LTJG John F. Kennedy aboard the PT-109 in 1943 (public domain)
I’m doing a bonus post today! Today marks the day that President Kennedy was shot, and Burnside Writers Collective published my photo essay of iconic photographs of JFK. You can see it here.
Whenever I think of the Kennedys, I think of my grandmother. She was always reading biographies about JFK and Jackie O.
Saint Marie-Bernarde Soubirous was born on this day in 1844 in Lourdes, France. She saw a vision of Mother Mary, who spoke to her in Gascon, which is now an endangered language. The visions inspired the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Lowell that Jack Kerouac writes about. You can read about this famous landmark, where Bob Dylan, Jackie O., and Allen Ginsberg also visited in my Church Hopping column on Burnside Writers Collective.
A car packed with teenagers was speeding down the street at the exact moment we were approaching the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes on foot. It was an unseasonably warm October day in 2011, and the car window was rolled down. Or maybe the rebellious, rowdy passengers rolled it down when they saw us, a group of about twenty-five people, looking eagerly toward the Stations of the Cross. ”God sucks!” a teenager yelled to the support of his peers. The car vanished down the road as we turned around.
Read the rest of my article Church Hopping: Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes on Burnside Writers Collective and discover how Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, JFK and Jackie Kennnedy, and endangered languages are connected to this place.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and speaker based in New York City.
She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of "Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"
You can email her at stephanie_701 {@} yahoo.com
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 