Living as we do at the extreme edge of the Eastern Standard Time Zone is to experience wide swings of daylight; in July barbecues can last until after 8 pm, and now, in December, at 4 pm, we are ready to put on our pajamas for the evening, even if we are still at work. And so, we compensate, with electric lights to illuminate the darkness. In Advent, a poem from M.W. MacKay’s collection, Hope runs through it, acknowledges this collective longing for more light, and wonders about how we try to make up for the lack of illumination. She writes: I hunger for light. Not the junk-food bright glare …

It is February 22, 1784, and George Washington’s fifty-second birthday. In New York, two ships set sail down the chilly East River—The HMS Edward on its way to England with papers formalizing the separation of a young United States from Great Britain, and the Empress of China on its maiden trading journey to China, carrying sea otter pelts, sandalwood, and silver, and bound for Guangzhou, or Canton as it was then called. Thus local author and historian Eric Jay Dolin began his talk at the Library last Monday evening, by doing what has become his trademark, picking out the threads of the past …

  If you’ve ever traveled outside New England, you begin to notice that most of the rest of the country looks a lot alike. Rapid development on a budget lends itself to a landscape of boxy stores in strip malls and cookie cutter homes. Some of these cookie cutter homes are “McMansions,” and very nice to live in, but even so their exteriors are unmemorable, duplicated a million times over. New England—Swampscott—looks different.  Neighborhoods have personalities. The roads curve in unpredictable ways.  Houses don’t all look alike. I happen to like the intricate purple paint on a certain home …

  Until recently, Bounthan, who hails from Luang Prabang, Laos and is 20 years old, had never been on a plane. Or an escalator. Or an elevator, or seen a microwave oven. But last Wednesday found Than, as he is called for short, at the Swampscott Senior Center, speaking to the writing class, in English. Accompanying him was Michael Sebastian, son of class member Nancy Diaz and the founder of SMILE, Supporting Monks In Learning English. The youngest boy of a farming family, Than was born in the countryside. Than’s parents could not afford the school fees required by every school in this tiny …

  By all accounts, Herman Liss was a great guy. Devout, kind, intelligent, a successful salesperson, he also knew how to have a good time, was a great dancer and a snappy dresser, as well as a loving and committed husband to his wife of 26 years, Betty. This warm but familiar story veers off course, though, into territory often hard to put into words, and even harder to explain. At the age of 92, within a week’s time, Betty passed away and Liss suffered a stroke that left him unable to continue to live on his own. After a series of hospital stays and rehab visits, Liss moved into the Jewish …

  A woman on the train checks her face in a pocket mirror. Boston slides by behind her through the window; the man in the nearby seat chats on his cell phone. Simple acts repeated countless times by ordinary people, so mundane most of us would barely notice. To Clayton Curtis, however, such images are grist for his creative mill. His woodcut prints are alive with people going about their business--the vibrant figures in action evidence of his lifelong study of the human body. Take, for example, the print of a woman sitting cross-legged on a bench, a lit cigarette casually held out to the side…

  Since the 1970s over 15,000 Soviet Jews have settled in the Boston area, many of them in Swampscott. To discuss the story of this mass movement of people, the Swampscott Public Library and Congregation Ahabat Sholom of Lynn invited Gal Beckerman to speak this past Thursday evening at 7. The most striking thing about this event was that so many people attending had been deeply touched by the topic, so that the question and answer portion of the evening was particularly moving. Beckerman is the author of When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry, which was …

  Each April Swampscott hosts a poetry contest for teens, named for Lee Golomb Cadiff, a local poet, and funded by her family. A collaboration of efforts go into making the competition work: Sandy Moltz, in her position of Teen Librarian, the English teachers at the Middle and High School, and the local Tin Box Poets, all contribute their time and effort to gather the poems and then to judge them. First prize comes with cold, hard cash — $100 for the High School winner, more money than many accomplished poets earn for placing a poem in a prestigious literary journal. Swampscott High junior …

  With its cheerful bright colors and streamlined images, it’s always summer in a design from Graphics by J&J. And, once you know their style, their work is instantly recognizable. Their picture of the entrance to Swampscott as you drive in along Lynn Shore is a good example. A line of fencing draws your eye into town, the rocks in front of Red Rock Bistro greet you, and the steeple of St. John’s draws your eye to a bright blue sky. The J&J are Janice and Jim Cohen, a Swampscott mother and son team who have been in business since 2004. Calling their efforts a true “collaboration,” all their …

  A bespectacled young man flops casually in a chair, his leg draped over the arm, cushions askew, blowing some kind of horn. We can see his foot nestled against a small dog; we notice the slight crosshatching on his pants. The image is fun, yet you are aware of the concentration it takes to play music. This is just one of the many fleeting moments Stephanie Osser captures in the earthy medium of clay. In another piece, a chick pokes through and emerges from its shell, so downy and vulnerable looking that it’s hard to believe that the feathers are not soft to the touch. Osser specializes in …

  When we stopped into Newman’s on a sunny mid-morning last week, the early hour rush was dying down, and Jessica Newman plunked into a chair for a well deserved rest. Her day started at 6 am, and she’d spent the morning greeting the customers who’d come in for a variety of baked goods, and chocolates.  Her brother Bernard’s day, however, had begun at 11 pm the previous evening. As the master baker, Bernard bakes from 11 pm until 5 am. Bernard is the sole person in charge of producing, day after day, the bakery’s wide array of kosher bread and pastries. That day’s specialty was hamentaschen: …

  To visit Israel, you must traverse 7 time zones on an 11-hour flight. Or, for the month of February, you can visit Abbot Library in Marblehead and check out the colorful and informative exhibit, “Discovering Our Common Roots.” The exhibit grew out of an interfaith trip to Israel taken by a group of 35 people from Swampscott and Marblehead. Led by Rabbi David Meyer of Temple Emanu-El and the Reverend Dennis Calhoun of Old North Church, the group visited both ancient sites and modern nonprofit organizations. Their itinerary, specifically designed by Meyer, traced the threads of both faiths …

Mid-day, no clouds in the sky, yet it’s getting darker. The wind picks up, the temperature falls. Confused animals make loud noises; birds go to sleep. A dark shadow comes at you at 2000 miles an hour and you find yourself in a cone of shadow as dark as night. People nearby start to cry or talk too much. Sunrise and sunset colors surround you in a 360 degree circle. The sun is gone. In its place is the moon, surrounded by mother-of-pearl and flares of fire. A bad dream? The apocalypse? A total solar eclipse, explains Marc Maccini, an “astonishingly beautiful phenomenon.” Yet, he adds, “You …

  Gini Mazman explains why she is working to bring “Cooking Matters,” a program that offers culinary education to food bank recipients, to local food pantries. The “decisions people make about food is part of a maze of decisions people make that effect their whole life,” she says. So a healthy change in the kitchen can have a profound impact. Cooking Matters, sponsored in part by ConAgra and Walmart, is part of the national organization “Share Our Strength,” dedicated to ending childhood hunger. Cooking Matters will run a 6-week program in Lynn for food pantry participants. Each week will …

  Funny thing about reading a book—you do it alone, choosing to turn off all distractions and noise from the outside in order to focus yourself on what is unfolding silently on the page (paper or electronic it makes no difference) in front of you. Yet reading is also the most social of activities. The reader connects to the author’s view of the world, meeting characters and situations otherwise unknown or unknowable. And, as was evident at the JCC Book Month’s Girls Night Out in November, readers connect to each other. With the ease of electronic publishing, the book world is changing rapidly…

  Each of Alex Gerasev’s prints for sale in Gaga Gallery draws the viewer into a mini-world, complete unto itself. “I tell a story, but the story has its own life,” Gerasev explains. “After I’m done you can find many stories to it.” And although he says he “cannot compete with nature” which was “made beautiful by God” he is also drawn to the outdoors. Take, for example, High Grass. Two figures — a smaller boy in front, a mysterious hatted man behind — approach between rows of reeds. The sun hangs overhead; there are hills to the side. Who are the people? What is their relationship? Where are …

  Partway through Elizabeth Buechner Morris’s novel, Bitter Passage, the main character, Frida Reinhardt, is traveling in a boat taking her to Independence, Missouri, where she, her husband, two sons and toddler daughter will begin their trek along the California Trail, west toward the newly discovered gold on Sutter’s Farm. She is trying to explain to her teenage son why she puts up with her husband’s arrogance and bullying, why she agreed to the journey. Frida points to the rosy gold in her wedding ring, the same gold her grandmother wore, the grandmother who told loving stories of her …

Swampscott’s Robin Samiljan’s bright and engaging landscapes fill the street front gallery at Lynn Arts on Exchange Street with color. This latest Samiljan show features a collection of photographs, watercolors and encaustic paintings around the theme “Pathways and Transitions.” "Pathways and Transition" was inspired by Samiljan’s repeated trips to the bird sanctuary on Marblehead Neck, and is a reflection of the many different ways of seeing the same space. As the seasons change, as the light changes, what a person sees changes as well. She photographed the same paths and pond throughout the…

Nadia Kalman’s grandfather fought for the Soviet Union in WWII. His unit performed with such courage that he and his comrades were honored for their bravery. Their reward? The entire unit, including Kalman’s grandfather, was conscripted for life into the Red Army. Kalman’s father played soccer. His team, which included a number of Jewish players, was routinely stoned and harassed whenever they played. Such treatment was “accepted and normal.” This, and more sinister behavior, such as the denial of higher education and well paying jobs, was part of what Kalman called the “net of anti-Semitism…

Those who braved the torrential rains last Thursday evening to attend the JCC Book Month event showcasing short story writer Stuart Nadler were richly rewarded. Nadler’s recently published short story collection, The Book of Life, has been critically acclaimed. The New Yorker wrote: “Betrayal and forgiveness infuse this impressive début collection … Nadler skillfully creates characters whose failures and faults make them comically, endearingly human.” Nadler, who was hoarse from fighting off a cold, was a funny and candid speaker. A 2008 graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, …