Weather permitting, City contractors will need to return to Thorndike St., between Howard St. and the Community Path, on Thursday, January 10, to make upgrades to drain pipes as part of the Somerville Community Path Drainage & Retaining Wall Upgrades Project. Work hours are 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Mayor Curtatone offered his views on the state of the city and how public policy should be shaped in the year to come at Monday night’s organizational meeting.

By Jim Clark

While the federal government remains deep in the throes of a (hopefully) temporary “shutdown,” the same cannot be said for local municipalities such as ours. And so, the City of Somerville emerged from its deep winter holiday break this week to forge ahead with the business of the people and its environs.

By Alderman-At-Large Stephanie Hirsch and Ward 5 Alderman Mark Niedergang

Residents reach out to us constantly about their frustrations and fear regarding traffic. Different people are aggravated by different aspects of traffic. Here’s some of what we hear:

Happy birthday this week to several locals: Happy birthday to a well-known sort of historian and good guy, Matt Hoey. We wish him the very best on this his birthday week. Happy birthday to former East Somerville, now Magoun Sq., sign guy, Dominick Silvestri Jr. We wish him the very best. Happy birthday to Theresa Rodriques, who is celebrating this week. Happy birthday to one of nicest ladies, Bonnie Raboin Carriger, who is also celebrating this week. Happy birthday as well to a good guy, Ken Sprague. Finally, to one of Somerville’s finest first responders and all around nice guy, Kevin O’Donovan, who is one of our best firemen. We wish him a great birthday. Happy birthday to everyone here and from the city who is celebrating this week. We wish every one of them a very happy birthday.

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

By Marshall Collins

Recently, the Board of Alderman shared their tax classification report for the upcoming fiscal year, and one thing is clear: we sorely need more commercial businesses in Somerville to help reduce the tax burden on residents.

Sometimes the wheels of bureaucracy grind along at an agonizingly unhurried pace, leaving much needed change far behind in its timeliness and degree of import. In one such case, the matter of renaming one of our city’s primary governing bodies in a manner more fitting and acceptable to contemporary sensibilities, the update appears to have been put off far too long – by a measure of 100 years or more.

An experimental music gathering in Somerville
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The Co-Incidence Festival is a gathering of experimental composer-performers for ten days hosted by Non-Event at Washington St. Gallery in Somerville.

The project is based on an expanded view of what constitutes art, music, and the traditional concert. Following the example of the revolutionary arts community Black Mountain College, it will bring together a group of radical artists operating in the boundary-zones of their practice to take part in a residency curated as “social sculpture.”

The Somerville Public Library and Somerville Media Center are excited to announce our 2019 workshops as part of our collaborative training program for improving people’s digital and technology skills called, Lunch & Learn Digital Literacy Series.

The next Lunch & Learn workshop is Tuesday, January 15 from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. at Somerville Media Center, 90 Union Square.

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Anne Elezabeth Pluto is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she is the artistic director and one of the founders of the Oxford Street Players, the university’s Shakespeare troupe. She is an alumna of Shakespeare & Company, and has been a member of the Worcester Shakespeare Company since 2011.

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Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer. Her poetry has recently appeared in Lyrical Somerville in The Somerville Times, The Cafe Review, Poetry Bay, The Horror Zine, Star*Line, Good Fat Poetry Zine, and more. Her poetry books Dear Deepest Ghost and This Scarlet Dancing are available on Amazon. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.net.