August 2020 - Neighborhood View

Keep Drawing, Keep (Th)inking: the Keith Knight Story

August 27, 2020 Sky Malerba 2

By Sky Malerba Born and raised in Malden, MA, cartoonist, rapper, teacher and activist Keith Knight delighted in drawing since early childhood. This week, Keith Knight is the subject for Malden Arts Mondays, a two-month long celebration of artists and figures associated with Malden. “I always used to draw on walls, and draw in class, and I’d never get in trouble for it, in fact, I kept on getting higher grades,” he said of his school experiences. He drew cartoons based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm and used portraits of his classmates and teachers as an analogue to a character in the story. “You should be doing a syndicated cartoon,” his teacher told him. That was the beginning of Keith Knight’s career as a highly regarded American cartoonist 20 years ago. Knight graduated from Malden High in 1984 and after a brief stint as a professional Michael Jackson impersonator in the 1980s, he created perhaps his most memorable in the 1990s. The K Chronicles was a weekly autobiographical comic strip, published in The San Francisco Examiner and then […]

A Dragon Hugs the Corner: Wah Lum Academy Embraces Unity Amid a Pandemic

August 23, 2020 Amanda DeRosa 3

By Amanda DeRosa Sifu Mai Du of the Wah Lum Academy in Malden often tells her students, “Under every roof there is a story.” So, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to close her martial arts studio on March 10, at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Ferry Street, and board up the windows, Mai Du knew she had to do something to continue to tell the story of Wah Lum. “A boarded-up corner didn’t sit well with me,” she says. She and some of her artistically talented students hatched a plan to transform the more than 400 square feet of blank plywood into a radiant message of solidarity. Beginning on July 19, a group of artists and volunteers began painting a mural on the boarded-up windows. Today, a dragon snakes around the corner, embracing Guardian Foo Dogs, Lion dancers, and a community united. The work is ongoing. Wah Lum Academy is not simply another school, Wah Lum is a communal space where members look forward to visiting on a regular basis; it’s an intimate place where […]

For the defense: Author Erle Stanley Gardner

August 18, 2020 Sky Malerba 2

By Sky Malerba Erle Stanley Gardner was a powerful force of nature. He was a towering, commanding defense attorney and a prolific author who created the archetype of the fearless defense attorney. And the native city of the man who brought us Perry Mason was Malden, MA. This week, Erle Stanley Gardner is the subject for Malden Arts Mondays, a two-month long celebration of artists and figures associated with Malden. In 1899 at 10 years of age, Gardner’s family left their Malden home and moved to Oregon to a mining camp. When he was kicked out of Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana for brawling with his professor, he pursued legal education in California. In Oxnard, California, he would become a successful defense attorney defending poor Chinese and Mexican immigrants who police often used as scapegoats for poorly investigated crimes. Although his legal career provided a steady income, he found it was not stimulating enough and and he turned to writing, particularly for the rakish world of cheap pulp magazines, much to his family’s disapproval. During these years he wrote under such pseudonyms as A.A. Fair, […]

He Ripped Off An Ear and Became a Legend: Killer Kowalski

August 10, 2020 Sky Malerba 4

By Sky Malerba Killer Kowalski never intended to go into professional sports. However, he eventually became one of the most feared and simultaneously admired villains in professional wrestling. For many years, he ran a popular wrestling school in Malden. This week, Killer Kowalski is the subject for Malden Arts Mondays, a two-month long celebration of artists and figures associated with Malden. Born Edward Władysław Spulnik on Oct. 13, 1926, Kowalski began training at a YMCA at age 14 when he was lanky and already over six feet tall. Although he planned to become an electrical engineer, he saw opportunities in the world of professional wrestling and attended a wrestling school. As a son of Polish immigrants who was raised in Ontario, he learned he could make a solid living being a wrestler. He would come to prominence when the emerging popularity of television created a golden age of professional wrestling. Kowalski took on a number of different identities as his wrestling persona evolved, as influenced by the technique of his craft. His names cycled through different strongman archetypes: Hercules, Tarzan, the more tame […]

If You Start With a High School Band, Norman Greenbaum Proves You Can Make It

August 5, 2020 Sky Malerba 4

By Sky Malbera Remember Spirit In the Sky, the rollicking rock hit from 1969 about spirituality? Did you know the singer was a Malden-born-and-raised musician? Norman Greenbaum, an Orthodox Jew born in 1942, went on to create music but it was Spirit in the Sky that would reverberate through American culture. It was featured in almost fifty films, including Apollo 13 and the sequel to Wayne’s World and numerous television shows such as Law & Order and Big Love. Fun fact: the lyrics reportedly took all of fifteen minutes to write! Greenbaum was more than a one-hit wonder. He led in the charts with several other memorable tunes such as The Eggplant That Ate Chicago in 1966 and Canned Ham in 1970. A long-time resident of Santa Rosa, Calif., Greenbaum visited Malden on Oct. 16 2019, to cut the ribbon unveiling a mural on 110 Pleasant Street painted by Jesse Melanson to honor of the 50th anniversary of the famous song. Fittingly, the mural envisions a hand raised up to the sky with rainbows and music notes flying, mirroring the streets of Malden blasting the hit with the universal themes incapsulated by […]