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Arts

Lunar New Year in Malden marked with joy and Chinese cultural flair

February 3, 2023 NeighborhoodView 0

By Jinghe Zhong, special to Neighborhood View MALDEN, MA — The Chinese Culture Connection (CCC) held its 14th annual Lunar New Year Celebration at Malden High School on January 14, 2022. For the Asian community in Malden, this was a momentous occasion. The event was finally presented in person after three years, bringing together hundreds of local residents and businesses of diverse cultural backgrounds. A spectacular lion dance performance by Wah Lum Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy set the festive mood, and Mei Hung, Executive Director of the CCC, was joined by Malden mayor Gary Christenson to officially open the event. The nearly four-hour celebration featured over 20 performing groups and individuals from across the Greater Boston Area. A major highlight was Thousand Hands Guanyin, a large-scale dance performed by the Boston Chinese United Dance Group, whose members range in age from eight to 80. Together, they harnessed the power of dance to raise awareness of the importance of goodwill and selflessness in today’s society. There were also performances by students from the CCC’s […]

Education

Drinking coffee with the Song Dogs of Forest Dale

January 20, 2023 karenbuckmalden 1

By Karen Buck Joey Kolbe, a professional wildlife photographer, leaned against a rock and sipped his coffee. His 22-pound camouflaged zoom lens was focused on his local and personal project: the lives of two coyote siblings living in the Forest Dale region of Malden, MA. Ten years ago, Kolbe and his family moved to Malden.  He was intrigued with the coyotes after his first local sighting in 2013.  His coyote project started in 2016 by filming a family of four, but by 2022 he was putting a more in-depth focus on the two siblings living in the Forest Dale neighborhood. Kolbe has observed these local Song Dogs for thousands of hours.  The Wildlife Photographer Lens Kolbe’s passion was sparked from an experience with his eight-year-old daughter two years ago. They had been exploring the Fells and were sitting by one of the water stations. Several coyotes appeared and were curious about the father and daughter.  The coyotes smelled the air; Kolbe described, “The bubble [atmosphere of smells and reactions] around us is very important to them. […]

Featured

Diversity, Service & Solutions: Ramon Norales reflects on his life in Malden

November 22, 2022 Joy Pearson 1

By Joy Pearson In May 2020, Malden Reads planned to host the Malden Mass. Memories Road Show (MMRS), a statewide, event-based, participatory digital archiving program that documents people, places, and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories. Due to the pandemic, the in-person event could not be held. So Neighborhood View, in collaboration with Malden Reads, is contributing photographs and stories online as part of the Malden Mass. Memories Stuck-at-Home Show. The following story continues the series of participant profiles, which focus on photographs and what they mean to that resident of Malden. It was the cultural and ethnic diversity of Malden that attracted Ramon Norales to move here in 1997.  During the past 25 years, Ramon has devoted his life to family, to work, and to his Malden community through his ethics of service and solutions. In 1971, 7 ½-year-old Ramon Norales immigrated to New York City from Spanish-speaking Honduras in Central America to be with his parents.  In New York City, he grew up in Harlem   Later, he attended NYC Technical College in […]

Education

Indigenous wisdom, poetry and history guide community event at Malden River

November 15, 2022 annedr 1

By Anne D’Urso-Rose I know that our ancestors are really happy for the work that we’re doing. It’s been a 400-year fracture – with colonization and assimilation – and it’s really going to take all of us to come together, in ways like this, to bring balance back to the land and to the water. Andre StrongBearHeart Gaines, Jr. – Malden, MA, 9-24-22 As the country recognizes indigenous Peoples Month this November, Neighborhood View reflects on a recent community event that embodied the spirit of remembering, understanding and connecting with Native people, history and culture. “Words on the Water” (morning) and “Project Misik” (afternoon) was a combined day-long event on Sept. 24 in a spot along the banks of the Malden River that is generally hidden from public view. In that space, more than 200 residents, a sampling of Malden’s diverse community, gathered over the course of the day to take part in an Indigenous blessing ceremony, paddle canoes on the waterway, share a meal of Haitian food from “The Island” restaurant, and learn how […]

Featured

Advocate Founder James Mitchell: “A newspaper is something that belongs to the city”

November 12, 2022 Shannon Garrido 0

By Shannon A. Garrido Berges Old black and white photographs of bikers soaring over cars and a dramatic shot of the Hindenburg surround me. I sit in an office filed with stacks of  newspapers that read “Advocate’” in bold red letters. The man behind the headlines,  James David Mitchell, sits before me. Mitchell, founder of The Advocate, discusses his journey in approaching the world of local journalism. He details the challenges The Advocate has and continues to face and what that means for the future of local journalism.  His father, James Mitchell Sr.—who sits at the desk parallel from us— started the Chelsea Advocate when Mitchell was a child and worked on many other publications as well. His father’s occupation became a source of interest for Mitchell from a young age  and heavily influenced him to pursue journalism. “When I was a kid, my father used to take me [and my three siblings] to his newspaper office, but I was kind of the only one who was always reading all the time,” said Mitchell. After […]

Arts

Mystic Valley Salon’s Spencer Woturski Offers an LGBTQIA+ Friendly Haircut Experience

October 28, 2022 Jack Drees 0

By Jack Drees There is a new “Hair Therapist” in town, and his name is Spencer Woturski. He is the owner of Mystic Valley Salon, a spot for coiffures and caring. Located at the 888 Eastern Avenue shopping plaza, Mystic Valley Salon offers familiar beauty salon services. However, it also focuses on providing services to and creating a safe spot for the LGBTQIA+ community. Woturski regards Mystic Valley Salon as a “Safe Space.” A Safe Space is when a “business or entity is accepting to different varieties of people and their lifestyles. And we do not impose judgment to some of the things people are looking to do or change themselves,” says Woturski, himself a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. In addition to making customers feel great in regard to their hair on the outside, he wants customers of various backgrounds to feel pleased on the inside. The shop contains pride-themed material to symbolize the intention of visually welcoming everyone. Mystic Valley Salon opened in May 2022, to provide eco-friendly hair treatments, ranging from haircuts […]

Featured

Malden Makes Language Access a Priority at the Polls

October 26, 2022 Martha Bezzat 1

By Martha Bezzat To serve Malden’s growing number of non-native English speakers, the city administration  is implementing new technology that will impact voting and language access for voters this November for the midterm state and federal elections. A new campaign called “I Speak” was initiated during the Sept. 6 primary election and was an opportunity to do a trial run of new Pocketalk devices that support voters speaking other language backgrounds to access, read, and understand the ballots. Poll workers were trained prior to the election and were specifically trained to recognize when voters may be having difficulty with language accessibility and to practice cultural sensitivity. The process works like this: 1) voters can point to a picture on language recognition cards to indicate what language they speak, 2) then a poll worker plugs that language into the Pocketalk device, which contains 72 languages, and 3) then they will be able to have a conversation with the poll worker, in English with translation back and forth, about their needs or questions. Susan Ecker, a Malden resident and […]

Featured

Malden’s housing crisis reaches far and wide

October 20, 2022 Shannon Garrido 0

By Shannon A. Garrido Berges As more people—students and families alike—occupy Malden’s newly vibrant downtown, looming housing instability threatens to stall the city’s economic progress. As the region recovers from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, residents are dealing with both a growing economy and a housing crisis. Many citizens in Malden are finding it harder to keep up with the housing cost burden, leading many to rely on a faulty, sometimes exploitative rental market. Neighborhood View interviewed Amanda Linehan, city council representative for Ward 3, about the landscape of housing in Malden today and what the future might hold.  “Over the last few decades, we have not produced enough entry-level housing that’s affordable to working families and working households. And on the other side of that coin, there isn’t anywhere for retiring folks to downsize into,” said Linehan. “So a lot of the larger homes, even apartments that in another generation would have cycled over to a younger demographic [don’t, and] those folks have nowhere to go.” Alex Pratt, Malden Community Development Director, also […]

Events

Malden hosts Brazilian election site: Ex-pat voters weigh in on candidates

October 4, 2022 annedr 3

By Anne D’Urso-Rose I heard several warnings not to drive on Salem Street on Sunday, Oct. 2, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Malden was hosting a polling site – one of only two sites in Massachusetts – for Brazil’s fiercely contested presidential election for the country’s expats in the area. According to WBUR, many of the more than 37,000 Brazilian citizens who live in New England were preparing to cast their ballots in the presidential election at these two Massachusetts voting locations. On a whim, I rode my bike down to do a story for Neighborhood View. The outside of the Salemwood School was abuzz with energy.  Lots of bright yellow and Brazilian flags waved in the breeze. Voters were checking the polling information outdoors before heading inside to cast their ballots.  A woman stood atop a safety block in front of the school, using it as a podium, holding the head of a Trump doll and shouting excitedly in support of Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the current rightist Brazilian president, is being challenged by […]