Lowell

The “Greatest Generation” loses two

Friday afternoon I traveled to McKenna-Ouellette Funeral Home on Hildreth Street to attend the wakes of Rudolphe “Red” Ouellette and Alfred “Nick” Favreau, two life-long residents of Lowell who were friends throughout their 88 years of life, who died within hours of each other on the same day, and who…

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In the Merrimack Valley: Regional Interests In Redistricting

These ten districts will be downsized in to nine districts as a result of the 2010 Census. (Note: Include Middlesex above with Essex.) A headline in  yesterday’s MetroWest Daily News asks: ” Is there political gamesmanship in Mass. redistricting?” Redistricting in Massachusetts – and elsewhere – is always political – it’s the nature…

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UMass Lowell Newsline, February

Read the electronic version of the UMass Lowell Newsline publication. The February isssue is here. Of special interest to the community are brief articles on findings from the Lowell Plan-UML Downtown Initiative, the acquisition of the former St. Joe’s Hospital, and year one of the Tsongas Center under UML control.

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Removing snow banks

When I was a kid in the 1960s, a post-snowstorm highlight was the appearance of the city of Lowell’s giant truck-mounted snow blower on our street. The above photo closely resembles the vehicle I remember: it was orange with a big box for its mechanics on the rear bed and…

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Uneeda Biscuit

Tony Sampas photographed this fading wall mural advertisement for Uneeda Biscuit on Merrimack Street. Prompted by Tony’s photos, I did some quick internet research on Uneeda, which I assumed was another Lowell-based cracker such as Bradt’s. I was wrong. According to Wikipedia, Uneeda was a late 19th Century product of…

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Lowell Folk Festival Time Machine

The SUN story this week about performers for the upcoming 25th Lowell Folk Festival sent me to the vault to find a non-web “log” entry before the blog days about the origin of the Festival. I  was cultural affairs director of the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission at the time. After…

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