RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

“Let them eat …” Croissants!

A photo of a large, eye-level billboard of different shop scenes (butcher, cheese shop, florist, café, etc.) in rue Cadet. It hides construction/renovation work being done on that particular building and the billboard was given over to this street artist “femmestabilo 2025”

“Let them eat …” Croissants!

By Louise Peloquin

In a world where the wild whirlwind of war blows needless destruction, it seems frivolous and callous to think about the pleasures of sampling food. This post, written by a “Nam generation” baby who participated in a Boston sit-in for peace in 1969, is respectfully dedicated to all of the battered peoples who cannot sample croissants and for whom we pray daily.

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Official statistics state that France has been the number one tourist destination for several years. Sights include the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre (1) and renovated Notre Dame cathedral (2) which, since its reopening last year, has taken the top spot away from Disneyland Paris.

April has come to Paris and, as the song goes, “chestnuts are in blossom” and tourists have arrived in droves to enjoy “the charm of spring.” (3)

     A myriad of tours offer visitors a myriad of experiences. They have their  pick of museum passes, river boat cruises, walking tours, private shopping sprees, beauty make-overs, spas, fitness challenges, rooftop terrace discoveries, you name it, it’s out there.

Of course, pleasures linked to the palate are synonymous with the French joie de vivre et qualité de vie. Consequently, café-hopping, cuisine classes, wine-tasting and cheese sampling are always popular. In the last couple of years, another epicurean activity has skyrocketed in popularity: viennoiserie sampling.

Croissants, pains au chocolat and pains aux raisins are traditional French breakfast staples. Why are they called viennoiseries? History embellishes everything under the sun just as lots of butter enhances a croissant.

 Viennoiseries are flaky dough baked goods made with eggs, milk, butter and, depending on the pastry, sugar and cream. Recipes date back to the 17th century, more precisely, to 1683 Vienna. While the Ottoman Empire was trying to attack the city, a local baker warned the Austrian soldiers about the unusual noises he was hearing, thus allowing them to thwart the attack.

To celebrate the Austrian victory, city bakers created a pâtissserie shaped like the crescent on the Turkish flag. How did it become part of French culinary tradition? Apparently, Marie-Antoinette of Austria, who was married to Louis XVI, introduced the croissant to the French court. Viennoiserie refers to any action or object related to the city of Vienna, pastries included.

To get off of the historical tangent and back to the increasingly popular Paris tour option, sampling viennoiseries in trendy boulangeries in touristy parts of town like Montmartre has become a must. Tour guides, often university students in search of extra income, need not be art history specialists to run these tours. On the contrary, required skills are simply mastery of English slang variables, a dose of enthusiasm and good humor.

Here’s a virtual viennoiserie tour illustrated with our own Paris boulangerie photos and comments gathered from eavesdropping tour groups.

The viennoiserie scene began with le croissant. Characteristics of a really good one are: a shiny, crispy outer crust, slightly chewy and moist texture inside and a strong buttery flavor. Le croissant is best enjoyed by eating with one’s fingers. When they become gloriously greasy, finger-licking is never frowned-upon.

Wooden board with 11 croissants

      Six months ago, a famous Paris pastry chef had the brilliant idea of opening a small viennoiserie shop on la rue de Steinkerque, the street leading up to Sacre Coeur Basilica on Montmartre hill. The small venue is now perpetually crowded by tourists lured in by the fragrance of oversized croissants sold for 30 euros apiece. (4)

Huge croissant with a small one on top

No tours patronize this particular shop because the sidewalk cannot accommodate the cafe tables and chairs necessary for comfortable sampling. Guides therefore opt for stopping at boulangeries with pavement space on Montmartre side streets.

The next favorite viennoiserie is le pain au chocolat, made with buttery flaky pastry rolled around a couple of dark chocolate sticks. The outside is crispy, the inside moist and the melted chocolate is deliciously tongue-coating.

An ongoing debate in France is this pastry’s name. Some insist on calling it une chocolatine and others un pain au chocolat. As the great Will wrote: “what’s in a name?” Tour guides insist that a pain au chocolat by any other name tastes as sweet. (5)

Pains au chocolat

Young woman placing pains au chocolat in a tray

     Next is le pain aux raisins, a puff pastry brioche with a bit of vanilla cream and raisins. Outer crispness and inner moistness combine with a bit of cream and scattered raisins to create a unique culinary delight.

Pain aux raisins

     Le chausson aux pommes is another classic viennoiserie. This is not your usual apple turnover. Its flaky pastry is light and its filling is pureed apple. Eating a chausson invariably makes a great deal of crumbs. Whether these dust the table or stick to one’s fingers, gathering them up for consumption is encouraged in order to prolong the pleasure.

Chaussons aux pommes

     One last pastry to close our virtual viennoiserie tour is le pain suisse, a variation of le pain au chocolat. Rectangular in shape, it contains crème pâtissière, a type of custard, and chocolate chips.

2 pains suisses

     All of the above have variations, modern takes on the traditional breakfast pastries. Today’s tourists will find croissants filled with, for example, almond paste, lemon curd, fruit jams and pistachio cream inspired by the Dubai chocolate fad.

Croissants amande & pistache

Tour guides certainly have an expanding selection of viennoiseries to offer their clients. Even so, the stars of the breakfast pastry show remain the classics.

Should future Paris visitors book a viennoiserie tour? Why not? But buttery wafts from simple boulangeries with alluring window displays suffice to trigger the urge to step inside and spend a couple of euros on  a warm, standard-sized croissant. Therefore, we choose not to list names of trendy places. Instead, leave it to serendipity, the best compass.

Paris now boasts of Krispy Kream franchises and, most recently, Dunkin Donut shops. Will Sorbonne students turned into culinary tour guides now tout American donut sampling tours? Nothing is unimaginable in Paris.

Selection of 3 different pastries

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1. Information about last winter’s spectacular robbery at the Louvre here: https://richardhowe.com/2025/12/02/louvre-update/

2) Details about the Notre Dame cathedral renovation here:

https://richardhowe.com/2025/05/16/notre-dame-revisited/

3) “April in Paris” – song written in 1932 for the Broadway musical “Walk a Little Faster.” Music by Vernon Duke and lyrics by Yip Harburg. Although Count Basie’s 1955 version is said to be the most famous, the lyrics Ella Fitzgerald sang stand out:

April in Paris

Chestnuts in blossom

Holiday tables under the trees

April in Paris

This is the feeling

No one can ever reprise

 4) Exchange rate on April 9, 2026: I euro = 1.169 US dollars.

5) In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II Juliet says: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The Housing Crisis: it never gets better by Marjorie Arons-Barron

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

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Jonathan Weiner is a comprehensive and enormously powerful study of the cycle of poverty in American cities brought about by the eviction of poor people from their homes.

Eviction is not just about eviction in the legal sense, where people get summoned to court for getting behind in their rent or violating their leases’ behavior standards, like engaging in domestic violence or drug use. He also includes those forced out of their homes by fires, substandard living conditions, health code violations, without due process, set adrift to find habitable and affordable housing elsewhere. Too many end up on the streets, sleeping in shelters. Eviction, in Weiner’s telling, deals with the gyre of how housing insecurity accelerates and perpetuates lives of poverty.

Weiner focuses on eight families in different housing arrangements, all of whom were in a downward spiral that only accelerated after eviction. From having a home, we get a sense of stability, a sense of belonging and self-worth, a sense of security. Rents for the poor may end up taking 80 percent or more of family income. Even if they succeed, they may end up with no heat or hot water, broken windows, non-working refrigerators, mice and cockroaches.

When they get behind in the rent and are thrown out, they end up in a constant search for a safe place for themselves and their kids. If they find something, it’s rinse and repeat. They’re hard put to buy clothes for school or put food on the table. Every move the family is forced to make means the kids may have to adjust to another school, sometimes as many as five or six in a single year. Often prospective landlords in the private market will refuse to rent to a family with kids, even if the law bars such discrimination.

When things get bad, the fathers of the children can end up in jail or just move out, leaving single mothers to foot the bills and solve the problems. The neighborhoods these women can afford get worse and worse and expose their children to drugs and violence.  Waiting lists for housing are so long it can take years just to get on the lists, and some of the lists are closed. In their struggles, some poor people turn to alcohol and drugs themselves.

A history of evictions is itself disqualifying in public housing. Private housing landlords in the inner cities get essentially a free hand in determining who stays and who goes.

Weiner describes the cycle of despair in terms that are gritty, graphic, and authentic. He makes us smell the squalor, hear the chaos, taste the fear. Having grown up poor, he has a natural empathy.  As a PhD student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he devoted himself to understanding the problems of players on all sides of the issue.  For nearly two years from 2009-2011, he lived the life, first in a trailer park rental in the outskirts of Milwaukee, where he got to know the very real people he writes about. He was never without a notebook. His subjects knew full well he was writing about them and their challenges. They wanted their stories told. America’s housing crisis is real.

Most of the tenants in the trailer park were poor whites.  He also moved on to live in the innermost parts of the city, mostly people of color. He spent hours in the housing courts learning the flaws of the process. He studied sheriffs, landlords, government bureaucrats, human services workers, addiction counselors and more. He details the shortcomings of the legal system. He developed statistical models to validate his findings from studying the lived experiences of his subjects.

Weiner concludes with recommendations, including especially a universal housing voucher program, not unlike the Section 8 housing vouchers that reach only about a quarter of those eligible. And not all landlords accept them. The waiting list can take at least two years. (In many places, the waiting lists are actually closed.) He maintains that, if fully funded, the nation can afford spending much more – just as the nation can afford the mortgage-interest deduction and other advantages it provides for homeowners.

He also urges that the government pay for legal services for poor tenants facing eviction. The landlords are typically lawyered up; tenants in civil cases are often unrepresented.

Every night of his study, Weiner would type up his notes, ending up with 5000 single-spaced pages. He maintained long-term relationships with some of his subjects, noting in the epilogue that a few of them had actually survived and stabilized their lives. His writing style is simple and direct, fact-driven and heartfelt. His 400-word book is human, moving, and eye-opening, well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it won in 2017. It is as relevant today.

Lowell Politics: April 12, 2026

Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting covered a variety of topics with a discussion of how the Lowell Police Department interacts (or doesn’t interact) with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents being most important, although I’ll save that until last.

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There was a public hearing and then a vote to amend the city ordinance on fees to make the annual residential trash fee $335 (up from the current $225) with the charge for a non-owner-occupied residence $600 (up from the current $425). This had previously been discussed by the council, but it was still surprising that not a single person spoke at the public hearing, either for or against, and no councilor commented on it before voting unanimously for the fee increase.

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There was some good news on the Lowell High renovation front. Since the start of this year, the council has anxiously awaited firm figures on the cost of unbudgeted remediation in the Coburn Hall building. Several councilors even sprained their fingers while wagging them at the contractors, warning them not to come back seeking more money. Now that interior demolition work has uncovered the areas of concern, they turned out not to be that big an issue and any additional costs will fit within the current budget.

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The complicated intersection of Appleton, Church, Central and Gorham Streets will be getting a much-needed remake. Statistically shown to be extremely dangerous for motor vehicles, cyclists and especially pedestrians, the historic and potentially very valuable buildings that border the intersection have all been at an economic disadvantage due to the challenges and risks faced by pedestrians trying to access them.

Now, the Commonwealth has awarded a $4.7 million grant to the city to make safety upgrades. (On Tuesday, the council formally voted to accept the grant.) A sketch of the intended work shows more pronounced crosswalks and associated signals and safer-for-pedestrian curb layouts as the primary output of the work.

For motor vehicles, when coming in-bound on Gorham/Central Street and turning right onto Church Street, the separated right turn lane that now has the sidewalk on one side and a pedestrian island on the other will be erased. In its place there will be a normal right-turn lane.

Ironically, the current design was a 1980s redesign that was one of several preconditions for the Hilton Hotel (most recently, the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center) coming to downtown Lowell. Before that, Gorham Street was laid out as it is today only it had two-way traffic, and Central Street was a straight shot up the hill to the Back Central neighborhood, with two-way traffic. The Hilton-mandated change created the big sweeping curve on Gorham Street that funnels inbound traffic from Gorham onto Central and then onto Church and onto George right to the hotel. The design purpose was to let cars drive like they were on a divided highway from the Lowell Connector straight to the Hilton Hotel without regard to the densely packed neighborhood the road passes through. This project won’t unwind that “highway in the middle of the city” design that plagues so much of downtown Lowell; it will just make some safety tweaks amid it.

Another roadway change of this new project involves the small stretch of Appleton between Gorham and Central and then on Church from Central to George Street. This is now three lanes wide, but it will be downsized to just two lanes. This should slow the traffic a bit, which will be helpful because after navigating the clogged intersection, drivers feel the urge to accelerate through the straightaway in front of Central Plaza, which creates dangerous conditions for those waiting for the bus or trying to cross the street. Having just two lanes instead of three should slow traffic slightly.

Work on this project is supposed to commence in 2027.

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The issue of ICE and the Lowell Police Department arose with the response to an earlier motion by Councilor Sean McDonough requesting statistics on ICE arrests, detentions and other activities in the city and what, if any, assistance has been provided by the Lowell Police.

The motion response from Police Superintendent Gregory Hudon said there were “no records responsive to this request” and went on to make the following points:

• Immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government and is “not subject to oversight by the Lowell Police Department.”
• When a person requests assistance, the Lowell Police Department does not “routinely question any person about his or her specific citizenship or immigration status.”
• The Lowell Department “routinely cooperates with all our law enforcement partners” such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), however, the LPD has “had no requests to cooperate with ICE.”
• The Lowell Police “are also bound by law to make arrests when a judicially issued federal arrest warrant exists for an individual” and in cases of threats to public safety and to national security.

The Superintendent’s memo also states, correctly, that Massachusetts law does not permit police officers to detain an individual pursuant to a federal civil immigration detainer or administrative warrant.

In the 2017 case of Lunn v. Commonwealth, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that Massachusetts court officers – and by extension, local police officers – do not have the authority to hold a person in custody solely because of a federal immigration detainer. Here’s the court’s reasoning:

Detaining someone against their will constitutes an arrest under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and therefore must be supported by probable cause that a crime has been committed and that the person being held is the one who did it. It doesn’t matter whether someone has said, “you’re under arrest;” the test is whether the person is detained. If the person is not free to leave, then it’s an arrest.

In the Lunn case, Lunn had been charged in state court with a state crime. Bail was set but not paid, so he remained in custody, however, the case was soon dismissed for failure to prosecute. In the meantime, a Federal immigration officer sent the court where Lunn was to appear a “civil detainer” which is an assertion by the Federal authorities that the person named is subject to removal from the country and also a request that the state authorities hold the person for up to 48 hours to give the Feds time to arrive and take them into custody. The court officers in this case did just that, with the concurrence of the judge who had dismissed the state charges, and Lunn was soon in Federal custody.

The SJC reviewed Federal immigration law, especially a 2012 US Supreme Court case that held that being in the country illegally is not a crime but is a civil violation. (Crossing into the country without permission is a misdemeanor, but simply being here, for example, if you have over-stayed your visa, is just a civil infraction.) The SJC also found that nothing in Federal immigration law invested state and local law enforcement officials with the authority to hold someone facing civil removal.

While a Lowell police officer has no authority to detain a person pursuant to a Federal civil warrant, an ICE officer does have the legal authority to do that. The logic used by Federal courts is that these arrests are not punitive (which would require criminal due process) but procedural in that it permits the executive branch to enforce laws regarding who may stay in the country.

The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution establishes that the Constitution and Federal laws are “the supreme law of the land” and take precedence over conflicting state laws. Consequently, the Federal law that permits ICE to make these arrests on the streets of Lowell takes precedence over conflicting state law that would analyze the arrest differently.

Now in normal times, if the Lowell Police was alerted that heavily armed, masked men, were roaming our streets in unmarked vans and grabbing people, there would be a rapid and overwhelming police response including the mobilization of the regional SWAT team. But these aren’t normal times because the de facto policy of the Federal government is not reasonable immigration enforcement, it’s to terrorize and intimidate people of color and anyone who gets in the way of that effort, hence, the masked, heavily armed Federal agents in our midst.

At one point on Tuesday, Superintendent Hudon mentioned avoiding a “blue on blue” incident by which he meant law enforcement officers from different agencies shooting at each other. Although it was never mentioned, I suspect that an incident in Worcester a year ago has also shaped the thinking of many police departments on this issue. In that case, on May 8, 2025, ICE agents detained a woman on a neighborhood street which prompted relatives and neighbors to surround the scene in protest. Worcester police officers arrived and intervened, arresting the 16-year-old daughter of the woman being detained by ICE and another woman. The incident sparked protests against the Worcester Police Department’s role in the arrests and launched an internal city investigation.

While the official policy of the Lowell Police may be to not assist ICE, at least in the absence of a judicial (criminal) warrant, the unofficial policy of the LPD might just be to stay as far away as possible from any ICE activity, both to avoid the risk of shooting at each other but also to steer clear of a repeat of the Worcester incident of last year.

If that’s the case, it’s unfortunate, because the presence of local police officers, even as passive observers when ICE is grabbing people off the streets, could be beneficial. We’ve all seen the power of video in holding Federal authorities to account and in shaping public opinion against the tactics being employed. Local police with their body cameras turned on to record everything would provide important evidence of what was happening in our city and might even keep confrontations from escalating.

But for now, the city’s official policy is essentially, “there’s nothing we can do” which is regrettable, because it deprives our residents of the feeling that at least those in local government are looking out for them. Furthermore, when setting community expectations or even aspirations, for all the “coffee with a cop” get togethers and the “our police force represents our community” demographic statistics, the “thin blue line” cultural allegiance among all those in law enforcement is powerful and will likely prevail in most circumstances.

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Speaking of how to respond to authoritarian regimes, this week in Seen & Heard I reviewed the 2025 movie Nuremberg which is about the post World War II war crime trials of Nazi leaders. I also commented on a YouTube interview of historian Beverly Gage talking about her Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover; and discussed a New York Times article that compares the current disruption of oil flowing from the Persian Gulf to the “oil shocks” of the 1970s.

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A reminder that this spring’s tours of historic Lowell Cemetery will take place on Saturday, May 2, and on Sunday, May 3, both at 10am from the Knapp Avenue entrance.

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.