Moose on the Run

One of the more fascinating aspects of Rhode Island politics every four years is the race for the lieutenant governor’s office, mainly because perennial independent candidate Robert J. Healey Jr. of the Cool Moose Party has run on the platform of abolishing the job. His contention that $99,000 in salary (along with associated fees of staffing, workspace, supplies and other expenditures placing the total budget at just under $1 million) is too much for Rhode Islanders to stomach for a position whose official duty is to replace the governor if he or she dies or becomes incapacitated, has struck a chord with many residents, especially during an election cycle in which voters seem inclined to shake up the status quo, whatever the consequences.

Healey, a Barrington resident, spent the last few years owning and managing The Cheese Plate in Warren, a delightfully offbeat, European-style dining spot that he recently sold. He has run twice previously, garnering surprising support and increasing name recognition, and in today’s political climate, some pundits believe that this election may represent his best chance to win.

His campaign posters – all of them parodying aspects of culture – add a certain charm to a political season dominated by dull signs and attack ads. One conjures John Lennon with Healey wearing a New York City T-shirt under the words: “Imagine No Lieutenant Governor…It’s Easy If You Try.” In another, he’s The Lone Ranger under the words “The Lone Candidate Rides Again.” A third shows him as what appears to be Napoleon (“Glory is Fleeting But Obscurity is Forever”). My favorite shows side-by-side Healeys spoofing Grant Wood’s iconic painting “American Gothic.”

Even if Healey wins, a constitutional amendment would be required to abolish the lieutenant governor’s office. Healey pledges that, if elected, he would serve but would collect no salary and hire no staff, thereby saving taxpayers $1 million for each year of his term, totaling $4 million for the term’s duration. His opponents, incumbent Democrat Elizabeth H. Roberts and independent Robert P. Venturini (of local cable’s “An Hour with Bob” and “Bob’s Big Adventures” fame), both believe in the merits of the office. In a bizarre and slightly sleazy side note, Heidi Rogers, the winner of the Republican primary (who also wants to eliminate the office) withdrew from the race just days after her victory, leaving Republicans with nobody on the ballot. (Rogers urged Republicans to support Healey.)

Cool Moose has been around a lot longer than the various Mad Hatters comprising America’s Tea Parties, but these days the old expression that “politics makes strange bedfellows” should perhaps be amended with an assist from Shakespeare. In politics today, “All the world’s a mattress,” and a lumpy one at that.

Given that Rhode Island’s lieutenant governor could go the way of the bowyer (maker of bows, arrows, crossbows and bolts) and pardoner (seller of indulgences) during an age that desperately cries out for job creation, Half Shell wants to know: Are there any archaic jobs worth bringing back in the new millennium? Court jester? Town crier? Vestal virgin?

Rhody Five-0

The hand-chalked menu board on the Block Island ferry includes “Advil” and “Dramamine” among the more traditional fare of hot dogs, bagels and potato chips, but there were few takers during the gentle swells of yesterday’s ride, with most passengers favoring the medicinal benefits of Bloody Marys and Narragansetts over their pharmaceutical counterparts. A beautiful late-summer day drew scattered crowds to the docks of Galilee – a motley mix of drinkers, surfers and families – all of us taking an escape day to the island 13 miles from Point Judith.

On the Block, breakers slammed against the jetties, sending giant plumes of sea spray in all directions, forcing the cast-and-reel fishermen closer to shore. Wave-skimmers, paddle boarders, boogie boarders and surfers challenged the unpredictable breaks, occasionally getting dumped into the violent white froth like bits of cork flying off from champagne spilled at a boat christening. One skimmer, staggering to get up after being sucker-punched by a wave, looked out on the horizon to see his board floating away. He gave it up for lost, but a huge ‘comber rolled in, gathered it up like a toothpick, and sent it careening onto the beach. The message was clear: The sea wasn’t done with him yet.

The day’s overall calm was in stark contrast to the surf, which was wild and rough. But Rhode Islanders learned long ago that if you want to know the weather, forget the forecasts. Ask a surfer. The men and women who live for waves are more passionate about meteorology than the average weatherman. And, maybe because they live so closely in tune with nature, something instinctual kicks in, giving them an edge over the broadcasters with their blue screens and Doppler radar.

So it was timely to receive Don Gentile’s “A Meteorological Guide to Predicting Surf on the Rhode Island Coast” (published by Rosedog Books of Pittsburgh) in the mail today. A lifelong Misquamicut resident and self-described “avid waterman and amateur meteorologist,” Gentile has produced yet another one of those Very Rhode Island books that deserves a place on the shelf for readers who enjoy the quirky culture of the Ocean State. A mix of weather data, local color and folksy memoir, the book is a meditation on the “science of swell prediction” and is filled with observations that could only come from a surfer. Consider what went through his mind during the ravages of Hurricane Gloria in 1985:

Is the worst really going to happen? Is a hurricane bigger than the 1938 hurricane about to devastate the Misquamicut Beach? Will my house survive? Will the swell be rideable after work?

One of the most helpful sections is a description of 14 of mainland Rhode Island’s legendary surfing spots (12 of which are located in the waters off South County). They include such colorful locales as “Dicky’s,” named after a hot dog stand in the parking lot of the long-gone Wreck Bar in Misquamicut; “Fenway” and “Point Panic” in Weekapaug; “Deep Hole” in Matunuck; “K-39,” “Monahans” and “Little Rincon” in Narragansett; and “Ruggles” off Ruggles Avenue in Newport.

With Hawaii Five-0’s scheduled reboot tonight, we thought it might be a good time to remind the world the Ocean State has some world-class breaks of its own (especially during the hurricane season of, well, now, and continuing into the coldest months of the year, when nor’easters blast away at our beaches). Rhody may not have the Kahuna culture of Hawaii, but we do have our own surfing Peter Pan. Also, Salve Regina in Newport and the University of Rhode Island (with campuses in Kingston and Narragansett) both rank among America’s top surfing colleges. (Take that, Harvard dudes.)

Leaving us with only one question: What classic TV series would you like to see remade?

Buzz Kill

Today’s Daily Beast asks the question: “When’s the last time something exciting happened in Delaware?” The Web site is referencing the state’s bruising but politically intriguing Senate primary contest pitting a couple of red-leaning Blue Hens – one a moderate, the other a staunch conservative. But, here at Half Shell, we’re more interested in the wider ramifications of the question.

Delaware residents once proposed giving away some of their land so that Little Del could reap the cultural attention that Little Rhody gets for being the smallest state in the USA – media props that include, but are not limited to, being an official standard of measurement for anything in the neighborhood of 1000 to 1,500 square miles, serving as a common punch line at the end of any joke about size and earning undue influence as a popular point of reference on The Weather Channel.

Anyway, enough about Delaware. The real reason for this post is to rephrase the Daily Beast’s question: “When’s the last time something exciting happened in Rhode Island?”

Some folks may point to the floods of last March. (Conveniently, Independent Newspapers has just published “Raging Waters,” the story of “The South County Flood of 2010” in words and pictures, available in Wakefield at our 10 High St. offices, Healy News and Damon’s Hardware.) Those old enough, however, can always play the natural disaster trump cards, including “The Blizzard of ’78” (Feb. 6, 1978) or “The Hurricane of ’38” (Sept. 21, 1938).

Rhode Island, not being much of a “buzz”-generating state, gets excited about things that draw yawns elsewhere. Sailing, for instance. Folks not only sail here, they watch other sailors sail from their vantage points on boats and docks and piers and island perches – especially island perches that serve frozen drinks. So maybe the last exciting thing that ever happened here occurred on Sept. 26, 1983, when the Australians won the America’s Cup, yanking the 12-meter yachting trophy out of Newport for the first time, well, ever. And if the Cup races ever were to return to this corner of the Atlantic, we might just have to declare a month-long state holiday, which we’d probably call, given the current vernacular, “Rhodypalooza.”

The other thing that generates excitement in Rhode Island is scandal. We’re not talking about the daily sort of scandal that fills our airwaves and papers and diners and “bubbla” talk on a pretty much every-second basis. We’re talking epic scandal. The kind that Greeks named Homer wrote poems about. So Paris kidnapped Helen from a Greek king and started the Trojan War. Big deal. In the 1990s, we had a guy, a fugitive banker named Joe “Puppy Dog” Mollicone, who single-handedly managed to collapse the state’s entire financial system. Suddenly our credit cards weren’t worth the plastic they were made out of, and Rhode Island money was deemed no good anywhere in the world. (Not for the first time. Something similar happened in Rhode Island during our Revolutionary youth, when we were still deciding whether we wanted to go along with this America thing. An excess of paper money was printed, which farmers took at face value but merchants declined to match. At one point, the legislature passed a law commanding everyone to consider paper the equivalent of gold. The merchants responded by shutting their shops. In the summer of 1876 in the once-thriving cities of Providence and Newport, no business whatsoever was conducted, except in the pubs. At Half Shell we like to think of that as the first “Rhodypalooza.”)

The thing of it is, Mollicone, after a stint in prison, still lives here and still owes us cash. He’s not as visible as he once was, but you can probably friend him on Facebook.

Other days when exciting things happened in Rhode Island:

Sometime in June, 1936: Roger Williams dropped anchor. Started his own colony.
July 19, 1769: British sloop Liberty destroyed at Newport, representing the first overt act of violence against British authority in America.
June 9, 1772: British schooner Gaspee burned in Narragansett Bay, an act of defiance commemorated annually at a Warwick festival.
July 25, 1965: Dylan goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival.

That’s about it.

Waiting for Earl

The first drops have not yet fallen from the hurricane that lurks off the Atlantic coast, but Earl should arrive sometime later this morning, nearly a week after the first forecasts predicted the track could sweep through New England. Just yesterday Earl was a Category 4 monster, ranked as one of the worst hurricanes to visit the neighborhood in 20 years, threatening to grow in power. Today it looks like it might just degrade into a gray, gusty, rainy day. The kind of day, in other words, that New England used to take for granted in between blasts of summer sunshine.

The Hurricane of ’38, that iconic storm that all young Rhode Islanders learned about at our bedsides and kitchen tables, the tempest that has become a kind of New England version of “Beowulf,” substituting weather for dragons, pummeled a state that was unaware and unprepared. But now we have six days of Doppler Radar showing the giant green blob creeping up the East Coast like a sick sea turtle turning in circles. We have The Weather Channel broadcasting endlessly from every beach on the Eastern Seaboard. We have Weather Underground and various Storm-Trackers and the slow crawl under “The Office” or the Red Sox game, announcing school closings and beach closings and tropical storm warning updates.

Earl has been a kind of shadow companion throughout the work week, poking us in the ribs as we went about our daily business of meeting deadlines, fulfilling social obligations and commuting between places. He was everywhere, part of every conversation, whether you tuned into radio, television or Internet, whether you visited the grocery store or the pizza joint, or whether you were just kibitzing with friends or co-workers. The old stories, photographs and video of hurricanes of yore were dragged out by the media, a succession of ’38, Carol, Gloria and Bob. Pub TVs usually tuned to ESPN had switched to Earl, 24-7. Communities announced voluntary evacuations – begging the question, what exactly is a voluntary evacuation? Technically, couldn’t I voluntarily evacuate anytime I’d like, or do I now need permission from a town official? Did I miss a memo?

A local politician even took Earl seriously enough to send an e-mail to newsrooms yesterday afternoon with a four-line bold headline that read:

With Unpredictability of Hurricane Earl, Independent
Candidate for State Senate Kevin O’Neill Asks His
Supporters and Constituents in South Kingstown and
Block Island to remove his lawn signs today.

The candidate was worried about damage to people and property presumably caused by political signs with his name on it uprooting and swirling around in 140 mile per hour winds like the thunderbolts of Zeus. And it’s true, a rash of voters impaled by political signs might have some effect on the polls.

But such is the way of weather these days. Long before they strike, hurricanes are bloated with the precipitation of hype and hot air. Better, as always, to pay attention to nature. All week the bees have been in a chaotic frenzy, swarming and stinging. The tree frogs have been noisier than normal at dusk. The cicadas have ratcheted up their heat songs during the week of 90-plus-degree weather that preceded Earl’s arrival. All of them telling us, in their own way, not to forget the raincoat on our way out the door today.

What is your favorite storm story?

[Blogger's note: Early blog today because of Monday's Labor Day holiday, when any remnants of Earl will be confined to the dryer. Back on Sept. 13.]

James Woods Has a Posse

The parking lot attendant at the New Bedford ferry to Martha’s Vineyard is a James Woods fan – and not just because the former Rhode Islander made his bones in Hollywood and still manages to get home every now and then. (Apologies for keeping my source anonymous, but when I spoke with her, I didn’t tell her I might be preserving her comments for posterity. Those determined to confirm that this conversation took place can find her at the ferry dock seven days a week.)

“I love all of his movies,” she told me, speaking of the one-time Warwick resident who, according to the blog site NNDB, has earned fame as an actor by playing “a long list of ruthless creeps and cold-blooded bastards.”

While I waited for the ferry to Oak Bluffs, she went on: “A few weeks ago he just drove up, with his wife or girlfriend or whatever, she looked about 20, and we chatted. He got out of the car and asked his wife or girlfriend or whatever to take a picture of us. He asked my e-mail and I told him but he didn’t write anything down so I figured, yeah, whatever. Two days later the picture came through. He remembered.”

In fact, most of the celebrities that come through New Bedford en route to the Vineyard, she said, are pretty down to earth.

“Bill Murray is just a regular guy,” she said. “He brought his family over to see the fireworks the other night. Just drove right up, dropped them off at the ferry, took the car to the Whale’s Tooth (parking lot) and got on the bus with everybody else.”

Last year, Jim Belushi stood next to her for half-an-hour, waiting for a ride.

“He kept saying what a beautiful place this was,” she said. “Real working-class, but beautiful. He loves it here. Of course, he’s not looking for a job around here. Might think differently then.”

Rise of the blue crabs
Rhode Island water temperatures are running three to five degrees higher than average this summer. While it’s irresponsible to cite a much-hotter-than-usual summer as a definite sign of global climate change, that caution will do little to assuage the fears of those who worry about the Baltimorification (or Delawarification) of the Ocean State. Where Rhode Island once represented the northern reach for many sea creatures, now it seems to be within easy reach of any southern swimmer. But what about the local marine life – lobster, cod, flounder – that prefer a colder bath?

The changing nature of species migrating to Rhody or establishing residence here might be a more reliable indicator that something’s different, weather-wise. Last week a 6-foot sea turtle was spotted in Rhode Island Sound. While certainly not foreign to these waters, large sea turtles – including leatherbacks and loggerheads – are being reported in unusually high numbers by Rhode Island boaters, who’ve seen them paddling in the waters between Block Island and Watch Hill.

Even stranger is the influx of blue crabs, some of them monsters in their own right, crawling around Narragansett Bay. The blue crab invasion, which was also reported on the Vineyard during my stay there, seems to have taken hold everywhere, including Waterplace Park just below the Providence Place Mall. Now, I’ve got nothing against blue crabs, especially on the boil with some cold Narragansetts on ice. But if gaining the blue crab means losing the lobster, Half Shell may have to migrate to Nova Scotia.

The crazy season
The November elections are just around the corner, which means it’s time for New England’s favorite biennial autumn activity – voter fraud. The Cranston Board of Canvassers recently received notarized voter registration cards for Elizabeth Taylor, Rudolph Valentino and Dracula. The astute reader may note that at least two of these voters are dead (well, one is undead), all of them wore (or wear) sunglasses and none of them are Rhode Islanders. But that didn’t stop somebody from notarizing their registration cards. If I were a betting man, I’d say we’re looking for a notary public named Renfield. Then again, here in bloggerland, it doesn’t get much better than the possibility that Dracula could cast the deciding vote for the next Rhode Island governor.

This week’s back-to-school question: What did you do on your summer vacation?

Postscript: Lament for a Lobster

We here at Half Shell have a heavy heart and a guilty conscience after learning that Rhody’s celebrity yellow lobster – whose discovery garnered headlines across the globe – died last week, having succumbed to the cruel ravages of fame and the public’s insatiable demand to be part of the phenomenon.

After too many days in the spotlight in which the lobster was repeatedly manhandled, it was sent to the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus for rest and recuperation. But apparently all of the attention had overstressed the lobster – dubbed “Tyler,” in honor of the 9-year-old New Hampshire boy whose mother took the first images of Rhody lobsterman Denny Ingram and his find that circulated around the world. Despite the best efforts of Bay Campus employees to provide him with plenty of oxygen and food, optimal water temperature and ample places to hide, Tyler’s immune system just gave out.

So it’s a sad day here at Half Shell, especially knowing that because of our incessant need for column and blog fodder, we contributed to the demise of a crustacean that never sought the limelight. While we generally espouse a life that avoids the celebrity treacle of supermarket tabloids, TV buzz and the widespread stalkerazzi mindset, we got sucked into the yellow lobster’s media glow. Most of us could care less about seeing the stars in cement along Hollywood Boulevard, but if someone wanted to brand a yellow lobster in the brick and cobblestone of Thames Street in Newport, we would make the pilgrimage to pay our respects.

Bloggers and lobsters have a lot in common. Both are bottom-feeders. The truth is, if the yellow lobster had emerged from its pot in a shell of a different color, it would have been boiled red and eaten two weeks ago. But that doesn’t absolve us from our role in killing the crustacean with curiosity. It’s too late to make it up to Tyler, but perhaps his legacy can live on. Someone with musical talent in Rhode Island could start a band called Yellow Lobster. (I’m thinking a reggae/rock/sea chantey group.) A village in need of a tourist attraction could host the Yellow Lobster Seafood Festival. The ghost of Yellow Lobster could join the living gargoyles at WaterFire Providence. Blount Seafood could mount a giant Yellow Lobster on the side of I-95 opposite the New England Pest Control’s Big Blue Bug, creating a gateway of kitsch in Rhode Island. A new dish, the Yellow Lobster Roll – lobster salad made with mustard instead of mayo – could be introduced at Hemenway’s.

What is the best way to pay tribute to the life of the yellow lobster?

[Blogster’s note: Half Shell will be taking a one-week hiatus to hunt and consume various sea creatures while avoiding presidential entourages in the waters off Vineyard Sound next week. Back Monday, Aug. 30.)

Sea Quest

You know you live in Rhode Island when more people would rather see a yellow lobster than run into Jeri Ryan, the actress who played Seven of Nine in “Star Trek: Voyager” and starred in “Boston Public” and “Leverage,” and who can now be spotted filming scenes for the medical drama “Body of Proof” in the Ocean State. (She’s third from the left in the photo.)

The yellow lobster, a one-in-30-million find, was plucked from Narragansett Bay’s East Passage by Denny Ingram, and resided for a week in a blue basket inside a little shack selling lobster and crabs at the Fishermen’s Co-op on the State Pier in Newport before being donated to the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus in Narragansett for display and study. Since I chronicled my encounter with the rare crustacean on the paper side of things this week, I’ll spare my ink-stained Thursday readers the redundancy, but the trip also prompted thoughts on what an odd summer it has already been for sea creature sightings in these parts.

Although it remains nameless, the yellow lobster has received the most global press for a local marine animal since the mammal dubbed “the Warwick manatee” took the scenic route through Rhode Island a few summers ago. (I even remember a sign outside of Jim’s Dock with a drawing of the manatee, welcoming it to Jerusalem. The manatee, which eventually reached Cape Cod, reportedly snacked from a drainage pipe in Warwick on its journey. In the drawing at Jim’s Dock, the cartoon manatee claimed that the chowder and clam cakes tasted better in South County.)

Earlier this April, nearly 100 North Atlantic right whales – representing about a quarter of the entire population – were spotted cavorting just off Block Island. All summer, reports of great white sharks feasting on seals off Chatham on Cape Cod have raised anxieties among local beachgoers. The sighting of another shark last week off Horseneck Beach in Westport, just a stone’s throw away from Rhody, only increased the collective worry. Of course, fishermen have long known that Rhode Island waters are part of Shark Alley, a stretch that runs along the extreme Atlantic edge from Long Island to Block Island to Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket, where some of the biggest and fiercest sharks in the world congregate. But it’s rare to see them so frequently close to shore. Then again, there’s a fishermen’s maxim: “Two summers of seals, then a summer of great whites.” With seal populations exploding in Narragansett Bay, we may all need a bigger boat.

Give the sharks credit, they’ve got great timing. The Horseneck Beach shark popped up on the first day of "Shark Week," the Discovery Channel’s seven-day extravaganza celebrating all things shark. As cable TV’s longest-running and most-watched series of programs, “Shark Week” is as much a part of popular culture as the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards. It also happens to be the 35th anniversary of “Jaws,” which was filmed on Martha’s Vineyard but is remembered fondly hereabouts as the movie in which Quint (Robert Shaw) drank Narragansett by the can.

This week’s question: What name should we give the yellow lobster?