RIP Alan Lupo - a real city columnist
By Ron Newman - Mon, 09/29/2008 - 12:58pm.
Alan Lupo, longtime columnist for the Globe and other local papers, died today at 70, of melanoma.
Anyone writing a metro or local opinion column today would do well to review Alan's body of work.
I especially recommend his section of Rites of Way: The Politics of Transportation in Boston and the U.S. City, detailing the citizen revolt against highway construction in the 1960s and 70s. The book is long out of print, but any good local library has a copy.
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Aw ...
That's awful. He was a real mensch.
goyim or member of the
goyim or member of the tribe, god rest his soul
Most definitely Jewish
He also wrote The Messiah Comes Tomorrow: Tales from the American Shtetl
Romanian Jewish, to be exact
Lupo being Romanian for "Wolf."
Greek, maybe?
My mother's maiden name is Lupo and she came from Greece. Her father owned a restaurant (of course) in New Bedford.
Interesting
But you can read how Alan Lupo is, indeed, of the Romanian Lupos.
No doubt. Is Romanian a
No doubt.
Is Romanian a romance language? Because Lupo is Italian for wolf. Any Latin students out there?
Yep, it's a Romance language
"Romania" means "Land of the Romans." I think back in the day, the place was the Roman province of Dacia.
When my grandfather left Romania (because he didn't want to serve in the Romanian army), he went to Italy first because he figured he'd be able to pick up Italian fairly quickly. One weird thing about Romanian - they put the definite article at the end of the word, like Swedish.
Lupescu, actually
That book says his ancestor changed the name to Lupo after arriving in the US.
Another interesting thing about Romanian
Is that, unlike the other Romance languages, it still has noun declensions. So if you type "wolf" into the English/Romanian dictionary here, you get back "lup." I bet Lupescu stems from that (and in turn it comes from the Latin word that, among other things, gives us the name of an awful disease called lupus).
lup/lupul (with "lupul" meaning "the wolf").
Remembering Alan Lupo
Paul Levy says farewell:
Cliff Garboden recalls Lupo:
A decent human being
Don Martelli worked with Lupo at the Globe:
He was my journalism professor's husband
When I went to B.U., Caryl Rivers brought Alan in to speak to our class. She was so cagey and professional. She never mentioned they were married!