January 2020 - Neighborhood View

The Malden Mass. Memories Road Show is coming!

January 31, 2020 NeighborhoodView 2

by Sandra Li On Monday, December 9th the Malden Reads organization held their first launch meeting at the Malden Public Library for the Malden Mass. Memories Road Show event that will be held on May 2nd. At the meeting, various other organizations across Malden were present to discuss more details in regards to the road show and volunteering. The Mass. Memories Road Show is a community history program that was first launched in 2004 and is coordinated by the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston). Since then, the event has digitized more than 11,000 photographs from across the state. The roadshow will be a capstone event for the 10th year anniversary of Malden Reads. Carolyn Goldstein, who is a representative from UMass Boston, explained that this event will be a “chance to bring people from all corners of the city together,” as it places an importance on archiving the stories and memories of residents. Goldstein presented a slideshow to all the organizations including Chinese Culture Connection, Malden Historical Society, and Massachusetts Senior Action Council, where she […]

Trash boom and volunteers keep Malden River cleaner

January 25, 2020 karenbuckmalden 0

By Karen Buck “Welcome to my office,” I recently told Malden city councilors and officials when I took them on a canoe tour of the Malden River, a waterway I cherish. I was happy to tell them that, thanks to the installation of a trash boom on the river and the hard work of volunteers, “my office” was getting cleaner. Consider the math: Since midsummer, the Trash Free Malden River Project, funded by the Massachusetts Environmental Trust (MET), has recruited 74 volunteers who donated 316 hours for clean up. We collected 1,120 single use plastic bottles, 976 alcoholic “nips,” 57 pounds of dry polystrene (Styrofoam), and 300 pounds of miscellaneous trash from the river. Some of this trash would have flowed down the Malden River into the Mystic River and may have continued into the Boston Harbor. Some of this trash would have been caught by the vegetation along the shoreline, disrupting the balance of nature. Without any cleanups, all of the plastic trash would have degraded into microplastics in the water, ruining our ecosystem […]

Malden Reads catches fire: The timeless themes of Fahrenheit 451

January 16, 2020 professorschorow 2

A book that imagines a future without books inspired activities during opening-day celebrations on Jan. 11 for the tenth anniversary of Malden Reads: One City, One Book. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s landmark dystopian novel, has been selected for the “NEA Big Read: Malden 2020” – the first time Malden Reads has picked a classic novel as a book for the entire city to read and ponder. A host of events are planned to explore the novel’s themes, including film screenings, discussions, a podcast series, youth activities, and a presentation on Bradbury’s life and influence. Copies of the book are available at the Malden Public Library, including translated print versions, audio and electronic formats. This year, Malden Reads was selected as one of only 78 nonprofit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Big Read grant. An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the mission of the NEA Big Read is “to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.” […]

Who was Elisha Converse?

January 2, 2020 annedr 3

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 […]