— Photos by Claudia Ferro

Mayor Curtatone, Jimmy Del Ponte and the Moonlighters, Alderman At-Large Mary Jo Rossetti, and other city officials have been making their way around Somerville visiting our local seniors, and regaling them with holiday songs. These pictures were taken at the Somerville Home.

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Review by Dennis Daly
(correspondent to Off the Shelf and noted critic)

Whether carrying his father and leading his son out of a burning city, navigating his fleet through a tsunami, escaping a Carthaginian seductress, visiting the forbidden realm of Hades, or engaging in mortal combat with a Latin prince, Aeneas, in David Ferry’s new and superbly rendered translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, conveys the destiny of civilization forward into its ordained future. This epic journey with episodic tragedies, and mythological wonders still captures the imagination of modern readers perplexed by their own earthly impediments and those nasty, ill-deserved thunderbolt strikes from above.

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Tara Skurtu is a two-time Fulbright grantee and recipient of two Academy of American Poets prizes and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a double degree in English and Spanish from the University of Massachusetts Boston. Tara has taught at Boston University as a lecturer in creative writing, a lecturer in composition at BU’s Prison Education Program, and she served on the planning and teaching team for Robert Pinsky’s 2014 MOOC, The Art of Poetry. Her poems are published and translated internationally, and her work appears in magazines such as Salmagundi, The Kenyon Review, Plume, and Poetry Review. Tara is the author of the chapbook Skurtu, Romania and the full poetry collection The Amoeba Game (Eyewear, 2017). Tara writes: My two January readings will be at: The Grolier, Tuesday 1/9, 7:00 p.m. and Porter Square Books, Saturday 1/13, 4:00 p.m.

Arrests:
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Kevin Banos, of 47 Hanson, December 4, 2:47 p.m., arrested at Walnut St. on a charge of operation of a motor vehicle with a suspended license.

Kevin Banos, of 47 Hanson, December 4, 8:12 p.m., arrested at Washington St. on charges of threat to commit a crime, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct.

A team of Career and Technical Education students from Somerville High School (SHS) earned a number of Skills Leadership and Quality awards at the 2017 Massachusetts Fall SkillsUSA Leadership Conference last month. SHS students networked and worked alongside other SkillsUSA high school students from across the state for the two-day event, gaining valuable skills and making new friendships and connections. This was the fourth year that SHS has participated in this event. The Highlanders brought home the following awards from this year’s Fall event:

The first Special Meeting will be held on Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7:00 PM, in the Aldermanic Chambers, 2^nd Floor, City Hall, 93 Highland Avenue, for the purpose of considering four zoning ordinance proposals for affordable housing linkage fees and/or jobs creation and retention linkage fees (#204399, #204400, #204524, and #204525).

Rachel Marta Greenberg (center) and about 40 others volunteered to make Meals on Wheels deliveries for Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services on Thanksgiving.

By Rachel Marta Greenberg

Thanksgiving is a day off for Meals on Wheels drivers at Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services (SCES), and volunteers help make that possible. This year I was very happy to be part of that effort.

I had no idea what to expect or how many people would participate. I was pleasantly surprised to see at least 40 men, women and children waiting to help on Thanksgiving morning.

— Photo by Bobbie Toner

The snow season has begun, to receive snow emergency announcements by phone, text message, or email, sign up at somervillema.gov/Alerts.

Make sure you’re in the know about what to do whenever  there is a snow emergency called by visiting http://somervillema.gov/snow , learn about  parking and shoveling rules.