On Tuesday, November 7, 2017, Somerville voters will cast their ballots in a City Election for the offices of Mayor of Somerville, various Board of Aldermen members, and School Committee Members in Wards 1 and 2. This week, the Somerville Times asked each of the qualified candidates for Mayor of the City of Somerville to describe why they would be the best choice for the office they are running for and what specific policies they would advocate or implement in that position, along with a bio if they choose to include one. Their responses are presented here in alphabetical order based on their last names.

Sen. Sanders delivered a rousing endorsement of local and state level candidates up for election in November.

By Eesha Pendharkar

Sen. Bernie Sanders came to Somerville on Monday to endorse 18 candidates for local office in Cambridge and Somerville. The Somerville and Massachusetts chapters of Sanders’ grassroots movement, Our Revolution, organized the event at which the progressive Vermont Senator spoke.

Election Day will be here and gone, then the fireworks begin. Nice of Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (everything should be free) to stop over briefly here in Somerville, and we mean briefly. We hear that he needed GPS to find us this past Monday morning. He was here long enough (maybe an hour) to shake hands with the local politicians (imagine he never met any of them before) running for office, to say “Hi” and then endorse them. He gave the same endorsement as Our Revolution Somerville gave (you know, that large group of Socialists – approximately 40 members) who used to be called the Progressive Democrats of Somerville, way back a few years ago. What we are wondering about is a couple of the candidates running look like they are trying to distance themselves from the long-time residents over the new Socialists? Bernie the Socialist Senator endorsed the following incumbents: Alderman At-Large Bill White and Mary Jo Rossetti, which surprised us. Wasn’t Bill a proud Republican not too long ago? Ward candidates Alderman Matt McLaughlin (not surprised here, remember he said he’s an activist first then an alderman), Alderman Mark Niedergang (again not surprised), Alderman Lance Davis (very surprised since he’s a billion dollar corporation lawyer), and those were just some of the incumbents. Here’s a bet: how many do you think he met and talked to before Monday’s endorsement? Again Sen. Bernie wasn’t here long; he probably had to get back up north to his multi-million dollar Island mansion he bought on that private island after the DNC convention last year. Just saying!

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The Somerville Media Center produced and hosted the only Mayoral Debate at the center on October 23, 2017. Candidates for Somerville Mayor, incumbent Joe Curtatone and challenger Payton Corbett, faced off in the 28-minute program moderated by WBZ – TV and Radio political reporter, Jon Keller.

Participating in the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday: (L to R) Tom Galligani, Director of Economic Development, City of Somerville; Liz Barno, Community Director, Greentown Labs; Courtney O’Keefe, Executive Director, Somerville Local First; Don Law, Union Square Partners, LLC; Mayor Joe Curtatone; Nadia Cheng, Head of Operations, RightHand Robotics; Esther Hanig, Executive Director, Union Square Main Streets; Greg Karczewski, President, Union Square Station Associates (US2).

By Somerville Times Staff

The former Union Square Post Office building will soon be home to RightHand Robotics, a local technology company that grew out of a team of researchers from Harvard, Yale and MIT.

RightHand Robotics is a leader in end-to-end solutions that reduce the cost of e-commerce order-fulfillment across industries, bringing the latest technological developments from the lab to the warehousing industry.

Once again, Somerville is thinking big. Really big.

The city and its neighboring partners are now competing with more than 200 like-minded communities across the North American continent, hoping to win the favor of e-commerce giant Amazon in becoming the site of its second corporate headquarters.

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Sous Vide, a French term meaning “under pressure” is a cooking method where you place a protein or vegetable into a plastic bag and vacuum seal it, or use the water displacement method with a freezer Zip Lock, (this information can be found on YouTube), cook it in a water bath at a specific and constant temperature as recommended by food safety guidelines*. This technique was very popular in upscale restaurants in the mid 1970’s and is stilled used today.

Congratulations to Somerville High School Coach Fenton for being named the New England Patriots High School Coach of the Week after a three-game win streak. The Highlanders football program received a $1,000 donation in his honor. Hall of Fame linebacker Andre Tippett’s visit and the check presentation was featured on “Patriots All Access,” which aired on Friday night.

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Review by Lawrence Kessenich

The best books for small children take a simple concept and play it out in a way that isolates the subject and strikingly illustrates it, thereby focusing the child’s attention on it – and, for that matter, the attention of the adult reading it to the child. Windows does this with the subject of windows at dusk in an urban setting – in this case, Somerville, Massachusetts (although the area is not identified in the text, anyone who knows Somerville will recognize some of the stores and buildings, and the authors identify it in their bios).

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Dennis Daly writes: “Originating in Malay prior to the 15th century the pantoum probably developed from an oral tradition of rhythmic and repetitive rowing songs. Early pantoums were very short, but modern ones require no set number of stanzas. The following poem is included in Pantoums, my sixth book, recently accepted for publication by Dos Madres Press.”