Somerville City Council passes resolutions to recognize new union, strengthen sanctuary city protections
Nearly a week after layoffs roiled city hall, the Somerville City Council passed resolutions to recognize the new Somerville Workers United (SWU) union and strengthen sanctuary city protections, among other business. Read more Encouraged by climate change innovation funding The SWU vote was the first of three resolutions at the council’s May 28 meeting addressing […]
Encouraged by climate change innovation funding
Props to reporter Madison Lucchesi and The Day for bringing us in-depth reporting on the Somerville-Cambridge tech incubators that just won major state grants for climate change innovation. Read more Transparency on tap during feisty debate between Decker and MacKay It’s thrilling! This is how important science gets done. Decades ago the seeds of the biotech […]
Transparency on tap during feisty debate between Decker and MacKay
Transparency in the Massachusetts state legislature was front and center in Thursday’s debate between Rep. Marjorie Decker and challenger Evan MacKay at St. James Episcopal Church. Read more Loud bang heard across region, cause unknown The two are vying for Decker’s seat representing the 25th Middlesex District, which is entirely in Cambridge, in a repeat […]
Loud bang heard across region, cause unknown
Around 2:10 p.m., a loud bang was heard across Cambridge and Somerville with police scanners in Somerville picking up Somerville Police Department chatter at 2:16 p.m. about several reports of a possible explosion. Other reports and online posts suggest the bang was heard throughout much of Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Read more Two movies on […]
Two movies on rules rewritten & rules broken
“Ladies First” ⭐⭐ Rating: 2 out of 4. Speaking of gloriously gonzo, Sacha Baron Cohen, the hot mess (said with respect and gratitude) behind the devilishly caustic “Borat” films, stars in this rom-com-lite, gender-reversal spin with a side of nasty. The movie has a killer cast (Charles Dance, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Fiona Shaw, […]
Yiyun Li on life ‘in the abyss,’ writing and the importance of ‘Moby Dick’
Novelist Yiyun Li read from her new memoir at a packed Cambridge Public Library last week, speaking about the suicides of her two sons and how she turned to art and writing in her grief. Read more CPS names new school leaders and administrators In “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” which won the Pulitzer Prize […]
CPS names new school leaders and administrators
Three Cambridge schools will welcome new principals at the start of the summer and the district also hired two new administrators, including a legal counsel. All three of the new principals announced on Thursday evening are familiar faces within the school system. Allan Gately Gehant, who has been interim principal at Cambridge Rindge and Latin […]
Two new movies grapple with our disorienting, disoriented world
“Backrooms” ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 4. If you’ve ever made a wrong turn in a shopping mall and found yourself in a space not intended for public view, you’ve had the eerie sensation captured by “Backrooms,” the new horror film from first-time director Kane Parsons. The seemingly innocuous setting is Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, […]
State invests $25 million in future MIT “quantum toolbox”
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey stood in a windowless room on the seventh floor of MIT’s Samberg Conference Center and promised the state’s $25 million investment in a Quantum Systems Laboratory (QSL) at MIT would be good for the state. Read more The once familiar bobolink now in decline “The [return on investment] is clear on […]
The once familiar bobolink now in decline
A reader asked me recently about ground-nesting birds. Here is the story of one such bird, the bobolink. Bobolinks (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) breed in open grasslands and prairies. When European settlers arrived in North America, they cleared forests for hayfields, pastures and farms. Bobolinks, native to the Americas, thrived in hayfields, which were plentiful even near […]