Blizzard Thoughts

Why do we give names to hurricanes but not blizzards?

That was the thought that kept me company during the digging out this morning. Sometime between 6 and 6:30, while the coffee was brewing and the weather forecasters were explaining why they got wrong what they got wrong, I shoveled and scraped and warmed up the car in a Blanding Avenue conga line with my neighbors. The drive to South County was sloppy, choppy and slow, but the roads were mostly empty, and the office, once the computers rebooted, hummed with electricity and heat. Now, moaning winds and the plow music of beeping, grinding and road rumble make the sounds of the day beyond the window. Phones go off haphazardly. The workday settles into the pace of a snowdrift.

The Not-Quite-White Christmas was truly a Boxing Day blizzard, with aftermath lingering into Monday. It barely made deadline as the biggest storm of 2010, the largest accumulation of snow in Rhody since the two snowfalls that struck last December. Between blizzards, we passed a year, and in this week’s Arts & Living section we relive some of the scenes of 2010 from southern Rhode Island – from roads turned into rivers during the March floods to the University of Rhode Island research vessel Endeavor voyaging to the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil spill. Skipping through the images in our photo archives was an odd experience, compressing the news and seasons of an entire year into a couple of hours of fleeting glances and memories.

In the whirl of a snow globe, photographs fell from filing cabinets and folders, no two quite alike. A pair of snowmen greeted travelers along Slocum Road in Exeter. Children pushed through a tight passage of blossoms at Kinney Azalea Gardens in Kingston. Visitors to the South County Museum in Narragansett held newly hatched chicks and watched cracking eggs during the museum’s Fourth of July Rhode Island Red Chick Hatch. Waves from tropical storm Nicole battered the breakwater off Point Judith. Maples erupted in red and orange over an artist’s studio in Rockville.

A swirl of scenes, brief moments and encounters, and then it was over. Times grow yellow in a dusty morgue. This weekend's snowstorm at least gives the space and silence necessary for appreciation and reflection, countering the norm of accelerated lives. So to friends and strangers, followers and any folks just passing through, may these winter-worn days, dressed as they are in snowflake sweaters, thick boots and skin-tight balaclavas, give you pause to be grateful for the people and places you know. Remember, "zero visibility" is just a weatherman's way of saying "blindness," and always keep a shovel and a scraper in your car – but don’t forget the sleds, skates, skis and snowshoes either.

Rest in peace, 2010, and happy New Year.

What will you remember most from the past year?

Saugatucket Solstice

It appears that the calendar will conspire with New England weather to turn tomorrow’s historic winter solstice, timed to coincide with a total eclipse of a full moon, into just another cloudy workday. So for me the ritual walk likely will be little more than a late afternoon trip for coffee along the icy Saugatucket River, just a snowball’s throw from my window.

It’s still worth celebrating the return of incremental light, and scenes of mallard tribes huddled against the riverbank and randomly scattered copper oak leaves trapped under thin skins of cracked ice make the detour a pleasant one, despite the increasingly annoying intrusion of sign pollution marking the short walk. Where once there was just a river abutting a parking lot, with no signs to speak of, now there is a fenced boardwalk leading to a gravel path connecting the area to the bridge that leads from Wakefield School to Main Street, sprouting signs like weeds. They are permanent admonishments, mostly variations of: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE WATERFOWL and PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG. While the rebukes are well intended, it’s somewhat ironic that before the river walk became a recreational haven, it lacked the aesthetics of modern leisure (benches, viewing platform, a dock) – but it also didn’t need the cautionary overkill.

No doubt the walkway has brought more people to the river. And, yes, there are minefields of doggy detritus to navigate because some pet owners can’t be bothered to pick up after themselves. And, yes, some misguided souls like to feed Wonder Bread to wildlife. But the signs don’t seem to prevent people who leave waste untended and feed Twinkies to geese from doing those things. They just sort of ruin the view. If signs really could change behavior, I’d be the first in line to make them: PLEASE FEED THE HUNGRY. PLEASE CLOTHE THE TATTERED. PLEASE SHELTER THE HOMELESS.

As long as we’re admonishing folks, we might at least try doing society some good.

What sign would you like to post for anyone passing by?

A Scrooge a Day

‘Tis the season of dueling ‘Messiahs,’ battling Claras and Scrooge-a-Palooza, a trinity of choral concerts, ballets and plays around the winter holidays that serve as a kind of artistic eggnog, the comfort food of creative expression at Christmastime. The Chorus of Westerly, which performed the region’s first concert of Handel’s “Messiah” just before Thanksgiving, editing the masterwork from its 2-1/2 hour running time to 75 minutes of highlights, sent out a press release with the following note:

In December, when The New York Times lists holiday musical performances, there is an entire section entitled: "Messiah and other oratorio performances."

And it’s true. There are "Messiahs" wherever you look. Scores of them, in churches and colleges and community chorales throughout Rhode Island, from Brown University’s orchestrated production to the sing-it-yourself-"Messiahs" at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd (Jan. 2) in Kingston and the First Baptist Church (Jan. 9) in Wickford.

But one might just as easily publish a calendar with listings for dance and theater that reads:
“'Nutcracker’ and other ballets” and “'A Christmas Carol’ and other plays.”

Rhode Island “Nutcrackers” range from the Festival Ballet of Providence version at PPAC to the lavish staging at Rosecliff Mansion in Newport to Rhode Island Youth Theatre’s “Madeleine Meets The Nutcracker” in East Greenwich. The New York Times recently ran a piece titled “'Nutcracker’ Nation: Yes We Can!,” chronicling Alastair Macaulay’s quest to see two dozen productions of “The Nutcracker” across America. One in Washington, D.C., set in a Georgetown mansion, featured Miss Liberty and John Paul Jones in the company of Drosselmeyer’s dancing dolls and staged Act II in a dreamscape of the Potomac “with female cherry blossoms dancing the Waltz of the Flowers.”

“A Christmas Carol” is the annual cash-cow staple at Trinity Rep in Providence. But they’re also playing the Dickens out of it in East Greenwich (The Academy Players at the Varnum Armory), Cranston (The Black Box Theatre at The Artists’ Exchange), Woonsocket (Encore Repertory Company at the Stadium Theatre) and Westerly (The Granite Theatre, where artistic director David Jepson performs all of the roles in a one-man show).

Like the Ghosts of Christmas Past, every year Handel, Tchaikovsky and Dickens come back to haunt the hallowed performance halls of Rhode Island. No doubt one day, for sheer convenience, the works of all three artists willl be combined into one festive event.: “The NutMessCarol.” Scrooge is redeemed, waking on a snowy Christmas morning to the sound of the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker Prince singing the “Hallelujah” chorus, while Tiny Tim marries Clara, Marley’s Ghost dances the pas de deux with the Snow Queen, and the Cratchits welcome the angel Clarence, the Little Drummer Boy, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Heat Miser, Snow Miser and all the boys and girls of Whoville to their humble home.

This week’s question: What turns you into a Grinch?

Season's Greetings

As we wait for the first snowfall, Rhode Islanders are comforted by certain sights that kindle the spirit of the winter holidays, from the tree lightings and Main Street ornamentation that give each town and village its distinctive seasonal look to the backyard glowing-bulb narratives of nativities, winter wonderlands and Santa’s workshops.

Each day my commute passes Santa on a forklift along I95 South and every evening I return home to the sight of New England Pest Control’s giant termite, wearing lighted antlers, a blinking red nose and blue illumination on its thorax and abdomen. But Rhody’s Big Blue (Christmas) Bug isn’t the only yuletide roadside ritual.

Trips to Tiverton are marked by the homeless nativity scene at Amicable Congregational Church, where about a dozen years ago Pastor William Sterrett and local chainsaw artist Michael Higgins teamed up to present a modern version of the First Noel. The scene features Jose, an unemployed migrant farm worker; Maura, a pregnant runaway; Hope, their newborn daughter; Gabe, an African American angel; David, a Native American working at Walgreens; Anna, a battered woman working the night shift at a medical center; a shopping cart; and an oil drum providing heat.

Another sign of the season is the holiday press release. Every year companies pitch various holiday-survey stories to newspapers to keep their products in the public eye during the Christmas blitz. Last week we received one from Dunkin’ Donuts asking the question: “Which part of the gingerbread man cookie do you eat first?” Turns out that 64 percent start with the head (my choice), while 20 percent go for the legs and only 16 percent begin at the arms. Left unsaid is that gingerbread men occupy the same diminished land of extremities as Oscar statuettes and harem guards, but since this is a family-friendly blog, we’ll leave our exploration of this topic right there.

Except to add that a town council in England recently voted to change the name of gingerbread men to gingerbread persons, only to reverse course after people not made of gingerbread complained that it was a plan that could only have been dreamed up by a fruitcake.

What is your favorite sign of the winter holidays in Rhode Island?

Winterizing

Geographically the dividing line between southern and northern New England may run in a rough, jagged crust separating rocky beach from sandy beach, but culturally the difference is most keenly felt in how each region handles winter. Up in New Hampshire, where I last lived, it was common for store marquees and school booster boards to proclaim “THINK ICE” or “LET IT SNOW” as soon as the apples dropped from the trees and until someone collected the payoff for correctly predicting the exact day of ice-out.

Down here in Rhody, it’s a different story – a tale of dreaded snowfalls and legendary blizzards, snowplows stuck behind school buses and annual milk and bread panic. The first scrape of winter was apparent this morning in my West Barrington cove, where the neighborhood woke to frosted car windows and a temperature reluctant to climb out of the 20s. Over the weekend I reshuffled the wardrobe, moving out the Hawaiian shirts to make room for clothes of a more Alaskan bent – the scarves and sweaters, fleeces and balaclavas that accessorize winter.

Alaskan aside: The 49th State is getting a lot of mileage and free publicity out of TLC’s “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” so here’s a way for Rhody’s new governor to put the 13th State on the map: “Linc Chafee’s Rhode Island,” a reality TV program showing the Chafee family living la vida Rhody. Suggested programs: 1) “East Bay Ecstasy”: The Chafees enjoy a morning of duckpin bowling at Dudek Lanes in Warren, followed by lunch at Rod’s Grill (an arm of gaggers all the way) or Blount’s Clam Shack, culminating in a night of competitive bocce at the gravel pits in Bristol’s Colt State Park. 2) “South County Sojourn”: With halibut-bashing not an option, the Chafees choose to spend the morning quahogging barefoot in the mudflats along Galilee Escape Road, before hopping on the slow boat to Block Island for an afternoon of TV drinking games at the bar in The National Hotel. (How it works: Every time Sarah Palin says “Obamacare” or “lamestream media,” you have to drink.)

Join the fun. Suggest an episode.

Alaskan aside, part deux: On a whim, I decided to Google “How many Rhode Islands can fit into Alaska?” Here’s the scary part: Dozens of sites have answered that question – and others like it, from “How many Rhode Islands can fit into Texas” to “How many Rhode Islands can fit into Mississippi?” In fact, pretty much name a place and somebody has worked out how many Rhode Islands can be squeezed into it. Of course, it wouldn’t be Rhode Island if everyone agreed on the math. Yahoo! Answers says that Rhode Island fits 423.56 times into Alaska, while Wiki Answers puts the number at 634.7. The difference is that Yahoo! uses the 1,545 square-mile calculation, which includes Narragansett Bay, while Wiki sticks to the land-only number of 1,045 square miles. Yes, this is how I spend my Monday afternoons.

And now, back to the post:

As for winter, New Hampshire may be colder, but like the reverse of an Arizona summer, it’s a dry cold. The loss of light in Rhode Island seems even more dispiriting than it does in moose country, for reasons that I can’t entirely fathom – although perhaps it has something to do with our lack of dark sky. Street lamps and neon strip the night of stars. That’s a bad tradeoff, especially in the season of Orion.

This week’s question: What do you dread most – or look forward to most – about winter?

Bear Essentials

There’s a rogue bear roaming the woods and neighborhoods of South County this fall. Suspected of killing four sheep, the Eastern black bear has been spotted crossing Ministerial Road in South Kingstown but has so far eluded and outwitted state environmental officials.

A week or so ago, DEM set up a trap filled with doughnuts and meat, long a Rhode Island staple. (At least it’s in the local culinary tradition of anything goes with dough. Consider the chourico sticks at Sip ‘n’ Dip in Bristol – essentially a cruller of fried dough surrounding a spicy Portuguese sausage – exhibit A.) The bear swiped the doughnuts but left the meat hanging, backing out of the trap while showing a healthy skepticism toward free carcass for the taking.

So many questions remain: Were the doughnuts honey-dipped? Did DEM cheap out with day-old leftovers from Dunkin’ Donuts? Or did they come from Allie’s, the legendary North Kingstown doughnut shop and Rhody pilgrimage site whose founder, sadly, passed away a week ago?

Here’s what we know: This particular bear likes doughnuts and sheep. So we at Half Shell humbly propose an idea for the next trap: “Mutton doughnut.” Yum. Great sheep taste in a deep-fat fried pastry. What bear could resist that?

Bears haven’t been around much in these parts since the Colonial days, when settlers clear-cut the forests, hunting them out and driving them away. But they’ve returned in small numbers in recent years, attracted by the state’s second-growth forests and a chance to stretch their legs away from the crowded conifers of Connecticut. The last time a bear got this much attention for visiting Rhode Island was in 2008. That summer I wrote an article for the autumn issue of South County Living describing the frenzy:

One day in late May, a black bear crossed over the Connecticut border into Rhode Island, carving a swath through upland forest and along rivers, blissfully unaware of the invisible line that separates Nutmeg from Ocean State culture and its own impending celebrity. The bear was hungry, quite likely just out of hibernation, and looking to set up his territory and find a mate. It wandered through the Foster-Glocester-Scituate region of northern Rhode Island and meandered in a southeasterly route into Coventry and, eventually, South County, where it was spotted Memorial Day weekend on Liberty Lane in West Kingston.

On May 27, the young bear, estimated at two years old and about 130 pounds, swam from the South Kingstown side of Narrow River to the Narragansett side, where it indulged in a breakfast buffet of birdfeeders and trashcans in the North End. But its visit to Mettatuxet started a frenzy, and before long the bear, dubbed “Fluffy” by the media, was dodging the wildlife paparazzi of camera-toting residents, TV crews and uniformed environmental law enforcement.

The saga of “Fluffy” lasted about a week, as new sightings were reported on television and radio, in local papers and in various blogs. The CVS/pharmacy in Wakefield hired someone in a bear suit to stand near Main Street with a sign urging shoppers to purchase “bear necessities.” Narragansett resident Jeanne Vicario printed up T-shirts that read “Where’s the Bear?” and “Mettatuxet Bear Patrol” and sold them at local bars and stores, donating a portion of the proceeds to the Sierra Club.

The giddy response to the South County Bear was a spontaneous reaction to the rare sighting of a totemic animal that, in the age before the settlers arrived, once foraged freely in these forests. Bears disappeared from the local landscape for hundreds of years, only recently showing up once again as a blip on the Rhode Island radar during the past decade. Narragansett Deputy Chief Dean Hoxsie told The South County Independent that he’d never seen or heard of a bear in the area in 24 years of law enforcement work.

Two years later, there's a new bear in town. Good news to those of us who believe in cultivating a little wildness wherever we can in an age of suburban overgrowth and digital overload. Then again, never been mauled by one. Might whistle a different tune then.

Leading to this week’s totally unrelated question: What is your favorite Thanksgiving ritual? (Bonus points if you can work doughnuts into the answer.)

Potato Head Mash

We return to the lighter side this week with a new look at the perpetually ascending stardom of Pawtucket’s own Mr. Potato Head. As reported in previous posts, the globetrotting Hasbro toy continues to straddle the celebrity tightrope between fame and scandal, having served as courier in an ecstasy drug deal from Ireland to Sydney, Australia; an octopus’ boy-toy love child in Cornwall, England; potato paparazzi in a series of snapshots taken with 2008 U.S. Presidential Candidates; and charged as racist in his “Tourist Tater” appearance as part of a Rhode Island tourism campaign.

Last year, life imitated toy as bicyclists in the Netherlands created a 1,000-kilometer long bike tour called the “PieperPad” (Potato Trail), donning potato costumes to ride the route designed to get people “out into the countryside and enjoy potatoes, a well loved Dutch staple, in a totally new way.” And as part of the new economic reality, Starbucks began using Mr. Potato Head as a model for the benefits of efficiency, requiring its managers to reassemble and box a Mr. Potato Head toy during training sessions.

But the growing Potato Head dynasty has found even more fertile ground in 2010, threatening to overtake “size of Rhode Island” in the media barrage of Ocean State references. The British press has routinely taken to calling England footballer Wayne Rooney as “Mr. Potato Head.” Most recently, Rod Liddle wrote in The Sunday Times: “So, a nation heaves a sigh of relief. After all that worry, Mr. Potato Head is back in the ample, if recently sagging, bosom of Manchester United.”

Earlier this spring, Mr. Potato Head joined Barbie in a group art exhibition – “Bodies Unbound: The Classical and Grotesque” at the Johnson Museum at Cornell. As reported in the Cornell Chronicle:

Elizabeth Emrich, curatorial assistant at the museum, believes the show’s success stems partly from the wide range of objects on display. Hasbro Inc.’s Mr. Potato Head, for example, demonstrates the potential for amusement in manipulating and distorting the human form and shows that children’s toys can find a place in art.

This summer, Birmingham, Ala., hosted “The Adventures of Mr. Potato Head” at the McWane Science Center, highlighted by a collection of Mr. Potato Head memorabilia from Birmingham’s own Dennis Martin. Matt Cuthbert at al.com writes:

…one kiosk ties it all together, and it suddenly makes sense. Kids are asked “What’s ahead for you?” And given the opportunity to place themselves in the role of several different careers – from gardener to astronaut. And that’s what Mr. Potato Head has always been about. You can make him into anything you want…His theme isn’t just imagination, but the opportunity to be and do anything. At one station, kids get the opportunity to exercise those imaginations and play with a huge tray full of Mr. Potato Head parts. Go ahead and give him princess shoes and a construction worker’s hat. Plug arms into his nose and mouth holes. He won’t mind – he’s been through worse (just see “Toy Story 3”).

Speaking of which, Mr. Potato Head excelled once again as a supporting actor in the third installment of the “Toy Story” trilogy, one of the best movies of the year, leading Ty Burr of The Boston Globe to comment: “‘Toy Story 3’ hits a high point of comic surrealism when Mr. Potato Head is forced to reinvent himself as Mr. Pita Bread Head – it’s harder than it looks, especially when a pigeon turns up…”

Also this summer, the Elvis Estate in Graceland teamed up with Hasbro to create Elvis Potato Heads. The first figure, timed to be released for Elvis Tribute Week in August, featured Elvis in a jumpsuit. The second figure, Elvis in black leather, will be available for Christmas.

Residents of San Francisco also made Potato Head news this year when some of them discovered a Mr. Potato Head staring back at them from newly issued blue recycling bins scattered throughout the city. According to writer Joe Eskenazi of SF Weekly:

The concept is simple: Mr. Potato Head would be more appropriately named Mr. Plastic, of which he is entirely crafted – and, short of plastic wrap or plastic bags, any sort of plastic is acceptable in a blue bin. But city residents don’t see bits of plastic when they glimpse Mr. Potato Head. They see vestiges of their childhood. And then they get angry.

Mark Westlund, a spokesman for the city’s Department of the Environment, confirmed that it will be removing Mr. Potato Head from future printed materials as soon as possible. Quite simply, San Franciscans have been too emotionally affected by the sight of Mr. Potato Head to absorb the intended message of placing him alongside detergent bottles, disposable cups, and other plastic items. As a result, the city has received a number of indignant phone calls. “They say, ‘That’s Mr. Potato Head! You can’t throw him away! You’ve gotta give him to the neighbor kids.!” Westlund says. “People identify with him so much.”

What does the future hold for Mr. Potato Head? Steam punk and robots, apparently.

Which leaves us with this week’s question: What explains the enduring popularity of Mr. Potato Head?

Sounding Off

There are rare mornings in the cove when my half-waking to a new day dawns in utter silence. For a blissful few moments, nothing stirs. No planes take off from across the bay at T.F. Green, their rumbling departures amplified by the acoustics of water and sky. No cars start in their driveways, idling in the cold, before coming and going along the narrow streets of the neighborhood. No garbage trucks clatter. No utility vehicles beep. No doors slam. The relentless screeching of the everyday manmade world hasn’t yet found its voice.

I thought of that this morning, when rain drummed against the windows, making its own pleasant waking music. For I have no quarrel with the wind or waves, thunder or rain, birdsong or even foghorn – one of the few human-created sounds that works in harmony with nature. There are noises that I welcome, so long as I am able to shut off the buzzing alarm before it begins its daily banshee call. But I’ve learned to appreciate any lingering silence wherever and whenever I find it.

In an interview with The Sun magazine, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton said that there may be only a dozen places in the country where a person can sit for 20 minutes without hearing a plane fly overhead or some other manmade noise. And Rhode Island isn’t one of them.

Examples are legion. Even my favorite places, such as the woods behind Hundred Acre Cove in Barrington, where the toll for moving through meditation and scenery is enduring a steady soundtrack of dull, distant traffic relentlessly motoring back-and-forth along the Wampanoag Trail, resounding across the water like a dying dentist’s drill. I went there on Saturday, before going to the library, where I found a seat in the “designated quiet area” next to two people who talked incessantly for two solid hours. Remember when whole libraries were “designated quiet areas?” How long before we have to start designating quiet areas in forests and churches?

My annual camping trip in the Maine woods used to end every night with the distant sound of the crashing waves against the rocks and the occasional disturbance of drunken harmonica or nearby bursts of laughter around the fireplace. Now, however, it is a constant parade of remote vehicle doors opening and locking. Where once there were ravens, now there are ring tones; owls in the pines have given way to car alarms.

As I type these words, another siren wails down High Street in Wakefield. The sirens are everywhere, even in once sleepy South County. I hear them constantly, whether jogging the bike path in Barrington, playing tennis at Hope High School in Providence, or spraying golf balls at Windmill Hill in Warren. These days, even recreation and reverie are merely fleeting pleasures between sirens; the cry of emergency is the default sound setting of civilization.

Hempton makes the point that all places once had a unique sonic identity, but everywhere people live now sounds like traffic. Artist Bill Fontana’s much-maligned sound installation of Rhode Island birdsong at the Kent County Courthouse makes this point rather eloquently. In the sprawl of Route 2, the birds that once sang these songs have been driven out – grasses and trees supplanted by concrete, wildlife replaced by chrome and engines. In this kind of world, the honking goose has become more invasive than the honking cab.

So is there a place in this state, outside of perhaps Block Island, where human sound rarely if ever intrudes? Where is your favorite quiet place in Rhode Island?

All Voters Eve

Sunday’s Halloween is over, and wind-ripped skeletons, broken pumpkins and toppled tombstones in yards throughout every Rhode Island neighborhood took on a more sober cast this morning in recognition of an even more bizarre festive season, culminating with tomorrow’s Election Day.

It’s been a wild ride so far, with the headless horsemen of the media falling all over themselves trying to explain why “FEAR” is the new “HOPE.” (Although the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations' motto, if not its name, seems safe for now.)

We even had our own Rhody Beast moment, when Democratic candidate for governor Frank Caprio uttered the “Shove it” heard ’round the world, using phraseology better suited to a Mamet play to tell President Obama – de facto leader of the Democratic Party – exactly what he thought of not getting the Dude of D.C.’s endorsement. It’s all very messy, especially given that Linc Chafee, a former Republican Senator from Rhody now running for governor as an Independent, is a favorite son in most Democratic households in the state, where many still remember crossing parties to vote for his father. Proving once again that yesterday’s Greek tragedy is today’s Rhode Island comedy.

If that weren’t enough, Bob Healey’s “Bullwinkle noir,” black-and-white political signs added a faux macabre touch to the predominance of red, white and blue in backyard campaign signage, a blur of names and phrases sharing the yard under tree ghosts, witches-on-broomsticks and – suddenly popular this year – phantom riders on motorcycles. (One nearby house even had a motorcycle dangling from an oak.) Whatever you think of Healey’s position, the candidate for lieutenant governor who is running on the pledge of eliminating the office of lieutenant governor has some of the most creative signage in politics, and it doesn’t hurt that he allows his own cartoonish mug – which looks like Ozzy Osbourne with a beard – to represent his cause.

Weird, wild stuff, as Johnny Carson (may he rest in peace) would have said.

Still, we have an election tomorrow, and, personally, I’m hoping we still have Providence Plantations by the end of the day. The argument for eliminating the phrase is essentially that plantations is a word associated with slavery. It wasn’t, back in the day, when it originally meant a “settlement,” “colony,” “estate or farm.” But even if today most people link the word “plantations” to the slave trade, the move to change the state’s name still rests entirely (albeit emotionally) on connotative grounds. It falls short historically, etymologically and geographically, given that Providence Plantations represented the area of the colony (Warwick and Providence) that wasn’t Aquidneck (or Rhode) Island. Somewhat ironically, as others have pointed out, it was primarily the "Rhode Island" part of Rhode Island that insisted on an economy of slavery, while the "Providence Plantations" part of Rhode Island largely and continually fought to eliminate the practice, establishing many first-in-America steps toward abolition in the process. It’s true that slavery is a significant part of the story of Rhode Island, and that by illuminating our inglorious past, we can begin to develop the conscience and compassion required of a civilized society. So let’s keep doing that. Let’s educate Rhode Islanders about our history without revising it.

Question of the week: What was worst Rhode Island political ad you saw this year?

The Offensive Offensive

This past Columbus Day, Providence residents woke up to see a statue of Christopher Columbus splattered in red paint and wearing a sign around its waist that read “MURDERER.” Similar acts of vandalism occurred on statues of Columbus throughout the country. Many in Rhode Island’s vast Italian American community reacted in outrage, with the Sons of Italy insisting that the state investigate and prosecute the statue desecration as a hate crime.

So maybe we should start arresting pigeons, too.

The incident and its resulting furor illustrate the lack of civility and level of debate in our society today. To many Italian Americans, Columbus is a legendary explorer and a cultural hero. To many Native Americans, he is a bloodthirsty butcher and evil oppressor. Somewhere in between lies a complex truth, but in an age that dismisses context, we will never find it. There are good reasons to debate Columbus’ place in history and the appropriateness of honoring him as a historical figure. But they are lost in a black-and-white world where all issues have distinctly polarized sides with no ability for light to penetrate.

Last year, Brown University eliminated Columbus Day from the calendar and replaced it with the generic Fall Weekend. That was offensive to me, not because it slighted the Italian explorer, but because it so banally shattered the storytelling inherent in the power of names and promoted branding over creative holiday conjuring. For many New Englanders, Columbus Day means getting into the car and meandering along rivers and over mountains to see leaves in their death throes, a metaphoric ritual (plus cider donuts and pumpkin pie) that connects us to all explorers – from the intrepid to the incompetent – and satisfies the human impulse to seek beyond our confines.

But Columbus Day isn’t the only controversial holiday. Practically every holiday offends someone. Consider Thanksgiving. Long a part of the New England and American chowder of history and myth, popularly celebrated by families at feast and high school football games, Thanksgiving is a National Day of Mourning to many indigenous Americans. On that day, members of the Wampanoag Tribe protest outside the grounds of Plimoth Plantation. Animal rights groups condemn the mass turkey slaughter. Hispanic Americans want the history books to reflect that earlier Thanksgivings, involving the Spanish, took place in Florida and Texas (while conveniently ignoring that American Indians have been celebrating Thanksgiving feasts on their own land for millennia).

Or what of Christmas? ‘Tis the season when the late Jerry Falwell’s “Friend or Foe” campaign still has legs. Woe to the unfortunate soul who accidentally slips and wishes the wrong person a “happy holiday” at Christmas. The merry season is a basket case of controversies. The devout protest its consumerism. Pagans blame Christians for co-opting their rituals. People like me bemoan the fact that we have to hear “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” starting in September.

As we approach Halloween – America’s second most popular holiday, even though it’s not very big with the fundamentalists – it would be nice to think you could wear your scary Rush Limbaugh mask without offending anybody. But you can’t. Not anymore. Better to play it safe. Stick with the Spider-Man outfit. Limit conversation to “trick-or-treat.” And keep a few buckets of red paint handy, just in case.

This week’s question: If you could change any holiday, which would it be?

Local Haunts

The ghosts of Rhode Island are a motley lot. They are scattered throughout the state, a collection of mysterious farmers, soldiers, lightkeepers, headmasters, stable hands, monks and nuns haunting swamps, graveyards, churches, schools, carousels, renovated barns, lighthouses, nursing homes, monasteries, fire stations, country clubs, hotels, sororities, fraternities and tourist attractions.

As chronicled on Web sites such as Shadowlands and Ghost Traveller and TV shows like “Ghost Hunters,” Rhode Island is rich in ghost lore, with apparitions that include Colonial settlers, Narragansett and Wampanoag warriors, Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, Victorian women and spirits animated as recently as the age of disco. Some of them are named Patrick, Barbara, George and Banquo. Edgar Allan Poe is reportedly still strolling down Benefit Street in Providence some nights, pining for his lost love, although he is also spotted in Baltimore, where he was buried, which is difficult to explain, even with the low air fare on Southwest from T.F. Green to Crab City.

They are dressed in red capes and black dresses, wearing military uniforms or war paint, the same wardrobe night after night, year after year, suggesting that fashion is somewhat lacking in the afterlife version of The Gap. Not all of our ghosts manifest themselves in figural form, though. Some are orbs. Some are blue lights. One in Warren floats around as a grayish-blue cloud - not far from seven heads sometimes seen hovering over seven poles near the Kickemuit River.

They can alter the weather, creating cold spots or gusts. Some can shove and grab with invisible force. Most make noise in typical ways - slamming doors, shattering china, rattling silverware and turning on radios. In some parts of Rhode Island, ghosts are still making the sounds of previous centuries, an aural spectrum that includes cannons firing, horses galloping and carousel music.

In addition to our resident spirits, Rhody also hosts phantom ships, trains, horse carriages and horse-and-rider varieties of transportation ghosts, making a kind of RIPTA for the eternally restless.

The ghost at the Roger Williams University Theatre in Bristol has been dubbed the aforementioned Banquo. It is thought that he is a former farm hand who froze to death in the hayloft of one of the barns on site, before they were converted into the theater. The Cumberland Monastery is crowded with ghosts, including a monk who moves books, a phantom horse rider on the trails and a child in the swamp. One punctual spirit appears upon a lake in Foster each year on the opening day of trout season.

Eerie voices have been caught on tape recorders and unexplained objects have been captured on videotape, but so far there are no reports of Rhode Island ghosts Tweeting or posting on Facebook, suggesting two possibilities: 1) Ghosts are creatures of analog, not digital: or 2) The phenomenon of social media is just slow to catch on in the spectral market.

What is your favorite Rhode Island ghost story?

Size Archive
From Rebecca Solnit’s “Wanderlust: A History of Walking,” published in 2000 by Viking, on page 7 in the chapter “Tracing a Headland: An Introduction”:

I became in the 1980s an antinuclear activist and participated in the spring demonstrations at the Nevada Test Site, a Department of Energy site the size of Rhode Island in southern Nevada where the United States has been detonating nuclear bombs – more than a thousand to date – since 1951.

Loose Leaf

It was a three-hawk drive to work this morning, the roads empty thanks to Christopher Columbus and the holiday some Americans celebrate in his honor (while others, including the population of Brown University, wrap the Italian explorer into a more nebulous celebration called “Fall Weekend”). The barren drive made for an easy commute, a diversion worthy of an Explorers’ Day, with leaves just beginning to turn and red-tails perched like statue idols on street lanterns along Route 4.

Traditionally the weekend most associated with spectacular New England foliage, Columbus Day and its Saturday/Sunday predecessors got clobbered by a stray hot summer or global climate change or whatever else is going on out there. Based on our own experiences, tour buses traveled landscapes alternatively still green-leafed, withered and dried, or dominated by large swaths of deadstick, with trunks and branches in their wind-stripped, rain-ripped forms, more suited for winter. Nothing peaked on the Mass Pike. The gentle slopes of western Massachusetts and Vermont offered their satisfying fare of glistening rivers and buzzing villages, covered bridges and country stores, but were devoid of the Oz-like color we’ve come to expect with colder nights and the thickening coats of goats and dogs.

New Hampshire saved us, especially the stretch between Campton and Canterbury, and the communities along the Pemigewasset River, our old stomping grounds, where the blend of cool green-and-blue evergreens wove seamlessly among crimson-and-orange sugar maples and the brilliant yellows of birches, blaring like bugles. The counterpoint of dramatic mountains, with their purple shadows making still life scenes on a canvas of blue sky, and the spectacular sweep of wooded rainbows along the slopes and riverbanks, satisfied the ritualistic itch that gets under the skin of most New Englanders every fall.

So we can wait a little longer in Rhode Island for whatever color will come this year, appreciating the individual trees and the little groves for providing moments of tranquility in the midst of a noisy and harsh political season, when knee-high cardboard signs in the weedy grass compete with Halloween decorations and the gathering hordes of pundits, press, politicians and PR hacks appear everywhere, shouting through their megaphones like competing carnival barkers, poisoning the air with cackling crow noises.

On the back roads of Rhode Island, as we prepare for autumn’s late arrival, we see dozens of witches, already snared mid-flight, having flown their broomsticks smack-dab into trees and telephone poles – in the same locations, we suspect, where each Christmas we find skeletal Santa Clauses stuck in chimneys. The gourd-happy members of the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Association have weighed their monster vegetables at Frerichs Farm in Warren. The gang at “Ghost Hunters,” a “Scooby-Doo” crew for adults, whose founders work as Roto-Rooter plumbers by day and investigators of the paranormal by night, threw Little Rhody a bone – launching its new season by examining the spectral happenings at Rose Island Lighthouse. (The same episode included an investigation of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The best moment: When Jason and Grant make an appeal to the baseball ghosts by saying “We’re from Rhode Island. We’re Red Sox fans.” You’d think that would get a few Yankee poltergeists stirring.)

We savor new autumn beers like Vermont’s Magic Hat IPA on Tour and Maine’s Peak Organic Fall Summit Ale, watching woodpiles in the neighborhood grow into pyramids against chain-link fences and observing herons hunting in the eelgrass along the cove. We ramble along at Four Town Farm – where horses and harvest scenes occupy the crossroads between Seekonk, Swansea, East Providence and Barrington – pausing to enjoy a murder of crows looting a pumpkin patch, the black birds and the orange gourds mixing the colors of Halloween.

The days shorten. The light lessens. Autumn moves like a cat in the rivergrass – senses heightened, stalking its ghost, seeing what we don’t in the tangle that lies just beyond.

What is your favorite autumn ritual?

One Day in Providence

Providence is a city of potholes and rabbit holes. The former are rarely fixed, the latter are always on the move, making the Providence underground a notoriously elusive scene. Perhaps that’s because so much of it exists above ground, in artist’s lofts and cold warehouses, abandoned stores and condemned buildings. And that’s just the art scene. Sex and crime also have their own thriving undergrounds, but it’s the artists that have made the city a haven for cheap, radical, do-it-yourself creating, and the clues are everywhere.

They’re stapled to telephone poles and street kiosks, chalked on brick and pavement, plastered to Dumpsters and graffitied on bridges and buildings, appearing one day and vanishing the next, leaving only the trace evidence of stapled fragments and faint chalk to suggest their whereabouts, whenabouts and whatabouts.

The patron saint Andre the Giant still stares down from the odd red octagonal stop sign, warning all passersby to OBEY. That word may have evolved nationally into HOPE or CHANGE and a wrestler may have morphed into a President, but Andre’s stoic mug still shows up now and then as a ghost and an echo of a simpler time, in the same way that pagan symbols often find a niche in the carvings, rituals and texts of modern religious iconography.

Artists, like most folks engaged in a trade, communicate in code. In the past you could find their tracks and ciphers, runes and hieroglyphics at the Price Rite Dumpster, Eastern Butcher Block, Sparkle City, Pink Rabbit, Dirt Palace, Gold Mine, Anarchy Mark’s Basement, Castle Cinema, Columbus Theater, Building 16, Old North Cemetery, Cradle of Filth, Church of the Messiah, Firehouse 19 or Candle Factory. Some no longer exist; others retain their roles as urban tableaux rasa.

More than most cities, Providence is a kind of living canvas. Edgy and dodgy in spots, dotted with entrapments and enchantments, snags and escapes. It is a place where the line separating art from trash is finer than anywhere else, given how much sheer creativity is generated from the recycled detritus of the city's crumbling landscape. A place where garbage dumps are treasure troves. And a place where, if you're a visitor, free parking can be either the holy grail or a false idol.

Earlier this year, I parked on Benefit Street and wandered down to the R.I. State Council on the Arts offices across from the State House. One Andre the Giant stared down at me from a traffic light across from the RISD Museum. Another gazed out from a RISD Rides bus stop. A woman got off a bicycle to post a flyer on a street lamp, a notice of a two-night exhibition of paintings and installations titled “Dirty Laundry & Clean Thoughts,” scheduled for a house on Kinsley Ave. later that weekend. Graffiti on the RISD Museum wall, near the lion mosaics, revealed communication by chalk, mostly anonymous love notes, punctuated by hearts and exclamation points. The space between the concrete steps and the shadowy terrace at the second-floor entrance to the Chace Center was filled with odd noises – typewriter tapping, rain, thunder and lightning, church bells. The work of Wakefield storyteller, educator and artist Marc Levitt, “Audio Winds #1,” a multi-channel audio installation, produced sounds that might have been heard at this precise location during previous centuries. The walk continued, past yellow masking tape on brickwork spelling “YO” and pink chalk scribbles and doodles complaining about finals. I meandered down to a sidewalk with a series of stencils – a tire, a dove and a splayed human body. All the while the city was buzzing was jackhammers and beeping construction trucks. Street corners were wrapped in yellow caution tape. Orange cones and red signs barricaded deep holes in the road, where construction workers wearing hardhats popped in and out, chasing their own white rabbits. And when I returned to my car, still sitting under the watchful eye of Andre, the passenger side window was smashed, my iPod and cell phone were gone, and I was left to ponder a maxim I have long believed: Theft is the only true art.

What is your Rhode Island crime story?

Moose on the Run

One of the more fascinating aspects of Rhode Island politics every four years is the race for the lieutenant governor’s office, mainly because perennial independent candidate Robert J. Healey Jr. of the Cool Moose Party has run on the platform of abolishing the job. His contention that $99,000 in salary (along with associated fees of staffing, workspace, supplies and other expenditures placing the total budget at just under $1 million) is too much for Rhode Islanders to stomach for a position whose official duty is to replace the governor if he or she dies or becomes incapacitated, has struck a chord with many residents, especially during an election cycle in which voters seem inclined to shake up the status quo, whatever the consequences.

Healey, a Barrington resident, spent the last few years owning and managing The Cheese Plate in Warren, a delightfully offbeat, European-style dining spot that he recently sold. He has run twice previously, garnering surprising support and increasing name recognition, and in today’s political climate, some pundits believe that this election may represent his best chance to win.

His campaign posters – all of them parodying aspects of culture – add a certain charm to a political season dominated by dull signs and attack ads. One conjures John Lennon with Healey wearing a New York City T-shirt under the words: “Imagine No Lieutenant Governor…It’s Easy If You Try.” In another, he’s The Lone Ranger under the words “The Lone Candidate Rides Again.” A third shows him as what appears to be Napoleon (“Glory is Fleeting But Obscurity is Forever”). My favorite shows side-by-side Healeys spoofing Grant Wood’s iconic painting “American Gothic.”

Even if Healey wins, a constitutional amendment would be required to abolish the lieutenant governor’s office. Healey pledges that, if elected, he would serve but would collect no salary and hire no staff, thereby saving taxpayers $1 million for each year of his term, totaling $4 million for the term’s duration. His opponents, incumbent Democrat Elizabeth H. Roberts and independent Robert P. Venturini (of local cable’s “An Hour with Bob” and “Bob’s Big Adventures” fame), both believe in the merits of the office. In a bizarre and slightly sleazy side note, Heidi Rogers, the winner of the Republican primary (who also wants to eliminate the office) withdrew from the race just days after her victory, leaving Republicans with nobody on the ballot. (Rogers urged Republicans to support Healey.)

Cool Moose has been around a lot longer than the various Mad Hatters comprising America’s Tea Parties, but these days the old expression that “politics makes strange bedfellows” should perhaps be amended with an assist from Shakespeare. In politics today, “All the world’s a mattress,” and a lumpy one at that.

Given that Rhode Island’s lieutenant governor could go the way of the bowyer (maker of bows, arrows, crossbows and bolts) and pardoner (seller of indulgences) during an age that desperately cries out for job creation, Half Shell wants to know: Are there any archaic jobs worth bringing back in the new millennium? Court jester? Town crier? Vestal virgin?

Rhody Five-0

The hand-chalked menu board on the Block Island ferry includes “Advil” and “Dramamine” among the more traditional fare of hot dogs, bagels and potato chips, but there were few takers during the gentle swells of yesterday’s ride, with most passengers favoring the medicinal benefits of Bloody Marys and Narragansetts over their pharmaceutical counterparts. A beautiful late-summer day drew scattered crowds to the docks of Galilee – a motley mix of drinkers, surfers and families – all of us taking an escape day to the island 13 miles from Point Judith.

On the Block, breakers slammed against the jetties, sending giant plumes of sea spray in all directions, forcing the cast-and-reel fishermen closer to shore. Wave-skimmers, paddle boarders, boogie boarders and surfers challenged the unpredictable breaks, occasionally getting dumped into the violent white froth like bits of cork flying off from champagne spilled at a boat christening. One skimmer, staggering to get up after being sucker-punched by a wave, looked out on the horizon to see his board floating away. He gave it up for lost, but a huge ‘comber rolled in, gathered it up like a toothpick, and sent it careening onto the beach. The message was clear: The sea wasn’t done with him yet.

The day’s overall calm was in stark contrast to the surf, which was wild and rough. But Rhode Islanders learned long ago that if you want to know the weather, forget the forecasts. Ask a surfer. The men and women who live for waves are more passionate about meteorology than the average weatherman. And, maybe because they live so closely in tune with nature, something instinctual kicks in, giving them an edge over the broadcasters with their blue screens and Doppler radar.

So it was timely to receive Don Gentile’s “A Meteorological Guide to Predicting Surf on the Rhode Island Coast” (published by Rosedog Books of Pittsburgh) in the mail today. A lifelong Misquamicut resident and self-described “avid waterman and amateur meteorologist,” Gentile has produced yet another one of those Very Rhode Island books that deserves a place on the shelf for readers who enjoy the quirky culture of the Ocean State. A mix of weather data, local color and folksy memoir, the book is a meditation on the “science of swell prediction” and is filled with observations that could only come from a surfer. Consider what went through his mind during the ravages of Hurricane Gloria in 1985:

Is the worst really going to happen? Is a hurricane bigger than the 1938 hurricane about to devastate the Misquamicut Beach? Will my house survive? Will the swell be rideable after work?

One of the most helpful sections is a description of 14 of mainland Rhode Island’s legendary surfing spots (12 of which are located in the waters off South County). They include such colorful locales as “Dicky’s,” named after a hot dog stand in the parking lot of the long-gone Wreck Bar in Misquamicut; “Fenway” and “Point Panic” in Weekapaug; “Deep Hole” in Matunuck; “K-39,” “Monahans” and “Little Rincon” in Narragansett; and “Ruggles” off Ruggles Avenue in Newport.

With Hawaii Five-0’s scheduled reboot tonight, we thought it might be a good time to remind the world the Ocean State has some world-class breaks of its own (especially during the hurricane season of, well, now, and continuing into the coldest months of the year, when nor’easters blast away at our beaches). Rhody may not have the Kahuna culture of Hawaii, but we do have our own surfing Peter Pan. Also, Salve Regina in Newport and the University of Rhode Island (with campuses in Kingston and Narragansett) both rank among America’s top surfing colleges. (Take that, Harvard dudes.)

Leaving us with only one question: What classic TV series would you like to see remade?

Buzz Kill

Today’s Daily Beast asks the question: “When’s the last time something exciting happened in Delaware?” The Web site is referencing the state’s bruising but politically intriguing Senate primary contest pitting a couple of red-leaning Blue Hens – one a moderate, the other a staunch conservative. But, here at Half Shell, we’re more interested in the wider ramifications of the question.

Delaware residents once proposed giving away some of their land so that Little Del could reap the cultural attention that Little Rhody gets for being the smallest state in the USA – media props that include, but are not limited to, being an official standard of measurement for anything in the neighborhood of 1000 to 1,500 square miles, serving as a common punch line at the end of any joke about size and earning undue influence as a popular point of reference on The Weather Channel.

Anyway, enough about Delaware. The real reason for this post is to rephrase the Daily Beast’s question: “When’s the last time something exciting happened in Rhode Island?”

Some folks may point to the floods of last March. (Conveniently, Independent Newspapers has just published “Raging Waters,” the story of “The South County Flood of 2010” in words and pictures, available in Wakefield at our 10 High St. offices, Healy News and Damon’s Hardware.) Those old enough, however, can always play the natural disaster trump cards, including “The Blizzard of ’78” (Feb. 6, 1978) or “The Hurricane of ’38” (Sept. 21, 1938).

Rhode Island, not being much of a “buzz”-generating state, gets excited about things that draw yawns elsewhere. Sailing, for instance. Folks not only sail here, they watch other sailors sail from their vantage points on boats and docks and piers and island perches – especially island perches that serve frozen drinks. So maybe the last exciting thing that ever happened here occurred on Sept. 26, 1983, when the Australians won the America’s Cup, yanking the 12-meter yachting trophy out of Newport for the first time, well, ever. And if the Cup races ever were to return to this corner of the Atlantic, we might just have to declare a month-long state holiday, which we’d probably call, given the current vernacular, “Rhodypalooza.”

The other thing that generates excitement in Rhode Island is scandal. We’re not talking about the daily sort of scandal that fills our airwaves and papers and diners and “bubbla” talk on a pretty much every-second basis. We’re talking epic scandal. The kind that Greeks named Homer wrote poems about. So Paris kidnapped Helen from a Greek king and started the Trojan War. Big deal. In the 1990s, we had a guy, a fugitive banker named Joe “Puppy Dog” Mollicone, who single-handedly managed to collapse the state’s entire financial system. Suddenly our credit cards weren’t worth the plastic they were made out of, and Rhode Island money was deemed no good anywhere in the world. (Not for the first time. Something similar happened in Rhode Island during our Revolutionary youth, when we were still deciding whether we wanted to go along with this America thing. An excess of paper money was printed, which farmers took at face value but merchants declined to match. At one point, the legislature passed a law commanding everyone to consider paper the equivalent of gold. The merchants responded by shutting their shops. In the summer of 1876 in the once-thriving cities of Providence and Newport, no business whatsoever was conducted, except in the pubs. At Half Shell we like to think of that as the first “Rhodypalooza.”)

The thing of it is, Mollicone, after a stint in prison, still lives here and still owes us cash. He’s not as visible as he once was, but you can probably friend him on Facebook.

Other days when exciting things happened in Rhode Island:

Sometime in June, 1936: Roger Williams dropped anchor. Started his own colony.
July 19, 1769: British sloop Liberty destroyed at Newport, representing the first overt act of violence against British authority in America.
June 9, 1772: British schooner Gaspee burned in Narragansett Bay, an act of defiance commemorated annually at a Warwick festival.
July 25, 1965: Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival.

That’s about it.

Waiting for Earl

The first drops have not yet fallen from the hurricane that lurks off the Atlantic coast, but Earl should arrive sometime later this morning, nearly a week after the first forecasts predicted the track could sweep through New England. Just yesterday Earl was a Category 4 monster, ranked as one of the worst hurricanes to visit the neighborhood in 20 years, threatening to grow in power. Today it looks like it might just degrade into a gray, gusty, rainy day. The kind of day, in other words, that New England used to take for granted in between blasts of summer sunshine.

The Hurricane of ’38, that iconic storm that all young Rhode Islanders learned about at our bedsides and kitchen tables, the tempest that has become a kind of New England version of “Beowulf,” substituting weather for dragons, pummeled a state that was unaware and unprepared. But now we have six days of Doppler Radar showing the giant green blob creeping up the East Coast like a sick sea turtle turning in circles. We have The Weather Channel broadcasting endlessly from every beach on the Eastern Seaboard. We have Weather Underground and various Storm-Trackers and the slow crawl under “The Office” or the Red Sox game, announcing school closings and beach closings and tropical storm warning updates.

Earl has been a kind of shadow companion throughout the work week, poking us in the ribs as we went about our daily business of meeting deadlines, fulfilling social obligations and commuting between places. He was everywhere, part of every conversation, whether you tuned into radio, television or Internet, whether you visited the grocery store or the pizza joint, or whether you were just kibitzing with friends or co-workers. The old stories, photographs and video of hurricanes of yore were dragged out by the media, a succession of ’38, Carol, Gloria and Bob. Pub TVs usually tuned to ESPN had switched to Earl, 24-7. Communities announced voluntary evacuations – begging the question, what exactly is a voluntary evacuation? Technically, couldn’t I voluntarily evacuate anytime I’d like, or do I now need permission from a town official? Did I miss a memo?

A local politician even took Earl seriously enough to send an e-mail to newsrooms yesterday afternoon with a four-line bold headline that read:

With Unpredictability of Hurricane Earl, Independent
Candidate for State Senate Kevin O’Neill Asks His
Supporters and Constituents in South Kingstown and
Block Island to remove his lawn signs today.

The candidate was worried about damage to people and property presumably caused by political signs with his name on it uprooting and swirling around in 140 mile per hour winds like the thunderbolts of Zeus. And it’s true, a rash of voters impaled by political signs might have some effect on the polls.

But such is the way of weather these days. Long before they strike, hurricanes are bloated with the precipitation of hype and hot air. Better, as always, to pay attention to nature. All week the bees have been in a chaotic frenzy, swarming and stinging. The tree frogs have been noisier than normal at dusk. The cicadas have ratcheted up their heat songs during the week of 90-plus-degree weather that preceded Earl’s arrival. All of them telling us, in their own way, not to forget the raincoat on our way out the door today.

What is your favorite storm story?

[Blogger's note: Early blog today because of Monday's Labor Day holiday, when any remnants of Earl will be confined to the dryer. Back on Sept. 13.]

James Woods Has a Posse

The parking lot attendant at the New Bedford ferry to Martha’s Vineyard is a James Woods fan – and not just because the former Rhode Islander made his bones in Hollywood and still manages to get home every now and then. (Apologies for keeping my source anonymous, but when I spoke with her, I didn’t tell her I might be preserving her comments for posterity. Those determined to confirm that this conversation took place can find her at the ferry dock seven days a week.)

“I love all of his movies,” she told me, speaking of the one-time Warwick resident who, according to the blog site NNDB, has earned fame as an actor by playing “a long list of ruthless creeps and cold-blooded bastards.”

While I waited for the ferry to Oak Bluffs, she went on: “A few weeks ago he just drove up, with his wife or girlfriend or whatever, she looked about 20, and we chatted. He got out of the car and asked his wife or girlfriend or whatever to take a picture of us. He asked my e-mail and I told him but he didn’t write anything down so I figured, yeah, whatever. Two days later the picture came through. He remembered.”

In fact, most of the celebrities that come through New Bedford en route to the Vineyard, she said, are pretty down to earth.

“Bill Murray is just a regular guy,” she said. “He brought his family over to see the fireworks the other night. Just drove right up, dropped them off at the ferry, took the car to the Whale’s Tooth (parking lot) and got on the bus with everybody else.”

Last year, Jim Belushi stood next to her for half-an-hour, waiting for a ride.

“He kept saying what a beautiful place this was,” she said. “Real working-class, but beautiful. He loves it here. Of course, he’s not looking for a job around here. Might think differently then.”

Rise of the blue crabs
Rhode Island water temperatures are running three to five degrees higher than average this summer. While it’s irresponsible to cite a much-hotter-than-usual summer as a definite sign of global climate change, that caution will do little to assuage the fears of those who worry about the Baltimorification (or Delawarification) of the Ocean State. Where Rhode Island once represented the northern reach for many sea creatures, now it seems to be within easy reach of any southern swimmer. But what about the local marine life – lobster, cod, flounder – that prefer a colder bath?

The changing nature of species migrating to Rhody or establishing residence here might be a more reliable indicator that something’s different, weather-wise. Last week a 6-foot sea turtle was spotted in Rhode Island Sound. While certainly not foreign to these waters, large sea turtles – including leatherbacks and loggerheads – are being reported in unusually high numbers by Rhode Island boaters, who’ve seen them paddling in the waters between Block Island and Watch Hill.

Even stranger is the influx of blue crabs, some of them monsters in their own right, crawling around Narragansett Bay. The blue crab invasion, which was also reported on the Vineyard during my stay there, seems to have taken hold everywhere, including Waterplace Park just below the Providence Place Mall. Now, I’ve got nothing against blue crabs, especially on the boil with some cold Narragansetts on ice. But if gaining the blue crab means losing the lobster, Half Shell may have to migrate to Nova Scotia.

The crazy season
The November elections are just around the corner, which means it’s time for New England’s favorite biennial autumn activity – voter fraud. The Cranston Board of Canvassers recently received notarized voter registration cards for Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolph Valentino and Dracula. The astute reader may note that at least two of these voters are dead (well, one is undead), all of them wore (or wear) sunglasses and none of them are Rhode Islanders. But that didn’t stop somebody from notarizing their registration cards. If I were a betting man, I’d say we’re looking for a notary public named Renfield. Then again, here in bloggerland, it doesn’t get much better than the possibility that Dracula could cast the deciding vote for the next Rhode Island governor.

This week’s back-to-school question: What did you do on your summer vacation?

Postscript: Lament for a Lobster

We here at Half Shell have a heavy heart and a guilty conscience after learning that Rhody’s celebrity yellow lobster – whose discovery garnered headlines across the globe – died last week, having succumbed to the cruel ravages of fame and the public’s insatiable demand to be part of the phenomenon.

After too many days in the spotlight in which the lobster was repeatedly manhandled, it was sent to the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus for rest and recuperation. But apparently all of the attention had overstressed the lobster – dubbed “Tyler,” in honor of the 9-year-old New Hampshire boy whose mother took the first images of Rhody lobsterman Denny Ingram and his find that circulated around the world. Despite the best efforts of Bay Campus employees to provide him with plenty of oxygen and food, optimal water temperature and ample places to hide, Tyler’s immune system just gave out.

So it’s a sad day here at Half Shell, especially knowing that because of our incessant need for column and blog fodder, we contributed to the demise of a crustacean that never sought the limelight. While we generally espouse a life that avoids the celebrity treacle of supermarket tabloids, TV buzz and the widespread stalkerazzi mindset, we got sucked into the yellow lobster’s media glow. Most of us could care less about seeing the stars in cement along Hollywood Boulevard, but if someone wanted to brand a yellow lobster in the brick and cobblestone of Thames Street in Newport, we would make the pilgrimage to pay our respects.

Bloggers and lobsters have a lot in common. Both are bottom-feeders. The truth is, if the yellow lobster had emerged from its pot in a shell of a different color, it would have been boiled red and eaten two weeks ago. But that doesn’t absolve us from our role in killing the crustacean with curiosity. It’s too late to make it up to Tyler, but perhaps his legacy can live on. Someone with musical talent in Rhode Island could start a band called Yellow Lobster. (I’m thinking a reggae/rock/sea chantey group.) A village in need of a tourist attraction could host the Yellow Lobster Seafood Festival. The ghost of Yellow Lobster could join the living gargoyles at WaterFire Providence. Blount Seafood could mount a giant Yellow Lobster on the side of I-95 opposite the New England Pest Control’s Big Blue Bug, creating a gateway of kitsch in Rhode Island. A new dish, the Yellow Lobster Roll – lobster salad made with mustard instead of mayo – could be introduced at Hemenway’s.

What is the best way to pay tribute to the life of the yellow lobster?

[Blogster’s note: Half Shell will be taking a one-week hiatus to hunt and consume various sea creatures while avoiding presidential entourages in the waters off Vineyard Sound next week. Back Monday, Aug. 30.)

Sea Quest

You know you live in Rhode Island when more people would rather see a yellow lobster than run into Jeri Ryan, the actress who played Seven of Nine in “Star Trek: Voyager” and starred in “Boston Public” and “Leverage,” and who can now be spotted filming scenes for the medical drama “Body of Proof” in the Ocean State. (She’s third from the left in the photo.)

The yellow lobster, a one-in-30-million find, was plucked from Narragansett Bay’s East Passage by Denny Ingram, and resided for a week in a blue basket inside a little shack selling lobster and crabs at the Fishermen’s Co-op on the State Pier in Newport before being donated to the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus in Narragansett for display and study. Since I chronicled my encounter with the rare crustacean on the paper side of things this week, I’ll spare my ink-stained Thursday readers the redundancy, but the trip also prompted thoughts on what an odd summer it has already been for sea creature sightings in these parts.

Although it remains nameless, the yellow lobster has received the most global press for a local marine animal since the mammal dubbed “the Warwick manatee” took the scenic route through Rhode Island a few summers ago. (I even remember a sign outside of Jim’s Dock with a drawing of the manatee, welcoming it to Jerusalem. The manatee, which eventually reached Cape Cod, reportedly snacked from a drainage pipe in Warwick on its journey. In the drawing at Jim’s Dock, the cartoon manatee claimed that the chowder and clam cakes tasted better in South County.)

Earlier this April, nearly 100 North Atlantic right whales – representing about a quarter of the entire population – were spotted cavorting just off Block Island. All summer, reports of great white sharks feasting on seals off Chatham on Cape Cod have raised anxieties among local beachgoers. The sighting of another shark last week off Horseneck Beach in Westport, just a stone’s throw away from Rhody, only increased the collective worry. Of course, fishermen have long known that Rhode Island waters are part of Shark Alley, a stretch that runs along the extreme Atlantic edge from Long Island to Block Island to Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket, where some of the biggest and fiercest sharks in the world congregate. But it’s rare to see them so frequently close to shore. Then again, there’s a fishermen’s maxim: “Two summers of seals, then a summer of great whites.” With seal populations exploding in Narragansett Bay, we may all need a bigger boat.

Give the sharks credit, they’ve got great timing. The Horseneck Beach shark popped up on the first day of "Shark Week," the Discovery Channel’s seven-day extravaganza celebrating all things shark. As cable TV’s longest-running and most-watched series of programs, “Shark Week” is as much a part of popular culture as the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards. It also happens to be the 35th anniversary of “Jaws,” which was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard but is remembered fondly hereabouts as the movie in which Quint (Robert Shaw) drank Narragansett by the can.

This week’s question: What name should we give the yellow lobster?

Feeling Massachusetts

Lately Rhode Island headlines have been dominated by stories about rich guys from Massachusetts playing ball with Little Rhody while pushing Taxachusetts to the sidelines. And Bay Staters are not happy about it.

Let’s take them one at a time.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who owns homes in Boston and Nantucket, decided to base his $7-million yacht, Isabel, in Rhode Island. By doing so, Kerry would be spared a one-time sales tax of $437,500 in addition to about $70,000 in annual excise taxes. After island-hopping between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard since the Fourth of July weekend, Kerry recently placed his 76-foot sloop in a Portsmouth shipyard, where it is undergoing routine maintenance. In Rich Guy Land, this is what’s known as good business, since what Kerry is doing is perfectly legal. But in an age when states are struggling to stay solvent, it’s also the kind of thing that reminds everyone how ridiculously lopsided the rules in Rich Guy Land can be. Being an experienced sailor, Kerry recognized the ill political winds blowing broadside and quickly tacked, informing the Massachusetts Department of Revenue last week that he had every intention of paying taxes to the home port – even if the vessel isn’t docked there.

Even more controversial was the R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s decision to guarantee a $75 million loan to former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s video-game firm, 38 Studios. By procuring the loan from Rhody taxpayers, Schilling can proceed with plans to move his studio from a Maynard, Mass. mill complex to somewhere comparable in Rhode Island. As Providence Journal columnist Bob Kerr noted in a piece last Wednesday:

The $75 million is 60 percent of the guaranteed loans that the state can grant for high-tech and knowledge-based companies under a law passed in June.

So that’s 60 percent for a video game shrouded in secrecy that may or may not have the breadth and scope of Pong – and 40 percent for anyone else out there that might have a good idea. As someone who hasn’t played a video game since a brief college flirtation with Joust and a strange, mid-1980s obsession with the Arkanoid machine at Giro’s Spaghetti House in Peace Dale, I’m not qualified to judge the potential of video-game development to the Rhode Island economy.

The bigger question for Rhode Island is why are we suddenly dueling with Massachusetts over yachts and video games? Sure, we’ve had our differences before. In 1658, some Pawtuxet residents got so fed up with the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations that they pledged their allegiance to Massachusetts (only to change their minds four years later when presumably they realized they’d have to pay Bay Colony taxes on their horses). In 1746, King George settled a dispute between the two states by giving Rhode Island “the Attleborough Gore,” making up most of what is now known as the East Bay. Despite these flare-ups, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have generally co-existed as big brother and little brother in the New England statehood. Certainly the relationship is nowhere near as contentious as the one between Rhody and Connecticut. The next time we make it through a generation without some Nutmegger getting the itch to dispute our border and claim our beaches will be the first.

And yet, given the recently frosty climate between Bay and Ocean States, I guess the question needs to be asked: What would be worth stealing from Massachusetts?

Handle with Care

Every time you think that American culture has reached absolute nadir, you look deep into the abyss only to discover…more abyss. A New York company has come up with a plan to stick a celebrity in a box in Bryant Park then invite visitors to take a peek to see who’s inside (but not before signing a non-disclosure release). Our nation’s celebrity fixation being what it is, there’s no doubt that the “starbox” will be a big hit. Before long, B-list celebs will be lining up in droves to be Duct-taped into cardboard boxes all over Manhattan, the way they used to scramble for gigs on “Tales from the Crypt,” “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island.” Speculation is rampant on who might be the first boxed celebrity, but the bigger question might be: Can all of New York really keep a secret?

While pondering the notion that America at its lowest common denominator has always been a cross between freak show and peep show, the staff at Half Shell has found a subversive silver lining in the starbox gambit. We like to call it “Rhode Islander in a Box.” It’s a complete rip-off of the New York idea (payback for messing with our chowder) but it does allow for comic possibilities.

Rhode Islander in a Box, or RIB, could be transported by Segway to all corners of Little Rhody, depending on the occasion. We could unveil Rhode Islander in a Box at WaterFire Providence, for example, somewhere between the stone gargoyles and the Del’s Lemonade cart. Rhode Islander in a Box could be rented out for Gaspee Days, the Black Ships Festival or the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Newport. It could have its own float at the Bristol Fourth of July Parade or its own Providence Art Window. At all of these locations, for a nominal fee to cover shipping and handling, viewers could actually gawk at the Rhode Islander in a Box for a predetermined length of time, an activity that on the surface is completely pointless, but on further examination, is even more so.

The key question, of course, is: Which Rhode Islanders would you like to see in a box? Keep in mind that these need to be living, breathing Rhode Islanders. (Note to self: The box will need air holes.) We’re not looking for Rhode Islanders who, may they rest in peace, have already been boxed. Roger Williams himself, tree root though he may be, does not belong in a box. We want contemporary, box-worthy Rhode Islanders: Like, say, Joe Mollicone. James Woods. Richard Hatch. Arlene Violet. Maybe a Cardi Brother. Maybe a Farrelly Brother. Maybe the alto saxophone player from Roomful of Blues.

And if we ever get around to a “Pop Goes the Weasel” version, how about: Buddy in a Box?

Village People

Recently I kayaked over to Annawamscutt, where now just a beach and a cluster of cottages are left to identify what was once a village. I saw osprey, a night heron, three red-tailed hawks and the usual gulls, geese and cormorants along the way; but no signs of industry, only nature and leisure. My launching point was my home port of Allin’s Cove in what was once known as the village of West Barrington, a former fishing ground for the Wampanoag long before it assumed its rather dull English name. The old post office no longer exists, the lace factory is now elderly housing. Only the corner barbershop, the marina and boatyard remain to signify the once thriving, working-class community of Bay Springs. Long a summer getaway for hordes of Pawtucket residents, the character of my neighborhood is changing. The spectrum ranges through teachers, restaurant owners, exiled New Yorkers, internationals, single moms, retirees, sailors, salvagers, handy men, artists, musicians and accountants, with a few lifers and Pawtucket natives still in the mix. Now both Annawamscutt and West Barrington are fringe neighborhoods in the East Bay town of Barrington linked by a coastline and a bike path. Such is the way of a village.

Rhode Island was once a jumble of villages – fragments of farm and cove, mill and woods that still resonate today if only as part of a certain independent crankiness statewide. Some have retained their names, if not their cultural distinctiveness. Others have disappeared. Many, I suspect, I have visited without even realizing it, for I could not tell you where to find them on any map.

They include Arctic in West Warwick, Arkwright, Quidnick and Summit in Coventry, Barberville and Locustville in Hopkinton, Coggeshall in Warren, Conimicut, Cowesett and Hoxsie in Warwick, Dyerville and Wanskuck in Providence, Forestdale in North Smithfield, Gazzaville, Mapleville, Mohegan, Saxonville, Tarklin and Whipple in Burrillville, Greystone in North Providence, Harmony in Glocester, Hummocks in Portsmouth, Liberty in Exeter, Lime Rock in Lincoln, Omega in East Providence, Stillwater in Smithfield, Vernon in Foster and White Rock in Westerly.

One of the advantages of working in South County at the Independent has been the opportunity to visit the vestiges of old mill towns and beach communities in villages such as Quonochontaug in Charlestown, Ashaway and Moscow in Hopkinton, Galilee and Jerusalem in Narragansett, Misquamicut, Watch Hill and Weekapaug in Westerly, Wood River Junction and Wyoming in Richmond, Rocky Brook, Perryville and Usquepaugh in South Kingstown, Frenchtown in East Greenwich, Hamilton and Slocum in North Kingstown. Work has taken me to the village of Pontiac in Warwick, identified by the Pontiac Mills, which are still condos-in-waiting. I’ve been to Fruit Hill in North Providence to get to Rhode Island College and Knightsville in Cranston to get to the Community College of Rhode Island. I marathoned through Apponaug, a village in Warwick, back in the day when the Ocean State Marathon began in the village of Narragansett Pier. I’ve taken leisurely drives to Sakonnet at the very tip of Little Compton and performed theater at a library and grabbed a bite to eat respectively and respectfully in the villages of Hope and Chopmist in Scituate.

In all, Rhode Island is home to as many as 250 villages, although more than a few are mostly defunct and a number of them survive only as ghost towns. Some have interesting pedigrees. Consider the following places in Westerly: The village of Avondale was originally called Lotteryville because its inhabitants at one time had won a state lottery to build homes there. The village of Misquamicut was once called Pleasant View supposedly because a prominent Victorian-era woman paused there on horseback and remarked on the “pleasant view.” The community of Napatree was wiped off the map by the Hurricane of ’38.

As I sign off on this post from a computer located in Wakefield village – or the village of “Historic Wakefield” to you travelers out there on Route 1 who might miss it through all the sprawl – I end with the week’s ceremonial question: What is your favorite Rhode Island village?

Oyster Night

Mondays are $1 oyster nights at DeWolf Tavern in Bristol, where I often find myself at the bar washing down the week’s varieties with an ale. DeWolf is not the only place to oyster it up in Little Rhody, but with many of the tasty pearl-makers going for almost $3 a shell these days, the buck-a-bivalve bargain is hard to beat. Most weeks the place has a selection from Canada, Massachusetts, Connecticut and the home state, offering a chance to compare tasting notes. I’ll be there again tonight, Tabasco and black pepper at the ready, if necessary.

Oysters are available year-round, but there’s something about summer that brings out the oyster fiend in folks, as raw bars and regular bars fill up with oval platters of half-shells on ice. You can taste your way around Rhode Island, traveling by tongue to sample Moonstones, Matunucks, Salt Ponds, Sakonnets, Rome Points, Watch Hills, Poppasquashes, Winnapaugs, Ninigrets and Wild Goose among the nearly three-dozen Rhody-born-and-bred varieties.

Savoring an oyster is as much a geographic as culinary experience. As author Rowan Jacobsen said in his guide to oyster eating, “A Geography of Oysters,” all oysters have a quality of “somewhereness.” Their sense of place is inherent in the flavors that emerge beyond their salinity. In other words, they taste like where they come from.

An excerpt from Jacobsen’s book featured the following note about Moonstones:

MOONSTONE
Point Judith Pond, Rhode Island

Some of the most savory oysters in the world come from a geographical arc running from the eastern end of Long Island, along the ragged Rhode Island coast, to Block Island, Cuttyhunk and Martha’s Vineyard: the line marking the terminal moraine of the most recent glacier. Along that arc, mineral-rich waters produce salty oysters with unparalleled stone and iron flavors, of which Moonstone is the reigning king.

While sampling oysters at McCormick & Schmick’s in Providence a couple of years ago, a friend and I tried a Rhode Island-grown oyster. Her description – “Tastes like swimming in the bay in summertime” – was perfect. Since I’ve been making notes on the subject, I’ve had oysters that tasted buttery, fruity, extra salty, or hinting of citrus, wine, even petrol. One good thing: I’ve never met an oyster that tasted like chicken.

In Louisiana, Creole recipes feature a lot of oyster dishes that are fried or baked, which seems like a waste of an oyster, although the dishes themselves are delicious, so maybe a few can be sacrificed in the pursuit of gastronomic bliss. The sad news for folks on the Gulf Coast is that their oysters are drowning in oil. One beloved New Orleans restaurant, called Charlie’s Seafood, was forced to change its menu to survive, and according to a recent Miami Herald article, the chef isn’t exactly happy about it.

“Charlie’s is a place that celebrates Louisiana seafood and here I am frying calamari from Rhode Island,” says [Frank] Brigsten, an award-winning chef who also owns his eponymously named contemporary Creole cuisine restaurant uptown. “I feel like somehow I am betraying my customers by not giving them oysters. I feel like I am wearing someone else’s clothes.”

As great as Rhody seafood is – and between the fish and the shellfish, we enjoy some of the best in the world – it’s hard not to feel devastated for those who live along our Southern coast. Just as Rhode Islanders wouldn’t be Rhode Islanders without our intimate relationship to Narragansett Bay – a place that serves alternatively as playground, buffet and spiritual companion – coastal residents of Louisiana and Texas feel the same way about the Gulf. So tonight, with every Rhode Island oyster that slides down my gullet, I’ll thank the bay and pray to the oyster gods to keep them coming. And, if any greedy, incompetent corporate types start poking around our sea beds, release the giant clams…

What flavors might you expect to taste in a Rhode Island-grown oyster?

Wiener World

The catchphrase “Only in Rhode Island” has a mostly negative connotation, generally referring to the population’s collective, unblinking acceptance of statewide cronyism, corruption, scandal and crime. But there are other times – we like to call them “Oiri” moments (think Yiddish reggae) – when it is the only way to describe the cultural oddities that abound here.

A case in point: While stuck in traffic on I-95 during last week’s squalls, I yo-yoed back and forth with a white car next to me that had two bumper stickers plastered on it. Since bumper stickers and vanity plates provide the only real reading opportunities during gridlock, I took the time to notice the odd juxtaposition. One was an Obama ’98 campaign sticker. Opposite Obama was a sticker that read:

OLYNEYVILLE
N.Y. SYSTEM
R.I.’s Best Hot Wieners

It’s a fair bet that no Obama supporters driving around the Other 49 would so proudly rank their political pride on equal terms with wiener love, but this is Rhode Island, where presidents rarely visit and wieners (sometimes spelled “weiners”) live in the pantheon of local culinary delights.

Side note: The next morning at the office I found a press release in my inbox headlined: “RHODE ISLAND DISH NAMED ONE OF THE 50 FATTIEST FOODS ACROSS THE NATION: HEALTH MAG REPORTS.”

And there, ranked with South Carolina turducken, South Dakota frybread, Texas corn dogs, Philly cheesesteaks, North Carolina livermush, Mississippi mud pie and Montana’s Rocky Mountain oysters is Rhode Island’s own N.Y. System Wieners. Here’s the profile:

Rhode Island
In the late 1930s, when father-son team Anthony and Nicholas Stevens moved to Rhode Island from Greece, by way of Brooklyn, they opened a small restaurant in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence. The popular fare – New York System Hot Wieners – is still a regional favorite, and is imitated by vendors and eateries throughout the state.
Ingredients: A beef hot dog drenched in yellow mustard, onions, celery salt and ground-beef sauce.
Fat content: With 13 grams of fat for the hot dog and 15 grams of fat in a serving of ground beef, you’ll max out your daily recommended limit of fat; the ground-beef sauce is usually made with ultra-fatty shortening.

What Health magazine doesn’t say, of course, is that “gaggers” aren’t the only “heart attack on the plate” enjoyed regularly by Rhode Islanders. From hot-oven grinders to doughboys, coffee milk to clam cakes, spinach pie to strip pizza, stuffies to zeppoles and sausage-stuffed breads and meals using chourico (a Portuguese sausage) or Soupys (an Italian sausage), Rhode Island has enough distinctive foods to keep Health magazine in the expose business forever.

This week’s question: What is your favorite “Only in Rhode Island” moment?

[Blogger’s note: Posting early this week because of the Monday holiday. Enjoy the fireworks.]

Smith Hill vs. Jerimoth Hill

Politics and poetry don’t often mix. There are a few old salts that may still remember a white-haired Robert Frost reading the inaugural poem for John F. Kennedy on a bitterly cold day in Washington, D.C., setting the stage for the Kennedy “Camelot” myth. On the other end of the spectrum, during the George W. Bush administration, poets were invited then quickly uninvited to a poetry gala at the White House when it turned out that some of them were going to recite peace poems (or anti-war propaganda, depending on which side of the aisle you stand on).

Now, here in Little Rhody, a mini-controversy is brewing over the proposal of a state poem. Last May, Sen. Leo Blais, a Coventry Republican, filed Senate Bill No. 2175 with three of his colleagues to establish “Jerimoth Hill,” by Rhode Island poet laureate emeritus Tom Chandler, as the official poem of Rhode Island. The poem describes the highest point in Rhode Island as being unrecognizable “except by this bullet-riddled sign by the road that curves through these scraggled third growth woods that was once a grove of giant pines that were cut down for masts that were used to build ships to sail away to the rest of the world from the docks of Providence Harbor…”

“Jerimoth Hill” is a wonderfully rhythmic and wry poem that, in the Rhode Island style, finds humor and resonance in the local identity and sense of place – in this case an 812-foot bump in Foster that for years was protected from curious onlookers and hikers by a shotgun-wielding homeowner. The prologue is one phrase (“812 feet, the highest point in Rhode Island”). The poem is one sentence broken into 26 single-spaced lines that builds like a story-song (complete with refrains). It serves as a reflective celebration and respectful illumination of one aspect of the state’s quirky culture. Most importantly, there’s nothing boosterish about it, which is probably one of the reasons I like it so much.

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, however, wasn’t sold. Still, give him points for creativity, since he expressed his veto in sonnet form:

Donald L. Carcieri
Governor
June 22, 2010

TO THE HONORABLE, THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE:

In accordance with the provisions of Section 14, Article IX of the Constitution of the State of Rhode Island and Section 43-1-4 of the Rhode Island General Laws, I transmit, with my disapproval, 2010 S 2175, “Relating to State Affairs and Government – State Emblems.”

State Emblems Bill Sonnet

Per Constitution and Rhode Island Law
Bill 2010 S 2175
I must disapprove since it holds a flaw.
It would by law a State Poem create.
A worthy poet had written those lines
Off’ring thoughts about a Rhode Island hill.
This famous bard would certainly decline
Since other poets were unheard from still.
For no contest was held or survey done
To find out what other poems might show.
Open process lets inspiration run
So I ask your support of this veto.

Art is not art if the state must decree.
Verses are best when we let poems be.

OK, so the sonnet veto is no improvement on the vetoed poem itself, but the idea that Rhody’s state poem should be a collective choice has merit – although one does worry that we’ll end up with some version of the unofficial University of Rhode Island fight song:

I’m Rhode Island born and Rhode Island bred
And when I die I’ll be Rhode Island dead
So go-go Rhode Island
Rho-Rho-Rhode Island
Go Rhode Island, URI!

Leading to this week’s question: What should be the designated poem of Rhode Island?

Rocky Redux

Today is the summer solstice, making it the longest day of the year. But even though there are plenty of picnics and barbecues, beach days and baseball games, fireworks and ferry rides ahead, I can’t get past the down note: Beginning tomorrow, we start losing the light.

To counter this nagging sensation, many Rhode Islanders move through summer in a mad dash, checking off quintessential experiences. Trips to Fenway and McCoy. A scenic drive to Tiverton Four Corners for an ice cream cone at Gray’s. Picking up chowder and clam cakes at George’s or Champlin’s and sitting on the jetties in Galilee watching the boats come and go. Breakfast at Jim’s Dock in Jerusalem. Pub-crawling and people-watching in Newport. Taking a picnic basket and a kite (or bocce balls) to Colt State Park in Bristol. A day of body boarding and Del’s at your favorite beach. Riding the ferry to Block Island and cycling around the Block before capping the day with drinks on the deck of The National Hotel.

The list is endless, but it’s missing something these days and this month the Warwick Art Museum reminds us what that is - Rocky Point Amusement Park. The once (and future?) land of summer leisure in Rhode Island is the subject of the museum’s latest exhibition, “Long Live Rocky Point: A Collection of Art and Artifacts,” a nostalgic thrill ride through the memories and mementos of a beloved park.

I had a chance to see the exhibition last Thursday (the trip turned into this week’s column, for those who like to follow my paper trail). In typically Rhode Island fashion, the collection is wonderfully weird and eclectic. There’s art by The Mad Peck. Dracula’s coffin top and the Darth Vader car from The House of Horrors. Stories spanning 150 years of Rocky Point goings-on that read straight out of the Weekly World News. Even a strangely familiar, “Animal Farm”-esque metal sign makes an appearance: “Management reserves the right on all decisions.” In a room crowded with TV and radio reporters and random Rhode Islanders, it was as if every photograph, comic book, token, tag, ribbon, Bingo card, postcard, ticket stub, newspaper ad, prop, sign, poster and piece of scrapbook ephemera served as a memory prompt and a conversation starter.

The day Leonard Nimoy showed up to read poetry and tried to sing. The day a woman taking a driver’s lesson just outside the park sent cars sprawling everywhere because a sea gull had flown in her window. The day the Viking statue inside the House of Horrors malfunctioned and scalped the hair off a child’s head.

Museum organizers said, only half-jokingly, that more people have already come to the Warwick Art Museum to see the Rocky Point show than visited during the previous 34 years’ worth of exhibitions combined.

The question is, with no Rocky Point around anymore, what has become the quintessential Rhode Island summer experience?