FAQs

Details: By Bob Sprague; Category: FAQs; 24 March 2022; Hits: 1

General policies

YourArlington exists to bring community news to our town in the most civil and even-handed way possible. We aim to generate conversation about important issues facing the town, both through Letters to the Editor and comments on specific entries in Your View, the site’s blog. Comments on news stories are not activated. While we welcome these voices, we also request that contributors join in our commitment to a civil tone.

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To facilitate this goal and guide our decision-making, we have adopted several policies that are noted in this article, and are also posted on the “About Us” page of our website.

Articles: Full-length articles will be considered for publication. Articles are factual reports and aim not to express or convey the opinion of the author. The information contained should be researched and accurate. Documentation of sources may be requested. Articles must be proofread for grammatical and spelling errors. Persons submitting articles must include their name, street address and telephone number or email address with a submission. Click to read the full Submissions Policy.

Community notices and event listings: Criteria for community notices and event publicity are included in the Guidelines for Submission.

OR you can compose and send news directly in this form >> (you must be an authorized user; log in, fill in the blank and click on publish)

If you have an opinion -- which is not news and is your viewpoint -- you want to be published, please see this FAQ.

This FAQ dates to 2006.

Details: By Publisher; Category: FAQs; 01 September 2011; Hits: 1

Web image

You don't want to publish only words -- you want to illustrate what you're writing about with images. They may be photographs, cartoons, logos -- anything you want to display, usually as .jpg or .gif files, but there are other formats, including .png.

Here is a guide to working with images on YourArlington. Print them out, if you like.

Apart from sending images to the site via Send News, you can also format and upload images that you control. To be able to post those images to YourArlington, you must be authorized to do so. To get authorization, the publisher must give it to you. If you want that authorization, email sprague.bob @ gmail.com.

If you get authorization, you'll get the Web address from which you may work with images. You'll need that. It the publisher forgets to tell you what it is, email him.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

Subcategories

YOUR VIEW: Opinions: Roe, Alewife, racism, film, Ukraine, letters, poetry

No. 127: Red Letter Poems 3.0: Performer, audience

Poetry

UPDATED Sept. 9: Steven Ratiner, Arlington’s poet laureate, sought submissions in February 2020 from Arlington residents to contribute to "a rather unconventional, utterly delightful way to inject poetry into the everyday." It was to remain secret until its debut during April’s National Poetry Month. Then the coronavirus hit. In June 2021, he offers Red Letters 3.0.

PUBLISHED: I was asked to write an essay for Askold Melnyczuk’s Arrowsmith Journal about what I learned from the first year of the Red Letter Project. It also became a meditation about the relationship between poet and reader. If you’d like to take a look, here is a link – arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices -- and you’ll also be able to check out the variety of marvelous literary projects that appear under Askold’s Arrowsmith imprint. Enjoy!

Steven Ratiner / David Andrews photo

The Red Letter Poem Project

The Red Letters 3.0: A New Beginning (Perhaps)

At the outset of the Covid pandemic, when fear was at its highest, the Red Letter Project was intended to remind us of community: that, even isolated in our separate homes, we could still face this challenge together. As Arlington’s Poet Laureate, I began sending out a poem of comfort each Friday, featuring the fine talents from our town and its neighbors. Because I enlisted the partnership of seven local arts and community organizations, distribution of the poems spread quickly – and, with subscribers sharing and re-posting the installments, soon we had readers, not only throughout the Commonwealth, but across the country. And I delighted in the weekly e-mails I’d receive with praise for the poets; as one reader recently commented: “You give me the gift of a quiet, contemplative break—with something to take away and reflect on.”

Then our circumstance changed dramatically again: following the murder of George Floyd, the massive social and political unrest, and the national economic catastrophe, the distress of the pandemic was magnified. Red Letter 2.0 announced that I would seek out as diverse a set of voices as I could find – from Massachusetts and beyond – so that their poems might inspire, challenge, deepen the conversation we were, by necessity, engaged in.

Now, with widespread vaccination, an economic rebound, and a shift in the political landscape, I intend to help this forum continue to evolve – Red Letter 3.0. For the last 15 months, I’ve heard one question again and again: when will we get back our old lives? It may pain us to admit it, but that is little more than a fantasy. Our lives have been altered irrevocably – not only our understanding of how thoroughly interdependent we are, both locally and globally, but how fragile and utterly precious is all that we love. Weren’t you bowled over recently by how good it felt just to hug a friend or family member? Or to walk unmasked through a grocery, noticing all the faces?

Letters: Emailing Advocate & Star? Copy it here; it'll be published first

Letters to the editor

YourArlington's policy about letters to the editor

UPDATED Aug. 13: YourArlington welcomes opinions of all kinds from local residents, including national issues so long as you can draw a local connection. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June on Roe v Wade must have echoes here, too. Letters are reviewed for fairness, factualness and taste.

letters

This site welcomes letters about any issue that stirs the public mind. Longer opinion pieces are also welcome.

NOTE: When emailing a letter to The Advocate & Star, consider copying YourArlington at the same time. Your opinions will be published sooner.

Please support your view with facts and arguments that attempt to adhere to reason.

You may write on any subject, so long as you try to make a connection to Arlington. If you can't do that, then your residence in town will be a sufficient connection.

Alewife Brook sewage campaign: Dredgery, Globe notices

Environment

Caption: Worst Offender: Somerville’s SOM01A Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Worst Offender: Somerville’s SOM01A combined sewer overflow.

UPDATED Aug. 11: Precinct 13 Town Meeting member Kristin Anderson, who is monitoring the combined sewer overflows into the Alewife Brook, provided this update via her blog, Save the Alewife Brook.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s mention of dredging the Alewife Brook in its response to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority’s April 2022 draft scope for the new CSO control plan has revived the discussion about the role removing sediment from the Alewife Brook can play in restoration and flood prevention efforts.