This is the eight year and fifth issue of the Bridge Review, a long time for a typical “small press” journal, especially on the new frontier of the Web. The Internet was fairly new in 1997, when the inaugural issue of this bioregional journal was launched at UMass Lowell. Since then, the World Wide Web has gained hundreds of millions of everyday users—people who read, listen, and view what’s on the Web and, more importantly, people who make the Web what it is through their contributions. The Bridge Review is a star in the universe that is the Web or maybe a planet in its particular cultural galaxy. This new issue offers a familiar mix of creative and scholarly work, with poems, stories, essays, songs, and research papers, as well as a selection of paintings by an artist with one foot in Lowell and the other in Cambodia. You’ll find local history (Shehong Chen on the Chinese Americans of Lowell) and personal history (Raymond Mungo’s chronicle of the 60s). Even the Three Stooges make an appearance in this issue. Seen through the lens of the Bridge Review, the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts begins to take shape as a place with a great array of voices, a deep pool of creative and intellectual talent, and a complex story line. The contributors to this journal are molding the material of the region into a virtual valley, a kind of cultural soul for the physical valley, the actual place.

Paul Marion and Charles Nikitopoulos
Editors

Matt Miller
Associate Editor

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Copyright © 2005 by The Bridge Review: Merrimack Valley Culture and University of Massachusetts Lowell. All Rights Reserved for compilation. Rights revert to individual contributors following publication. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher and individual contributor.