Miss America Hopeful Runs on Dunkin'

Miss America pageant contestants are rarely chosen for their oratory. But despite her rather good showing overall during the most recent competition, Deborah Saint-Vil, Miss Rhode Island 2011, made an even greater impression in media limbo than on the judges. And it wasn’t a swimsuit or evening gown that did it. It was a factoid.

Given a chance to introduce herself and represent her home state, Miss Rhode Island declared: “With the most Dunkin Donuts shops per capita in the nation, I’m wired up and fired up tonight! I’m Miss Rhode Island!”

The comment went viral the moment it came out of her mouth. Saint-Vil may not have won – on this snowy President's Day we are reminded that a Rhode Islander has as good a chance of becoming President of the United States as Miss America – but her pronouncement got more play on the blogosphere and Twittersphere than any of the Other 49 sparkly wannabes. It was also featured in a Miss America sum-up on “The Soup,” the E! network’s pop cultural gumbo of favorite TV moments from the past week.

While some Rhode Islanders cringed at the reference, most national commentators seemed charmed by it. One blogger noted: “(must be Dunkin Donuts Co. is based out of Rhode Island?)”

Uh, no, actually. That’s one of the odd twists in this tale. Dunkin’ Donuts is a Massachusetts chain. But in Rhode Island, travel distances are measured as much in Dunkin’ Donuts as miles. You can’t jog a 5K anywhere in the state without running into one.

How did this happen? Probably because our two favorite things are: 1) Coffee and 2) Anything fried in dough. The recent news that greater Providence (including the Fall River-New Bedford, Mass. region) remains the doughnut capital of the United States, with 25.3 doughnut shops per 100,000 people, surprised no one hereabouts. (Boston came in a distant second.)

But for those who’ve got their crullers in a twist because Miss Rhode Island bragged about our Dunkin’ mania, consider what she might have said:

“Hello, I’m Miss Rhode Island. Our founder’s skeleton was consumed by an apple tree root!”

“I’m from Rhode Island, one of only two states that never ratified the 18th Amendment declaring Prohibition! Isn’t that right, Miss Connecticut?”

“In these difficult economic times, I’m proud to be from Rhode Island, home to the first discount store in the United States!”

“I’m Miss Rhode Island, home to the world’s largest bug! It’s a big blue termite – 58 feet long and 928 times actual termite size! And it lives rent-free on a roof overlooking a highway in Providence!”

“I’m from Rhode Island, where the weather is always changing, which is why we have a corrosion test site at Point Judith where material samples sit exposed for years and are analyzed to determine the toll taken by ocean air and the sun!”

What should Miss Rhode Island be most proud of?

Valentines and Oysters

On the calendar of holidays in New England, Valentine’s Day fits like a sourball in a Whitman’s Sampler. There’s nothing natural about it. Unlike Halloween (pumpkins and crows), Thanksgiving (Pilgrim hats and turkeys), Christmas (snow on evergreens), New Year’s (First Night), St. Patrick’s Day (Irish pubs), Easter (spring returns!) and Fourth of July (grilling and fireworks), Valentine’s Day has no organic relationship with the region.

Look around. There are mounds of snow and potholed roads everywhere. It’s cold and slippery. Nothing says “Be My Valentine” like a yearning for rock salt and Icy Melt.

Let’s face it. Cold hearts don’t melt in February. The pagan origins of St. Valentine’s Day refer to the time of year when the birds start to mate. But this month I haven’t seen any birds mating. I’ve only seen birds freezing. They’re hungry. They’re miserable. They’re wondering when the snow and ice will clear and the frozen ground will once again offer up wormy breakfasts.

Most of us know the feeling. Valentine’s Day would be better if it were moved to the summer. Possibly August, which has no national holiday. Days and nights of August in Rhode Island have the sensual, languid quality one would like to see in a Valentine’s Day. If I am overemphasizing the passionate and romantic aspect of the occasion – what the Greeks called “Eros” – it’s only because I feel as if I’m drowning in a media flood of florists and wineries, candy makers and chocolatiers, barbershop quartets and restaurants advertising candlelight dinners, all of them banking on Valentine’s Day as a lover’s holiday.

Maybe there’s a reason why every year Valentine’s Day is considered the holiday most overrated and least anticipated by a majority of Americans. At least locally, Providence just isn’t as sexy as Miami or New Orleans in February. Perhaps we would be better off downplaying “Eros,” and emphasizing the various other aspects of love – “Storge” (familial), “Philia” (friendship) and “Agape” (selfless love for others). I mention this even knowing that reducing love to four chambers of the heart is inherently problematic. Google “kinds of love” and you’ll see links numbering them at 4, 5, 3, 9, 7 and 8 varieties on the first page scroll.

Adding to Rhode Islanders’ Valentine’s Day angst this year is the news that wild oysters are “functionally extinct,” meaning that the world’s most popular aphrodisiac is going the way of the Dodo. For those of us who would prefer a platter of Moonstones, Watch Hills, Rome Points and Ninigret Cups to a chocolate box of nuts, fruits, nougats, caramels and creams, the worry that wild oyster extinction will endanger love on the half shell is almost paralyzing. (It’s an irrational worry; but aren’t they all?)

At least in Rhode Island, valentines and oysters are members of the same species. But don’t take my word for it. New York City’s Aquagrill considers Rhody oysters to be the best on the market. Here’s what the owner had to say about Moonstones in an article on “26 Oysters You Should Know This Valentine’s Day” for The Feast:

I’ve had these since I opened. Some of my favorite oysters. It’s almost like a meal, a perfectly balanced oyster. Sweet, salty, bitterness, but everything comes together in your mouth. Rhode Island is one of my favorite states for oysters.

The proof is in the shucking. He also carries Watch Hills, Rome Points, Ninigret Cups and Potter’s Moons, which he describes as his “second favorite oyster.”

The other benefit of combining oysters with Valentine’s Day is that, if you find the right kind, you won’t have to spring for pearls.

What is your Valentine’s Day ritual?

True Crime: Confessions of a Dangerous Blog

Journalism may be in the business of throwaway lines but there are whole novels in police beat. Consider the following Tales from the Naked Suburbs pulled from the police logs by my colleagues and fellow scribes at Independent Newspapers, as reported in last Thursday’s editions. First, from the North Kingstown police log in The North East Independent:

TRESPASSING
REPORTED
John Flowers of 88 Terre Mar Drive, North Kingstown, was issued a no-trespass order at the Wickford Sunoco after he argued with the clerk about paying for $16 worth of gas he had pumped. Flowers eventually paid for the gas and when questioned by police, he said he “owned all of Rhode Island” and didn’t have to pay for any gas because he already owned it.

And this instant classic – to use a horrible oxymoron – from the Narragansett police log in The South County Independent:

MEOW
A 42-year-old Narragansett woman walked into the Narragansett police station on Jan. 25 at around 10:10 p.m., saying she was concerned at her boyfriend’s level of intoxication. The complainant said he came home from skiing intoxicated. Once in the vehicle together, the man started spitting and began to meow, at which point the woman went to police. After a short period of time, the man apologized to police, and the couple went home together.

If only there were an Elmore Leonard or two to chronicle the characters that live so vividly in the police reports as transcribed in Rhode Island’s local dailies and weeklies. Maybe it was just something in the air last week, but we don’t think so. Week after week, we report locals behaving badly and bizarrely, just as they do in every town and city in America.

The bigger question is what snaps in the brain in these moments? In that split second, why does the life of an expectorating, growling tomcat seem preferable to the mundane reality of human relationships and workdays after an alcohol-infused ski trip? What triggers us to spontaneously declare ourselves King of Rhode Island after filling a quarter-tank of gas with unleaded?

Perhaps it’s just a need to blow off steam. Maybe a little insanity is necessary every once in a while in a world gone mad, when there is so much strife and anger and unfairness around us that even the relentless distractions of noise and neon can’t mask the daily frustration. Just as fairy tales and horror movies and bad dreams can be therapeutic ways to address our collective fears, perhaps the patterns of behavior uncovered in police beat show us how people keep society from driving off the cliff. The tires are flat, the doors are dented, the muffler’s broken and we stall out every now and then, but at the end of the day, we’re still moving forward, headlights be damned.

Maybe that explains Rhody Gas King and Spitting Cat Man.

What is your favorite police beat anecdote?

Married to the Mob

A couple of weeks ago the news went old school with word that more than 100 people were arrested in a sweep that targeted seven mob families in New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. The round-up was impressive in its scope, playing like an episode of “Crime Story,” and reminding us of the days when the Rhody motto was – to use the expression long made popular by Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge – “Mobsters and Lobsters.”

Rhode Island’s notorious independent streak rears up at a time like this. Although proudly New England, the state has an unhealthy affinity for the Mid-Atlantic, as evidenced by its mobster history, disproportionate number of Yankees fans, and connections to TV shows ranging from “Jersey Shore” to “The Sopranos.” Local viewers of the latter used to look for episodes based on Rhody mob lore. In season 4’s “The Weight,” one subplot involved Uncle Junior telling Tony to put a hit on Johnny, according to the Wikipedia summary, “using the skills of a notorious crew of an elderly hit man from Rhode Island, Lou “DiMaggio” Galina – nicknamed for his use of a baseball bat as a murder weapon.” The incident is pulled directly from a Rhody mob moment, when, as the story goes, “Bobo” Marrapese bashed in the head of a teenager with a baseball bat after getting cut off in Pawtucket on a ramp leading to I-95.

Even the DiMaggio reference is an in-joke. Once at The Mews in Wakefield, I talked with a guy at the bar who said that, in his youth, he drove back and forth from Providence to Boston running numbers for the mob. He said that the only difference between the bars were the pictures inside. In Boston, it was the Virgin Mary, John F. Kennedy and Ted Williams. In Providence, it was the Virgin Mary, Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.

The mob arrest made headlines around the world and was of particular interest to the newspapers of England, which can’t ever seem to get enough of the underbelly of America. As far back as 1993, the English newspaper The Independent (no relation) published a lengthy piece on Rhode Island as the “US Mob state,” in which reporter Patrick Cockburn opens as if he’s warming up an audience in the Catskills:

A joke, much resented by Rhode Islanders, is that things got so bad in their state during the recent recession that the mafia had to lay of two of its judges.

The only thing the reporter got wrong is the “much resented by Rhode Islanders” clause. Most Rhode Islanders love mob jokes. Chances are if you ever hear a mob joke, a Rhode Islander made it up in the first place.

It’s politically incorrect to harp on it now, but growing up in this state, hearing stories, rumors and gossip about the mob was a given. Even as elementary school kids, we watched “Godfathers” I and II and compared Hollywood scenes with local details of murder, racketeering and extortion we heard secondhand during recess between games of Muckle The Kid With The Ball.

As much as the state has changed, its Rogues Island reputation lives on. The first European settlers may have moved to Rhode Island to pursue religious freedom, but it wasn’t long before the rascals and radicals took root. We were a haven for pirates, an industry so lucrative that the state decided to make it legal by calling it privateering. During Prohibition, rumrunning was rampant in Rhode Island. (It’s rumored that Tara Mulroy’s Joyce Family Pub, still hanging on the edge of the earth in Matunuck, was one of many Rhody watering holes involved in the trade.) And Providence, of course, was home to the New England mob for generations. Even now, if Half Shell ever goes under, I could start my own mob blog, using the Internet’s Mob Name Generator. (Depending on whether I use the informal or formal version of my first name, I am either Doug “The Jeweler” Norris or Douglas “The Vampire” Norris, either of which would be appropriate in a state with its own Jewelry District and vampire legends.)

What is your favorite Rhode Island crime story?

Weather smack

With more snow forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, 2011 is blurring into a blizzard of blizzards. In a couple of weeks, some Pennsylvania rodent will tell the rest of America whether this winter will be a long one or not, but here in New England we don’t need a publicity-seeking groundhog to predict the weather. We’ve got our own clues in nature to investigate, albeit few of them involving toothy mammals, whether the burrowing variety or those attractive Weather Channel personalities bragging about their Doppler radar.

How do you know winter is going to be long, cold and snowy? The hornet’s paper nest will be higher than usual, while the squirrel’s nest will be lower. The wooly worm will wear a jet-black coat, rather than its standard brown-striped russet. Squirrels will have bushier tails. Walnuts and hickory nuts will have thicker hulls. August will have a lot of foggy mornings. Onions will have extra layers. You’ll have to dig deeper to get at your carrots. The north side of any neighborhood trees will be enlarged with extra bark and moss will grow thicker on all of the trees. The bushes will grow more blackberries and the pines will drop more cones than usual. And perhaps you’ll hear the late-night call of the hoot owl throughout autumn, foretelling the next season's severity.

Some weather lore has been turned into proverbs:

The aching of a broken bone predicts rain.

True enough. When it comes to forecasting precipitation, my two surgically reconstructed knees and surgically repaired right elbow are more accurate than Al Roker, Stephanie Abrams and Heather Tesch combined.

One proverb I’d never heard before, but discovered recently on a Web site devoted to American Folklore, has resonance because of the “thunder snow” Rhode Island received during its most recent blizzard, when the sight of lightning and the rumble of thunder in a flurry of early morning snow seemed almost apocalyptic:

If you see lightning in January, you will see snow in April.

Worrisome, because we’ve already had the January lightning, and the thought of April snow on a day when snow piles are stacked like skyscrapers and the temperature may not climb above a single digit is just winter misery overkill.

Based on living through the last decade of winters on a West Barrington Cove, I also know this: When the ducks cluster near the shore, freely mingling with the gulls, geese and swans, and there’s no low tide to provide an easy buffet, a storm’s coming. It’s an observation that I’ve cobbled together in my own weather proverb:

When birds of a different feather flock by the shore together, seal the windows, grab a coat – and get ready for stormy weather.

This week's question: What is your favorite weather lore?

Really, Rhody?

It sounds like something written for the old Seth Meyers-Amy Poehler “Really?” bit on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.” Not long after the ball was dropped on the New Year, Rhode Island politicians dropped the ball again when Republican Rep. Doreen M. Costa of Dist. 31 in North Kingstown and Exeter took her first crack at legislating by submitting a resolution to ban state officials and agencies from using any term but “Christmas trees” to describe the “customarily erected” evergreens decorated in many households during December.

So let’s see. Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Families and many entire communities are in debt. Job prospects are dim. The educational system is a mess. The state’s infrastructure is in disrepair. Health care costs are bankrupting people and businesses. What to do, what to do? Hmm. Oh, here’s a priority: From now on, all state employees and agencies must always say “Christmas tree” in their official statements and communications.

Really?

What happens to the poor sod who makes a mistake and publicly utters or e-mails an announcement about a “holiday tree” instead? Or makes some unfortunate reference to “yule,” “wintertide,” “Saturnalia,” “Norway spruce” or “evergreen”? Would he or she get fired? Banned from the office Christmas party? Burned at the stake? Sent to the stocks for a day to be pummeled with fruitcakes and eggnog? Permanently rubber-stamped onto Santa’s Naughty List?

Costa, as described in an Independent editorial last week, is “a vocal member of the R.I. Tea Party and one of 29 newcomers elected on a platform of change.” She has admitted that she submitted the legislation “on a whim,” with the backing of Rep. Joseph Trillo, a Republican from Warwick. Because they submitted it wrong, copies of the resolution were not given to lawmakers but instead were approved by the House on a voice vote within moments of its introduction, requiring – in what amounts to a monumental waste of time and energy – referral to a committee to consider and study the matter.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not (and, for the record, I do; four beloved Christmas trees from my childhood are now towering evergreens in my backyard, serving as home for a mockingbird and a playground for squirrels), the legislative effort is misguided. To establish a law insisting that state workers use the expression “Christmas tree” is heavy-handed, and the inference or presumption by the legislators that a “Christmas tree” has always been a “Christmas tree” is just plain wrong. Not for nothin’, but Bethlehem wasn’t exactly known for its Scotch pine, Douglas fir and white spruce.

Sure, it’s always fun when we can correct political correctness and co-opt a pagan ritual in one fell swoop, but how about letting Rhode Island – the original “separation of church and state” state – do what it does best and encourage everyone to keep making ornaments, not laws, for the Christmas tree?

Speaking of which, there’s also some momentum for a bill to stipulate that Halloween would always be celebrated on the last Saturday of October – no matter its actual date – to make it easier for parents to plan trick-or-treating and for bars, restaurants and businesses to profit from the holiday. Again, let’s put a stake in this vampire right now.

Before you know it, some well-intentioned politician will decide that we should move Halloween to August – a month without a national holiday – so the kids won’t have to risk going out in the cold. And maybe we should pick a Sunday in March or April and just stick with it to celebrate Easter, because it’s too confusing the way that holiday bounces like a jellybean around the calendar every spring. On second thought, make it April, because some years Easter falls too closely next to St. Patrick’s Day. Then again, it would probably be better for bars and restaurants if the feast day of St. Patrick were held on a weekend, so let’s just consider March 17 to be more like a global happy hour if it falls on Monday through Friday and schedule the bodhrans and shamrocks for the third Saturday in March.

What would you change about any holiday, if you could?

Dorr and more

For those Rhode Islanders who grew up around these parts since the 1970s, our study of American history in schools was startlingly lacking in previous Rhode Islanders. Oh, sure, we might have spent a day or two on Roger Williams and Samuel Slater, squeezed in between the timeline of Columbus, Pilgrims, American Revolution (mostly the events in Boston and Philadelphia), the Civil War (Gettysburg), World War II and the Kennedy years, but otherwise most of us meandered around the state, driving on asphalt called Willet Avenue, Metacom Avenue and Newman Avenue without knowing the stories behind the street names.

The religious seekers, political pioneers, radical patriots, revolutionary thinkers, independent women, Wampanoag and Narragansett sachems, privateers and pirates, slave traders and abolitionists, innovative entrepreneurs and military heroes – including the soldiers of the First Rhode Island Regiment, also known as the Black Regiment of Rhode Island, comprising slaves who agreed to fight for their country in exchange for freedom – that made up the patchwork of Rhode Island history were anonymous to us.

Things are better now. Schools have made more of an effort to incorporate local history into their curricula. The Web, cable television and publishers like Arcadia and The History Press have created a market for stories and images documenting regional and community histories. So every now and then someone who was part of the state limelight in some long-ago generation returns from the shadows to earn the spotlight again.

Such is the case with Thomas Dorr. In an age when only white male landowners (i.e., the filthy rich) could vote in Rhode Island, Dorr, the son of Conservative Whigs, shocked his family by becoming the people’s champion, leading a short-lived revolution that fizzled in its day but opened the door to a future in which Rhode Island and the nation would become more democratic.

As Rhode Islander Rory Raven, author of “The Dorr War: Treason, Rebellion & The Fight for Reform in Rhode Island” (2010, The History Press) notes:

There is a Dorr Street in Providence; it is a dead end, and on my last visit, there was no street sign. And while an official portrait of Dorr was hung in the Rhode Island Statehouse some time ago, giving him his rightful place among the other governors honored there, that portrait has not been seen in many years, and no one seems to know where it has gotten to.

Raven’s book restores Dorr’s place in the pantheon of the state’s quirky and independent but significant historical figures. As leader of the Dorr Rebellion, he helped draft the “People’s Constitution,” mandating universal suffrage for white males. (There is some evidence that he was sympathetic to the plight of African Americans and women as well, but decided that those were civil rights battles that would have to be fought later.)

Studying the bare bones of history, the Dorr War appears almost comical. On the day when Rhode Island had two governors, Dorr marched with his supporters up to the Rhode Island State House to claim his seat, only to the find the doors locked and no way to get in, so he held swearing-in ceremonies in a nearby foundry still under construction.

Later, he attempted a military victory by marching on a Providence arsenal, tugging along two cannons (that allegedly had been seized from British General Burgoyne after his defeat at Saratoga during the Revolution and ended up in Rhode Island), both of which misfired, causing most of his followers to abandon the effort.

When his political enemies marched up Acote’s Hill in Chepachet to capture him, “there he was,” said the Woonsocketer in the militia, “gone.” So they took the cannons and smashed up a local tavern, eating and drinking everything the owner had, and confiscating the lot, including household silver, a cookstove and a pair of garters belonging to someone named Ripsy Tift. (The victors and writers of history would later call this “the sacking of Chepachet.”)

Dorr was eventually imprisoned for life and sentenced to solitary confinement and hard labor. (He painted fans all day. Some of his fans are now in the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.)

One side note: Raven makes the point that for generations in Rhode Island all major political rallies were structured around the classic Rhode Island clambake, which then as today certainly would make the politics more palatable. Memo to candidates in 2012: Less negative advertising. More rockweed and quahogs.

What Rhode Islander do you think deserves more prominence in the history books?