Rachael's Varied Interests
I recently built a Home Price Estimator in Rails to replace a 3rd party service that couldn’t be customized. It uses the Zillow API to obtain a home value “Zestimate” along with a high and low Zestimates. It provides users with an instant value and then …
I signed up to teach Scratch to some kids at my son’s school for “project days”. Rather than make a video game, I wanted to introduce projects that could be useful to the everyday curriculum. Here are a few of the projects I came up …
I’ve been working with some visualization tools lately. This one uses Venngage and data from the Census (American Community Survey). You can scroll over the image to get detailed data.
May marks the beginning of the peak rental and buying season. But people move more in some places than in others. Cambridge tops the list, with 27% of residents moving in the last year, followed by Somerville at 23% and Brookline at 19%. Last on the list are Winchester and Lexington at 9% and 8% respectively. Cambridge and Brookline also lead in the percentage of residents who moved from abroad (5% and 4%) with Malden at Waltham following close behind (at 4% and 3%). Lincoln, at 9%, has the largest percentage of movers from out-of-state, followed by Cambridge at 7%. Everett and Melrose have the lowest percentages of out-of-state movers (1.1% and %0.5%). In-town moves are led by Cambridge and Somerville (8% and 6%) while Winchester and Concord have the lowest number of in-town moves (1% and %0.2).
Look at the amazing fleece creations (blankets and scarves) that Many Helping Hands Volunteers came up with at the Cambridge YWCA today! I was astonished by the creativity and joy of these folks. Thanks, all! For this year’s projects, we tried to have more of …
I’m looking forward to helping with the Many Helping Hands event in Cambridge again this year on MLK Day, January 19th. I’ll be helping make fleece blankets and scarves and despite the presence of many devoted sewers there’s always a lot of sewing left to …
Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services (SCES) organizes volunteers to deliver meals on Thanksgiving morning. You use your own car and go in your own team or get paired up with one other person. I think these are the meals-on-wheels routes/recipients, but this is for the Thanksgiving meal. We have done this as a family since 2009. We’re generally finished by noon. For this opportunity, you need to have a criminal check (CORI) which as I recall isn’t too complicated. You can contact Marie Mazzeo at Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services if you’re interested: 617-628-2601 x3051 or mwilson@eldercare.org
In the past, we have also delivered food (not on Thanksgiving day, but a few days before) with the Salvation Army in Central Square, Cambridge (my car, with my son, and a volunteer from the Salvation Army). In this case, we were delivering a box of food (frozen turkey, etc.) also in Somerville. The volunteer was very nice. There was a short talk about church up front but then we moved on to other topics. I didn’t have to have a CORI check for this opportunity. Salvation Army (Cambridge) phone is: (617) 547-3400
In addition, The Little Sister of the Poor (Highland Ave in Somerville – Spring Hill) welcomes donations of pies on Thanksgiving. This is a center for low-income elders. Very nice folks. They particularly enjoy pecans! 617.776.4420
Please note that SCES (Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services) has a number of excellent volunteer programs. I work as a Money Management volunteer and they always need more volunteers for this important program. Happy to talk with anyone about this too.
I am also a fan of the food pantry at the Unitarian Universalist Church near Medford Square (on High Street). More information and drop-off donation times here: http://www.uumedford.org/pantry.html.
A Universal Jam Recipe On Friday, my 9-year-old and I made jam using strawberries and rhubarb (with a little mint thrown in) from the garden. We got seven pints of delicious jam! He took the lead, hulling strawberries, sterilizing the jars, cooking the jam and …
Picked the first fruits of the garden this weekend and cooked them up into a vegetable sautée and a rhubarb crumble. Delicious! Above: bok choy, pea tendrils (both bought from Russos as plants about a month ago), asparagus, chives, and rhubarb (all perennials). This year, …
Can you think of jobs that combine the following interests, skills, and values?
| Interests | Skills | Values |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | Writing | Working with GROUPS of People |
| Community | Research | Time flexibility/goal orientation |
| Financial Literacy/ Empowerment | Analysis | High Hourly Pay |
| Sustainability | Teaching | Constant Learning/ Intellectual Expansion |
| Entrepreneurship | Designing/ Formulating/ Starting | Ethical Business Practices |