The holiday season gives us that little nudge we sometimes need to take stock in what is most important for us and to share in the sense of appreciation that we feel amongst one another.

Of course, for those of us who may be blessed with material abundance, it is also important to help the less fortunate who may be in need as the winter holiday season unfolds. Consider giving a little of your time or money to make another’s life a little better, particularly during the winter months to come.

(L-R) Program Director Majic Alphonse, The Dojo Youth Extraordinaire Award Recipient Liovens Myrtil, and Rafi Properties Managing Director Collin Yip. At holidayNOVA, Liovens was presented with the first annual The Dojo Youth Extraordinaire

Somernova hosted their annual holidayNOVA party on Wednesday, December 6, featuring live music by the Green Freaks, local vendors, rolling skating, a performance by the Somerville High Step Team, and holiday cheer. At the event, Somernova announced it has officially filed a Zoning Text Amendment application and Zoning Map Amendment application for the first of its kind Climate and Equity Innovation Sub-Area Overlay District with the Clerk’s Office at the City of Somerville. The event was made possible by Also Does Events, EventThem, Green Freaks, Chez Vous Catering and Aeronaut Brewing Company.

*

Review By Off the Shelf Correspondent Andy Hoffman

Lloyd Suh has written in The Heart Sellers, a play that will run in repertory theaters around the country for the next generation. You can see it now at the Calderwood Pavilion of the Huntington Theatre.

*

Hilary Sallick is the author of two full-length poetry collections, love is a shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023) and Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Permafrost, Jet Fuel Review, Notre Dame Review, Ibbetson Street, Poetry Porch, and other journals. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she serves on the Board of the New England Poetry Club. She lives and works in Somerville. (www.hilarysallick.com)

Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) to share constituent stories and ask Senator Patricia Jehlen (2nd Middlesex) and Representatives Christine Barber (34th Middlesex), Marjorie Decker (25th Middlesex), and Erika Uyterhoeven (27th Middlesex) to pledge their support for $1.6 billion in bond bill funding for public housing, Real Estate Transfer Fee enabling legislation, and legislation requiring State IDs for citizens returning from incarceration

Tonight at 7pm more than 100 citizens and faith leaders will gather in Cambridge’s Reservoir Church to share moving stories of the struggle to obtain safe, affordable housing, and to ask their Beacon Hill representatives to publicly commit to supporting legislation and funding measures targeting the Commonwealth’s severe, and worsening, affordable housing shortage.

The City of Somerville’s Fair Housing Commission (FHC), which works to ensure that all current and prospective Somerville have equitable housing access, seeks one new member. 

As has become tradition in recent years, members of the Chi Eta Zeta chapter of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority volunteered to deliver holiday meals on Thanksgiving.

By Nathan Lamb

More than 90 volunteers converged at Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services (SCES) on Thanksgiving morning to help deliver 375 holiday meals.

The MBTA  announced that the work to regauge the track along the Green Line Extension (GLX) will not be completed by Monday, December 11, as initially anticipated under the plan presented by the project’s contractor, GLX Constructors (GLXC), which requested additional time of the MBTA. The MBTA has granted the contractor an additional seven nights to continue the work – until at least Sunday, December 17th. Evening Green Line trains on both the Union Square and Medford/Tufts branches of GLX have been replaced with shuttle bus service beginning at 8:45 pm since November 27, which will continue during this time.