A Commentary by James A. Norton, Managing Editor

It’s not every day that Somerville has a legitimate link to someone who could be the President of the United States, so while it’s exciting to find out that Barack Obama lived here while attending Harvard Law School back in the late 80’s, it’s disheartening to have found out in the way and manner in which we did.

While he lived here, he parked illegally near Harvard Law and amassed tickets with no intention on paying them – until he decided to run for President – and then had someone from his campaign quietly slip into Cambridge and pay his 19-year-old parking tickets.

Is that someone you want to vote for as our next or future President?

By George P. Hassett, Senior Editor

Before Barack Obama was a United States senator and a presidential hopeful, he was a Harvard University law student living in Somerville who parked in bus stops and accumulated hundreds of dollars in parking tickets. And for nearly two decades those parking tickets went unpaid, until a representative of Obama’s settled all his outstanding debts with Cambridge’s Traffic, Parking and Transportation Department Jan. 26.

By David Taber

Hours before he was scheduled to chair a joint meeting of the Board of Aldermen’s Land Use Committee and the Planning Board to discuss the rezoning of the Max Pak site, Ward 5 Alderman Sean T. O’Donovan was advised by the city solicitor to recuse himself from the proceedings.

  In mid-December, O‚ÄôDonovan finalized the purchase of a house at 30 Warwick Street, directly abutting the property in question.  KSS Realty Partners Inc. owns the property, and they are advocating for the rezoning in the hopes of building a 199-unit condominium development on the site.

Edited by Doug Holder

Michigan poet Jared Smith generously shared a poem with me during a recent interview at the office of The Somerville News. Smith, a former energy consultant with the federal government, who is now on the board of the New York Quarterly, has written policy, as well as a great deal of poetry. Here is a poem for a late winter‚Äôs eve. 

Dark Machinery of Maybe

The long eastern snow has slowed,
leaving only at last scattered tracks,
bud-swelled branches scattered broken,
mail boxes filled with empty envelopes,
homes with no one left to light the lights,
a swirl of missed meaning and metaphor.

I do not have to travel far today:
the flights to Boston, London, and Sydney
are delayed in the dark machinery of maybe.
A cup of soup steeped with seeds from Beijing
brought inside with pine logs from Wisconsin
brings the miles together between my fingers.

Bartok plays shocked digital destinations magnetically
in a living room where my hands are warmed before a fire.

—Jared Smith

By Lisa Locke

The Somerville News Poetry and Music Series, March 4th at 3 p.m. at the Porter Square Books store will feature local singer/songwriter Jim Wells performing his original music.

Wells has been writing songs for approximately seven years.  ‚ÄúI started not long after I started playing guitar,‚Äù he said.  ‚ÄúI never gravitated towards playing other peoples‚Äô songs as much as towards putting poetry to music. I‚Äôve been writing poetry since I was old enough to write.‚Äù

Songwriting, Wells said, was initially a private outlet. When he first performed his music for an audience in the summer of 2002, it was out of necessity. 

“I went to Cambridge, England for six weeks to study abroad, expecting some student loans to be deposited into my account,” Wells said. “By the time I found out I wasn’t going to get them, I was broke and needed enough money to get back to London to pick up my plane ticket home. Somewhere I got the idea to start busking in the street.”

While earning enough in spare change to pay for his bus ticket, he also had his first taste of the transformative experience of an audience responding to his work.

By Nuria Chantre

Amid various restaurants and coffee shops on Teele Square and at walking distance from Tufts University, a restaurant that looks a lot like a dining room focuses on serving Thai food at its most authentic.

Tip Top Thai is family-owned and specializes in Thai food, noodle dishes and Japanese Sushi for eat-in and take-out.  This month, Nung Bunaiamsri, manager, and Monk Sakthanaset, owner and chef, who are married, celebrate three years of business in the city.

‚ÄúI know it looks like a home.  We‚Äôre just a small business and I need to take care of my kids; customers, they know, they understand,‚Äù said Bunaiamsri. 

The couple‚Äôs three children, on break from school, run in and out from the back room of the restaurant which boasts of decorative pieces from Thailand, like a carved elephant, and where Thai music is playing. 

When it comes to cooking Thai food, Sakthanaset said, preparation is key.  He worked in the restaurant business for 15 years before he launched his own, he said.  Chefs don‚Äôt typically spend a lot of time preparing food and often take the faster way out.  It takes a lot of time and gas, he said which can cause some restaurants to make instant soup instead of traditional Thai soup.  For this reason, he said, Thai food is often cooked in ways that it resembles Chinese, Japanese, Italian or even American cooking styles.

‚ÄúI try to make things different.  If you‚Äôve gone to Thailand and you‚Äôve tried Thai food and you come here, you are going to love our food,‚Äù Sakthanaset said.

By Christopher S. Pineo

Close to the southern border of the city there can be observed a mix of actors, renaissance fair workers, and curious minded students battling with swords.

The motions of the blades on Sunday at noon are not the quick, conservative, snapping moves of a fencing bout.  Instead they are deliberate, wide, telegraphed, and loud.

The classes are primarily for actors interested in learning the skills of swordplay said L. Stacey Eddy, Club Director of Baystate Fencing.

A major focal point of these classes is safety of the students, reinforced by practice and the supervision of quality staff, Eddy said. “You know if you have to do it six times a week and twice on Sunday you have to be able to do a fight that is real, but is safe.”

“You know if you hurt yourself on the first day and you’re out of work for a week, you’re screwed,” he said.

“I started off as an actor originally picked up fencing because it seemed like it was an important part of actor training,” he said.

“A lot of the stuff we do here is based on concepts and precepts that the Society of American Fight Directors codified, which basically is certain weapon styles, like rapier dagger, broadsword, sword and shield, quarter staff, unarmed, small sword, and knife.”