Floating Rhody

A few weeks ago another Rhode Island-sized iceberg snapped off the Antarctic. This time, we have an iceberg the size of Luxembourg to thank.

The iceberg we like to call Luxemberg slammed into an Antarctic glacier known officially as the Mertz Ice Tongue. The collision caused a Rhody-sized bit of ice tongue to splinter off and float away. If you look at the picture provided by NASA, the Mertz Ice Tongue even looks like an upside-down Rhode Island – minus the East and West Passages of Narragansett Bay.

Anyway, this new Rhodyberg is potentially lethal to sea life. Some scientists believe that it could “disrupt the undersea currents that ferry oxygen throughout the oceans,” with the consequence that vast areas of the high seas may not have enough oxygen to support life.

In a case of life imitating art, comments posted to science blogs have resorted to quoting the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow:”

Jack Hall: Our climate is fragile. The ice caps are disappearing at a dangerous rate.

Vice President Becker: Professor, um, Hall, our economy is every bit as fragile as the environment. Perhaps you should keep that in mind before making sensational claims.

Jack Hall: Well, the last chunk of ice that broke off was about the size of Rhode Island. Some people might call that pretty sensational.

Now that we have killer icebergs the size of Rhode Island roaming the seven seas, it’s only a matter of time before astronomers start charting Rhody-sized killer asteroids to rain on the Earth. But enough of this doom and gloom. Here are 10 reasons why frozen, floating Rhode Islands are good for the world.

10. Quonset huts can be easily modified into igloos.
9. Cans of ‘Gansett never go warm.
8. Hockey moms won’t lose sleep commuting to pre-dawn rink rentals.
7. Rhode Island-sized tongue should win most arguments.
6. Unlimited supply of Del’s.
5. Rhode Islanders won’t have to go anywhere. The iceberg will travel for them.
4. Can convert Thurbers Ave Curve into Thurbers Ave Luge.
3. More elbow room for polar bears at Roger Williams Park Zoo.
2. State might finally start developing some winter Olympians.
1. No longer have to share a boundary with Connecticut.

Have you heard a good “size of Rhode Island” reference lately?

Rhody Universe: Fear the Chicken

News that a Rhode Island Red rooster and his harem henpecked a fox to death is making the rounds in England. The Week magazine reports:

When a fox targeted a hencoop in Essex, the cockerel, Dude, didn’t take the slaughter lying down. Instead, it seems he led his ladies into battle against the predator – and won. Owner Michelle Cordell found the fox lying dead in the coop when she went to collect the eggs last Saturday morning. She reckons the Rhode Island Reds kicked over their table, knocked the fox out, then pecked it to death. “It’s like ‘Revenge of the Chickens,’” she said.

None of this comes as a surprise to Rhode Islanders, who have long extolled the Red’s hardiness and tenacity, but the tendency in these parts is to understate, so there’s no 100-foot chicken statue within the boundaries of Little Rhody to honor what may be the world’s best-known poultry breed. (My father grew up in South Africa raising Rhode Island Reds long before he ever knew a place like Rhode Island existed – or that he would end up living most of his life here.) Instead, just a small stone marker designates the village of Adamsville as the birthplace of the R.I. Red, signifying the spot where a Rhode Island farmer purportedly cross bred a domestic hen with a red Malay rooster in the 19th century.

Officially the state bird of Rhode Island, the R.I. Red used to be Rhody’s representative totem animal until the quahog walloped the chicken in a popularity contest. There is a Rhode Island Reds Heritage Society in Rhode Island but it’s devoted to a beloved although defunct hockey team. Three Rhode Island Red Clubs exist worldwide, one celebrating the local chicken in Devon, England. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Red Club of America, originated in December 1898 “on a cold blizzard of a day in a Coffee Tavern in Fall River, Mass.,” now lists Arizona as its mailing address. There is also a separate Scottish R.I. Red Club, presumably because the Scots prefer not to share anything with the English if they can help it.

The bird’s legacy lives on in its global popularity as a dual-purpose chicken (high marks for meat and eggs). Known for producing between 200 and 300 eggs during a 12-month laying period, R.I. Reds can begin laying eggs as early as 6 months. Despite their attributes, the Red is in danger of vanishing as a heritage breed, which is one of the reasons that the South County Museum in Narragansett maintains a heritage flock. They lay about 35 eggs a day, donated to local organizations. And around every Fourth of July, the museum hosts the feathery fireworks of 100 or so baby chicks popping out of their brown shells.

The friendly fowl were also accomplices in an anonymous prank a couple of years back in Pennsylvania, when a Philadelphia school was closed after 85 Rhode Island Reds were discovered milling about its corridors.

What is the strangest animal behavior or encounter you’ve experienced in Rhode Island?

Rhody Beast

Tina Brown’s latest media venture Daily Beast is all about buzz. Her Web site and its bloggers delve into politics, art, media, celebrity, fashion, style, food, glamour and the like in sections called “Sexy Beast,” “Book Beast,” “Art Beast,” “Hungry Beast” and “Giving Beast.” Rhode Island has certainly received its fair share of press at the site, but here at Half Shell we think we’re worthy of our own Beast.

The legacy of Little Rhody as a haven for rumrunners, rabble-rousers and revolutionaries, pirates and politicos, mobsters and lobsters, treasure-hunters and seedy characters out of bad noir novels is well earned. But that’s yesterday’s pewter. Rhody Beast will bring you what’s currently occupying the Ocean State of mind.

In politics: Rocky Point may be dead and gone, but Rep. Patrick Kennedy has been spinning his own personal Tilt-a-Whirl with the press in Rhode Island over the past few months. First, there was his very public feud with Bishop Tobin, which generated months of letters to the editor at the ProJo and enough hot air on local talk radio to fill the skies at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival for the next decade. Then, there was his surprise resignation. Then, his wild-eyed, gut-wrenching rant in front of an empty House chamber about the press being more interested in Daily Beast-type gossipy news than covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the oxymoron that we like to call celebrity news: As I type these words, Dana Delany (of “China Beach,” “Tombstone” and “Desperate Housewives” fame) is dodging the puddles and potholes of a Rhode Island March with Jeri Ryan (of “Star Trek: Voyager,” “Boston Public” and “Leverage” notoriety) in a new shot-in-Providence ABC pilot, “Body of Evidence.” This being March, most Rhode Islanders would prefer to see the first branch of yellowing forsythia or the osprey return to their nests than a Hollywood star taking up what little parking remains on Providence streets. That’s not to say that we don’t have our own glitterati in Little Rhody (rhodyrati?). We’re happy to run into Tim Daly at Benny’s or Richard Jenkins at Whole Foods. It’s just that we no longer trust the legions from Tinseltown ever since we got Shatnered last fall. Oh, and Oscar winner Nicolas Cage still owes $128,000 in unpaid taxes on a Middletown mansion he bought a couple of years ago. Maybe in the next “National Treasure” movie his character can look for a bobble or two to pay off his Rhody debt.

In culture: The Daily Beast makes a daily habit of reporting on Sarah Palin, and now, thanks to the set-in-Rhode-Island cartoon sitcom “Family Guy,” Rhody Beast can jump on the Palin bandwagon. Created by Rhode Island School of Design grad Seth MacFarlane, “Family Guy” has become the gold standard of bad taste in American culture. But it’s filled with Rhody references and language that every Rhode Islander hears everyday. The classic episode when Brian goes on a campaign to legalize marijuana presciently satirized the state’s own efforts, which have made national headlines. (The power of “Family Guy” on the 40-and-younger generation in Rhode Island cannot be overstated. At a wedding I attended last year in Bristol, one guest described the perfect Rhode Island night as getting “drunk, stoned and a four-hour block of ‘Family Guy.’”)

In true crime: OK, so our mobsters’ heyday may be waning. In the past few months, we’ve had a front-page story in the ProJo on a 300-pound bronze statue of peace that was stolen from a sculpture garden at Tiverton Four Corners. (It was later discovered that two Fall River, Mass. men had cleaved it in twain and planned to sell it for scrap metal.) There was also the case of the 92-year-old woman who made a quilt for a library fund-raiser, only to have it stolen off the wall. Two young women wearing baseball caps and sunglasses robbed a bank in Barrington, only the glasses were wrapped around their caps and their faces were captured on camera, prompting a local TV reporter to say: “It’s common for bank robbers to wear sunglasses, but usually not as a fashion accessory.” And, just a couple of weeks ago, a bicyclist robbed a bank in Wakefield, but he was caught with the money and the note he wrote while pedaling away. The days when Providence was home to the New England mob, with guys named “Bobo” and “Buckles” roaming the streets with baseball bats, are long gone. But the stories never get old. (One legend: Supposedly the reason why there’s a grassy area next to the beach at Scarborough in Narragansett is that it was once a popular gangster’s hangout and the mobster’s wives didn’t want to have to deal with the sand.)

Do you have a news nugget to feed to Rhody Beast?

Name Dropping

Narragansett Councilman Christopher Wilkens recently inquired for the record whether naming rights could be sought for a new North Pavilion planned for the town beach. Expect more of the same as towns get desperate for cash after discovering that there aren’t any more pennies left in the taxpayer’s piggy banks. So why not sell off the sidewalks, the parking lots and the manhole covers to the highest bidder? By the next decade we’ll all be walking advertisements. (Some advice from my financial guru: The thighbone may be connected to the hipbone, but you’ll make more from the naming rights if you sell them separately.)

The council tabled the suggestion for another time, but the Pier’s willingness to consider going all NASCAR on us is a sign of the times. Maybe the town can entice the Narragansett Brewing Co. to sponsor the new pavilion. Not a bad idea if they’re willing to install taps. The Pier Imports Pavilion also has a certain ring, although my memories of that store are strangely dominated by a profusion of wicker.

Colleague Liz Boardman freelances as a naming rights columnist for Venues Today magazine. She passed along a couple of items recently:

Item 1: In January, the Irving City Council in Texas designated Kraft Macaroni & Cheese as the official sponsor for the demolition of Texas Stadium. Kraft foods got the naming rights for the implosion while the city received $75,000 in cold cash along with another $75,000 worth of Kraft products to be donated to local charities. That’s $150,000 in value for slapping the Kraft name onto the act of blowing up a football field. (Colleague Laura Kelly points out that the logo on the box of Kraft’s mac ’n’ cheese reads “The Cheesiest,” which seems a suitable epitaph for the whole idea of naming rights.)

Which begs the question, where was this kind of thinking in Rhode Island when we detonated the old Jamestown Bridge? Surely the Jiffy Pop Popcorn Pop-in-a-Pan/Jamestown Bridge Photo-Op-Drop Pop-in-a-Span could have netted a few Benjamins for the state’s barren coffers.

Item 2: Also in January, Comfort Dental, America’s largest dental franchise, won the rights for the next three years to change the name of the Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Denver to the Comfort Dental Amphitheatre. (Aside from Liz: “When do you suppose they’ll put on ‘Little Shop of Horrors?’”)

Of course, there is something unseemly about equating urban demolition with over-microwaving processed comfort food. And while Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre conjures up images of Irish musicians and Greek choruses, the best that can be said for Comfort Dental is that it promises a brighter, whiter stage and entertainment that is minty-fresh and cavity-free.

Closer to home, Great Woods lost some of its Thoreauvian New England soul once it became Tweeter (and now Comcast) Center. The Dunkin’ Donuts Center sounds more like a halfway house for people addicted to munchkins and crullers than a venue for concerts, minor league hockey and college basketball.

Still, if businesses are willing to shell out the dough and reduce the burden on taxpayers, why not put up all the state’s properties, holidays and administrative functions up for naming auction? Companies wouldn’t even have to change slogans.

Obey your thirst. (Formerly the Scituate Reservoir. Now the Sprite Reservoir.)
You’re in good hands. (Formerly the R.I. State House. Now the Allstate Insurance State House.)
So easy a caveman can do it.(The Governor’s State of the State address, now sponsored by GEICO.)

What Rhode Island institution should be re-branded if the price is right?

Last Call

The past is never very far away in Providence, even in the eclectic jumble of buildings that make up what locals call Downcity, an area south of a former saltwater cove and west of the confluence of the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket rivers. Here, the air is thick with ghosts and damp with the sweat of laborers who made this a place of grandeur in the 18th and 19th centuries. At night, a lingering scent of tidal backwash and greasy food being served at a parked silver trolley known as Haven Brothers – considered the first American diner – is carried on breezes that gather in strength and curl around city blocks and foot bridges, cutting sharply to the spine.

This part of Providence offers a mix of charm and grit, streets of broken cobblestones and windows displaying FOR LEASE signs and a tight-knit culture of restaurants, pubs and artists making bold and innovative music, theater and visual art. In some ways the fact that Providence has endured so many cycles of neglect has been its salvation – and its inspiration.

Among the many successful projects to find a home in Providence recently is the latest initiative from The Museum On Site folks, whose Westminster Stories will remain up through Friday in the empty storefront at 191 Washington St. As one of the Providence Art Windows during this winter round, the exhibition is the centerpiece of a project that has collected “facts, memories and stories about two blocks of a single street in downtown Providence.” Andrew Losowsky and Lyra Monteiro of The Museum On Site are dedicated to “helping people understand their worlds through site-specific, free public experiences that share ideas and information in accessible and stimulating ways.” The group’s window and website are wonderful ways to make history off-the-wall and relevant to people today. The stories create a loose and engaging timeline of Providence’s former vitality, while reminding us even amid the vacuum and vacuity of so much modern development that there is still depth, heart and resonance in the places and spaces around us.

The Museum On Site first gained attention at another public art event in Providence, when it spotlighted Rhode Island’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade during a WaterFire display in the fall of 2008. Titled “A Thousand Ships,” the observance featured torchbearers who read aloud the names of slaves sold on ships that departed from Rhode Island, along with the burning of ceremonial paper chains. In a grand, symbolic gesture, a thousand WaterFire attendants simultaneously poured water from bottles into the river. The mass libation represented the estimated 1,000 slave ships that traveled from Rhode Island to Africa.

The group’s mission statement emphasizes projects that stimulate viewers in non-conventional ways and engage people directly, emotionally and intellectually through the forums of theater, museums, scholarship, art, advertising, public ritual and interactive media. Like many of Providence’s artists and arts organizations, The Museum On Site obsessively documents its work, providing an archival record that is helpful to historians, preservationists and storytellers, while actively encouraging further discussion and exploration.

So check out the window this week if you can. Another round of artists will be installed for the next iteration of Providence Art Windows the day after St. Patrick’s Day.

This week’s question: If you had an empty window to design, what part of Rhode Island would you like to put into it?

Rocky Redux

If there is a Rhode Island wing in Heaven, it will include room for Rocky Point. The Warwick Neck location that generations of Rhode Islanders enjoyed in various guises for more than 150 years is best remembered as an amusement park, and its nostalgic hold on the local population can’t be surpassed, not even by the Blizzard of ’78. Rhode Islanders have paid tribute to the park in a myriad of ways, from film documentaries to comic books to incorporating its old lights and signage into a theatrical production of “The Fantasticks,” as Trinity Rep did a while back.

The midway is gone, and along with it the Musik Express, the Palladium and the World’s Largest Shore Dinner Hall. The Cyclone went to Prince Edward Island. The Corkscrew settled in Washington State. And the beloved Flume, the famed log roll that carried you leisurely out of the park's confines and offered stunning views of Narragansett Bay before its thrilling splash down, is now a revamped ride in the Philippines.

But even though the rides and chowders, rock concerts and carnie games are a distant memory, a group of Rhode Islanders wants to save the spot and make it a place once again where all residents of the Ocean State can gather. The Rocky Point Foundation is composed of a group of citizen volunteers with a mission to “preserve and protect the natural and historic heritage and environment of the land formerly occupied by the Rocky Point Amusement Park on the west shore of Narragansett Bay.”

In the words of the foundation:

Rocky Point Amusement Park on Warwick Neck evokes warm memories for many Rhode Islanders. For 150 years, Rhode Islanders traveled by ferry, horse-drawn carriage, trolley and automobile to experience one of New England’s preeminent recreational attractions. Rocky Point is the location from which the first telephone call was made by a President of the United States, and Babe Ruth hit a home run from the Rocky Point ball field into Narragansett Bay [blogger’s note: although he only got credit for a ground-rule triple, since the bay was considered out of play].

Established last year, the foundation is working to make sure that Rocky Point remains a place of public access in the form of a park with hiking trails and picnic sites. Ever since the amusement park closed in 1995, Rocky Point and its scenic shoreline has been off-limits to visitors – except for two days, one in 1998 and another last year, when Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian opened the property for public driving and walking. Thousands of Rhode Islanders took the mayor up on his offer.

David Bettencourt’s entertaining documentary “You Must Be This Tall” captures the Rocky Point vibe nicely, and conveys the near-universal love Rhode Islanders had for the place. (Some of his most interesting stories didn’t even make the film. Bettencourt told me that on the sweltering August day in 1892 when Lizzie Borden may have murdered her father and stepmother with a hatchet, the entire Fall River Police Department was enjoying its annual outing at Rocky Point. He said that a number of Lizzie Borden historians – and you’d be surprised at how many people out there walking around among us consider themselves Lizzie Borden historians – are convinced that she knew the police were out of town that day.)

I remember loving the view from the Ferris wheel. Seeing Boston in concert. Watching out for Electric Boy in the saltwater pool. Hearing too much Donna Summer and “Fly Like an Eagle.” Getting thrown off the Dodge ‘Em cars for not dodging ‘em enough. Always tasting that distinctive Rocky Point grease from one too many clam cakes the next day.

What’s your favorite Rocky Point memory?

Take Two

Apparently ABC likes the look of Rhode Island. A year after filming scenes incorporated into episodes of the abysmal and quickly canceled “Eastwick,” the network is returning next month to try again. This time ABC TV will start filming a pilot for a new procedural drama called “Body of Evidence.” If the show sounds familiar (you may have just felt a cold shudder of dread), that’s because Madonna made a cheesy-bad* movie by the same name, a 1993 thriller also starring Willem Dafoe notable for its ridiculous plot, awful acting and determination to show as much of Madonna as possible and still pull an R rating.

According to the press release, this “Body of Evidence” centers on “a brilliant and tenacious female medical examiner, Megan Hunt. Her background as a neurosurgeon gives her a unique and refreshing crime-solving perspective, one that often puts her at odds with just about everyone who crosses her path.” A trade publication called it “a female postmortem ‘House.’”

So the dead bodies keep piling up on television. Viewers can’t get enough of them. Pretty soon we’ll be tuning into “Cadaver Idol,” “Dancing with the Stiffs” and “Survivor (Not).” Luckily for the producers, March in Rhode Island can look like a morgue, so the setting might match the body count.

The folks at the R.I. Film & TV Office are happy with the news, especially on the heels of Governor Carcieri’s proposal to eliminate the state’s motion picture tax credit in the next budget. While it’s difficult to assess precisely whether all that lost income tax has been worth luring the likes of Wesley Snipes and Richard Gere to Little Rhody, it’s clear that other states, including our northeast neighbor, are pulling out all the stops to bring Hollywood east. Last spring Rhode Island lawmakers were campaigning to build a movie empire in Hopkinton. Now it’s move over RHODYWOOD, make way for MASSAWOOD. Ah, well. That’s show biz.

What would be a good name for a forensics-based show set in Rhode Island?

*As opposed to cheesy-good, like the old “Batman” TV show or most wine-tasting parties.