Ferry Street Food & Drink kicks off Malden Reads dinners

When you see an old English Raleigh three-speed with a basket of flowers on the handlebars and chalkboard that reads  “Open” you’ll know you’ve arrived at Ferry Street Food & Drink. Pull the large wooden door open and you will find a room filled with warm, amber light reflecting off of golden wooden panels and an old map of Texas, birthplace of Jason Ladd, head chef and co-owner. Ladd recalls, “I discovered cooking as a deep love when I was a very young lad, my teen years, and stuck with it ever since.”  Ladd was influenced by the Tex-Mex cooking of his homeland that you can taste in his signature dish, pork meatballs with cheddar grits in barbecue sauce.  He uses a combination of cumin, cayenne, and ground chile peppers and is ever refining his barbecue sauce. In his travels and work, he was influenced by the tastes of many places.  The southwest, French creole and cajun is expressed in the jambalaya, and in the Louisiana cajun dish, shrimp and grits.  House-made linguine with milk […]

A waxing crescent moon was brightly visible, as was Jupiter and the bright star Sirius. Through the telescope, event goers to the top of Waitt’s Mount got to see the close-up surface of our moon, as well as the moons of Jupiter, and other stars. They were treated to a variety of storytelling and live, acoustic music on a beautifully windy, but warm, night in April. The second annual “Sunset, Storytelling and Stargazing on Waitt’s Mount” on April 29 proved to be a successful and delightful community event. Co-sponsored by Malden Reads and Ward 4 City Councillor Ryan O’Malley, the event celebrated a central theme of this year’s Malden Reads book selection—getting to know your neighbors and creating a shared sense of community. It featured family storytelling at sunset with professional storyteller Sharon Kennedy, live acoustic Americana music from the band “Slow Boat Home,” and local folks telling their own personal stories that were honed under the direction of Malden-based writer and spoken word artist CD Collins. The telescope was provided compliments of the North […]

  By Sharon Santillo An international effort that encourages citizens to set up free neighborhood book exchanges has arrived in Malden. Moreover, these “little free libraries” are bringing back a miniature version of the neighborhood libraries that the city lost beginning in the 1980s. Sparked by the non-profit organization, Little Free Library, Malden residents are creating tiny spaces where anyone passing by can take a book to read or leave a book for someone else to find. The first little free library was created by Todd Bol in 2009 to honor his deceased mother who loved to read. He built a one-room schoolhouse model and put it on a post in the front yard of his Wisconsin home and filled it with books. He shared the idea and it spread globally. Now there are over 50,000 little free libraries across the United States and in over 70 countries. Soon you will see these small libraries around Malden. Malden Arts has received a grant from the  Malden Cultural Council to register 10 little free libraries in Malden […]