Board members appear to be in favor of approving phase one of the ambitious Union Sq. Revitalization Project, but doubts linger on environmental issues overlooked earlier in the process. — Photo courtesy of US2

By Denise Keniston

On August 22 the Somerville Planning Board is set to vote on the remaining site design applications for phase one of the ambitious Union Square Revitalization Project.

So-called supervised consumption sites offer drug users the ability to take advantage of a clean, medically supervised environment, thus eliminating many risks while additionally offering support for getting clean.

By Jim Clark

Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone announced last week that he intends to open a supervised consumption site (SCS) somewhere in the city next year.

“The death toll in this opioids epidemic is too high for us to continue to act like the status quo has any chance of fixing it,” Mayor Curtatone asserted in a public statement. “Supervised consumption sites may offend the War on Drugs mentality of some federal officials, but that mentality has done nothing but make this plague of addiction worse. These are our family and friends. This is in every neighborhood, even if it doesn’t seem that way when you walk around your block. It doesn’t take the form of street crime. It’s mostly quiet suffering behind closed doors.”

132 Perkins Street LHD – before

By Marian Berkowitz

On a crisp, sunny day in late spring I interviewed local developers Elan Sasson and John Topalis, who recently completed extensive work, both restoring and enlarging a former single-family house in East Somerville.

Mural artist Calo Rosa.

The City of Somerville will be getting three new murals in August and September, thanks to a mini mural festival by the City of Somerville and Somerville Arts Council. From August 21 through September 1, three internationally-renowned artists will be painting murals in the East Somerville, Union Square and Central Hill neighborhoods.

The deadline to register to vote in the September 10 preliminary election is tomorrow, Wednesday, August 21. Be sure to visit somervillema.gov/elections for more info about registering to vote and where to vote. For any questions, please contact the Elections Department (617-625-6600 ext. 4200 or elections@somervillema.gov).

The mayor is calling for the installation of a so-called “supervised consumption site” in the city, to help lower the instances of death and serious injuries to those who use hard drugs, such as opioids and other substances that are injected intravenously.

Basically, the idea is to provide a safe, clean place where users can inject their drugs under medical supervision and without fear of interference by law enforcement personnel.

— Photos by Claudia Ferro

NBC and Telemundo owned TV stations teamed up with hundreds of shelters across the country to host Clear the Shelters, a nationwide pet adoption drive on Saturday, August 17 to help find loving homes for animals in need. Kitty Connection, a no-kill, all volunteer rescue based in Medford, took part in the event locally. Nationwide, more than 250,000 pets found their forever homes since 2015.

The Somerville Arts Council is partnering with Oompa, a nationally-acclaimed, Boston- born, poet, rapper, and educator, to present a Black, Brown & Queer, a QTPOC (Queer and Trans, person of color) multi-disciplinary arts festival. This will be a free, outdoor, community festival, with all of the artists coming from the QTPOC community.

*

Review by Off the Shelf Correspondent Marcia D. Ross.

First, the title: Dreadsummer. Before I’d read a single poem, the title bespoke (to me) some call of the wild, a terrible loss, a subject matter emotionally wrenching, like Heathcliff and Catherine’s tragic love. And I was wrong, but I was close. This chapbook of poems by Eliot Cardinaux turns out to be much subtler and more musical than my cheap dramatic expectations, but I would not be exaggerating to call the poems odd, like dreams, and arresting, invasive, suggestive, and large in their life upon the page. They live.

*

Karen VanKnapp was employed at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She likes the offbeat and enjoys things of a scientific bent.