Extreme makeover edition

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

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

How are you cutting back in these tough economic times?

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

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

Bluest of them all?

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

Decision '08

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

Halloween Edition

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

Ocean State Job Not

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

Rhody's rank

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

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

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

Fall color

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

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

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

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