By Joe Creason

The Finance Committee convened for a public hearing with regards to the FY-22 Budget on June 9. Ward 2 City Councilor J.T Scott, Chair of the Finance Committee, led the hearing proceeding in the third night of the Committee’s budget review process. The Council did not answer questions or deliberate on comments from the public, in order to allow as many individuals to speak as possible.

Somerville’s most popular entertainment venues are coming back to life after COVID-19 restrictions are largely lifted.

By Bella Levavi

After the three major Somerville music venues shut their doors over a year ago, Governor Baker’s order on May 29, 2021 has brought live music back to Massachusetts. 

Somerville residents are coming in huge numbers to the local venues to hear live music once again. “It’s bouncing back like it never happened,” Tommy McCarthy, owner of The Burren, said.

All city buildings will reopen to the public on Monday, July 12, with limited staffing. Both visitors to city buildings as well as staff will be required to wear face coverings while inside the buildings. Staff will be available on a walk-in basis in all departments for quick transactions like paying a bill or picking up a document. For matters that will take longer, residents will need to schedule an appointment with city staff. Many city services are also available online and, whenever possible, residents are encouraged to continue to use online services.

By Rachael Hines

The Council of Energy Use and Climate Change (CEUCC) held a virtual meeting to discuss upcoming sustainability regulations on Wednesday, June 11. The Committee tackled issues like defining “net zero carbon emissions” and discussed how to incentivize sustainability in construction and remodeling while keeping costs low.

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

By Mayor Emeritus Eugene C. Brune
Museum Trustee

I remember that it was in the 1980’s when I was first introduced to the wonders of the Somerville Museum. Although I learned “Mary had a little lamb” in the early grades of elementary school I never knew that Mary Sawyer Tyler, the heroine of that poem, lived in our city and was the wife of Columbus Tyler (Superintendent of the McLean Asylum). It was fascinating to also know that the very first telephone line in the world was installed by Alexander Graham Bell in the home of Charles Williams, a resident on Arlington Street, Somerville in 1877. Bell invented the telephone in Williams Electrical Shop. Bell, owing Williams some money, made his very first phone call from his shop in Boston to Williams’ home. Or how it came to be that the first flag of the United Colonist was raised on the high point of Prospect Hill on January 1, 1776 and we celebrate this by raising the replica of that flag every year on the first of January. And more fascinating stories such as the Mill, built in 1747 at Powder House Park, that stored hundreds of barrels of gunpowder which was seized by General Gage for the British. As well as the Round House and Ploughed. The Blessing of the Bay, and so much more about the glass works, the brick yards and that is just the tip of the iceberg, as the saying goes.

Eagle Feathers #231 – The Faithful and the Fearless

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

While walking by, biking, or sitting in Winter Hill traffic, many people have noticed the names of Reilly and Brickley on the front of the city’s fire headquarters and have casually dismissed them without a thought. On June 10, Somerville firefighters celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Arrow Paper Company fire where two of their fellow firefighters lost their lives and five were injured. Veteran firefighter, George Janus, was buried in the rubble and narrowly escaped with serious injuries. Four other firefighters were also injured trying to extricate him.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have had a strong, loving father figure in our lives, we have indeed been truly blessed.

They have served as our providers – along with mom, of course – our enablers, our staunch supporters, our coaches, our towers of strength.

Most of us love our dads year-round unconditionally, but we are immediately reminded of just how much they mean to us whenever Father’s Day rolls around in the month of June.

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Article by Michael Todd Steffen

With the passage of time, consciousness expands from the center we’re made to believe we are, to a sphere of awareness back toward ourselves, self-knowledge, with its pains and gift of empathy for the world around us. It isn’t us acting upon the world so much as the world reflecting back at and through us, forging the spirit in us. This is a subtle sense hovering about the more direct and passionate appeals in Gloria Mindock’s new book, Ash (ISBN: 978-1-941783-75-7, 2021, Glass Lyre Press, LLC, Glenview, IL), a sense which emerges in a pristine still moment in the poem Room, with its lament of diminishment and disintegration as being part of the inheritance of the world of facts:

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Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Ibbetson Street, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Mom Egg, etc. Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Cervena Barva Press, and a story collection is in the works.

Prizes include five $1 million winners; five college scholarships

The Baker-Polito Administration, Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg and the Massachusetts State Lottery announced the Massachusetts VaxMillions Giveaway for residents who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Fully vaccinated residents 18 and older will have the opportunity to enter to win of five, $1 million cash prizes. Fully vaccinated residents between 12-17 years of age may enter for the chance to win one of five $300,000 scholarship grants.