— Photos by Claudia Ferro

The Ferro family of Somerville took a trip north last weekend to have a look at the 2015 Revere Beach National Sand Sculpting Festival, which took place on Revere Beach.

The much hoped for library for Union Square faced a setback as the city declined a matching grant earmarked for construction costs.

By Haley ED Houseman

At the end of June, the city announced that the Somerville will be passing on a $18 million grant that underpinned hopes for a plan for a library presence in Union Square. According to Dann DeMaina, the Media Manager for the city, Somerville applied for the grant from Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners’ (MBLC) MPL Construction Program in January 2012, although discussions about this proposal began even earlier. Initially the city was placed on a waiting list, and received notification of the provisional award in 2014. After a series of planning discussions, it was determined that the timeline designated in the grant application could not be met by the city, and the city declined to match it.

Food Truck Festivals Of America will be wheeling in gastronomic delights every Tuesday evening throughout the month of August at Powder House Square. — Photos courtesy of Food Truck Festivals Of America

By Patrick McDonagh

Popularity grew in L.A., where cavalcades of 27-foot metal trucks serving gourmet meals might be known as rodeos. The Food Network converted this culinary phenomenon into a TV show hosted by Tyler Florence, The Great American Food Truck Race, which will soon be airing its sixth season.

Make the Mural Night is this week, on Thursday, from 8:00–10:00 p.m. at 34 Cross Street East. You are welcome to join in to bring the mural design to life. Help trace the community mural design on the wall at Deano’s Pasta Factory. The Cross Street mural projection event is an opportunity for the community to see and be a part of a very important part of the mural process. You can help trace the community mural design up onto its new home and reveal a mural design created from community participation and stories told at the mural design event on the 18th. The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded East Somerville Main Streets, in conjunction with the Somerville Arts Council, a grant to fund a place making initiative for East Somerville during 2014 and 2015. The initiative, called “This is East,” will celebrate, maintain and promote East Somerville’s identity at this time of change for the neighborhood. This event is only one piece of a much larger place making initiative that includes video stories and other events.

By Rebecca Danvers

Crystal Rene´ Burney has been beautifying various spaces in Somerville, such as the Trum Park Playground, pictured here, and will now be creating a mural for the new US2/Workbar headquarters in Union Square.

Somerville mural artist Crystal Rene´ Burney has been selected to design a mural celebrating Union Square in the new headquarters of Union Square Station Associates (US2), the City of Somerville’s master developer partner for Union Square’s revitalization, that it will share with co-working space network Workbar.

By Jim Clark

Plainclothes police officers working a narcotics surveillance detail in the Assembly Square area last Saturday evening observed what they believed to be suspicious activity in the Home Depot parking lot and decided to investigate the situation.

And so it goes. Boston’s arguably controversial bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympic games is no more, as proponents of the plan failed to meet the required expectations of the United States Olympic Committee in the allotted time.

Peach season is finally here. This versatile fruit can be used in salads, compotes, salsas, preserves and pies or whatever clever idea you can think of. One way I like to prepare them is using a grill or grill pan to bring out the natural sweetness of the fruit. The desserts listed below are not overly sweet, but if preferred, sugar may be substituted for the honey.

This week we have poems in Spanish by Sergio Inestrosa, a professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Endicott College, with English translations by Max Sklar. Max Sklar is an actor and a translator based in Salem, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of McGill University, and works as the Foreign Language tour coordinator for Cambridge Historical Tours.