~Photos by Claudia Ferro
Somerville hosted one of only two parades in the region in honor of Veterans Month in November (the second is the Veterans Day Parade currently planned in Boston for November 11).

“i i on the pi pi” [“eyes” on the pi’s”] won first place in Somerville Math Funds Scrapheap Showdown.

On October 28, 27 high school students on 9 teams gathered in “The Cage” in Cousens Gym at Tufts University to compete in the Somerville Mathematics Fund’s 13th annual Scrapheap Showdown. Instead of just the usual interesting “junk” in the center of the room when the students walked in, there were also piles of foam core. The students were given their challenge: to design and build a catapult on a base of homasote board. The teams worked intensely, designing, building, testing, reinforcing, and adjusting their catapults.

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This past week I was lucky enough to find fresh Mission Figs on sale for $1.98 a pint. Knowing they needed to be used up quickly, I thought I would make up a quick jam that could be used as a topping for hamburgers, oatmeal, crostini, crackers and even grilled cheese sandwiches. The most common figs seen at farm stands in our area are the Mission, available summer through fall, and the Adriatic, referred to as green or white figs, typically available July through August.

Thursday, November 8, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. at the Fisher Performance Room, Granoff Music Center, Tufts University, 20 Talbot Avenue, Medford, MA.

This workshop is part of a residency celebrating the Liberian Women’s Chorus for Change.

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Decades ago, I remember working on my master’s thesis at Harvard. The thesis was titled Food in the Fiction of Henry Roth. My adviser was a prominent Yiddish literature scholar. At the end of the project she told me, “I thought food as your focus would be trivial, but you proved me wrong.” Food, of course, is now a national obsession, a hotbed for media attention, a subject for scholarship, etc.

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Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, Peacock Literary Review, Black Poppy Review, The New Boston Review, Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, Southern Women’s Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, etc. Her poem Gender Veils was just awarded the 12th Annual Moon Prize by Writing in a Woman’s Voice. David Godine Press published her book This Body and her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Somerville’s Cervena Barva Press.

— Photos by Julian Goetz

SENATOR IN CONGRESS

Elizabeth A. Warren, Democratic -59%
Geoff Diehl, Republican
Shiva Ayyadurai, Independent

Greater Somerville host Joe Lynch in conversation with MA Senator Denise Provost