Author: Robert Sondak
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Sharewood Project Brings Healthcare to Low-Income Communities
MALDEN, Mass.—The Sharewood Project is a volunteer-run health clinic founded in 1997. Medical students and doctors from Tufts University Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance staff the program. Its clinic provides case managers every Tuesday evening to help people set up online health insurance accounts at the state Massachusetts Health Connector website and fill…
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Fat Tuesday Brings Jazz to Old South Church
Just as the clock strikes six on Thursday evening, people gather in the cathedral-like Gordon Chapel at Old South Church in Copley Square—with its soaring arches, stone walls and stained glass—for prayers and music. The worship service included prayers and a sermon led by Reverend Anthony Livolsi, the church’s associate minister, along with gospel songs…
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Nina Simone
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina during the Great Depression. Simone’s mother, Mary Kate Waymon, was a Methodist minister and housekeeper and her father, John Divine Waymon, worked as a handyman and part-time minister. At three years old, Eunice displayed musical talent by playing the piano by ear. At seven,…
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Remembering Odetta
Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Alabama during the Great Depression to a poor, working-class African-American family. At an early age, Odetta demonstrated a love for music, singing in church and at school. It was an elementary school teacher that noticed her singing and recommended to her mother that she begin vocal training. Odetta’s father,…
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Teddy Pendergrass, Soul Man
Theodore Dereese “Teddy” Pendergrass was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a working class father and mother. After his father left the family, he was raised by his mother, Ida Pendergrass, a religious sharecropper’s daughter from South Carolina, the rhythm-and-blues state. Theodore’s mother discovered his voice when he began singing in church at only 2 ½…
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Food for Free
Over the past three years, Food For Free, a Cambridge-based food recovery organization, has created partnerships with two prominent local food corporations: Boston Organics and the Greater Boston Food Bank. Their purpose is to deliver food to people facing food insecurity in Greater Boston with a population of 106,000 and a median household income of…
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Will the Dudley Municipal Center Project Revitalize Roxbury?
The Roxbury community has a 300-year-long history, starting out as a colonial town and later, in the 19th century, becoming part of the city of Boston. Currently, Roxbury is a low-income neighborhood at a crossroads, embarking on significant inner- city urban development in a recessionary environment. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has started to address…
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Timeless Soul
Nick Ashford was born in Fairfield, South Carolina, and Valarie Simpson was born in the Bronx in New York City. They met at Harlem‘s White Rock Baptist Church in 1963, and developed a musical partnership as songwriters and performers that spanned five decades. After recording unsuccessfully as a duo in the early 1960s, Ashford and…
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monday is sunday: holy resurrection bulgarian orthodox church’s monday dinner
Two blocks north of Brighton and Harvard Avenue, people are waiting in line for the Holy Resurrection Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Allston to open their doors for the Monday community dinner founded 24 years ago. Since 1988, the Open Door Ministry has been providing dinner every Monday at 6 p.m. for people who either do…
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Feed the Hungry: MIT Students Provide Meals for the Needy
Wednesday Oct. 24 marked the one-year anniversary of Feed the Hungry, the MIT student-run Wednesday night community meals program located at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Central Square, Cambridge. At 5:30 p.m. the Central Square Church doors opened up allowing people to sit down in the chapel room just before the final food preparation takes place.…