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Lowell is best known for its role in the Industrial Revolution, but the first English settlers arrived at the confluence of the Merrimack and the Concord Rivers in the mid-1600s. They found the area fully inhabited by indigenous people who had lived here for centuries. In the following essay, Jim…
Read More »Standing on the City’s old Armory site with about 60 other people at 2 p.m., I couldn’t help thinking that Armory Park was being put to use for another kind of conflict, even war in the broadest sense—a war against violence like the war against poverty championed by Rev Dr…
Read More »Pawtucket Dam on the Merrimack River, Lowell Massachusetts (Corey Sciuto, May 2006) In her article “Planning for the future to save pieces of history” – Globe correspondent Taryn Plumb features Lowell’s Pawtucket Dam on the Merrimack River. This historic dam was recently designated by Preservation Massachusetts as “endangered.” The Pawtucket Dam, meanwhile, faces…
Read More »Mimi at www.leftinlowell.com posted yesterday about the shootings and killing at the New Year’s Eve party on Grand Street. The Lower Highlands Neighborhood Group is asking concerned people to gather at 2 p.m. at Armory Park, just off the Lord Overpass at Westford and Grand streets, to honor the victims and to push…
Read More »While watching the Gator Bowl and now Rose Bowl on TV and occasionally checking Breaking News on the Sun site and the home page of boston.com, I’ve been reading “Irish Thunder’ by Bob Halloran, a vivid account of Micky Ward’s struggles and success. Parts of the book describing life in…
Read More »Check this discussion thread from 2002 on Jacques L’Heureux’s Franco-American Connection website for the cultural significance of New Year’s Day among French Canadians. And why is New Year’s Day an official holiday in Massachusetts? Here’s the Lowell connection from worcester.bettysgenealogy.org : New Year’s Day, however, was not an American holiday. It…
Read More »I’ve never seen a copy of the newspaper written and published in the late 1920s and early ’30s by Jack Kerouac’s father, Leo Kerouac, when he owned Spotlight Print, a small printing business downtown that got washed out in the 1936 Flood. Called The Spotlight, the newspaper had items about local entertainment…
Read More »How many times have you said something like that to yourself? What is that, a reflex reaction to psychological muscle memory of what certain days “feel” like? This usually happens when holidays get into the mix, shuffling the pattern of days off. Out with the Boston Terrier this morning on…
Read More »Plaque erected in Quebec City marking the spot of American General Richard Montgomery’s death. “Here stood the Undaunted Fifty safeguarding Canada, defeating Montgomery at the Pres de Ville Barricade on the last day of 1775, Guy Carleton commanding at Quebec.” Two hundred and thirty-five years ago tonight, American soldiers attacked…
Read More »Shawn Levy, my old friend from graduate school at the University of California, Irvine, is a film critic for The Oregonian newspaper in Portland. Here’s Shawn’s take on “The Fighter,” which he calls “terrific.”
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