapes on the vine. Of leaf peeping and football. Of “sweata weatha,” and Oktoberfest beer and the glossy squeak of grackles as they flock South.

October is contrasts: the first skim of ice on the birdbath and mellow-warm afternoons and chilly nights. It is a month of winnowing, of trees shedding after just a few short months of green newness. It is raking up the summer: June, July, August, September — a leaf for every minute. It is an ache and a beauty and a quality of light — “October Light,” as the novelist John Gardner called it — all its own.

In the old Roman calendar, when March was in the pole position and February came at the end with its tail pinched off short, October earned its name. In this hemisphere, it’s the angle of the lowering sun that illuminates the stark display of mortality. Summer is over, the harvest nearly done, and the careful listener becomes aware one night that the crickets have gone silent. If you shut your eyes, you can almost hear the clop of Pegasus riding the sky with the moon in Scorpio.

In fields where people gathered up tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn, the pumpkins — unnoticed through the months — have come. Avatars of autumn, they leer from front stoops.

Since the “twilight superstitions” of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne, October has long stirred — and haunted — the artistic imaginations of writers. In his doleful poem “Ulalume,” Edgar Allan Poe writes, “The skies they were ashen and sober / The leaves they were crisped and sere . . . / It was night, in the lonesome October / Of my most immemorial year.”

Thomas Wolfe’s prodigious, inward-gazing novels Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River fairly ooze October. In the latter, he writes: “It was late October, there was a smell of smoke in the air, an odor of burning leaves . . . a pollinated gold in the rich, fading, sorrowful and exultant light of day.” In On the Road, Jack Kerouac memorably wrote: “I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.” Such is a wanderer’s yen for home in a season when, as Kerouac writes elsewhere in the book, “everything was falling down.”

Add Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, John Updike, Maya Angelou, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving, Stephen King — the list is long. But the writer most indelibly linked to October has to be Ray Bradbury.

With words as chewy as candy corn, he celebrates the month in short stories and novels. In Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Halloween Tree, the very word “October” is like an incantation, invoking magic and casting long shadows over childhood innocence. Bradbury’s classic collection The October Country particularizes that place “where it is always turning late in the year . . . where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. . . . That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts [and who] . . . passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”

Ah, the lyrical October rain, which takes away the leaves that the wind has missed.

This season never fails to bring a savor of melancholy and some vague impression of the unmet hopes of a year in swift decline, of the sweetness that fades — and the awareness, too, of winter tapping its foot impatiently and preparing to take the stage. But then, beauty is its own reward. It can be the very brevity of things that gives them their poignance.

And so, October burns down to its waning days, and tells us again, lest we forget, that what has been given will be taken away.

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This piece first appeared in the Boston Globe in October 2023. David Daniel will be speaking at the Gleason Library in Carlisle at 7 p.m. on Thursday November 13.