Federal funding for heat assistance has been restored after a 43-day government shutdown, but money won’t arrive in Massachusetts for another four to six weeks, leaving many Waltham residents wondering how they’ll heat their homes in the meantime. 
Massachusetts received $144 million for the program last year. More than half of the 159,000 residents who received assistance last year were seniors. Ten percent of families had a child younger than the age of 5.
Ann Sirois, chief planning and...

Brandeis University junior Alanis Gonzalez comes from a family of creatives.
Not only is Gonzalez’s mother an artist, but her grandmother is as well. In Gonzalez’s youth, her grandmother collected discarded items from the streets of the Dominican Republic — think coins, keyboard keys and paper clips — to create a collage of trash on canvas. Gonzalez considers this piece of art to be something from nothing. It’s her favorite. 
So when Gonzalez got the chance to coordinate the painting of a...

Ten-year-old River Bernstein owns a car. 
It’s a classic 1906 Orient Buckboard – manufactured by the Waltham Manufacturing Company under the leadership of Charles Herman Metz – and a recent gift from his grandparents, Frank and Linda Bernstein. 
But the sixth grader at Gideon Welles Middle School in Glastonbury, Conn., says his classmates are skeptical of his story. “So I say, I have a car. They say, ‘No, you don’t, you’re too young to have a car.’ And I say, ‘Look, I’ll show you a picture...

Civil rights leader Jean McGuire stood in front of Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office while others besides her held signs that read, “Save Franklin Park.”
“It’s our park. We live there,” McGuire said. “It’s not a place that should be monetized or turned into something that isn’t for the people.”
The Franklin Park Defenders assembled Feb. 26 to request Campbell’s support for their lawsuit combating the demolition and privatization of White Stadium, which could limit stadium access for Bost...