For the past couple of weeks, digital screens located over the highways of Rhode Island have warned drivers about the new state law that bans texting while driving. Lost is the irony that drivers are basically reading a giant text message sent by the state. Still, the law makes a lot of sense, especially to those of us who commute long distances to work, dodging the texting, phoning, shaving, movie-watching, coffee-spilling, GPS navigator-adjusting traffic around us. The truth is that many Rhode Islanders should be banned from driving while driving, but taking away texting is a good start.
The law is also a good lead-in to this week’s blog, since “intexticated” (being distracted because you were texting on a cell phone while driving a vehicle) was recently announced as a 2009 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year finalist. According to the Web site, Urban Dictionary, the term has been around for a while and also means sending a drunken text message or photo to someone (sometimes accidentally, almost always regrettably). The Telegraph of London made note of a 29-year-old businesswoman who scrolled down her phone’s contact list to send a salacious “sextext” to her boyfriend “Dan,” only to realize to her horror by checking her outbox much later that she had instead solicited her “Dad.”
“Sexting,” or the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cell phone, is in fact another Word of the Year finalist, proving the influence of technology on today’s lexicon. Other tech terms that made the dictionary were “hashtag” (the # sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets that contain similarly tagged items or thematic sets), “netbook” (a small, portable laptop with limited memory) and “paywall” (a way of blocking access to a part of a Web site, which is only available to paying subscribers).
The economy is on everyone’s minds these days, reflected in the language as “freemium” (a business model in which some basic services are provided for free in the hope that users will be enticed to add premium features or content), “funemployed” (deciding to enjoy one’s newly unemployed status by taking trips, having fun or pursuing other interests) and “zombie bank” (a financial institution whose liabilities are greater than its assets, but which continues to operate because of government support).
Our growing concern about the environment has given rise to “green states” (where environmental laws are strict) and “brown states” (where they aren’t) – which seems like just another way of saying “blue” and “red” if you think about it. Another eco-word is “ecotown,” denoting a community built and run on environmentally friendly principles.
In the realm of politics and current affairs are the “birthers” (who don’t believe President Obama was born in the U.S.), “teabaggers” (who protest President Obama’s tax policies and stimulus package) and “death panel” (a theoretical body that determines which patients deserve to live when care is rationed or, alternatively, a weapon on an old “Star Trek” episode). Bridging the generation gap are “choice mom” (a person who chooses to be a single mother) and “Ardi” (for Ardipithecus ramidus, the oldest known hominid, discovered in Ethiopia during the 1990s and announced - “intexticated?" - to the public in 2009).
Novelty words include “deleb” (a dead celebrity) and “tramp stamp” (a tattoo on the lower back, usually on a woman).
The dictionary also cited two notable word clusters.
Twitterisms: Twitterati. Twitterature. Twitterverse. Twittersphere. Retweet. Tweetaholic. Twittermob. Twitterhea.
Obamaisms: Obamanomics. Obamarama. Obamasty. Obamacons. Obamanation. Obamafication. Obamanator. Obamalicious. Obamania. Obamacracy. Obamanon.
The winning Word of the Year was “unfriend,” the act of removing someone as a friend on a social networking site such as Facebook.
Left unsaid is if “unfriend” is the Word of the Year, what does that tell you about the year?
In the meantime, Half Shell would like to nominate Rhody for next year’s word cluster. Some examples:
Rhodyverse: Anything that myopically chronicles Rhode Island, including this blog; the Web site Quahog; Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World column in The Providence Phoenix; the late, lamented OSO.com; the old Cox TV show, Rhode Trip; the Web site Art in Ruins; the store Only In Rhode Island; and folklorist Michael Bell, to name a few.
Rhodyrati: Celebrity Rhode Islanders, such as the Farrelly Brothers, Jhumpa Lahiri, Buddy Cianci and Mr. Potato Head.
Rhodyfication: Tangible proof of your Rhody cred, such as wearing a Narragansett Brewery Father’s Day tie, even when it isn’t Father’s Day, or carrying the business card of a R.I. State Trooper in your wallet, tucked behind your driver’s license, just in case.
Rhodylicious: Something only a Rhode Islander can truly appreciate, i.e. wiener joints, sleeping to the sound of a foghorn and weekly scandals.
Leading to this week’s question: What belongs in the Rhodyverse?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Waste Land
Wanna buy a dump? The State of Rhode Island, in desperate need of ready cash, is considering selling or leasing the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the major repository of Rhody waste, which manages the state’s recycling programs and the Central Landfill in Johnston. Apparently, running a landfill isn’t the trash cow it once was. The concern now is that the dump may be yet another potential black hole in the state’s seemingly bottomless pit of money problems.
According to a report by the ProJo’s Mike Stanton, revenues have dropped from $70 million to $45 million at Resource Recovery. Not all of the losses can be blamed on the economy. In typical Rhody fashion, scandals outnumber recycling bins at the landfill, where $75 million disappeared amid the banana peels, broken bobble-heads and computer cartridges. In his Nov. 3 article, Stanton chronicles a laundry list of abuses overlooked by past leaders: “…flawed construction projects, questionable land deals, cronyism, suspected fraud, apparent bid-rigging, bogus workers’ compensation claims and phony overtime scams.” In other words, when it comes to business as usual in Rhode Island, something stinks to high Jerimoth Hill.
There is a long and colorful history to refuse in the Ocean State, where even former governors have been known to dive into Dumpsters in a frantic search to find wads of cash in a tossed-out brown bag.
Ritualistically, many Rhode Island school kids visit the Central Landfill on field trips. Artists, especially in Providence, have long recycled trash into sculptures and artworks that have appeared on the city’s streets and in galleries. Andre the Giant may have been known worldwide as a wrestler and the strong man in the movie, “The Princess Bride,” but in Providence he will always be known as that guy plastered all over Dumpsters, telephone poles and stop signs.
The Trash Man Cometh (Then Goeth)
The city of Providence has the worst recycling rate in the state, with fewer than 10 percent of residents sorting out plastics from cardboard, glass from paper and dumping them into green or blue bins. Instead, each week the curbs and corners of Providence streets fill up with random refuse, overstuffed bags and broken furniture. Now the city is fighting back. Starting this month, Providence residents had to put out two recycling bins for every trash barrel, or else collectors wouldn’t pick up the garbage. The bins are supposed to be placed outside even if they’re empty. So far most city residents have ignored the “no-bin, no-barrel” policy, resulting in uncollected garbage lining the streets of Providence as far as the eye can see. As Olneyville resident Maria Medeiros said in Friday, Nov. 13 edition of The Providence Journal:
Throwaway Lines
At the Rose Hill Transfer Station in South Kingstown, there’s a cinderblock building with a bunch of books and magazines inside that someone, years ago, sign-posted as the Rose Hill Free Library. It works on the honor system. Drop a book or two off, take a book or two home. There are no due-by dates or late fees, and no shortage of trashy novels.
What is your favorite trashy Rhode Island story?
According to a report by the ProJo’s Mike Stanton, revenues have dropped from $70 million to $45 million at Resource Recovery. Not all of the losses can be blamed on the economy. In typical Rhody fashion, scandals outnumber recycling bins at the landfill, where $75 million disappeared amid the banana peels, broken bobble-heads and computer cartridges. In his Nov. 3 article, Stanton chronicles a laundry list of abuses overlooked by past leaders: “…flawed construction projects, questionable land deals, cronyism, suspected fraud, apparent bid-rigging, bogus workers’ compensation claims and phony overtime scams.” In other words, when it comes to business as usual in Rhode Island, something stinks to high Jerimoth Hill.
There is a long and colorful history to refuse in the Ocean State, where even former governors have been known to dive into Dumpsters in a frantic search to find wads of cash in a tossed-out brown bag.
Ritualistically, many Rhode Island school kids visit the Central Landfill on field trips. Artists, especially in Providence, have long recycled trash into sculptures and artworks that have appeared on the city’s streets and in galleries. Andre the Giant may have been known worldwide as a wrestler and the strong man in the movie, “The Princess Bride,” but in Providence he will always be known as that guy plastered all over Dumpsters, telephone poles and stop signs.
The Trash Man Cometh (Then Goeth)
The city of Providence has the worst recycling rate in the state, with fewer than 10 percent of residents sorting out plastics from cardboard, glass from paper and dumping them into green or blue bins. Instead, each week the curbs and corners of Providence streets fill up with random refuse, overstuffed bags and broken furniture. Now the city is fighting back. Starting this month, Providence residents had to put out two recycling bins for every trash barrel, or else collectors wouldn’t pick up the garbage. The bins are supposed to be placed outside even if they’re empty. So far most city residents have ignored the “no-bin, no-barrel” policy, resulting in uncollected garbage lining the streets of Providence as far as the eye can see. As Olneyville resident Maria Medeiros said in Friday, Nov. 13 edition of The Providence Journal:
We’re going to have a city full of garbage … They thought they had a rat problem before, wait until this garbage stays out for a week.
Throwaway Lines
At the Rose Hill Transfer Station in South Kingstown, there’s a cinderblock building with a bunch of books and magazines inside that someone, years ago, sign-posted as the Rose Hill Free Library. It works on the honor system. Drop a book or two off, take a book or two home. There are no due-by dates or late fees, and no shortage of trashy novels.
What is your favorite trashy Rhode Island story?
Monday, November 16, 2009
Rhode Tripping
The R.I. DOT recently opened the latest phase of its Iway project. Now when travelers on Route 195 West come to the split for 95 North and South they see two big green signs. One says “New York,” the other “Boston, MA.” Just wondering but was it necessary to add the Massachusetts postal abbreviation? Is there anyone in Rhode Island who is confused about Boston's paternity? Does the R.I. DOT worry that some of the traffic is aiming for Boston, England?
Plain old “Boston” was good enough for the previous sign. The only surprise about the new Boston sign is that they didn’t slap a “Historic” in front of it, so that it could join Providence, Wakefield and East Greenwich on the “Historic” New England redundancy highway tour. Given the way language is changing these days, however, maybe we should just be grateful that the sign doesn’t include an emoticon or describe the Hub as “Bostonalicious.”
Signs of the Times
Every once in a while we get a letter-to-the-editor about sign pollution in South County. And it’s true, there do seem to be a lot of needless signs out there. Especially those blue evacuation signs, pointing drivers in the direction of the back roads of South County in case of apocalyptic natural or manmade disaster. Considering the daily road jam whenever classes let out at the University of Rhode Island or the hour-long backlog on Kingstown Road before and after concerts at the Ryan Center, the idea that we will be able to evacuate efficiently and swiftly in the event of emergency is beyond delusional. In fact, as bad ideas go, it ranks somewhere between the Ford Pinto and the Cleveland Indians’ 10-Cent Beer Night promotion at the old Municipal Stadium.
History Lesson
My frequent travels from Barrington to Warren, Bristol and Newport roughly follow the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route. Rochambeau’s French Army marched from Rhode Island to Virginia in 1781. Signage along what is now Route 114 and other stretches of local asphalt identifies the Rhode Island portion of a series of encampments and roads used by the U.S. Continental Army troops under George Washington and French troops under Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau stretching 680 miles from Newport to Yorktown. The marked route now plays connect-the-dots in Rhode Island, although important landmarks like Monkey Town Road are unrecognizable today, victims to generations of urban sprawl. The full route is the most recent National Historic Trail signed into law, and is the only one of 19 such trails to include Rhode Island.
The Billboard Jungle
Around here, there have been few good billboards over the years, yet they keep going up. According to an online article on “outdoor advertising in Rhode Island,” billboards should be creative if they’re going to reach consumers who are breaking the speed limit:
There’s one up now, visible from 195 West and paid for by the Reproductive Science Center, riffing off of the confusion created by re-routing the roads through Providence during the Iway project: “Need help having a baby? Left lane.”
A few years back, the Roger Williams Park Zoo erected the memorable: “Imagine going through life as a naked mole rat.”
Leading to this week’s question: What’s the best (or worst) billboard you’ve seen in Rhode Island?
Plain old “Boston” was good enough for the previous sign. The only surprise about the new Boston sign is that they didn’t slap a “Historic” in front of it, so that it could join Providence, Wakefield and East Greenwich on the “Historic” New England redundancy highway tour. Given the way language is changing these days, however, maybe we should just be grateful that the sign doesn’t include an emoticon or describe the Hub as “Bostonalicious.”
Signs of the Times
Every once in a while we get a letter-to-the-editor about sign pollution in South County. And it’s true, there do seem to be a lot of needless signs out there. Especially those blue evacuation signs, pointing drivers in the direction of the back roads of South County in case of apocalyptic natural or manmade disaster. Considering the daily road jam whenever classes let out at the University of Rhode Island or the hour-long backlog on Kingstown Road before and after concerts at the Ryan Center, the idea that we will be able to evacuate efficiently and swiftly in the event of emergency is beyond delusional. In fact, as bad ideas go, it ranks somewhere between the Ford Pinto and the Cleveland Indians’ 10-Cent Beer Night promotion at the old Municipal Stadium.
History Lesson
My frequent travels from Barrington to Warren, Bristol and Newport roughly follow the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route. Rochambeau’s French Army marched from Rhode Island to Virginia in 1781. Signage along what is now Route 114 and other stretches of local asphalt identifies the Rhode Island portion of a series of encampments and roads used by the U.S. Continental Army troops under George Washington and French troops under Jean-Baptiste de Rochambeau stretching 680 miles from Newport to Yorktown. The marked route now plays connect-the-dots in Rhode Island, although important landmarks like Monkey Town Road are unrecognizable today, victims to generations of urban sprawl. The full route is the most recent National Historic Trail signed into law, and is the only one of 19 such trails to include Rhode Island.
The Billboard Jungle
Around here, there have been few good billboards over the years, yet they keep going up. According to an online article on “outdoor advertising in Rhode Island,” billboards should be creative if they’re going to reach consumers who are breaking the speed limit:
Billboards advertise everything from God to gum and they are the most popular form of outdoor advertising in Rhode Island.
There’s one up now, visible from 195 West and paid for by the Reproductive Science Center, riffing off of the confusion created by re-routing the roads through Providence during the Iway project: “Need help having a baby? Left lane.”
A few years back, the Roger Williams Park Zoo erected the memorable: “Imagine going through life as a naked mole rat.”
Leading to this week’s question: What’s the best (or worst) billboard you’ve seen in Rhode Island?
Monday, November 9, 2009
The Snark Wears Hunter's Orange
I’d like to give Newsweek’s Raina Kelley a do-over. In her October article, “Leaf Us Alone,” Kelley tore apart the autumn-worshipping, leaf-loving visitors to New England, condemning the entire season in the process. Worse, she claimed to speak for all of us who call New England home. Now, sometimes writers write things in a bad mood that they later wished they hadn’t written. Maybe this is one of those times. But in case it isn’t, today’s blog will deconstruct Kelley’s rant, reprinted here in its entirety, interspersed with snarky comments in italics by yours truly:
Few could. But it doesn’t hurt to try. Here are some of my own attempts to describe autumn, culled from old columns:
The funeral for the green leaf lasts a couple of months in New England, where foliage season is both a rite of passage and a cottage industry.
In New England, autumn plays through the landscape like a kid with a box of crayons.
But the only winter worth worrying about is the nuclear kind. Otherwise, let us get on with autumn, New England’s most inspired season. Now is the time to notice: The landscape is electric, the air is reviving, and we wake to the knowledge that every new day is a blank canvas, and everywhere you look there is color to fill it.
Actually, come this fall, we’ve learned that New England is the least religious part of the entire country. In a recent study, New England passed the Pacific Northwest as the place where the fewest number of citizens regularly go to church or follow a particular religion. But it’s true that those white-steeple churches and village greens contribute to the scenery.
Not sure they feel the same way in Texas, but it’s a nice sentiment.
Sounds like yet another one of those Connecticutites who like to call themselves New Englanders because it gives them a kind of cocktail party cred but they’re really New Yorkers who spend every day commuting to Manhattan and would have to use MapQuest to find Boston. You know. The kind of Nutmeg State lodger identified in those local McDonald’s commercials, where Connecticut is referred to as “Newyorkachusetts.”
Can a New Englander who loves being outside be considered an outsider? Because I don’t know any New Englanders who don’t look at the leaves every autumn, gasping at the colors and grasping for ways to describe them, sometimes succumbing to cliché. The “heads cocked permanently skyward” reference once again betrays the author as a closet Manhattanite. In technical tourism terms, that’s a New York skyscraper thing, not a New England foliage thing. The phrase “leaf voyeurs” is nice. I’ll have to borrow that someday. Except for a few weeks in November and March, “winding country roads” in New England are always clogged. Without the tourists, there would be no restaurants. And I’ve never had trouble finding a big pumpkin in autumn, even on Halloween.
Not all of us descended from the Puritans. I’m a native New Englander. I gush. (See above.) Most of my friends are native New Englanders. They all gush. My friend Gavin and I gushed all fall as we jogged the same route along a local bike path, watching the changing color and transient wildlife in the swamp and woods. I went to a mountainside cabin in Vermont on Columbus Day weekend, with eight friends, all native New Englanders, when the trees were at peak color. We drank and gushed. I visited my friends Frank and Terri in my old stomping grounds in Plymouth, N.H. We hiked in the woods, following unmarked trails painted in sunshine and leaf colors. They’re both from the Midwest, but they supported my gushing wholeheartedly. I bicycled in Little Compton a couple of weeks ago, popping in at art galleries and coffeehouses, marveling at the range of autumn tones in the landscape, sharing brief conversations with native New England strangers. Gushing everywhere.
No, again. Standing in line at the DMV is a horrible, Sisyphean chore. Raking is only spiritless for people who own too many acres. Obviously the author has never raked leaves on a sunny autumn day surrounded by bounding dogs and godchildren jumping in leaf piles. It is good exercise and the leftover non-raked leaves make a fine mulch for the winter garden.
O-for-three. The Patriots had nothing to do with it. New England grumpiness began with Calvinism and continued with the Red Sox being oh-so-close but not winning the World Series for 86 years while the dreaded, Babe Ruth-swiping, money-burning Yankees consumed pennants like Cracker Jacks. Now that the Sox have won a couple recently, there isn’t as much grump in our demeanor, although the fact that this year’s Bronx Bombers are world champs is – like thickness on a red berry or a horse’s coat – a sign of a longer, darker, colder winter.
Except for when it can…
Go ahead, reader. Take a few seconds to shake off the hyperbole.
That’s precisely why it is so miraculous. The colors of flowers growing out of the earth in the spring and the colors of leaves falling back to the earth in the fall is great spectacle and drama, reminding us of the beauty inherent in the cycles of life, birth and death. There was a time when artists and scientists both understood that exploring the truth doesn’t mean sacrificing wonder.
For which we are grateful. The Disneyfication of the universe is a depressing turn of events.
Sounding like a whiny New Yorker again. A true miserable New Englander would never confess the fact.
Actually, most farmers use honor bins because they’re usually out farming. Or sometimes, in the case of the farm I used to visit regularly in Ashland, N.H., out playing paintball games with their kids.
It’s true that New Englanders aren’t schmoozers. Small talk is, by definition, small. We like big talk. Whether it’s in our sermons (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”), poems (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”), philosophical thought (“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”), political speeches (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”) or daily conversation (“Yankees #@*%!”).
Or how much they care about the neighbor’s pigs…
Syrup.
Spoken like someone wearing a crisp, blue cap with “NY” on its bill. If Twain, who became an end-of-his-life New Englander, settling in Hartford, could write one of his most moving pieces on the aftermath of a New England ice storm, surely there’s still room in the region for those of us who like watching leaves dazzle as they die.
This week’s question: What is your favorite piece on nature written by a New Englander?
Autumn in New England – what a lovely thought. “The maple wears a gayer scarf, the field a scarlet gown,” wrote Emily Dickinson, and I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Few could. But it doesn’t hurt to try. Here are some of my own attempts to describe autumn, culled from old columns:
The funeral for the green leaf lasts a couple of months in New England, where foliage season is both a rite of passage and a cottage industry.
In New England, autumn plays through the landscape like a kid with a box of crayons.
But the only winter worth worrying about is the nuclear kind. Otherwise, let us get on with autumn, New England’s most inspired season. Now is the time to notice: The landscape is electric, the air is reviving, and we wake to the knowledge that every new day is a blank canvas, and everywhere you look there is color to fill it.
New England already knows it’s God’s country, what with all those cute churches on every village green, but come fall it may really be true.
Actually, come this fall, we’ve learned that New England is the least religious part of the entire country. In a recent study, New England passed the Pacific Northwest as the place where the fewest number of citizens regularly go to church or follow a particular religion. But it’s true that those white-steeple churches and village greens contribute to the scenery.
Nothing says America like a cool afternoon spent apple picking, pumpkin carving and leaf ogling, all finished off with a nice, warm apple-cider doughnut (preferably two).
Not sure they feel the same way in Texas, but it’s a nice sentiment.
The problem is: I get sick just thinking about it. Why? I grew up in Connecticut, and as far as I’m concerned the leaves of autumn might as well be the 11th plague.
Sounds like yet another one of those Connecticutites who like to call themselves New Englanders because it gives them a kind of cocktail party cred but they’re really New Yorkers who spend every day commuting to Manhattan and would have to use MapQuest to find Boston. You know. The kind of Nutmeg State lodger identified in those local McDonald’s commercials, where Connecticut is referred to as “Newyorkachusetts.”
Oh, sure, tourists love them. I once saw a grown man cry over a particularly lovely stand of maple trees, and he was covered in Army tattoos. Tears aren’t the telltale sign of a leaf peeper – or “outsider,” as we locals like to call them. Outsiders are the ones who throw around phrases such as “nature’s majesty” or “breathtaking array,” all the while walking around with their heads cocked permanently skyward (I’ve always assumed that the first call they make on Monday morning is to their chiropractor.) Sure, all those leaf voyeurs drop millions of dollars on that horrible maple-syrup candy that I’ve never seen anyone actually eat. But they also clog up winding country roads, jack up the prices in restaurants, and buy up all the really big pumpkins.
Can a New Englander who loves being outside be considered an outsider? Because I don’t know any New Englanders who don’t look at the leaves every autumn, gasping at the colors and grasping for ways to describe them, sometimes succumbing to cliché. The “heads cocked permanently skyward” reference once again betrays the author as a closet Manhattanite. In technical tourism terms, that’s a New York skyscraper thing, not a New England foliage thing. The phrase “leaf voyeurs” is nice. I’ll have to borrow that someday. Except for a few weeks in November and March, “winding country roads” in New England are always clogged. Without the tourists, there would be no restaurants. And I’ve never had trouble finding a big pumpkin in autumn, even on Halloween.
A native New Englander does not gush over leaves. OK, so we don’t gush over anything, but leaves – never going to happen.
Not all of us descended from the Puritans. I’m a native New Englander. I gush. (See above.) Most of my friends are native New Englanders. They all gush. My friend Gavin and I gushed all fall as we jogged the same route along a local bike path, watching the changing color and transient wildlife in the swamp and woods. I went to a mountainside cabin in Vermont on Columbus Day weekend, with eight friends, all native New Englanders, when the trees were at peak color. We drank and gushed. I visited my friends Frank and Terri in my old stomping grounds in Plymouth, N.H. We hiked in the woods, following unmarked trails painted in sunshine and leaf colors. They’re both from the Midwest, but they supported my gushing wholeheartedly. I bicycled in Little Compton a couple of weeks ago, popping in at art galleries and coffeehouses, marveling at the range of autumn tones in the landscape, sharing brief conversations with native New England strangers. Gushing everywhere.
Actually, we try to pretend the leaves are still green, because long after all the peepers have gone home, we have to dispose of all those leaves. Raking leaves is a horrible, Sisyphean chore.
No, again. Standing in line at the DMV is a horrible, Sisyphean chore. Raking is only spiritless for people who own too many acres. Obviously the author has never raked leaves on a sunny autumn day surrounded by bounding dogs and godchildren jumping in leaf piles. It is good exercise and the leftover non-raked leaves make a fine mulch for the winter garden.
I’m quite sure that is the main reason New Englanders are so grumpy. (I used to think it was because the Patriots were such losers, but that, apparently, wasn’t the problem.)
O-for-three. The Patriots had nothing to do with it. New England grumpiness began with Calvinism and continued with the Red Sox being oh-so-close but not winning the World Series for 86 years while the dreaded, Babe Ruth-swiping, money-burning Yankees consumed pennants like Cracker Jacks. Now that the Sox have won a couple recently, there isn’t as much grump in our demeanor, although the fact that this year’s Bronx Bombers are world champs is – like thickness on a red berry or a horse’s coat – a sign of a longer, darker, colder winter.
The misery of raking cannot be exaggerated.
Except for when it can…
Imagine standing for hours in the sun, dragging a huge metal salad fork back and forth, back and forth. Your vertebrae compress. Your hands break out in blisters. Your feet sweat and swell. Sometimes the rake moves the leaves toward the pile, but more often the leaves clog the rake, requiring you to stop, remove them by hand, and place them on a huge pile of already raked leaves. A huge pile, by the way, that attracts wind, dogs, small children, and fire like nobody’s business. It’s easier to get a cat into a sack than to keep a pile of leaves together. Seems Mother Nature’s determined to protect her precious babies from spending eternity in garbage bags.
Go ahead, reader. Take a few seconds to shake off the hyperbole.
And it’s not as if the leaves are doing anything miraculous. Get a grip on yourselves, people. Cold weather stops photosynthesis, and the leaves die. All that bright color is a death shroud.
That’s precisely why it is so miraculous. The colors of flowers growing out of the earth in the spring and the colors of leaves falling back to the earth in the fall is great spectacle and drama, reminding us of the beauty inherent in the cycles of life, birth and death. There was a time when artists and scientists both understood that exploring the truth doesn’t mean sacrificing wonder.
We’re not Disneyland – far from it.
For which we are grateful. The Disneyfication of the universe is a depressing turn of events.
If you want a warm welcome and some kind of apple-picking show, try a different part of the country. We will take your money, but we’re miserable hosts (guests don’t rake).
Sounding like a whiny New Yorker again. A true miserable New Englander would never confess the fact.
That’s why local farmers walk the other way when you want to buy something. That’s why so many of them use “honor bins.”
Actually, most farmers use honor bins because they’re usually out farming. Or sometimes, in the case of the farm I used to visit regularly in Ashland, N.H., out playing paintball games with their kids.
In that way they get the money, but they don’t have to make small talk – a chore second only to raking.
It’s true that New Englanders aren’t schmoozers. Small talk is, by definition, small. We like big talk. Whether it’s in our sermons (“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”), poems (“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”), philosophical thought (“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”), political speeches (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”) or daily conversation (“Yankees #@*%!”).
The spread up the street from my parents feeds its apples to the neighbor’s pigs – that’s how little they care about whether you get a pie to take home as a souvenir.
Or how much they care about the neighbor’s pigs…
And don’t even mention syrup.
Syrup.
Just buy the candy and go. All the carbon emissions from your slow-moving cars have overcooked the environment, and now the maple trees are going dry. On the other hand, no maple trees means fewer leaves to rake.
Spoken like someone wearing a crisp, blue cap with “NY” on its bill. If Twain, who became an end-of-his-life New Englander, settling in Hartford, could write one of his most moving pieces on the aftermath of a New England ice storm, surely there’s still room in the region for those of us who like watching leaves dazzle as they die.
This week’s question: What is your favorite piece on nature written by a New Englander?
Monday, November 2, 2009
Scratching Rhody
It tells you everything you need to know about Rhode Island that the state lottery commission is located next to the state prison. All Rhode Islanders are born with a lottery gene, and if the “CSI” franchise ever moved to Rhody, the celebrity forensics experts would discover silver latex ink under our fingernails, smoothed-over edges on our nickels, pennies and quarters, and a tendency to defy the laws of probability in our DNA. That’s the only way to explain the obsession with PowerBall numbers, scratch cards and Keno games in the Ocean State, which happens to be number one in lottery sales per capita in the country. Here, residents think that all Ping-Pong balls come individually numbered, scratch tickets are the perfect stocking stuffers at Christmas, and meeting regularly for late-night coffee and Keno at the corner convenience store is considered an acceptable date.
This gambling fixation is as old as the state itself. Even before The Lot opened in 1974, Rhode Island embraced the notion of taking a chance, any chance, anytime, with whatever money was leftover in the pocket. One example: The part of Westerly known as Avondale was once called Lotteryville until the 1880s, because original settlers received their houses as part of a lottery scheme.
But Rhode Island’s true lottery legacy is the scratch ticket, most of which involve familiar characters or offer a theme. The latest features Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” which seems about 30 years too late for it to be so popular – except that in New England some things, like pewter and Steven Tyler, never really get old. In the past you could also buy scratch games for “The Three Stooges,” “Family Guy” and The Crypt Keeper (host of “Tales from the Crypt”). The state legislature even allows the lottery to make money for good causes through its scratch ticket program. Two years ago, the R.I. State Council on the Arts had a scratch card that raised funds for local arts organizations and communities. It was followed by a “Scratch the Tick” game, with part of the proceeds funding tick awareness programs.
Lot of Art
A Providence artist has found a way to make something of value from all of those shredded hopes and confetti dreams. Rebecca Siemering’s “A Fine Suit,” made from more than 1,000 discarded scratch tickets and representing over $3,500 in gambling losses, was presented as one of the Providence Art Windows in 2007 and now stands in the offices of its new owners, Fidelity Investments in Smithfield.
Siemering, now the director of Providence Art Windows, began creating additional objects out of lottery cards, while developing installations for other projects that represent some of the most intriguing art being made in Rhode Island. Among them: Her latest art window, “piece(work),” a time-based installation on Eddy Street, and “The Bells Ring for Thee,” still decaying in the North Burial Ground as part of the Cryptic Providence group installation. For her window, which she visits and works on weekly, she designed a “crazy quilt” that reflects the news of the world and the buzz of conversation around Providence. For the graveyard, she created a landscape of sound in an adjacent field, “planting” rows of metal flowers that played a vibraphone’s range of tones in the breezes, gusts and rainfalls that filled the seasons.
Future Scratch
The Rhode Island corollary to Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” theory is that in the future every Rhode Islander will appear on his own scratch ticket. Until then, we have plenty of opportunities to add to the state’s rub out culture. How about:
“Scratch What, Netop?” (To repair the fingers on the statue of Roger Williams in Providence’s Prospect Terrace Park and to develop a foundation that will supply the statue with permanent maintenance and a lifetime of replaceable fingers.)
“Scratch That Nuke.” (To entice another Russian nuclear sub to dock in Providence and serve as the city’s Russian Sub Museum, since the previous one sank, was scrapped and is being recycled into millions of toasters and electric razors.)
“Scratch That Kirk.” (To refund the R.I. International Film Series after William Shatner canceled an appearance last-minute to receive the first ever Nathaniel Greene Humanitarian Award in Rhode Island, causing the festival to give back $5,000 in advance tickets.)
“Scratch That Hound.” (To bail out the state’s beleaguered greyhound-racing industry.)
“Scratch a Buddy.” (To put a little extra cash in Buddy Cianci’s pocket in exchange for favors to be named later.)
Now it’s your turn. What would be a good subject for the next R.I. Lottery scratch card?
This gambling fixation is as old as the state itself. Even before The Lot opened in 1974, Rhode Island embraced the notion of taking a chance, any chance, anytime, with whatever money was leftover in the pocket. One example: The part of Westerly known as Avondale was once called Lotteryville until the 1880s, because original settlers received their houses as part of a lottery scheme.
But Rhode Island’s true lottery legacy is the scratch ticket, most of which involve familiar characters or offer a theme. The latest features Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” which seems about 30 years too late for it to be so popular – except that in New England some things, like pewter and Steven Tyler, never really get old. In the past you could also buy scratch games for “The Three Stooges,” “Family Guy” and The Crypt Keeper (host of “Tales from the Crypt”). The state legislature even allows the lottery to make money for good causes through its scratch ticket program. Two years ago, the R.I. State Council on the Arts had a scratch card that raised funds for local arts organizations and communities. It was followed by a “Scratch the Tick” game, with part of the proceeds funding tick awareness programs.
Lot of Art
A Providence artist has found a way to make something of value from all of those shredded hopes and confetti dreams. Rebecca Siemering’s “A Fine Suit,” made from more than 1,000 discarded scratch tickets and representing over $3,500 in gambling losses, was presented as one of the Providence Art Windows in 2007 and now stands in the offices of its new owners, Fidelity Investments in Smithfield.
Siemering, now the director of Providence Art Windows, began creating additional objects out of lottery cards, while developing installations for other projects that represent some of the most intriguing art being made in Rhode Island. Among them: Her latest art window, “piece(work),” a time-based installation on Eddy Street, and “The Bells Ring for Thee,” still decaying in the North Burial Ground as part of the Cryptic Providence group installation. For her window, which she visits and works on weekly, she designed a “crazy quilt” that reflects the news of the world and the buzz of conversation around Providence. For the graveyard, she created a landscape of sound in an adjacent field, “planting” rows of metal flowers that played a vibraphone’s range of tones in the breezes, gusts and rainfalls that filled the seasons.
Future Scratch
The Rhode Island corollary to Andy Warhol’s “15 minutes of fame” theory is that in the future every Rhode Islander will appear on his own scratch ticket. Until then, we have plenty of opportunities to add to the state’s rub out culture. How about:
“Scratch What, Netop?” (To repair the fingers on the statue of Roger Williams in Providence’s Prospect Terrace Park and to develop a foundation that will supply the statue with permanent maintenance and a lifetime of replaceable fingers.)
“Scratch That Nuke.” (To entice another Russian nuclear sub to dock in Providence and serve as the city’s Russian Sub Museum, since the previous one sank, was scrapped and is being recycled into millions of toasters and electric razors.)
“Scratch That Kirk.” (To refund the R.I. International Film Series after William Shatner canceled an appearance last-minute to receive the first ever Nathaniel Greene Humanitarian Award in Rhode Island, causing the festival to give back $5,000 in advance tickets.)
“Scratch That Hound.” (To bail out the state’s beleaguered greyhound-racing industry.)
“Scratch a Buddy.” (To put a little extra cash in Buddy Cianci’s pocket in exchange for favors to be named later.)
Now it’s your turn. What would be a good subject for the next R.I. Lottery scratch card?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Eastwick or Leastwick?
“The Witches of Eastwick” is not John Updike’s best work, but it may be his most lasting. It’s a novel about Rhode Island witches that many critics charged as misogynist but Updike said was intended as a satire on feminism. In his view, contrary to the popular idea that the world would be better off with women in power, Updike felt that the world would be in exactly the same mess as it is now. In other words, power corrupts absolutely, regardless of gender.
Subsequent renditions of his tale have squeezed dry whatever satire sustained the original story, focusing instead on perpetuating a soapy “Peyton Place” meets “Dark Shadows” view of New England. A place where attractive women are subject to relentless gossip and, therefore, turn to witchcraft between mornings clamming and nights boiling lobster for their boyfriends. You know. A place like Barrington.
Kidding, kidding. Nobody boils their own lobster in Barrington. Actually, to create Eastwick, Updike merely combined East Greenwich with Wickford, where his family name is prominent. But in truth the Ocean State has a checkered history with his story. Hollywood wanted to film the movie version (starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher) in Little Compton, but the locals weren’t crazy about Nicholson-as-the-Devil character spewing inside the little church on the town common. So the production moved to Massachusetts and was filmed primarily in Cohasset, with other scenes shot in Scituate and Castle Hill in Ipswich.
This year’s ABC TV version is the first televised production of the story to make it on the air, after two previous attempts. The show tries very hard not to pin down Eastwick’s exact location, except to put it somewhere “on the edge of New England.” The opening sequence features images of Ocean Drive in Newport, but for some reason the show’s creators are reluctant to come out and say it’s set in Rhode Island. Instead, they’ve invented a pastiche of New England towns – a blend of Maine’s fog (stolen from “Murder, She Wrote”), New Hampshire’s foliage, Vermont’s covered bridges, Rhody’s seaside charm, the witch legacy of Massachusetts and Connecticut’s New York hand-me-down fashion sense. The result is like putting Yankee magazine in a blender with “Desperate Housewives,” “Charmed” and “Providence.”
Lucky us. “Eastwick,” based on the first few episodes, is a mess. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, not scary enough to earn its horror bones, not dramatic enough to be a drama and, despite the predominance of eye candy, not sexy enough to be worth staying up for.
A press release earlier this year by the R.I. Film & Television Office lauded the show for its aerial shots of Newport and for planning to film more location shots in Rhode Island. As it turns out, guess-the-location might be the only reason for a Rhode Islander to watch.
This week’s more important question: Where can you see houses decorated for Halloween in Rhode Island?
(There’s a nice little stretch beginning in Wakefield on Saugatucket Road, going through the Peace Dale Rotary and back into Wakefield via High Street, where three homes go wild decorating in the kitsch of the undead, making menageries of giant spiders, skulls on fence posts and cobweb-covered ghouls. If you’re in the neighborhood…)
Subsequent renditions of his tale have squeezed dry whatever satire sustained the original story, focusing instead on perpetuating a soapy “Peyton Place” meets “Dark Shadows” view of New England. A place where attractive women are subject to relentless gossip and, therefore, turn to witchcraft between mornings clamming and nights boiling lobster for their boyfriends. You know. A place like Barrington.
Kidding, kidding. Nobody boils their own lobster in Barrington. Actually, to create Eastwick, Updike merely combined East Greenwich with Wickford, where his family name is prominent. But in truth the Ocean State has a checkered history with his story. Hollywood wanted to film the movie version (starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher) in Little Compton, but the locals weren’t crazy about Nicholson-as-the-Devil character spewing inside the little church on the town common. So the production moved to Massachusetts and was filmed primarily in Cohasset, with other scenes shot in Scituate and Castle Hill in Ipswich.
This year’s ABC TV version is the first televised production of the story to make it on the air, after two previous attempts. The show tries very hard not to pin down Eastwick’s exact location, except to put it somewhere “on the edge of New England.” The opening sequence features images of Ocean Drive in Newport, but for some reason the show’s creators are reluctant to come out and say it’s set in Rhode Island. Instead, they’ve invented a pastiche of New England towns – a blend of Maine’s fog (stolen from “Murder, She Wrote”), New Hampshire’s foliage, Vermont’s covered bridges, Rhody’s seaside charm, the witch legacy of Massachusetts and Connecticut’s New York hand-me-down fashion sense. The result is like putting Yankee magazine in a blender with “Desperate Housewives,” “Charmed” and “Providence.”
Lucky us. “Eastwick,” based on the first few episodes, is a mess. It’s not funny enough to be a comedy, not scary enough to earn its horror bones, not dramatic enough to be a drama and, despite the predominance of eye candy, not sexy enough to be worth staying up for.
A press release earlier this year by the R.I. Film & Television Office lauded the show for its aerial shots of Newport and for planning to film more location shots in Rhode Island. As it turns out, guess-the-location might be the only reason for a Rhode Islander to watch.
This week’s more important question: Where can you see houses decorated for Halloween in Rhode Island?
(There’s a nice little stretch beginning in Wakefield on Saugatucket Road, going through the Peace Dale Rotary and back into Wakefield via High Street, where three homes go wild decorating in the kitsch of the undead, making menageries of giant spiders, skulls on fence posts and cobweb-covered ghouls. If you’re in the neighborhood…)
Monday, October 19, 2009
Randomocity
Thoughts, observations and leftovers picked up from the jumble of a sloppy desk:
Inner City
The streets outside the RISD Museum last week were cluttered and clanging with the fixing and rebuilding of Providence. Blue and yellow scaffolding scaled the museum walls. Jackhammers jumped. Trucks rumbled and beeped backing up. Construction workers wearing hardhats and drinking cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee joked between duties. Officers diverted traffic and pedestrians around concrete Jersey barriers, yellow caution tape and orange barrels and cones.
The sights and sounds of city making, part of the daily routine in the epic narrative of urban living, was coincidental but also complementary to the installation inside the Chace Center, where ceramic sculptor Arnie Zimmerman and architect Tiago Montepegado have staged “Inner City,” featuring 200 figurative and architectural elements. It’s a stunning exhibition, about 80 pieces larger than previous versions that toured Lisbon and the Netherlands. The room of anonymous city buildings and workers and the detritus of urban streets – trashcans, graffiti and broken walls – captures the vibrancy and absurdity of modern life in its cycles of boom and bust and moods alternating between whimsy and hopelessness. Walking back out from the gallery, trying to avoid being bulldozed and cement mixed on beautiful Benefit Street, I passed the live versions of those workers and told them that everything they were doing had already been done in clay inside. A few expressed an interest in checking it out but one guy shook his head and said: “I like breaking things. Not making them.”
Mobile Art
If you see a 16-foot Penske truck rumbling through Rhode Island blaring sounds of gulls and waves and the rhythmic clicking of shrimp percussion, follow it until it parks. The truck is the vehicle of choice (at least for now) for the Mobile Art Project, an initiative coordinated by Viera Levitt and Hera Gallery, both of Wakefield, to bring art on wheels to locations in Rhode Island where you don’t usually find any. So far it has shown up at village greens and elementary schools, train stations and sea walls, supermarket parking lots and senior centers. The first artist featured is Warwick’s China Blue, who created a 9-minute sound installation titled “Aqua Alta.” She recorded around and under the waters of Narragansett Bay and the Providence canals using hydrophone arrays and seismic microphones, along the way capturing the chanting of gondoliers, the radio singing voice of Marvin Gaye, an osprey crying and the gloop-glop-glubbing sounds of sloshing seawater and river chop. To immerse yourself, you have to walk inside the box at the back end of the truck. Organizers told me that the most surprising thing they’ve discovered is how many people take pains to avoid getting near the truck wherever they park. Among the hundreds who have responded to the work in surveys, one person wrote: “Not your average Belmont parking lot experience.”
Newport’s Best Kept Lunch Secret
Unless you’re a mariner, you probably don’t think about having lunch at the Seamen’s Church Institute in Newport. The building at 18 Market Square was designed in the 1930s to serve all seafarers, including naval personnel, fishermen, yachtsmen, ferryboat captains and crew, freighter crews, customs officers, Coast Guardsmen, old salts, transients and travelers from around the world. It has a painted chapel, designed symbolically to look out upon the Seven Seas, and an altar hung with an embellished sailcloth held by nautical knots. There’s also a little library and a small café with a few tables and a short counter that delivers tasty cheap eats, ranging from burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches to more exotic chowders and soups. Called the Aloha Café, the place serves mostly grizzled mariners and sun-burnt seafarers, but it’s open to tourists, and the elbow-to-elbow conversations about weather, waves and wayfaring makes you realize that in the passage of life, we’re all just human driftwood.
Word of the Day
Over on the paper side I write an occasional column that adds new words to the lexicon. Sometimes words find me. From Bob and Diane Smith’s letter to the editor about the Antique Autos/Perryville Day celebration earlier this summer comes “automobilia” – a word used by collectors and antique car fanatics to describe anything related to vintage vehicles.
Leading to this week’s question (which was actually posed by my friend Tom, but since I haven’t come up with a good solution, I’m passing it on):
What would be a good word for that situation on the highway when everyone in traffic is forced to swerve simultaneously at high speed because lanes have shifted?
Inner City
The streets outside the RISD Museum last week were cluttered and clanging with the fixing and rebuilding of Providence. Blue and yellow scaffolding scaled the museum walls. Jackhammers jumped. Trucks rumbled and beeped backing up. Construction workers wearing hardhats and drinking cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee joked between duties. Officers diverted traffic and pedestrians around concrete Jersey barriers, yellow caution tape and orange barrels and cones.
The sights and sounds of city making, part of the daily routine in the epic narrative of urban living, was coincidental but also complementary to the installation inside the Chace Center, where ceramic sculptor Arnie Zimmerman and architect Tiago Montepegado have staged “Inner City,” featuring 200 figurative and architectural elements. It’s a stunning exhibition, about 80 pieces larger than previous versions that toured Lisbon and the Netherlands. The room of anonymous city buildings and workers and the detritus of urban streets – trashcans, graffiti and broken walls – captures the vibrancy and absurdity of modern life in its cycles of boom and bust and moods alternating between whimsy and hopelessness. Walking back out from the gallery, trying to avoid being bulldozed and cement mixed on beautiful Benefit Street, I passed the live versions of those workers and told them that everything they were doing had already been done in clay inside. A few expressed an interest in checking it out but one guy shook his head and said: “I like breaking things. Not making them.”
Mobile Art
If you see a 16-foot Penske truck rumbling through Rhode Island blaring sounds of gulls and waves and the rhythmic clicking of shrimp percussion, follow it until it parks. The truck is the vehicle of choice (at least for now) for the Mobile Art Project, an initiative coordinated by Viera Levitt and Hera Gallery, both of Wakefield, to bring art on wheels to locations in Rhode Island where you don’t usually find any. So far it has shown up at village greens and elementary schools, train stations and sea walls, supermarket parking lots and senior centers. The first artist featured is Warwick’s China Blue, who created a 9-minute sound installation titled “Aqua Alta.” She recorded around and under the waters of Narragansett Bay and the Providence canals using hydrophone arrays and seismic microphones, along the way capturing the chanting of gondoliers, the radio singing voice of Marvin Gaye, an osprey crying and the gloop-glop-glubbing sounds of sloshing seawater and river chop. To immerse yourself, you have to walk inside the box at the back end of the truck. Organizers told me that the most surprising thing they’ve discovered is how many people take pains to avoid getting near the truck wherever they park. Among the hundreds who have responded to the work in surveys, one person wrote: “Not your average Belmont parking lot experience.”
Newport’s Best Kept Lunch Secret
Unless you’re a mariner, you probably don’t think about having lunch at the Seamen’s Church Institute in Newport. The building at 18 Market Square was designed in the 1930s to serve all seafarers, including naval personnel, fishermen, yachtsmen, ferryboat captains and crew, freighter crews, customs officers, Coast Guardsmen, old salts, transients and travelers from around the world. It has a painted chapel, designed symbolically to look out upon the Seven Seas, and an altar hung with an embellished sailcloth held by nautical knots. There’s also a little library and a small café with a few tables and a short counter that delivers tasty cheap eats, ranging from burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches to more exotic chowders and soups. Called the Aloha Café, the place serves mostly grizzled mariners and sun-burnt seafarers, but it’s open to tourists, and the elbow-to-elbow conversations about weather, waves and wayfaring makes you realize that in the passage of life, we’re all just human driftwood.
Word of the Day
Over on the paper side I write an occasional column that adds new words to the lexicon. Sometimes words find me. From Bob and Diane Smith’s letter to the editor about the Antique Autos/Perryville Day celebration earlier this summer comes “automobilia” – a word used by collectors and antique car fanatics to describe anything related to vintage vehicles.
Leading to this week’s question (which was actually posed by my friend Tom, but since I haven’t come up with a good solution, I’m passing it on):
What would be a good word for that situation on the highway when everyone in traffic is forced to swerve simultaneously at high speed because lanes have shifted?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
