During the last week of used book life for Myopic Books of Wakefield, I rummaged through the shelves and found a few treasures, including a bound collection of photocopied pages of cartoons from Paule Stetson Loring. Titled “This Really Happened in Rhode Island,” the volume represented “cartoons that have been presented in the Providence Evening Bulletin” as “compiled from items contributed by readers from all parts of the state.”
Loring, who died in 1968, was a Wickford resident, an artist for Yachting magazine and a longtime cartoonist for the Providence Journal-Bulletin Co. His “This Really Happened In Rhode Island” series has a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” quality, since they illustrate anecdotal items submitted by Rhode Islanders that were meant to be true, but probably were not seriously fact-checked. Anyway, their charm had little to do with veracity, and everything to do with Loring’s ability to capture the state’s quirkiness in odd incidents, gravestone epitaphs, strange encounters and historical notes – a handful on every page – squeezed inside a line drawing of the basic Rhode Island puzzle-piece shape. Each tidbit and illustration also received a credit line from the reader. All of which made his cartoons a popular feature among notoriously myopic Rhode Islanders. Note also that his cartoons appeared in the Evening Bulletin, which is no longer published, even though Rhode Island was one of the few places in the country where the evening paper outsold the morning paper. (As I remember it, most folks read their paper when they got home from work. So they considered the morning paper “old news.” No kidding. This really happened in Rhode Island.)
Here are a few of my favorite “This Really Happened In Rhode Island” moments (with contributor credit included for posterity):
In 1688 a man was fined heavily for planting a peach tree on Sunday in Providence. (Arnold Galiano, Providence)
In 1840 bath tubs were denounced by doctors and Providence officials charged a water tax per tub. (Judith Halliday, Greenville)
During the winter of 1894 there was horse racing on the Blackstone River – one could skate to Uxbridge from Woonsocket. (E.L. Lemery, Woonsocket)
Spencer Greene was nearly drowned by falling under an open spigot of a whiskey barrel. (Mrs. John Albro, West Greenwich)
During the Gale of 1815 a 520 ton East India ship was torn from her moorings and left high and dry against the Washington Insurance Building. (Leonard Donovan, Bristol)
Just an R.I. hill billy custom – stringing up Johnny cakes for future use. (Mary Darling, Barrington)
The Rawson Fountain Society in 1772 provided the first public water supply for Providence. Wooden pipes were used. The pipes were found in 1922, 150 years later, and in perfect condition. (Mrs. B.V.W., Providence)
Clara Herreshoff (age 14) of Bristol has a rooster that follows her to school, plays dead and rides on her sled. (Alexander Cioe, Barrington)
Michele Felice Corne was the first American to eat a tomato. He raised it at his garden on Farewell Street. (Newport)
Frank McCabe owns a letter addressed to: “Apponaug, Rhode Island. Please deliver this letter to housekeeper for and niece of Mr. Briggs who lives in the sixth house on the right hand side of the street leading to East Greenwich and beyond the bridge who has a sixth sister.” (West Greenwich)
Several years ago an election was won in North Providence when the warden of the losing party ate the winning ballot. (Fred Heap, Centredale)
The Providence Public Library once attached chains to their books. (Mary Slater, Providence)
The first student to be enrolled at Brown University was William Rogers in 1765. (Milton Levy, Cranston)
Sun shining through jug of water on porch sets fire to Barrington house, owned by Earle Davis. (A. Fulmschneider, Barrington)
It was a law in Providence that a horse might not be put to a gallop between the houses of John Whipple and Pardon Tillinghast. (J. Muratore, Providence)
The first insect zoo in America was initiated and conducted by a Rhode Islander, Brayton Eddy. (Emilia Robson, Providence)
It once rained fish in Olneyville. (Laurence Mortensen, Providence)
In 1658 wolves preyed on livestock in R.I. At Warwick (a reward of five hounds) was offered for the death of one large wolf. (Clara Hess, Warwick Neck)
(1908) Pig raised by Charles F. Hambley of East Providence was so big a horse couldn’t drag it. It weighted 1043 pounds, seven feet, four inches long. (George Bourne Jr., East Providence)
On Wednesday July 17, 1935, the lights all went out when a heron got tangled up in the wires near Bonnet Shores. The bird had a wingspread of six feet. (Scott Solomon, Saunderstown)
Charles Whipple was told by his father to go and get a pail of water. His father sarcastically warned him not to be gone more than a year. Whipple went out and went away. He returned exactly a year later. Picked up the pail and brought it into his house. (Matt Harpin, West Warwick)
It’s our world and you’re welcome to it
As befits a state with a history that is little more than a running caricature, Rhode Island has a roster of cartoonists in its annals, including Frank B. Lanning, Jr., who served as sports cartoonist for the Providence Journal-Bulletin Co. from 1937 to 1982, and Don Bousquet of Bonnet Shores, whose cartoons have appeared in several books, magazines and newspapers, including every week in The Independent.
What Rhode Island anecdote would you include in a new edition of “This Really Happened In Rhode Island?”
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Ambrosia, Rhody-style
Tonight Crazy Burger in Narragansett will make its television debut at 10 p.m. on the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins & Dives” program. The restaurant began on Boon Street in 1995, creating an alternative vibe with an eclectic menu that caters to vegetarians and carnivores alike. This evening, owner/chef Michael Maxon and TV host Guy Fieri will hone in on three of the restaurant’s most popular dishes – the Luna Sea Burger, the Whassupy Burger and the Pacific Rim Rolls Appetizer.
Crazy Burger’s Andy Warhol moment got Half Shell salivating over some of our favorite signature dishes in the state. They include the Hall of Fame Chowder at The Boathouse in Tiverton, a bowl of creamy chowder - made from baby Maine shrimp, chourico and corn - that I hope to find at the counter in the Cloud Nine Pub in Heaven one day. (Although lapping it up while overlooking a summer sunset on Mount Hope Bay may be as good as it gets in this life.) The pot of plump steamed mussels in coconut milk, curry leaf and chili at The DeWolf Tavern in Bristol would also qualify, along with the roasted butternut squash quesadilla with black beans, jack cheese, avocado and a side of salsa at The Garden Grille, just over the Providence line in Pawtucket.
Two standouts for cheese lovers would include every variation of cheese board (with wine) at The Cheese Plate in Warren and the grilled cheese sandwich or the bowl of mac-and-cheese with linguica at The Red Fez in Providence.
The list would include pretty much anything alive and chilling at the raw bar at Hemenway’s in Providence (or any of the bisques and chowders, for those who prefer their mollusks and fish in a hot bath), the huevos rancheros (or whenever they make the jambalaya or Cajun asparagus soup) at The Bluebird Café in Wakefield, and (especially around St. Patrick’s Day) the corned beef sandwiches at Patrick’s Pub in Providence. Thayer Street must-eats include the gyros served “Soup Nazi” style (in the manner of ordering, not the attitude) at East Side Pockets and the baingan bharta and aloo paratha at Kabob and Curry.
I could go on forever – the seafood paella at The Cheeky Monkey in Narragansett, the Giant Lobster Roll, stuffies (baked in scallop shells rather than quahogs) or any of the bisques, stews or chowders at Blount Clam Shack, served from trailers amid mounds of broken shells on the Warren waterfront. (There’s another location at the old Crescent Park Loof Carousel in Riverside. Both are open seasonally.) I’m also partial to the hot ‘n’ sour soup and any Szechuan dish served with the trademark Oceanview rice at The Oceanview Chinese restaurant, which adds to the Rhode Island quirk-o-meter with dishes like Narragansett Surprise in a location that has no ocean view whatsoever. Let’s see…the lobster ravioli at Venda Ravioli in Providence, the pulled pork plate at Becky’s BBQ in Middletown, the Cajun scallop soup at The Mews Tavern in Wakefield…somebody stop me. It’s time for lunch.
What signature dishes belong on a “Best of Rhode Island” menu?
Crazy Burger’s Andy Warhol moment got Half Shell salivating over some of our favorite signature dishes in the state. They include the Hall of Fame Chowder at The Boathouse in Tiverton, a bowl of creamy chowder - made from baby Maine shrimp, chourico and corn - that I hope to find at the counter in the Cloud Nine Pub in Heaven one day. (Although lapping it up while overlooking a summer sunset on Mount Hope Bay may be as good as it gets in this life.) The pot of plump steamed mussels in coconut milk, curry leaf and chili at The DeWolf Tavern in Bristol would also qualify, along with the roasted butternut squash quesadilla with black beans, jack cheese, avocado and a side of salsa at The Garden Grille, just over the Providence line in Pawtucket.
Two standouts for cheese lovers would include every variation of cheese board (with wine) at The Cheese Plate in Warren and the grilled cheese sandwich or the bowl of mac-and-cheese with linguica at The Red Fez in Providence.
The list would include pretty much anything alive and chilling at the raw bar at Hemenway’s in Providence (or any of the bisques and chowders, for those who prefer their mollusks and fish in a hot bath), the huevos rancheros (or whenever they make the jambalaya or Cajun asparagus soup) at The Bluebird Café in Wakefield, and (especially around St. Patrick’s Day) the corned beef sandwiches at Patrick’s Pub in Providence. Thayer Street must-eats include the gyros served “Soup Nazi” style (in the manner of ordering, not the attitude) at East Side Pockets and the baingan bharta and aloo paratha at Kabob and Curry.
I could go on forever – the seafood paella at The Cheeky Monkey in Narragansett, the Giant Lobster Roll, stuffies (baked in scallop shells rather than quahogs) or any of the bisques, stews or chowders at Blount Clam Shack, served from trailers amid mounds of broken shells on the Warren waterfront. (There’s another location at the old Crescent Park Loof Carousel in Riverside. Both are open seasonally.) I’m also partial to the hot ‘n’ sour soup and any Szechuan dish served with the trademark Oceanview rice at The Oceanview Chinese restaurant, which adds to the Rhode Island quirk-o-meter with dishes like Narragansett Surprise in a location that has no ocean view whatsoever. Let’s see…the lobster ravioli at Venda Ravioli in Providence, the pulled pork plate at Becky’s BBQ in Middletown, the Cajun scallop soup at The Mews Tavern in Wakefield…somebody stop me. It’s time for lunch.
What signature dishes belong on a “Best of Rhode Island” menu?
Monday, January 11, 2010
News menagerie
Two for the Rhode
Forbes magazine recently declared Rhode Island to have the safest drivers in the nation, begging the question: Are you sure that news wasn’t first published in High Times?
For the last couple of weeks, the digital signs over Rhode Island’s highways have advertised “DMV CLOSED WEDNESDAYS.” Given the rampant closings and limited hours at Department of Motor Vehicles facilities in the state, the line just got a little bit longer and the bureaucratic abyss just got a little bit deeper for the safest drivers in the nation. If Dante had been a Rhode Islander, he would have added a DMV level to his Inferno, somewhere between the “Wrathful and the Gloomy” (Level 5) and “Heretics” (Level 6).
Catnip
News that a Glocester couple has been keeping a mountain lion in a cage for years made the front page of the ProJo. The Chepachet lion was shipped out of town recently, leaving the residents of northern Rhode Island, who occasionally rang the doorbell and asked to see the lion, with one less thing to do.
The most surprising part of the story wasn’t the caged lion, per se, but the fact that suburban Rhode Island has become a veritable wilderness of exotic creatures. There’s even a “zedonk” (cross between a zebra and a donkey) munching on a lawn in a menagerie next to the Hotel Manisses on Block Island. A DEM permit is required to own exotic wildlife and officials are less likely to issue them after last year’s horrific incident when a Connecticut chimpanzee mutilated a woman. But in the meantime there are a few creatures to keep an eye on, including yaks in Little Compton, a Patagonian cavy and South African crested porcupine in Hopkinton and kangaroos and a zebu on Block Island. Rhode Island has long been a haven for lawn animals, mostly of the pink plastic variety, but it turns out that the Ocean State is its own little “Animal Planet.” Which makes you wonder what’s really in those weiners.
Never forget
The Chepachet mountain lion continues a long tradition of big game shenanigans in the village, where the only claim to fame is the fact that someone shot and killed an elephant there almost 200 years ago. The elephant, known variously as “Betty,” “Little Bett” and “The Learned Elephant,” came from Calcutta, India and was only the second elephant to walk on the North American continent. She spent four years visiting towns from the Carolinas to Maine. Her owner claimed that even bullets couldn’t pierce her hide. So local men shot her and found out otherwise. The poor pachyderm was struck down while crossing a wooden bridge on the Chepachet River on May 25, 1826. Local dignitaries put up a commemorative plaque on the bridge for the 150th anniversary, which coincided with America’s Bicentennial. Now each year the anniversary is commemorated in the village as “Elephant Day.” Some historians consider the incident to be the tipping point that led to the formation of the American circus.
This week’s question: What is your most memorable Rhode Island driving experience? (Bonus points if it involves an elephant or a zedonk.)
Forbes magazine recently declared Rhode Island to have the safest drivers in the nation, begging the question: Are you sure that news wasn’t first published in High Times?
For the last couple of weeks, the digital signs over Rhode Island’s highways have advertised “DMV CLOSED WEDNESDAYS.” Given the rampant closings and limited hours at Department of Motor Vehicles facilities in the state, the line just got a little bit longer and the bureaucratic abyss just got a little bit deeper for the safest drivers in the nation. If Dante had been a Rhode Islander, he would have added a DMV level to his Inferno, somewhere between the “Wrathful and the Gloomy” (Level 5) and “Heretics” (Level 6).
Catnip
News that a Glocester couple has been keeping a mountain lion in a cage for years made the front page of the ProJo. The Chepachet lion was shipped out of town recently, leaving the residents of northern Rhode Island, who occasionally rang the doorbell and asked to see the lion, with one less thing to do.
The most surprising part of the story wasn’t the caged lion, per se, but the fact that suburban Rhode Island has become a veritable wilderness of exotic creatures. There’s even a “zedonk” (cross between a zebra and a donkey) munching on a lawn in a menagerie next to the Hotel Manisses on Block Island. A DEM permit is required to own exotic wildlife and officials are less likely to issue them after last year’s horrific incident when a Connecticut chimpanzee mutilated a woman. But in the meantime there are a few creatures to keep an eye on, including yaks in Little Compton, a Patagonian cavy and South African crested porcupine in Hopkinton and kangaroos and a zebu on Block Island. Rhode Island has long been a haven for lawn animals, mostly of the pink plastic variety, but it turns out that the Ocean State is its own little “Animal Planet.” Which makes you wonder what’s really in those weiners.
Never forget
The Chepachet mountain lion continues a long tradition of big game shenanigans in the village, where the only claim to fame is the fact that someone shot and killed an elephant there almost 200 years ago. The elephant, known variously as “Betty,” “Little Bett” and “The Learned Elephant,” came from Calcutta, India and was only the second elephant to walk on the North American continent. She spent four years visiting towns from the Carolinas to Maine. Her owner claimed that even bullets couldn’t pierce her hide. So local men shot her and found out otherwise. The poor pachyderm was struck down while crossing a wooden bridge on the Chepachet River on May 25, 1826. Local dignitaries put up a commemorative plaque on the bridge for the 150th anniversary, which coincided with America’s Bicentennial. Now each year the anniversary is commemorated in the village as “Elephant Day.” Some historians consider the incident to be the tipping point that led to the formation of the American circus.
This week’s question: What is your most memorable Rhode Island driving experience? (Bonus points if it involves an elephant or a zedonk.)
Monday, January 4, 2010
Hockey Talk
If there was such a thing as a hockey edition of the running feature, “You Know You’re A Rhode Islander When…” it would go something like:
Outside of Bruins-Canadiens, it doesn’t get any better than Mount St. Charles vs. Bishop Hendricken.
If a pond isn’t frozen, you’ll find a tennis court.
When the substitute teacher never showed up, you played eraser hockey with yardsticks in junior high school.
You sat behind the chicken wire at the old Rhode Island Auditorium.
You think “Slapshot” is the funniest movie ever.
You buy your pucks at Manny’s.
Back in the Stone Age, when I was a kid, the Big, Bad Bruins were the most popular sports team in New England. Our hockey roots don’t run as deep as Quebec’s, but only Minnesota and maybe Michigan match this region’s puck-loving intensity in the Star-Spangled 50. So on New Year’s Day, when the Fenway Park diamond went white, and the Boston Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers in overtime at the Winter Classic, a lot of Rhode Island was watching. Despite the close score, the game wasn’t a classic, but Mother Nature got the winter part right. It was played on crisp day sandwiched around a weekend of snow. Baseball and hockey, New England’s two most primal passions, morphed together into as pure a celebration of sport I’ve seen around here since Lonnie Paxton made snow angels and Patriots fans spontaneously erupted in synchronized snow-throwing during two of the previous decade’s football-with-a-blizzard-chaser games.
It wasn’t always like this around here. Back in the 1800s, while Canadians were busy refining the sport of hockey, New Englanders were the undisputed masters of a game called ice polo. According to the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (published in 1911):
Rhode Island’s legacy in hockey evolved rapidly. Brown University played the first game of intercollegiate ice hockey in the United States, drubbing Harvard, 6-0 on Jan. 19, 1898. Eighteen natives have gone on to play in the National Hockey League. And for 51 years Providence had a franchise in the American Hockey League called the Reds that played in the raucous old Rhode Island Auditorium. (Some people called it the Rhode Island Arena. Part of the confusion was that the building featured the word “Auditorium” on the marquee and “Arena” on the facade.)
Named after the state bird, the team developed a loyal following. But it wouldn’t be Rhode Island unless there were a few quirks: Outside the state, the team was known and marketed as the Providence Reds. Locally, most folks called the club the Rhode Island Reds. Also, when the team became affiliated with the New York Rangers (perhaps the most despised Bruins rival after the Montreal Canadiens), locals seemed to have no problem rooting for players as Reds then against them as Rangers – at least when they competed against Bobby Orr and the gang about an hour’s drive north.
The Reds are gone now. The modern Bruins have their farm club firmly entrenched in Providence, but the feeling isn’t the same. At the Auditorium, sometimes you couldn’t see the ice by the third period because of all of the cigar and cigarette smoke. And when the building replaced the chicken wire with Plexiglass, if the Reds were losing (which they usually were in those days), fans would start chanting “Bring back the chicken wire!” Ah, old time hockey.
Like most of Rhode Island’s once-great landmarks, the Auditorium was reincarnated into a parking lot. If you’re interested in how the game was played there, check out the DVD “When the Reds Ruled the Roost.” Otherwise, what old Rhode Island landmarks do you miss the most?
Outside of Bruins-Canadiens, it doesn’t get any better than Mount St. Charles vs. Bishop Hendricken.
If a pond isn’t frozen, you’ll find a tennis court.
When the substitute teacher never showed up, you played eraser hockey with yardsticks in junior high school.
You sat behind the chicken wire at the old Rhode Island Auditorium.
You think “Slapshot” is the funniest movie ever.
You buy your pucks at Manny’s.
Back in the Stone Age, when I was a kid, the Big, Bad Bruins were the most popular sports team in New England. Our hockey roots don’t run as deep as Quebec’s, but only Minnesota and maybe Michigan match this region’s puck-loving intensity in the Star-Spangled 50. So on New Year’s Day, when the Fenway Park diamond went white, and the Boston Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers in overtime at the Winter Classic, a lot of Rhode Island was watching. Despite the close score, the game wasn’t a classic, but Mother Nature got the winter part right. It was played on crisp day sandwiched around a weekend of snow. Baseball and hockey, New England’s two most primal passions, morphed together into as pure a celebration of sport I’ve seen around here since Lonnie Paxton made snow angels and Patriots fans spontaneously erupted in synchronized snow-throwing during two of the previous decade’s football-with-a-blizzard-chaser games.
It wasn’t always like this around here. Back in the 1800s, while Canadians were busy refining the sport of hockey, New Englanders were the undisputed masters of a game called ice polo. According to the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (published in 1911):
Ice Polo, a winter sport similar to Ice Hockey, is almost exclusively played in the New England states. A rubber-covered ball is used and the stick is heavier than that used in Ice Hockey. The radical difference between the two games is that, in Ice Polo, there is no strict off-side rule, so that passes and shots at goal may come from any and often the most unexpected direction. Five men constitute a team: a goal-tend, a half-hack, a center and two rushers. The rushers must be rapid skaters, adept in dribbling and passing and good goal shots. The center supports the rushers, passing the ball to them or trying for goal himself. The half-back is the first defense and the goal-tend the last. The rink is 150 feet long.
Rhode Island’s legacy in hockey evolved rapidly. Brown University played the first game of intercollegiate ice hockey in the United States, drubbing Harvard, 6-0 on Jan. 19, 1898. Eighteen natives have gone on to play in the National Hockey League. And for 51 years Providence had a franchise in the American Hockey League called the Reds that played in the raucous old Rhode Island Auditorium. (Some people called it the Rhode Island Arena. Part of the confusion was that the building featured the word “Auditorium” on the marquee and “Arena” on the facade.)
Named after the state bird, the team developed a loyal following. But it wouldn’t be Rhode Island unless there were a few quirks: Outside the state, the team was known and marketed as the Providence Reds. Locally, most folks called the club the Rhode Island Reds. Also, when the team became affiliated with the New York Rangers (perhaps the most despised Bruins rival after the Montreal Canadiens), locals seemed to have no problem rooting for players as Reds then against them as Rangers – at least when they competed against Bobby Orr and the gang about an hour’s drive north.
The Reds are gone now. The modern Bruins have their farm club firmly entrenched in Providence, but the feeling isn’t the same. At the Auditorium, sometimes you couldn’t see the ice by the third period because of all of the cigar and cigarette smoke. And when the building replaced the chicken wire with Plexiglass, if the Reds were losing (which they usually were in those days), fans would start chanting “Bring back the chicken wire!” Ah, old time hockey.
Like most of Rhode Island’s once-great landmarks, the Auditorium was reincarnated into a parking lot. If you’re interested in how the game was played there, check out the DVD “When the Reds Ruled the Roost.” Otherwise, what old Rhode Island landmarks do you miss the most?
Monday, December 28, 2009
Leftovers
We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Look closely into the DNA of the average Rhode Islander and you’ll find lottery numbers. Scratch tickets in the Christmas stocking have become such a Rhody tradition that this year the state lottery director felt obligated to issue a public declaration suggesting to parents that giving instant tickets to children as stocking stuffers might not be the best way to ensure that celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas doesn’t turn into enrolling in a 12-step program.
White Christmas, Brown New Year
A rose care product company will pay tribute to the history of the Rose Bowl this Friday with a 32-foot tall, 55-foot long float made up of thousands of dried and live flowers, including four large “floragraphic” images of historic games on the gridiron. One of them will feature Brown University. Rhody’s Ivy League school gets the full rose treatment from Bayer Advanced for the landmark 1916 tilt between Brown and Washington State. That game marked the first time an African-American student, Brown’s Fritz Pollard, played in the Rose Bowl, the oldest of all the college bowl games, which kicks off annually on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, Calif., shortly after The Tournament of Roses Parade. Pollard was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005. For the record, Brown lost 14-0.
What Cheer?
A recent National Park Service study of Rhode Island’s Roger Williams Memorial offered little to cheer about. Among the criticisms: There’s no memorial at the memorial. Almost nobody knows where it is and those who do aren’t sure why it’s located on North Main Street. None of the park’s resources have national significance. The place can’t decide whether it wants to be a park or a landmark. There’s trash in the well that may (or may not) indicate the location of the stream where Williams originated his settlement. The state DOT even refused to put up signs for the memorial on the highway, citing the landmark’s insignificance. The lesson? Sometimes you founder when you try to honor a founder.
New Orleans on the Narragansett
Providence is considering adding streetcars to ease congestion and get traffic flowing again in parts of the city. Given Providence’s rich traditions in blues, jazz and dining, some locals already like to think of it as a cold New Orleans. The back-to-the-future tram look could bring us even closer. Providence residents, like those in New Orleans, already adopt a fatalist attitude toward big storms. The Hurricane of ’38 was the Katrina of its day. Locals celebrate bad weather by drinking near the Hurricane Barrier. And while the city may never have a streetcar named Desire, there is an adult entertainment club by that name.
Downsizing
One deeply disturbing but underreported consequence of climate change is the potential extinction of “size of Rhode Island” references. While ice shelves continue to break apart and float off to places like Australia and New Zealand, their remnants fall far short of Rhody length. Consider two of the most recent moving icebergs, variously described as “the length of seven football pitches,” “the length of Beijing’s ‘Bird’s Nest’ Stadium,” “twice the length of Hong Kong island” and “twice the size of New York’s Manhattan island.” Not a single Rhody reference in the bunch. Talk about an inconvenient truth. Not for nothin’ but when the world stops measuring its natural disasters and cataclysms in Rhode Islands, maybe it’s time to dust off those Mayan calendars.
This week’s question: What is your New Year’s tradition, or your favorite New Year’s memory?
White Christmas, Brown New Year
A rose care product company will pay tribute to the history of the Rose Bowl this Friday with a 32-foot tall, 55-foot long float made up of thousands of dried and live flowers, including four large “floragraphic” images of historic games on the gridiron. One of them will feature Brown University. Rhody’s Ivy League school gets the full rose treatment from Bayer Advanced for the landmark 1916 tilt between Brown and Washington State. That game marked the first time an African-American student, Brown’s Fritz Pollard, played in the Rose Bowl, the oldest of all the college bowl games, which kicks off annually on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, Calif., shortly after The Tournament of Roses Parade. Pollard was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2005. For the record, Brown lost 14-0.
What Cheer?
A recent National Park Service study of Rhode Island’s Roger Williams Memorial offered little to cheer about. Among the criticisms: There’s no memorial at the memorial. Almost nobody knows where it is and those who do aren’t sure why it’s located on North Main Street. None of the park’s resources have national significance. The place can’t decide whether it wants to be a park or a landmark. There’s trash in the well that may (or may not) indicate the location of the stream where Williams originated his settlement. The state DOT even refused to put up signs for the memorial on the highway, citing the landmark’s insignificance. The lesson? Sometimes you founder when you try to honor a founder.
New Orleans on the Narragansett
Providence is considering adding streetcars to ease congestion and get traffic flowing again in parts of the city. Given Providence’s rich traditions in blues, jazz and dining, some locals already like to think of it as a cold New Orleans. The back-to-the-future tram look could bring us even closer. Providence residents, like those in New Orleans, already adopt a fatalist attitude toward big storms. The Hurricane of ’38 was the Katrina of its day. Locals celebrate bad weather by drinking near the Hurricane Barrier. And while the city may never have a streetcar named Desire, there is an adult entertainment club by that name.
Downsizing
One deeply disturbing but underreported consequence of climate change is the potential extinction of “size of Rhode Island” references. While ice shelves continue to break apart and float off to places like Australia and New Zealand, their remnants fall far short of Rhody length. Consider two of the most recent moving icebergs, variously described as “the length of seven football pitches,” “the length of Beijing’s ‘Bird’s Nest’ Stadium,” “twice the length of Hong Kong island” and “twice the size of New York’s Manhattan island.” Not a single Rhody reference in the bunch. Talk about an inconvenient truth. Not for nothin’ but when the world stops measuring its natural disasters and cataclysms in Rhode Islands, maybe it’s time to dust off those Mayan calendars.
This week’s question: What is your New Year’s tradition, or your favorite New Year’s memory?
Monday, December 21, 2009
Prose and Cons
Maybe it’s just a knee-jerk survival response to being the smallest fish in a big pond, but Rhode Island breeds self-obsession the way Glenn Beck breeds conspiracy theories. Four books have been published in the past four years chronicling the fables, foibles, fallacies and quirky cultural attractions and behaviors found in the Ocean State.
Ryder Windham’s “You Know You’re In Rhode Island When …” and Roberta Mudge Humble’s “The RIght to Crow: A Look at Rhode Island’s Firsts, Bests & Uniques” were published in 2006. Seth Brown’s “Rhode Island Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff” came out in 2007. The latest, “Rhode Island 101: Everything You Wanted to Know About Rhode Island and Were Going to Ask Anyway,” written by Tim Lehnert and published earlier this year, is the best of the bunch.
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, Inc., chose Rhode Island to launch its 101 Book Series, producing guides to all of the United States compiled and written by local scribes, after a similar venture proved successful with the Canadian provinces.
The most impressive thing about the book is that even lifelong, all-things-Rhody mad residents will learn something new. Small enough to fit into a purse or coat pocket, the volume comprehensively details the state’s oddities and trivial pursuits, while fleshing out the facts with 26 engaging opinion columns by prominent Rhode Islanders.
Anecdotes and tidbits trace Rhode Island’s “mobsters and lobsters” legacy, a sobriquet made popular by Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge (who emerge in the book). There are also stories of mills, mansions, vampires, ghosts, pirates, stuffies, bubblers, dynamites, Plunder Dome, Dollar Bill, the Ancients & Horribles Parade and everything that makes Rhode Island what it is today.
In between, there are lists galore (“Five Quebecois Rhode Islanders,” “Top Five Legendary Weiner Joints”) and carefully selected quotes compiled in a running “They said it” feature. The guest columns are especially enjoyable (among them “Rory Raven’s Top Five Tales of Haunted Rhode Island,” “Ted Widmer’s Five Ways Rhode Island Influenced the United States,” “Robin Kall’s Top Five Rhode Island Reads,” “Tony Petrarca’s Top Five Forecasting Challenges.”)
In sum, it’s a field guide for travelers to the strange ways and byways of Rhode Island and a keepsake for Rhode Islanders who can’t read enough about their home state.
Skeptics Wanted
With so many scandalmongers around, Rhode Island is a haven for skeptics. Thankfully, North Kingstown’s Tom Sgouros is one of them. His “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Rhode Island,” published earlier this year, is billed as “a skeptical look at government, economics and recent history in one lively little state.” Sgouros, an independent journalist and editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter, a political newsletter, compiles and expands his columns and writings into a book-length analysis of the state’s financial shenanigans and bad decision-making at the highest (and lowest) levels. In doing so, he debunks conventional wisdom about business as usual (a.k.a. the Rhody follies), pointing out the flaws and hypocrisy in many of the traditional arguments about the ills and problems of the Ocean State. Just an edited glance at the index will let you know that this is not your typically dry white paper:
Beast, Starve the, 147; boogeyman labor, 23; Bruce, Lenny, 135; Gekko, Gordon, 26; I-boondoggle state debt, 15; Jamestown two police cars, 72; lemons market for, 51; lottery, projections, bad, 11; mall not useful investment, 61; music stops eventually, 41; Oedipus, 42; orange drivers, 142; paradise this isn’t, 23; sea bass vs. cod, 141; self-freezing Popsicles, 57.
By taking a closer and more thoughtful look at Rhode Island’s infrastructure, tax collections, debt service, municipal aid practices, police budgets and salaries for white-collar and blue-collar workers, Sgouros describes a state in crisis and how it got there. His insightful skepticism puts him in good company with the dissidents and critics that have helped define this state since it was little more than a humble settlement running uphill from a Providence stream. (Nobody is sure where that stream is today, although some believe its source to be located under the Roger Williams National Memorial on North Main Street, under a well now clogged with litter and crushed beer cans.)
Oceans Three
Three Rhode Islanders collaborated on a new book about a decade-long effort to survey life in the world’s oceans. That volume, “World Ocean Census: A Global Survey of Marine Life,” serves in part as a preview for a final report to be released next year. It’s filled with stunning pictures, including dramatic images of such creatures as the jeweled squid, cownose ray, football fish and Hawaiian monk seal, along with several colorful corals and everything from scallops to sharks. Fans of maritime New England will enjoy scenes ranging from logbooks of whaling expeditions, vintage postcards of beached black fish and finbacks off Cape Cod and a collage of coasters and placemats from old seafood restaurants. Even the names – The Oyster Boat, The Lobster Claw, Anthony’s Fish Grotto – conjure days of platters and bibs in southern New England. My favorite picture in the book is a 1910 postcard of a 270-pound halibut caught at Provincetown, a fish as big as a dune shack that dwarfs the fisherman who caught it. Today Evelyn’s or Flo’s could serve fish ‘n’ chips for a month from a fish like that. Like many white fish, halibut have just about disappeared from the North Atlantic. Go to Jim’s Dock in Jerusalem and take a look at the snapshots on the walls if you want to see the giants that didn’t always get away in the old days.
R.I.P. Myopic
One sad note of prose to add: Myopic Books in Wakefield recently announced that it would close at the end of January. The store, located at 343A Main St., featured an eclectic selection of used books and routinely hosted intriguing solo art exhibitions on site. Owner Kristin Sollenberger said that the Myopic Books on Angell Street in Providence will remain open and that in the meantime all books at the Wakefield location will be 25 percent off. The closing of Myopic, on the heels of the body’s-still-warm loss of Mom and Pop’s on Robinson Street in Wakefield, is just more kindling for the bonfire of lost bookstores in an age of Kindle and iPod Touch.
This week’s question: What is your favorite book that you discovered in a used bookstore?
Ryder Windham’s “You Know You’re In Rhode Island When …” and Roberta Mudge Humble’s “The RIght to Crow: A Look at Rhode Island’s Firsts, Bests & Uniques” were published in 2006. Seth Brown’s “Rhode Island Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff” came out in 2007. The latest, “Rhode Island 101: Everything You Wanted to Know About Rhode Island and Were Going to Ask Anyway,” written by Tim Lehnert and published earlier this year, is the best of the bunch.
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, Inc., chose Rhode Island to launch its 101 Book Series, producing guides to all of the United States compiled and written by local scribes, after a similar venture proved successful with the Canadian provinces.
The most impressive thing about the book is that even lifelong, all-things-Rhody mad residents will learn something new. Small enough to fit into a purse or coat pocket, the volume comprehensively details the state’s oddities and trivial pursuits, while fleshing out the facts with 26 engaging opinion columns by prominent Rhode Islanders.
Anecdotes and tidbits trace Rhode Island’s “mobsters and lobsters” legacy, a sobriquet made popular by Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge (who emerge in the book). There are also stories of mills, mansions, vampires, ghosts, pirates, stuffies, bubblers, dynamites, Plunder Dome, Dollar Bill, the Ancients & Horribles Parade and everything that makes Rhode Island what it is today.
In between, there are lists galore (“Five Quebecois Rhode Islanders,” “Top Five Legendary Weiner Joints”) and carefully selected quotes compiled in a running “They said it” feature. The guest columns are especially enjoyable (among them “Rory Raven’s Top Five Tales of Haunted Rhode Island,” “Ted Widmer’s Five Ways Rhode Island Influenced the United States,” “Robin Kall’s Top Five Rhode Island Reads,” “Tony Petrarca’s Top Five Forecasting Challenges.”)
In sum, it’s a field guide for travelers to the strange ways and byways of Rhode Island and a keepsake for Rhode Islanders who can’t read enough about their home state.
Skeptics Wanted
With so many scandalmongers around, Rhode Island is a haven for skeptics. Thankfully, North Kingstown’s Tom Sgouros is one of them. His “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Rhode Island,” published earlier this year, is billed as “a skeptical look at government, economics and recent history in one lively little state.” Sgouros, an independent journalist and editor of the Rhode Island Policy Reporter, a political newsletter, compiles and expands his columns and writings into a book-length analysis of the state’s financial shenanigans and bad decision-making at the highest (and lowest) levels. In doing so, he debunks conventional wisdom about business as usual (a.k.a. the Rhody follies), pointing out the flaws and hypocrisy in many of the traditional arguments about the ills and problems of the Ocean State. Just an edited glance at the index will let you know that this is not your typically dry white paper:
Beast, Starve the, 147; boogeyman labor, 23; Bruce, Lenny, 135; Gekko, Gordon, 26; I-boondoggle state debt, 15; Jamestown two police cars, 72; lemons market for, 51; lottery, projections, bad, 11; mall not useful investment, 61; music stops eventually, 41; Oedipus, 42; orange drivers, 142; paradise this isn’t, 23; sea bass vs. cod, 141; self-freezing Popsicles, 57.
By taking a closer and more thoughtful look at Rhode Island’s infrastructure, tax collections, debt service, municipal aid practices, police budgets and salaries for white-collar and blue-collar workers, Sgouros describes a state in crisis and how it got there. His insightful skepticism puts him in good company with the dissidents and critics that have helped define this state since it was little more than a humble settlement running uphill from a Providence stream. (Nobody is sure where that stream is today, although some believe its source to be located under the Roger Williams National Memorial on North Main Street, under a well now clogged with litter and crushed beer cans.)
Oceans Three
Three Rhode Islanders collaborated on a new book about a decade-long effort to survey life in the world’s oceans. That volume, “World Ocean Census: A Global Survey of Marine Life,” serves in part as a preview for a final report to be released next year. It’s filled with stunning pictures, including dramatic images of such creatures as the jeweled squid, cownose ray, football fish and Hawaiian monk seal, along with several colorful corals and everything from scallops to sharks. Fans of maritime New England will enjoy scenes ranging from logbooks of whaling expeditions, vintage postcards of beached black fish and finbacks off Cape Cod and a collage of coasters and placemats from old seafood restaurants. Even the names – The Oyster Boat, The Lobster Claw, Anthony’s Fish Grotto – conjure days of platters and bibs in southern New England. My favorite picture in the book is a 1910 postcard of a 270-pound halibut caught at Provincetown, a fish as big as a dune shack that dwarfs the fisherman who caught it. Today Evelyn’s or Flo’s could serve fish ‘n’ chips for a month from a fish like that. Like many white fish, halibut have just about disappeared from the North Atlantic. Go to Jim’s Dock in Jerusalem and take a look at the snapshots on the walls if you want to see the giants that didn’t always get away in the old days.
R.I.P. Myopic
One sad note of prose to add: Myopic Books in Wakefield recently announced that it would close at the end of January. The store, located at 343A Main St., featured an eclectic selection of used books and routinely hosted intriguing solo art exhibitions on site. Owner Kristin Sollenberger said that the Myopic Books on Angell Street in Providence will remain open and that in the meantime all books at the Wakefield location will be 25 percent off. The closing of Myopic, on the heels of the body’s-still-warm loss of Mom and Pop’s on Robinson Street in Wakefield, is just more kindling for the bonfire of lost bookstores in an age of Kindle and iPod Touch.
This week’s question: What is your favorite book that you discovered in a used bookstore?
Monday, December 14, 2009
'Curiouser and curiouser'
Looking Glass Theatre, the longtime Rhode Island children’s theater company, must have fallen down the rabbit hole. One day it was here, applying for state arts grants, performing at local schools. Then suddenly, as Lewis Carroll might have said if he had grown up in Woonsocket, “there they were…gone.”
So maybe Alice doesn’t live here anymore.
If so, that would be a shame. The first time I saw the company, I was a student at the late, lamented West Barrington Elementary School. (Where one brick building once stood now dozens of homes squeeze together in a garish parody of a Hollywood set. Wisteria Lane meets Washington Road.)
A traveling company from Looking Glass performed some of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” in the cafeteria-auditorium, where they always sent us for meals, indoor gym class and whenever they wanted to show us movies about the Harlem Globetrotters or the evils of smoking. The story I remember best was “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the one where three men are told that they will meet Death under a tree. They discover gold coins instead and praise their good fortune, but inevitably greed consumes them and the prophecy is fulfilled. It was a transforming experience, opening my eyes to the instant magic of theatrical storytelling. It also served as my introduction to the rich world of Chaucer.
Eleven years later, I was out of college, working as a cub reporter for a weekly newspaper in southern Rhode Island, with Saturdays off. I noticed a small advertisement: Looking Glass was looking for actors for Saturday presentations of an Old Stone Bank - (also late, not as lamented) -sponsored series telling little-known stories of the American Revolution. I was chosen to act in one of the short plays, chronicling the lively narrative of Tempe Wicke, a New Jersey woman who played an important role in the war. My role was a narrow-minded American soldier – somewhat blustery, quick-tempered and chauvinistic, like a cross between Yosemite Sam, Foghorn T. Leghorn and Tom DeLay. Every Saturday, we traveled to two libraries around the state, carting our set, changing into costume and improvising the play a bit to fit the space and keep us sane. It was a chance to act and get paid for it. More importantly, it was an opportunity to explore the quirky communities of my native state as I visited places like Hope and Chepachet for the first time. I don’t remember much about the actual play, except that I got my comeuppance twice a week, and the kids loved it. The run ended, and I haven’t been asked for my autograph since.
At its peak, Looking Glass presented more than 300 performances a year throughout New England. There are Looking Glass Theatres in New York, Chicago, San Diego and Pennsylvania, but apparently Rhode Island is no longer part of Wonderland. Does anyone out there know what happened to the company?
Abbreviation deviation
As one might expect of the smallest state in the nation, Rhody is a place that likes its diminutives. The state’s daily newspaper, The Providence Journal, is known colloquially as the “ProJo,” (PRO-JOE) while Rhode Island College is “RIC” (RICK). The former Providence Civic Center, now the Dunkin’ Donuts Center – home base for “Friartown” and Providence College men’s basketball – is “The Dunk.” The old Ocean State, now the Providence Performing Arts Center, goes by the horrid nickname of “PPAC” (PEE-PACK). It brings to mind the reason the Community College of Rhode Island system changed its name from Rhode Island Junior College. Because too many locals referred to RIJC as “REE-JECK,” which offered the best of both worlds in Rhody slang, combining a memorable diminutive with the hardcore Vo Die-luhn accent.
What is your favorite Rhody diminutive?
So maybe Alice doesn’t live here anymore.
If so, that would be a shame. The first time I saw the company, I was a student at the late, lamented West Barrington Elementary School. (Where one brick building once stood now dozens of homes squeeze together in a garish parody of a Hollywood set. Wisteria Lane meets Washington Road.)
A traveling company from Looking Glass performed some of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” in the cafeteria-auditorium, where they always sent us for meals, indoor gym class and whenever they wanted to show us movies about the Harlem Globetrotters or the evils of smoking. The story I remember best was “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the one where three men are told that they will meet Death under a tree. They discover gold coins instead and praise their good fortune, but inevitably greed consumes them and the prophecy is fulfilled. It was a transforming experience, opening my eyes to the instant magic of theatrical storytelling. It also served as my introduction to the rich world of Chaucer.
Eleven years later, I was out of college, working as a cub reporter for a weekly newspaper in southern Rhode Island, with Saturdays off. I noticed a small advertisement: Looking Glass was looking for actors for Saturday presentations of an Old Stone Bank - (also late, not as lamented) -sponsored series telling little-known stories of the American Revolution. I was chosen to act in one of the short plays, chronicling the lively narrative of Tempe Wicke, a New Jersey woman who played an important role in the war. My role was a narrow-minded American soldier – somewhat blustery, quick-tempered and chauvinistic, like a cross between Yosemite Sam, Foghorn T. Leghorn and Tom DeLay. Every Saturday, we traveled to two libraries around the state, carting our set, changing into costume and improvising the play a bit to fit the space and keep us sane. It was a chance to act and get paid for it. More importantly, it was an opportunity to explore the quirky communities of my native state as I visited places like Hope and Chepachet for the first time. I don’t remember much about the actual play, except that I got my comeuppance twice a week, and the kids loved it. The run ended, and I haven’t been asked for my autograph since.
At its peak, Looking Glass presented more than 300 performances a year throughout New England. There are Looking Glass Theatres in New York, Chicago, San Diego and Pennsylvania, but apparently Rhode Island is no longer part of Wonderland. Does anyone out there know what happened to the company?
Abbreviation deviation
As one might expect of the smallest state in the nation, Rhody is a place that likes its diminutives. The state’s daily newspaper, The Providence Journal, is known colloquially as the “ProJo,” (PRO-JOE) while Rhode Island College is “RIC” (RICK). The former Providence Civic Center, now the Dunkin’ Donuts Center – home base for “Friartown” and Providence College men’s basketball – is “The Dunk.” The old Ocean State, now the Providence Performing Arts Center, goes by the horrid nickname of “PPAC” (PEE-PACK). It brings to mind the reason the Community College of Rhode Island system changed its name from Rhode Island Junior College. Because too many locals referred to RIJC as “REE-JECK,” which offered the best of both worlds in Rhody slang, combining a memorable diminutive with the hardcore Vo Die-luhn accent.
What is your favorite Rhody diminutive?
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