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, …

In her position as young adult librarian, Sandy Moltz has been creating exceptional programming for teens since 2002. Her brainstorm “Battle of the Bands,” where teens in local bands play near Fisherman’s Beach, has become a fixture for the end of June. Each April she helps to administer the Lee Cadiff Poetry contest, which awards cash prizes to teen poets. And Moltz has also applied for and received a grant to encourage creativity in teens from the Institute of Museum & Library Services, as administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. This two-year grant, which began …

In everyone’s favorite movie, The Sound of Music, Maria teaches an unruly brood of children about music. “When you read you begin with a-b-c,” she sings in her crisp and clear voice, and “when you sing you begin with do-re-mi.” Swampscott musician and teacher Heather Bissell has given a lot of thought to the best possible way to teach music, and her methods—fun, yet highly effective—remind me of that scene in the field when Maria whips out her guitar and transforms the Von Trapp children into musicians. In her Banks Road studio on an afternoon last week, she led four young children in a …

The second of a two part interview with filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh. In the 1990’s, many Somalians, displaced by their civil war, immigrated to the United States. This family-oriented, conservative Muslim culture was not a good fit for the urban housing projects, mostly in Atlanta and Cincinnati, the US government resettled them into. So, in 2003, five or six elders went out to find a new home, with cheap housing, good schools, and a safe place in which to raise their families. They discovered Lewiston, Maine, and families began moving there. Within 18 months, over 1000 Somali refuges had moved to …

The first of two pieces about local filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh  A few years ago Swampscott filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh was in Tunisia as a member of a panel on the Arab film industry, and he was asked his opinion of the state of Arab films. Arab movies, he replied, were “in a dismal state.” They were making movies about “what the West has done to us” rather than “stories that come from within.” The best stories, he emphasized, are the ones that tell the world about what a people care about, what they value and yearn for. His words caught the ear of the well known Tunisian director, Ridha Behi. Behi was …

This story first ran last December. When Estelle Epstein was in first grade, she ran away from home. And headed straight for the library. Too impatient to wait for her mother, who was busy with a newborn, to take her, she took matters into her own hands. Fortunately, the librarian recognized her, and she was returned home unharmed. Her act of uncharacteristic rebelliousness still makes her smile. "It's even funnier," she adds, "if you know that I've always had a terrible sense of direction." This combination of love of words and the willingness to put her ideas into action defines Epstein-- …

Back in 1637, John Humphrey, first deputy governor under John Winthrop, built the fanciest house in Swampscott. His front door had the most nails in it, courtesy of the Hammersmith Iron Works in Saugus. The British Navy, which commandeered all wide boards for its ships and let colonists use boards only 6 inches or less, couldn’t say no when John Humphrey put foot-wide boards on his floors and walls. And, fresh off the boat from England with Lady Susan, John Humphrey insisted that those wide-planked walls be decorated. He called in Native American artists to paint a beautiful pattern of wavy …

Mary Baker Eddy, who lived from 1821 until 1910, was a formidable character by all accounts. During a time not known for its enlightened views about the capabilities of women, she devised a method of healing disease, taught that method to others and founded a church, which continues to this day, Christian Science. And, the critical event of her life occurred while she was living at 23 Paradise Road, in Swampscott. This last bit of information I learned from Mary and Ron Beerman and Joan Eaton, the friendly and informative employees of the Longyear Museum, which owns and runs the Swampscott …