Crooked Rhode

When conversation turns to ranking the most corrupt state in the nation, the typical Rhode Islander’s response is: “No duh.” In 1905, muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens called Rhode Island “a state for sale.” Public corruption and scandal have long been part of the Rhody DNA. We’ve had governors rifling through Dumpsters for easy loot. We’ve had Providence police seize cars from drug suspects and re-sell them to city workers with no paper trail. We’ve had credit unions cooking the books. We’ve had the chief justice of the R.I. Supreme Court and his court administrator tuck away a secret stash of $177,000 from state coffers. We’ve had a state traffic court that couldn’t explain the disappearance of $39 million in lost, stolen or uncollected fines. We’ve even had a Providence mayor indicted on racketeering charges hired by local radio and TV affiliates to broadcast commentary on the next mayoral race and how his successor “needs to clean up Providence.”

From Operation Plunder Dome to “Puppy Dog” Mollicone, Rhode Island is a paint-by-numbers portrait of trials and errors, a connect-the-dots epic of crime and slime. Sleaze is so much a part of the culture that it has become a perverse source of collective pride for many Rhode Islanders, who love a good scandal as much as a good story or joke. (Usually you can weave all three into the same sentence. This is the Rhode Island equivalent of haiku.)

But judging by recent reports, Rhody may be losing its me-first mojo. Early warning signs occurred nearly five years ago. In a report on “Public Corruption in the United States” released by Corporate Crime Reporter at the National Press Club, popular perception failed the statistical litmus test. The analysis documents the number of prosecutions and convictions involving federal, state or local officials nabbed in public corruption investigations.

The states with perhaps the worst reputations for corruption have historically been Louisiana, Illinois, Rhode Island and New Jersey.

Louisiana … is not the most corrupt state in the country, as its reputation might indicate. It comes in third. Illinois, living up to its reputation, comes in fifth. New Jersey, believe it or not, comes in 16th. Rhode Island is even less corrupt than New Jersey – it comes in 20th.

Three weeks ago, The New York Times ran a new survey, ranking all 50 states and four territories (D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands) in three measures of public corruption. The first updates the Corporate Crime Reporter information for 2008, itemizing convictions in federal public corruption cases at local, state and federal levels. Rhody ranked 49th with 26 cases. (In first place: Florida with 824.)

Of course, Rhode Island is a dense but small state, with a population hovering around a million. So the second measure adjusts the data for population. Even per capita, Rhode Island isn’t excessively scandalous, coming in at 34th out of 54 overall, with an average of 2.5 convicted officials per 1 million constituents. (In first place: Washington, D.C. with 66.9 crooks per million.)

The final measure was a simple survey of journalists. Researchers asked state house reporters to assess their states or territories based on a 1-to-7, clean-to-crooked rating. The results were close, but in the end the other 53 were left choking on our back-graft. Reporters covering Rhode Island were marginally more cynical than reporters covering Louisiana, awarding the gold medal of public corruption to the Ocean State by a score of 5.5 to 5.4.

In fairness to them, when it comes to scandal and corruption, there are things you know in your gut that don’t show up on a spreadsheet.

What is your favorite all-time Rhode Island scandal?

Snow Globe

The first major snowstorm of the year struck Rhode Island this weekend and the state was predictably paralyzed. Shoppers cleaned shelves of milk and bread. Drivers pumped gas tanks dry. Schools, organizations and some businesses canceled business a day before the storm. Part of the panic is primal - anxiety in the collective psyche of all Rhode Islanders who survived the Blizzard of ‘78. But it’s also rooted in reality. Despite the advance warning, the plows waited until the snow came tumbling down to begin sanding, salting and pre-treating the white stuff, exacerbating the slippery conditions.

You’d think a state that began its life as a glacier could deal with a little snow. Last year the executive director of the State Emergency Agency and the Providence Director of Emergency Management were both fired for their roles in a chaotic first snowstorm that left some schoolchildren stranded on buses until just before midnight.

Leading to this week's question: What is your favorite or wildest snowstorm memory?

Going for Baroque

The Christmas season has always blended the pagan and the Christian, merging stories of Santa Claus and Jesus Christ, lighting evergreen trees and church candles, uttering wishes and prayers with equal conviction. But there are some strange partnerships this season in my neighborhood and surrounding communities. Nativity scenes seem to be on the rise, but they are not limited to Mary, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, the shepherds, the Baby Jesus and the odd donkey, sheep or camel. Every so often you see a penguin or a polar bear lurking among the barnyard animals. Reindeer and camels intermingle. While not yet part of the inner circle, Santa and Frosty are within a snowball’s distance of the Wise Men. One house down the street has propped up a cardboard Nativity on the left side of the front door and a complementary scene featuring Charlie Brown and the gang celebrating a Peanuts’ Christmas to the right of it. Even more disturbing are those lawns along Route 114 that showcase giant, grotesquely inflated, plastic blow-up Nativity figures. It’s one thing to see a glowing Baby Jesus the size of a giant pumpkin. It’s another to see the same Baby Jesus in 52 mph wind gusts, zipping around the yard in his manger, only to be strewn, punctured by a tree branch and flattened in the grass the next morning.

What is the most disturbing holiday decoration you’ve seen so far?

For Scrooge-aholics
Trinity Repertory’s annual production of “A Christmas Carol” is only one of eight versions of the famed Charles Dickens tale now playing within driving distance of the average Rhode Islander. Scrooge runs amok at the Hartford Stage in Connecticut, the Artists’ Exchange in Cranston, the Attleboro Community Theatre in Massachusetts, the Swamp Meadow Community Theatre in Foster, the Granite Theatre in Westerly, the Zeiterion Theatre in New Bedford and at a one-man show in Mansfield, Mass. While it seems like Scrooge overkill, it’s hard to blame strapped theaters for trying to conjure up the Ghost of Christmas Box Office Past to salvage a dreary ticket season.

Rhody Universe: David Byrne worked in a weiner joint
Back in the dark ages of the 1970s, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz hung around Providence as students at the Rhode Island School of Design. Eventually they would form three-quarters of The Talking Heads, considered one of the all-time great bands by music fans of a certain vintage. Ever since, as Byrne grew to iconic status, Providence adopted him as a favorite son. While the feeling isn’t exactly mutual, Byrne does remember his time in Providence, as recounted in the Nov. 28 edition of The Providence Phoenix. The most interesting revelation? Byrne once logged hours in a New York System, selling gaggers by the arm.

Rocket blog

Last Friday I sacrificed a vacation day to fix the hard drive on my laptop. After enduring a couple of hours of frustration and failure, playing the part of Dave to my MacBook’s Hal, I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple Store in the Providence Place Mall. Arriving 15 minutes early, I was encouraged to play with the computers on site, so I positioned myself in front of a screen the size of Fenway’s Green Monster and started scrolling through online newspapers. Next to me was a man who appeared to be in his 30s, dancing in place and singing at high volume to Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man

While he sang and moved without rhythm, Rocket Man tried to make eye contact. I kept the corner of my left eye on alert in the event of rocket launch, while studiously reading the latest news on the Celtics and Bruins. My 15-minute wait turned into 45, and Rocket Man continued grooving to the beat of his own planet, eventually working his way through the entire Elton John discography.

Finally the Genius Bar opened. I left Rocket Man to “Crocodile Rock” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on his own. After a couple of hours of diagnostics and repairs and installing updates, I had my computer back, took note of Rocket Man’s sudden disappearance from the Apple atmosphere, slogged through Providence traffic and got to my home on the cove just as the sun went down. Even though I was grateful that my pictures had been salvaged on iPhoto, it felt like a waste of a day, until I rounded the bend to watch and listen to masses of geese migrating, joining one another in V formation, flying above the waves and below the blood-red sunset. Somehow though, in the cacophony of honking, all I could hear was “Rocket Man.”

The tedium of the mundane can be transcended by an instant of nature, and a fleeting moment can save a day. But I think it’s gonna be a long, long time before I get that damn song out of my head...

This week’s question: If hell had a jukebox, what songs would play on it?

Rhody on Ice
This week’s size of Rhode Island reference links to an artistic rendering of the famed 2002 Larsen B Ice Shelf collapse. For some reason, the clunky drawing has the Ocean State toppled over horizontally, like the chalk outline of a homicide victim.

Loose change

A Web site on Ideas for Change in America is seeking your input on how to make things better. It’s described as “a citizen-driven project that aims to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress can turn the broad call for ‘change’ across the country into specific policies.” The site is designed to be nonpartisan and invites all political points of view. Anyone can submit an idea or comment and vote on others. The top 10 ranked ideas will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, as the “Top 10 Ideas for America.” A national campaign will be launched in support of each idea.

But not every light bulb burns the same wattage. As of this posting, change.org listed about 1,500 suggested ideas. Among them – Repeal the Patriot Act. Create a global union of states. End the war on drugs. Legalize marijuana. Create a Department of Innovation. Create a Department of Peace. Close Guantanamo. Make Election Day a national holiday. Tell the truth about extraterrestrial contact. Make free trees available to the public. Remove the nonprofit status from churches that are politically active. Give all veterans the day off on Veterans Day. Get rid of daylight-saving time. Promote bicycle transportation. Create a cabinet position on Violence against Women. Put prayer back in schools. Conduct no business on Sundays. Launch a National Service Corps to improve the nation’s infrastructure. Mandate vegan school lunches in addition to standard fare. Plant a large organic victory garden on the White House lawn. Stop the live skinning of animals.

It’s an intriguing read, representing a broad spectrum of interests from leftist to centrist to rightist. At minimum, the site proves that thoughtful consideration of ways in which change can be a positive force is a worthwhile exercise. Leading to this week’s question: If you could change one thing about Rhode Island, what would it be?

Diehards
The lasting image of the 2004 World Series championship by the Boston Red Sox – the team’s first in 86 years – was the sight of nearly every graveyard in New England festooned in Sox caps, jerseys and pennants. Rooting for the Red Sox is a cradle-to-grave activity for members of the Nation, but now the dearly departed don’t have to give up the ghost. The first officially licensed Red Sox casket arrived in Rockland, Mass., serial No. 0001, at the Magoun-Biggins Funeral Home. The casket is manufactured by Eternal Image of Michigan, which creates branded funeral products for corporations as varied as Major League Baseball, the Vatican Library, the American Kennel Club and Star Trek. Not surprisingly, the Red Sox and Yankees are running neck-and-neck in the afterlife biz, well ahead of all other teams and products in sales of team-logo caskets and urns. Last year, the Sox stopped the popular practice of fans scattering the ashes of their loved ones on the grounds of Fenway Park, after the number of dying wishes became too overwhelming to accommodate. Recently traded centerfielder Coco Crisp had the baseball quote of the year when he talked about patrolling an outfield that was part-grass, part-warning track and part-cremation ash: “It’s kind of freaky knowing you’re diving into somebody’s grandpa.”

Mining for Size
Found this in a USA Today story from last year about the environmentally destructive coal mining practice called “mountaintop removal.”

Without further restrictions, 2,200 square miles of Appalachian forests – an area twice the size of Rhode Island – will be eliminated by 2012.

Thanksgiving edition

By tradition, the Norris clan travels to North Portland, Maine, every Thanksgiving, to celebrate with lifelong friends and former Rhode Islanders, the Conforti family. One year, after clearing plates cleaned of turkey, walnut-and-wild rice stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce (both homemade and canned), sweet potato, antipasto, Italian Wedding soup, roasted chestnuts, green beans, carrots, squash, pies of pumpkin, apple, pecan (and occasionally strawberry rhubarb), glasses of red wine and ale, and cups of coffee, my father reached into his pockets, spilling the future of Thanksgiving onto the dining room table.
Pills, in bottles and bowls, tumbled onto the tablecloth. They made small piles of harvest colors – sienna capsules, egg-yellow ovals, oblong blues and breath mint-sized medicine colored orange, white, beige and blue-green.
“This is for my prostate,” Dad said, swallowing three orange ovals. He paused for effect, a twinkle in his eye. “And this is for my colon.” Three big beige capsules disappeared in a mouthful.
Our friend Joe joined in the chant, whenever he heard the appropriate affliction.
“This is for my arthritis.” Three white capsules vanished while Dad reached for something blue.
“This is for my depression.” Something yellow next. “This is for my blood pressure.” Then he held up a pill called ginkgo biloba and tapped his head. “For my memory.”
Fingers plunged into another bowl, grasping a vitamin C and two echinacea capsules.
“For the cold I’m fighting.”
The drug store Thanksgiving lasted as long as the feast.
“This comes from African tree bark,” said Dad, holding up his final pill.
Then Joe: “These use flower pollen from an unpolluted part of Sweden.”

Leading of course to this week’s question: What was your funniest or most memorable Thanksgiving experience?

When Size Meets Universe
Here at Half Shell, we believe in the separation of church and state, but not when it involves the “size of Rhode Island.” The following items referencing the research of Smithsonian astronomer Margaret Geller were plucked from the Web sites The Real Truth, maintained by the Restored Church of God and Watchtower, the online site for Jehovah’s Witnesses. (For those who don’t like proselytizing, we’ll keep the links a mystery. Feel free to Google away to your heart’s content.)

1) Made in the 1980s, the first 3-D visualization of the universe was chosen for the northern sky. Although that survey covered a spectrum of [more than] 500 million light years, Geller likened this panorama to trying to visualize the structure of the continents and the oceans of the earth by examining a map the size of Rhode Island.

2) Interpretations of cosmic structure on the basis of current mapping of the heavens are far from definitive – more like trying to picture the whole world from a survey of Rhode Island, USA.

Not for nothin’, but here in the birthplace of G.I. Joe, Dee Dee Myers and religious freedom, the notion of picturing the whole world from the vantage point of Rhode Island doesn’t sound that far-fetched.

Extreme makeover edition

The lively experiment of Blog on the Half Shell continues. While building on our obsession with “size of Rhode Island” references and anything with an Ocean State of mind, we’ll also be asking a question each week. So post a comment and we’ll see if Half Shell can get a half-life…

Budget blues
A friend of mine, a waitress, spent a recent Saturday afternoon waiting for customers.
“You know the worst part,” she asked. “Everybody who walks through the door looks at me, shakes their head and says, ‘It’s the economy, isn’t it?’ Well, you know, maybe it’s just a slow Saturday. We had those when the economy was good, too.”
Point taken, but my friend would be the first to admit that Easy Street is a dead end these days. The same waitresses and bartenders who paid their heating and electric bills by working a double on Saturdays have seen their income cut by half. Shoppers aren’t shopping. Some businesses have closed. And the daily drumbeat of bankruptcies, foreclosures, debts, defaults and layoffs has the sound and fury of a Keith Moon solo.
Everybody I know is cutting back. Clipping coupons. Eating in. Buying only what we absolutely need at the grocery store. Even those of us who are fortunate enough to still have jobs are juggling bills more than ever before, getting by paycheck to paycheck.
Several polls reinforce what we see around us on a daily basis. All of them, from Quinnipiac College to Gallup, indicate that consumers are already implementing huge cutbacks in dining out, entertainment and leisure, heating or cooling their homes, vacations and charitable giving.
For what it’s worth, I began by putting the plastic in solitary confinement, locking up my credit card for good until the debt is paid. I refused to turn on the heat until November and continue to keep it low enough to require fleece and sweatshirts some nights. I shop for groceries judiciously, using only whatever dollars happen to be squirming around in the wallet. I use the weekly Borders coupon to buy a single book at a reduced rate, stockpiling gifts for the holiday season. I eat out socially just once a week (a far cry from my devil-may-care pub-crawling past). I jog more and golf less. I spend one night of the week at the library, where I check out books instead of buying them for myself. I’ve postponed travels and vacations and will be sticking closer to home for the foreseeable future, although I refuse to call it a “staycation.” I have also, I admit, stopped giving as much to non-profits, charitable causes and in-store tip jars. I’m rolling quarters, dimes and nickels again and depositing them in the bank (not quite ready to plunge into the pennies yet). I’m breaking out bottles of red wine that have been sitting in a rack for years. I’ve agreed with my friends to cancel our Christmas gift exchange and just enjoy dinner and a night of board games together instead.

How are you cutting back in these tough economic times?

Post a comment, and maybe we can all figure out how to endure the recession together.

Size of Rhode Island alert
The adventure travel Web site World Hum entices us to visit post-nuclear Chernobyl, where “The flora and fauna in an area the size of Rhode Island are still radioactive…”

Bluest of them all?

Not quite, but based on the recent Presidential Election, Rhode Island is closer to indigo than sky. Rhody ranked third in states showing the greatest margin of victory for President-Elect Obama (28 percent), just behind Hawaii (Obama's native state) and Vermont and just ahead of Massachusetts and New York. By contrast, McCain's largest margin of victory came in Wyoming and Oklahoma, with Utah a solid third and Idaho and Alaska also seeing red. Local Republicans are frustrated by the ritualistic dominance of Dems, but they're at a symbolic disadvantage since the last thing you ever want to see in an Ocean State is a red tide.

Decision '08

Sign of the times: Java giant Starbucks offered free coffee to anyone who votes today, then had to pull the promotion after discovering that the give-away could violate federal election laws. So the company decided to hand out a free "tall brewed coffee" to anyone who walks through the door, voters, non-voters and anarchists alike. The upshot? This morning the lines at any Starbucks are longer than the lines at the polls. My experience voting in Barrington: No line, voted in less than 2 minutes. My experience trying to get coffee in Wakefield: Line out the door into the parking lot with an anticipated 45-minute wait surrounded by people ordering their free tall brewed coffee along with something called a venti double half-caf extra foamy with legs.

Halloween Edition

Only in Rhode Island could two Roto-Rooter plumbers become famous as TV ghost hunters. But Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, who head up The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), are now enjoying their fourth season stalking spirits on the Sci-Fi Channel series, "Ghost Hunters." When moonlighting they trade their plumbers' snakes and Drano for white noise generators, ion generators and thermal imaging cameras to investigate the paranormal around the country. Got ectoplasm?

Ocean State Job Not

The news gets grimmer in Rhode Island, a state that has earned a blue ribbon for black clouds. Yesterday the Bureau of Labor Statistics released figures that ranked Rhody worst in the nation for joblessness. Unemployment reached 8.8 percent in September, the highest rate in the country. Even worse, the figures were compiled before the recent nationwide financial collapse, indicating that more bad news can be expected next month. The signs are equally gloomy locally. At the Jonnycake Center in Peace Dale, the number of families enrolled in its emergency meals program has already risen from 261 last year to 905 today, a number that is expected to grow to more than 1,000 before year’s end. And the good times keep on rolling here in Phil Gramm’s “mental recession”…

Rhody's rank

Another survey, another reason for Rhode Islanders to cringe. Recently the Yahoo! Finance section reported figures provided by Business Week ranking the states according to their budget shortfalls in tax revenue. The data, based on a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, indicates that Rhode Island has the fifth-worst budget gap in the nation by percentage. Rhody is $430 million in the hole, which represents 13.1 percent of its total budget. The report was completed long before the stock market plunge and financial bailout, factors that will continue to adversely affect federal, state and municipal budgets for months, if not years. Here’s the thumbnail critique:

Rhode Island’s economy has been weakened by its housing market, one of the worst in the nation. Lawmakers are trying to make up for a $430 million shortfall in their budget with proposed cuts to the public college system and aid for municipalities, as well as tighter limits on welfare benefits.

The only four states in worse shape than Rhode Island? California (-$22.2 billion, a budget gap of 22 percent); Arizona (-$2 billion, 19.9 percent); Florida (-$5.1 billion, 19.9 percent); and Nevada (-$1.2 billion, 16 percent).

Fall color

Two oddities about New England’s most glorious season: First, Rhode Island grows the biggest pumpkins in the world. Two years ago Ron Wallace of Greene set a world record with a 1,502-pound pumpkin. The results were made official at the Rhode Island Weigh-Off at a farm along the Kickemuit River in Warren - which means that the smallest town in the smallest county in the smallest state in the country hosted the world’s biggest gourd. Another Rhode Islander, Joe Jutras of North Scituate, shattered the record last year, weighing in with a 1,689-pound pumpkin at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts.

And this from a national telephone survey by Plow & Hearth: Among the questions asked: ‘What is your favorite fall foliage color?’

Red and orange led in preference (36 percent each) followed by yellow (14 percent) and brown (11 percent). Those living in the Midwest are most likely to choose red or orange (38 percent each), while North-Easterners are most likely to choose orange (44 percent). Those on the West Coast are most likely to like yellow (20 percent), and Southerners have the highest propensity to like brown (16 percent).

Veteran New England foliage seekers might prefer to choose more precisely among crimson, maroon, purple, rust, russet, copper, bronze, gold, raw umber and burnt sienna. The color is already peaking in parts of South County. Red maples and bright orange poison sumac are bursting from the swamps while the white ash blush a rusty maroon along the streams and uplands. Beech and quaking aspen, oak and sugar maple, hickory and black birch, tupelo and sassafras will add to the drama as the color hangs on deep into November in Rhode Island. Look for the Norway maples to make the final bugle call of autumn with a blast of brassy yellow.

Size Cliche Police

The blog has been sluggish lately, but we'll perk up a bit this week. First up: The latest "size of Rhode Island" catch. This one appeared in a blog entry by Stanley Fish on NYTimes.com. Titled "Buttons and Bows," the posting discussed the pros and cons of recent decisions in New York and Illinois to ban teachers from wearing political buttons or putting political bumper stickers on their cars.

He writes: "It is silly (and unconstitutional) to dictate what faculty members can put on their cars, especially at a state university like Illinois where the parking lots are the size of Rhode Island and the odds of a student knowing which car belongs to which professor are next to nothing."

So no Obama. No Nobama. No lipstick and pigs. No Women for Palin. No Women against Palin. No W with or without the line through it. My old Something's Bruin in Providence sticker is still good, though.

A fan's note

Some good fortune, some classic baseball and the Red Sox are moving on. Even Sox fans have to feel a pang of sympathy for the Los Angeles By Way of Orange County Southern California Angels of Anaheim, who defeated Boston eight out of nine times in the regular season but have lost 12 of the last 13 playoff games to the Carmine Hose. Ouch.

That point wasn’t lost on a Rhody member of Red Sox Nation living out in the Los Angeles By Way of Orange County Southern California Area of Anaheim. The following appears in a note from Jerry Crowe’s column in the Los Angeles By Way of Orange County Southern California Times of Anaheim:

Before Sunday night’s 12-inning marathon, it had been so long since the Angels defeated the Red Sox in a playoff game, reader Jerry Sondler of Warwick, R.I. notes, “Elena Sharapova was in her first trimester carrying daughter Maria.”

Cosmic Rhody

Digging deep into the online archives to discover an unusual size of Rhode Island reference. In a 2003 article about the construction of a cosmic ray detector in Argentina, the author uses a timeworn unit of measurement to prove once again that Rhode Island is the Universe.

Scientific theory can account for the sources of low- and medium-energy cosmic rays, but the origin of these rare high-energy cosmic rays remains a mystery. To identify the cosmic mechanisms that produce microscopic particles at macroscopic energy, the Pierre Auger collaboration is installing an array that will ultimately comprise 1,600 surface detectors in an area of the Argentine Pampa Amarilla the size of Rhode Island...

Located about 600 miles west of Buenos Aires, the first detectors are already working their soon-to-be Rhode Island-sized magic. Said Nobel Prize winner Jim Cronin of the University of Chicago: "These highest-energy cosmic rays are messengers from the extreme universe. They represent a great opportunity for discoveries."

Our interstellar readers will soon find out what Earthlings already know: Universes don't come more extreme than Rhode Island. It's such a given that we don't even bother to put "Discover Rhode Island" on our license plates anymore.

Lost in translation

Found this while blog-trolling during a post-deadline lull. It’s an 11-month-old posting by Dan Glaister of the British newspaper The Guardian. In his blog, Deadline USA, Glaister comments on the various ways Rhode Island is used to quantify swaths of wildfires in the U.S., adding that the dimensions are completely meaningless to anyone who isn’t American. His confusion is heightened when he discovers that nobody seems to agree how big (or small) Rhode Island really is.

P.S. Check out the comment by “Hammer Time.”

Middle of the Rhode

The good news: With the fifth and final category in the University of Cambridge study ranking American states by personality traits, Rhode Island no longer occupies the lowest rungs of the personality ladder. The bad news: We won’t be selling any T-shirts for ranking 28th in the category of “openness.”

Still, if we’re looking for positives from a study that has done nothing to elevate the self-esteem of Rhode Islanders, which is already below sea level, we achieved our strongest showing for being “curious, intellectual and creative.” Here’s the cultural profile:

Liberal values are often strong in states with a high openness rating; overall, people espouse more tolerant views on marijuana, abortion and gay marriage. Artistic and investigative occupations are popular; the arts, entertainment and computer industries are often strong. People prefer jobs that involve a high degree of abstract and creative thought. Rates of robbery and murder are often high, however. Conventional value systems, such as those enforced by religion, community or even the traditional family, are less popular than in other states.

The bottom line: Rhody should rank higher in this category. From its start, Rhode Island has been a tolerant and creative state. It was liberal before conservatives even discovered the word (and how to wield it like a bazooka to detonate debate before it starts). The role played by diverse religious and ethnic communities throughout our history is well documented (some of it even seeped into the Constitution). Through the generations, people here have found ways to retain their cultural heritage while simultaneously helping to create a distinct Rhode Island identity. As for traditional family values, well, that’s as subjective as judging diving. All I know is, it took a Rhode Islander to create “Family Guy.”

Survey says...

The appropriate Rhode Island response to Britain’s “Geography of Personality” study, ranking American states according to personality traits, would be our time-honored retort (and unofficial state motto): “You’re killing me.”

Yet another category that ranks Rhode Island near the dregs of the national neighborhood is “extroversion,” identifying a collective that is “sociable, energetic and enthusiastic.” Rhody nabbed the 40th spot, meaning it is only slightly more extroverted than Wyoming, Massachusetts, Montana, Oregon, Virginia, Idaho, Vermont, Washington, Alaska, New Hampshire and Maryland. Here’s the profile:

The strongest effect of a high extraversion rating is how much people socialize with others. Many people enjoy attending club meetings and spending time in bars. While outgoing and sociable, they are not necessarily friendly and warm – their socializing is probably more indiscriminate and not restricted to close friends. Large proportions of the population are employed in industries where social interaction is an essential aspect of working life, such as business (e.g.: sales) and healthcare (e.g.: nursing). Rates of robbery and murder are often high. People may tend to prefer in engaging in physical activities that involve other people, rather than exercising at home.

Hmm, that profile leaves Blog on the Half Shell stumped. If the strongest effect of high extraversion is socializing, wouldn’t a state that is 90 percent diner, pub, coffee shop and crowded beach rank higher? Almost everybody I know is an Elk or a Lion or a Rotarian. Some of my friends belong to the German-American Club, the Italian-American Club and the Portuguese-American Club – and they’re Irish! For night-crawlers, Providence is the biggest clubbing town in New England (even more diverse than Boston). The granges may be dead or dying, but socializing – whether with strangers or friends – is still ritualistic here. The only plausible theory is that when researchers polled Rhode Islanders on this topic, they were all at the casinos in Connecticut.

Rude Island

Continuing our dip into the murky waters of scholarly research, today's entry takes a look at a third way in which a British study has determined that Little Rhody lives on the dark side of mood and personality. Rhode Island ranks 45th in the category of "agreeableness," a personality type defined by people who are "warm, friendly and compassionate."

Only six places ranked lower: Maine (Yankee cold), New York (Yankee fans), Nevada (Vegas vice), Wyoming (Cheney country), Washington, D.C. (lawyers, guns and money) and Alaska (moose for breakfast again). According to the report:

Friendliness, trust and helpfulness are the dominant characteristics of a strong A rating. Social activities that promote tight social relations, such as spending time with friends and entertaining guests at home, are popular. People are more likely to be religious and attend places of worship. Deaths due to cancer and heart disease are lower than many other states. The warm, friendly and altruistic attitude of agreeable people apparently contributes to an environment characterized by social, psychological and physical health.

Yup, that's not us. So where would one find the most agreeable Americans? The survey says...North Dakota.

Rogue nature

Yesterday we noted how a British-based study determined that Rhode Island was the second-most “stressed-out” state in the U.S. Today our weeklong blog series on the report takes a look at a second category, “conscientiousness,” ranking states according to the personality traits of being “dutiful, responsible and self-disciplined.” Here, Rhode Island came in 48th, meaning only three states finished with lower scores (the District of Columbia is included in the personality map). A description of the cultural profile for states that rank high on the conscientiousness scale follows:

Individuals in these states are more likely to place importance on religion and attend places of worship. Exercising at home is popular, but life expectancy is relatively low. Entertaining and socializing with friends is less popular than in many other states. Computer scientists and mathematicians are more likely to flourish than artists and entertainers. Many people prefer systematic and focused tasks, and clearly defined rules and regulations.

If you read yesterday’s blog on “neuroticism,” you’ll note the inconsistencies. Let’s start with the premise of the conscientiousness category. If it’s true, then “entertaining and socializing with friends” would be more popular and “artists and entertainers” would be more likely to flourish in low-scoring states like Rhode Island. Except that those findings contradict yesterday’s note suggesting a high neuroticism ranking means that “people are less likely to go out or spend time with friends” and “entertainment and the arts tend not to flourish in these states.”

But a closer reading of the report reveals something else. The three states that finished lower than Rhody in the conscientiousness category were Hawaii, Maine and Alaska. Note the similarities: All are ocean states. All are iconoclastic, with strong separatist traditions and uniquely individualistic and independent state cultures. Historically, all have experienced some dislocation with mainstream America. (Maine actually split off from Massachusetts; Rhode Island was the first colony to renounce British rule and the last of the original 13 to accept American statehood; Hawaii and Alaska, the most recent states to join the club, are remote and exotic places that still prefer the totemic to the bureaucratic.) All have been havens for dissenters, free-thinkers, pirates, rogues and scandal-mongers. These are places where individual liberties are celebrated (in ways both good and bad), where “systematic and focused tasks” are considered dull and dreary and “clearly defined rules and regulations” are to be avoided whenever possible. There’s a reason we’re called The Independent State (with the highest number of registered independent voters per capita in the U.S.) But if you’re looking for more conscientiousness in your life, take a trip to New Mexico, the top-ranked state in the category.

Stress Test: Grade F

A study from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. has identified Rhode Island as one of the most "stressed-out" states in the U.S. Titled "The Geography of Personality," the study attempts to determine how the personalities of Americans often differ according to the state in which they live. Rhode Islanders ranked second in the category of "neuroticism," described in the findings as "a personality trait normally associated with high levels of stress, anxiety and impulsive behavior." Here's the cultural profile, according to the report:

The impact of neuroticism is particularly strong in relation to public health. Exercise is less popular and life-expectancy lower. There is a comparatively high mortality rate due to heart disease and cancer. In states with a high-level neuroticism rating, people are less likely to go out or spend time with friends. Entertainment and the arts tend not to flourish in these states.

Strange. Those last two sentences don't seem to fit a state that is half-beach, half-bar, and crawling with artists. A place where everybody knows everybody, and anybody, even a nobody, can be somebody. (We've said it before and we'll say it again: If Kevin Bacon were a Rhode Islander, he'd only need two degrees of separation.) It has also been widely reported that there are more artists per capita in Rhode Island than any other state. (Then again, perhaps that confirms the findings. Nobody actually buys art here. If a majority of those polled were starving artists, it would explain the pessimism.)

Maybe it's a size thing. Research showed that the most stressed-out state is West Virginia. On the other hand, if you're looking for Zen and the Art of Stress-Free, Life Cycle Maintenance, the British scholars offer a simple solution: Move to Utah.

Rhody bling

In today’s Monday Morning Quarterback column for si.com, Peter King wrote that “Super Bowl rings have gotten as big as Rhode Island.” Oddly enough, for years Providence was the bling capital of the world, a city as synonymous with making costume jewelry in America as Detroit was for manufacturing cars. King’s timing, however, was brutal. The day after New England Patriots’ QB Tom Brady went down with a season-ending knee injury in the first quarter of the first game of the year, King may as well have written that New England sports fans are suffering from a state of depression as big as Rhode Island. Just 35 seconds away from taking home the hardware during the last Super Bowl, the Pats were primed and motivated to add to their jewelry collection this year, before Brady tore his ACL. No doubt it’s small consolation to Pats fans, but the season isn’t a complete loss. Brady’s gone, and the economy is just as bad here as in Detroit. But at least we don’t have to watch the Lions.

Rhode whine

In this week’s “Life” section of Time magazine, critic Joel Stein tries a different wine from every state, ranking them from excellent to good to bad to undrinkable. Rhode Island’s randomly chosen vintage, a Vidal Blanc from Sakonnet Vineyards of Little Compton, gets a “Good” score, but you’d hardly know it from the mini-screed that Stein delivers on the pop-up online version of his review. It follows, with snarky deconstruction by your faithful beer-biased blogger:

This wine is from Rhode Island, but you’d have to look at the tiny print on the back of the label to figure that out. Instead, what appears in a big font on the front and back is Southeastern New England. Is Rhode Island that embarrassing? [Obviously not a Blog on the Half Shell reader. Of course Rhode Island is that embarrassing. Only Florida and California can keep up with us in this category.] And is Southeastern New England incredibly prestigious-sounding? [It is if you’re from Southeastern New England.] Is this why the Patriots refuse to say they’re from Boston? [No, the Patriots refuse to say they’re from Boston because they’re not from Boston. They play in Foxborough. Which can also be spelled “Foxboro.” That’s one of the neat things about living in Southeastern New England. Multiple spellings of place names.] The name of the town where this wine is made, Little Compton, [a.k.a. Common, Compton, Compton Commons or Little Compton Commons] doesn’t conjure up images of beautiful vineyards. But this vidal blanc isn’t too bad. It’s sticky-sweet, and I’ve had better vidal blancs, from New York and Canada [those names conjuring up vineyards for you, Stein] – and I don’t think vidal blanc is such a great varietal to begin with. [Hey, nobody forced you to try vidal blanc. You could have tried vidal sassoon, gore vidal or one of our other “varietals.”] But still, Rhode Island, dude, get some state pride. [Hey, New York critic dude, you want Rhody pride, next time try ranking states by their coffee milk.]

Rhody Universe: Beijing

North Kingstown swimmer Elizabeth Beisel did her best to promote her native state during interviews, peppering quotes about her Olympic experience with a liberal seasoning of “awesome.” In a Projo Sports Blog interview, she says: “Coming from Rhode Island, which is definitely not known as a swimming state, and to represent them [Rhode Islanders] in Beijing is awesome. Just to be from Rhode Island is awesome…” Well, yes it is, although it’s strange that an Ocean State would not be a swimming state. Earliest forms of the word “awesome,” described by some linguists as the official adjective of Rhode Island, go back to the 1500s, when it meant “inspiring awe” and “dreadful.” The Oxford English Dictionary traces its etymological transformation as the slang expression equivalent to a Michael Phelps swim or Usain Bolt sprint to a phenomenon that occurred in the 1980s. Far be it for the sun-deprived scribes at lowly Blog on the Half Shell to question the OED, but some of us were tossing “awesomes” around in the playgrounds, classrooms and school buses of Barrington throughout the 1970s, well before the decade of synthesizers and mullets. And you know that if Beisel had somehow managed to medal in Beijing, we would have heard her describe the Games as "wicked awesome," otherwise known as the official highest praise of Rhode Island.

Baywatch (The Lost Episode)

Spent the weekend kayaking that part of the bay that lies beyond my backyard. There were the requisite moments of poetry: osprey circling the masts of sailboats; breeze-blown monarch butterflies cascading over the waves; a kingfisher diving off the roof of a waterfront shack; thrashing bluefish, minnows and bait fish leaping out of the water; cormorants posing like “Playbird” models on slick, black sea boulders and herring gulls competing with laughing gulls in a cacophony of gull karaoke. But the mornings weren’t entirely peaceful or pleasant. Green slime oozed on Annawamscutt Beach. Noxious algae mats, ranging in size from shoebox to Four Square court, meandered as floating dead zones along the shore. The coast near Nayatt Point burbled in stringy, goopy streaks of brown and green, the color of septic tea. And in the channel between Bullock’s Point in Riverside and Lavins and Cove Haven marinas in West Barrington, a fish kill: Dozens of dead menhaden, bloated and belly-up, stinking to high heaven, staring vacantly into the void. A combination of natural conditions and manmade factors (cesspools and wastewater) cause these kills and the toxic bloom that turns Narragansett Bay green at the gills. It appears that saving the bay won’t be as easy as Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff made it look.

Mondo potato

Pawtucket native Mr. Potato Head spent the primary campaign season flexing his political (and detachable) muscle. An Iowa man who began traveling with a Mr. Potato Head four years ago, came up with a novel way to elect a president. He based his vote on how the candidates reacted to having their picture taken with the plastic spud. The popularity of the Hasbro toy went a notch higher last month when a London newspaper gave Mr. Potato Head a new honor: its own syndrome. In a review of “The Half-Known Life,” a book by Simonetta Wenkert, Independent on Sunday writer Charlie Lee-Potter describes “Mr. Potato Head Syndrome” in the context of characters that have “an assortment of attributes that don’t quite add up to convincing wholes.”

Blogger's block

After a week off, you’d think I’d feel refreshed and ready to blog. But it’s just the opposite. For a few languid summer days in New England and New York I unplugged from the world. No computer. No cell phone. No media beyond tuning into the radio to check the Red Sox score. What I missed in Rhode Island: 1) The tornado that began as a funnel cloud at Barrington Beach. 2) The half-man, half-pickle stopped for DWI in Providence, who registered a .491 blood-alcohol level. 3) The husband and wife who were murdered and buried in the family cesspool in Warren. What I discovered in the meantime: 1) There are more free public tennis courts in Providence than in Manhattan. 2) Kayaking in the upper part of Narragansett Bay, you paddle through pockets of mysterious foamy goop in August and can feel the rumble of planes taking off from T.F. Green Airport from your seat in the water. 3) Impromptu lemonade stands competing with Del’s trucks along the East Bay Bike Path offer cups of liquid refreshment of varying quality that range in price from 50 cents to $1. Like any addiction, the media can be a tough habit to break. No papers. No deadlines. No columns, blogs or reviews. But still. Sitting around the fire during those starry New Hampshire nights a week ago, I always had the nagging feeling that I should be sending smoke signals somewhere.

Rhody Universe: Luxembourg

Following up on yesterday’s comment on Luxembourg (a.k.a. “the European Rhode Island”), I thought I’d take a look our prospects for establishing some kind of cross-cultural, international exchange. The country the size of Rhode Island is land-locked, which doesn’t bode well. But it does share the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation’s affinity for long names. Officially, it’s the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Unlike Rhody, however, you won’t hear folks in the grand duchy calling their homeland Lux or Luxy. Their motto is “Mir welle bleiwe wat mir sinn,” which is Luxembourgish (yes, it’s an official language, much like Rhode Islandese), for “We want to remain what we are.” Not as eloquent, perhaps, as “Hope,” but most of us feel the same way here in Rhode Island. Luxembourg, like Rhode Island, is a secular state but is predominantly Roman Catholic. It’s divided into three districts instead of five counties, 12 cantons instead of 39 towns, and 116 communes instead of a nebulous number of villages. Luxembourg has the highest gross national product per capita in the world. Rhode Island, thanks to the likes of the Farrelly Brothers and “Family Guy,” has the highest output of grossness per capita in the world. The 2008 Guinness Book of World Records indicates that Luxembourg consumes more alcohol than any country in the world. Anyone out there know what the Luxembourgish is for “packie”?

(Blogger’s note: Blog on the Half Shell is unplugging for a few days. Back next week.)

One size fits all

While discussing trivial matters of globe and state during a Bastille Day party in Providence over the weekend, friend and Blog on the Half Shell reader David Steinbrick casually mentioned that my efforts to reduce the phrase “size of Rhode Island” to the acronym “sori” were misguided. It turns out that “sori” is already an acronym – for Special Olympics Rhode Island, which Dave has been involved with for several years. In desperation, I turned to the online dictionary of units of measurement, hoping to find inspiration among the “tithings” (old English land areas) and “Pfiffs” (small units of beer) within. There, among the dropped Rs, stuck smack-dab between “rhm” (a unit used in physics to measure the strength of gamma rays) and “ri” (a traditional Japanese unit of distance, similar in length to the European “league”), I found the following:

Rhode Island – the smallest state of the U.S., Rhode Island has long served as an informal unit of area in statements such as “an iceberg 1.5 times the size of Rhode Island has broken off from Antarctica.” Rhode Island has a land area of about 1045 square miles or 2706 square kilometers. Europeans might note that Luxembourg (2586 square kilometers) provides a comparable unit.

So it’s official. The “Rhode Island” is a unit of measurement. Coming soon: Size of Rhode Island tape measures at an Ocean State Job Lot near you.

Escape to (or from) RI

If you notice even more cars with New York license plates than usual tearing up the asphalt in South County this weekend, you can thank today's New York Times. The "Escapes" section of the paper includes a backcountry southern New England road trip under the headline, "134 Miles of Yankee Charm." Mile 105 stops at Kenyon's Grist Mill in Usequepaugh, but makes no mention of johnnycakes. ("Pick up a bag of fresh cornmeal - the muffins or pancakes you make with it later will be a revelation.") Mile 110 stops in Kingston, accompanied with a note on the Allison B. Goodsell Rare Books shop. What Times readers miss about the local roads this weekend: Hot air balloons filling the skies at the South County Balloon Festival, actors going the "Full Monty" in West Kingston and roots rock reggae playing en route at the Ocean State Reggae Festival at Ninigret Park in Charlestown. With gas above $4 a gallon, drivers might like to know that they have a few more options than picking up a bag of cornmeal and a $4000 copy of Capt. James Cook's memoir about his voyages on the H.M.S. Resolution.

Baseball blog

Dragging a bit after staying up until 2 a.m. to watch Major League Baseball’s All-Star game. Thought about writing a rant on boorish Yankee fan behavior (a.k.a. “morons being morons”) but decided that would just incriminate me for my own boorish Red Sox fan behavior. So instead I’ve chosen to post a few sentences on Rhode Island’s connection to the American pastime. The Providence Grays were an early National League franchise. They won two pennants (in 1879 and 1884) back when pennants meant championships. They also won the first-ever “World Series,” before the American League existed, beating the New York Metropolitans of the rival American Association 3 games to 0 in an arranged series after the 1884 season. (In 1903, the A.L. Boston franchise that we now call the “Sawx” defeated the N.L. champs, the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5 games to 3 in the first modern World Series.) After the major-league Grays disbanded in 1888, a minor league team in Providence kept the name alive for another generation. One of their players was a promising young pitcher and power hitter named Babe Ruth. The Grays have been reinvented as New England’s longest-running vintage baseball team, playing 19th-century rules against competition throughout the Northeast. The “PawSox,” playing at Pawtucket’s gem of a minor league park, McCoy Stadium, were involved in the longest game in baseball history in 1981. Cardines Field in Newport has been a baseball ground since 1908. Negro League ballplayers used to barnstorm there, and there are few more enjoyable summer rituals than quaffing a pint or two in Mudville Pub’s caged-in bar along the right-field foul line during a Newport Gulls game. Rhody has produced hall-of-famers, such as Napoleon Lajoie, and recent all-stars, like Rocco Baldelli. South County-born major leaguers include Guerdon Whiteley of Hopkinton, who broke in with the Cleveland Blues in 1884, Dave Stenhouse of Westerly and a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, (Washington Senators, 1962) and Sean Maloney of South Kingstown, (Milwaukee Brewers, 1997).

Bridge blahs

The good news is that Rhode Island's bridges rarely fail to entertain. The bad news is that they don't always sustain. If you're a bridge, that's a problem. In the wake of last year's Minnesota bridge collapse we learned that the Ocean State is listed as worst in the nation in the category of bridge safety, with 55 percent of its 749 bridges rated deficient or obsolete. Residents routinely encounter detours for bridges that have been shut down or lanes closed for repairs. Truckers passing through Rhody have to go north-south via Route 295 or else risk fines (and limbs) driving on the Pawtucket River Bridge. The old Jamestown Bridge - the Erector Set - was notorious for seeming more like an amusement park ride than a serious way to get from South County to Conanicut Island. Some state transportation officials living on Jamestown refused to cross it, choosing to add miles and minutes by traveling over the Newport and Mount Hope bridges instead. But the news isn't entirely grim. Bridges have given Rhode Island two of its quirkiest one-day events in the past two years. In April 2006, the whole state came to a standstill to watch the old Jamestown Bridge get blown up, with the comical sideline of pandering pols pushing an ACME/Wile E. Coyote-style detonator just before the implosion. Four months after the "big boom," the Iway "bridge float" captivated Rhode Islanders, when the Providence River Bridge was transported by water over Narragansett Bay to its designated resting place. Last month, the R.I. Department of Transportation earned a national innovation award for the bridge float, which was also featured on the History Channel's "Mega Movers" series. Less impressive was the fact that state taxpayers paid $50,000 to name and promote the Iway so newspaper editors and reporters would stop calling the project "The Little Dig." Only in Rhode Island will an inferiority complex cost you five bills.

Rhody's Believe it or Not

Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her parents 81 whacks only because she knew that most of the Fall River Police Department was out of town that day, partying in Rhode Island. At least that's the story told by filmmaker David Bettencourt in the DVD version of his documentary, "You Must Be This Tall: The Story of Rocky Point Park."

"Apparently, when Lizzie Borden was allegedly killing her parents, like 92 percent of the Fall River Police Department was at an outing at Rocky Point," Bettencourt said, adding that the theory is believed to be true by a majority of Lizzie Borden scholars and historians. "And you'd be surprised at how many people in this area consider themselves Lizzie Borden historians."

Rhody Universe: Abu Dhabi

The land of the low-numbered license plate reaches far and wide, from Misquamicut to the Middle East, from the oyster beds of Apponaug to the sands of Arabia. Consider the following item posted in the "Briefing" section of the July 14, 2008 edition of Time magazine:

'It's not enough to just have a Ferrari.' - Abdullah Al-Mannaei, resident of Abu Dhabi, on Arab businessmen who spend millions on single-digit license plates.

Rant of the Week: Bag the tag

Governor Carcieri last week vetoed a bill that would prohibit the use of radio frequency locator tags on student backpacks. Advocates of tagging say that keeping track of your kid's whereabouts is a matter of public safety. You'd know whether they got on the bus or not. You'd know where they were in the event of weather disasters, acts of terrorism, criminal activity, field trips or off-campus extracurricular activities. Earlier this year, the Middletown School Department experimented with the technology, dubbed in Big Brother-speak as the "Mobile Accountability Program," or "MAP." More than 90 percent of parents participated. Of course, a backpack isn't the same thing as a body. A student could switch backpacks with someone else, or drop one in a location that would raise no alarms, while he or she went off to - Zeus preserve us - engage in rebellious, anti-social behavior. So after backpacks, what's next? Human implants? MAP also doesn't safeguard students from anyone with access to the school's computer network. In the wrong hands, students could actually be targeted with this technology. But get used to it. In the 21st century, Orwell runs amok. Before long, we'll be tagging criminals, immigrants, employees, scholars, activists, artists, op-ed writers, you name it. Just another waste of money in a state where tracking down anything is simply a matter of knowing a guy who knows a guy.

Clambake primer

To celebrate Independence Day like a Rhode Islander: 1) Find a beach with rocks and sand and seaweed. (Easier said than done, which is why Rhode Island, teeming in native seaweeds and Narragansett Bay-bred shellfish, and the place where rocky beach segueys into sandy beach along the Atlantic coast, is clambake nirvana.) 2) Make sure that lifeguards won't throw you off the beach you've chosen. 3) Dig a hole 3-feet deep and 4 to 6 feet across. 4) Line the hole with round rocks, each a little bigger than a duckpin bowling ball. (They should be igneous, to hold in the heat. If you don't know from igneous, consider yourself a local.) 5) Build a fire in the hole to heat the rocks using driftwood or hardwood. Let it burn for 4 hours. To test if it's hot enough, take some saltwater out of the nearby ocean and sprinkle it on the rocks, which should sizzle on contact. 6) Once the rocks are white-hot, rake out the ashes and any remaining wood. 7) Cover the bottom rocks with 4 to 6 inches of wet seaweed. (Hindsight tip: While the rocks were heating, you should've been out collecting seaweed.) 8) Add layers of the following, more or less in this order: tightly shut clams (previously cleaned), more seaweed, live lobsters, more seaweed, small new potatoes, more seaweed, chourice (a Portuguese hot sausage), more seaweed, unhusked corn, and a final thick layer of seaweed. (Careful if you live in Barrington, where illegal seaweed collection is subject to a litany of fines.) 9) Cover hole with wet tarpaulin or canvas and anchor it to the ground so the steam doesn't escape. 10) Let it steam for an hour or so. (Check under the cover with a stick, found on site. The bake is done when the clams are open, the lobsters are bright red and the potatoes can be skewered easily with a fork.) 11) Serve with melted butter and black pepper. Tabasco optional. 12) Wash down with a Narragansett lager or, if you're a hophead like me and prefer a bit of bite to your beer, a Trinity Brewhouse IPA.

New and classic 'sori'

Ranked 10th and climbing with a musket ball on the Google "size of Rhode Island" charts is a critique of a Rhode Island-sized phone, posted earlier this month by a contributor to a technology weblog. It joins another newcomer, an endangered Rhode Island-sized forest found in Papua New Guinea. Also ranked in the top 10 are two classic references from the past decade - the Rhode Island-sized iceberg wreaking havoc in the shipping lanes of the Antarctic and an ancient Guatemalan jade quarry known for its precious stone and its predictable dimensions.

Brad and Billy's

It looked like the world was coming to an end yesterday at the Rhode Island Country Club in Barrington, where the sky and ocean turned a dozen different shades between blasts of sunshine and whirling dervish clouds whipping through like the Tasmanian Devil. Splintered rays turned the fairways leprechaun green until thunderstorms flooded them to the point where you needed an oar, not a pitching wedge. Lightning came from seemingly everywhere, flung like party favors from Norse Gods on a bender. Black clouds pounded the course with golf ball-sized hail. Then it was done, and the site of the CVS Caremark Charity Classic - known to all Rhode Islanders as "Brad and Billy's tourney" for its founders, childhood friends and PGA pros Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade - shimmered in streaks of blue, green and gold.

Left Coast golfer Paul Goydos, inexperienced with New England weather, looked shaken, saying, "We don't have that in California." (True. You only have earthquakes, mudslides and wildfires the size of Rhode Island.) But the weather was an afterthought for the decade-old event that has brought the likes of Arnold Palmer and Gary Player to the bandbox Donald Ross course in Barrington. The tournament has raised more than $10 million for children's charities in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts.

Andrade, from Bristol, and Faxon, from Barrington, have been around the world, but they've never really left. They're with us, whether walking outside to pick up the morning ProJo, cheering for the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots and Bruins, complaining about the road construction on I-95, or ending a long, hot day on the course with a cold 'Gansett. As global ambassadors for Little Rhody, they have no peer. (Apologies to James Woods, G.I. Joe, the Farrelly brothers and Mr. Potato Head.)

Rant of the Week: Crossing Main

Those bright orange-red "crosswalk flags" haven't worked. Nor have the crosswalks themselves, painted in large white stripes, big enough for a squash court. Signs urging drivers to yield to foot traffic? Who drives slow enough to read them? In the village of Wakefield, don't bother trying to walk across Main Street. Too many cars trying to break the sound barrier. Too many drivers too busy talking on their cell phones to notice what's in front of them. Too many people who don't want to be inconvenienced into obeying the law if it means having to put their foot on the brake and wait five seconds for anyone. Town officials even had to install an extra traffic light where the bike path crosses the road, to save cyclists from getting killed. You'd have better luck as a squirrel chasing a nut from the northbound to the southbound lanes of I-95 than you would making the trip from All That Matters to Brickley's Ice Cream shop. One day last week I stood at the crosswalk near Town Meats and the Wakefield Fish Market and counted how many cars wouldn't let me pass: 17. Finally a guy in a Jeep rolled to a stop. The car coming from the other direction was going to blow through anyway, but its driver made the last-second decision to come to a screeching, rubber-scorching halt a few feet away from me. Jeep Guy rolled down his window and yelled out: "They'd just as soon kill ya." Sit on a bench and watch for a half-hour. You'll see these asphalt cowboys who don't stop for people with canes, in wheelchairs, on crutches. Forget the village stroll. Main Street's gone NASCAR.

Blue plate special

Many Rhode Islanders suffer from obsessive, compulsive license plate disorder. Symptoms include: 1) A belief that status in this state hinges, not on the kind of car you drive, but on having the lowest possible number on the license plate hanging under it. 2) A belief that the world wants to know that you are the RI-BADBOY or RI-HOTCHIK. 3) A belief that your closest relative didn't truly love you if he/she didn't bequeath the rights to their plate number or vanity message.

Our license plate angst is historic. The state's official colors are blue and white, but from 1972 to 1980 Rhody's license plate colors were black and white - because most of the state legislators were Providence College men's basketball fans. But things are better now. From a graphic design standpoint, few states can match the blue wave on the current edition of the Rhody plate. And in recent years, legislators have offered up the state plate to local charities. The R.I. Community Food Bank raised money with a Mr. Potato Head license plate. Save the Bay followed up with an environmentally friendly Osprey plate. Now lawmakers have introduced legislation allowing the state Division of Motor Vehicles to issue a special license plate to benefit Providence WaterFire. An extra $40 surcharge would support the popular bonfire-world music carnival, with half the money going to the state's general fund and the other half to WaterFire organizers.

The mottoes may change (just as "Discover Rhode Island" gave way to "The Ocean State") but the mores never will. How does a state solve a $434 million budget deficit? One license plate at a time.

Goodnight and farewell

There are better things in the world to do on weekends than watch television. But if you found yourself in front of the idiot box on Sunday mornings or Saturday afternoons, Tim Russert and Jim McKay made sure that you weren't wasting your time. In a profession overpopulated with talking heads, white noise, agenda journalism and baa blah blog sheep, both broadcasters, who died within days of one another, brought civility, fairness and just the right touch of poetry or storytelling to their reporting.

Russert was one of the best interviewers in the business, tough and tenacious, but nonpartisan and never malicious. He did what so many journalists don't: held people accountable for their words by digging up past quotes and pointing out contradictions and hypocrisy in their statements. The fact that he was an unabashed blue-collar Buffalo guy made Americans everywhere, including here in perpetually irrelevant Rhode Island, feel that their voices mattered as much as the power elite in Washington.

McKay, wearing that horrid trademark ABC yellow jacket, elevated sports journalism to the level of news, making it a vital part of our daily cultural discussion. As host of ABC's Wide World of Sports, and the network's coverage of the Olympics, he guided Americans through our growing pains with sports not named baseball, football, basketball and hockey. I was a 10-year-old when Munich happened, and was riveted to McKay throughout those Games. His remarkable ability to convey humanity yet maintain dignity and professionalism while describing horrifying acts of terrorism left an indelible impression, and had a calming influence, in the same way that Walter Cronkite's teary reporting of the JFK assassination is recalled by a slightly older generation.

With the passing of Russert and McKay, Americans have lost more than a couple of great journalists and good men. We've lost a reason to tune in on Sunday mornings and Saturday afternoons.

Green Week: Cat people

Reports of big cats roaming the wilds of southwestern Rhode Island are nothing new. During the past decade, folks in rural South County have called the Independent with sightings of mountain lions in their backyards. They're convinced, and they're vocal, but so far they don't have proof in the form of photographs, video or other viable evidence (although one cougar watcher claims to have a skull, scat and pictures of tracks to indicate that panthers prowl in these parts). Arguments against the big cats: They don't show up as roadkill and, strangely, they don't seem to go on cat-like killing sprees, terrorizing domestic animals or wildlife. Conspiracy theorists believe that state environmental management officials know the cats are here in limited numbers. They point to the fact that for years officials were reluctant to admit that black bears were back, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. (All it took to silence the doubters was for one bear to go public a couple of weeks ago, eluding officials from Narragansett to North Kingstown, turning all of Rhode Island into bear paparazzi. But "Fluffy" the bear, like the Warwick manatee from two summers ago, wanted no part of the publicity, and high-tailed it to Connecticut.) We know that mountain lions once hunted here, and they are increasing their range throughout the U.S. With the emphasis on cleaning up the environment over the past few decades, preserving wilderness and preventing toxic chemicals and pesticides from polluting air, water and soil, wildlife has made a comeback, even in the second-most-densely populated state in the union. Rhody is exploding in deer (a.k.a. big cat food) and a state that was once logged to near baldness is now more than two-thirds forested (a.k.a. cougar cover). So maybe it's not a matter of if but when for the first documented case of the Eastern puma returning to Rhode Island. After all, the only thing that matters to all animals except humans is habitat, not borders.

Green Week: Beetlemania

If someone made a bug's life version of "CSI," the American burying beetle would star as the forensic investigator. Say a mouse dies on Block Island. Within an hour, the beetle would be on the case. The only difference between the TV detectives and the Block Island bug is that once the beetle finds the corpse, the show is over and dinner is served. The insect can smell a dead mouse from two miles away. Carrion eaters aren't the most loveable creatures on Earth, but American burying beetles are on the endangered species list, and Block Island is the extent of their range east of the Mississippi, so in one way or another they are the envy of almost every other species of Rhode Islander.

The Roger Williams Park Zoo, as part of its beetle conservation program, breeds them in captivity, monitors them in the wild and even transplants some of the Block Islanders to Nantucket. Zookeeper Lou Perrotti, speaking to me a few years back, admitted that most people think the beetle's stalk-strip-secrete-and-devour approach to dead animals sounds more like a horror show than fine dining, and are skeptical that they're worth saving. "The usual response is, 'You're doing what? Shouldn't you be getting rid of these things?'" Sharon Begley's column in last week's Newsweek quotes Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, praising the bug: "Think of the potential if we could mimic that for finding earthquake victims." According to Perrotti, saving, not squashing, the beetle is one of those big-picture deals. "If there were no more insects then life on this planet, including us, wouldn't last a month."

Green Week: Making the cut

The endangered species list contains 1,985 species of plants and animals recorded as either "endangered" (next stop: oblivion) or "threatened" (hanging out at the rest area just before the exit). Most of the media attention and charity love goes to totemic animals like wolves, whales and polar bears or greeting card/desk calendar models like the Karner blue butterfly. Few people are clamoring to "Save the Dung Beetles." The very idea of saving species has critics among the top end of the predator food chain, who argue that millions of species have been wiped out since the planet first exploded with life. That's true, of course, with the one major distinction being that those were acts of nature and the cosmos, not the conscious behavior of a single species that can't be sure of which links in the environmental chain are essential for its own existence.

Sixteen Rhode Island species are listed on the Endangered Species Act. Some are residents (the American burying beetle), others visit annually (a variety of whales and sea turtles), while a few make rare or rumored appearances - the wildlife equivalent of celebrity sightings (Eastern puma). Up until March 28, the gray wolf was on the list. In Wyoming (the state out West not the village in southwestern Rhode Island), a few days after the wolf came off the list, 16 were shot dead, including a limping canine known to locals as "Hoppy." So now that wolves are no longer endangered, they're being slaughtered in mass numbers. Memo to other species: Do not leave the list. Thriving can get you killed.

Green Week: Tick doc

A 24-minute documentary about ticks and the diseases they can pass on to humans, titled "Hidden in the Leaves," has just been released at the height of tick season. It was written, directed and narrated by Mary Healey Jamiel, who teaches film media at the University of Rhode Island. The film features the work of Dr. Thomas Mather, professor of entomology and director of the Center for Vector-Borne Disease. Rhode Islanders, Mather said, live within "the heart of tick country" and encounter ticks routinely "in their own backyards." Now playing at libraries across the state, the film will air on R.I. PBS Channel 36 (Cox 8) throughout the month. A couple of nuggets that won't make it into my story in this Thursday's Independent:

Unlike most Rhode Islanders, Mather doesn't look romantically at those 150,000 miles of stone walls lining the southern New England landscape. "Rodent condominiums," he calls them. And, given his choice, one of the last places on Earth he'd vacation is Nantucket. "I call it Nanticket. It's kind of a tick-infested hell hole."

Not so Great, not so Fine

Yesterday we received word from the University of Rhode Island that Judith Tolnick Champa, director of URI's Fine Arts Center Galleries, and Roxana Tourigny, director of URI's Great Performances, will be laid off, and that the galleries and concert series will be terminated. Administrators say that the move, which goes into effect on July 4, was required as part of a university-wide $17 million reduction this year. Winifred Brownell, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, said that Academic Affairs is absorbing $12 million of that figure, with $2.7 million coming out of Arts & Sciences. Both Great Performances and the Fine Arts Center Galleries have already been eliminated from the college's Web page. On Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the Fine Arts Center's Main Gallery, Wakefield artist and activist Marc Levitt will facilitate a brainstorming session on the cuts and their impact on the state's cultural landscape. A Facebook group of alumni and current students has been created under the heading "Save the galleries!!" We'll have more tomorrow on the Independent Web site and in next Thursday's editions of the South County and North East Independent newspapers.

Rhode trip

One of the more interesting trends in the Providence contemporary art scene has been a grass-roots effort by young artists to obsessively explore, depict and record the city's decay and growth in street art, paintings, posters, found-object sculptures, assemblages and installations. Now they're paying attention in New York. Starting tomorrow, four Providence artists will showcase visions of the City of Hope at the Brooklyn gallery, RABBITHOLESTUDIO. The exhibition, titled "Using It Up," features the work of Zane Claverie, Shawn Gilheeney, Quinn Corey and David Allyn. Gilheeney's paintings, prints and street art bring the ghosts of crumbling Providence factories and buildings to life, finding beauty in the deteriorating landscape. Claverie combines pictorial history, graphic design and illustration, using found materials to make large-scale cut-and-paste collages that satirize modern culture. Corey explores the back alleys and Dumpsters of Providence for materials that he transforms into whimsical, often archetypal forms. Allyn fuses street decals with porcelain to create colorful ceramic tile reliefs that skewer contemporary ideals of gentrification and consumerism. If you've tossed something out in Providence, chances are one of these artists has turned it into art.

Where's George?

It's not hyperbole to suggest that the most-viewed painting of all time came from the brush of a Rhode Islander. Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington wound up on the U.S. one-dollar bill more than a century ago. Stuart, who was born and raised in Saunderstown, is considered by many to be America's finest portrait artist. Washington sat for him three times, but it was the "Athenaeum Portrait," which Stuart began in 1796 and never finished, that has earned lasting fame on the Yankee greenback.

In the 1990s Dollar George became an Internet cult hero when a Massachusetts man with too much time on his hands founded the Web site, "Where's George?". Bills stamped "Where's George?" can be logged into the site and tracked around the world. (I finally took the plunge myself last year, when I received a "Where's George?" dollar from Fall River, Mass., and used it to buy coffee in Rhode Island. After 246 days, 20 hours and 44 minutes of waiting, the dollar revealed its whereabouts, ending up in a pile of change 80 miles away in a Hampstead, N.H. store. Exciting stuff, no?)

Forget Elvis and Madonna. From Founding Father to national treasure to history's most famous layabout to Internet icon, George invented the American art of re-invention.

Matunuck magic

The first moth arrived during the third song, Fats Waller's "T Ain't Nobody's Biz-Ness If I Do," a fluttering welcome to the return of musical theater at the old barn in Matunuck. Opening with "Ain't Misbehavin'," Theatre By The Sea is celebrating its 75th anniversary of song-and-dance at the Rhode Island seaside, even though a few of those years, including most of the past three, were dark. The peculiar charm of the place remains. The drafty barn, hearing coyotes howl in the moonlight, watching clouds of fireflies explode on sultry summer evenings, dodging bats hunting mosquitoes, while savoring the gardens, the grounds and the musicals.

"Salty Brine always sat in the seat next to you," said the customer seated behind me during intermission. "He never missed a show." A friend recently told me that when she was a young girl, she used to sneak in, but only in time for the after-play cabaret. The magic of Matunuck, one of the last places in America where a barn playhouse still comes to life, stirs the collective memory of Rhode Islanders, stoking the gray matter where Theatre By The Sea and summertime go together like families and clambakes, neighborhoods and block parties.

Go Gansett

You can't beat a dead horse, or a dead horse racetrack, but apparently you can beat a dead beer back to life. The Narragansett Brewing Company won the Bronze Medal at the 2008 World Beer Cup. It's the latest coup in a series of honors for Gansett, which was originally established in Rhode Island around 1890 and eventually became New England's largest brewery, earning a 65 percent market share in the six-state region during the 1960s. The beer's fame grew with its "Hi Neighbor, have a Gansett" advertising campaign and three-decade sponsorship of the Boston Red Sox. But ultimately it couldn't compete with the national lagers, especially when Budweiser muscled in, building a plant in New Hampshire. The Narragansett Brewery in Cranston closed in 1981. Production was moved to Fort Wayne, Ind., but the water there was no match for the Scituate Reservoir. A few old-time Rhode Islanders still swore by their cans of "Nasty Gansett," but the beer was dropped from the taps and considered by many to be undrinkable. Enter Mark Hellendrung, previously the head "Juice Guy" at Nantucket Nectars, who rounded up a group of local investors and revived the brand three years ago, re-launching it with its heritage recipe and new packaging. According to Beer Advocate, Narragansett is now the highest-rated premium domestic lager in the country.

Personal note: While researching through Life magazines from the 1960s, I was struck by how prominent the Narragansett beer ads were, appearing on pages with JFK, Apollo astronauts and Frank Sinatra. The revived lager is a huge improvement over the Indiana-watered-down beer, but it doesn't quite match the original. Marketing surveys influenced the revivalists to make the beer slightly less bitter to satisfy the masses (but not confirmed hopheads like me). So here's a thought: Narragansett Classic.

Lost in Cyberspace

Anticipating tonight's season finale of "Lost" inspired a little Google play: When you Google "Lost Rhode Island," the first listing chronicles the demise of four Ocean State ski areas. That means Little Rhody, a state with no mountains, once had five places to go downhill skiing. The only one left is Yawgoo Valley, but at one time Rhode Island also counted Diamond Hill, Neutaconkanut Hill, Pine Top and Ski Valley as slope-worthy, a ski belt that stretched from Cumberland through Providence/Johnston and into Escoheag and Exeter. (In typical "Only in Rhode Island" fashion, Ski Valley and Diamond Hill shared one side of the same Cumberland hill, even though they were two separate ski operations.)

What does this have to do with "Lost?" Nothing. In fact, I'm hard-pressed as a weekly "Lost" watcher to think of any time the TV show made reference to Rhode Island culture (except remotely as part of the Jack-is-a-Red-Sox-fan-who-still-can't-believe-they-won-the-World-Series running gag). In that way, "Lost" has nothing on the cool years of "The X-Files" (early-to-mid Mulder), when one episode was set in Chepachet, another featured flashbacks to Mulder's childhood summer cottage in Quonochontaug and a later show mentioned that his mom was in a Providence hospital.

Blueways and Greenways

In March 2000, several months before I returned to Rhode Island to cover arts and culture for the Independent, I took my old touring bicycle on a rambling journey along the East Coast, wayfaring from Key West, Fla. to Lubec, Maine, with detours and diversions in between. (All recorded in notebooks that have yet to see the light of day. Perhaps I'll blog it someday: "Bike on the Half Shell" anyone?) The trip was hazardous in spots, often lacking good shoulder, courteous drivers or a way to ride safely from point A (Florida City) to point B (Miami). Little did I know when I settled down to my sloppy desk in Wakefield, R.I. later in the year that someone was already working on a solution - creating a 3,000-mile ribbon of bike-friendly trail from Florida to Maine called the East Coast Greenway. (Now 20 percent completed and counting.) To top it off, headquarters for the national grass-roots organization was right here in Wakefield.

But the East Coast Greenway is only one of the ways Rhode Island is going green. And with local efforts toward opening up more woods, wilderness and trails to recreational enthusiasts firmly established in the state, someone decided Rhody should go blue, too. It's a great escape: Kayaking the Wood River in Hope Valley, listening to the plaintive cry of a red-shouldered hawk overhead, or cycling the William C. O'Neill (South County) Bike Path through the Great Swamp, watching a snapping turtle the size of a flying saucer emerge from the murk into the sunshine. The call of the wild. The journey of the paddle and the wheel. And the best part of Rhody's blueways and greenways? No highways.

Peak bagging

Dr. Tim Warren became the first Rhode Islander to climb Mount Everest last Friday at 11:15 p.m. Eastern Time. The Warwick chiropractor scaled the world's highest mountain (29,035 feet) on his second attempt, helping to raise money as part of his "Klimb for Kids" campaign for the children of A Wish Come True, the wish-granting organization founded in Tiverton in 1982. In a brief blog chronicling his excursion, he notes:

"I have been where humans are just not supposed to be and the corpses are in plain sight as a reminder."

A few years ago, those same words might've applied to the highest climb in Rhode Island, the 882-foot summit at Jerimoth Hill in Foster. The hiking isn't hard, but the shotgun-wielding landowner made life difficult for anyone who attempted the feat. Thanks to the work of Highpointers (people dedicated to climbing all 51 of America's tallest-per-state peaks - D.C. included) and new property owners, walkers are allowed to hike Jerimoth Hill from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. 52 weeks a year. Surprisingly, Rhode Island's little molehill of a mountain isn't the smallest in the U.S. Little Rhody looms above the highpoints of Mississippi (806 feet), Louisiana (535), Delaware (442), Washington D.C. (415) (although climbing the steps of the Washington Monument will get you up to 555 feet) and Florida (345).

Sticks and stones

Dissing Rhode Island has long been an American pastime, dating back to Colonial days, when Massachusetts Puritans derisively referred to the colony of eccentrics, mystics, misfits and religious exiles as Rogue's Island. Then, as now, our neighbors in the Bay and Nutmeg states did most of the slagging. Massachusetts Bay Colony Calvinist Cotton Mather was the Shakespeare of the Rhody put-down, producing at least two classic insults, calling Rhode Island "the fag end of the universe" and "the cesspool of New England." As recently as 2000, in the pages of Smithsonian magazine, a Connecticut writer called for the abolition of Rhode Island as a state. Of course, the jealousies of our border states may be prompted by missing out on better beaches, better kitsch and a better sense of humor.

Squiggy, the Ugly Dog

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but ugly is universal. Squiggy, a canine from Exeter, is vying for the title of "World's Ugliest Dog." A mix of hairless Chinese crested and Japanese chin, Squiggy has a spiky mohawk and a face only a mother could love. He's missing most of his teeth, causing his tongue to hang out lopsided. The unofficial mascot of the Pet Refuge Animal Shelter in North Kingstown, Squiggy was adopted through a rescue in 2006 at six weeks of age. This Monday, he'll march with the "Dogs of Wickford" in the North Kingstown Memorial Day Parade. For now, he ranks third in the online contest sponsored by the Sonoma-Marin Fair of California. But in true Rhode Island "Underdog" fashion, he's not giving up. Squiggy's pressing the flesh regularly in Wickford, where the strolling masses stop to greet him. He also appears at pet expos, charity dog walks and in animal shelters across the state. He's even got his own line of merchandise.

Would you vote for this dog?

Blog love

Blog on the Half Shell may be anchored in Rhode Island, but the world is our quahog. So we were thrilled to appear last week in The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting, thanks to the good word put in by my friend Chris Murphy, who works on the travel desk at the Globe and Boston.com. My reader will now have company. Clams got legs!

In that same giving spirit, Blog on the Half Shell isn't the only scenic detour in the Rhody blogosphere. Those interested in following the Ocean State's political scene should check out Not for Nothing, a news blog by the estimable Ian Donnis of the Providence Phoenix. Art and preservation collide at Art in Ruins, an artist-as-activist Web site chronicling the demise of some of the state's most beloved landmarks and buildings. And for an extended road trip through the wild, the weird and the wicked Rhode Island, visit the folks at Quahog.

Rat 'sori'

The following "size of Rhode Island" reference comes from the online edition of the San Bernardino County Sun of California, courtesy of my friend and Rhody renaissance man, Tom Viall:

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing cutting the habitat set aside for the endangered San Bernardino kangaroo rat by two-thirds.

"Under the proposal, the designated critical habitat for the kangaroo rat would be reduced to approximately 10,500 acres from more than 33,000 acres in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, according to a report by the federal agency.

"The species historically occupied 326,467 acres, an area about one third the size of Rhode Island."

Seriously seaweed

Few places take seaweed more seriously than Rhode Island. Historically, every citizen of the state has been entitled to gather seaweed along "the seaweed line" of the entire 440-something miles of coastline. In fact, "gathering seaweed" is one of the four basic shoreline rights outlined in Article I, Section 17 of the R.I. Constitution. (The others are fishing, swimming via the shore and providing passage along the sea.) But disputes over seaweed rights are common. Swamp Yankee farmers in the early 20th century in South County valued seaweed as prized fertilizer, and many of them had seaweed-gathering rights written into their deeds. In the Arcadia Publishing "Images of America" series edition "South Shore, Rhode Island," by Independent Managing Editor Betty J. Cotter, she writes:

"Frank H. Crandall Jr. recalls his father telling him that competition among the farmers to gather the seaweed was fierce; after seaweed had been washed ashore by a storm, the farmers would cover their horses' hooves in burlap so other farmers would not hear them making their way to shore. The seaweed was spread on the fields in the fall and then plowed under in the spring after it had decayed."

In the modern era, the town of Barrington has staked its own seaweed claim, as noted in the 2007 R.I. General Laws, Title 46 (Waters and Navigation), Chapter 46-11 (Seaweed).

46-11-1. Taking of seaweed by inhabitants of Barrington. - The inhabitants of the town of Barrington may, at all times between the rising and setting of the sun, take up and carry off from the public beach in Barrington, extending west from Hyde's Hole to land now or formerly of the heirs of John Watson, with their vehicles, not exceeding two (2) loads of seaweed in any one day; provided, that no person shall take more than one load of seaweed in any one day, until all who have repaired to the beach with their teams shall have obtained one load each.

46-11-2. Privilege restricted to Barrington inhabitants. - No person other than an inhabitant of the town of Barrington shall be permitted to take or carry off from the beach any seaweed in any manner whatsoever.

46-11-3. Penalty for violations. - Every person who shall take or carry off from the beach any seaweed, contrary to the provisions of this chapter, shall forfeit ten dollars ($10.00) for each and every load of seaweed so carried off, one-half (1/2) thereof to the use of the person suing for the same and one-half (1/2) thereof to the use of the town of Barrington.

On an even lighter note, samples of Rhode Island seaweed hang in a hall showcasing the evolution of flora and fauna at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Rhode Island scientist and artist Alex Frost has exhibited seaweed prints in trendy Manhattan restaurants. And local chefs will tell you that cooking with seaweed isn't limited to the traditional Rhode Island clambake, which starts with mounds of the state's omnipresent brown rockweed, and improves from there.