2019: More of the Same? The brisk spring/summer market cooled a bit in the fall, with some prices softening and days on market increasing, as is typical. Given recent stock market volatility, higher interest rates, and a little more new inventory in the pipeline, some observers speculate the market may stabilize or soften a bit. Anecdotally, I can say that the only softening I have seen locally is minor and is mainly on properties under $700K. The higher end of the market seems quite active. Given the number of new buyers I encountered viewing properties this fall with the goal of buying in the spring, I think the spring market will be strong again this year, although we may see some flattening out of prices. ~Thalia
Best Real Estate Agency
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New Listings
6 Spring Road, Arlington
494 Medford Street, Somerville
Lovely Arlington Heights bungalow, perched on a hill with views, with 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, large front porch, front/back/side yard, and parking in front on recently paved private way. Walk to the Minute Man bike path, Trader Joe’s, and shops along Massachusetts Avenue.
Well-appointed two-family on a corner lot in Magoun Square. Unit 1 has 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom on 2 levels; Unit 2 has 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom. 2-car driveway. Great, walkable location near restaurants and 2 Red Line subways now—as well as 2 new GLX stops in the near future.
$645,000
4 Olive Square, Somerville $719,900
Attached 2-level single family with 2+ bedrooms, 2 full baths, and 2 parking spaces steps to Union Square. The house offers handicapped accessible baths updated in 2015. Ideal condo alternative.
$849,000
221 Highland Avenue, Unit 2, Somerville Between Davis and Porter Squares, this updated, 2-level Spring Hill condo has 3-bedrooms, 1 1/2 bath, in-unit laundry, private back deck, and two parking spaces. Near the Arts at the Armory (home of the Winter Farmer’s Market), Dulock butcher, Highland Kitchen, 7 Ate 9, and more.
Coming Soon
Thalia Tringo
President, Realtor ® 617.513.1967 cell/text Thalia@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
11 Bailey Street, Somerville West Somerville attached single family on 2 levels with 2+ bedrooms, 1 bathroom, study, enclosed porch, back deck, and fenced yard.
Jennifer Rose
Residential Sales Specialist, Realtor ® 617.943.9581 cell/text Jennifer@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
Lynn C. Graham
95 Orchard Street Unit 2, Somerville On one of Davis Square’s most beloved streets, this charming second floor condo has 3 bedrooms, study, tile full bathroom, and 2 parking spaces. High ceilings, wood floors, large, shared fenced backyard.
Free Classes First Time Home Buyers:
Residential Sales Specialist, Realtor ® 617.216.5244 cell/text Lynn@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
Brendon Edwards
Residential Sales Specialist, Realtor ® 617.895.6267 cell/text Brendon@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
an overview of the buying process Wednesday, January 23RD OR Tuesday, February 12TH 6:30 – 7:45 pm If you’re considering buying your first home and want to understand what’s in store, this is a quick and helpful overview. Led by our agents and a loan officer from a local bank, it includes a 45-min presentation and 1/2 hour Q&A session. Handouts and refreshments provided.
How to Buy and Sell at the Same Time:
Seth Kangley
Residential Sales Specialist, Realtor ® 315.382.2507 cell/text Seth@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
for homeowners contemplating a move
Wednesday, January 30TH OR Thursday, February 21ST 6:30 – 7:45 pm If trying to figure out the logistics of selling your home and buying a new one makes your head spin, this workshop will help make the process & your choices understandable. This workshop, led by our agents and a loan officer from a local bank, includes a 45-min presentation and 1/2 hour Q&A session. Handouts and refreshments provided.
Sarasvati Lynn
Residential Sales Specialist, Realtor ® 617.949.6942 cell/text Sarasvati@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
Basic Home Maintenance:
preparing your home for winter Tuesday, January 15TH 6:30 – 7:45 pm Do you worry about pipes bursting? Ice dams? Clogged gutters? Broken downspouts? Heat loss? Damage from broken tree limbs? Heating system failure? Routine maintenance is the best way to prevent damage to your most important investment: your home. Come to this class to get a checklist and explanation of the things you need to do to maintain your home—and sanity.
How Individuals Can Buy Property Together as a Group Tuesday, February 5TH 6:30 – 8:30 pm When two or more people, whether or not they are related, buy property together, what are their options for taking title? How do you determine each one’s financial contributions, percentage legal interest in the property, and expense allocation? What kind of arrangements can be made in the event one or more parties want to move on but others want to keep the property? What type of financing is available? We will address these and other questions, followed by a Q&A session. Lead by our team and a local real estate attorney. If you are a first time homebuyer, please attend the First Time Home Buyers Workshop (January 23RD) or make an appointment with one of our agents so you’ll have your prerequisites for this class. To reserve space in any class, please email Adaria@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com. Admission is free, but we appreciate donations of canned goods for the Somerville Homeless Coalition.
Adaria Brooks
Executive Assistant to the President, Realtor ® 617.308.0064 cell/text Adaria@ThaliaTringoRealEstate.com
About our company... We are dedicated to representing our buyer and seller clients with integrity and professionalism. We are also commi ed to giving back to our community. Our agents donate $250 to a non-profit in honor of each transaction and Thalia Tringo & Associates Real Estate Inc. also gives $250 to a pre-selected group of local charities for each transaction. Visit our office, 128 Willow Avenue, on the bike path in Davis Square, Somerville.
MARCH 11 - MAY 12, 2019 ::: VOLUME 56 ::: SCOUTSOMERVILLE.COM
contents 6 // EDITOR’S NOTE 8 // WINNERS & LOSERS The city is taking a swing at opioid manufacturers. 10 // WHAT’S NEW? The Board of Aldermen is now the City Council, plus the city’s named a new poet laureate. 14 // OPEN FOR BUSINESS Check out the stories behind three new businesses.
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16 // NEWS: TUFTS TO RESEARCH AIR QUALITY IN CITY’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING Researchers will look at how traffic pollution affects air quality in affordable housing.
36 // SCOUT OUT: LAUGH YOUR STRESS OFF The Somerville Laughter Club teaches 12 types of laughter. 38 // SOMETHING VENTURED: LA POSADA AND HIMALAYAN KITCHEN Meet the siblings behind each of these local restaurants. 42 // DO-GOODERS, KEY PLAYERS, AND GAME CHANGERS: ‘EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE’ PROGRAMS The East Somerville Community School aims to uplift immigrant families. 44 // MEET THE SCOUT TEAM 46 // CALENDAR
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE 18 // DRINK RESPONSIBLY—BY CHOOSING ECO-FRIENDLY BREWS Local brewers are taking ownership of their environmental impact. 22 // ‘NO PH.D. NEEDED’: HOW REGULAR CITIZENS CAN HELP PREVENT BIODIVERSITY LOSS At Earthwise Aware, anyone can help conduct ecological research. 24 // GREENTOWN LABS ALL STARS Step inside Greentown Labs, the largest cleantech incubator in the country. 28 // GROUNDWORK SOMERVILLE TAPS INTO NEW ENGLAND HERITAGE The annual Maple Syrup Project helps Somervillians engage with their environment.
30 // RAISE THE GREEN ROOF Recover Green Roofs squeezes in green space—and the environmental impacts are huge. 32 // BRINGING ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE CLEANING INDUSTRY The founder of Somerville Sustainable Cleaning explains what “sustainability” means to his business. 34 // RECAP: THE CITY’S CLIMATE ACTION PLAN Somerville Climate Forward is a broad-reaching plan to reduce the city’s contribution to climate change.
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Photo, top: Children gather to learn about tapping maple trees. Photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz. Photo, bottom: Inside La Posada. Photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz. On the cover: A Recover Green Roofs garden. Photo by Patrick Rogers Photography.
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EDITOR’S NOTE
T
he Environmental Issue is one that I’ve been excited to put together for some time. It’s a subject that has become increasingly important to me, and as I look around at my neighbors in Somerville and Cambridge, I can tell it is on their minds as well. In this edition, we address the threat climate change poses head on. “We are going to be dealing with a very different flooding and heat landscape,” Oliver Sellers-Garcia, director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment, tells us in our piece on the city’s climate action plan, which outlines the path to becoming carbon neutral by 2050 (p.34). It’s serious, and at times grim, as is the reality that climate change Photo by Bernie Birnbaum. and pollution don’t affect all groups equally, which we examine with a story on a new research project from Tufts University (p.16). But we also want to use this issue as an opportunity to celebrate the work our neighbors and local businesses are doing to hold themselves accountable regarding their treatment of the environment. What we’ve found is quite exciting. Local breweries are turning spent grain into bread and reducing water use to counteract the copious amount of resources needed to make beer (p.18). Companies working out of Greentown Labs are gathering data and creating products that will allow us to use less heat and destroy fewer rainforests (p.24). Recover Green Roofs is increasing green space while aiding in stormwater management (p.30). And Earthwise Aware (p.22) and Groundwork Somerville (p.28) are creating avenues for people to engage with their environment, even in our urban landscape. We hope their work inspires you as much as it has inspired us. Best,
Reena Karasin Reena Karasin, Editor-in-Chief rkarasin@scoutmagazines.com
PUBLISHER Holli Banks hbanks@scoutmagazines.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Reena Karasin rkarasin@scoutmagazines.com ART DIRECTOR Nicolle Renick design@scoutmagazines.com renickdesign.com CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Jerry Allien jallien@scoutmagazines.com EDITORIAL FELLOW Alyssa Vaughn avaughn@scoutmagazines.com STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Adrianne Mathiowetz EDITORIAL INTERN Abbie Gruskin CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Adam Sennott, Abigail Feldman, Lilly Milman COPY EDITOR Joe Palandrani BANKS PUBLICATIONS 519 Somerville Ave, #314 Somerville, MA 02143 FIND US ONLINE scoutsomerville.com somervillescout
scoutsomerville scoutmags
Office Phone: 617-996-2283 Advertising inquiries? Please contact hbanks@scoutmagazines.com. GET A COPY Scout Somerville is available for free at more than 220 drop spots throughout the city (and just beyond its borders). Additionally, thousands of Somerville homes receive a copy in their mailbox each edition, hitting every neighborhood in the city throughout the year ... sometimes twice! You can sign up for home delivery by visiting scoutsomerville.com/shop. 6 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
T
he flavors of Greece can be found in Davis Square at Opa Greek Yeeros. Traditional dishes are served up daily by George and his crew with ingredients imported straight from Greece to ensure the authenticity and quality of every item on the menu. It’s not only the menu that is steeped in tradition; Opa is a family affair. George’s mother has owned and run Sophia’s Greek Pantry for over 15 years and now she keeps Opa stocked with homemade fresh Greek yogurt, delicious desserts and pastries.
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7
W&L
WINNERS
LOSERS
TUFTS The Tufts admissions office is working on some Jumbo-sized decisions. The university received a record number of regular decision undergraduate applications—that is, 22,725—to the class of 2023, the Tufts Daily reports. “We’re very excited that so many highly qualified, talented, and enthusiastic students from a wide variety of backgrounds and life experiences continue to express interest in Tufts,” Karen Richardson, dean of admissions and enrollment management, told the Daily. These students will have to wait until April 1 to find out if they’ll be sporting blue and brown in the fall.
SHOP SECURITY He’ll huff, and he’ll puff, and he’ll—shatter your glass door? So goes the tale of 3 Little Figs, which was broken into early this year. The Somerville Journal reports that a man allegedly threw a rock at 3 Little Figs’ front door and made off with the cash drawer. M.F. Dulock, the butcher down the street, also reported signs of an attempted break-in. While 3 Little Figs still hasn’t caught its Big Bad Wolf, the owners are choosing to see the situation in an empathetic light: “Maybe they were that desperate, and that’s how we’re looking at it: This person may have done a bad deed, but they might be desperate,” Owner Katie Rooney said to the Journal.
CLEAN ENERGY The Baker-Polito administration awarded close to half a million dollars to two local early-stage clean energy technology companies, Heila Technologies and VIA Separations, as part of the InnovateMass program, the Somerville Journal reports. InnovateMass, a program of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, funds the testing of the realworld applications of unique technologies. The companies, which both operate out of Union Square’s Greentown Labs, are each approaching clean energy in an innovative way: Heila Technologies’ project is designed to bring clean energy to the edge of the grid, and VIA Separations’ intends to cut the energy needed in the paper industry.
OPIOID MANUFACTURERS AND DISTRIBUTORS The city filed a lawsuit against a whopping 19 opioid manufacturers and distributors this winter, including Johnson & Johnson and Walgreens, the Boston Globe reports. In a statement, the city condemned the companies’ “alleged deceptive and illegal promotion of opioids and failure to investigate, report, maintain effective control, and take steps to terminate suspicious orders of the highly addictive prescription drugs.” The opioid crisis has hit Somerville hard—there were 11 opioidrelated deaths in 2013, 15 in 2014, 17 in 2015, and 21 in 2016, the Globe reports.
URBAN GARDENERS No, remembering to water that cute little succulent on your office desk every now and then doesn’t really make you an urban gardener—but with some help from the Somerville Public Library, you just might become one for real. Soon, you’ll be able to test out your green thumb at the Central Branch’s teaching garden, due to be installed sometime this spring. The garden is part of the Public Library’s “Food for Thought” initiative, a food and gardening program that “aims to promote health and wellness, teach practical life skills, build community, and introduce residents to related resources and opportunities citywide,” according to the City of Somerville’s website.
FORGETFUL THIEVES On a cold night this winter, a woman allegedly broke into a car on Electric Avenue and made off with a pretty decent haul: a pair of sunglasses, a $20 Dunkin’ gift card, and a BJ’s Wholesale ID, the Somerville Times reports. What’s more important, though, is what she didn’t take from the car: her own cell phone. When the car’s owner discovered the theft in the morning, he also found the phone and turned it over to the police. The police tracked down Danielle Walsh (who said she had lost her phone while leaving a party the night before), asked her to unlock the phone to prove it was hers, and promptly arrested her.
SCOUT TO THE SOUTH Here’s just some of what you’ll find in The Environmental Issue of our sibling publication, Scout Cambridge.
LIVING ON THE VEG Nüssli118° creates plant-based treats that defy stereotypes and delight taste buds.
PLANKS WITH A PAST Longleaf Lumber gives wood a second life.
ALMOST PERFECT GLASS TRAILBLAZES ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM THROUGH ART The couple behind the community glass studio aims to improve the sustainability of their craft by sharing it with others.
Someone rustle your jimmies or tickle your fancy?
Let us know at scoutsomerville.com/contact-us, and we just might crown them a winner or loser. 8 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
—BY ALYSSA VAUGHN
Welcoming • Inclusive • Egalitarian Rabbi Eliana Jacobowitz will be teaching this Spring in Hebrew College’s Eser Program for 20s & 30s! AT TEMPLE B’NAI BRITH
ESER CLASSES IN SOMERVILLE
Davis Square – Winter Hill – Prospect Hill Eser (Hebrew for 10) brings together individuals in their 20s and 30s for conversations about diverse topics including race, love and sex, the passage of time, the Holocaust, bioethics, Jewish humor and more, while building connections and community. Eser welcomes participants from all religious, political, gender, and economic backgrounds. No prior formal Jewish education or knowledge of Hebrew is required. All classes meet from 7-9 pm - March thru May - Program Fee: $95* Registration: register.hebrewcollege.edu/eser-2019 *The program fee should not be an obstacle to participation. For scholarship information: email Sara at eser@hebrewcollege.edu
• A special place to celebrate your life cycle events: Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Baby Namings, Weddings, etc. • Adult Education – Spring semester registering soon for March! • Young adult programming – for info email TBB20s30s@gmail.com • Weekly Children’s School K-8 (monthly pre-K) • Weekly Torah Study: 8:00am Tuesdays at Porter Square Panera (no Hebrew needed) • Monthly Song of the Heart – Come sing with us! • Monthly Book Group, 7:00pm at Porter Square
201 Central Street 02145 | 617-625-0333 | www.templebnaibrith.org | tbb@templebnaibrith.org
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scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue
9
WHAT’S NEW
BY ALYSSA VAUGHN
CHANGING TASTES “Alexandra will find a delicious ingredient—foraged rose petals or lemons, local honey, freshly roasted George Howell coffee—and create a chocolate to highlight and celebrate that ingredient,” the gâté comme des filles website explains. DAVIS SQUARE
ELM STREET TAPROOM
Here’s a new challenge for Davis’s most ambitious beer COMING drinkers: If you down all 64 MOVED brews SOON on the new Elm Street Taproom’s beer list, you’ll earn one of the 22-ounce mugs that hangs behind the bar, in which you can drink any beer for the price of a regular-sized pour, boston.com reports. To keep track of how close you’re coming to victory (because it certainly won’t happen on your first visit), Elm Street had a customized app designed to help you remember which beers you’ve ordered. The Taproom is also offering a small menu of shareable plates, and plans to start brunch in the future, according to boston.com
ASSEMBLY SQUARE
LA CUCINA
A
ssembly Row’sCOMING latest addition to its dining lineup pays MOVED homage to theSOON area’s history. La Cucina, operated by former North End restaurateur Jeff Malloy, is serving up an Italian menu in a large industrial space, with a fireplace, a semi-open kitchen, and decorative touches that hearken back to Assembly Row’s days as a center of automotive manufacturing. “I had an artist come in and do the vintage Ford logo up on the wall, and we’ve brought in some old pictures of the Ford Edsel,” Malloy told Eater Boston. The restaurant also boasts an extensive wine list and a thorough menu of pasta, pizza, and other Italian entrees.
will serve cocktails and woodfired pizzas, Eater Boston reports. T and B will join a diverse lineup of restaurants in that corner of Union Square, including Backbar, Field & Vine, and Casa B. “The building will be a really great artistic culinary center,“ Tim Wiechmann, co-owner of T and B, told Eater. UNION SQUARE
UNION SQUARE
TANÁM
While Bow Market regulars have become masters of bouncing from storefront to COMING MOVED storefront with a shrimp SOON cocktail in one hand and vegan poutine in the other, the market’s latest addition, Ellie Tiglao’s Tanám, is offering patrons a chance to sit and stay a while. You can experience Filipino-American “narrative cuisine” at Tanám in three different ways, according to the restaurant’s website. On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, there’s Chibog, a five-course tasting menu experience. There’s 10 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
the Bar at Tanám on weekend evenings, where restaurant goers can purchase cocktails and bar snacks a la carte. Tanám’s most buzzed-about seating, however, is Wednesday evening kamayan dinners, when ticket-holders gather around a Filipino feast and eat with their hands. UNION SQUARE
T AND B PIZZA
COMING
SOON The team behind Union Square’s cozy European beer hall, Bronwyn, is expanding—within the same building. T and B Pizza, due to open in May or June of this year,
BALL SQUARE
AVENUE KITCHEN AND BAR
COMING SOON
While Ball Square said goodbye to longtime neighbor Pescatore at the beginning of this year, a new dining destination is coming to fill its spot, Eater Boston reports. Avenue Kitchen and Bar, led by chef Kenny Schweizer of Boston’s Nahita, will offer thick crust
GÂTÉ COMME DES FILLES
Bow Market also now houses a new place for COMING you to satisfy MOVED SOON your sweet tooth. gâté comme des filles—or, in loose French, “spoiled like the girls”—is the work of Alexandra Whisnant, a Cambridge native who polished her MOVED pastry skills at Paris’s famous Ladurée. The shop’s central focus is chocolate, but these aren’t your average grocery store truffles.
Photo, top left, by Drew Katz. Photo, bottom, courtesy of gâté comme des filles.
MOVED
Detroit-style pizza, along with a menu of American-style burgers, steak, chicken, and fish. PORTER SQUARE
MANOA POKE SHOP
One of the first Boston-area poke shops has closed its doors COMING for good, Eater Boston reports. SOON Manoa Poke Shop operated
out of its Beacon Street spot for about two years, but closed due to financial issues, according to Boston Magazine. “Thank you for letting us share our food and aloha with you. We cannot be more thankful for the love and support you all have given us,” a message on Manoa’s Instagram MOVED page reads.
THE REPORT CARD
UMASS PROFESSOR NAMED NEW POET LAUREATE
The UMass-Boston English professor Lloyd Schwartz was named Somerville’s poet laureate earlier this year, the Boston Globe reports, and he plans to use his new platform to connect the community’s poets with those who are unfamiliar with the craft. “Having spent my whole adult life bringing poetry to my students, I value the chance to encourage my neighbors to love poetry as much as I do,” Schwartz told the Globe. In addition to teaching, Schwartz has published several volumes of poetry, and he says the Somerville community has often impacted his work.
POWDERHOUSE STUDIOS HIGH SCHOOL PROPOSAL PICKS UP STEAM
Powderhouse Studio High School, a proposed innovation school that would operate in the former Powder House
Community School space, scored another major victory earlier this year, the Boston Globe reports. The Somerville Teachers Association ratified an agreement regarding the alternative high school in January, allowing for 60 days of community input before a vote from the school committee. As an innovation school, it would belong to the school district but have autonomy within the realms of student performance and achievement gaps. If approved, Powderhouse could admit 30 to 40 13- to 15-yearolds this September.
TUFTS OFFERS DEGREE PROGRAM FOR INCARCERATED MEN
Prison inmates who pursue education while incarcerated are 43 percent less likely to return to prison than those who don’t, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. That’s why Tufts, in collaboration with Bunker Hill Community College, began a program earlier this year that provides incarcerated men at MCI-Concord the opportunity to pursue a college degree, according to TuftsNow. Students will earn a liberal arts associate’s degree from Bunker Hill if they pass the program’s 23 courses— many of which are taught by Tufts professors—by May 2022. “When you are in prison and can be successful in educational endeavors and experience the joy of learning—it’s transformative,” Hilary Binda, the founder of the program, told TuftsNow.
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11
WHAT’S NEW
CITY BEAT Council, the Boston Globe reports. “Board of Aldermen,” Councilor-at-Large William A. White Jr. White notes, means “board of wise old men” or “board of patriarchs,” and he felt it was time to shift to a more inclusive moniker. “I am very happy not to be called an ‘elder man’ anymore,” Council President Katjana Ballantyne said in a statement. ASSEMBLY SQUARE
PARTNERS HEALTHCARE CEO SUDDENLY STEPS DOWN
ASSEMBLY SQUARE
PUMA NORTH AMERICA POUNCES ON ASSEMBLY ROW
A
ssembly Row has landed another major office tenant. Athletic shoe brand Puma plans to move into its new North American headquarters, with 550 employees in tow, the Boston Globe reports. While Puma already has a presence across the Charles, with offices in Westford and Downtown Boston, the Assembly Row headquarters will both bring all of the area’s Puma employees under one roof and increase the brand’s visibility across the area. “To be honest we haven’t really been a big, active, engaged member of the Greater Boston area,” Chief Marketing Officer Adam Petrick told the Globe. “This affords us a platform to do more of that.”
UNION SQUARE
GREENTOWN LABS SEEKS CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY INNOVATORS Got an idea that would shake up the construction industry? Greentown Labs wants to hear it. In collaboration with CertainTeed and SaintGobain NOVA, Greentown has announced the InNOVAte 2019 Challenge, a program
12 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
that will provide construction and building industry startups with “intensive business training, hands-on mentorship from industry experts, and a unique approach to startup and corporate relationship building,” the Boston Business Journal reports. Program awardees will receive several perks, including partnership with and/or investment from Saint-Gobain and CertainTeed, office space at
Greentown Labs, and $25,000 in grant funding. Applications for the program close April 8.
BOARD OF ALDERMEN NO MORE In a change almost a year in the making, the Board of Aldermen has officially been renamed the City
Earlier this year, CEO David Torchiana unexpectedly announced he would depart Assembly Row-headquartered Partners Healthcare at the end of April, the Boston Globe reports. Torchiana’s four-year tenure as CEO has been fraught with challenges, with tensions between hospital executives and corporate staff rising over the past few months. Partners is the parent company of both Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals, and while Torchiana has led efforts to integrate the two institutions, Partners staff told the Globe that the hospitals remain largely decentralized, and even maintain some rival programs. Torchiana’s push to expand Partners outside of Massachusetts by acquiring hospitals in Rhode Island was also met with resistance. Torchiana’s successor will inherit these conflicts at a challenging time. As Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Lahey Health finalize their merger this spring, Partners will have to contend with a large local competitor. Dr. Anne Klibanski, Partners’ chief academic officer and head of the neuroendocrine unit at Mass. General, has been named interim CEO as the national search for Torchiana’s permanent replacement unfolds. The search, officials say, could take up to a year.
Image, top left, courtesy of Federal Realty Investment Trust. Photo, right, courtesy of Fadil African Hair Braiding.
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FADIL AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING
After a 10-year run in Cambridge, Fadil African Hair Braiding COMING was forced to close because of a MOVED SOON fire in their building in July 2018. Now, the salon has been reborn on Broadway in East Somerville, according to a press release. “I love this job, I love braiding hair,” Anita Eklou, co-owner, told the Somerville Journal. “I’ve been doing it since I came to America 23 years ago.” EAST SOMERVILLE
HAIR-GINEER
Need to clean up your winter scruff? Hair-gineer, a barbershop specializing in men’s COMING MOVED hair and beards, is now open SOON on Lincoln Avenue, according to a press release. Preliminary
customer reviews on Yelp have noted the shop’s “cool vibe” and “chill” atmosphere, and the barbers’ attention to detail. EAST SOMERVILLE
BONITA HAIR SALON AND BLOW DRY BAR
For those looking to shake up their beauty routines, Bonita Hair Salon and COMING Blow Bar SOON DryMOVED is now open with an extensive menu of treat-yourself services, according to a press release. “My plan is to provide service for all hair textures,” Owner Nailah Montalvo said in the release. “We also offer private events on site, such as bachelorette parties, and mobile salon services, such as wedding updos.” The salon also offers coloring treatments, eyelash extensions, and makeup treatments. scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 13
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OPEN FOR BUSINESS
FOR BUSINESS
REVIVAL CAFE & KITCHEN BY REENA KARASIN
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n its seventh day in business this January, Revival Cafe & Kitchen’s Davis Square location was bustling. The cafe is cozy and bright, with light streaming in through a wall of windows that will open up in warm weather. A rectangle of clipboards announces the day’s food menu— The Jimmy Pesto (egg, pickled red onion, spinach, feta, sunflower seed pesto, homemade English muffin), Fake News (pastrami, red cabbage kraut, Russian dressing, gruyere, rye bread), Magic Melt (braised beef, “something pickled,” sunflower seed pesto, pepper jack, garlic aioli, potato bread). The Davis spot (197 Elm St.) is the second location for Revival, following an opening in Alewife in June 2018. Owners Liza Shirazi and Steve “Nookie” Postal were also behind Harvard Square’s beloved Crema Cafe, which shuttered in December after the shop was unable to negotiate a lease with the building’s new owners, according to Shirazi. But don’t despair, Crema lovers—visit Revival in Davis, and you’ll notice many familiar touches. For one, the majority of
COMING SOON
MOVED
Crema’s staff came over to the new shop. Additionally, there’s menu overlap, including the most popular sandwich from Crema (Crema Grilled Chicken, with avocado, cotija cheese and corn spread on potato bread). Like the Alewife location, however, Davis’s Revival gives off a more modern vibe than Crema did, Shirazi explains. She adds that the Revival team’s ready to engage with the neighborhood just as they did at Crema. “People have gravitated to it being a meeting spot, or a working spot,” she says. “It’s a great community.” What else is special about Davis’s newest coffee shop? Thanks to the combination of Shirazi’s coffee background, Postal’s food background, and the large kitchen at Alewife’s Revival, the team’s able to do it all. “What we’re doing is inspired by great food, great products, great beverages, great service, and great atmosphere—to really nail that combination of things, to do them all equally,” Shirazi says.
PROOF BY REENA KARASIN
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verything at Winter Hill’s newest liquor store is well thought out. Virtually all pieces of the shop are custom made, from the wine racks to the hanging lights. Wines hail from all over the world—South America, Portugal, Italy—and beers from beloved local breweries adorn the shelves. “It kind of follows the trend lately— everything’s farm-to-table, they’re going back to very clean, aesthetic lines,” Manager Jay Cahill says. “We wanted to do something that was along that way, but in a wine shop instead of a restaurant. So a lot of sheet metal, a lot of wood, warm touches, it kind of follows that whole trend.” PROOF (10 Main St.) aims to engage with the Winter Hill community, a goal that is baked into the infrastructure of the shop. 14 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
The display racks are on wheels, meaning they can be pushed to the sides to make space for events. The team envisions inviting local chefs to come cook in the space—which has a full kitchen in the works—and hosting dinners with alcohol pairings. At the front of the shop, benches swivel to create a space to admire art or listen to poetry readings. And they’ve already held a fundraiser for RESPOND, a local domestic violence organization. “Every little bit of Somerville has a niche-y little store like this, except Winter Hill,” Cahill says. PROOF’s focus is on wine and microbrewed beers, although they do have a selection of other alcohol. Most wines are between $15 and $25, apart from a wall of specialty wines that are higher-end.
Photo, top left, by Reena Karasin. Photo, bottom left, courtesy of PROOF. Photo, right, by Emily Tirella.
Architecture and Design
IN SEASON FOOD SHOP BY ALYSSA VAUGHN
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n Season (1 Bow Market Way) isn’t a grocery store, exactly. Or at least not like one you’ve seen before. There are shelves stocked with pantry staples—pasta, broth, tea—and refrigerator cases with cheeses and meats, but half of In Season’s tiny outpost is dedicated to a kitchen, where Co-owners Shane Clyburn and Bobby MacLean churn out prepared food made from the same ingredients available on their shelves. “A big part of the values system we’re coming from is reducing food waste,” says Clyburn. “We’ve sort of realized that as we have a more complete kitchen and we have a regular seasonal menu, we can use the kitchen to reduce any of the waste from the front … Right now, the amount of food we waste is very minimal.” Clyburn and MacLean’s friendship was founded on food. The two met working at Slumbrew, and solidified their relationship when Clyburn worked on MacLean’s food truck, Compliments Food Co.
There is no shortage of challenges for Clyburn and MacLean. One of the biggest is their lack of typical food service conveniences, like walk-in refrigeration. The size of the shop also makes it impossible for In Season to stock the amount of groceries that a typical chain grocery store would. “You know you’re not going to walk away with a full cart of groceries,” Clyburn says. “But you’ll find the highest quality version of the products we do carry.” Clyburn and MacLean call themselves “storytellers”—unlike in a big box grocery store, everything they put on the shelves of In Season has a story to tell, and the shop’s mission is to share those stories with as many people as possible. “Everyone in the production line is someone from Massachusetts or New England who is sending their kids to college, or just paying their bills, or buying grain for their cows,” MacLean says. “We like the idea of New England feeding itself,” he adds.
These pieces were originally published online. To keep up to date with the latest Somerville news, check out scoutsomerville.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. scoutsomerville.com somervillescout
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NEWS
TUFTS TO RESEARCH AIR QUALITY IN CITY’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING BY ADAM SENNOTT | PHOTO BY ABBIE GRUSKIN
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esearchers from Tufts University will spend the next three years studying the air quality inside affordable housing built near busy roads in Somerville. The study will focus on Route 28, Route 38, and McGrath Highway, according to John Durant, the project’s principal investigator and an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at Tufts. The study aims to understand how to maximize comfort and air quality through air filtration and ventilation. Cities have been under pressure to develop empty parcels of land or replace existing buildings near busy roadways with housing, Durant says. But when those new developments are used for affordable
16 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
housing, concerns surrounding environmental justice arise. “The main risk, from the standpoint of our study, is pollution that’s coming out of cars and trucks,” Durant says. “And there’s a variety of different combustion byproducts that are present there, the principal one is ultrafine particles.” These miniscule particles can enter a unit from a variety of places, including underneath doors and through open windows. The team will also look at larger particles, carbon dioxide, black carbon, and nitrogen dioxide. He says these pollutants can “cause a variety of health impacts,” but the study itself will not examine residents’ health. “These are health effects that take years, and years, and years
develop and worsen,” Durant says. “So the focus on residential housing makes a lot of sense, because people typically spend years of their life in these units.” The team will study the air quality and the efficiency of HVAC and air filtration systems in the selected buildings. It will also look at how much outside air is entering each unit and how quickly the air circulates through each unit. “We’re just trying to make sure that the housing that’s built there is optimized such that residents are not exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution,” Durant says. “And that can be done in a variety of ways by making sure that the ventilation structures that bring fresh air into the buildings are operated in a way to prevent pollution from entering.”
Researchers will examine which air ventilation system settings are the most successful and how they impact residents’ electricity bills. “You can change the ventilation rates [to] bring in more outside air, you can increase the fan speed, that will allow greater air exchange throughout the unit, that will actually decrease pollution concentrations, [and] you can put in different size filters in the air handling system to remove different sizes of particles,” Durant says. “So there’s different ways you can minimize your exposure.” The team already has roughly a dozen buildings in mind for the study, which is being funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The group is working with city officials and the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership (STEP) to pare the list down. While the study focuses on affordable housing, Ellin Reisner, president of STEP, notes that air pollution can affect everyone who lives in a certain area. “Any resident who lives in a building near a heavily trafficked road, weather they [make] $5,000 a month or $500 a month, is susceptible to the air pollution … It happens that more people with low income live near the highway, but if you think about all of the fancy buildings in Boston, along the Greenway where all of the pollution comes out through the exits, they’re exposed, too,” Reisner says. “So it’s an issue for all housing.” “We’re very interested in making sure that people with low incomes are protected, but we’re interested in ensuring that all people are protected,” she adds. Durant says the team hopes to develop a guidance document on HVAC system design and operation that developers will be able to use in the future. The study could have a significant impact as communities continue to turn to affordable housing, he adds. “We’re thinking that this study in Somerville might have broader applications to other communities in Massachusetts, and perhaps nationally,” Durant says.
YOUR DENTAL HEALTH IS PART OF YOUR OVERALL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING. START THE NEW YEAR OFF RIGHT WITH A DENTAL VISIT. THE REST OF YOUR BODY WILL BENEFIT!
DR. KATIE TALMO received her DMD from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in 2010. Upon graduation, she joined her father, Paul Talmo, in his practice located in the historic English Tudor house at 180 Highland Avenue on the corner of Highland Avenue and Benton Road. Dr. Talmo graduated first in her class from Tufts and continues to be involved in her alma mater where she teaches parttime as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Comprehensive Care.
Her patient-centered treatment philosophy focuses on prevention and conservative treatment modalities. She is a member of the American Dental Association and the Massachusetts Dental Society and is a fellow of the International College of Dentists. She is engaged in the community, serving as the Advisory Committee Chair to Somerville High School’s Dental Assisting Program. Dr. Talmo also travels to the Dominican Republic to provide dental care as part of a global outreach mission project. Schedule an appointment to visit Dr. Talmo in her newly renovated office space.
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THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
DRINK RESPONSIBLY— BY CHOOSING ECO-FRIENDLY BREWS Local Brewers Are Taking Ownership of Their Environmental Impact BY ALYSSA VAUGHN
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lumbrew co-owner Caitlin Jewell really wishes she hadn’t forgotten to pour herself a beer. She’s spent the past 25 minutes lecturing the small crowd gathered around the brewery’s tanks. She’s taken them through Slumbrew’s history, given them the simple breakdown of how beer is made, cracked some good jokes, and doled out the instructions everyone will need for this evening’s workshop. Now, she’s getting tired of talking, so she leaves the group with one final word of advice. “If you’re really anal about your home kitchen,” Jewell says, scanning the crowd to make sure everyone’s listening, “This is going to drive you batshit crazy.” Thirty minutes later, the group is elbow-deep in flour and yeast in the Brewer’s Loft, little white splatters adorning their clothes, sticky spatulas precariously balanced on the table. Mastering the art of prepping and baking a loaf of Jewell’s spent grain rosemary bread requires getting a little dirty. It isn’t often that one leaves a brewery with bread dough— 18 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
or, to use Jewell’s terms, “an amorphous blob in a Ziploc bag.” The connection between bread and brewing only becomes clear when you discover the secret ingredient in Jewell’s recipe: brewer’s spent grain, a byproduct of the beer-making process. Despite its unassuming appearance—the grains look like soggy brown rice, and Jewell stores them in a trash can—spent grain is actually a hyper-rich source of both fiber and protein. However, regardless of its residual nutritional value, spent grain is often simply thrown out. In fact, it’s the largest source of waste for most breweries, according to the Brewers Association. “We’re a tiny brewery,” Jewell says. “But we’re getting rid of 10,000 pounds of spent grain a month.” It’s no secret that the local craft beer scene is thriving. From 2011 to 2017, the number of craft breweries in Massachusetts leapt from 45 to 129. The state produces close to 600,000 barrels of craft beer a year at 31 gallons a barrel, making Massachusetts the 13th most productive state in the country. Somerville alone Photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz.
is home to five craft breweries— Aeronaut Brewing Co., Remnant Brewing, Small Change Brewing Co., Slumbrew (also known as Somerville Brewing Co.), and Winter Hill Brewing Co.—and one cidery, Bantam Cider Co. In these parts, you’re never too far from your next pint. The proliferation of craft breweries is certainly celebrationworthy—the brewing industry has proven positive economic impacts in the community, and it creates a popular product. But brewing beer also consumes a copious amount of resources. At 95 percent of the country’s breweries, for example, making one barrel of beer uses three to seven barrels of water (a number that doesn’t take into account the water needed to grow hops and barley), Quartz reports. Much of this water is drained off during the brewing process, but it is full of yeast and sugars, making it difficult to treat. The entire brewing process, from drying the barley to cooling the fermentation tanks, also consumes significant amounts of energy, emitting CO2 and contributing to air pollution, the Brewers Association outlines. Finally, there’s all the solid waste produced by breweries—from cans, to bottles, to coasters, to all that spent grain—that could easily end up in a landfill if a brewery doesn’t prioritize waste reduction. To see the tangible toll breweries can take on their communities’ ecosystems, one need only look to Burlington, Vt. Last year, the city, which is home to eight breweries and one cidery, was forced to close two of its beaches after 1.8 million gallons of sewage spilled into Lake Champlain during three days in June, the Burlington Free Press reports. Burlington officials pointed fingers at the city’s craft brewers, saying their sugary wastewater overloaded the sewage treatment plant’s system, inhibiting the water-treating microbes by disrupting their diet. “For us to handle the [breweries’] waste, it takes more chemicals, more energy, potentially more staff,” City Water Resources Director Megan Moir told Seven Days Vermont. As craft breweries continue scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 19
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
to pop up, some brewers are innovating ways to reduce their footprints. From CO2 reclamation systems to tools that can scrub and reuse cleaning water, there are plenty of shiny gadgets that now allow breweries to scale back their negative impact on the environment. For the breweries of Somerville, however, there’s just one problem. “We’re so small,” says David Kushner, co-founder of Remnant Brewing. “A lot of the very cool toys that breweries can install
therefore, must find alternative ways to reduce their footprints. “Every brewery, especially in New England, is trying to make an effort of sitting down and saying, ‘How can we be more sustainable with what we have and what we can use?’” Kushner says. At Remnant, Kushner decided to make water use one of his primary focuses. He was particularly interested in cutting down water use during the phase of brewing known as knockout. One of the most water-intensive stages of the brewing process,
there is water flowing from the tap that entire time. In planning Remnant, Kushner worked with the brewery’s manufacturer to ensure that the water used in this heat exchange process could be filtered back into the brewery’s hot liquor tank, allowing the water to be reused to make the next batch of beer. The benefits of this are twofold: Remnant captures and recycles water, and also conserves energy by using the wort to heat the water. “It’s a relatively easy fix,” Kushner says. “You don’t need a $500,000 piece of machinery and you don’t need more square footage to implement this.” Michelle da Silva and Dana Masterpolo, however, conserve even more water—by not brewing beer at all. Masterpolo and da Silva co-own Bantam Cider, the Union Square spot that holds the title of the state’s first cider taproom. Crafting cider is completely different from brewing beer—the process essentially involves pressing apples and fermenting their juice, which means that cideries use little water in their product, and produce no spent grain. Most of Bantam’s raw ingredients are reused, Masterpolo says. The squished apple pulp, for example, is sent to farms to feed livestock. The natural flavoring additives that Bantam uses, like ginger, hibiscus, and mint, are composted. Bantam also makes an effort to run their taproom sustainably. They recycle nearly everything— cardboard, water cups, and coasters, to name a few—and all of the glasses used in the brewery are washed by hand. Masterpolo
“WE FEEL A CERTAIN RESPONSIBILITY TO THE LOCAL COMMUNITY THAT HAS ALLOWED US TO RUN OUR BUSINESS IN THEIR BACKYARD.” to help them be energy efficient and sustainable are prohibitively expensive, or take up a lot of square footage that breweries like Remnant just can’t sacrifice.” One wastewater treatment unit from MIT-born startup Cambrian Innovation, for example, measures 53 feet by 8.5 feet, an amount of space no small, local brewery could sacrifice. Somerville’s brewers, 20 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
knockout refers to the phase in which piping hot hops-andmalt-infused water (called wort) needs to be cooled down so that yeast can be added to it for fermentation. To cool off this mixture, breweries typically filter the liquid through a heat exchanger, which uses cold water to lower the temperature of the mixture. This process takes about 30 minutes at Remnant, and
and da Silva also took inspiration from the recent Boston plastic bag ban and stopped distributing bags to each customer purchasing cider to go. “I think we feel a certain responsibility to the local community that has allowed us to run our business in their backyard,” Masterpolo says. “We’re operating right next to people’s homes, down the road from the center of town. We are part of a community, and I think we’re just doing what we should be doing.” While the sizes of Somerville’s breweries bar them from experimenting with many of the latest sustainability innovations, there are environmental benefits to running a small brewery. Each operation is fairly limited in its distribution—Slumbrew’s is so modest that their canning apparatus can be folded and tucked away in the corner of the brewery—so they only produce a minimal amount of waste from packaging and delivery trucks. Remnant and Winter Hill don’t even distribute at all. “A lot of our customers don’t even drive; they either bike, walk or take public transportation,” says Kushner. “So we have a small carbon footprint when you look at the total lifecycle.” Kushner hopes that Remnant will become even more energyefficient in the future. As Bow Market considers installing renewable energy sources, like solar panels and wind turbines, Kushner looks forward to further reducing the brewery’s electrical load. He’s also anxiously awaiting the day that sustainability technologies are adapted, and made affordable, for breweries of Remnant’s size. “We plan on being here a long time, and I don’t think the brewery will look like this, ideally, in five to 10 years,” Kushner says. For now, though, Kushner is dedicated to studying, evaluating, and adapting his brewing practices to ensure he is doing as much as he can to protect the community supporting his beer. “That’s something I’ve really loved about this industry,” he says. “The constant driving thing is ‘Let’s provide a great product for people to enjoy—but let’s also be the best neighbors as possible.’” Photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz.
REMNANT BREWING
1 Y E A R A N N I V E R S A RY F E S T • 2 Sessions 12-4pm and 5-9pm • 4 Hours of Beer Sampling from Fantastic New England Breweries • A Unique Remnant Brewing Bottle Release • Drinking throughout Bow Market • All Bow Market Shops, Restaurants and Bars Open
SATU RDAY
MAY 18TH
Bow Market
Visit remnantsomerville.com for Tickets, available March 15
scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 21
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
‘NO PH.D. NEEDED’ How Regular Citizens Can Help Prevent Biodiversity Loss BY LILLY MILMAN PHOTO COURTESY OF EARTHWISE AWARE
22 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
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nly about 12 percent of Americans are literate in ecological issues, according to Claire O’Neill, founder of Somerville-based Earthwise Aware. The environmental advocacy organization’s goal is not to throw money at big beautification projects or to find a miracle solution for climate change and habitat loss, but to make gradual change through learning. “There is a big gap in terms of the knowledge of ecology in the world, for sure, in modern society,” says O’Neill, who has been involved in ecological science for
the past 20 years. This begs the question: How can an organization fill this gap of knowledge? For Earthwise Aware, the answer starts with engaging community members through the concept of citizen science. Citizen science is much more involved than regular science, where researchers study the public, O’Neill explains— in Earthwise Aware’s model, the citizens are the ones conducting the research themselves. “It’s not about using you,” she says. “It’s about sharing skills, and in the process, everybody’s going to learn.”
Earthwise Aware will tell people how to get involved in its biggest initiative through the free event series called “No Ph.D. Needed: Saving the Planet with Citizen Science.” Sessions will be held at Arts at the Armory on April 4 and the Somerville Public Library on April 6, in addition to locations in Cambridge, Belmont, and Medford. The primary purpose of the talks is to equip locals with the tools needed to begin documenting and learning about the environment around them, and to encourage participation in the City Nature Challenge (CNC). Started in 2016 in conjunction with the first celebration of Citizen Science Day, the CNC is a nine-day event in which people all around the world compete to document the most wildlife in their respective cities. The CNC now includes thousands of municipalities. The first part of the challenge is a three-day period starting April 26 when anyone can take pictures of wildlife (“It can be any plant, animal, fungi, slime mold, or any other evidence of life,” according to the CNC website) and upload the photos and locations to the app iNaturalist. Then, from April 30 to May 5, scientists and other qualified researchers will identify what the public found. The goal of the CNC is to increase the public’s ecological knowledge, while also helping practicing scientists learn more about the state of international biodiversity loss. In this way, everyday citizens serve as field researchers in this worldwide project. The need to learn about the environment is currently at an all-time high, O’Neill says—since 1970, there has been a decline of roughly 60 percent of vertebrate animals, according to the World Wildlife Fund. “The reason for that is habitat destruction, habitat degradation, overpopulation, of course,” O’Neill says. “We are taking over land at a rate far more than the land has a capacity for.” This dynamic is why it’s important to learn about what wildlife does remain and how we as a population can best preserve it. “We need a lot of
information,” O’Neill says. “Things are changing rapidly, and we need to understand the mismatch between, let’s say, when flowers blossom or when the leaves unfurl, and when the insects come to create food for the birds, etc. Everything is tied. It’s really about the relationships among the different organisms. That’s why there’s no need for a Ph.D. to do citizen science. Every citizen can start documenting with a little bit of monitoring, but not that much, and start assembling important information that can help.” This is possible even in urban areas like Somerville, which is only about a 15-minute drive away from the 2,575-acre-spanning Middlesex Fells Reservation. “In Somerville, it’s a little bit of a tough crowd,” O’Neill says regarding public interest in environmental literacy. “We’ve been doing programs in green spaces, parks, and reservations like Middlesex Fells Reservation. We want to raise the motivation of the people and raise the level of awareness of the people so that they might join citizen science efforts, which are a fun outreach effort.” Anyone who is eager to make a change can start by downloading the iNaturalist app or a similar platform and begin taking photos of the wildlife that they pass by every day. “Start taking pictures of plants—even the white flowers or weeds. Try to document that. Invasive [species] are one of the major threats of biodiversity loss in the city,” O’Neill says. “You can also document pollinators. There have been insect declines of 75 percent worldwide. There is a huge need for gaining data about the pollinators around us. Taking pictures of butterflies, of the plants where the butterflies land, that’s something that can be done right away.” The biggest hurdle in the race against biodiversity loss is apathy, according to O’Neill, who calls it a “weak excuse.” “Apathy is an easy way to say ‘I don’t want to do anything,’” she says. “There is always something we can do. We’ve seen that when we have the will to do something, there is an impact.”
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scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 23
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
ALL STARS BY REENA KARASIN
omerville is home to Greentown Labs, a focal point of the environmental movement. The largest cleantech incubator in the country, Greentown Labs offers its members an 1,800-square-foot wet lab, a machine shop, an electronics lab, and more to help get their ideas off the ground. The more than 90 companies at Greentown Labs are pushing the boundaries in fields such as agriculture, robotics, and transportation.
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hen you consider how much of the planet is covered in water, we don’t know all that much about our oceans. Less than five percent of the ocean has been explored, according to Autonomous Marine Systems (AMS) CEO Ravi Paintal. The ways that researchers currently collect ocean data are costly and inefficient, Paintal argues. Most data is gathered by human-staffed boats, which is expensive and requires returns to land. Buoys can gather information, but only offer a lone data point. Autonomous underwater machines are typically battery powered, and so they can’t stay below the surface for too long. Planes, which can be used to spot mammals, are expensive.
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24 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
Photo, left, courtesy of Autonomous Marine Systems. Photo, right, by Adrianne Mathiowetz.
“Clearly, there’s a gap between the importance of the resource and our knowledge on it,” Paintal says. “When you look at how difficult and expensive it is to actually learn about the ocean, and you couple that with the need to know more about it, that’s where the commercial opportunity for our technology became apparent.” Enter the Datamaran, a robotic boat that’s fueled by wind and sun. Described by AMS as “the world’s first self-righting catamaran,” the Datamaran sails autonomously and can be a more economical and eco-friendly approach to ocean data gathering. Since it’s wind- and solarpowered, the Datamaran has the capacity, in theory, to stay in open water for an unlimited amount of time. “You could send a fleet of our vessels out—which, by the way, costs somewhere between one-fiftieth and one-hundredth what you’d pay to have a ship out there—collecting data,” says Paintal. “The data could be [on whales], measuring wind profiles, measuring water currents.” AMS currently has two prototypes, and expects to help with research across many fields including climate change, agriculture, and defense. “We can revolutionize how we collect information from the oceans,” Paintal says.
hat’s the key to gathering more information about epidemics? Looking at sewage, Biobot Analytics Co-founder and CEO Mariana Matus suggests. Matus first became attuned to the vast data available in sewage while getting her Ph.D. in computational biology at MIT. She and fellow co-founder Newsha Ghaeli made a list of all the things they could track through sewage, from environmental contaminants to infectious disease outbreaks to nutrition. But as the national opioid epidemic gained steam, Biobot Analytic’s first project became clear. “We saw the important need to be the first company to go out of a university with a mission
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to transform sewers into public health observatories,” Matus says. “The opportunity that we see is that there’s a lot of valuable data about people’s health and behavior in wastewater. Almost any activity that you can imagine has a footprint in the water that we use, and that goes into this public infrastructure, and nobody’s looking at it.” Public health officials’ current data-gathering approach to the opioid crisis is “reactive,” Matus explains—it’s largely based on overdoses and hospitalizations. “We saw an opportunity to provide this real-time feedback to understand what’s happening in communities, to understand what programs are working, to understand where there’s need,
and to stay on top of emerging trends,” says Matus. Biobot Analytics has done research in Cambridge and Boston, and recently was granted permission to study a manhole outside of Greentown Labs. It ran its first full study in Cary, N.C. last year, and in 2019 will work with five to 10 other locations. Ultimately, Biobot Analytics aims to create a platform that public health officials can utilize in many ways, from telling if a particular community has a spike in lead levels to potentially identifying food deserts. “We’re very passionate about making an impact on public health and making public health more efficient, more data-driven, more accountable,” Matus says.
scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 25
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
ver sit shivering in your office building? Or dripping sweat in the muggy months? Three MIT scientists did, and they decided to do something about it. The Embr Wave Bracelet helps adjust the wearer’s wrist temperature by sending strategic wave patterns to thermoreceptor nerves. While your core body temperature doesn’t change, Embr Labs Co-founder Sam Shames likens it to going outdoors in the winter or without a hat. “How hot or cold you feel has far more to do with local temperature sensations than your core body temperature,” the company’s website explains. Embr Labs has evolved to consider not just physical comfort, but the broader realm of “thermal wellness.” “At any given time, how you feel partially depends on temperature,” says Shames. “If you’re too hot or too cold in a room, that has effects on how well you can focus, but also, even more interestingly, what we’ve found is whether you’re hot or cold affects, say, how friendly you are to other people or how you process stress.” University of California-Berkeley found that the Embr Wave could have the effect of a five-degree shift in room temperature, according to Shames, which could reduce somewhere between 15 and 35 percent of a building’s cooling and heating energy usage. The chargeable wristband keeps evolving through software updates to a mobile app. A recent release, for example, is designed to use temperature to help users fall asleep. “We launched a specific wave form for falling asleep, which, over the course of the 35-minute duration, the rhythm, the time between the warming and cooling waves, slows down, the way your breath slows as you’re falling asleep,” Shames explains. “So it kind of helps put your body into that relaxed state.” Embr plans to continue developing ways to make its users more comfortable, as evidenced by a new research partnership with Johnson & Johnson to see how the wristband can be used to make menopausal women more comfortable in the face of hot flashes and sleep problems.
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ou might not realize how many items you use every day contain palm oil. Shampoo. Lipstick. Nutella. Bread. Ice cream. About half of all items at grocery stores include palm oil, sometimes under a different name, according to C16 Biosciences Co-founder Shara Ticku. The problem? Growing palm oil is a major cause of deforestation. It only grows close
Y
26 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
to the equator, and to keep up with demand growers cut down and burn tropical rainforests. This means carbon emissions and threats to biodiversity—tigers, elephants, orangutans, and rhinos have suffered loss of habitat to palm oil plantations, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Essentially, C16 is to palm oil what almond milk is to cow’s milk, Ticku explains. The synthetic substance isn’t palm oil,
but it can function just like it, and serves as a sustainable alternative. “We brew yeast, and we basically use yeast as factories to produce something that looks and functions just like palm oil,” she says. “It’s an oil produced from yeast fermentation that mimics the physical and chemical properties.” Ticku was attending Harvard Business School when she went to a class at the MIT Media Lab
called “Revolutionary Ventures.” The course helped her and her two co-founders conceive of C16. They were inspired by the success of Impossible Foods, which also utilizes synthetic biology in the name of sustainability. C16—named for one of the main components of palm oil—plans to be in items on store shelves within a year and a half, according to Ticku.
Photo, top, courtesy of Embr. Photo, bottom, courtesy of C16 Biosciences.
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THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
GROUNDWORK SOMERVILLE TAPS INTO NEW ENGLAND HERITAGE BY ABIGAIL FELDMAN PHOTOS BY ADRIANNE MATHIOWETZ
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he sap was flowing on Tufts University’s campus in late January, where more than a hundred people gathered for Groundwork Somerville’s first tree tapping of the year. Children took turns slowly drilling into the trees, hammering small spiles into the bark, and tasting droplets of sap, while program leaders explained how to identify and tap sugar maples. The event was part of the Maple Syrup Project, a springlong program run by Groundwork Somerville. The local nonprofit works to improve local communities by helping residents engage with their environment, and is associated with the larger Groundwork network. “What we’re hoping to do is 28 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
provide a fun way for community members to connect with the environment, and connect to each other at the same time,” Deputy Director Jess Bloomer says. Groundwork Somerville took up the Maple Syrup Project about 15 years ago as a way to promote natural spaces during the cold winter months, Bloomer says. The project is a collaborative effort by Groundwork, Tufts, the Somerville Community Growing Center, and local elementary schools. Over February and into March, the Maple Syrup Project collects about 200 gallons of raw sap, which is kept frozen at the Somerville Homeless Coalition’s Project SOUP pantry, according to Bloomer. The project involves several
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events, including a Maple Brunch at the Independent in February and a Sap on Tap event at Aeronaut Brewing Company on April 14. The core of the project, however, is educational—each year, about 20 to 25 Groundwork volunteers visit second grade classrooms throughout the city and introduce students to maple sugaring through what Bloomer calls “place-based learning.” “There’s big value in understanding and connecting to the places that we live,” Bloomer says. “We’re proud of the fact that we have kids in our school district whose families have been here for multiple generations, and also kids whose parents have just arrived from various other countries.” Learning about maple sugaring can be a “unifying force” for these students, she adds: “They can take part in something [that’s] been happening in this part of the country for hundreds of years.” Students in each class receive four to five hours of education on maple sugaring approached through various subjects areas, like learning about ratios through syrup-related facts and writing “sappy” poems. The project culminates in an annual Boil Down, where volunteers and all 200 participating second graders help convert the sap to homemade syrup. This year’s Boil Down, which is free and open to the community, is scheduled for March 16. In order to create syrup, 97 percent of the liquid must be boiled away, according to Bloomer, so about five gallons of syrup come out of the boil down. Most of it is given to community sponsors as gifts, or used in community events for children.
The Maple Syrup Project is just one of Groundwork Somerville’s many programs for supporting the community and the environment. The organization’s flagship program, the Green Team, provides high schoolers with an opportunity to develop leadership skills through projects in urban agriculture and environmental justice, according to Bloomer. The summer program recruits local teens to learn about food systems, as well as gain hands-on skills in farming and landscaping. “For many of these kids, it’s their first job,” Bloomer says. The Green Team also helps to produce about 2,000 pounds of produce annually, which, along with food from other local farms, is distributed to underserved residents through the organization’s Mobile Farmers Market. The mobile market is a van that brings subsidized fruits and vegetables to communities that lack easy access to a supermarket or areas where many individuals rely on SNAP or EBT benefits, Bloomer says. About half the available produce consists of foreign crops that have been requested by local immigrant communities, such as the Haitian Lalo plant. “It’s really important to us that we’re increasing food access in our city, especially to vulnerable communities,” Bloomer says. Groundwork also maintains and hosts programing in schoolyard gardens at 10 schools within the city, where volunteers host lessons on health and wellness through cooking and gardening, according to Community Engagement Coordinator Casey Merkle.
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scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 29
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
A Q&A WITH RECOVER GREEN ROOFS CO-FOUNDER BRENDAN SHEA BY REENA KARASIN Tell us about yourself and how you got to the point of founding this company. I started working for a wastewater engineering company that used plants and bacteria to treat wastewater. We were using living systems to provide a traditionally mechanical function for a building. I was cleaning a filter one day, which is really gross, and a piece came on WBUR about green roofs. They were also talking about a lot of the challenges involved in green roofs, in that they’re very 30 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
protects the waterproofing from sun exposure and temperature fluctuations, which makes your waterproofing last longer. It can keep your building cooler in the summer months and reduce air conditioning costs. It increases real estate values. It helps battle heat island effect, which is the warming of a city in summer months—basically, large paved areas or areas with a lot of roofs get much hotter, and they stay hot overnight. A lot of our favorite projects these days are trying to create native species meadow roofs, where we’re often allowing the roof to evolve with nature, and we’re helping to try to guide that evolution, but we’re not trying to keep a rigid design and plant pallet in place.
new, they’re living, and basically all of the challenges they were identifying of integrating new environmental technology were the challenges I dealt with every day at that job, but all those challenges involved rainwater and stormwater, not wastewater. And so I was like, “This sounds way better.” We got into it to build stormwater management gardens and create green space. That focus has definitely evolved, in terms of the complexity of projects we’re doing now, we’re doing everything from large, half-acre stormwater management gardens to complex and high-end amenity roofs that are creating green space for people, and so basically building parks on the roofs of buildings and trying to bring purpose to underutilized space on a building in an urban area. Can you define stormwater management? Stormwater management refers to rainwater that is falling on impervious surfaces in a city, so that could be roofs, that could be sidewalks, parking lots, and
basically that surface water runs off into the sewage system. In old cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, we have what’s called a combined sewage system, and that means the water from our sinks, showers, and toilets leaves a building and goes out under the street and enters the same pipes as the sewer grates that collect rainwater. So rainwater becomes contaminated as soon as it enters the sewer systems, and any time it rains in Boston more than threequarters of an inch in 24 hours, we’re getting sewage released into the Charles River, the Mystic River, and Boston Harbor. So stormwater management refers to the goal of trying to reduce rainwater from entering that waste stream. It is something that we’re trying to raise more awareness of. People don’t realize that our waterways are regularly being polluted. It’s an environmental issue, it’s a people issue, and it’s an economic issue. You said stormwater management was where you started—what has been the evolution?
Stormwater management and habitat creation were the two things that we were most attracted to in green roofs, basically helping deal with stormwater and also creating places for pollinators, birds, and people. What has evolved from that people-and-environment focus has been rooftop farming, which is something we totally didn’t expect to have such quick growth in popularity, and it’s like what people are most interested in when they learn about Recover. We built a half-acre farm on a Whole Foods, we’ve worked on putting farms on a number of restaurants, different office spaces and private residences, adding lawns and gardens and usable space to what was underutilized property. And the other is creating amenity spaces that are places for people to congregate, whether that’s outside an office building or in a high-rise apartment building. What are some of the other benefits to having a green roof? There’s both environmental benefits and economic benefits. It
Photos by Patrick Rogers Photography. Left, the Montaje Sky Deck & Courtyard. Top, Avigilon Offices at Assembly Row.
I’d love to hear about some of your Somerville projects. We’ve done over half a dozen projects over at Assembly, as well as a number of projects in Davis Square. We have some roofs over at Assembly, like on the Caffe Nero, that are not open to the public but are just helping keep the building cooler, protecting the building’s waterproofing, and absorbing stormwater. But across the street, at places at like the Montaje, we have roofs that have mature, 20-foot-tall trees and large native shrubs and lawn and recreation space. It’s more space that’s meant for biophilia and entertainment. Ideally, we’re trying to build spaces that are meant for people to relax, to find some connection to the natural environment within the density that is Somerville. There are many ways we can [increase green space], and green roofs are not the sole solution, but they’re one of many—more street trees, bioswales, more support from local government to create green space, whether it’s on a roof, whether it’s in a public park, whether it’s at street level. Recover Green Roofs is located at 9 Olive Square. For more information, call (617) 764-1310 or visit recovergreenroofs.com. Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and conciseness. scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 31
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
BRINGING ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE
CLEANING INDUSTRY
BY REENA KARASIN PHOTO BY ADRIANNE MATHIOWETZ
A
fter years working in the cleaning industry, Marcelo Silva was burned out. “It’s a high-burnout industry,” he explains. “[There’s] this tendency of the industry of not caring for its actions, and not caring about how it handles its employees.” He took time off to reflect, asking himself, “What can I do that’s meaningful?” That question led to the birth of Somerville Sustainable Cleaning, which Silva started out of his Union Square home in 2010. “The vision for it was to be different in the way we did things, and to be sustainable,” Silva explains. “Sustainability’s one of those words that’s really hard to define. For me, personally, it’s the ability to provide value to our customers and at the same time to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and to be able to repeat that process every day.” Silva’s three-pronged definition of sustainability ripples throughout the company’s practices, from chemicals to cleaning techniques to Silva’s attitude toward the staff. Take vinegar: the common cleaner is cheap, Silva explains, but it’s also acidic, can cause microcracks in glass, and is bad for electronics, plus its repeated use has been linked to respiratory problems for cleaners, so his company steers clear of it. The approach is far from what Silva experienced when he first entered the industry. He says they would use “stronger and stronger” chemicals and wipe immediately. At Somerville Sustainable Cleaning, they use milder cleaners and give them time to stand.
32 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
“It takes a little bit more time, but if [done] properly, it’s just as effective, and the difference is usually less than 10 percent of labor consumption,” he says. “But it’s much better environmentally, and it’s much better for the operator. They’re exposed to a lot less harsh chemicals.” The list goes on: “Less aggressive” vacuums that yield better results because they’re less straining for workers. Bucketless mops that use 70 percent less water and leave surfaces cleaner than the traditional model does, largely by preventing the water source from getting dirty. Reusable microfiber cloths that last longer and don’t need as much chemical as regular cleaning rags do. Starting the company shortly after the financial crisis, Silva
knew he wanted Somerville Sustainable Cleaning to be selffinanced so there wouldn’t be outside pressure to “cut corners” in the ways he saw were common in the industry. Sticking to its principles seems to have worked for the company, which now has a staff of about 40. More than half of Somerville Sustainable Cleaners’ sites are in Somerville or Cambridge, including Aeronaut Brewing Co., Bluebikes, Bow Market, and Formlabs. “We work with a lot of young companies,” Silva says. “They believe in what we’re doing, a lot of startups, a lot of tech companies, a lot of companies that are following that Google idea of giving a creative outlet within the workspace. There’s definitely a transition going on right now in which workspace is
becoming very nontraditional, and we have been able to really adapt to those companies.” The company is always looking for ways to further its mission of sustainability, from offering recyclable and biodegradable supplies to clients to trying out new cleaning techniques. “Every day, we ask ourselves, ‘How can we be environmentally friendlier?’” Silva says. “Every month, there’s always something here that we change, that we address, that makes a small impact on the environment around us. And that really brings me great satisfaction, and the rest of the management team.” For more information, visit somervillecleaning.com or call (617) 547-0450.
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THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
RECAP: SOMERVILLE’S CLIMATE ACTION PLAN BY REENA KARASIN
T
he city is charting a path to sustainability with Somerville Climate Forward, a broad-reaching plan to reduce its contributions to climate change and prepare for the effects of global warming. The plan’s goals are lofty: “We have to turn transportation and heating and cooling into electricity, and then that electricity needs to be 100 percent renewable,” says Oliver Sellers-Garcia, director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment (OSE). “And all the while, we are going to be dealing with a very different flooding and heat landscape.” For a city that often puts together 20- or 30-year plans, the five- to 10-year scope of Somerville Climate Forward highlights the need to act immediately on climate change.
achieve their status in several ways, the plan explains, including solar panels, ground source heat pumps, and carbon offset programs. The goal is complicated, Sustainability Coordinator Hannah Payne says, by the fact that Somerville can’t create its own building code—and the state’s code is less strict than what’s necessary to achieve the Somerville Climate Forward plan’s goals. Because of this roadblock, the plan’s approaches include incentivizing net-zero buildings, making zoning changes, and trying to change the state building code. Similar approaches will be needed to ensure buildings can handle the rising temperatures and increased flooding that are projected effects of climate change.
PUBLIC AND ELECTRIC TRANSPORTATION
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ransportation accounts for about one-third of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the plan. To target transportation’s effect on the environment, city officials aim to reduce car use— by improving public transit, walking, and biking options— and encourage a switch to electric vehicles. Sellers-Garcia says the city will strategically install new electric vehicle charging stations. Rather than placing stations in areas like Davis Square that are connected to public transportation, the charging stations will likely end up in
residential areas to let people charge their cars at home. “We can really facilitate charging in the places people need it, so that they see, ‘Oh, there’s a place that I can charge my car, even though I don’t have a driveway and I rent, this might actually work for me,” Sellers-Garcia says. PREPARATION AND RESILIENCY
S
he city’s goal is for future buildings to create essentially no greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings currently make up about twothirds of all emissions in the city, according to the Somerville Climate Forward plan. Zero net energy buildings can
omerville expects to see flooding from the Mystic River, flooding from heavier rainfall, and extreme heat, according to Payne. A state grant is funding research into Somerville’s stormwater infrastructure to help the city be resilient in the face of worsening storms. Another OSE priority is to build up Somerville’s tree canopy to maximize its cooling effect, Payne and Sellers-Garcia say. OSE staff say that communication, education, and what the plan calls a “culture of climate action” are top concerns when it comes to residents and building owners. They also note that education will prepare people for the effects of climate change and help them make informed decisions about their homes and habits.
34 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
Graphic, top, by Mike Powers. Graphic, bottom, courtesy of the City of Somerville.
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SCOUT OUT!
Laugh Your Stress Off The Somerville Laughter Club Teaches 12 Types of Laughter BY REENA KARASIN PHOTOS BY SASHA PEDRO
W
alter Ness starts our conversation with a joke. “What do you call two pyromaniacs sharing an apartment?” The punchline: “Matching roommates.” It’s a fitting beginning to an interview with a man who specializes in laughter. Ness, founder of the Somerville Laughter Club, has studied the mechanics and effects of laughter and developed his own technique, which he shares at the group’s monthly meetings at Unity Somerville. In addition to the club, he’s
36 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
run a mindfulness-based comedy theater group and drafted a comeback guidebook titled “Jests In Time,” which features over a dozen sections including puns, self-deprecating humor, and “miscellaneous snappy comebacks.” How did you get started in the world of laughter? I was invited to the Arlington Laughter Club when it first started. I had such a good time laughing that I decided to keep going. It’s not that I couldn’t laugh, I had no trouble laughing, but it intrigued me. A lot of the regular people would be saying, “I wish I could laugh like this when I was at home.” And I’m thinking, “OK, there’s something wrong with this picture.” So I tried different varieties of laughter. I’m into mind-body, and I’m very aware of chi energy flow, and so I am able to be more aware of the sensations in my body than most people are. I wanted to see what would happen if I started teaching people different styles of laughter. Most people have one style. I started meeting a lot of people who couldn’t laugh, and what happens when a person can’t laugh, and you try to encourage them, they get more tense. So I was lucky that I came across an article by a scientist who proved that if you make a left fist it activates the right side of the brain, which is in control of motor functions. And I said, “What would happen if a person who can’t laugh made a left fist?” And they start laughing, it’s like I found the key. That was the beginning of me creating over a dozen different ways of laughing. The idea is that, now that you know how to laugh, do you know you can actually laugh with the throat, chest, abdomen. What do you do when you have a newcomer? How do you bring them in, get them started? It’s very easy, I just tell them “Make a left fist.” It’s neuroscience, it really works. I haven’t had anybody fail doing that. I also teach them the traditional way, fake-it-til-you-make-it. And then
I show the new style, where you actually use the understanding of laughter, and how to get it started and keep it going, just so you know you have that ability. I actually present the mechanics of how things work. The prevailing theory, or belief, is that we laugh because of social interaction—but it’s different when you’re on your own, you have to laugh, and you don’t know how to get it started, and keep maintaining it. People insist that is has to be real. Well, it is real. [We’re] the only laughter club that teaches over 12 styles and the techniques of laughter, the methods of how to make laughter occur. I’ve made it a point, this is how you become aware of your body, this is how you activate this part of the body to laugh. The emphasis here is not that you laugh, it’s that when you’re in a really bad situation, you can cause laughter to occur. One of the things I point out to people when they have trouble laughing is that they don’t move. If you actually look at people that are laughing, they move their head, they move their body, because laughter is movement. When you’re young, you go to school, [and are told,] “Sit down, behave yourself.” High school: “Sit down, behave yourself.” College: “Sit down, behave yourself.” Work: “Sit down, behave yourself.” So by the time they show up over here, they don’t know how to move.
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Why is it so important for people to be able to laugh on their own? I was at a party, and a woman said, “I can change my mood by laughing.” That’s the basic idea. We don’t realize that we can change our emotions like we can change words coming out of our mouths. It’s not that we stop the emotions, it’s that we change the duration of how long they last. You can actually do that, but you have to know it’s possible. The Somerville Laughter Club meets monthly, typically the second Friday of the month, at Unity Somerville, located at 6 William St. Editor’s note: This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and conciseness.
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SOMETHING VENTURED
Something Ventured BY ABBIE GRUSKIN PHOTOS BY ADRIANNE MATHIOWETZ
HIMALAYAN KITCHEN Brother and sister meld Nepalese cooking with friendly service
B
rother-and-sister duo Rabina Lockett and Uttam Shrestha work side-byside at Himalayan Kitchen to introduce Somerville locals to the authentic Nepalese cuisine of their home country. The siblings’ close relationship has helped their business thrive, they say. “My brother has literally been my best friend, my brother, my family,” Lockett says. “Now, since we’re partners in this business, it’s a really good feeling. I cannot even think about working with anybody else.” Lockett and Shrestha bought the restaurant four years ago when it was called BBQ International, and kept the name and menu for over a year before transitioning 38 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
the space into Himalayan Kitchen, with dishes ranging from chicken tikka pizza to traditional Himalayan momo dumplings. The three owners—the siblings and Rabina’s husband, Jay—each bring something unique to the restaurant, relying on encouragement from one another to experiment with new dishes and business opportunities. Lockett’s love of food and cooking led the siblings down the path of opening a restaurant, an area in which they could combine their strengths. “I work mostly on cooking the food, I love to cook,” Lockett says. “When this opportunity struck us, we said ‘OK, why don’t
we do it together, because I love to cook and you love business.’ We thought this would be a great start, this would be a good adventure for us.” “My brother is the person who loves to bring in new ideas,” Lockett adds. “His mind works 24 hours on how to grow the business. All these ideas he brings in, I just support him. I know how my brother is feeling in certain moments, and I can go, without him even explaining to me … and support him.” Lockett says the team’s focus on providing excellent customer service has attracted local and out-of-state customers alike. “My husband is like a salesperson, he handles customers,”
she says. “He’s dealing with every single customer in the way he wants to be dealt with when he goes to other restaurants.” The siblings continue to update and improve Himalayan Kitchen with support from loyal customers, embracing how much the restaurant has changed since it first opened. “At first, it was a little scary, because we didn’t have the whole concept of how it was going to turn out,” Lockett explains. “Getting the support from our customers has been amazing. It is truly an emotional, overwhelming feeling for us. How things have changed up until now has been nothing but positive for us. We have given everything to this place.”
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SOMETHING VENTURED
LA POSADA Posada siblings dish up a childhood love for Latin American cooking
T
he siblings behind La Posada discovered a love of food at a young age in their home country of El Salvador. “I grew up around food,” Joe Posada says. “Living at home was like living at a restaurant, there was so much food, so much dessert. I was cooking when I was little, I was already baking when I was 7 or 8.” Joe and his sister, Yenny, translated this appreciation for family-style cooking into the Magoun Square restaurant, working side-by-side as they had in their childhood. When the siblings bought the restaurant that they later rebranded as La Posada, they 40 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
intended to open an additional restaurant and each manage their own kitchen. Instead, the pair stuck together, and three years later expanded La Posada into a larger space just down the street. “We joined into this bigger project knowing that we would be able to offer better service,” Joe says. “It’s been so smooth and perfect. It’s like a machine. I’m doing my thing, she’s doing her thing.” La Posada’s ever-changing menu features a fresh spin on food from up to nine different Latin American countries, expanding on the Posadas’ Salvadoran roots. “We wanted to do a fusion of Latin American food, collect the
recipes from different countries in Latin America,” Joe says. “Sticking to one country, to me, is like limiting myself. People have loved the concept of having more than one country all together.” The restaurant balances traditional Latin American comfort foods of rice, beans, and different meats with eclectic dishes like Brazilian style empanadas and Puerto Rican tostones. It also offers madeto-order Salvadoran dishes, including pupusas. The pancakesized dough pupusas are typically grilled with an assortment of cheese, vegetables, meat, and beans, but La Posada also offers vegetarian and vegan options.
“The area has grown so much with vegetarian and vegan people that we’re trying to evolve with what the community wants,” Joe says. “We’ve managed to grow in the direction that people want, and we’re passionate about what we do. We’re always trying to bring something new to the table, we want people to experience the way we cook at home.” Joe says he believes new dishes and innovative combinations are what keep loyal customers returning for meals. “They get excited about everything we do, because they want to try something new from the place they love,” Joe says.
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DO-GOODERS, KEY PLAYERS & GAME CHANGERS
DO-GOODERS, KEY PLAYERS, AND GAME CHANGERS
‘EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE’ PROGRAMS – EAST SOMERVILLE COMMUNITY SCHOOL BY LILLY MILMAN
“I
am funny, I am Somerville.” “I am a brother, I am Somerville.” “I am kind, I am Somerville.” These are just a few of the phrases students at the East Somerville Community School (ESCS) have used to describe themselves and their community during the Everyone is Welcome Here Week of Action in years past. Co-organized by educators Helen Schroeder and Emma Mrozicki, the Everyone is Welcome Here Week of Action is an annual week-long event held at the beginning of May that focuses on uplifting immigrant families in the community and fostering an atmosphere of 42 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
support and acceptance. Events include community parties and gatherings, assemblies, art projects, and more. East Somerville is not the first school to host a Welcome Here week in the area. Schroeder says she was inspired to bring the event to ESCS after attending an Educators for Social Justice conference, where she learned about how other schools in the Boston area were supporting immigrant families in their communities. “We only heard about it just a couple of weeks before the actual week was supposed to occur, so it was all-hands-on-deck in our school,” Schroeder says. “We developed a curriculum guide.
We also had a community block party, and had face painting, and a photo project and lots of different things just to celebrate our community. Both years it’s been an incredible response from our school community. The event has had hundreds of people there, and people have just felt sort of love and support—that was our whole goal all along.” Although the Everyone is Welcome Here week only lasts a few days, ESCS prides itself on celebrating diversity yearround. Every Friday teachers wear shirts designed by PTA parents sporting the “Everyone is Welcome Here” messaging, and student-created signs with the sentiment hang in multiple
languages throughout the school. “This is for real—this is how we do things at the East Somerville Community School,” says Sarah Davila, district administrator of English Learner Education and Family and Community Partnerships. Mrozicki also teaches in the school’s UNIDOS Dual Language program, where students take classes in both English and Spanish. This program is reflective of the school’s population, as 71.8 percent of the student body identifies as Hispanic. “It’s a way for many students who speak Spanish as a home language to maintain that language and to become fully literate in both languages,” Mrozicki says. “It’s interesting because it’s a program within the school, so it puts a high emphasis on how important it is to hold onto Spanish and how powerful it is to be bilingual. I’ve noticed that there’s an increased awareness of language in general across the school.” One of the primary themes of the week is to discuss the contributions immigrants have made to the community. For example, Schroeder says ECSC partnered with English-languagelearner classes from the high school to give the younger students an opportunity to learn from their older peers. “We brought down immigrant students from the high school, who then spoke in classes throughout our school about their experiences being immigrants and being students in Somerville,” Schroeder says. “We’ve done that two years now, and it’s just been really powerful for the kids to have a chance to see kids who are a little older than them speaking to their experiences.” Both Schroeder and Mrozicki stressed the role that the rest of the community plays in bringing together the Welcome Here week, sharing credit for its success. “It’s been an opportunity to share and collaborate across the district,” Mrozicki says. “We’re part of a bigger structure within the city that’s really supported us. We kind of brought this spark of inspiration, but there’s just been so many people across the city who are really stepping up in this time to show their support.” Photo by Sasha Pedro.
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Patio Time!
WWW.THENEIGHBORHOODRESTAURANT.COM 25 BOW ST, SOMERVILLE • (617) 623-9710 scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 43
MEET THE SCOUT TEAM
MEET THE SCOUT TEAM
REENA KARASIN EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
O
ur editorin-chief comes up with the themes for each issue, and then spends time brainstorming. What are all the different ways we can approach the topics of food, or the environment, or the arts? From there, she assigns, writes, and edits articles. Throughout the
issue cycle, she works with Nicolle Renick, our art director, and Adrianne Mathiowetz and Sasha Pedro, our staff photographers, to make sure we’re getting great visuals for each piece. Reena also runs our websites and online presence, making sure that we’re getting timely pieces out online in addition to creating our print magazines. Reena’s from New Jersey, and came up to Somerville to attend Tufts University. She majored in
Prices are already up quite a bit over 2013, which was the strongest market in years. More inventory has
started to appear, but it is still not enough to satisfy English, and has always enjoyed demand. Consequently, prices should continue to rise in 2014. reading and writing. Now, Reena call us for more information on the market, lives just over the border in Please or to get a sense of the current value of your home. Cambridge. She loves that at Scout~Thalia, Todd, Niké, Jennifer, and Lynn Our New Listings she gets to learn about and share people’s stories. ~ $1,495,000 When she’s not writing and editing Scout, Reena can often be found at the Cambridge YogaWorks (formerly Prana Power Yoga), where she’s getting certified to be a yoga instructor. She says yoga is a~ $519,000 great complement to the quick-paced ~ $349,000 world of journalism.
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Left: Reena takes notes at a meeting of LIPS, run by the Welcome Project, which helps bilingual teenagers become translators. Right: Reena (center) hikes at Walden Pond with friends.
44 The Environmental Issue | scoutsomerville.com
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HEALTH & WELLNESS DIRECTORY
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SHOPPING DIRECTORY PORTER SQUARE BOOKS
25 White St., Cambridge 617-491-2220, portersquarebooks.com Porter Square Books is your fiercely independent source for great books, magazines, fun gifts and more.
LA POSADA RESTAURANT
505 Medford St., Somerville 617-776-2049, laposadasomerville.com Somerville’s spot for delicious, hand-crafted Latin American cuisine.
MAGPIE
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JOSE’S MEXICAN RESTAURANT
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TACO PARTY
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MAGPIE KIDS
95 Elm St., Somerville 617-764-4110, magpiekids.com Modern gifts for modern kids. Clothes, toys, books and more!
scoutsomerville.com | The Environmental Issue 45
CALENDAR
MARCH 17 | MUSIC
Photo courtesy of Cambridge Symphony Orchestra.
APRIL 7 | FOOD
CAMBRIDGE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PRESENTS “HEROES AND ANGELS” 4 to 6 p.m., $25 Kresage Auditorium at MIT— 48 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge In “Heroes and Angels,” the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra will take audiences on a musical journey from swans to angels to Martin Luther King, Jr. Music will include Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5, Nan Schwartz’s “Angels Among Us,” and Joseph Schwantner’s “New Morning for the World” (“Daybreak of Freedom”).
MEATBALL MADNESS AT BOW MARKET 12 to 5 p.m., $39.99 1 Bow Market Way, Somerville Bow Market has gotten a reputation for being a melting pot of foods from around the world. So, why not channel that all into … meatballs? In addition to the classic Italian meatballs, at this event you’ll find Mediterranean meatballs, vegetarian meatballs, Asian meatballs, and more, topped off with beer from Remnant Brewing.
APRIL 27-MAY 4 | ENVIRONMENT
MARCH 21 | COMMUNITY
Photo by Derek Kouyoumjian.
GROWING DIVIDES IN CAMBRIDGE: A TALE OF 2.0 CITIES 6 to 7:30 p.m., Free Cambridge Public Library— 449 Broadway, Cambridge The Cambridge Center for Adult Education presents this examination of the city’s growing income inequality as part of its “Conversations On the Edge” series. Cambridge Community Foundation President and CEO Geeta Pradhan will moderate the panel.
Photo courtesy of the City of Somerville.
APRIL 28 | DANCE
MARCH 25 | BOOKS
Photo courtesy of Gareth Hinds.
GARETH HINDS AT PORTER SQUARE BOOKS 7 p.m., Free 25 White St., Cambridge Graphic novelist Gareth Hinds has created works around many canonical texts, including “The Odyssey,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “King Lear.” He’ll come to Porter Square Books to speak about his latest graphic novel, “The Iliad,” out on March 12.
Photo by Hil Steadman.
MARCH 30 | HISTORY
Photo courtesy of Mount Auburn Cemetery.
WOMEN’S HISTORY WALK 1 to 2:30 p.m., $12 Mount Auburn Cemetery— 580 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge This walk at Mount Auburn Cemetery will “honor women who have led efforts to end war, violence, and injustice and pioneered the use of nonviolence to change society,” according to the event page.
“YOU CAN DANCE IF YOU WANT TO” 7 to 9 p.m., $15 The Dance Complex— 536 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge Dance meets live music in “You Can Dance If You Want To,” where a nonprofit string ensemble will present Hungarian and Romanian “traditional dance tunes” alongside dance choreography. Stick around for the second act and you’ll get to try your hand at dancing too!
MAY 5 | MUSIC
MARCH 27 | HISTORY
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN GARDENS 6 p.m., Free Harvard Semitic Museum— 6 Divinity Ave., Cambridge Egypt was home to the oldest documented gardens, according to the Harvard Semitic Museum. At this event you can learn about their representations, as well as “the symbolism and functions of gardens in the religious and personal lives of ancient Egyptians.”
SUSTAINAVILLE WEEK Times vary, Most events are free Various locations in Somerville The City of Somerville’s annual SustainaVille week returns with various events promoting and celebrating sustainability—think Meatless Monday, a climate justice workshop, and “Waste Myth Busters.” Visit somervillema.gov/ sustainavilleweek for the full event lineup.
Photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz.
PINDROP SESSIONS SEASON 2 FINALE 7 to 10 p.m., $20 Aeronaut Brewing Company— 14 Tyler St., Somerville This monthly “classical-ish performance series” has become quite popular, and the season finale will feature what Aeronaut says is the first brewery-commissioned classical work in the country. “No stodginess. No competing sound. Just sweet, shared silence, beautiful beers, and beautiful people,” Aeronaut promises.
MAY 3-5 | ART
SOMERVILLE OPEN STUDIOS Times vary, Free Throughout Somerville It’s Open Studios time again! Take a peek at the art being created in your city during one of Somerville’s most exciting weekends of the year.
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