Turkeys gone wild

The turkeys are coming home to roost. News that a wild turkey is stalking the streets of New Bedford, Mass., pecking at cars and terrorizing pedestrians, is just the latest example of bad bird behavior that has swept the nation in recent years. Long a staple of a New England Thanksgiving, the wild turkey was hunted to extinction in Rhode Island, vanishing for more than 200 years until they were reintroduced from Vermont in 1980 and again from New York in 1994 to build up the state's now flourishing population. They seem to be everywhere, an estimated 6,000 in all, divided into roving mobs that torment the suburbs, especially in Jamestown and South County. Last year, a Middletown motorist got out of his car when a wild turkey scratched it, then bid a hasty retreat and filed a police report after the turkey kicked him. In recent years, turkeys across America have chased joggers, attacked postal workers, toppled cyclists from their bikes, dented cars, broken into homes and stores, halted traffic, knocked out power lines and assaulted a lab technician who was riding a Segway. But not all wild turkeys are a menace. At the South County Museum in Narragansett, turkeys come out of the woods every day to pay a social visit to the two Narragansett turkeys on site - Thompson the Tom and Greta the Gobbler. Museum director Jim Crothers said the turkeys get together for a few hours to gobble about this and that - like a turkey version of "The View."

Quahogs R Us

Strangers might think that Rhode Islanders have an unhealthy obsession with quahogs. The bivalve mollusk is the state's official shellfish and favorite appetizer, whether eaten raw on the half shell, tossed into the broth of white, red or clear chowder, buried in the dough of clam cakes, made mince in stuffies or teasing linguini or angel hair pasta. Rhode Island even produces 1/4 of the nation's total commercial harvest catch. But there's more to the quahog than meets the stomach. It turns out that quahogs filter the waters of the Fountain of Youth. They are the longest-living creatures on Earth. They are harbingers of good fortune, whether providing riches in the form of pearls or wampum. And their "happy as a clam" mantra completes the trinity of health, wealth and happiness. (They even score big in Scrabble.) If you're not getting Zen with quahogs, then you're not living "la vida Rhody."

Ranking Rhody

Rhode Island has a long heritage of firsts. We were the first colony to attack England, sink a British ship and renounce allegiance to the British Crown. We were home to the first circus (1774), polo match (1876), national lawn tennis championship (1899) and open golf championship (1895) in America. The first U.S. discount department store (Ann & Hope), Baptist Church and torpedo boat were built here. The state gave birth to the Industrial Revolution and (thanks to Roger Williams) the first practical working model of democracy, including most of the precepts found in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

But what has been true historically falls apart statistically in recent times, when more often than not, worst comes before first in Rhode Island. Over the past few years, Rhody has finished dead last compared to the Other 49 in various rankings, including worst drivers (2006), worst business taxes (2006), worst bridge conditions (2007), worst tort laws (2008) and worst population loss (2007). (Coincidentally, the state earned its worst-driver designation despite the fact that on Aug. 28, 1904, Newport Judge Darius Baker imposed the first jail sentence for speeding in an automobile in the U.S.)

The good news? Rhode Island ranked first in the nation for state investment in wireless technology, which should bear fruit next year, when we lead the U.S. in number of blog rants per capita.

Shark jumping

Has the Providence underground art scene jumped the shark? Last year's media blitz on "The Apartment at Providence Place Mall," in which a group of artists "micro-developed" abandoned, neglected mall storage space into a furnished flat, brought CBS and Fox News to town and generated headlines worldwide. It was the latest salvo in a barrage of underground art strikes bringing attention to the capital. Providence first gained international buzz in the late 1980s when former RISD student Shepard Fairey created stickers that said "Obey" and "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" and stuck them on lampposts and Dumpsters throughout the city. Ten years ago, more people in Helsinki and Stockholm knew about the street art/pulp comic/noise punk scene happening on the West Side of Providence than people living on the East Side. (The Fort Thunder era of the mid-1990s was recorded for Rhode Islanders in the acclaimed RISD exhibition of street posters and giant installations, "Wunderground Providence: 1995 to the Present.")

Now television executives have floated the idea of re-staging the "Apartment at the Mall" project for a reality TV show in Manhattan. And all of those Andre the Giant faces that sprang up on stop signs and bulletin board kiosks can be purchased at Urban Outfitters. (There's even a store on the formerly sticker-plastered Thayer Street in the heart of the Brown University community.) Proving once again the adage that all successful subversion eventually mutates into commodity.

Buddyspotting

Only in Rhode Island could an ex-con become a celebrity invitee at the state's biggest social gala - in our case, the Bristol Fourth of July Parade. It has been a wild year of freedom for former Providence Mayor-turned felon-turned mayor again-turned felon again-turned talk radio host Buddy Cianci. His own release from federal prison last spring came on the heels of an acclaimed documentary on his life, by Cherry Arnold, released a month earlier. His story is the subject of an in-progress film version of ProJo reporter Mike Stanton's "The Prince of Providence." And he was the best interview featured in David Bettencourt's documentary on the rise and demise of Rocky Point Park, "You Must Be This Tall." Now he's going to be a star attraction on the red, white and blue median at this year's Bristol Parade. (Also coming along for the ride: The Red Sox' 2007 World Series trophy.)

The invite shouldn't come as a surprise, since the parade route was lined with homemade signs pleading "FREE BUDDY" every year during his incarceration. As much as Blog on the Half Shell would like to be a Buddy-free Zone, we have a rule to never turn down a good (reasonably clean) story, especially a good Buddy story. Share one if you've got it.

Balance of State

This state has only five counties. They include Bristol, Kent, Newport, Providence and Washington. (South County isn't a county, even though it's called one, but is instead a region of historical and cultural distinction encompassing most of Washington County.) To promote the state, however, officials split the five counties into seven tourism regions, one of which lumps East Greenwich, West Greenwich and Coventry into South County. So the region is marketed to the world as something that doesn't pass the snuff test at Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum for anyone living in South County (or the other three towns, for that matter).

Even stranger, Global Insight, a national economic analysis firm hired in 2006 to assess tourism in Rhode Island, decided that seven tourism regions still weren't quite enough. So they made eight. Now we have Providence, Warwick and the West Bay, East Bay, Block Island, Blackstone Valley, Newport County, South County and an eighth piece that could have only been named by a bureaucrat: "Balance of State." Lucky enough to live in Rhody limbo as the puzzle pieces that don't fit are Cranston, Foster, Johnston, North Providence, Scituate and West Warwick.

Collectively, "Balance of State" seems to be a region known for cold strip pizza, apple orchards, the reservoir that provides water to most of us and strip malls. Coming soon to Green Airport: "I (Heart) Balance of State, Rhode Island" T-shirts?

Cardi Idol

The folks at Java Madness in Wakefield want all Rhode Islanders to know that Narragansett singer-songwriter James Grande, a Java regular, is one of five finalists for a special Cardi Brothers promotion to be featured in a 60-second commercial on the season finale of "American Idol." He's actually one of four South County musicians/groups in the mix. The others are Meline Vergne Skelly of North Kingstown, Melanie Donnelly of North Kingstown, The Ticonderogas of Narragansett (full disclosure: band member Dylan Sevey of South Kingstown writes a monthly music column for the Independent newspapers), and Nick Tetrault of Assonet, Mass. You can hear the musicians and vote by logging on to the Cardi Brothers Web site. Voting ends on May 7.

The competition falls on the heels of "Rhode Island Idol," a statewide crooning contest to be held Saturday at Stone Soup Coffeehouse in Pawtucket. Here at Half Shell, we've never seen "American Idol," but we have strangled our way through some bad Rhode Island and Australian karaoke, so we're supportive of anyone brave enough to get up in front of the world and sing into a microphone.