State of the State

Following up on last week’s post on the “State By State” essay collection, published in 2009, I thought a summary of the addendum might be of interest to Rhody readers, wherein each state is ranked in a variety of categories.

Rhode Island ranks:

43rd in population.
42nd in population increase.
12th in foreign-born population.
29th in population born elsewhere in the U.S.
45th in birthrate.
9th in median age. All six New England states were in the top 10, including Maine (1), Vermont (2), New Hampshire (7), Connecticut (8) and Massachusetts (10).
18th in gross state product per capita.
34th in bankruptcy filing rate at 28 percent. (Tennessee came in first at a whopping 109.9 percent.)
21st in mean travel time to work.
47th in unemployment rate. (From the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Feb. 2008. We all know what happened later that year, when the economy collapsed. Since then, Rhody’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled and ranks consistently in the top five.)
43rd in military recruitment rate.
18th in percentage of population claiming no religion.
9th in public education expenditure per pupil.
32nd in voter participation rate.
42nd in oil consumption per capita.
43rd in gasoline consumption per capita.
44th in violent crime rate.
41st in incarceration rate.
35th in breastfeeding rate.
43rd in population without health insurance.
34th in toothlessness rate at 17.9 percent. (West Virginia is first at 40.5 percent.)
44th in obesity rate.
5th in alcohol consumption. (Only Wisconsin, North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa drink more.)
26th in cigarette consumption.
43rd in divorce rate.
47th in suicide rate.
47th in highest monthly temperature.
27th in lowest monthly temperature.

Also, Rhode Island is one of seven states with no roller coaster.

Most importantly, Rhode Island was at the top of the list in one category, ranking first in Table 17, “Classic Movie Theaters and Drive-Ins Per Capita,” with a score of 143.1. (Source: Cinema Treasures.)

What does this mean? We drink a lot, but typically aren’t violent or criminal in nature. We stay married. We don’t tend to jump off bridges. We’re thinner than the average Americans. We don’t severely deplete energy resources. We spend more than most on education. We used to have jobs. There aren’t that many of us, all things considered, but those of us who are from here tend to stay here. We miss the Cyclone, the Corkscrew and the Flume*, and we still like to watch movies in places that have a little character.

Leading to this week’s question: What’s your favorite old movie house in Rhode Island?

[Blogger’s note: Starting next week, Half Shell will be burrowing in the sands of Lambert’s Cove, enjoying a Monday-to-Monday beach rental on the Vineyard, which means…look for our return on Tuesday, Aug. 23, when we’ll be rocking some serious surfer tan and clam belly. Until then…]

*Technically, a log ride, not a roller coaster, but it belongs in the discussion of lamented amusement park rides.

Jhumpa's take

To write the Rhode Island entry in the book, “State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America,” featuring 50 writers opining on 50 states, editors chose Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who grew up in Kingston. The book itself is a fascinating kaleidoscope of Americana. Essays are wildly inconsistent in tone and presentation, which is part of the appeal. Like the old joke about the four blind men touching different parts of an elephant and describing something other than what it is, these authors don’t capture sense of place comprehensively, but by not even trying to go for the whole elephant, collectively they do convey a sense of what is peculiar.

(Some partnerships are odd. Massachusetts gets native son, John Hodgman, best known for his appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and TV commercials for Macintosh computers. Now a transplanted New Yorker, Hodgman’s Bay State rambling seems to miss its mark: “I guess that I am from Massachusetts. But I never felt at home there, and, really, no one ever does.” Yeah, well. No. Having lived there myself, and having shared conversations with countless residents from the Cape and the Islands to Boston to the Berkshires over the years, I’m fairly confident in saying that many feel very much at home in Massachusetts and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Hodgman does allude to the state’s sports mania, which he doesn’t share…a point emphasized by the error in the following sentence: “The local sports teams – which I am told are the Baseball Red Sox, the Football Patriots, the Basketball Celtics, the Hockey Bears, and of course the famous Boston Lobsters of the World Team Tennis League – are an obsession.” Yeah, well. No. Lobster sarcasm aside, it’s the Hockey Bruins. Your Stanley Cup champion Hockey Bruins. The Bears are a football team that plays in Chicago.)

Lahiri is a good choice to represent Rhode Island, even though her short stories and novels often draw upon her autobiographical experiences of feeling alienated in the culture she grew up in. After some cursory geography and history, she moves into memoir, sharing details about her upbringing in “a place originally called Little Rest.” She’s at her best when engaging in the tactile sensations of the place, as in this paragraph:

The Atlantic I grew up with lacks the color and warmth of the Caribbean, the grandeur of the Pacific, the romance of the Mediterranean. It is generally cold, and full of rust-colored seaweed. Still, I prefer it. The waters of Rhode Island, as much a part of the state’s character, if not more, as the land, never asked us questions, never raised a brow. Thanks to its very lack of welcome, its unwavering indifference, the ocean always made me feel accepted, and to my dying day, the seaside is the only place where I can feel truly and recklessly happy.

Another wonderful section follows in which Lahiri contrasts her father’s contentment about living in Rhode Island with her mother’s agitation…including a sad passage about her mother getting racist notes and anonymous hate mail while teaching at a South County elementary school. The anecdotes balance the state’s charms with its under-the-surface ugliness, but Lahiri resists the temptation to catalog the litany of little injustices that occur here. So I’ll return to the section on her father, because I think she gets at what makes Rhode Island an appealing place to live for many of us who choose to do so:

My father, a global traveler, considers Rhode Island paradise. For nearly four decades he has dedicated himself there to a job he loves, rising through the ranks in the library’s cataloging department to become its head. But in addition to the job, he loves the place. He loves that it is quiet, and moderate, and is, in the great scheme of things, uneventful.

Two quibbles: Throughout the article, Lahiri refers to “Dell’s” – instead of Del’s – lemonade. And she mentions the “Ghiorse Beach Factor,” which was actually just the “Ghiorse Factor,” a meteorologist’s numerical shorthand for describing the inherent beauty of any particular day, well known to all Rhode Islanders. After noticing Hodgman’s “Hockey Bears,” and these two typos in the only two pieces I’ve read so far, I have an idea. Next time, how about 50 editors from 50 states?

What makes Rhode Island unique as a state?

Art, Unanchored

There’s a big boat hanging out in Newport this summer that describes itself as a “floating art gallery.” Dubbed Sea Fair, the world’s first mobile mega-yacht art gallery chose Newport as its Summer Hang, docking at the Newport Shipyard, where owners hoped to attract lovers of art and fancy boats to its 228-foot-long luxury digs.

The plan was to interest tourists in viewing three decks worth of sculpture, glass, jewelry, fine furniture and contemporary photography and painting, while also giving them a look-see at a handful of masterworks by the likes of Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Most of the works range in price from $3,000 to $35,000. There’s enough space leftover for two outdoor bars, an international coffee bar, an open-air bistro and a glass-walled restaurant. But after a flurry of early interest this summer in Newport, the fourth largest privately owned yacht in the U.S. has pulled anchor on the idea for a few weeks, citing vendor disappointment at the relative lack of daily patronage.

The yacht plans a trip to Martha’s Vineyard later this month and a return engagement in Newport during the lead-up to Labor Day.

Organizers thought the Newport destination made sense, given the art yacht’s popularity in Sarasota earlier in the season. But last year’s yellow lobster drew a bigger crowd to Newport. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Tough economy everywhere – especially here in Rhody. Newport skews the data somewhat, and there are plenty of rich folks zooming around these parts in July and August, but the state on the whole is a collective of proud, working-class folks with ties to family traditions and the old world (Ireland, Portugal, Italy) that values a bargain and distrusts anything that comes with too many dollar signs – unless it’s the lottery.

We are home to the nation’s first bargain stores and family restaurants that live by the credo of selling big portions for cheap. We make art but rarely buy it. And during our glorious summers, we have a million ways to get on a boat or on the water without paying admission or feeling as if we’re underdressed.

Still, the under-whelming support for the art yacht has given me an idea for a classified advertisement.

WANTED: DINGHY
(Or reasonable rowboat facsimile, such as a whaleboat, dory, lifeboat or currach. Perhaps even a raft. For purposes of artistic experiment.)

Bottom Feeder, a.k.a. Art Dinghy on the Half Shell, would be the world’s first rowboat art gallery. Small enough to dock anywhere on the Rhode Island coast, the boat needs to have enough room for the rower, one patron and one work of art. Maiden voyage to launch with a viewing of “Dogs Playing Poker.” Refreshments will be served at our outdoor coffee thermos and flask of rotating spirits.

Outside of traditional galleries and festivals, where would you like to see art in Rhode Island?

The Sunny Side of the Tweet

A good friend once described me as a “social media Quaker.” Another called me a “social media snob.” Both may be right. I don’t deny the pervasive influence or potential benefit of the social media revolution, but I’ve mostly chosen not to join the party, remaining friendless on Facebook, having exactly one tweet to my name (a crude and snarky post that may end up being my Twittertaph) and only signing up on LinkedIn to try to locate someone I couldn’t find any other way. Even though, working for a newspaper, there’s a certain amount of pressure to stay plugged in to everything, everywhere, at all times, I resist the impulse personally for reasons of health and sanity, and professionally because I think in today’s culture the intensity of 24-7 cyber-immersion results in communication that is skewed to being almost entirely reactive rather than reflective. And what’s missing from the debate in the political arena, on the airwaves and on Internet comment boards, where so many of the participants prefer to act like monkeys throwing feces at one another, is the measured, reasoned and thoughtful approach to argument and analysis that can result in positive progress. Social media is a ceaseless echo chamber. Some of us just need more distance, space, quiet and time to think through problems, consider solutions, become inspired, stoke our imagination, create, invent or discover what's meaningful and valuable in our lives.

Another friend and I once had an idea – that we’ll never follow through on, so I’ll give it up to the universe – for a T-shirt company to compete with Twitter. We’d wear a different shirt every day, each bearing a new message. Some examples:

HAD A BAGEL TODAY.
LESS FACEBOOK. MORE FRESH AIR.
WHAT WOULD JESUS GOOGLE?

That kind of thing.

In the meantime, for those who are interested, the most popular Rhode Islander in the Twitterverse is Audrey McClelland, a working mom, writer and former fashion executive, who “vlogs” (video blogs) daily fashion advice. The last time I checked, which was also the first time I checked, she had 16,906 followers, ranking No. 1 overall in the Ocean State, ahead of such members of the Rhody Twitterati as Gov. Lincoln Chafee (No. 29), Rhode Island Monthly Bride (No. 93) and Rhode Island Weather Alerts (No. 98).

What Rhode Islander would you most like to follow on Twitter?

Crackerjack Memories

Baseball passion cuts deeply in New England, where being manager of the Boston Red Sox is the most scrutinized job in the six states. The earliest written mention of the game in the United States was a 1791 ordinance in Pittsfield, Mass. that banned playing it within 80 yards of the town meeting house. After the American Industrial Revolution was born in Pawtucket, the game became religion in mill cities up and down the East Coast, where immigrant communities spent precious leisure hours playing the sport – while their rich robber baron overlords in places like Newport preferred yachting, polo, golf, tennis and rambling around in horseless carriages.

Few books capture the relationship between baseball and the working-class players and fans hooked by the game better than Dan Barry’s “Bottom of the 33rd,” subtitled “Hope, Redemption and Baseball’s Longest Game.” Barry, a national columnist for the New York Times and former Providence Journal writer, revisits April 19, 1981, a cold and raw night in Pawtucket, when the Rochester Red Wings and Pawtucket Red Sox played the longest game in professional baseball history – a game that didn’t end until later that summer after being mercifully suspended at the end of the 32nd inning.

It’s a book full of gems, and its accordion-like structure, in which we experience a moment imbedded in the game – an at-bat, a player on base, a pitcher toeing the rubber – before pulling back as the author frames the life, moving from boyhood dreams to (mostly) broken dreams, captures the hard road and loss of innocence for the many who don’t make it. Rhode Islanders will enjoy the local history and colorful details that bring the book to life, with references to Pawtucket landmarks like the Mei-King, the Modern Diner, the Wiener Genie and McCoy Stadium’s slow transformation from dive to minor league field of dreams.

Barry captures sense of place beautifully, as one short sequence illustrates:

Hope, after all, is the motto of Rhode Island. Hope has a seat on the public buses, those thirty-five-foot green whales, their insides musty with urine at certain hours of the day, sighing through their blowholes as they stop and start past machine shops and old mills. One of the drivers, Scott Molloy, who will soon embark upon a long career in academia, is occasionally assigned the Pawtucket route. And for all the urban despair he sees, especially late at night, when that despair assumes the drape of gloom, he is struck by a small group of ragtag Pawtucket regulars, a couple of white guys, a black guy, and a woman, who routinely make the transfer to the dog track in Lincoln. Broken people, really, but made whole somehow by one another, and by the shared hope of a winning day at the track – of returning home on a RIPTA bus with a hundred-dollar score on a two-dollar bet. Never happens. Maybe tomorrow.

For lifelong Red Sox fans, there is much to savor, even if it is mostly painful memories. Playing for Rochester during baseball’s longest game was Cal Ripken, Jr., who would be the sport’s golden child in the majors, breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games streak and quite possibly saving MLB from years of apathy following revelations of historic records shattered with the help of steroids from some of the game’s biggest stars. Playing for Pawtucket that night were Wade Boggs, Bruce Hurst, Marty Barrett, Rich Gedman and Bobby Ojeda, all of whom would meet a few years later when Ojeda’s Mets would defeat a Red Sox team made up in part of former PawSox teammates in a World Series that wrote another dramatic chapter in Boston's litany of epic collapses. Here’s how Barry writes it:

All of this is five years in the future, and far, far from Pawtucket. That ground ball hit by Wilson; that error made by Buckner; that series-ending, knife-in-the-heart moment when Jesse Orosco launches his glove high into the New York night after striking out Marty Barrett. Marty is here now, harvesting and tossing away the infield pebbles that might lead to bad hops around second base. And Wade Boggs, who will weep in the Boston dugout after that World Series, is here, muttering curfew, curfew, isn’t there any such thing as a curfew. And Rich Gedman, who will be unable to block an errant Bob Stanley pitch in the 10th inning of that fateful Game Six, allowing the Mets to tie the game, is in the bullpen, having left the game hours ago. And Bobby Ojeda, Hurst’s brother in the slightly odd fraternity of left-handers, somehow convinced Joe Morgan to let him go home a few innings ago. Ojeda will also appear in the 1986 World Series, but for the New York Mets. In the moments leading up to the climactic seventh game of the World Series games, the two former teammates will spot each other, one in a Red Sox uniform, one in a Mets uniform, and their eyes will lock in wordless communication, conveying so much, including: Pawtucket.
Of all the Shea Stadium revelry that followed the last out of the World Series, Ojeda will remember one moment above the rest. He sees them now, two Red Sox players making their way through the champagne-soaked chaos of the Mets jubilant clubhouse, through a party at their expense. Boston’s starting battery for Game Seven: Bruce Hurst and Rich Gedman, his Pawtucket brothers, coming to hug him and offer their heartfelt, heartbroken congratulations.
“I won’t ever, ever forget it,” Ojeda will say.

What is your favorite McCoy Stadium memory?

Santa sighting

Earlier this week, just a few short months after passing Pogo Dave on the highways of Rhode Island, I discovered another Rhody original whizzing along the asphalt artery of I-95 – Santa George. Also known as George Martin, owner of a Rhode Island vanity plate that reads “SANTA,” Santa George zoomed by me at a high-octane 80-plus reindeer-miles-per-hour on his way home to his summer North Pole in North Smithfield on his day off from Theatre By The Sea duties in Matunuck, where this month he is playing the Padre in “Man of La Mancha.”

On Independence Day Monday you can see Santa George riding in the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council’s “Polar Express” float at the Bristol Fourth of July Parade. After that he’ll appear in the Pine Acres Resort Christmas in July. Apparently, there’s no off-season for Santa. Look up “Santas for Hire” in Rhode Island and you’ll find Santa Lester and Santa James, both from Warwick, also in the mix for whatever stirs your eggnog. (Just fill out a Santa Request Form.)

In light of last Monday’s posting on the Believe It Tour, it appears that the Folklore component of Rhody Believeitology is alive and well with the likes of Santa George, Love 22 and Pogo Dave roaming around or beyond the state. Santa George has been spreading Christmas cheer for more than 30 years, including the last 11 as a Real Bearded Santa. (He’s listed No. 1322 on the National Beard Registry and is a past member of the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas.)

You can follow Santa George on Twitter or My Space. Or just wait until Christmas.

What is your favorite Rhode Island vanity plate?

[Blogger’s note: Posting early because of Monday’s Fourth of July holiday, when I expect to vanish into a world that is half-hammock, half-cooler.]

'Blood Simple' Meets 'Complex World'

The Believe It Tour came to Rhode Island last Friday to host a vampire-themed blood drive at the R.I. Blood Center and celebrate the season premiere of HBO’s “True Blood.” The company promotes something called “Believeitology” and encourages exploration of the weird, folkloric and supernatural – all in good fun.

There are five fields of study: Cryptozoology (study of “cryptids,” or animal-like creatures such as Bigfoot, Mothman, the Loch Ness Monster and Chupacabra); Paranormal (mostly ghosts and hauntings); Extraterrestrial (aliens and UFOs); Monsters (zombies, vampires, dragons, werewolves, mummies or any creatures bent on destroying humanity); and Folklore (the beliefs, rituals and stories contained within a culture, including such seasonal and holiday customs as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Green Man).

Believe It Tour (or BIT as we’ll call it from now on) is a national organization but it’s hard to imagine a better place for them to detour than Rhody, home to the grandmaster of weird fiction, H.P. Lovecraft, two Roto-Rooter plumbers turned Ghost Hunters and enough legends of vampires, devils and phantom ships to fill a crypt. Rhode Island has its own state folklorist in Michael Bell. Providence cemeteries are sometimes converted into public art galleries. Edgar Allan Poe once spent a few months pining for a lost love on Benefit Street. Back when Rhode Island was a colony, records of visits by ghosts, witches and devils were legion. Zombie walks occur with increasing regularity in the capital city. Somewhere a few years back in Hope Valley, a Rhode Island couple converted an empty strip mall store into an extraterrestrial reporting center.

Here’s a guarantee: Spend a day walking through Providence and you’ll run into a cryptid. Probably more than one. It may not have a fancy name like Clam Man or Swamp Yankee Thing but you can be sure that it will be only vaguely human – although, oddly enough, quite often erudite.

What is your favorite example of Rhode Island folklore?