Rhody Universe: Beijing

North Kingstown swimmer Elizabeth Beisel did her best to promote her native state during interviews, peppering quotes about her Olympic experience with a liberal seasoning of “awesome.” In a Projo Sports Blog interview, she says: “Coming from Rhode Island, which is definitely not known as a swimming state, and to represent them [Rhode Islanders] in Beijing is awesome. Just to be from Rhode Island is awesome…” Well, yes it is, although it’s strange that an Ocean State would not be a swimming state. Earliest forms of the word “awesome,” described by some linguists as the official adjective of Rhode Island, go back to the 1500s, when it meant “inspiring awe” and “dreadful.” The Oxford English Dictionary traces its etymological transformation as the slang expression equivalent to a Michael Phelps swim or Usain Bolt sprint to a phenomenon that occurred in the 1980s. Far be it for the sun-deprived scribes at lowly Blog on the Half Shell to question the OED, but some of us were tossing “awesomes” around in the playgrounds, classrooms and school buses of Barrington throughout the 1970s, well before the decade of synthesizers and mullets. And you know that if Beisel had somehow managed to medal in Beijing, we would have heard her describe the Games as "wicked awesome," otherwise known as the official highest praise of Rhode Island.

Baywatch (The Lost Episode)

Spent the weekend kayaking that part of the bay that lies beyond my backyard. There were the requisite moments of poetry: osprey circling the masts of sailboats; breeze-blown monarch butterflies cascading over the waves; a kingfisher diving off the roof of a waterfront shack; thrashing bluefish, minnows and bait fish leaping out of the water; cormorants posing like “Playbird” models on slick, black sea boulders and herring gulls competing with laughing gulls in a cacophony of gull karaoke. But the mornings weren’t entirely peaceful or pleasant. Green slime oozed on Annawamscutt Beach. Noxious algae mats, ranging in size from shoebox to Four Square court, meandered as floating dead zones along the shore. The coast near Nayatt Point burbled in stringy, goopy streaks of brown and green, the color of septic tea. And in the channel between Bullock’s Point in Riverside and Lavins and Cove Haven marinas in West Barrington, a fish kill: Dozens of dead menhaden, bloated and belly-up, stinking to high heaven, staring vacantly into the void. A combination of natural conditions and manmade factors (cesspools and wastewater) cause these kills and the toxic bloom that turns Narragansett Bay green at the gills. It appears that saving the bay won’t be as easy as Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff made it look.

Mondo potato

Pawtucket native Mr. Potato Head spent the primary campaign season flexing his political (and detachable) muscle. An Iowa man who began traveling with a Mr. Potato Head four years ago, came up with a novel way to elect a president. He based his vote on how the candidates reacted to having their picture taken with the plastic spud. The popularity of the Hasbro toy went a notch higher last month when a London newspaper gave Mr. Potato Head a new honor: its own syndrome. In a review of “The Half-Known Life,” a book by Simonetta Wenkert, Independent on Sunday writer Charlie Lee-Potter describes “Mr. Potato Head Syndrome” in the context of characters that have “an assortment of attributes that don’t quite add up to convincing wholes.”

Blogger's block

After a week off, you’d think I’d feel refreshed and ready to blog. But it’s just the opposite. For a few languid summer days in New England and New York I unplugged from the world. No computer. No cell phone. No media beyond tuning into the radio to check the Red Sox score. What I missed in Rhode Island: 1) The tornado that began as a funnel cloud at Barrington Beach. 2) The half-man, half-pickle stopped for DWI in Providence, who registered a .491 blood-alcohol level. 3) The husband and wife who were murdered and buried in the family cesspool in Warren. What I discovered in the meantime: 1) There are more free public tennis courts in Providence than in Manhattan. 2) Kayaking in the upper part of Narragansett Bay, you paddle through pockets of mysterious foamy goop in August and can feel the rumble of planes taking off from T.F. Green Airport from your seat in the water. 3) Impromptu lemonade stands competing with Del’s trucks along the East Bay Bike Path offer cups of liquid refreshment of varying quality that range in price from 50 cents to $1. Like any addiction, the media can be a tough habit to break. No papers. No deadlines. No columns, blogs or reviews. But still. Sitting around the fire during those starry New Hampshire nights a week ago, I always had the nagging feeling that I should be sending smoke signals somewhere.

Rhody Universe: Luxembourg

Following up on yesterday’s comment on Luxembourg (a.k.a. “the European Rhode Island”), I thought I’d take a look our prospects for establishing some kind of cross-cultural, international exchange. The country the size of Rhode Island is land-locked, which doesn’t bode well. But it does share the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation’s affinity for long names. Officially, it’s the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Unlike Rhody, however, you won’t hear folks in the grand duchy calling their homeland Lux or Luxy. Their motto is “Mir welle bleiwe wat mir sinn,” which is Luxembourgish (yes, it’s an official language, much like Rhode Islandese), for “We want to remain what we are.” Not as eloquent, perhaps, as “Hope,” but most of us feel the same way here in Rhode Island. Luxembourg, like Rhode Island, is a secular state but is predominantly Roman Catholic. It’s divided into three districts instead of five counties, 12 cantons instead of 39 towns, and 116 communes instead of a nebulous number of villages. Luxembourg has the highest gross national product per capita in the world. Rhode Island, thanks to the likes of the Farrelly Brothers and “Family Guy,” has the highest output of grossness per capita in the world. The 2008 Guinness Book of World Records indicates that Luxembourg consumes more alcohol than any country in the world. Anyone out there know what the Luxembourgish is for “packie”?

(Blogger’s note: Blog on the Half Shell is unplugging for a few days. Back next week.)

One size fits all

While discussing trivial matters of globe and state during a Bastille Day party in Providence over the weekend, friend and Blog on the Half Shell reader David Steinbrick casually mentioned that my efforts to reduce the phrase “size of Rhode Island” to the acronym “sori” were misguided. It turns out that “sori” is already an acronym – for Special Olympics Rhode Island, which Dave has been involved with for several years. In desperation, I turned to the online dictionary of units of measurement, hoping to find inspiration among the “tithings” (old English land areas) and “Pfiffs” (small units of beer) within. There, among the dropped Rs, stuck smack-dab between “rhm” (a unit used in physics to measure the strength of gamma rays) and “ri” (a traditional Japanese unit of distance, similar in length to the European “league”), I found the following:

Rhode Island – the smallest state of the U.S., Rhode Island has long served as an informal unit of area in statements such as “an iceberg 1.5 times the size of Rhode Island has broken off from Antarctica.” Rhode Island has a land area of about 1045 square miles or 2706 square kilometers. Europeans might note that Luxembourg (2586 square kilometers) provides a comparable unit.

So it’s official. The “Rhode Island” is a unit of measurement. Coming soon: Size of Rhode Island tape measures at an Ocean State Job Lot near you.

Escape to (or from) RI

If you notice even more cars with New York license plates than usual tearing up the asphalt in South County this weekend, you can thank today's New York Times. The "Escapes" section of the paper includes a backcountry southern New England road trip under the headline, "134 Miles of Yankee Charm." Mile 105 stops at Kenyon's Grist Mill in Usequepaugh, but makes no mention of johnnycakes. ("Pick up a bag of fresh cornmeal - the muffins or pancakes you make with it later will be a revelation.") Mile 110 stops in Kingston, accompanied with a note on the Allison B. Goodsell Rare Books shop. What Times readers miss about the local roads this weekend: Hot air balloons filling the skies at the South County Balloon Festival, actors going the "Full Monty" in West Kingston and roots rock reggae playing en route at the Ocean State Reggae Festival at Ninigret Park in Charlestown. With gas above $4 a gallon, drivers might like to know that they have a few more options than picking up a bag of cornmeal and a $4000 copy of Capt. James Cook's memoir about his voyages on the H.M.S. Resolution.