Dropping the Ball

With the possible exception of Valentine’s Day, few holidays on the American calendar cause as much angst and apathy as New Year’s Eve. For most of us, it is a chore to eat and drink too much and stay up too late yet again after what is a seemingly endless stretch of feasting, shopping and stressing since Thanksgiving.

Still, as much as I would like to join “the band of tatterdemalions” known as the Banished Fools during Bright Night Providence, and mingle among the monster puppets of Big Nazo and bang a drum or blow a horn with the Extraordinary Rendition Band, and wake up the next morning to jump into Narragansett Bay with various Polar Bears, Penguins and Scuppers, I’ll be up in moose country instead, wearing antlers instead of a jester’s hat.

But before I head north, I’d like to propose something for next year. Why not shift the New Year to March, where it used to be?

As established, the holiday comes too soon after Christmas and Thanksgiving to be given the respectful indulgence it deserves. In fact, it convolutes the Christmas season, occurring in the middle its 12 feast days and rendering insignificant the celebration of Twelfth Night on Jan. 6.

For centuries many cultures, including the Mesopotamians, who are credited with giving us the first New Year’s bash (with party favors and resolutions printed in Sanskrit), started the year with the vernal equinox – the beginning of spring. (Some cultures – Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians and Celts among them – began the year in autumn, while the Greeks started during the winter solstice.) The ancient Romans, after centuries of cheering the New Year on March 1, moved the holiday when they created the months of January and February for the Julian calendar, although many Romans continued to celebrate in March. Medieval religious leaders later abolished Jan. 1 as the New Year, moving it to Christmas Day, to honor the birth of Christ. The Gregorian calendar reestablished the January date in 1582, although the British Empire – including its colonies in America – kept partying in March until 1752.

So maybe it’s time to go back to March to start the calendar. The only down side is that we would end every year with the darkest, coldest months, with only valentines, groundhogs and college basketball to cheer us up. But on the plus side, by the time New Year's Eve arrived in March, the hangover might actually be worth it.

This week’s question: What is the best way to celebrate the New Year in Rhode Island?

[Blogger’s note: Early post this week, given the impending trip to the Granite State. Rest in peace, Dick Clark.]

Ornamentally Rhody

So Olivia Culpo, the Cranston cellist who became the first Rhode Islander to win the Miss USA Pageant, went on to win the Miss Universe Pageant. We’re left wondering what’s next for Ms. Culpo? Is there a Miss Space-Time Continuum Pageant?

Anyway, she leads this year’s list of Rhode Island ornament-worthy figures, for the Christmas (or holiday) tree in your household:

12 Rhody Ornaments for the 12 Days of Christmas

1) An Olivia Culpo action figure, dressed in Miss Rhode Island, Miss USA and Miss Universe sashes, inserted into the shape of a nebula in honor of her latest accomplishment. Glitter color to match the sparkle on her evening gown.

2) An Elizabeth Beisel talking action figure, crooning a reworked “Silver and Gold” as “Silver and Bronze,” in honor of the two swimming medals the North Kingstown native won this summer during the London Olympics.

3) The R.I. State House in a snow globe, with a scene of an evergreen in the rotunda, wrapped in a banner that says “This is NOT a holiday tree” or “Even if this is a Christmas tree the state recognizes it as a holiday tree because it is meant to represent all Rhode Islanders, not just Christians or those who celebrate Christmas.” Your choice.

4) The Big Blue Bug with its antennae lit green and red.

5) A frosted pumpkin in honor of the two-ton giant world-record-holding gourd grown by Ron Wallace of Greene and weighed in October.

6) A white Styrofoam ball with “I O U $112.6 MILLION” written in black magic marker in honor of the 38 Studios debacle, in which Curt Schilling’s video game company bankruptcy left Rhode Island taxpayers holding the bill.

7) Two new Christmas characters – Foster the Fisher Cat and Cranston the Bear – in honor of the sudden abundance of fishers and bruins in the Ocean State. Fishers are suddenly everywhere, depleting the skunk and squirrel populations, while a big black bear was a visitor to the streets of Cranston in October, presumably to indulge in a few boxes of Calvitto’s and Crugnale’s party pizza.

8) Matunuck sand in an hourglass, in honor of the increased battering and erosion along the Rhody coast thanks to more frequent and intense storms during this era of climate weirdness. Save the sand. It may be all we have to remember Matunuck by someday.

9) Two gingerbread brown pelicans, in honor of the North Carolina birds blown all the way to Rhode Island by Hurricane Sandy. The pelicans were discovered at Fisherman’s Memorial State Park in Narragansett and were treated at the Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Rhode Island in Saunderstown before flying (on a private plane) to more natural habitat in Florida.

10) Heads-you-win, tails-you-lose, gold coin in honor of the R.I. casino ballot measure that was approved in Lincoln but rejected in Newport in November.

11) Mini-accordion, to replace the traditional harp among the popcorn and cranberry garland, in honor of Cumberland’s Cory Pelaturo, World Digital Accordion Champion.

12) Calico lobster, an ornament that doubles as a bottle opener, in honor of the latest 30 million-to-one crustacean to be hauled out Rhode Island waters earlier this spring in Newport. Makes a great companion piece to last year’s dangling yellow lobster.

What 2012 Rhode Island ornament belongs on your Christmas tree?

Eating Rhody (Holiday Edition)

Chowder in the pot was ready when we arrived at an early Christmas party in Bristol, a clammy concoction that began with a base from Blount Seafood in Warren, accentuated by clams, potatoes and seasonings from the homeowner’s kitchen. The buffet included blade meat and chourico and peppers, fortified with port wine, served in grinder rolls, a nod to the Portuguese heritage on the East Bay. Italian influences on the menu included strip pizza, homemade calzones and antipastos.

The story of Rhode Island could be told through its food. This is especially true during the holidays, when cooking and eating traditions are cultural, regional and personal. French-Canadians settling in Woonsocket brought the tourtiere, a pie made of ground pork (and sometimes beef), onions, mashed potatoes and seasonings to the region, where it is a staple in the local luncheonette culture. As John Larrabee points out in an appetizing article in this week’s Providence Phoenix, every recipe is different, with seasonings that “can include clove, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg or sage,” and the merits of individual pies are debated at counters from Castle Luncheonette to Barbara’s Place to Paul’s Family Restaurant. To many Rhode Islanders from the northwestern part of the state, the pies taste and smell of Christmas.

On the other side of the world, down in southwestern Rhody, families in the villages of Westerly engage in their own Christmas holiday tradition – making soupy. The spiced pork sausage more formally known as sopressata is the product of its own distinct ritual. Clan members of Italian American families and their closest friends will gather in homes and social clubs to fill the casings during the yuletide season. The sausages then hang overwinter (usually in somebody’s basement) before they are ready to eat sometime around St. Patrick’s Day.

What the tourtiere and the soupy have in common, aside from pork fillings and their uber-local Rhode Island pedigree, is that each depends upon the all-important “secret recipe” to distinguish one family’s dish from another. Some are scrawled on index cards and locked away in safety deposit boxes. Others exist only in the cook’s head (and maybe the head of whomever the cook has entrusted with the recipe down the line). Like parking spaces in Boston or watering holes in New Hampshire, these secrets are revealed upon penalty of death or exile. Sometimes it’s worth the risk. Anyone who has ever eaten a stuffy to die for will know what I’m talking about.

What special foods do you associate with the holidays in Rhode Island?

Big Bang Theory

Call it the Phantom Boom. The Mystery Blast. The Barrington Bang. The Warwick Whatwasthat?

Last Monday residents of the East Bay’s Barrington and West Bay’s Warwick reported hearing an explosion at 11:30 p.m. with most describing it as a single, loud bang. I slept through it, having gone to bed a half-hour earlier, where I was presumably immersed in “Inception”-like REM dream sleep. Nothing was going to wake me up. But several neighbors and friends jolted out of their slumber or reveries and bolted out of their homes to investigate. Most thought someone’s house had blown up in a gas explosion. Others worried that a plane had crashed. Some reports added the detail of a mysterious light that flashed once and disappeared. Speculation was rampant the following day on the local radio talk shows. Meteorite? Sonic boom? UFO? It was all anyone wanted to talk about. A friend of mine, who lives across the street, was convinced that a body would wash ashore in a day or so, proving her theory that someone was murdered by gunshot in the middle of the bay.

Officials investigating the incident eventually concluded that it defied explanation. My own crazy theory? Some kind of long-dormant depth charge, torpedo or mine – dropped during the days when Nazi subs (or, later, Soviet subs) routinely prowled Narragansett Bay – suddenly went kablooey. You’ll see the occasional dud explosive hauled up from time to time by trawlers plowing the bay. Otherwise, I’m just glad to know that when Armageddon strikes, I can hit the snooze button.

What do you think caused the Narragansett Bay mystery blast?

Tinsel Time

A blue snowflake hangs over Hope Street in Bristol now, a town otherwise decorated in mostly golden light on December nights. In neighboring Warren, bare branches and stark poles along Main Street are illuminated in electric colors while staid Barrington, just down the road, insists on stately (or pretentious, depending on your point of view) white phosphorescence.

Along Route 114, evergreens bound by rope are being sold in convenience store parking lots. Giant, one-story inflatables – of snowmen, reindeer, Santas – pop up here and there, dominating postage-stamp sized front yards. By day they are strewn across their lawns like gutted whale carcasses. Many of these yards just recently contained large signs supporting political candidates. (What happens to those, by the way? Christmas bonfire fodder?) Inflatable Christmas, like Inflatable Halloween – with its bungalow-sized ghosts and witches – is a relatively recent addition to holiday kitsch. Let’s hope Inflatable Political Campaigns never become in vogue. It’s one thing to stare at a 10-foot Nutcracker full of hot air. Not sure I’d appreciate the same view of someone running for School Committee.

Judging by the early lighting in the cove, those icicle lights are passé, but there are more blowup candy canes in the mix. Cardboard and light bulb nativities are scattered around the neighborhood, mingling crèches, camels and the Baby Jesus with snowmen and reindeer and elves from Santa’s Workshop. There was a time when this chaos of color and Christmas character mishmash rankled, but now I appreciate any effort to celebrate the season and light the night. Most of the decoration is hung in good spirit, if not in good taste. Which reminds me. It’s time to drag Christmas Lobster back out of the closet.

What is your favorite tacky Christmas decoration?

Puritan Chic

While the rest of the country turned Thanksgiving into Thanksgetting, three New England states – including Yours Rhody – never left the table to go to the mall. One of the few Colonial-era blue laws still on the books preventing merchants from operating their business on the holiday meant itchy shoppers in Rhode Island, Maine and Massachusetts had to crank up the hard drive or drive to New Hampshire to go bargain hunting while they were still digesting their turkey.

Score one for the Puritans.

This particular blue law, like most of the others, will likely not stand the test of time. One way or another Americans are going to demand to exercise their right to stand in line in the cold on a sacred day to save $50 on the latest iThingamabob instead of spending a few hours sharing stories with family and friends and expressing gratitude for their lives. So be it, but it was nice to enjoy a consumer-free Thanksgiving for at least one more year.

For one glorious late-autumn Thursday in three New England states, Thanksgiving was as it should be. Here’s hoping Puritan Rhody, Maine and Massachusetts can find a way to keep this blue law on the books. Otherwise, we’ll be like every other state in America, wishing people a “Happy Walmartgiving” every November.

This week’s question: Should Rhode Island change the blue law preventing retailers from conducting business on Thanksgiving?

Sporting Rhody

A new minor league sports team based in Rhode Island promoted its inaugural season under at tent yesterday at The Mews “Beer N Geer 5K” race in Wakefield. The Rhode Island Kingfish will be competing in the North American Lacrosse League this season. Box lacrosse – like indoor soccer and arena football – is an indoor version of a game traditionally played outdoors. It uses fewer players, features more scoring and relies heavily on mascots and promotions to draw fans. Good luck to them, but you wonder why they chose the moniker “kingfish?” That’s hardly a species that one commonly associates with Rhode Island.

Why not select one of the two top sport fish in the Ocean State – striped bass or bluefish? The Rhody Stripers or the Rhody Blues? In the latter case, the team could tie in the state’s predominant symbolic color along with its illustrious blues music history. Or go with the many sharks that patrol the local waters: The Rhode Island Hammerheads has a nice box lacrosse ring to it.

Back in the days when Providence was a major league city, Rhode Island rubbed shoulders with Boston and New York in the sportingverse. It had franchises in the National League of Major League Baseball, National Football League and National Basketball Association. (Our capital city never cracked the National Hockey League, but the Providence Reds were a flagship minor league franchise from 1926 to 1977, drawing well for many years despite being affiliated with the New York Rangers and not the Boston Bruins. The team also won four Calder Cups.) Even Newport held its own, with golf and tennis championships that inaugurated the U.S. Open in both sports, although these days the golf event is nomadic and the tennis tourney was hijacked to Long Island.

The Providence Grays played from 1878 to 1885 and won the National League championship twice (1879, 1884). The club played its home games at the Messer Street Grounds in the Olyneville neighborhood. The 1884 champs accepted a challenge from the New York Metropolitans of the rival American Association. Providence traveled to the Polo Grounds and swept the Metropolitans on their home ground, playing by AA league roles, forbidding overhand pitching. “Old Hoss” Radbourne pitched all three games for the Grays. By virtue of that victory, many baseball historians consider Providence to be the first official World Series champion.

Another short-lived but reasonably successful professional team was the Providence Steam Roller, a member of the NFL from 1925 to 1931. The Steam Roller, whose team colors were black, orange and white, played most of their home games in a stadium built for bicycle races called the Cycledrome. The team was invited to join the league after a decade of domination as the best independent team in the country. They were the first New England team to win an NFL championship (1928), a feat that didn’t get duplicated until the New England Patriots won its first Super Bowl in 2002. The Steam Roller nickname lives on in a bold blend of coffee produced by a Pawtucket coffee roaster called New Harvest.

The last of the pro sports franchises from one of the Big Four (baseball, football, hockey and basketball) to be based in Rhode Island, the Providence Steamrollers were one of the original NBA teams, but their three seasons produced mostly lowlights. They still hold the record for fewest wins in a season (6) and their all-time record of 46-122 left them with a lifetime .274 winning percentage. Their team colors were red, white and black and they played to sparse crowds at the old “Aud,” the Rhode Island Auditorium, which was packed for games played by their winter brethren, the minor league Reds.

One notch above the Reds, the most successful Rhody sports franchise remains the Pawtucket Red Sox, whose home games at McCoy Stadium are a quintessential part of a Rhode Island summer. (This year’s PawSox team even won its third International League championship.) The Providence Bruins have one Calder Cup and a steady fan base since becoming the minor league affiliate for the Boston Bruins in 1992. But without the Boston connection, Rhody pro sports teams don’t last long. The Rhode Island Oceaneers, an American Soccer League club, won the league championship in its charter season of 1974 but had disbanded by 1978. The team may be gone, but its nickname lives on as the best ever to come out of Rhode Island.

What would be a good name for the next sports team to play in Rhode Island?

Home Is Where The Haunt Is

Here’s a list of things I like about lists:

1) They’re easy to compile.
2) They spark conversation.
3) They’re fun to cross out.
4) When you’re sitting in a coffee shop, working on a list, it looks like you’re writing a novel, even though you’re only reminding yourself to go to the bank and pick up the dry cleaning.
5) You can turn them into columns and blog posts.

There’s no shame in this. Some of the world’s most important writings have come to us in list form. (Consider the Ten Commandments, which is basically just a To-Don’t List, etched on stone tablets.)

So today I thought I’d share a list of someone else’s invention. My favorite Rhode Island-based list of recent vintage appeared in a book titled “Rhode Island Legends: Haunted Hallows and Monsters’ Lairs” by South County author M.E. Reilly-McGreen. It’s her list of the most unusual haunts in the Ocean State. Given that politics, weather and a midweek date on the calendar muted the annual New England Halloween festivities in many communities, I thought it would be worth passing along while the days are getting darker and the November landscape turns skeletal.

Here’s Marybeth’s field guide to Rhode Island legends:

ALIENS (BEST BETS): Wood River Junction, Providence, Newport County, Cumberland
BIGFOOT: the Great Swamp, South Kingstown
BLEEDING ROCKS: Indian Corner, Slocumville, North Kingstown
CLASSICAL GODS AND GODDESSES AT PLAY: Narragansett Beach, Narragansett; Worden’s Pond, South Kingstown
CRYING ROCKS: Child Crying Rocks, Charlestown
CURSED MATCHING THRONES: the Salt Chairs of Belcourt Castle, Newport
THE DEVIL: Devil’s Hole, Woonsocket; Devil’s Ring, Peace Dale
THE DEVIL’S HOOFPRINT: Devil’s Foot Rock, North Kingstown; Purgatory Chasm, Middletown
FAIRIES: Worden’s Pond, South Kingstown
FLESH-EATING VEGETATION: Roger William’s Root, Providence
GHOSTS OF FAMOUS HORROR WRITERS: Edgar Allan Poe, Benefit Street, Providence; H.P. Lovecraft, Barnes Street and Swan Point Cemetery, Providence
GIANT WOLVES AND BLACK SHUCK: Devil’s Hole, Woonsocket; Fort Wetherill, Jamestown; Wolf Rocks, Exeter; Wolf Bog, Peace Dale
HAUNTED ASYLUMS: the Ladd Center, Exeter
HAUNTED HOLY SITES: the Monastery, Cumberland
HAUNTED MILLS: Slater Mill, Pawtucket; Ramtail Factory, Foster; Mooresfield Road, Kingston
HAUNTED WEDDING VENUES: Sprague Mansion, Cranston
HEADLESS GHOST HORSE: Belmont Avenue, Wakefield
GHOST REGIMENTS: Route 138, Kingston; Hessian Hole, Portsmouth
GHOST SHIPS: Beavertail, Jones’s Ledge, Jamestown; Grave’s Point, Jamestown; the Seabird, Newport; the Palantine, Block Island
HEADLESS HUMAN GHOSTS: Indian Corner, North Kingstown; Mooresfield Road, South Kingstown
IT: Dark Swamp, Chepachet
JEWELRY-WEARING GIANT SERPENTS: Wilson’s Woods, South Kingstown; Carbuncle Pond, Coventry
MOANING BONES: Arcadia, Narragansett
ORBS: Charlestown
PIRATES’ GHOSTS: Gravelly Point, Newport
PIRATES’ TREASURE: Block Island; Sugarloaf Hill, South Kingstown
POSSESSED PAINTINGS: Kingston Free Library, Kingston
SAINTS’ RELICS: Rough Point, Newport
SEA MONSTERS: Block Island; Point Judith, Narragansett
SKELETONS IN ARMOR: Old Stone Mill, Newport
SKULKING MONKS: Belcourt Castle, Newport; Nine Men’s Misery, Cumberland
SOLDIERS’ SPIRITS: Hessian Hole, Portsmouth; Kingston village; Nine Men’s Misery, Cumberland
TRAGIC MAIDENS’ SPIRITS: Hannah Robinson, Hannah Robinson’s Tower and Rock, South Kingstown; Dolly Cole, Dolly Cole’s Brook, Foster; Angela O’Leary, Fleur de Lys House, Providence
VAMPIRES: Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter; Mooresfield, South Kingstown; Plain Meeting House, West Greenwich; the Shunned House, Benefit Street, Providence
WAILING KNIGHT: Belcourt Castle, Newport
WAILING WOMAN: The Crying Bog, Narragansett
WANDERING WRAITHS: Dorothy’s Hollow, Narragansett
WEREWOLVES: the Great Swamp, Charlestown; Woonsocket; Watson’s Corner, South Kingstown
WITCHES: Benefit Street, Providence; Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter; Hell Hollow, North Kingstown; Hopkins Hill, East Greenwich; Kettle Hollow, North Kingstown; Ministerial Woods, South Kingstown; Witches Altar, Narragansett; Westerly

What is your favorite haunted hot spot in Rhode Island?

Adventures at the Ballot Box

Life in parts of America may soon be easier for gays, gamblers, hunters, potheads, euthanisers, car-insurance salesmen, grammarians and horses.

That's how The Economist cogently summed up America's 2012 trip to the ballot box. Tomorrow's vote will decide the next U.S. President, but Rhody and the Other 49 have their own problems to worry about. Taking another look at the quote that begins this post, we Rhode Islanders find ourselves, not for the first or last time, lumped in with "gamblers."

Questions 1 and 2 ask us to decide whether Twin River and Newport Grand should be allowed to introduce table games - blackjack, roulette, craps, poker - moving Rhody closer to a casino royale culture. If it passes, maybe James Bond (alias Daniel Craig) can finally make a long overdue appearance in Newport to film one of those iconic baccarat scenes opposite The Villain while impressing The Bond Girl. Jet-propelled paddle boarding in Narragansett Bay followed by a frenetic though unresolved battle with The Villain's Physically Distinctive Henchman on the Cliff Walk. Tuxedo scene at Rosecliff. Car chase down Ocean Drive. Narragansett Beer shaken, not stirred, with the exploding froth used to create a temporary distraction the second time The Villain's Physically Distinctive Henchman appears, interrupting 007's seduction of The Bond Girl at The White Horse Tavern. You get the idea.

Anyway, for once, Rhode Island isn't a contender for oddest ballot measure. Idaho will vote on whether to protect the rights of fishers, hunters and trappers against campaigns by animal rights groups. Proponents cite history, reminding residents that trappers founded Idaho. (It does make you think. Taking a cue from our own founding, maybe we need to strengthen our state constitution to protect exiled preachers and other free thinkers from people who think thinking is the devil's work.)

In California, voters in Los Angeles County will be asked to consider the issue of mandatory condoms for porn stars. Measure B (or "The Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act") would require all adult movie actors to wear protection on camera. (Consider the bright side. It'll be easier to work a Trojan horse reference into the XXX version of "The Iliad.")

In Arizona, Republicans want voters to take the Grand Canyon back from the federal government, and give it to the state (presumably so business interests can start doing things like building canyon condos and mining for minerals, pronto). The ballot measure, known as Proposition 120, would give Arizona sovereignty over the "air, water, public lands, minerals, wildlife and other natural resources" of the Grand Canyon, essentially harnessing the kind of power that even the ancient Greeks decided should be divided between multiple gods.

In North Dakota, passing Measure 5 would mean stiffer punishments for those who inflict harm on cats, dogs or horses. (Of course, you're still free to torture hamsters.) Measure 78 would allow the state to make improvements in its constitution's spelling and grammar - which must be pretty bad, if it requires a ballot measure to fix. If it passes, the next step is to find a school marm with a red Sharpie.

What measure would you like to see on the next Rhode Island ballot?

State of Emergency

Sandy’s coming. Wind gusts are strengthening, stripping trees of limbs and leaves. The rain has moved from mist to spit to drizzle, with downpours expected. A full moon tide may create strong storm surges, causing erosion and flooding throughout the state. Here in Rhode Island, today should be the worst of it. So we wait.

Many of us have been in the newsroom since early this morning. Schools have closed. All state workers described as non-essential have been asked to stay home. Many businesses also have chosen to remain shuttered today. But in the media game, extreme weather is a headline maker. Most of us will spend today trying to think of a sexier way to say “Frankenstorm.”

At 10 a.m., the power went out at The Newport Daily News. After rebooting the computer, I just spent the last couple of minutes reconstructing the first two paragraphs from memory. Advice for the apocalypse: Hang on to that old manual typewriter gathering dust in the attic. When the grid goes, you’ll be grateful.

Mandatory evacuations already have been declared in low-lying and coastal portions of Westerly, Charlestown, Narragansett, South Kingstown, Tiverton, Middletown and Bristol. Yesterday, during a break in the Patriots game, a reporter for The Weather Channel showed the scene at Narragansett Town Beach. The reporter marveled at the skills of the local kiteboarders riding massive waves along the shore. He also warned that much of the beach could be wiped out after this storm, depending on its track, timing and intensity. It is the story of Rhode Island in the age of climate change. We are becoming more Ocean than State.

In addition to the South Shore beaches, the surge probably will be worst along the upper part of the East and West Bays. The Fox Point Hurricane Barrier will be closed in Providence, protecting low-lying DownCity from massive flooding. But all that water has to go somewhere. My little cove community of West Barrington could be one of the places that endures the bounce back.

The barrier itself was constructed after two hurricanes – the 1938 Great New England Hurricane, known locally as the Hurricane of ’38, and Hurricane Carol in 1954 – slammed into Rhode Island and submerged Providence’s financial district in water. The hurricane barrier, a 3,000-foot-long tidal flood barrier spanning the Providence River, was constructed between 1960 and 1966 to keep downtown dry during major storms. In 1985 the barrier was credited with sparing Providence from being deluged with two feet of water from Hurricane Gloria. Six years later, when Hurricane Bob roared through, the barrier saved the city from being inundated with four feet of water.

Two odd bits of hurricane barrier trivia: City officials use it to keep the river level higher during low tides during Providence WaterFire events. During an April storm in 2007, the barrier’s pumps are thought to have been the primary cause for the sinking of the Soviet submarine K-77, a.k.a. “The Russian Sub Museum” in Providence. The sub’s evolution from an instrument of the Cold War to a unique tourist attraction to scrap metal is worth chronicling in a collection of “only in Rhode Island” stories someday. But for now I can’t help wondering how much Russian sub remains in the mountains of scrap that border the highway along Providence’s industrial waterfront?

Once this whole thing blows over, Half Shell would like to know: What’s your Hurricane Sandy story?

Side By Each

Rhode Island always has been a state of odd juxtapositions. Most days when I drive to work through Warren I tap the brakes out of respect for the life-sized Cornelius – a “Planet of the Apes” character in a white NASA flight suit – that occasionally stands in front of the Warren Exchange at the funky corner where Water Street merges with Main Street. The space ape was on display yesterday, when the shop held one of its “parking lot sales” during the Warren Walkabout. Adding to its kitschy appeal, a plastic jack-o-lantern dangled from its neck.

“It’s part of the team now,” said Kevin, one of the workers monitoring visitors in the parking lot. “People stop in just to take their picture with it.”

Last week, while driving back from Newport, I saw a flock of wild turkeys in the Warren streets, making their way to a yard decorated in political signs. On the same drive, going the opposite direction, I’ve seen wild turkeys sleeping on a lawn in front of a funeral home in Portsmouth. There’s also a tiny historical cemetery just off busy West Main Road, known as the Holy Cross Episcopal Cemetery but once a family graveyard on old Rogers Farm, which I only noticed because I was stopped at a light. Directly across the street from it is a Benny’s.

These are the kinds of things that amuse me during the daily commute. The fleeting moments of Rhody culture that offer brief mental relief from the tedium of traffic, endless lights and the blight of sprawl that has crept into what was once an entirely scenic stretch of villages, farms and ocean vistas. Every now and then, the juxtapositions are transcendent – such as the October sunset I saw while crossing the Mount Hope Bridge last week, wild streaks of burning clouds, sky and leaves set against the blue bay. Or yesterday in Warren, wandering into the Medium Gothic Baptist Church to discover the Atwater-Donnelly Band performing Celtic folk, Irish airs and clog dancing on the black walnut pulpit with sunlight streaming through a kaleidoscope of huge arched stained glass windows.

What is your favorite “side by each” Rhody moment?

Rhody Gone Wild

The wilds of Rhode Island are getting wilder. The latest creature to cause a stir in the Ocean State is the fisher cat, which doesn’t fish and isn’t a cat but is a particularly vicious member of the weasel family. Sightings have exploded. A fisher bit one woman in Lincoln when she tried to kick it with bare feet. Friends in Kingston have heard their screeching at night and seen them trotting on the tops of stone walls, using them as rural highways to watering holes and easy kills.

Squirrel-heavy neighborhoods that suddenly don’t have any squirrels are a sign that fishers might be lurking around. Same with communities that put up signs for missing cats. They were hunted out of Rhode Island in the early 1700s, but are back with a vengeance.

Coyotes, also suspected in local cat thefts, have adapted quite easily to Rhode Island, even though they never lived in Rhody (or anywhere in the East for that matter) until last century. The absence of wolves in this part of the world gives them room to roam. I’ve heard them baying at night in Matunuck, watched them slink through the woods at Trustom Pond in South Kingstown and even spotted them darting across the bike path in Barrington and East Providence.

South County and other parts of the state are glutted with deer. I never saw one in Barrington until recently. Now I see them every week. A large female bounded between the post office and the middle school around 11 a.m. one day. The next night, when I was jogging at dusk on the bike path, two young deer trotted toward me, pounding the asphalt, only veering off at the last minute.

In recent years, young male black bears have returned to the state in the spring. Moose are prevalent once again in Massachusetts (numbering about 1,000) and friends from Connecticut have reported sightings on the main roads of the Nutmeg State. While no moose have been spied in Rhode Island yet, the great antlered beasts are getting closer to our borderlands. The state has more forested land than it did a century ago, when it was more agrarian. There may not be much elbow room, and even less wiggle room, but there are pockets of habitat that can sustain big creatures – at least as tourists, if not residents. So Bullwinkle’s coming, folks. Bet on it.

Finally, state environmental officials downplay sightings of mountain lions in Rhode Island, citing a lack of any credible evidence. But the true big cat believers are out there. According to the excellent eco RI blog, the last mountain lion in the Ocean State was shot in 1847 in West Greenwich and is preserved at Harvard University. But the mountain lion conspiracy theorists don’t buy it. Many of them insist that a mountain lion was spotted in Matunuck last year. Lending credence to some of their claims, one was killed on a Connecticut road, not far from Rhode Island. So for now the cat people have an edge over the folks who report Bigfoot, alien and Tom Brady sightings in Rhode Island.

What is the wildest thing you have ever seen in Rhode Island?

Small State, Big Gourds

Unlike, say, Texans, New Englanders aren’t big on bragging. In fact, here in Rhody, we aren’t really big on anything. Cultivating a belief in the appreciation of beauty on a small scale is part of the local habitude. But when the season of Falloween rolls around, with its cornucopia of apple-picking, foliage-viewing, haunt and harvest rituals, Rhode Island brings out the big gourds.

Giant pumpkin grower Ron Wallace of Greene grew the world’s first one-ton pumpkin, a gourd dubbed “The Freak II,” which tipped the scales at 2009 pounds at the Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts. The new world-record holder for giant pumpkins, “The Freak II” wrested the “pumpking” crown back for Rhode Island, topping a record held for two years by a Wisconsin man (1,810.5 pounds), which itself was broken by a New Hampshire grower (1,843 pounds) in September at a state fair in Deerfield.

Wallace seems to enjoy smashing pumpkin records. Last week at the Frerichs Farm pumpkin weigh-off in Warren, his entry, “The Pleasure Dome,” came in at 1,872 pounds. Although not a new world record, it was the heaviest pumpkin ever weighed in Rhode Island, and the second-heaviest weighed worldwide.

A member of the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Association, Wallace uses Epsom salts, Borax and a variety of fertilizers to grow his monsters. Weather conditions during the growing season contributed to this year’s fertile crop. Temperatures in the low 80s during the day with nighttime temperatures hovering around 70 are ideal for producing gourds the size of a Buick.

What else is biggest about the Biggest Little State in the Union?

Rooster Boosters

Antonia Farzan, a colleague here at the bricks-and-mortar home of Half Shell in Newport, showed me a piece of Rhode Islandiana last week. She inherited a small enamel label pin of a Rhode Island Red rooster superimposed over an anchor from her grandfather. The souvenir dates back to sometime in the middle of the 20th century, when a group of Providence businessmen got together to think of ways to promote the state. Part of the campaign involved wearing the pins with the pride. There was also a jingle:

Be a Rooster Booster/Now’s the time to crow!/Be a Rooster Booster/And help Rhode Island grow!

The pins are collector’s items today, but they also point to a time when the rooster had more cache than it does now in the state. As recently as the 1980s, people were more aware of Rooster Boosters in our midst. The second item on a Google search of the phrase includes a reprint of a St. Petersburg Times column from 1983 announcing a dinner of the R.I. Rooster Booster Club at a Florida Holiday Inn.

For about a century, the Rhode Island Red was the state's second-most visible symbol, after the anchor. The breed was established in the mid-1800s in Adamsville when farmer William Tripp crossed his Cochin hens with a Red Malay or Chittagong rooster he bought from a sailor in New Bedford. A neighbor bred his hens with the “Tripp fowl” and turned his flock into what he called the “Biggest Poultry Farm on Earth.” The bird’s fame spread quickly near and far, and its immediate success in the international poultry market made it a source of pride for Rhode Islanders.

This was around the time when Rhode Island led America into the Industrial Revolution. The state, which became world-famous for engineering and manufacturing achievements, started to romanticize about its pastoral, agrarian past. Once a place of farmers and fishermen, Rhode Island turned rapidly into a state of mills, factories, mechanical triumphs and immigrant workers. Somehow in the psyche of the average Rhode Islander, a rooster had more personality than a steam engine. So it became the state icon. (Although to be fair we should note that Providence once had a professional football team named Steam Roller and a professional basketball team called Steamrollers. It also had the minor-league hockey Reds, with their rooster logo, which lasted for 51 years.)

Rhody’s agrarian symbols weren’t limited to poultry. The University of Rhode Island mascot, the Rhody Ram, is a direct link to the state’s longtime heritage as an innovator in the design and manufacture of textiles. But sometime in the early 1970s, the state began to wean itself from its agricultural roots and went all in on the ocean. Part of it may have been a growing consciousness surrounding the pollution of Narragansett Bay and the notable efforts of the Save The Bay, one of the most significant environmental charity success stories in the country. The state also changed its license plate signature from “Discover” Rhode Island to adopt “The Ocean State” nickname. An American Soccer League championship team dubbed the Rhode Island Oceaneers played in East Providence. And suddenly, it seemed, everyone started talking about quahogs.

Rhody billed itself as Quahog Country, harvesting a quarter of the nation’s annual catch. Quahog festivals popped up here and there in places like North Kingstown and Warren, and quahogs began getting more of a mention in Rhode Island menus. The quahog became the official state shellfish, and even though the Rhody Red remained the state’s official bird, the fact that the Rhode Island Reds hockey team eventually disbanded didn’t help the rooster in its rivalry with the hard clam. If you add the prevalence of steamers, oysters, mussels and scallops to the local mania for all things oceanic, Rooster Boosters never stood much of a chance. Today, bivalve mollusks rule, and the state taste tends to the salty and briny. In fact, many Rhode Islanders nowadays, when they hear the word chicken, think of the name for one-pound lobsters.

None of that should discredit the triumphant role of the Rhode Island Red in helping to form the state identity. Still, it might be time to put on a clam pin and change the booster jingle to something like:

I’m a happy clam/At the beach or in the fog/Rhode Island’s where I am/Home of the wild quahog.

(Life lesson No. 8,472: Never try to jingle before your second cup of coffee.)

What is your favorite Rhode Island souvenir?

The 'Yo, Dude' of its Day

If you look up the phrase “What Cheer” on Google, the first and third items that pop up are links to information about the What Cheer? Brigade, the multi-piece, multi-style street music brass band from Providence. Second is a reference to a website strategy, design and application development company based in Omaha, Neb. Fourth is a Wikipedia entry on What Cheer, Iowa, a city in Keokuk County strangely named after the Providence motto. (The city’s signature event is the What Cheer Flea Market, billed as the largest flea market in the Midwest.) Other “What Cheer” references that make the first Google page include What Cheer Driving, a chauffer company based in Cranston, and What Cheer Antiques, a Providence store.

That’s a lot of What Cheering for a relatively archaic English greeting, but it looks as if the catchphrase might come back into vogue. On Saturday, Oct. 13, the R.I. Historical Society will host the first “What Cheer Day” promoting aspects of Ocean State history at all four of its sites.

Ever since the Narragansetts are said to have hailed Roger Williams with “What cheer, netop?” (a 17th-century version of “What’s going on, friend?”), the phrase “What Cheer” has been quintessentially Rhode Island: you can find it on street signs and storefronts, and it’s even the motto of the city of Providence.

Some of the ways local historians will be What Cheering: By attending roundtables on the RIHS 2012 theme “Rhode Island at War” at the Aldrich House; by learning about Rhode Island’s Civil War hospital at Portsmouth Grove at the RIHS Library; by knitting a pair of Civil War-era mittens in a “knit-a-long” while simultaneously shifting eras and wars in interaction with Revolutionary War re-enactors drilling and cooking in uniform on the lawn of the John Brown House Museum; or by attending a gala at the Museum of Work & Culture to celebrate the region’s industrial legacy during an evening titled “Made in Woonsocket.”

But back to Iowa. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on how the city got its name:

When the future What Cheer was founded in 1865, it was named Petersburg for Peter Britton, the settlement’s founder. This name was rejected by the Post Office, forcing a change of name. Joseph Andrews, a major and veteran of the American Civil War suggested the name What Cheer, and the town was officially renamed on December 1, 1879.
Sources differ as to why the name What Cheer was chosen. The phrase what cheer with you is an ancient English greeting dating back at least to the 15th century. One theory of the name is that a Scottish miner exclaimed What cheer! on discovering a coal seam near town. A more elaborate theory suggests that Joseph Andrews chose the name because of one of the founding myths of his native town of Providence, Rhode Island. According to the story, when Roger Williams arrived at the site that would become Providence in 1636, he was greeted by Narragansett Native Americans with “What Cheer, Netop.” Netop was the Narragansett word for friend, and the Narragansetts had picked up the what cheer greeting from English settlers. It is possible that the connection between What Cheer, Iowa and What Cheer, the shibboleth of Rhode Island, was merely coincidental – the entries for these subjects are adjacent but not connected in the 1908 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana.

Begging the question, then why aren’t there any Iowa towns named Word or Wassup?

How will you celebrate the first “What Cheer” Day in Rhode Island?

Crossed Signals

A friend of mine who works in Warren tells this story: He was driving through town when he saw a policeman on the side of the road. The cop waved. Dave waved back. Within a couple of minutes he saw a cruiser flashing its lights behind him. The policeman he had just passed got out and read him the riot act. “This means stop,” he said, raising his palm in the air. “No, it doesn’t,” Dave said, raising his own hand. “This (pushing his hand forcefully forward in front of him) means stop. This (lifting his hand in the air next to his shoulder) means hello.”

Gesture, like words, can be a tricky way to communicate. Even within the same culture, motioning can be misunderstood. It’s even worse when you leave the country. In Britain and elsewhere, what we think of as a peace sign means victory when the palm faces outward and is equivalent to giving the middle finger when the palm faces inward. Giving the OK sign in Greece, Turkey and several other countries is not OK; it is taken as a rude insult. Thumb’s up in Iran is equivalent to the ubiquitous middle finger here. (Reason No. 1,843 why it’s probably not a great idea to hitchhike in Iran.) Beckoning someone to “come here” with a single finger is frowned upon in the Philippines, where the gesture can be used only to call dogs. Any offender caught summoning a human that way could be arrested and possibly have the finger broken as punishment. Even the “hook ’em horns” sign showing the forefinger and little finger raised with the other fingers down - the signature gesture of the University of Texas Longhorns occasionally used by the general public as a silent “party on” statement - has alternate meanings. It’s been used for years as a form of greeting among Satanists and in many Mediterranean countries the “hook ’em” is an insult essentially calling men a “cuckold,” meaning “your wife is cheating on you.” (Now more commonly flashed at referees during soccer matches.)

Just a brief aside: As I was practicing the Longhorn greeting while researching this blog, I realized it could be adapted to provide a signature gesture for the University of Rhode Island Rams. Curl all of the fingers into a clench (with an open palm, not a fist), then raise the forefinger and little finger at the knuckles to make curled rams horns. “Rack ’em Rams!” Watch for it. Soon it will be sweeping the country.

Leading to this week’s question: What is the definitive Rhode Island gesture?

Please think beyond the middle finger. Some possibilities:

The shrug.
The hand slap to forehead followed by a shake of the head.
One hand on the steering wheel, the other raising a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to blot out the sun and make the blind side even more dangerous.
The “I’m watching you” point to your eyes, to their eyes and back to your eyes again.
Air kisses. Air quotes. Air guitar. Air “check please.” Air “scratch” indicating an immediate need to purchase a lottery ticket.
The “my bad” hand pat over the heart after you’ve done something stupid on the road while not making eye contact with the angry driver passing you.
The raising a pint in greeting to someone across the bar whose name you either can’t remember or who you just don’t want to talk to.

The Half Shell Legacy

Since I went missing in mid-June, I tried to get Jeremy Renner to guest blog Half Shell during its forthcoming limited engagement. He said something about “over Matt Damon’s not-dead-but-no-more-sequels body” and so I’m back, for as long as my temporary gig at the helm of the arts pages at Independent Newspapers lasts. The details of my return are more arcane than a Ludlum plot, but all that should matter to Rhodyholics is that Ocean State minutia will once again return to its rightful place at the top of the obscurity heap in the endless abyss of the cybersphere.

As sequels go, “Return of Blog on the Half Shell” will aim to be more “Godfather II” than “Jaws II.” (Or “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in” vs. “You’re going to need a bigger blogging platform.”) If I keep doing this – coming and going from the same job – readers can expect to encounter “Blog on the Half Shell Strikes Again,” “Revenge of Blog on the Half Shell” and “Blog on the Half Shell Meets Abbott and Costello” in the future. Mondays worked before, so we’ll stick to that schedule in our eternal quest to get Bob Geldof and The Boomtown Rats to amend the lyrics to their most famous song and spread a little grief to Tuesdays.

Rhody Universe: Three Brighton Memories
Andre the Giant Gets Plastered
Within days of my summertime move to the English Channel, I wandered down to a public bench on Marine Road in Brighton. A familiar face stared back from a sticker. It was Shepard Fairey’s born-in-Providence “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” mug. First appearing on Providence streets in the late 1980s, Andre’s “Posse” and “Obey” stickers remain a global phenomenon wherever alternative cultures congregate. Based on my own travel adventures, Andre may not have overtaken the peace sign yet, but he’s opened up a decent lead on yellow smiley face.

‘Moonrise’ Delight
It was somewhat surreal to watch the mostly-made-in-Rhody “Moonrise Kingdom” among an audience full of appreciative Brits at the Duke of York’s Picturehouse in Preston Circus, Brighton. Wes Anderson’s fantasy valentine to the magic of first love was a critical and popular success in the UK. Its arched style, archetypal narrative and stilted, comic dialogue didn’t thrill everyone, but the consensus among English moviegoers is that the film ranks with Anderson’s most charming and hopeful. A Rhode Island scene from “Moonrise” even made the front page of The Guardian last week to illustrate an article on the summer’s best movies. For a native New Englander, seeing locations in Rhode Island (and Massachusetts and New Hampshire) rendered with the Anderson touch made me wish I’d grown up as a Khaki Scout in South County.

Torch Song
After watching the Olympic torch being jogged through Brighton, my sister and I and the family dog, Harry, enjoyed a picnic brunch on the Pavilion grounds. A drunken man staggered over, reached down to pet Harry, missed, and sprawled to the ground next to our blanket.
“Where’r you from,” he mumbled.
“The States,” I said.
“Which one,” he asked.
“Rhode Island,” I said.
The man stared at me, as if trying to will an act of concentration into his furrowed brow. Eventually, he gave up.
“That means absolutely nothing to me,” he said. Then he threw up.

This week’s question: What was your strangest Rhode Island encounter outside of the Ocean State?

Half Shell, Will Travel

Some of you know this already, but for those who don’t get the paper, I’m leaving the office life to embark on a new adventure, beginning with a two-month excursion to England and surrounds. On Sunday I fly to London. As part of the condition of non-employment, I will be giving up this blog.

So the question is how to end it. Perhaps in a computer crash, where the characters of Half Shell dodge smoke monsters and polar bears before appearing in a flash sideways in some parallel purgatory Rhodyverse. Or maybe it ends in a blogging duel with a one-armed typist. Or I wake up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette and realize it was all a strange dream.

But then last week Olivia Culpo, a 20-year-old cellist from Cranston, became the first Miss Rhode Island to win the Miss USA pageant and will represent the United States of America in competing for the title of Miss Universe. As we know from our “Seinfeld” history, Rhode Island never wins these things, but the poised Miss Culpo, who deftly handled the toughest question of the night – “Would you feel it would be fair that a transgender woman wins the Miss USA title over a natural-born woman?” – gave hope to every Ocean State gal who looks great in a bikini and an evening gown.

It seemed like the right note on which to sign off.

As of today, Half Shell is officially on permanent hiatus. I’m a never-say-never guy, so in my admittedly warped world there is always a chance it could return in some guise. I won’t stop collecting size of Rhode Island references or obsessing over the oddities and quirks of Ocean State culture. So we’ll see what happens down the road.

But for now I’d just like to thank you all for reading. During the typical Monday slog, Half Shell has been the most enjoyable part of the day and I’ve been amazed at how many of you I’ve encountered randomly at places such as Kenyon’s Grist Mill or the Red Fez, who don’t actually get our paper but check in on the blog. Your comments (both on screen and off) are much appreciated.

As I’ve told some of you before, Rhode Island is my anchor, but every now and then I need to haul up and sail. For those who are interested, I will be starting a travel blog in England. Give me a week or so then Google my name (and "travel blog") and it should direct you to the new site. Naturally it will be a different kind of animal, but I will still be on the lookout for Rhode Islandisms wherever I can find them. Because you can take the boy out of Rhode Island, but you can’t take the Rhode Island out of the boy.

Fade to black.

English Signglish

Here at Half Shell we’re always on the lookout for other blogging Rhode Islanders, bringing their own voices to the Rhodyverse. Sometimes we stumble onto them while trolling for blog fodder. Other times they find us. A couple of weeks ago Rhody author Marna Krajeski e-mailed a head’s up about her blog, The Hanging Indent – a highly entertaining compendium of literary “misuses, malapropisms and interesting expressions,” often found on store and street signs locally and nationally.

The site is an amusing treasure trove for lovers of words and the English language. Photographs taken by Krajeski or sent to her from family and friends around the country document odd juxtapositions, poorly considered word choices and glaring typos on public signs. We learn, for example, that Hope Court in Wakefield is a dead end. A sign at McDonald’s reads: “WE ARE CURRENTLY OUT OF BOY TOYS. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.” A chimney sweep in North Kingstown advertises business on a truck, exhibiting a literary flair: “Lord of the Flues.”

Some of Half Shell’s global wanderings have resulted in similar findings. London, with its familiar signposted admonitions to “MIND THE GAP” and warnings about upcoming speed bumps (“HUMPS 50 METRES”), is particularly rich in “Signglish.” Once, as we were traveling on the Tube, among throngs jammed together like ripe sardines in a tin can, one poor passenger was pressed against a door with the words “NO PASSING THROUGH” overhead, only the P was scratched out. Another sign, at a walled London school, read: “THESE WALLS PAINTED WITH ANTI-CLIMB PAINT.” Yet another, at a traffic light in Stoke Newington, warned pedestrians not to cross a busy road before the light had turned with a huge sign over the street that read: “WAIT FOR THE GREEN MAN,” a reference to the glowing stick figure that appears at the intersection for 30 seconds or so, signaling it’s safe to cross.

What is the most oddly worded sign in Rhode Island?

Treasure Hunting

The prospect of discovering buried treasure has long appealed to the Rhode Island imagination. Reports of pirate booty stashed on some of Rhody’s islands have entertained the locals for centuries, causing sporadic searches for stunted oaks and storm-wrecked shores somewhere near the mysterious spot marked X. British pirate Joseph Bradish is believed to have buried chests of silver and gold on Block Island that, as far as anyone knows, have never be claimed. Captain Kidd is thought to have scattered bits of treasure on Patience Island and possibly Hog Island and Jamestown (at Beavertail) as well.

Today’s Rhode Island treasure hunters range from historians armed with metal detectors looking for old musket balls and coins in family farms to beachcombers picking up sea glass, driftwood, shells and stones along the coast to leisurely adventurers hunting for hidden geocaches and letterboxes.

Wakefield glass artist Eben Horton, borrowing from a West Coast friend’s idea, will add to the local treasure lore this Saturday on Block Island. The Block Island Glass Float Project is based on a similar activity in Lincoln City, Ore., which began after an artist started thinking about the blown glass floats that often wound up on the beaches there. The orbs, colored in various shades of blue and green, were used by Japanese fishing crews to float their nets and could be as small as 2 inches or as large as 2 feet. Now that most fishing vessels use buoyant plastic, the blown glass floats are rare, until an Oregon artist decided to make an annual event of placing 2,000 handmade colored glass spheres on a wide swath of public beach.

For the Rhode Island version, 200 glass floats, each about the size of a grapefruit, will be hidden on the Block, all of them dated, numbered and stamped with the shape of the island. The orbs will be divided evenly between the beaches and the greenway trails. They will be hidden above the high tide mark but never in the dunes or up the bluffs, and no floats will be placed between Surf Beach and Scotch Beach, or along the inside of Great Salt Pond. The floats will be located within one foot of either side of two Greenway trails – in the Enchanted Forest and along Clay Head Trail. They are finders keepers, although organizers request that finders keep only one, and leave the rest for others. All of the floats except 12 (in honor of 2012) will be made of clear glass. One is made entirely out of gold leaf. If you find one, you are asked to register it by logging on to www.blockislandinfo.com and clicking on the Glass Float Project link. The running count will allow visitors to continue to explore the sites, if all of the floats aren’t found on Saturday.

What is your favorite “found treasure” in Rhode Island?



[Blogger's note: Apologies for the late post. Forgot last week to mention that I would be off on Memorial Day, cycling Ocean Drive in Newport, where the kites, fishing poles, sails and bug-shaped zip cars were out in full force.]

Officially Ours

We have no state amphibian, insect or fossil, but on May 10 the Rhode Island General Assembly approved legislation designating the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry as the official sailing education vessel of Rhode Island.

Set to sail in July 2013, the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry is a replica of a three-masted 19th century warship that will serve as an innovative ocean-going classroom for Rhode Island students. The square-rigged tall ship will measure 207 feet, and when not fulfilling its education-at-sea duties, will be displayed and available to the public in Newport.

The ship is named after the Rhode Island-born Navy hero of the War of 1812, a conflict of note in these parts, now commemorating its bicentennial. In the state symbol pantheon, it competes somewhat with the replica of the continental sailing vessel Providence, which was adopted as the official Rhode Island flagship and tall ship ambassador in 1992. It also bumps up against the image of the America’s Cup yacht Reliance, which is prominently featured on Narragansett Bay, with the Newport (Pell) Bridge in the background, on the Rhode Island commemorative quarter.

Half Shell is not opposed to making more room in the attic for the clutter of Rhody symbols and emblems, from anchor, flag and great seal to the Crescent Park Loof Carousel (American folk art), Rhode Island Red (bird), coffee milk (drink), striped bass (fish), flower (violet), fruit (Rhode Island greening apple), mineral (Bowenite), rock (Cumberlandite), shell (quahog), tartan and tree (red maple).

(The official symbols list even has its own quirky only-in-Rhode-Islandisms, most notably in the legacy of the state song. “Rhode Island,” with words and music by T. Clark Brown, was adopted as state song in 1946. Fifty years later it was replaced by “Rhode Island’s It For Me,” with lyrics by comedian Charlie Hall, music by Maria Day, arranged by Kathryn Chester. Instead of dismissing Brown’s ditty from the archives forever, legislators made it the official march of Rhode Island.)

The SSV Oliver Hazard Perry fits comfortably into the mix, especially since Rhode Islanders collect boats the way Imelda Marcos hoarded shoes. That’s true even during these austere times, when many residents who own sailboats find them too expensive to maintain and those who own motorboats can’t afford the fuel. This explains why Half Shell owns a pair of kayaks, the precursor to our master plan to restore a small boat in retirement with the ultimate goal of making it the official dinghy of Rhode Island.

What should be the next Rhode Island state symbol?

Do the Locomotion

It is Half Shell’s contention that there are few more attractive rail routes in the country than the brief stretch that passes along the coves from northeastern Connecticut into southwestern Rhode Island at sunset or sunrise, when the track deviates from coast to swamp, a view we’ve enjoyed on the Amtrak line to West Kingston during various excursions from New York, Washington, D.C. and Colonial Williamsburg.

We’ll have a review of Frank Heppner’s “Railroads of Rhode Island: Shaping the Ocean State’s Railways,” an entertaining survey of the state’s rail heritage and culture written for The History Press, in this Thursday’s paper (and online). But for the purposes of today’s blog, we’re going to mine the minutia for the nuggets and oddities that give the book such a Rhode Island flavor.

As Heppner writes about the Ocean State in the preface: “It abounds in contradictions. Rhode Island has produced some of the most distinguished and honorable national politicians of recent times…However, during one recent ten-year period, an ex-governor, the ex-mayor of the largest city, the ex-mayor of the third-largest city and a superior court judge were all serving time in the slammer on various corruption charges.”

Personal anecdotes and comments throughout lend a touch of humor to the history. Writing about the Providence and Springfield Railroad: “Most of the names of the towns along the right of way would not be recognized by anyone outside Rhode Island, but one town name would be instantly recognized by anyone who was a child in the 1920s through the 1940s. The Esmond Mills made baby blankets and, in a stroke of marketing genius, published a little book in 1924 designed to be read aloud to children. Called The Tale of Bunny Esmond, it was about an adorable bunny that was always cold until somebody wrapped him in a Bunny Esmond blanket. By a strange coincidence, Esmond Mills made a baby blanket that had Bunny’s image printed on it. Bunny Esmond was the Elmo of his day. The Esmond blankets were softer than most, and in 1943, the author would have killed with his tiny fists anyone who tried to take his Bunny Esmond blanket away from him.”

Among the things the staff at Half Shell did not know:

“The lowest temperature ever recorded in Rhode Island – negative twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit – was noted at Wood River Junction, located at the current route in southwestern Rhode Island. Wood River Junction is consistently the coldest location in the state.”

“The Great Swamp was also the home of another most unusual railway, perhaps a unique one: the Rhododendron Railroad.” (It was established by Dr. Lorenzo Kinney Sr., a professor of botany at URI, who in the early 20th century became one of the world’s foremost experts on rhododendrons and azaleas, and began a business exporting native and cultivated rhodies to East Coast estates.)

Two straight stretches of track in Rhode Island are two of only three places on the Amtrak line where Acela trains can go as fast as 150 miles per hour.

There was once a village of Sinking Fund, Rhode Island.

The first Union Station building in Providence was “the longest building in the country at the time (some historians dispute this; none of them is from Rhode Island).”

The Providence and Worcester Railroad’s freight train PR-3 serves a single customer in South County – Arnold Lumber of Kingston.

In addition to its record for Rhode Island cold and its sad role as the site of one of Rhode Island’s worst railway disasters, Wood River Junction earned another kind of notoriety when, in 1964, the United Nuclear Co. built a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility “less than half a mile from the location of the wreck at Richmond Switch.” After pouring a solution of uranium compound into a mixer, a worker at the plant saw a blue flash, was knocked over and died of radiation poisoning two days later. “His was the first and only death due to acute exposure to radiation in a commercial nuclear facility in the United States.”

Rhode Island, America’s smallest state, once had two of the shortest railroads in the country. The smallest, a revamped version of the Warwick Railroad, was about a mile long. Perhaps more interesting was the Moshassuck Valley Railroad, “which operated as an independent line for over a century with only 1.8 miles (generously) of track.”

Providence was the only New England city to have cable cars.

One unusual aspect of the Providence and Danielson Railroad: It had a single freight car that carried a particular cargo – occupied caskets. Heppner explains: “Trolley lines were often built near cemeteries (the land was cheap), and in an era before automotive hearses, a specialized trolley car with seating space for the funeral party and cargo space for the departed was often a feature of trolley lines, including the Providence and Danielson Railroad.”

The original paint job of Kingston Station was three shades of brown.

One of the more familiar electric locomotives that passes through Rhode Island is the AEM-7, made by General Motors for Amtrak, a generally reliable train distinguished by its ugliness. Railroad enthusiasts call them “Toasters;” to Amtrak employees, they are known as “Meatballs.”

What is your favorite Rhode Island train story?

Rhody Squid

On Friday at an Irish pub called O’Hara’s in the Newton Highlands part of Massachusetts, my friends and I, all visiting from Rhode Island, began our lunchtime food-and-drink excursion by glancing at the appetizers. At the top of the list was calamari, served “traditional” and “Rhode Island style.” So we asked the waitress: How do you make the Rhode Island style?
“Comes with banana peppers and garlic butter.”
“And the traditional?”
“Comes without those things.”
A day later, I talked with a couple of folks from Connecticut, who said that menus in the Nutmeg State increasingly refer to “Rhode Island-style calamari.” Some diners have even found it on menus in southern California. There are subtle variations, but the gist is hot cherry peppers (served as rings) or banana peppers (or both), cooked in garlic butter or garlic and oil. Often a small condiment serving of marinara sauce accompanies. In general, it’s a spicier and greasier version of the dish and famed New England chef Jasper White pays tribute to those qualities by calling his flavorful version, “Spicy and Greasy Rhode Island Calamari.”
In the past year, Rhode Island has been referred to as “the squid capital of the East Coast,” with more than 7 million pounds caught in local waters. Last fall Bryan Rourke of the ProJo reported it this way: “Squid is to Rhode Island what lobster is to Maine; cod is to Massachusetts.”
But the Rhody cuisine renaissance isn’t limited to calamari. Clear-broth Rhode Island chowder, sometimes called South County chowder hereabouts, is also making its way onto more menus, along with variations of white, from the thick, stick-a-spoon-in-it-and-it-won’t-move versions popular in Boston and Cape Cod to the thinner milky versions, locally called Newport chowder. One food Web site reported that “Rhode Island Red chowder” is gaining fans as well, popping up on regional menus, elbowing its way as a soup du jour as something distinct from Manhattan chowder, far spicier and creamier than its New York-dubbed cousin.
In some Rhode Island restaurants (and, I’ve heard, Long Island ones as well), we’ve had a clam chowder variant that could be called “dirty chowder” or “gray chowder,” being a blending of the clear and milky chowders. Perhaps it should be called “New England skim chowder.” Long Island food shacks have also popularized a mix of the red and white chowders. One of my friends calls that “Long Island chowder,” although I’m not sure anyone over the Throgs Neck Bridge would be able to identify it as such.
The predominance of food shows on TV, easy recipe hunting on the Internet, a growing awareness of regional cuisines and ubiquitous kitchen experimentation has led to the discovery of Rhode Island’s notoriously insular food culture on plates and platters outside the state. Can anyone envision the day when French cafes, along with their croissants and brie, will offer Rhode Island New York System hot wieners? (Wouldn’t be the same without the neon sign in the window.)

What will be the next Rhode Island food to go national?

With Apologies to Monty Python...

Friday is Rhode Island Independence Day, marking the moment when our forebears became the first residents of the Colonies to renounce allegiance to the British Crown. Details are murky, but according to some historians of ill repute, Rhode Island patriots gathered in a dim pub and, fired up on casks of ale and the demon rum, collectively asked, “What have the British ever done for us?”
One voice spoke out meekly:
“The ale house?”
“Right. Fine. But except for the ale house, what have the British ever done for us?”
“Well, Shakespeare…”
“Very well. Shakespeare and the ale house.”
“Dictionaries.”
“Dictionaries. Of course. That goes without saying.”
“Shorthand.”
“Clearly. Conceding the points on shorthand, Shakespeare, dictionaries and the ale house, what have the British ever done for us?”
About an hour later, after the patriots had exhausted the positive benefits of British rule, they all agreed to revolt and, following a few historical anomalies in the ensuing years, Rhode Island, as we know it, was born.

So the question is: How should we celebrate Rhode Island Independence Day?

Some suggestions:
1) Take the day off. As currently constituted, Rhode Island Independence Day, unless it falls on a weekend, is a working day for a majority of Rhode Islanders. But how can we all exuberantly assert our independence when we are working for The Man?
2) Rename it. As holiday names go, Rhode Island Independence Day has all of the poetry of Administrative Professionals Day. Massachusetts figured it out. They have Patriots Day (celebrated with a little road race in Boston, a skirmish between Minutemen and Lobsterbacks on the Lexington Green and a morning baseball game at Fenway). So why not Rogue’s Day, a day of roguery to commemorate the subversive dissident in all of us?
3) Renounce all things British for a day. That means no listening to old Beatles, Stones or Who albums. No catching up on “Dr. Who” DVDs. No bangers ’n‘ mash for lunch. No bitters after work. No checking on Premier League scores. No following Ricky Gervais on Twitter. No practicing your fake Cockney accent while shaving in front of the mirror.
4) Convert Rhode Island Shore Dinner Halls into all-you-can-eat May Breakfast buffets.
5) Anchor something somewhere.
6) Pay bills in wampum.
7) Attend Fifestock, an all-day Fifeapalooza of fife and drum music at Fort Adams.
8) Invent a Roger Williams drinking game. (Believe me, this is harder than it sounds.)
9) Moon Connecticut
10) Go quahog tipping.

We Are What We Are

The Web site The Awl ranked Rhode Island's latest slogan, "Unwind," as the third worst out of 51 (including all states and the District of Columbia), barely beating out Maryland's "Maryland of Opportunity" and Washington's "SayWa!" The ranking, which is entirely fair, illuminates a long-standing problem for Rhody: We can't sell ourselves.

For many of us who live here, that's fine, of course. We're happy with our secret knowledge of Rhody's collective cool, contentedly brunching at Jim's Dock in Jerusalem, watching kids catch crabs near the moorings or gazing at boats that motor or sail in and out of Salt Pond. Taking our rambling drives along coast and through country to Tiverton Four Corners, for a cone of coffee or butter brickle at Gray's Ice Cream. Cycling with a picnic lunch to Colt State Park in Bristol, where the bay opens up to a patchwork of green fields attracting communities of kite flyers, Frisbee tossers, smorgasbord crashers and games of volleyball, baseball, touch football, bocce and horseshoes. No, it doesn't bother us that the rest of the world hasn't discovered some of our simple but peerless pleasures.

But the state wants tourist money. So it comes up with slogans. Like "Discover Rhode Island." As if we are too small for the average American to find. Or "Unwind." As if the world's tightly wound will encounter bliss, harmony and tranquility in a Rhode Island February.

The slogan concept has even confused the Great Oz of Dictionaries, Wikipedia, which in a list of state slogans, says the following about Rhode Island: "Unwind (formerly Hope)."

Uhh, sorry all you Wikipedians out there, but Hope is our motto, never our slogan. A motto is a much deeper thing than a slogan, a core tenant, a belief, a way of being. A slogan is just trying to sell something, a marketing gimmick, a shallow catch phrase. Perhaps that's why we've never gotten the hang of it. "Unwind" sounds like something California would say. It's not us. We're a state of slapstick. We're a state of scandals. We're a state of contradictions. We're a state of little-known secrets. We're a state that loves to laugh. We're a state that lives to the daily rhythms of the ocean. We're a state obsessed with our quirks. We're a state that likes to eat and drink and gamble. We're a state that immerses itself in history and nature and roadside kitsch. We're a state that is happy it's not Connecticut.

It's hard to get all of that into a slogan.

More successful was the response to a student posting a Yahoo Answers question, requesting help for a social studies project in which the assignment was to come up with a slogan for Colonial Rhode Island. The best answer, chosen by three voters:

I named a chicken 'Red.'

Yup. That about sums it up. Beats "Unwind," at any rate.

We've asked this question before, but we're not above repeating ourselves. What should be Rhode Island's slogan?

Taste for Tacky

After passing the pink gates and fake deer menagerie of a Bristol home along Route 114 en route to Newport, I began thinking about the profusion of tacky lawns in Rhode Island. With streaks of forsythia and daffodil clusters yellowing the commute, and the pinks and whites and pastels of the blooming and budding spring bushes and trees serving as colorful distraction, Rhody’s endless fascination with lawn animals, mini-lighthouses, glass orbs and leftover holiday decoration can go unnoticed. But operating on the theory that there is nothing in the universe that can’t be Googled, when I got to work I plugged into the Matrix and, wouldn’t you know it, there’s already a blog called Tacky Lawns dedicated to documenting the wonderful world of yard kitsch.

Our purpose and mission is to document the hordes of tacky lawns and lawn ornaments that blight American yards. We seek out everything from the ordinary tacky (pink flamingoes, gnomes on the roam, resin animals of every stripe and shape) to the extraordinary in tackiness.

My search led to a post on the tacky lawns of West Warwick, a photo sequence accompanied by the following note:

As of April 1, 2000 there were 13,186 housing units in West Warwick. As of November 2, 2009, 90% of these housing units featured Tacky Lawns.

Rhode Island, Land of Giant Termites and Six-Foot Mr. Potato Heads, has long loved its kitsch. Somewhere inside most homes you are liable to find one of the following: Pope-on-a-Rope Soap, Smoking Monkey, Yodeling Pickle, Boxing Nun puppet, a Buddy Christ Dashboard Statue or something equally cheap and tawdry that indulges the bad taste impulse in all of us. (Full confession: My thing is plastic lobster. One crustacean lives in the kitchen; the other’s on a bookshelf.)

Like the circles of hell in Dante’s “Inferno,” there are levels to tackiness. At one end you have pink flamingoes and garden gnomes, deserving induction in the first class of the Kitsch Hall of Fame. Somewhere lower you’ll find the Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure, a pajama bottom-wearing, slipper-clad, wild-eyed, sloppy-haired elderly woman crawling in cats. Or Fred Toothpick Holder, a bulbous, vaguely man-shaped figure, stuck mercilessly in dozens of toothpicks, like an acupuncture session gone horribly wrong, available in “Ouch Gray.” Or a Lookin’ Good for Jesus mini-makeup kit, a selection of Tattoos for the Elderly or Instant Irish Accent Mouth Spray, all novelties in the marketplace of ideas that make you go “hmm…”

So where is the tackiest yard in Rhode Island?

The Daffodil Man

I’ve never met the Daffodil Man, but I’d like to thank him. Ronald Lee Fleming, a city planner and urban designer, was honored by members of the Alliance for a Livable Newport recently for his generosity and vision. Fleming is the man responsible for funding the Daffodil Project, in which more than 120,000 daffodils have been planted throughout Newport over the last seven years. As quoted last week by Sean Flynn of The Newport Daily News, Fleming envisions “a gold necklace from the city’s entryways right down to the water.”

As our communities asphalt and concrete and sprawl themselves into one homogenous, gray Blobville, we take pleasure in what little grace notes of beautification are left in the landscape. It improves the drive to Newport, for example, on a late March/early April day, to notice satellites of daffodil clusters streaking yellow at the Rotary, in the field along Admiral Kalfbus Road and next to two burying grounds on the aptly named Farewell Street. Somehow civilization doesn’t feel so drab when bulbs are in bloom.

A few daffodils at a time, Fleming has transformed Newport. His contribution to Newport’s charm is reminiscent of local heroes in other communities – such as the late Antoinetta Goodwin, better known in South County as The Chicken Lady, for the Rhode Island Red figures that adorned her automobile and mailbox along her Route 138 property. (Her son has carried on the chicken mailbox tradition, with the birds decked out in Red Sox garb or seasonal decoration, amusing commuters along the route that once connected Tower Hill to Little Rest.) Goodwin made it her mission to plant flowers in many of the roadside and rotary medians in the villages of South Kingstown, bringing color and a sense of tranquility to the increasingly noisy, suburbanized space.

People my age who grew up in Barrington may remember Karl Jones, who tended what was thought to be the country’s largest private rose garden at his property along Nayatt Road. Jones was a cranky, Yankee iconoclast, but his cultivated roses and landscape were beautiful, drawing visitors from around the world in June. Each year he donated his land to Barrington High School for a day, so the graduating class could hold its Friendship Service on the grounds, while the roses were in bloom. When he became too old to take care of the garden, he approached the town for help, hoping his flowers, with a little care and tending, would have new life in posterity. Barrington balked. Jones sold to private developers. The property was split up and turned into a cul-de-sac of homes with an address of Jones Circle. A trellis with a few thorny vines is all that remains visible to the public along Nayatt Road, an echo of what once was the town’s quirkiest and most beloved attraction.

So Barrington lost its rose paradise, and much of its character and charm in the process. Newport is still building its Brigadoon of daffodils. If it takes a village to raise a child, perhaps it takes a villager who sees the world with the eyes of a child to save it.

What would be one way to transform an ugly part of Rhode Island?

Waiting for 'Moonrise'

Quint drinks a can of Narragansett in “Jaws.” Bluenote was the name of the horse that wins the fourth race at Narragansett Park in “The Sting.” Miss Rhode Island wins the Miss America crown in “Miss Congeniality,” and when pageant host William Shatner asks her to describe her idea of a perfect date, she says “April 25, because it’s not too hot, not too cold.”

These are a few of the sterling Rhode Islandisms in Hollywood films. Despite the best efforts of the Farrelly Brothers, and the fine work of some exceptional actors – including Richard Jenkins and Viola Davis – the Ocean State still comes up a bit short on the Silver Screen. More movies are being made here, but few of them have been very good, so Rhode Islanders have contented themselves with lapping up appetizers of scenery or Rhody references while mostly cringing at the dialogue and plot contrivances.

But that could change in May, when the quirkiest of film directors, Wes Anderson, opens the Cannes Film Festival with a new movie filmed in the quirkiest of states, Yours Rhody.

“Moonrise Kingdom,” featuring a stellar cast (Edward Norton, Francis McDormand, Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel and Bob Balaban), tells the story of a 12-year-old boy and girl in a New England village, circa 1965, who fall in love, make a secret pact and escape together on the eve of a impending storm, with the villagers in pursuit. If the trailer is a true indication of the film’s verbal wit and visual enchantment, “Moonrise” may end up being the movie that stamps Rhode Island in the minds of film buffs in the manner of Martha’s Vineyard in “Jaws” and coastal Scotland in “Local Hero.” Much of it was filmed at the South Kingstown Land Trust conservation easement Bayfield Farm, and advance scenes suggest that Anderson has captured the fairy-tale atmosphere of its sloping fields and tangled woods.

Leading us to this week's question: What Rhode Island location would you like to see filmed in a movie?

Rhody Universe: Soupy Sales
Last December I wrote an article about the art of making soupy, a family tradition in the villages of Westerly that originated in parts of Italy in which spicy sausages are made before Christmas, hung over winter, and distributed to kin and close friends around Easter. The article, posted on our Web site, prompted an e-mail from a reader, who wondered how to acquire soupy, which he had enjoyed years ago. I passed on a couple of suggestions – Ritacco’s Market, Dipollino’s Packing Co. – and didn’t hear from him again until recently. He’s having his bathroom remodeled and talked to “the guy that is putting in the flooring.” Turns out the flooring guy goes to Westerly every year to make soupy. So now he has a soupy source. The universe that is Rhode Island works in mysterious ways.

Ode to a Greasy Spoon Diner

I belong to the counter culture, the kind of person that prefers sitting in front of a bartender, waitress or short-order cook than in a booth or at a table. Cafes are nice, but sometimes they can have too much milieu. When I want an environment without the fancy French vocabulary attached, I head for pubs and diners.

Growing up in Rhode Island, the birthplace of the American diner, I always looked for the dives and greasy spoons – for the food, yes, tasty, cheap and served in big portions, but also for the conversation and the characters. You could run into anybody. Millionaire. Fisherman. College professor. Stripper. The diner seemed to be a safe haven for all walks of life. Some of my strangest conversations have occurred in diners. Today it was a thread about whether you could eat another human being to survive if you had to. The consensus was it depended on how much Tabasco was available.

(I remember a conversation at the old Jigger’s Diner in East Greenwich about how the town had an unusual number of wedding shops. One man at the counter was from a college town in New Hampshire. He said you couldn’t turn a corner without running into a pizza house. Another guy was from Brockton, Mass. He said, “Our thing is funeral homes.”)

Working now from our Newport Daily News offices above the slots, I can tumble down the hill anytime to Bishop’s 4th Street Diner at the Rotary. It’s the kind of rough-and-ready place where a frappe is advertised as a “Great Hangover Cure!” on the menu. Rhody food figures prominently. There are R.I. Johnny Cakes and stuffies, meatball grinders and clam strip rolls, and plenty of items featuring “Portuguese” in the name, including Portuguese breakfast sandwiches, Portuguese Sweet Toast and even Portuguese French Toast. The Portuguese Omelet includes the signature twist in all Rhody food described as “Portuguese,” a spicy sausage called chourico (it is combined with onions, peppers and cheese in the egg). At Bishop’s, a waitress scrawling shorthand on a receipt pad might yell out, “Drop a fry, Mikey!,” indicating in diner lingo that a particular order has been placed. The customers are mostly locals and regulars, and everyone seems to use a lot of ketchup.

Sometimes even the names of diners create a feeling of Rhode Islandness. The Hope Diner in Bristol. The late and lamented Wampanoag Diner in East Providence, where Mama Dot and her family worked. Like Champs Diner in Woonsocket and many others, the Wampanoag lingers only in the haze of nostalgia and the eternal scent memory of cigarette smoke, infiltrating every fabric of clothing.

The tourists come to see our lighthouses, but the locals prefer the diners. There is Snoopy’s in North Kingstown, the Middle of Nowhere Diner in Exeter and Haven Brothers in Providence. There’s also the Modern Diner and Right Spot Diner in Pawtucket, Seaplane Diner and Liberty Elm Diner in Providence, State Line Diner in Foster, Beacon Diner in East Greenwich and Miss Cranston Diner in Cranston, among others, calling on all souls. Because the average Rhode Island diner always felt to me like the kind of place where the angels and demons might show up after midnight, meeting behind windows and chrome reflecting rain-streaked neon. The winged and horned, mostly invisible to the rest of us, sitting at the counter to square up the previous day’s soul-stealing and soul-saving over coffee and hash. Loser pays the tab. Winner leaves the tip.

What is your favorite Rhode Island diner?

Saints Preserve Us

Today is St. Joseph’s Day, the feast day celebrated by Rhode Island’s significant Italian American population, and the only day the rest of us eat zeppole, a lightweight, deep-fried dough ball often powdered with sugar, filled and/or topped with custard, cannoli, jelly, pastry cream, a butter/honey mixture or some other sweet stuffing.

Italian Americans represent the largest demographic in the state, with 19 percent, a figure that is also the highest percentage of any United State. Which is why it always seems a little odd that St. Joseph’s is such a low-key day, especially given the noise St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, makes hereabouts.

Most feast days are occasions for communal celebration and religious devotion. But St. Patrick’s, like Christmas, has morphed beyond its religious roots. As the second largest cultural community in Rhode Island (a little over 18 percent), Irish Americans also contribute greatly to the Ocean State identity. Per capita, Rhody has the third-largest Irish American community in the country, behind only Massachusetts (23 percent) and New Hampshire (20 percent). (The other three New England states are also in the top 10, and Boston, the Hub of the region, often called Ireland’s 33rd county, has the highest population of Irish Americans of any city in the country.)

But St. Patrick’s is really a worldwide phenomenon – a tribal party turned global, sustained in part by mythmaking and marketing. It’s an expression of triumph for a poor island nation that sent its sons and daughters to shores around the world, where they have endured, thrived and helped build nations in both hemispheres. So in Rhode Island, when March arrives, we have three straight Saturdays of parades, festivities and pub crawls in Pawtucket, Providence and Newport. (And next week some of the same revelers and participants will take the party just across the Connecticut border, to Mystic.)

Last Saturday, on the actual feast day, I visited my local, a pub called Crossroads, in Warren, owned by an Irishman now living in Rhode Island. Between rounds of Guinness and platters of corned beef and cabbage, the Providence Police Pipes and Drums Band showed up, banging and blowing “Danny Boy,” “Amazing Grace” and other classic tunes, as part of a six-pub visit that included Patrick’s in Providence and Lucky’s in East Providence. Inside, the pub was greener than the Emerald City. The dabblers had their green beer; the drinkers stuck with the black stuff or the caramel-colored whiskies lined behind the bar. The room was sardines. Customers kept bumping into Lance, the armored knight that stands between the entrance and the bar. (Some of them even apologized.) A good time, as always, unless you were the besieged wait staff, bartenders, cooks or busboys, slammed for hours, working through the mirth.

Other feast days are celebrated in Rhode Island. The state also has the largest percentage of people of Portuguese origin (Portuguese Americans and Cape Verdean Americans, comprising over eight percent of the population, most located on the East Bay). Their feast days are a chance to sample favas, chourico, malasadas, cocoila, sweet bread and blade meat, among other delicacies. But like St. Joseph’s and festivals for Rhody’s large French Canadian and Liberian populations, days devoted to St. George or the Feast of the Holy Ghost aren’t ritually observed statewide. Rhode Island, by far the most Catholic state in the nation, keeps its saints close at hand and embedded in the calendar. But the state itself has no patron saint, unless one is willing to grant the honor to its founder, Roger Williams. The problem there, of course, is that Roger was decidedly not Catholic. So, in scanning the list, perhaps we are best off with Saint Drogo, the patron saint of coffeehouses. Given the local mandate of a Dunkin’ Donuts on every corner, Drogo would seem to be an obvious candidate. (He is also the patron saint of unattractive people, so that covers a lot of ground.) If you’re with me, raise an espresso to Drogo on his designated day, April 16.

Otherwise, who should be Rhode Island’s patron saint?

Scratch, Scratch Rhody

Just as Rhode Island’s latest one-in-30-million lobster, a calico dubbed Spoticus pulled from the waters off Newport, was getting used to its new Save The Bay aquarium digs, a Newport woman dropped by the Bellevue Avenue Stop & Shop with a family member for a frozen dessert and figured she might as well get a Powerball ticket, too. She chose three Quick Picks with the Power Play option along with a tub of rainbow sherbet. Later that evening, Louise White, 81, of Newport learned that the $336.4 million lottery prize was hers.

But the story doesn’t end there, because the day after White claimed the prize, another Powerball jackpot was won in Rhode Island. This time, the winning ticket of $60 million was sold at the convenience store, Quickets, in Smithfield. It’s not the first time a state has won back-to-back Powerball jackpots – Indiana managed the trick three times in a row once – but the odds of that happening are way up there in yellow/calico lobster territory.

The cyber-ink on last week’s blog post (“The Ballad of the Anonymous Powerball Winner”) had barely dried when the announcement came that White was the winner. The Newport Daily News (which owns Independent Newspapers) broke the story. Reporter Sean Flynn’s entertaining first look at the winner noted that White, who lives with her son, Leroy White (a longtime and popular musician and performer in Newport) and daughter-in-law Deborah White, a surgical nurse at Newport Hospital, established the Rainbow Sherbet Trust to administer the winnings. In Flynn’s words:

The trust bears the name of the frozen treat that drew a family member, accompanied by White, to Stop & Shop the evening she purchased her winning lottery ticket.

How cool is that?

So Rhode Island, suddenly lucky in lobster and lottery, likely will ratchet up its obsession with shellfish and numbered Ping-Pong balls in the coming days. For a state with at least one village created entirely by lottery (Avondale, formerly known as Lotteryville, in Westerly), whose residents routinely give each other scratch tickets as stocking stuffers, this can only mean that the gaming madness is going to intensify. The state needs money, so this is the perfect time to introduce a plethora of instant games into the market.

Some possibilities:
Where’s Roger? (Scratch the tree root. If you discover the head of Roger Williams, you are an instant winner.)
Yellow Lobster (Scratch the lobster. If you discover a calico lobster underneath the yellow one, you are an instant winner.)
Roomful of Blues Mystery Tour (Scratch the band. If you discover a Rhode Island musician who hasn’t played in it yet, you are an instant winner.)

Beyond that, Rhode Island has joined the other five New England states to create a new regional lottery game – Lucky for Life – that will pay winners $1,000 a day for the rest of their lives. The game also will be an interesting lesson in kinship. Every New England state revels in its own cranky independence. (Rhode Island even has an Independent Man that stands atop its State House, enduring heaps of pigeon guano every day.) Outside of Yankee magazine and sports fan tribalism, there isn’t much we celebrate together.

Years ago, the short-lived New England magazine, a high-quality monthly that tried to do for the region what weekly New Yorker and monthly New York magazine do for the Empire State, couldn’t find enough advertisers to sustain its publication. Knowing that Yankee had already targeted the “lighthouses and covered bridges” demographic, as one New England magazine editor snidely put it to me, the publication tried to provide a niche between Yankee’s culture-and-travel kitsch, Boston magazine’s personality-driven content and The Atlantic’s high-brow focus on ideas. It didn’t work (possibly because The New Yorker and The New York Times seem to spend as much time in New England as their own state).

But this lottery thing. This could have legs.

This week’s question: What should be the next scratch ticket game in Rhode Island?

The Ballad of the Anonymous Powerball Winner

On Feb. 11 someone bought a winning Powerball lottery ticket worth $336.4 million dollars at the Stop & Shop on Newport’s Bellevue Avenue. You know, the street where the Astors and the Vanderbilts camped out every July and August in those modest little summer cottages overlooking the ocean. Understandably, the winner has so far been reluctant to go public, but the prize and its mystery recipient have been bubbler fodder for weeks. The following ballad, roughly written, humbly submitted, is dedicated to the hubbub:

From Adamsville to Quonochontaug
Everyone wants to know:
More than three hundred million in Powerball –
Who won all that dough?

Cameras are ready, pens are poised
To record someone’s instant fame.
The ticket is won, the game is done,
But we don’t even have a name.

A native? Or some visitor?
We can’t be sure which gender.
The only thing we’re certain of –
That’s a lot of legal tender.

The ticket was sold as one of three
At the Newport Stop & Shop
The store soon became a celebrity
With a weeklong photo op.

For days that’s all we talked about:
Who was the mysterious winner?
What would you do with all that cash?
Where would you go for dinner?

The lucky anonymous lottery champ
Probably hired a lawyer
To help with the financial windfall
And deal with Diane Sawyer.

The longer this goes, the more people ask
A question that sounds a bit funny.
We’d all like to win the lottery but
Is it possible to get too much money?

Would it really be worth all the trouble
And the constant aggravation –
All the kooks, all the friends, all the family,
All those suffering in desperation

All converging on your home
Begging for a little assistance,
Relentless in their hounding,
Furious at any resistance.

You’d have to change your phone and mail
And unplug your computer, too.
You’d probably have to leave the state
Just to escape the zoo.

You might need to go into hiding
Otherwise you’d have a whole nation
Watching your every move and step,
And joining you on vacation.

But all that most of us want for now
Is to see the face and learn the fate
Of the richest lottery winner in RI
So we wait and we wait and we wait…

This week’s question: What is one thing you would do if you won $336.4 million in the lottery?