Youth leaders Chahat Kalia, Keysha Saint-Cyr, Merbensdjina Jean Paul, and McKayla Hahn share why their work with Somerville Positive Forces (SPF) matters to them – Slide from SCAP Annual Meeting

By Maile Blume

Somerville Cares About Prevention (SCAP), a community-based coalition working to reduce substance misuse among the city’s youth, celebrated achievements the group has made over the past year, during their annual Zoom meeting last Thursday. Some of the achievements the coalition celebrated include conducting trainings on preventing drug overdoses, distributing Narcan throughout the city, developing youth led projects in Somerville’s schools to prevent vaping and other substance misuse, and providing supports rather than punishments for students who are found vaping or misusing other substances.

On Thursday, June 8, the Kiwanis Club of Somerville held its annual Legion of Honor luncheon at the Mount Vernon Restaurant. The Legion of Honor recognizes Kiwanis members after 25 years of continuous membership and service and again every five years thereafter. The meeting honored four outstanding members for their dedication and service to the Kiwanis Club and the Somerville community:

Eagle Feathers #281 –Bunker Hill

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

(originally published on June 12, 2013)

If you drive out of Boston over the Leonard P. Zakim (Bunker Hill) Bridge, the first exit brings you to Sullivan Square at the Charlestown/Somerville line. This area used to be known as Charlestown Neck.  The site was an isthmus, or small thread of land, that connected Charlestown with what is today Somerville.

You won’t get the day off from work or school or grocery shopping or … anything, really. There’ll be no three-day weekend or big picnic to mark the occasion. But for many, the significance of the day will ring loudly in their hearts and minds.

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Book Review by Off the Shelf Correspondent Ed Meek

Some of the best fiction in the past one hundred years or so has come in the form of short stories: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Munroe, Tobias Wolf, etc. Short stories have some advantages over novels. They can zero in on a particular time period or a conflict or a problem and they can usually provide the reader with a sense of an ending where the endings of novels can be unsatisfactory. Recently there’s been a trend toward micro-fiction, but a well-developed short story creates its own little world of escape and contemplation. And despite the availability of so many other ways to entertain ourselves, Fiction still offers insight into the inner lives of characters in a way that is deeper and more satisfying than film and television to give us a portrait of our lives today.

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Jacques Stanley Fleury is a Haitian American Poet, Educator and Author of four books. He has a degree in Liberal Arts and is pursuing graduate studies in the fine arts through Harvard University. His first book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir about life in Haiti and America was endorsed by the Boston Globe. Fleury is prominently featured in newspapers, anthologies and prestigious libraries and literary publications worldwide such as Muddy River Poetry Review and Cornell University Press’s anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide. Two of his books, Sparks in the Dark and his epochal tome Chain Letter To America: The One Thing You Can Do To End Racism, are permanently archived at the University of Massachusetts Healey Library. Find his books locally at The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Porter Square Books, The Harvard Book Store, and worldwide online. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

Pilot program is the latest of several transit equity initiatives Somerville has undertaken this year, fully funding more than 4,000 passes for residents, students, families, and workers

The City of Somerville, in partnership with the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CAAS), is launching a pilot program to distribute 500 fully subsidized MBTA passes to low-income households in Somerville. This program is the latest of several initiatives the City has undertaken recently to deliver economic relief to residents and expand access to sustainable and equitable transportation options. Funded by American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars, this pilot is among the first means-tested transit pass programs in Massachusetts. 

Experience the Band that Created the Music for Toy Story 2 and “Woody’s Roundup”  

Arts at the Armory’s Spotlight Series is delighted to present Riders in the Sky this Friday, June 16th! For more than forty years, Riders In The Sky has been the keeper of the flame passed on by the Sons of the Pioneers, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, reviving and revitalizing Western music. And while remaining true to the integrity of the genre, they have themselves become modern-day icons with their own legendary wacky humor and way-out Western wit, and all along encouraging buckaroos and buckarettes to live life “The Cowboy Way!