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February 19, 2011 - 9:53am
Photo: Jay Shetterly, third from right, was elected to the seven-member Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association Board of Directors February 17. Incumbents Bill August, President (center) and Carolyn Shipley, Secretary (second from left) were reelected. Pictured with them are currently serving board members Leslie Greis (third from left) and Cathie Zusy (second from right). Cambridge Vice-Mayor Henrietta Davis (left) and State Rep. Marty Walz, 8th Suffolk District (right) congratulated the officers after the election. Note: Board member Elizabeth Torrey was not present at the time of the photo.
Annual Meeting Held Thursday evening, February 17
Election
Area lawyer Jay Shetterly was elected to the Board of Directors of the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association (CNA) at the organization’s annual meeting, held in the Community Room of the Woodrow Wilson Court Apartments at Magazine and Fairmont. Incumbent board members Bill August and Carolyn Shipley were reelected. The three candidates were unopposed, and the vote was by acclamation. Some 33 residents were present.
Shetterly is well-known locally, both as an attorney and as the owner, renovator, and gardener of the property with a...
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February 9, 2011 - 11:17pm
Geologists from Brown University joined customers at the Tavern on the Square Tuesday night for a science cafe on global warming. Clockwise from left: Prof. Jessica Whiteside, grad students Alexa Tzanova, Danielle Grogan, Rocio Caballero Gill, and Elizabeth Thomas.
Happy hour conversation took a long look at the past on Tuesday evening, when Cambridge pub patrons got together with geologists for a science cafe at the Tavern in the Square, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Porter Square. A science cafe is a new kind of event—an opportunity for scientists and non-scientists to meet informally and discuss a chosen topic. Rishi Jajoo, a Harvard graduate student in biology, organized the event for Science by the Pint, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/
Tuesday evening’s topic was one that is on a lot of people’s minds right now: Climate Change Past and Present. About 30 people, ranging from students to retirees, showed up to talk about it with a team of five geologists from Brown University.
Leading off the brief opening presentation was Elizabeth Thomas, a NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Geological Sciences at...
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February 8, 2011 - 1:30pm
Photo: Carol Goss (right), Board President of On The Rise, welcomed Tara and Corey Finnegan to a presentation of "Strong at the Broken Places."
“For many homeless women, this is the place where they have felt safe for the first time in their lives.”
Most of us can barely imagine the chilling reality behind that comment made by Charyti Reiter during an event titled “Strong at the Broken Places,” presented on January 25 at On The Rise in Cambridge. Located at 341 Broadway, On The Rise, Inc. is a day program for homeless women (http://www.ontherise.org) in the Cambridge and Greater Boston area.
Reiter is the Program Director at On The Rise. Her dramatic comment introduced a short video featuring a woman identified as C., who started coming in to On The Rise in the summer of 2008.
“My stepfather would do bad things to me when I was little,” C. said in the taped interview. “If I resisted he would put me in a box and leave me in there in the dark for a couple of days . . . My brother would sit by the box and try to talk to me, but when he did, my stepfather broke his arm.”
C.’s life story unfolds in a way that underscores the long-term effects of childhood trauma. Removed from...
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January 5, 2011 - 1:39pm
Detail from "Further the Dream," a mural at Martin Luther King School, 100 Putnam Avenue, Cambridge.
“Over 2000 Throng Church to Hear Martin Luther King, Alabama Bus Boycott Leader”--headline from Cambridge Chronicle of January 14, 1960
This historic event at the First Baptist Church, Central Square made the front page of the local paper 51 years ago.
Thirty-one-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was already in the spotlight as a leader in the protest movement that was sweeping the country. This article will recall some milestones in King's life and show how they were connected to events and people here in Cambridge.
“The main auditorium and balconies were packed, with standees in the foyer,” the Chronicle report goes on to say. “Over 400 persons unable to obtain seats in the main auditorium listened to the service over a loud-speaking system set up in the church vestry.”
King’s sermon on that January Sunday was titled "Saint Paul's Letter to America." It was his second one that day; earlier he had preached on "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life" at Harvard University Memorial Church.
Cambridgeport resident Annie Bombard was at First Baptist for the service. Years...
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January 1, 2011 - 10:24pm
Happy New Year from your friends at Mount Auburn Cemetery! No, not the ones in the marble tombs; we’re talking here about a different crowd—the birds who were out there looking for lunch on New Year’s Day. I went to Mount Auburn on January 1 to see who was around.
Photo: Junco and cardinal at the base of the bird feeder. They prefer the ground level.
A red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) was making his way straight up a sugar maple, stopping once in awhile to inspect a promising strip of bark. His name is misleading—it’s his head that’s bright red, not his belly (which you mostly can’t see anyway, and which is merely pinkish). His back is finely cross-hatched black-and-white.
A white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) was foraging in an American elm up on Tower Hill. Lots of blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) hung around in the oak trees and hollered in the distance.
A few robins (Turdus migratorius) were chowing down on crabapples—apparently at this time of year the fruit still clinging to the trees is just the way they like it. They like highbush cranberries and holly berries, too. Some of them stay here all winter.
However, the hot spot for lunch is at the bird...
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December 29, 2010 - 10:57pm
Last October Marcos Colono was arrested by Cambridge police and charged with an August 26 home invasion, stabbing, and assault (http://www.cctvcambridge.org/_Arrest_in_Cambridge_Stabbing_Case) at 220 Pearl Street in Cambridgeport. The Cambridgeport crime has been linked by DNA tests to an earlier incident--the rape of two female college students on Commonwealth Avenue in Brighton in 2008. Marcos Colono, already accused in the Cambridge case, now faces charges in the Brighton case as well.
The news comes in a December 28 press release (see below) from the office of Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. The Brighton case had been under investigation by Boston police and Suffolk County prosecutors; the investigation here in Cambridge was handled by Cambridge police and the office of Middlesex County District Attorney Gerard T. Leone.
Colono, a 33-year-old Cambridge resident, was arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston on Tuesday and charged with the 2008 break-in and assaults. Cambridge police and prosecutors had identified him in October of this year by means of fingerprints at the Pearl Street scene; the prints were said to match others already on file in...
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December 18, 2010 - 2:39pm
What does Santa do after the toys are all made and the letters are answered? He and all the other Santas go for a festive pub-crawl, of course. There's a name for this activity: the SantaCon. The local SantaCon has a website, http://santaconboston.blogspot.com ; other towns have them, too: http://santacon.info. Ours is billed as the Boston SantaCon, but the scheduled stops begin in Cambridge and end up in Somerville. Go figure.
These revelers were spotted just after noon on Saturday, December 18 at the corner of Albany Street and Massachusetts Avenue. They were heading for the 12:30 p.m. SantaCon meet-up at the Asgard Irish Pub.
After some refreshments at the Asgard, they (and goodness knows how many of their friends) will head for Central Square and beyond; they're expected at several spots--Tavern in the Square, Cantab Lounge, People's Republik, Plough and Stars. By 4:30 they'll be spreading out around Harvard Square--at Grafton St., Hong Kong, and/or Whitney's Cafe. Dinnertime will find them at John Harvard’s and/or Grendel's Den. Around 9:30 they'll head north (on the way home to the North Pole, you see). But they'll stop off at Davis Square and visit a few spots, like the...
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December 10, 2010 - 11:42am
Board member Cathie Zusy of the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association thanked attendees and musicians at the CNA/Greenport holiday potluck December 7. With her are Charles (Curly) Merzbacher (left) and Sam Kendall (center) of the Best Ever Chicken blue-grass band, which performed during the dinner.
Bill August, president of the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association (CNA) and Steve Morr-Wineman, the founder of Greenport, welcomed about 100 local residents on December 7 to a festive community evening with a potluck dinner, blue-grass music, and face-painting for kids by Jenny the Juggler. Guests heard the latest news from the two civic groups, which co-sponsored the dinner.
The event filled the fellowship hall of Cambridgeport Baptist Church at Putnam and Magazine Streets. Pastor Dan Szatkowski welcomed the crowd.
August spoke briefly about CNA's purpose and programs. Through its monthly meetings and its website, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cportneighbors, CNA helps area residents stay in touch with each other and with local and municipal happenings. August listed highlights of the group's recent activities including the October 2 celebration of Cambridgeport History Day,...
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December 1, 2010 - 1:37pm
Photo: Chain Reaction Director Arthur Ganson (right) and Benjamin Canfield of Littleton discuss “Camouflage Elevator,” an apparatus designed and built by Benjamin and his brother Adam. It's powered by a hand drill that turns the bottom roller. A plastic box attached to the camouflage fabric catches an incoming golf ball, which is hoisted up and over the rack and into a cardboard tube that sends it on to trigger the next apparatus.
IN THE ART WORLD Arthur Ganson is known as a kinetic sculptor. Here in Cambridge he’s also known as the maestro of a unique seasonal event: the F.A.T. Chain Reaction at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. F.A.T. took place this year on the afternoon of November 26 in the Rockwell Cage Gymnasium.
No, F.A.T. is not about holiday over-indulgence. It’s a way to remember the date: Friday After Thanksgiving.
For the chain reaction, a series of homemade set-ups—mostly toggled together by area kids with varying amounts of adult supervision—are hooked up in a circle so that each one triggers the next by tugging on a string or (new this year) by launching a golf ball. The impulse travels from table to table, with each set-up doing its thing and then...
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November 8, 2010 - 3:56pm
The ThunderCats joined Cambridge's 2nd Annual Halloween Superhero 5K Run/Walk on October 31. Lion-O is at left; Pumyra is almost out of sight behind him. Next (l to r) were WilyKit (in purple), Mumm-Ra, Cheetara, Panthro, and Snarf. (Photo by Jonathan Hinkle*)
“Never underestimate the undying desire in proper ‘grown-ups’ to dress up on Halloween.”
That’s from an on-line “Yelp" review by Tamar A. Her topic: the 2nd Annual Halloween Superhero 5K Run/Walk on October 31.
Tamar's review is right on. The popular event isn’t just a race—it’s an occasion to take on a larger-than-life identity for an hour or so. The organizers, Have2Run Productions of Boston (http://www.have2run.com), are serious about running, no doubt about that. They’re also serious about having fun.
The downtown course ran along Massachusetts Avenue through Central Square, with loops at the ends near Harvard and MIT. The area came alive this year, as it did during last year’s Superhero race, with runners and spectators representing Spider Women, Jokers, Incredibles, ghouls, Care Bears, Batpeople, Ninja Turtles and other good guys and bad guys. Runners' friends and families dressed up to stand on the sidelines...
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