By Joe Creason

On Tuesday, September 28, a joint hearing of the Land Use Committee and Planning Board was held. Members of the of the public were given the opportunity to speak, with each speaker having up to two minutes to give their opinion on the various agenda items being discussed at the forum.

Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen and Michael Capuano chaired the Land Use Committee and Planning Board respectively.

A GoFundMe fundraising effort has been established to help the Peréa-Roberson family cope with the challenges of dealing with the incident involving their child.

By Eileen Qiu

Tense pauses, stutters and silence fell over last Thursday’s Legislative Matters Committee meeting as City Council members discussed the city seeking to overturn a ruling from the Public Records Office that will let parents acquire records for their child, who was accused of inappropriately touching a classmate. 

Shirley pop-up kitchen owner/operator Chef Kat Bayle.

By Fernando Cervantes Jr.

Chef Kat Bayle has worked in kitchens from San Francisco to Slovenia to Paris. For almost a year now, Bayle has been running a weekly pop-up kitchen in restaurants around Somerville and now plans to do a soft opening.

Shirley, a pop-up kitchen, which was formerly known as Blueberries for Sal, is set for a soft opening on October 16 at Union Square’s Bow Market.

L to R: Kurt Redgate, Katjana Ballantyne, Anthony Slocum, and Christian Martinez.

The City Councillor and current mayoral candidate Katjana Ballantyne sat down for a conversation with Next Wave/Full Circle students Anthony Slocum, Christian Martinez, and Kurt Redgate.

Anthony Slocum: How did you end up in Somerville?

KB: Great question. It was affordable, I had been living in Chelsea for five years and my housing situation changed. I was single, roommates and all that, and I moved to Winthrop for a year and a half, two years when the house had a fire and I got displaced. I lost everything and my friends let me sleep on their couch for three months here, two weeks there until I was able to find a place.

By Matt McLaughlin
City Councilor, Ward 1

Voters have until 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 13, to register to vote or update their voter information for the November 2 election. Massachusetts voters have the option to register online or via a paper form. To register by mail, call (617) 625-6600 ext. 4200 and request a form be mailed to you or download one from the Elections website, somervillema.gov/elections. Don’t forget that your form must be received by the Somerville Elections Department by 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 13.

Eagle Feathers #238 – The Great Fires

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

Reprinted from the October 1, 2014 issue of The Somerville Times.

Next week is Fire Prevention Week. Its annual observance is the week in which October 9th falls and has been celebrated at this time since 1922. The reason for this date is the remembrance of a conflagration, the Great Chicago Fire of October 8 and 9, 1871.

Musicians of most genres played live music around the city on porches and in yards between noon and 6:00 p.m. on Saturday during this year’s PorchFest event. 

After more than a year of study and debate, the Somerville City Council has passed a new ordinance that sets guidelines for when and how leaf blowers may be used within the city

Many have felt annoyed with a neighbor or contracted groundskeeper running one of these contraptions either at inappropriate times – such as weekend mornings when one hopes to sleep in a little longer in the morning – or upwind of us as we hope to breathe some fresh air while we enjoy the outdoors whenever we wish to.

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Review by Off the Shelf Correspondent Dennis Daly

Elegant beyond elegance. Moira Linehan stitches together a palimpsest biography of her mother’s mother, Marie Louise Raimbault Wacha, a nonpareil seamstress and dress designer. Based on very little hard information, Linehan conjures up backdrops, insights, and probable artistic techniques used by her grandmother. She does this by incorporating period art in an ekphrastic approach that uncovers the extraordinary will and likely contours of a magnificent lady. Wacha’s life spanned the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. The urban textile centers of Paris and Boston nurtured her.