Don’t forget good guy and friend to many here in the city, Alderman at Large and President of the Board Bill White is having a fundraiser on Thursday, June 2 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at Cantina La Mexicana in Union Square. We’re very lucky to have Bill on the Board of Alderman. He’s one of the smartest and most forward thinking aldermen. He is currently in his fourth year as President of the Board of Alderman. You know you’re good when your colleagues on the Board keep voting for you every year for the office of President. Not in our lifetime has that accomplishment ever been made.

~Photos by Claudia Ferro and Kevin Dickinson

Villens United by Chris Haskell

For the last six years the city has thrown its annual PorchFest, which highlights the many different musicians we have residing here in the ‘Ville. Musicians with permits entertain passers by on the porch or in their yard while Villens and visitors alike enjoy the sights and sounds of the Somerville streets. The festival itself has become an unofficial city holiday and something the locals look forward to every year. Whether hiking the hills, or riding your bike around town, there’s something interesting to check out on nearly every block.

Eagle Feathers #104 – Gypsy and the Brown Tails

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

The contrast between the birth of Somerville’s last century and now is startling. In its Annual Report of 1901, the city granted 25 petitions to keep 129 cows, 16 permits to keep pigs, and 4 permits to keep goats. Twenty-five diseased horses were put down, and 23 stables were built.

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For years I heard about Gloria Mindock, the founder of the Cervena Barva Press, but I never met her in the flesh. She was the editor of the Boston Literary Review for a decade. She was involved in avant-garde theatre, (her theatre company won a Rockefeller Grant) as well as being an accomplished poet and a strong presence in the arts scene in these parts.

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Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist living in Somerville, MA.  Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity, gender and self, focusing on how we relate and present ourselves to one another between realities, in real time, online and more.  She enjoys creating costume-based personas to further convey sense of self and belonging.  She also examines the role(s) that technology plays in how we relate to one another, as is the focus of some of her more humorous and/or cynical poetry.