Clambake primer

To celebrate Independence Day like a Rhode Islander: 1) Find a beach with rocks and sand and seaweed. (Easier said than done, which is why Rhode Island, teeming in native seaweeds and Narragansett Bay-bred shellfish, and the place where rocky beach segueys into sandy beach along the Atlantic coast, is clambake nirvana.) 2) Make sure that lifeguards won't throw you off the beach you've chosen. 3) Dig a hole 3-feet deep and 4 to 6 feet across. 4) Line the hole with round rocks, each a little bigger than a duckpin bowling ball. (They should be igneous, to hold in the heat. If you don't know from igneous, consider yourself a local.) 5) Build a fire in the hole to heat the rocks using driftwood or hardwood. Let it burn for 4 hours. To test if it's hot enough, take some saltwater out of the nearby ocean and sprinkle it on the rocks, which should sizzle on contact. 6) Once the rocks are white-hot, rake out the ashes and any remaining wood. 7) Cover the bottom rocks with 4 to 6 inches of wet seaweed. (Hindsight tip: While the rocks were heating, you should've been out collecting seaweed.) 8) Add layers of the following, more or less in this order: tightly shut clams (previously cleaned), more seaweed, live lobsters, more seaweed, small new potatoes, more seaweed, chourice (a Portuguese hot sausage), more seaweed, unhusked corn, and a final thick layer of seaweed. (Careful if you live in Barrington, where illegal seaweed collection is subject to a litany of fines.) 9) Cover hole with wet tarpaulin or canvas and anchor it to the ground so the steam doesn't escape. 10) Let it steam for an hour or so. (Check under the cover with a stick, found on site. The bake is done when the clams are open, the lobsters are bright red and the potatoes can be skewered easily with a fork.) 11) Serve with melted butter and black pepper. Tabasco optional. 12) Wash down with a Narragansett lager or, if you're a hophead like me and prefer a bit of bite to your beer, a Trinity Brewhouse IPA.

New and classic 'sori'

Ranked 10th and climbing with a musket ball on the Google "size of Rhode Island" charts is a critique of a Rhode Island-sized phone, posted earlier this month by a contributor to a technology weblog. It joins another newcomer, an endangered Rhode Island-sized forest found in Papua New Guinea. Also ranked in the top 10 are two classic references from the past decade - the Rhode Island-sized iceberg wreaking havoc in the shipping lanes of the Antarctic and an ancient Guatemalan jade quarry known for its precious stone and its predictable dimensions.

Brad and Billy's

It looked like the world was coming to an end yesterday at the Rhode Island Country Club in Barrington, where the sky and ocean turned a dozen different shades between blasts of sunshine and whirling dervish clouds whipping through like the Tasmanian Devil. Splintered rays turned the fairways leprechaun green until thunderstorms flooded them to the point where you needed an oar, not a pitching wedge. Lightning came from seemingly everywhere, flung like party favors from Norse Gods on a bender. Black clouds pounded the course with golf ball-sized hail. Then it was done, and the site of the CVS Caremark Charity Classic - known to all Rhode Islanders as "Brad and Billy's tourney" for its founders, childhood friends and PGA pros Brad Faxon and Billy Andrade - shimmered in streaks of blue, green and gold.

Left Coast golfer Paul Goydos, inexperienced with New England weather, looked shaken, saying, "We don't have that in California." (True. You only have earthquakes, mudslides and wildfires the size of Rhode Island.) But the weather was an afterthought for the decade-old event that has brought the likes of Arnold Palmer and Gary Player to the bandbox Donald Ross course in Barrington. The tournament has raised more than $10 million for children's charities in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts.

Andrade, from Bristol, and Faxon, from Barrington, have been around the world, but they've never really left. They're with us, whether walking outside to pick up the morning ProJo, cheering for the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots and Bruins, complaining about the road construction on I-95, or ending a long, hot day on the course with a cold 'Gansett. As global ambassadors for Little Rhody, they have no peer. (Apologies to James Woods, G.I. Joe, the Farrelly brothers and Mr. Potato Head.)

Rant of the Week: Crossing Main

Those bright orange-red "crosswalk flags" haven't worked. Nor have the crosswalks themselves, painted in large white stripes, big enough for a squash court. Signs urging drivers to yield to foot traffic? Who drives slow enough to read them? In the village of Wakefield, don't bother trying to walk across Main Street. Too many cars trying to break the sound barrier. Too many drivers too busy talking on their cell phones to notice what's in front of them. Too many people who don't want to be inconvenienced into obeying the law if it means having to put their foot on the brake and wait five seconds for anyone. Town officials even had to install an extra traffic light where the bike path crosses the road, to save cyclists from getting killed. You'd have better luck as a squirrel chasing a nut from the northbound to the southbound lanes of I-95 than you would making the trip from All That Matters to Brickley's Ice Cream shop. One day last week I stood at the crosswalk near Town Meats and the Wakefield Fish Market and counted how many cars wouldn't let me pass: 17. Finally a guy in a Jeep rolled to a stop. The car coming from the other direction was going to blow through anyway, but its driver made the last-second decision to come to a screeching, rubber-scorching halt a few feet away from me. Jeep Guy rolled down his window and yelled out: "They'd just as soon kill ya." Sit on a bench and watch for a half-hour. You'll see these asphalt cowboys who don't stop for people with canes, in wheelchairs, on crutches. Forget the village stroll. Main Street's gone NASCAR.

Blue plate special

Many Rhode Islanders suffer from obsessive, compulsive license plate disorder. Symptoms include: 1) A belief that status in this state hinges, not on the kind of car you drive, but on having the lowest possible number on the license plate hanging under it. 2) A belief that the world wants to know that you are the RI-BADBOY or RI-HOTCHIK. 3) A belief that your closest relative didn't truly love you if he/she didn't bequeath the rights to their plate number or vanity message.

Our license plate angst is historic. The state's official colors are blue and white, but from 1972 to 1980 Rhody's license plate colors were black and white - because most of the state legislators were Providence College men's basketball fans. But things are better now. From a graphic design standpoint, few states can match the blue wave on the current edition of the Rhody plate. And in recent years, legislators have offered up the state plate to local charities. The R.I. Community Food Bank raised money with a Mr. Potato Head license plate. Save the Bay followed up with an environmentally friendly Osprey plate. Now lawmakers have introduced legislation allowing the state Division of Motor Vehicles to issue a special license plate to benefit Providence WaterFire. An extra $40 surcharge would support the popular bonfire-world music carnival, with half the money going to the state's general fund and the other half to WaterFire organizers.

The mottoes may change (just as "Discover Rhode Island" gave way to "The Ocean State") but the mores never will. How does a state solve a $434 million budget deficit? One license plate at a time.

Goodnight and farewell

There are better things in the world to do on weekends than watch television. But if you found yourself in front of the idiot box on Sunday mornings or Saturday afternoons, Tim Russert and Jim McKay made sure that you weren't wasting your time. In a profession overpopulated with talking heads, white noise, agenda journalism and baa blah blog sheep, both broadcasters, who died within days of one another, brought civility, fairness and just the right touch of poetry or storytelling to their reporting.

Russert was one of the best interviewers in the business, tough and tenacious, but nonpartisan and never malicious. He did what so many journalists don't: held people accountable for their words by digging up past quotes and pointing out contradictions and hypocrisy in their statements. The fact that he was an unabashed blue-collar Buffalo guy made Americans everywhere, including here in perpetually irrelevant Rhode Island, feel that their voices mattered as much as the power elite in Washington.

McKay, wearing that horrid trademark ABC yellow jacket, elevated sports journalism to the level of news, making it a vital part of our daily cultural discussion. As host of ABC's Wide World of Sports, and the network's coverage of the Olympics, he guided Americans through our growing pains with sports not named baseball, football, basketball and hockey. I was a 10-year-old when Munich happened, and was riveted to McKay throughout those Games. His remarkable ability to convey humanity yet maintain dignity and professionalism while describing horrifying acts of terrorism left an indelible impression, and had a calming influence, in the same way that Walter Cronkite's teary reporting of the JFK assassination is recalled by a slightly older generation.

With the passing of Russert and McKay, Americans have lost more than a couple of great journalists and good men. We've lost a reason to tune in on Sunday mornings and Saturday afternoons.

Green Week: Cat people

Reports of big cats roaming the wilds of southwestern Rhode Island are nothing new. During the past decade, folks in rural South County have called the Independent with sightings of mountain lions in their backyards. They're convinced, and they're vocal, but so far they don't have proof in the form of photographs, video or other viable evidence (although one cougar watcher claims to have a skull, scat and pictures of tracks to indicate that panthers prowl in these parts). Arguments against the big cats: They don't show up as roadkill and, strangely, they don't seem to go on cat-like killing sprees, terrorizing domestic animals or wildlife. Conspiracy theorists believe that state environmental management officials know the cats are here in limited numbers. They point to the fact that for years officials were reluctant to admit that black bears were back, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. (All it took to silence the doubters was for one bear to go public a couple of weeks ago, eluding officials from Narragansett to North Kingstown, turning all of Rhode Island into bear paparazzi. But "Fluffy" the bear, like the Warwick manatee from two summers ago, wanted no part of the publicity, and high-tailed it to Connecticut.) We know that mountain lions once hunted here, and they are increasing their range throughout the U.S. With the emphasis on cleaning up the environment over the past few decades, preserving wilderness and preventing toxic chemicals and pesticides from polluting air, water and soil, wildlife has made a comeback, even in the second-most-densely populated state in the union. Rhody is exploding in deer (a.k.a. big cat food) and a state that was once logged to near baldness is now more than two-thirds forested (a.k.a. cougar cover). So maybe it's not a matter of if but when for the first documented case of the Eastern puma returning to Rhode Island. After all, the only thing that matters to all animals except humans is habitat, not borders.