Pop-up store expands hours till Christmas

By Martha Bezzat, Fern Remedi-Brown, Laura Cummingham, Susan Margot Ecker, Nikita Sampath On Saturday, Dec. 4, the sidewalks of Pleasant Street were lined with about 55 local artists and craftspeople, eager to share their wares with Malden residents as part of the first Winter Festival, sponsored by the City of Malden.  Malden Reads held its 2022 season “kick-off” event during the festival in the J Malden Center lobby. The group hosted poetry readings from local poets, children’s activities, dance videos from local dance group Monkeyhouse, and a raffle. J Malden Center also hosted the Chamber of Commerce’s 130th Anniversary closing event, which provided history and hot chocolate for crowds seeking warmth and nourishment from the cold weather.   The event had the dual goal of “bringing customers back to our downtown to support our businesses and [giving] our residents an outdoor activity to enjoy themselves safely,” said Kevin Duffy, the Strategy and Business Development Officer for the City of Malden. However, a runaway car parked on Pleasant Street momentarily shook up the festive atmosphere when it began to roll, went […]

By Shikha Vyas An International Day that is celebrated every year at The Immigrant Learning Center, Inc. (ILC) has indeed become a great success. On Thursday, June 20, guests were handed a passport when entering the ILC building at 442 Main St. with a list of 22 countries from across the globe. ILC students were set up in classrooms throughout the building representing their countries and their culture with food, music, clothing, and displays.  “Over the year since we have opened the school, 118 different countries and over 10,000 students have studied here. That means helping 10,000 families,” said Diane Portnoy, Founder and CEO of The ILC. “Every student is very special and this is an opportunity where the students get a chance to show their cultural diversity.” Portnoy enthusiastically explained that on International Day everyone enjoys eating food, listening to music and seeing different kinds of  artwork, literature and traditional clothing. Moreover, this is the best way to learn about the culture of other countries, finding out about differences but also all the things […]

2020 marks the 200th anniversary year of the birth of Elisha Slade Converse, the first mayor of Malden and a major benefactor to the city. The video, “Who Was Elisha Converse?” (posted below) was produced by youth this past summer as part of the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program (MSYEP). Fengying Guo, Bridget Gately, and Joshua Dube worked at MATV, Malden’s Media Center (soon to be UMA) to co-produce this six-minute video. “The most interesting thing to me about Elisha Converse was researching and learning about his incredible impact on Malden,” said Gately. “But what stuck out to me was his project on the creation of Fellsmere Pond after the burning of the Boston Rubber Shoe Company and how he paid all of his workers when they were out of work following the fire.” “Before we started the Converse project, I knew nothing about our first mayor, but I learned a lot about him as we worked on this project,” said Guo. “We all worked together to do research and we attended two of the […]