RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

When a con cons a con in merrie olde England by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted by Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson is a mystery set in London in 1749. It is a romp, filled with colorful characters, set against the well-detailed urban landscape of the Georgian era. The plot is full of surprises, twists and turns. It is a beautifully crafted page turner.

A well-mannered beautiful widow in her thirties, Hannah Cole, owner of a luxury confectionery shop in London, is hard-working, businesslike, and caring. But, were there other sides to her?  An elegant gentleman, wealthy, experienced, cosmopolitan and philanthropic, William Devereux, extends a hand to her. But what of his intentions? What hidden secrets do they have? And how do these principal figures play off the many colorful characters making their way in a city noted historically for its gentry and its rogues, the pretentious and the petty thieves, its orphans and its drunkards.  Her late husband, Jonas Cole, was a hardworking shopkeeper, a dedicated public servant in his parish and a devoted husband. But was he?

And then there is Henry Fielding. Yes, the author of A History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, and of Joseph Andrews, novels that changed the course of English literature. Shepherd-Robinson presents Fielding as himself, when he is earning his living as a magistrate.  He is dealing with pimps and prostitutes, con men, murderers, gamblers and informers. As he did in real life, he is an advocate for reform of the judicial system and a proponent of a formally trained police force.  Fielding in the novel had a flawed past, as he had had in real life. As we read about Fielding in the novel, we recognize the mix of roguishness and forgiveability we read long ago in Tom Jones.

The Art of the Lie is a battle of wits and the principal characters’  interior struggles with their own feelings. It’s a crime mystery and a rich, atmospheric, historic portrait of 18^th century London (if you love the West End of London, you’ll feel right at home.) Most of all, it’s a fast, fun read, and I’m happy to recommend it.

Buttercups and Birthdays

Buttercups and Birthdays

By Leo Racicot

I started to say there are no more bakeries here in Lowell but there are a couple downtown I’ve yet to investigate. Growing up, I guess I was spoiled for choice; there was Price’s on Chelmsford Street where the family and most Lowellians went for their baked goods. There was also the wonderful Yum Yum Shops, one next door to Chelmsford Market Basket (DeMoulas), further up on Chelmsford Street, and my favorite Yum Yum, in the heart of Cupples Square. Also, just up the street from us on Broadway Street, near where the Kathryn Stoklosa Middle School now stands, was Zipp’s Bakery. Most people don’t remember Zipp’s but I was a regular customer;  close enough for me to walk or ride my bike to. Zipp’s donuts were so big, one could feed a family of five. They were that grand. Zipp’s had the best raspberry sticks, I can still taste their freshness, their tangy-sweet combination of flavors. I never wanted them to end, wished the whole day could be taken up eating one. Also, still part of my olfactory memories is the distinct smell of Zipp’s as I got nearer and nearer to it. I could smell its baking ovens as soon as I hit Muldoon’s Oil at the corner of Broadway and Mount Vernon. Some places you never forget and I have never forgotten Zipp’s, miss it to this very day.

Getting back to Yum Yum. It had a confection called buttercups. Buttercups (sometimes called chess squares) were flat cake-like sweets cut into squares. Because at that time, I had no idea what they were, what they were made of, I liked the mysterious nature of them. Sinking my teeth into a fresh buttercup was like no other taste sensation — totally satisfying. The delights of them are still deeply embedded in my taste-memory bank. Once Yum Yum Shops disappeared, so did buttercups. Now-and-then, I’d stumble across them in a stray bakery or two but they were never as good as Yum Yum’s and I haven’t seen them sold anywhere in years. Most people nowadays don’t know what I’m talking about when I ooh and ah over them. They seem to have been strictly a sweet of the 1950s and ’60s.

Every birthday, we went with Marie to either Price’s or Yum Yum for our birthday cakes. Since we knew there was no birthday fairy who, like Santa Claus, was going to surprise us with cake and ice cream on the day itself, as that day approached, anticipation was high and moved on up to motor speed for the day when Ma and Marie would say, “Let’s go get your birthday cake!”  Piled high in front of us — the birthday boy or girl got to sit on a special higher chair — were bowls and bowls, veritable mountains of potato chips, peanuts, popcorn. Of course, I loved the frosting part of the cake, could never get enough of it. As I age, I find myself scraping the gooey, too-sweet slab off of a cake or a cupcake as fast as I can; one of the necessities of aging. I much prefer, and my system can tolerate better, the not overly sweet cakes baked by the Asian Bakery on the corner run by Betty Chiu Leung. At 50 or 60 dollars a pop, I convince myself they’re well worth the price for their delectability and decorative look, pleasing to the eye as well as to the taste buds.

_________________

My birthday party, age 7 or 8

Yum Yum Shop interior

Clara Zipps Bakery

Price’s Bakery

Betty Chiu Leung

Buttercups

Seen & Heard vol. 14

Seen & Heard: Vol. 14

Movie Review: Nuremberg – This 2025 historical drama is now on Netflix. It’s about the war crime trials of German leaders that were held at the end of World War II in the German city of Nuremberg. The movie stars Russell Crowe as Hermann Goring, who ranked just behind Hitler in the Nazi hierarchy, and Rami Malek as a US Army psychiatrist assigned to assess Goring and the dozen other defendants for their competency to stand trial, their risk of suicide, and to covertly obtain information about their defense strategy. In supporting roles are John Slattery as the warden of the jail in which the defendants are held, and Michael Shannon, as US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who was the lead American prosecutor. At first, I had a hard time separating what I thought were the dramatic liberties that had been taken with the story, but in my subsequent reading, I was surprised to learn the movie hewed closely to what actually happened. Even with my (unfounded) skepticism, it was an excellent film, especially Crowe’s performance. Knowing now that it was mostly accurate made my memory of the film that much better. Although not completely clear from the movie, after the war, the psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, published a book, 22 Cells in Nuremberg: A Psychiatrist Examines Nazi Criminals. His conclusion: there was nothing unique about the Nazi defendants. They were all mediocre, narcissistic men, who latched on to a charismatic leader (Hitler) to advance their own standing, and were willing to say or do anything to stay in the good graces of that leader. Kelley argued that these types of men exist in every society, even in America, and that the same thing could happen here. Published in 1947, his downbeat message was not what Americans wanted to hear and the book was poorly received, although looking back from today, it seems remarkably prescient. 

YouTube Author Interview: America’s Bookclub: Historian Beverly Gage – Hosted by philanthropist David Rubenstein and produced by CSPAN, America’s Bookclub features Rubenstein interviewing American historians about the books they have written. A recent edition featured Beverly Gage, a professor of history at Yale, who won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for her 2022 book G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century. Gage explained that her field is 20th century American history and that Hoover’s career, which began under President Calvin Coolidge and ended under Richard Nixon, spanned much of that period and was deeply involved in the Cold War which was a dominant circumstance of that era. She talked much about Hoover and her writing process. She also said her next big biography will be of Ronald Reagan, not because there are a lack of Reagan biographies, but because the Cold War was also dominant throughout his political life, including the end of the Cold War, so his biography would allow her to tell the full story of that conflict. Because writing a big biography takes a decade or more, she fit in a shorter project in honor of the US 250th birthday. That book, This Land is Your Land, describes visits to 13 historical sites in America ranging from Independence Hall in Pennsylvania to Disneyland in California. Here’s a link to the interview: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MycpJL6uUQ&t=1988s

Newspaper Article: “70s Oil Shocks Altered Global Finance. Will This One?” New York Times, March 29, 2026. In my recent book chronicling the history of Lowell, I repeat the oft used phrase that in Lowell, the Great Depression came early and stayed late. I usually set 1978 as the pivot point when things changed, but more likely it was a year or two later. An event that extended the city’s economic plight was the twin oil shocks of the 1970s. The first happened in 1973-74 in the aftermath of the Six Day War; the second in 1978-79 with the Iranian Revolution. I was in high school during that earlier episode (Bishop Guertin in Nashua) and recall having Christmas vacation extended a week and then having all Mondays off in January and February, all to conserve heating oil. In the later oil crisis, there was gas rationing – if your license plate ended in an even number, you would only get gas on an even numbered day of the week and vice versa for odd numbers. I also recall spending the summer of 1978 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for ROTC training camp, and worrying about access to gasoline during my 750 mile drive back to Lowell that August. It turned out not to be an issue but it was a cause for concern. The article cited above reviews both of those crises and their consequences. Besides squeezing the US with oil shortages, the embargos also fueled further inflation that wracked the US economy in that decade which forced the incredibly high interest rates (18% home mortgages) of the early 1980s that were needed to tame inflation. But the oil shortages also strengthened the US dollar as the world’s currency which caused billions to flow to oil exporters in the Middle East. That countries like Saudi Arabia are now central to global finance is a direct result of those oil shocks of the 1970s. The article also invites readers to speculate how the global system of finance and commerce might be fundamentally reordered if the current war drags on.

A Franco Poet Graces National Poetry Month

A Franco Poet Graces National Poetry Month

By Louise Peloquin

In 1996, the Academy of American Poets declared April as National Poetry Month. For the 30th anniversary, we remember a great Franco-American poet of the 20th century – Normand C. Dubé.

Maine native Normand Camille Dubé (1932-1988) was a proud Franco-American, an educator, an academic, a curriculum creator, a cultural leader, a published writer, a friend. For detailed biographical information, consult:

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=findingaids

We celebrate April with a poem included in an article Normand wrote for a French academic journal whose advisory committee gathered renown university professors from France, Canada, Switzerland, and England. For the first time in its history, indeed, for the first time in France, a special issue was devoted to French-speaking enclaves in the United States. (1) Publication was in 1988, a short time before the poet’s passing.

Normand knew this would be his last appearance in print. Perhaps knowledge of the inevitable shaded his verses? The reader is the judge.

Franco-American culture and identity make up his music and the “mystical lily.”

LA MUSIQUE SUR LES EPAULES

Je jouerai ma guitare                                      Je jouerai la musique

Par les rues des grandes villes_                    D’un poème à la vie

Dans la fumée des bars                                   Écrit en vers classiques_

Où les jeunes garçons                                      Comme ceux qui vivent et meurent

Boivent la vie aux sons                                    Dans l’âme de mes soeurs

De leur printemps fébrile.                               Qui les auront écrite.

     Mes ballades parlent d’amour                            Puis, je laisserai ma guitare

     Nourri de ses complications;                              Entre les mains d’un parvenu,

     Comme au temps des troubadours,                   Au seuil d’un hall ou d’un bar,            

     Elles se chantent à répétition.                             Ayant joué les coins de rues.                              

Je jouerai par les halls                                           Lys mystique    

Les chansons oubliées                                           Au refrain que le coeur frôle_

Au fond de vieilles malles.                                    C’est ma musique

Les fantaisies du coeur                                          Que je porte sur les épaules.

Rajeunissent les valeurs

D’un folklore retrouvé.

     Mes chansons parlent toujours

     Deci-deça, de va et vient;

     Comme au temps de tous les jours

Elles parlent de tout et parlent de

rien.

THE MUSIC ON MY SHOULDERS (2)

I shall play my guitar                                I shall play the music

Through the big-city streets_                  Of a poem to life

In the smoke of bars.                                 Written in classical verses_

Where young men.                                     Like those which live and die

Drink life to the sound                               In the soul of my sisters

Of their feverish spring.                             Who will have written them.

My ballads speak of love                                          Then, I shall leave my guitar

Fed by its complications;                                         In the hands of a chancer,

Like at the time of the troubadours,                      At the threshold of a hall or a bar,

They are sung repeatedly.                                        Having played on street corners.

I shall play through the halls                           Mystical lily

The forgotten songs                                           Whose refrain the heart kisses_

At the bottom of old trunks.                             It is my music

The fantasies of the heart                                  Which I carry on my shoulders.

Rejuvenate the value

Of rediscovered folklore.

My songs always speak

Of this and that, of coming and going;

Like everyday times

They speak of everything and speak of

nothing.

****

1. Number 70 of Études de Linguistique Appliquée (Applied Linguistics Studies) is called Foyers Francophones aux États-Unis (French-Speaking Foyers or Centers in the United States). The preparation, coordination and editing of the April – June 1988 special issue was entrusted to Louise Peloquin. 13 articles by French heritage Americans from New England, Louisiana, the Midwest, and a contribution from a journalist at France’s daily newspaper LE MONDE, make up the issue.       ELA is a publication of DIDIER ÉRUDITION, 6 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005, Paris.       Louise Peloquin can provide the translation of Normand Dubé’s complete article should readers be interested in discovering his last poems as well as insights on his creative inspiration and work.
2. English version, respecting the original layout, punctuation and syntax, translated by Louise Peloquin,