Married to the Mob

A couple of weeks ago the news went old school with word that more than 100 people were arrested in a sweep that targeted seven mob families in New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. The round-up was impressive in its scope, playing like an episode of “Crime Story,” and reminding us of the days when the Rhody motto was – to use the expression long made popular by Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge – “Mobsters and Lobsters.”

Rhode Island’s notorious independent streak rears up at a time like this. Although proudly New England, the state has an unhealthy affinity for the Mid-Atlantic, as evidenced by its mobster history, disproportionate number of Yankees fans, and connections to TV shows ranging from “Jersey Shore” to “The Sopranos.” Local viewers of the latter used to look for episodes based on Rhody mob lore. In season 4’s “The Weight,” one subplot involved Uncle Junior telling Tony to put a hit on Johnny, according to the Wikipedia summary, “using the skills of a notorious crew of an elderly hit man from Rhode Island, Lou “DiMaggio” Galina – nicknamed for his use of a baseball bat as a murder weapon.” The incident is pulled directly from a Rhody mob moment, when, as the story goes, “Bobo” Marrapese bashed in the head of a teenager with a baseball bat after getting cut off in Pawtucket on a ramp leading to I-95.

Even the DiMaggio reference is an in-joke. Once at The Mews in Wakefield, I talked with a guy at the bar who said that, in his youth, he drove back and forth from Providence to Boston running numbers for the mob. He said that the only difference between the bars were the pictures inside. In Boston, it was the Virgin Mary, John F. Kennedy and Ted Williams. In Providence, it was the Virgin Mary, Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.

The mob arrest made headlines around the world and was of particular interest to the newspapers of England, which can’t ever seem to get enough of the underbelly of America. As far back as 1993, the English newspaper The Independent (no relation) published a lengthy piece on Rhode Island as the “US Mob state,” in which reporter Patrick Cockburn opens as if he’s warming up an audience in the Catskills:

A joke, much resented by Rhode Islanders, is that things got so bad in their state during the recent recession that the mafia had to lay of two of its judges.

The only thing the reporter got wrong is the “much resented by Rhode Islanders” clause. Most Rhode Islanders love mob jokes. Chances are if you ever hear a mob joke, a Rhode Islander made it up in the first place.

It’s politically incorrect to harp on it now, but growing up in this state, hearing stories, rumors and gossip about the mob was a given. Even as elementary school kids, we watched “Godfathers” I and II and compared Hollywood scenes with local details of murder, racketeering and extortion we heard secondhand during recess between games of Muckle The Kid With The Ball.

As much as the state has changed, its Rogues Island reputation lives on. The first European settlers may have moved to Rhode Island to pursue religious freedom, but it wasn’t long before the rascals and radicals took root. We were a haven for pirates, an industry so lucrative that the state decided to make it legal by calling it privateering. During Prohibition, rumrunning was rampant in Rhode Island. (It’s rumored that Tara Mulroy’s Joyce Family Pub, still hanging on the edge of the earth in Matunuck, was one of many Rhody watering holes involved in the trade.) And Providence, of course, was home to the New England mob for generations. Even now, if Half Shell ever goes under, I could start my own mob blog, using the Internet’s Mob Name Generator. (Depending on whether I use the informal or formal version of my first name, I am either Doug “The Jeweler” Norris or Douglas “The Vampire” Norris, either of which would be appropriate in a state with its own Jewelry District and vampire legends.)

What is your favorite Rhode Island crime story?

Weather smack

With more snow forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, 2011 is blurring into a blizzard of blizzards. In a couple of weeks, some Pennsylvania rodent will tell the rest of America whether this winter will be a long one or not, but here in New England we don’t need a publicity-seeking groundhog to predict the weather. We’ve got our own clues in nature to investigate, albeit few of them involving toothy mammals, whether the burrowing variety or those attractive Weather Channel personalities bragging about their Doppler radar.

How do you know winter is going to be long, cold and snowy? The hornet’s paper nest will be higher than usual, while the squirrel’s nest will be lower. The wooly worm will wear a jet-black coat, rather than its standard brown-striped russet. Squirrels will have bushier tails. Walnuts and hickory nuts will have thicker hulls. August will have a lot of foggy mornings. Onions will have extra layers. You’ll have to dig deeper to get at your carrots. The north side of any neighborhood trees will be enlarged with extra bark and moss will grow thicker on all of the trees. The bushes will grow more blackberries and the pines will drop more cones than usual. And perhaps you’ll hear the late-night call of the hoot owl throughout autumn, foretelling the next season's severity.

Some weather lore has been turned into proverbs:

The aching of a broken bone predicts rain.

True enough. When it comes to forecasting precipitation, my two surgically reconstructed knees and surgically repaired right elbow are more accurate than Al Roker, Stephanie Abrams and Heather Tesch combined.

One proverb I’d never heard before, but discovered recently on a Web site devoted to American Folklore, has resonance because of the “thunder snow” Rhode Island received during its most recent blizzard, when the sight of lightning and the rumble of thunder in a flurry of early morning snow seemed almost apocalyptic:

If you see lightning in January, you will see snow in April.

Worrisome, because we’ve already had the January lightning, and the thought of April snow on a day when snow piles are stacked like skyscrapers and the temperature may not climb above a single digit is just winter misery overkill.

Based on living through the last decade of winters on a West Barrington Cove, I also know this: When the ducks cluster near the shore, freely mingling with the gulls, geese and swans, and there’s no low tide to provide an easy buffet, a storm’s coming. It’s an observation that I’ve cobbled together in my own weather proverb:

When birds of a different feather flock by the shore together, seal the windows, grab a coat – and get ready for stormy weather.

This week's question: What is your favorite weather lore?

Really, Rhody?

It sounds like something written for the old Seth Meyers-Amy Poehler “Really?” bit on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” Not long after the ball was dropped on the New Year, Rhode Island politicians dropped the ball again when Republican Rep. Doreen M. Costa of Dist. 31 in North Kingstown and Exeter took her first crack at legislating by submitting a resolution to ban state officials and agencies from using any term but “Christmas trees” to describe the “customarily erected” evergreens decorated in many households during December.

So let’s see. Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Families and many entire communities are in debt. Job prospects are dim. The educational system is a mess. The state’s infrastructure is in disrepair. Health care costs are bankrupting people and businesses. What to do, what to do? Hmm. Oh, here’s a priority: From now on, all state employees and agencies must always say “Christmas tree” in their official statements and communications.

Really?

What happens to the poor sod who makes a mistake and publicly utters or e-mails an announcement about a “holiday tree” instead? Or makes some unfortunate reference to “yule,” “wintertide,” “Saturnalia,” “Norway spruce” or “evergreen”? Would he or she get fired? Banned from the office Christmas party? Burned at the stake? Sent to the stocks for a day to be pummeled with fruitcakes and eggnog? Permanently rubber-stamped onto Santa’s Naughty List?

Costa, as described in an Independent editorial last week, is “a vocal member of the R.I. Tea Party and one of 29 newcomers elected on a platform of change.” She has admitted that she submitted the legislation “on a whim,” with the backing of Rep. Joseph Trillo, a Republican from Warwick. Because they submitted it wrong, copies of the resolution were not given to lawmakers but instead were approved by the House on a voice vote within moments of its introduction, requiring – in what amounts to a monumental waste of time and energy – referral to a committee to consider and study the matter.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not (and, for the record, I do; four beloved Christmas trees from my childhood are now towering evergreens in my backyard, serving as home for a mockingbird and a playground for squirrels), the legislative effort is misguided. To establish a law insisting that state workers use the expression “Christmas tree” is heavy-handed, and the inference or presumption by the legislators that a “Christmas tree” has always been a “Christmas tree” is just plain wrong. Not for nothin’, but Bethlehem wasn’t exactly known for its Scotch pine, Douglas fir and white spruce.

Sure, it’s always fun when we can correct political correctness and co-opt a pagan ritual in one fell swoop, but how about letting Rhode Island – the original “separation of church and state” state – do what it does best and encourage everyone to keep making ornaments, not laws, for the Christmas tree?

Speaking of which, there’s also some momentum for a bill to stipulate that Halloween would always be celebrated on the last Saturday of October – no matter its actual date – to make it easier for parents to plan trick-or-treating and for bars, restaurants and businesses to profit from the holiday. Again, let’s put a stake in this vampire right now.

Before you know it, some well-intentioned politician will decide that we should move Halloween to August – a month without a national holiday – so the kids won’t have to risk going out in the cold. And maybe we should pick a Sunday in March or April and just stick with it to celebrate Easter, because it’s too confusing the way that holiday bounces like a jellybean around the calendar every spring. On second thought, make it April, because some years Easter falls too closely next to St. Patrick’s Day. Then again, it would probably be better for bars and restaurants if the feast day of St. Patrick were held on a weekend, so let’s just consider March 17 to be more like a global happy hour if it falls on Monday through Friday and schedule the bodhrans and shamrocks for the third Saturday in March.

What would you change about any holiday, if you could?

Dorr and more

For those Rhode Islanders who grew up around these parts since the 1970s, our study of American history in schools was startlingly lacking in previous Rhode Islanders. Oh, sure, we might have spent a day or two on Roger Williams and Samuel Slater, squeezed in between the timeline of Columbus, Pilgrims, American Revolution (mostly the events in Boston and Philadelphia), the Civil War (Gettysburg), World War II and the Kennedy years, but otherwise most of us meandered around the state, driving on asphalt called Willet Avenue, Metacom Avenue and Newman Avenue without knowing the stories behind the street names.

The religious seekers, political pioneers, radical patriots, revolutionary thinkers, independent women, Wampanoag and Narragansett sachems, privateers and pirates, slave traders and abolitionists, innovative entrepreneurs and military heroes – including the soldiers of the First Rhode Island Regiment, also known as the Black Regiment of Rhode Island, comprising slaves who agreed to fight for their country in exchange for freedom – that made up the patchwork of Rhode Island history were anonymous to us.

Things are better now. Schools have made more of an effort to incorporate local history into their curricula. The Web, cable television and publishers like Arcadia and The History Press have created a market for stories and images documenting regional and community histories. So every now and then someone who was part of the state limelight in some long-ago generation returns from the shadows to earn the spotlight again.

Such is the case with Thomas Dorr. In an age when only white male landowners (i.e., the filthy rich) could vote in Rhode Island, Dorr, the son of Conservative Whigs, shocked his family by becoming the people’s champion, leading a short-lived revolution that fizzled in its day but opened the door to a future in which Rhode Island and the nation would become more democratic.

As Rhode Islander Rory Raven, author of “The Dorr War: Treason, Rebellion & The Fight for Reform in Rhode Island” (2010, The History Press) notes:

There is a Dorr Street in Providence; it is a dead end, and on my last visit, there was no street sign. And while an official portrait of Dorr was hung in the Rhode Island Statehouse some time ago, giving him his rightful place among the other governors honored there, that portrait has not been seen in many years, and no one seems to know where it has gotten to.

Raven’s book restores Dorr’s place in the pantheon of the state’s quirky and independent but significant historical figures. As leader of the Dorr Rebellion, he helped draft the “People’s Constitution,” mandating universal suffrage for white males. (There is some evidence that he was sympathetic to the plight of African Americans and women as well, but decided that those were civil rights battles that would have to be fought later.)

Studying the bare bones of history, the Dorr War appears almost comical. On the day when Rhode Island had two governors, Dorr marched with his supporters up to the Rhode Island State House to claim his seat, only to the find the doors locked and no way to get in, so he held swearing-in ceremonies in a nearby foundry still under construction.

Later, he attempted a military victory by marching on a Providence arsenal, tugging along two cannons (that allegedly had been seized from British General Burgoyne after his defeat at Saratoga during the Revolution and ended up in Rhode Island), both of which misfired, causing most of his followers to abandon the effort.

When his political enemies marched up Acote’s Hill in Chepachet to capture him, “there he was,” said the Woonsocketer in the militia, “gone.” So they took the cannons and smashed up a local tavern, eating and drinking everything the owner had, and confiscating the lot, including household silver, a cookstove and a pair of garters belonging to someone named Ripsy Tift. (The victors and writers of history would later call this “the sacking of Chepachet.”)

Dorr was eventually imprisoned for life and sentenced to solitary confinement and hard labor. (He painted fans all day. Some of his fans are now in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.)

One side note: Raven makes the point that for generations in Rhode Island all major political rallies were structured around the classic Rhode Island clambake, which then as today certainly would make the politics more palatable. Memo to candidates in 2012: Less negative advertising. More rockweed and quahogs.

What Rhode Islander do you think deserves more prominence in the history books?

Beating a Dead Potato

A brief look back at the news of the previous decade from the perspective of one of its biggest celebrities, Hollywood star, toy Hall-of-Famer and Rhode Island’s own, Mr. Potato Head:

Upon opening the parcel, Customs officers were greeted with the smiling face of Mr. Potato Head. When a panel from Mr. Potato Head’s back was removed, a quantity of MDMA (ecstasy) tablets was found in a small taped bag concealed in the cavity space.

-- Australian customs postal director Karen Williams after discovering a large amount of drugs inside a Mr. Potato Head toy mailed to Sydney from Ireland. From Google News AFP. Oct. 3, 2007.

Its bright colors, strange shape and moveable parts make it fascinating for Louis. The secret space within Mr. Potato Head allows us to hide tasty treats like fresh crab inside and that perhaps more than anything has resulted in him becoming such a hit.

-- Matt Slater of Blue Reef Aquarium in Newquay, Cornwall referring to a 6-foot, giant Pacific octopus that refused to let go of a Mr. Potato Head for hours at a time. From The Scuba Herald. Jan. 11, 2008.

On the Democratic side it’s definitely Senator Obama, and on the Republic side it’s Senator McCain.

-- Andy Green, an Iowa man who gained national attention by asking 2008 Presidential candidates and other politicians to pose for photographs with a Mr. Potato Head, referring to his best-selling snapshots. His portfolio included images with Obama, McCain, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John Edwards, whom Green described as the most uncomfortable with the idea. From WHDH News. Jan. 2, 2008.

If you look at this potato head, the only thing missing is a watermelon.

-- Onna Moniz-John, East Providence affirmative action officer after seeing Kathy Szarko’s “Tourist Tater,” one of the giant Mr. Potato Heads that appeared throughout the state as part of a Rhode Island tourism campaign in 2000. From A.P. reporter Gillian Flynn’s story as reported on ABC News. Sept. 30, 2000.

He’s a potato. That’s why he’s brown.

-- The artist Szarko, responding to the complaint.

The whole Potato Head campaign is supposed to encourage people to visit. Obviously, we did not intend to offend anyone.

-- Then Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian on the decision to remove the 6-foot Mr. Potato Head from outside City Hall. The statue had been on display since May but complaints started after its photo appeared in a newspaper in September.

Mr. Potato Head goes organic.

-- Headline on a story about giant potatoes riding bicycles in the Dutch countryside to promote the health benefits of organic farming. From the Web site, www.greenpeace.org. May 29, 2009.

Starbucks teaching efficiency with Mr. Potato Head.

-- Headline on a blog post quoting a Wall Street Journal story about Starbucks executives training managers throughout the country: “One odd tactic that he used was to challenge managers to reassemble and box a Mr. Potato Head toy.” From the site, www.bloggingstocks.com. Aug. 5, 2009.

Hasbro Inc.’s Mr. Potato Head, for example, demonstrates the potential for amusement in manipulating and distorting the human form and shows that children’s toys can find a place in art.

-- Quoted from Farrah Tan’s article headlined “Mr. Potato Head, Barbie and Eeyore help redefine our view of bodies in student-curated art exhibition,” about a show titled “Bodies Unbound: The Classical and Grotesque” at Cornell University. From The Cornell Chronicle. May 5, 2010.

‘Toy Story 3’ hits a high point of comic surrealism when Mr. Potato Head is forced to reinvent himself as Mr. Pita Bread Head – it’s harder than it looks, especially when a pigeon turns up…

-- Quoted from Ty Burr’s review of “Toy Story 3” in The Boston Globe. June 18, 2010.

…that’s what Mr. Potato Head has always been about. You can make him into anything you want…His theme isn’t just imagination, but the opportunity to be and do anything.

-- Quoted from Matt Cuthbert’s article headlined “Mr. Potato Head encourages kids to tap their imagination at McWane Science Center” about “The Adventures of Mr. Potato Head” exhibition in Birmingham, Ala. From the Web site, al.com. July 6, 2010.

They say, ‘That’s Mr. Potato Head! You can’t throw him away! You’ve gotta give him to the neighbor kids! People identify with him so much.

-- Mark Westlund, spokesman for San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, responding to the anger of city residents when they discovered Mr. Potato Head figures were being used on blue recycling bins to promote responsible waste disposal. As a result, the city reversed its plan to transform Mr. Potato Head into Mr. Plastic and place him “alongside detergent bottles, disposable cups and other plastic items,” according to reporter Joe Eskenazi. From The San Francisco Weekly. Sept. 15, 2010.

So a nation heaves a sigh of relief. After all that worry, Mr. Potato Head is back in the ample, if recently sagging, bosom of Manchester United.

-- British magazine The Week quoting Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times about England footballer Wayne Rooney’s expensive return to Old Trafford. The British press has begun referring to Rooney routinely as Mr. Potato Head. Oct. 30, 2010.


What has been your favorite Potato Head moment of the new millennium?

Blizzard Thoughts

Why do we give names to hurricanes but not blizzards?

That was the thought that kept me company during the digging out this morning. Sometime between 6 and 6:30, while the coffee was brewing and the weather forecasters were explaining why they got wrong what they got wrong, I shoveled and scraped and warmed up the car in a Blanding Avenue conga line with my neighbors. The drive to South County was sloppy, choppy and slow, but the roads were mostly empty, and the office, once the computers rebooted, hummed with electricity and heat. Now, moaning winds and the plow music of beeping, grinding and road rumble make the sounds of the day beyond the window. Phones go off haphazardly. The workday settles into the pace of a snowdrift.

The Not-Quite-White Christmas was truly a Boxing Day blizzard, with aftermath lingering into Monday. It barely made deadline as the biggest storm of 2010, the largest accumulation of snow in Rhody since the two snowfalls that struck last December. Between blizzards, we passed a year, and in this week’s Arts & Living section we relive some of the scenes of 2010 from southern Rhode Island – from roads turned into rivers during the March floods to the University of Rhode Island research vessel Endeavor voyaging to the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil spill. Skipping through the images in our photo archives was an odd experience, compressing the news and seasons of an entire year into a couple of hours of fleeting glances and memories.

In the whirl of a snow globe, photographs fell from filing cabinets and folders, no two quite alike. A pair of snowmen greeted travelers along Slocum Road in Exeter. Children pushed through a tight passage of blossoms at Kinney Azalea Gardens in Kingston. Visitors to the South County Museum in Narragansett held newly hatched chicks and watched cracking eggs during the museum’s Fourth of July Rhode Island Red Chick Hatch. Waves from tropical storm Nicole battered the breakwater off Point Judith. Maples erupted in red and orange over an artist’s studio in Rockville.

A swirl of scenes, brief moments and encounters, and then it was over. Times grow yellow in a dusty morgue. This weekend's snowstorm at least gives the space and silence necessary for appreciation and reflection, countering the norm of accelerated lives. So to friends and strangers, followers and any folks just passing through, may these winter-worn days, dressed as they are in snowflake sweaters, thick boots and skin-tight balaclavas, give you pause to be grateful for the people and places you know. Remember, "zero visibility" is just a weatherman's way of saying "blindness," and always keep a shovel and a scraper in your car – but don’t forget the sleds, skates, skis and snowshoes either.

Rest in peace, 2010, and happy New Year.

What will you remember most from the past year?

Saugatucket Solstice

It appears that the calendar will conspire with New England weather to turn tomorrow’s historic winter solstice, timed to coincide with a total eclipse of a full moon, into just another cloudy workday. So for me the ritual walk likely will be little more than a late afternoon trip for coffee along the icy Saugatucket River, just a snowball’s throw from my window.

It’s still worth celebrating the return of incremental light, and scenes of mallard tribes huddled against the riverbank and randomly scattered copper oak leaves trapped under thin skins of cracked ice make the detour a pleasant one, despite the increasingly annoying intrusion of sign pollution marking the short walk. Where once there was just a river abutting a parking lot, with no signs to speak of, now there is a fenced boardwalk leading to a gravel path connecting the area to the bridge that leads from Wakefield School to Main Street, sprouting signs like weeds. They are permanent admonishments, mostly variations of: PLEASE DON’T FEED THE WATERFOWL and PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG. While the rebukes are well intended, it’s somewhat ironic that before the river walk became a recreational haven, it lacked the aesthetics of modern leisure (benches, viewing platform, a dock) – but it also didn’t need the cautionary overkill.

No doubt the walkway has brought more people to the river. And, yes, there are minefields of doggy detritus to navigate because some pet owners can’t be bothered to pick up after themselves. And, yes, some misguided souls like to feed Wonder Bread to wildlife. But the signs don’t seem to prevent people who leave waste untended and feed Twinkies to geese from doing those things. They just sort of ruin the view. If signs really could change behavior, I’d be the first in line to make them: PLEASE FEED THE HUNGRY. PLEASE CLOTHE THE TATTERED. PLEASE SHELTER THE HOMELESS.

As long as we’re admonishing folks, we might at least try doing society some good.

What sign would you like to post for anyone passing by?