By Maeve Lawler

Somergloom Festival returns on Saturday, August 27, for a day filled with music, art, games, food, and more.

The festival’s lineup features “Junius, Glacier, SEA, Dreamwell, Consumer, Queen Elephantine, Ashen Veil, Crone Visions, Lesotho, Dysthymia, Heavy Hands, and visuals by The Dregs Liquid Light Show,” as stated on Somergloom’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/301663368752310.

Mayor Ballantyne, Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen Campen and members of the Somerville Community Land Trust celebrate the first property acquisition of SCLT, located at 7 Summer Street.

By The Times Staff

The Somerville Community Land Trust hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the first community land trust project in Somerville on Wednesday, August 17. The project, funded by the City of Somerville, the Somerville Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and Winter Hill Bank, brings five permanently affordable homes to Somerville’s Union Square Neighborhood.

Father and son literary power duo Paul and Charlie Carafotes.

By Jim Clark

In the years following the publication of Somerville native Paul Carafotes’ delightful children’s book, The Adventures of Charlie Bubbles, the author has followed up that initial offering with a successful string of sequels. And now, the actual inspiration for the first book – his own son Charlie – is following in his father’s footsteps by penning his own forthcoming contribution to the series, Charlie Bubbles! Zena the Great!

The Somerville Flea is now open every Sunday in Davis Square now through mid-October. ~ Photo courtesy of Somerville Flea

By Fernando Cervantes Jr.

Local Somerville resident Greg Ghazil is the founder and operations director for The Somerville Flea, a local flea market. Open for the last 10 years, the market has grown and become a large part of the Davis Square community every August.

Looking to vote early in the 2022 State Primary Election? In-person early voting will be held in the Council Chambers at City Hall (93 Highland Ave.) from Saturday, August 27, to Friday, September 2. Residents can also apply to vote by mail. Applications must be received by the Elections Office by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, August 29, to vote by mail in the State Primary. For more information or to register to vote, visit somervillema.gov/earlyvoting.

Members of the Kiwanis Club of Somerville and many of the PUMA volunteers.

For the third year, members of the Kiwanis Club of Somerville delivered over 200 backpacks filled with school supplies to middle and high school students who are most in need of assistance. The students who will receive these backpacks will be identified by the Somerville Parent Information Center and the administrators at Prospect Hill Academy. 

Bring your favorite poem about Somerville to a poetry reading with an open mic for Somerville poets on Friday September 9, 4:30 p.m., at the Somerville Community Growing Center, 22 Vinal Ave (between Summer St. and Highland Ave.).

Once again it is time to shift gears and power down a bit as we roll out of the high-octane frenzy of summer time and into the laid-back breezy days of autumn and on into the winter months ahead.

It hardly seems possible that we have zipped through the summer months already and it’s now time to send the kids back to school.

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Every so often I look in my archives and reprint an article. This was about the local, legendary street musician known as “Mr. Butch.”

It is poetic justice that Mr. Butch died on the streets of Boston in a motor scooter accident. He was a true creature of those streets for so many years.

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Rinat Harel holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art and studied creative writing at Emerson College, where she received the 2015 Nonfiction Award. Currently a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter England, she is working on a collection of interlinked stories that revolve around life in Israel.