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November 2, 2010 - 6:57am
Darlyne Milord (standing, right) helps a program participant get started on the new computer at On The Rise. Milord is OTR's Operations Coordinator. (Photo by Ashley Forgione)
There’s a brand-new computer in the alcove at On The Rise, Inc. (OTR), located at 341 Broadway in Cambridge.
Most of the women who use the computer came here originally for more basic needs—a meal, a warm coat, a safe haven from abuse. Or they were looking for assistance with issues like addiction, homelessness, illness or unemployment (http://www.ontherise.org).
But computer access is fast becoming a basic need, too.
The new computer—along with six others in the offices of the community advocacy staff—is part of an array of improvements funded through a $20,000 grant awarded to OTR earlier this year by two agencies working together: the National Center for Family Homelessness, headquartered in Newton, and the Cambridge-based Community Collaborative for Change, which focuses on cities near Boston. Together the two organizations offer funds, training and technical assistance for non-profit programs that assist people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
Gillian Grossman, OTR’s Director of...
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October 15, 2010 - 5:54pm
“Make your house harder to get into than the one next door. If a criminal can’t get in easily he’s likely to move on.”
That advice from Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas was at the heart of a presentation by Cambridge police officials concerning the bloody stabbing and assault on August 26 at 220 Pearl Street. The meeting took place at the Morse School on Thursday, October 14. Some two dozen people attended.
Victims in the case were a 53-year-old Harvard researcher and his 11-year-old son. On October 7 police announced that Marcos Colono, 32, of Cambridge had been arrested and charged with home invasion, assault with intent to murder, and rape.
The police team at the Morse School meeting was led by Commissioner Haas and Deputy Supt. Paul Ames. Others representing the CPD included Supt. Christopher J. Burke; Deputy Supt. Christine Elow, a Cambridgeport native who was On-Call Duty Chief at the time of the attack; Lieut. Steven Donahue, who has been in charge of the investigation; Sgt. Rob Lowe, newly named Neighborhood Sergeant for Cambridgeport; and Dan Riviello, public information specialist and department spokesman.
Questions from the floor during the meeting...
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October 15, 2010 - 9:33am
Photo: part of crowd scene from "Beat the Belt," a 1980 Bernard LaCasse mural at 727 Memorial Drive. The entire mural is shown at bottom of the page.
Tour participants’ accounts of local protest actions in the 1970s cast interesting sidelights on Cambridgeport’s past during the recent History Day walk led by Charles M. Sullivan (photo, below), Executive Director of the Cambridge Historical Commission. Some other aspects of the tour were described earlier in an article by Saul Tannenbaum at http://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/58096.
The beginning of the walk focused on Sullivan’s account of how the farms and marshes of pre-Revolutionary Cambridgeport gave way after the war to commercial developments in which landowner-entrepreneurs like Judge Francis Dana and his heirs played leading roles. In the early 19th century Dana owned much of the land here, including today’s Dana Park.
However, more recent history also took on a role in the tour. As they walked, several people volunteered stories and recollections about Vietnam-era demonstrations in the area.
The route took the group past what was once Sergeant Brown’s Memorial Necktie Coffee House (photo, left) at 140 River Street....
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October 7, 2010 - 11:58pm
There has been an arrest in the August 26 stabbing case at 220 Pearl Street (corner of Pearl and Hamilton), Cambridge police announced today. Six weeks ago the two-family Cambridgeport house was the scene of a break-in and brutal stabbing of a 53-year-old Harvard researcher and his 11-year son during the early morning hours. Their names have not been made public.
Initially alarmed by the idea that such a crime could happen here, my neighbors along Pearl Street had begun to assume that the crime was probably the outcome of personal animosity or some kind of vendetta. It was a comforting thought, they said, since it would mean that the public had not been targeted.
But police and reporters were back in the neighborhood today, October 7, and they said that apparently there is no connection between the victims and the accused attacker, Marcos Colono of Cambridge. However, there is a report that Colono was implicated in at least one other violent crime.
News of the arrest was confirmed by the Cambridge Police Department report shown above. It is on line athttp://www.cambridgema.gov/CityOfCambridge_Content/documents/PressReleas...
A spokeswoman at Cambridge police...
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October 4, 2010 - 2:00pm
Photo: Keynote Speaker Dr. Gabor Maté signed copies of his recent book at the annual On The Rise "Prepare for Winter" dinner. With him around the table (l to r): volunteer Adam Light-Sergott; Darrell Byers, a former member of the OTR Board of Directors; Kim O’Loughlin.
When we talk about addiction, we often say that addicts have “made bad choices,” or we say that the problem is “in their genes,” according to Dr. Gabor Maté. He doesn’t accept those explanations.
“Both those answers have something in common—they both take society off the hook,” Dr. Maté told some 400 supporters of On The Rise (http://www.ontherise.org) at its annual benefit dinner, "Prepare for Winter," on September 23. On The Rise (OTR), 341 Broadway, aids women in Cambridge-Somerville and Greater Boston who face issues such as addiction, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, and abuse.
Maté was the keynote speaker at the benefit on September 23 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge. He is staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a non-profit housing and treatment facility in Vancouver's seedy, dangerous Downtown Eastside. He is a well-known advocate for today’s addicted populations, which he sees as including...
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August 26, 2010 - 6:53pm
This morning (Thursday, August 26) around 1 a.m. there was a stabbing at 220 Pearl Street, a couple of houses down from where I live.
Around breakfast time I learned what had happened, and I went out onto the front porch to hear what my neighbors had to say; together we watched the action and speculated about what was going on. About a dozen police were conferring in front of the cream-shuttered gray house, and occasionally people with surgical gloves and plastic bags on their feet could be seen entering or leaving. Yellow police tape isolated the block, but uniformed officers were allowing residents to come and go. That was it for drama so far as onlookers were concerned. Not like "CSI."
I went into my apartment and checked the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association website, where Carolyn Shipley had posted a brief account: "A father and his 11-year-old son were stabbed during a home invasion on Pearl Street near Allston St. Father and son are in a local hospital with stab wounds. The son was stabbed once according to the NECN (New England Cable News) report, while the father had to undergo surgery for his stab wounds. The son described the home intruder as a stout white...
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July 28, 2010 - 9:59am
Photo: Kids met puppets in person at the Tanglewood Marionettes show in Dana Park July 26. This toddler helped the snake charmer adjust his embouchure.
“Oooooh!”
Spectators gasped as the big flower flipped over and turned into a dancer in a blue gown. Johann Strauss’s “Blue Danube” played, and a courtly gentleman took the dancer's hand. A red butterfly hovered discreetly over the pair; they circled the stage and waltzed off into space.
The magical dance was part of “The Fairy Circus,” presented by puppeteer Peter Schaefer and his Tanglewood Marionettes on July 26 at Dana Park in Cambridgeport. The show drew a sizeable crowd on this bright, breezy Monday—285 people, according to a head count by Julie Madden, Director of Community Arts for the Cambridge Arts Council This was the seventh event to be presented during July in the Council's "Summer in the City" series. The programs continue through August. See the performance schedule at http://www.cambridgema.gov/CAC/Community/summer.cfm.
Slides: 1. Peter Schaefer with dancers 2. Ballerina 3. Child examines marionettes after the show 4. Kids from Camp Kaleidoscope with Schaefer; Fairy Princess is in front in pink...
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July 23, 2010 - 10:07am
Colin Rhinesmith, CCTV’s Community Media and Technology Manager, read a farewell card from members of NeighborMedia at the group’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, July 21. A ceremonial cake was presented by blogger SB (Siobhan Bredin).
Rhinesmith leaves CCTV at the end of July to enter a Ph.D. program in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The station’s new Community Technology Coordinator, Nicole Belanger, will work with the NeighborMedia program, he said.
Rhinesmith reported on the 2010 Conference of the Alliance for Community Media held in Pittsburgh earlier this month. He was a presenter at the conference and will continue to be involved in ACM’s citizen journalism initiatives.
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June 23, 2010 - 5:08pm
Photo: Hawaiian lei and new stones in OTR Memorial Garden.>
Three women were remembered at a ceremony June 2 in the memorial garden at On The Rise (OTR), 341 Broadway in Cambridge.
New stones will honor Carole, Lauren, and Marylin, OTR participants who died during the past year. (Last names omitted for privacy.) Engraved riverstones for Carole and Lauren were ready to be embedded among the 25 others already there. Marylin’s stone was expected soon.
The garden is a popular respite for participants in On The Rise day programs. The non-profit organization provides safety, community and advocacy for homeless women from Cambridge-Somerville and Greater Boston. Information: http://www.ontherise.org.
The annual garden ceremony has become a tradition, offering a sense of belonging and permanence that is especially important among homeless people, whose mortality rates have been shown to be 3 to 5 times higher* than those of the general population.
Photo: Speakers Jutta Hicks (l) and OTR founder Katya Fels Smyth (r), with OTR Director Martha Sandler (c).
The first speaker at the service was Jutta Hicks, a volunteer, garden enthusiast, and long-time friend to OTR. She helped...
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June 17, 2010 - 11:43am
Until July 31 MIT's Kresge Green is a vast living room, with an exhibition of some of the wittiest and most original furnishings you can imagine. The area is just off Massachusetts Avenue, between Amherst and Vassar Streets.
On the brick plaza in front of Kresge Auditorium there's a display of giant sofas and chairs made of hay bales. It's titled "Lazy Hay," by John Tagiuri. At lunchtime on a sunny day it fills up with students and passers-by.
"We're part of the art," a student pointed out happily as she posed on a bale.
Here are views of a few more chairs--you get the idea.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36390105@N04/sets/72157624295201698/show/
There's a lot more to the show. There are tables as well as chairs outside; exhibits inside the Auditorium lobby include cabinets, mirrors, desks and other pieces ranging from a massive trestle table to a tiny container the size of a spool of thread. The objects are remarkable for elegant craftsmanship, artful design, and beautiful materials as well as--in many cases--for humor.
The occasion for the Outdoor Furniture Exhibition is the June 16-19 conference on campus of the Furniture Society, a nonprofit organization whose mission is...
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