Grab Bag

Piecing together a few random finds from recent reading, with a Rhody twist. First, from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s unauthorized autobiography as excerpted in the British newsmagazine, The Week. In the extract, Assange recalls spending much of his childhood on the run from his mother’s abusive ex-lover, a member of a cult called The Family, based in the mountains north of Melbourne, Australia:

It was so tiring. Just moving all the time. Being on the run. The very last time, we got some intelligence that Leif was drawing close: they told us he was near us in the hills outside Melbourne. My brother and I showed a lot of resistance that final time – we just couldn’t bear the idea of grabbing our things again and dashing for the door. As a bribe, my mother and I told my little brother he could take his prized rooster, a Rhode Island Red, a very tall, proud, strong-looking bird, who was also extremely loud.

And two more for the size of Rhode Island archives:

From Sloane Crosley’s collection of essays, “How Did You Get This Number,” in a paragraph on an essay about a trip to Alaska titled “Light Pollution”:

The state of Alaska itself is like one big whale. Chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island exist like barnacles. They could detach from a glacier up north and no one would notice.

From the archives of the Economic Collapse blog:

Did you know that a new desert the size of Rhode Island is created in China because of drought every single year?

This week’s question: What is your favorite use of Rhode Island in a printed sentence?