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Review by Off The Shelf Correspondent Lee Varon

It sounds cliché to say of a book that the author’s words leapt off the page. Yet I can’t think of a better expression to describe the feeling I had when reading the poems of Susan Sklan. The letters on which all of these poems are based, are actual letters written by Sklan’s grandmother who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before her presumed death in the Treblinka concentration camp. Most of the letters Sklan’s grandmother wrote were to her son (Sklan’s father) in England. He escaped Warsaw to England when he was seventeen, a few weeks before war began. After the war he immigrated to Australia, the only one of his immediate family to survive. These lucid and beautiful poems are reflections on the letters of her grandmother, and often contain her grandmother’s own words.

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Bestselling Author, Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his latest novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works of fiction and poetry published, 17 nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. In 2023, Big Table Publishing published an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 150 pages of new material: The Best of Timothy Gager. Timothy was the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, and the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, MA.

Last week Mayor Katjana Ballantyne, Representative Christine Barber, Preservation of Affordable Housing, Somerville Community Corporation, Somerville Housing Authority, residents, funders and partners celebrated the groundbreaking for Clarendon Hill Apartments, Phase One.

LEGO® Discovery Center Boston had its grand opening ribbon cutting today with an imagination and colorfulness matching the new next-gen attraction. Governor Healey, along with other local business and government leaders, were present to open and experience Northeast’s first LEGO Discovery Center and participated in a kid-led ceremonial ribbon cutting. With a giant LEGO® key, the doors were opened as guests blasted off into adventure with the new experiences Spaceship Build & Scan, DUPLO® Park, and more. LEGO Discovery Center Boston be opened to the public on May 25.

Wednesday, May 31 from 3:30 to 5 p.m., Food For Free will open its doors to the nonprofit’s Packing & Distribution Center, located at 59 Inner Belt Road in Somerville. Area residents are invited to hear more about how the nonprofit is working to provide 6.25 million meals to food-insecure individuals across 27 communities in Eastern Massachusetts and the ways in which they can get involved through the organization’s numerous summer volunteer opportunities.

Sessions will be held throughout June to give community members the opportunity to share their experiences with accessibility in Somerville and help create priorities for the City’s ADA Transition Plan.

Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and the Somerville Department of Racial and Social Justice invite Somerville community members to join an upcoming ADA Community Survey Focus Group session to make their voices heard as the City updates its Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Transition Plan. 

— Photos by Beatriz Leite

By Beatriz Leite

For the second consecutive year, Somerville’s Asian community gathered  Friday, May 17, at the Aeronaut Brewing Company, for the Asian Festival to celebrate Asian arts and culture. The Asian & Asian American Family network of Somerville organized the event.

Greentown Labs, located in Somerville, recently announced that it will be partnering with Aramco Americas, a subsidiary of big oil company Aramco.

By Molly Rains

Greentown Labs, a climate-minded startup incubator based here in Somerville, last month revealed the identity of its newest partner: Aramco Americas, a subsidiary of the global oil giant Aramco.

Pictured (left to right): Wayne Procope (Food For Free), Juan Camilo Saavedra (La Colaborativa), Marena Burnett, Mark O’Neal, Adrienne Dunlap (Food For Free).
~Photo courtesy of Food For Free.

Cambridge/Somerville nonprofit receives 3 years of funding from Cummings Foundation

Food For Free is one of 150 local nonprofits selected to receive funding from the Cummings Foundation $30 Million Grants Program. The Cambridge & Somerville-based organization was selected from a total of 630 applicants during a competitive review process. It will receive $180,000 over three years.