Party celebrates paper in all forms
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Jewelry by Project Have Hope

By Ashley Troutman

Union Square Main Streets is celebrating the summer with a paper party. On August 14 from 3 to 7 p.m., a specialty craft market will be in Union Square featuring origami, paper maché, framers, bookbinding, silk-screening, comics, and more.

Main Streets Executive Director Mimi Graney co-coordinated the event. “I’m looking forward to seeing paper in all its varieties, textures, colors, and shapes,” Graney said.

Weinberg Design, White Sparrow Bindery, and Albertine, Repeat, and Union Press, are just a few of the participating vendors. The Boston Paper Collective will attend, and demonstrate how to make handmade paper. Project Have Hope will display their handmade paper bead jewelry, and donate a portion of the proceeds to families in Uganda.

On The Silly Side By Jimmy Del Ponte

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

Do you know who Snooki and Pauly D are? How about some dude known  simply as The Situation? They are the supposedly real life characters on the MTV smash hit, Jersey Shore.

Of course, Happy Days’ Arthur Fonzarelli was the first one to come up with a nickname beginning with “the.”  Give me The Fonz over The Situation any day. The Fonz never removed his leather jacket and flaunted his abs. They never had to bleep The Fonz out.

By Julia Fairclough

The art of cocoa bean cultivation by the Olmec Indians dates back as far as 1500 BC. Thousands of years later, the only producer in the United States of 100 percent stone ground, organic chocolate continues to thrive right here in Somerville.

Taza Chocolate, founded in 2006, will open its new factory store on August 18, which co-founder and chocolate maker Alex Whitmore boasts is one of the few chocolate factories in our region. To celebrate the grand opening, Taza is selling gift certificates (or “Taza dolllars”) in ten dollar increments.

"Bella Figura" - Lorenzo the CAt photo by Joann Biondi

Bring cat food to pet inspired art show at Nave gallery Friday Sixteen artists share art works inspired by their pets at a new show in Somerville this month. The price of admission should be easy for an animal lover: donated cat food for a local cat adoption shelter.

The Nave Gallery is presenting little critters – a mix of video, painting, pen and ink, photography, and mixed media installation creations inspired by their beloved pets. The opening reception is Friday and it runs until August 29. “Come have breakfast with Ginger, a Golden Retriever with the best of table manners, in a video by Barb and Scott Withers, take time to study Zehra Khan’s intense 91 inch pen drawing entitled “The Beastiary”, and you can’t help smiling when you see Lorenzo the Cat in his latest dashing outfit as photographed by Joann Biondi,” said V Van Sant. The show runs until August 29.

Part 5: Union Square
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By William Shelton

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

Union Square is a classic example of how a neighborhood commercial center declined, and how a determined group of partners can bring it back.

The Square got its name by being a Civil War recruiting center for the Union Army. Adjacent to the Boynton Yards meatpacking district and a short distance to Assembly-Square and Brickbottom factories, it thrived as Somerville industrialized.

The process to pick Somerville’s next police chief is nearing its final stage.

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and other city officials last week began the first of four visits to the police departments and agencies of the final candidates with a trip to Washington, D.C., where candidate Thomas Pasquarello works as special agent in charge and area police director of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. 

- Photo by William Tauro

By William Tauro

A bicyclist fell off his bicycle and sustained a severe injury Thursday morning at the intersection of Washington and Joy Street in Somerville.
Emergency crews treated him at the scene and later transported him to an area hospital.

- Photo by William Tauro

By William Tauro

The Newport Construction company is working diligently on the reconfiguration of all the Assembly Square Mall project’s infrastructure.

Heroin, crack arrests in busy plaza

By George P. Hassett

Some longtime Davis Square residents recognized the old faces, others overheard brazen talk of drugs and money. Restaurant employees complained of finding needles in their bathrooms.

As summer began, the crowd – usually about a dozen or so men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, attracted further attention: citizens and business owners complained to police that they were selling drugs in the square’s busy center plaza, Statue Park.