Somerville’s Poet Laureate, Nicole Terez Dutton.

Nicole Terez Dutton’s work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review, and Salt Hill Journal. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University and is currently serving as the the 2013 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at the Frost Place. She has been awarded the fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Cave Canem and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the winner of the 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for If One Of Us Should Fall.  She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and teaches at the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College and Grub Street.

— Photo courtesy of Tufts University

By Jim Clark

The Committee on Public Health and Public Safety made a report to the Somerville Board of Aldermen at its regular meeting on Dec. 11 regarding its discussions with a representatives of the Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) Study and the Housing Department of the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development addressing a $675,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation aimed at ways to deal with the health risks to Somerville residents from Route 93 in Somerville.

By Rebecca Danvers

According to an announcement by the city, Somerville’s “Pocket Change” workforce development program for low-income, out-of-school young adults has a new partner—Help Around Town, a website that allows businesses and residents to post one-off jobs and part-time employment opportunities at no cost to them.

From all of us here at The Somerville Times, we wish everyone in the Ville a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

By Jim Clark

Police were dispatched to a Medford St. location on last week on reports of a vehicular accident with the driver being kept from leaving the scene.

The Day After Christmas Concert will be held at Johnny D’s this coming Friday.

By Sanjeev Selvarajah

Johnny D’s will be holding its 7th Annual Day After Christmas Concert this coming Friday at 7:45 p.m., at which time Hello Echo, Nighttime Sunshine, Grimis, and Four Legged Faithful will be performing.

Eagle Feathers #68 – First Call

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

“It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, (except the inventor of the telephone.)” This was quoted from a letter Mark Twain sent to Gardiner Hubbard, father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. This was Twain’s reaction to phone usage in the 1890’s, much like today’s older generation’s reaction to the modern assault of today’s cell phone technology and its lack of ethics.

The sign at Sav-Mor Liquors piqued our curiosity this week. We are not sure of what “Blitzen” may have done to deserve the admonition, but we hope that all will soon be forgiven. In the spirit of Christmas, of course.

Kate Chadbourne is about all things Irish. She radiates warmth and a passion for Irish folklore, music, literature, poetry, food…in short everything the Emerald Isle has to offer.

Singer/Songwriter Jennifer Matthews responds to the massacre of school children in Pakistan with this poem.