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Posts Tagged ‘Framingham’

A Framingham, Mass., couple who run a restaurant have decided to do their bit to combat hunger in their town.

Bella English has the story at the Boston Globe. “The Foodie Cafe is a 24-seater in a factory-and-warehouse section of Framingham. Workers stop in for coffee and eggs or for a lunch of homemade soups and breads, artisan sandwiches, and cupcakes with killer icing.

“But David and Alicia Blais, who own and run it, feed more than just their paying customers. They also aim to feed all of the city’s hungry. A chalkboard in the cafe proclaims: ‘Thanks to you (our wonderful customers), we have fed over 890 people in need this November. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!’

“About three years ago, the couple opened the Foodie Cafe — they loved its huge kitchen — after selling a Walpole restaurant they had run for several years. …

” ‘There was no sense of food insecurity in Walpole on the scale found in Framingham,’’ says Alicia, 55. “All you have to do is drive around, and you can see the need. …’

“Devout Christians, the couple went to hear a pastor speak about his street ministry and when he mentioned that he always runs out of sandwiches for the hungry, they decided to help. …

“ ‘They’ve been tremendous to us,’ says Jim Bauchman, founder of Framingham Street Ministries. “I can’t thank them enough. I see it as a partnership.” …

“For them, feeding the hungry is a matter of philosophy and faith. ‘I feel that people should have the necessities of life,’ says Alicia. ‘People should be sheltered. People should have food. We have a restaurant. We make food. It’s not rocket science.’ ”

More here.

Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff
Inside Alicia Blais assembles sandwiches.

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Unless you are going to the Danforth Museum of Art, I do not recommend ever going to Framingham (traffic issues, strip mall issues).

But I am very glad I finally made it to the Danforth today because it is a lovely museum with a community outreach effort that I admire.

The exhibit I went to see was described in the Boston Globe by by Sebastian Smee.

“One of the things you notice first in ‘Eternal Presence,’ a terrific career survey of John Wilson at the Danforth Museum of Art, is how attentive Wilson is to the faces of children. From his earliest days sketching his brother to his most recent large-scale drawings in charcoal, the impulse has remained the same: It is an impulse toward clarity, toward truth. He doesn’t sentimentalize or caricature children. …

“What you notice later is the high number of pictures showing children in the arms of adult men and women. … Wilson is after something elemental and profound. But the resulting image is not just another mother and child, or dad with young kid. There is instead, each time, something tender and hard-won about what you are looking at. A hope, a promise, a lament all in one.

“Wilson, 90, is one of Boston’s most esteemed and accomplished artists. He was born in Roxbury, the son of parents from British Guiana (now the nation of Guyana), was admitted to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1939 after developing a natural aptitude for art at the Roxbury Boys Club, where he attended classes taught by SMFA students.”

Smee goes on to describe Wilson’s long career, including a stint in France, his interest in the Mexican muralists, and his sculptures of Martin Luther King Jr. (one is in the Capitol rotunda).

Amazing that the artist is around and will be giving a talk at the museum. Try to go. The show is up until March 24. And you may enjoy as much as I did the African American sculptures by Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller from the permanent collection and the joyful Harlem watercolors of Richard Yarde.

More at the Globe.

Lithograph by John Wilson

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