A funny thing happened on the evening the power was restored to my cove neighborhood in West Barrington. One neighbor sat on his porch, strumming guitar. My friends across the street, after checking light switches, computers and TVs to make sure they were functioning, turned everything off, went for a dusk bike ride and then lit their outdoor fire ring, inviting people over to talk. My parents, who generally occupy evening hours at their house on the laptop (Mom) or watching television (Dad), were sitting on the porch in the dark, conversing while looking out at the bay and the planes flying to and from Green Airport. Most of the neighborhood, in fact, was out strolling, cycling or sitting in their porches, chatting amiably.
After going more than four days without power, everyone wanted it back, but once they had it, they were happy to ignore it. The power outage caused by Hurricane Irene seemed to spark something significant and universal in people, even despite the challenges of keeping food and drink cold, cooking, cleaning and doing the wash, or finding our way around the house at night. It felt right to go to sleep to the sound of crickets, wake up to the caterwauling of hungry sea gulls and live the day in concert with the rising heat songs of cicadas. The stars were impossibly bright for a Rhode Island sky too often polluted by excessive human light. You could see Cassiopeia’s W and the Archer’s arrow point and both Dippers dipping in vivid relief, looking like giant-sized versions of glow-in-the-dark stickers plastered on the ceiling above a child’s bed. Neighbors who once barely spoke to one another came out of their houses for no apparent reason and resumed their hurricane-prompted conversations, helping each other clean up, exchanging tools or tips, and sharing new stories about damages and crimes occurring in Rhode Island in the storm’s aftermath. Children grudgingly admitted how much fun it was to play Clue by candlelight and Twister by flashlight. People gathered at the shoreline, marveling at the liquid silver of the bay at twilight, the water lapping in waves of melted moonlight.
It was as if we all knew – whatever we lost when the power went out, we gained something, too. And now that the power was back, we didn’t want to sacrifice our newfound embrace of simple pleasures. Who knows how long it will last? But for the first time since I can’t remember when, the place I call home feels like a neighborhood. Without a doubt, the communities that endured the worst of Irene’s miseries deserve our thoughts and prayers, but in West Barrington, and wherever the storm managed only inconveniences of varying degree, we might want to thank her.
Irene follow-up question: How did you occupy your time while the power was out?
[Note: Half Shell is posting early because of Monday’s Labor Day holiday.]
Friday, September 2, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Irene: A Sketch
The first casualty of Hurricane Irene in my cove neighborhood happened three days before the storm arrived when a tree removal crew chopped down a majestic weeping willow, dressed in its lush summer green, from a yard by a house at the point. The willow had been there for several generations, standing as one of the postage stamp trees of West Barrington. But the neighbor had lost a couple of big branches recently – during one of last winter’s nor’easters and, before that, during a heavy wind and rain storm last summer – and given the dire predictions of Irene’s wrath, he was determined not to risk his home for the notoriously weak-rooted willow in our sandy soil.
Most people spent part of Saturday boarding up and removing potential projectiles from their yards, then went to bed as the storm blew in. The power went out in Barrington at 7 a.m. on Sunday and the worst of the surge followed a couple of hours later, as water splashed over the cove’s edge, swamping some roads, spilling over sea walls and creating little lakes in adjacent parks. Despite steady, strong winds for hours afterward and except for one small stretch of street that appeared to endure a mini-twister, causing large trees to topple onto rooftops, sheds and in yards, our neighborhood was mostly spared, and we were once again able to sigh with relief that a hurricane – a.k.a. God’s bowling ball – only delivered a glancing blow.
We were lucky. Watching during the height of the storm from one of the windows in my folks’ place that wasn’t boarded, the Atlantic appeared primal, with breakers crashing in the middle of the bay and surf as high as a one-story house. At one point, between the wind and the rain, the world was just a wild, gray blur, with no way to tell where the water met the land. It felt like being on the smear end of a microscope.
But the worst didn’t last long. Heavy rains eventually subsided and all that was left was to ride out the winds, nap, drink, eat, play board games, and check out the damage when the lull came later in the afternoon. A friend’s boat had been wrenched from its mooring. They discovered it a long way down the channel, with a gash in the hull, in a completely different marina, where someone had lashed it to a dock to spare it further damage. Neighbors and strangers gathered to survey the scene, sharing condolences with people who sat on their porches under houses crowned by downed trees or otherwise enjoying the fresh air, charged with ions that paradoxically made us feel drugged and drowsy. My souvenir from the day was a quahog shell that was tossed onto the small beach at Allin’s Cove, ringed on the inside with a half-inch of the dazzling purple color used to make wampum.
All the world is investing in gold these days, it seems. But its value is merely monetary. Give me a clamshell offered up by a hurricane any day, if only as a reminder of the blessings and fortunes we always take for granted, and in memory of the friends and willows we lose along the way.
How did you pass the time during Hurricane Irene?
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Of Killhags and Gurrybutts
The vacation gods were kind to me. As I returned to my office this morning, wondering what I might blog about later, a brown envelope addressed from Florida was dropped onto my desk chair. Inside was a book and a letter from Mim Harrison, who lived in Sand Hill Cove with her husband back in the mid-1970s and early ’80s. Her book is titled: “Wicked Good Words: From johnnycakes to jug handles, a roundup of America’s regionalisms.”
In her letter she says:
[Side note: River’s Edge Café is now Meldgie’s Rivers Edge Café, a concession by Meldgie to the fact that Rhode Islanders will always call things by what they once were instead of what they are. So when Quick Rick’s in Wakefield, which has been a fast eats pit stop for generations, turned over to a woman named Jessica it became Jessica’s Quick Rick’s. And when the Joyce Family Pub (or “Joyce’s”) in Matunuck was sold a few years back to an Irish woman named Tara, it became Tara’s Joyce Family Pub. That is, until recently, when she renamed it Tara’s Tipperary Tavern. But it will be at least 40 years before folks around these parts stop calling it “Joyce’s.”]
For the record, Harrison traces “bubbler” – meaning a water fountain where the water bubbles up from the spigot – to the Midwest, where the earliest known reference dates back to 1911. Most Rhode Islanders grew up with the word pronounced “bub-luh” but meaning the same thing, although there aren’t many of us left who date back to 1911 to tell the rest of us whether we were drinking from bubblers back then.
The book begins with a New England chapter titled “Wicked Pissa.” Most New Englanders will recognize the majority of expressions, although I was taken with “the frog run of the sap” (meaning the last batch of maple syrup you collect during the season, just about the time the frogs appear) and “gurrybutt” (the empty bowl that accompanies orders of clams, mussels or lobster at a fish shack or seafood restaurant and used for shell discards). A “killhag,” common to Maine and New Hampshire, is a trap used to catch a variety of animals. To “put the oakum on him” is to shut a guy up for good. (Oakum is a tarred hemp mixture used to seal the seams on boats.)
As for people living in the Other 44, some Southerners call a heavy rain a “frog strangler.” “Old Scratch,” a term for the Devil, was coined in New England but is still in use in parts of the South. That region also has more than one term for “the blues,” including the “mulligrubs,” which traces its etymology to a medieval English word for migraine, and “the weary dismals,” an expression heard in Tennessee as well as Virginia and North Carolina, which share the Great Dismal Swamp.
Iowans will eat a “loosemeat sandwich,” a concoction of ground beef and onions on a bun, known elsewhere as a “sloppy joe.” Lottery cards are known as “pickles” in Nebraska because they’re traditionally sold out of pickle jars. Avocados in Louisiana are known as “alligator pears” and French toast in New Orleans is “lost bread.”
Residents of Seattle have an expression, “the mountain is out today,” meaning those rare occasions when it’s clear enough to see Mount Rainier. (A local variation in praise of sunny weather, not mentioned by Harrison, is “it’s a three-bridge day,” spoken by residents of the East Bay on clear days when they can see the Mt. Hope, Newport (Pell) and Jamestown (Verrazzano) bridges bending over Narragansett Bay.)
Alaskans call whisky “arctic wine” and snowmobiles “iron dogs.” A “beignet” is a New Orleans-style doughnut without the hole, similar to Rhode Island’s (and New England’s) “doughboy,” which tends to be rounder, like the bellies of its eaters. In the Southwest, the same plump, powder-sugared confection is called a “bunuelo.” Other New England expressions for doughnuts include “boil cakes,” “cymbals” and “huffjuff” or “huffle juffle.” Some Connecticutites call them “holy pokes” while Mainers might refer to them as “Baptist bread” (or “Baptist cake”) in honor of the dough being immersed.
This week’s question: What’s your favorite regionalism?
In her letter she says:
As a former South County-ite, I made sure that Rhode Island and southern Rhode Island in particular, was well represented – down to the mention of River’s Edge Café for its American chop suey. Other Rhode Islandisms are in here as well; I don’t think anybody else in the country drinks cabinets. Bubbler is in here, too…although there’s some surprising (and perhaps disturbing) news about its use.
[Side note: River’s Edge Café is now Meldgie’s Rivers Edge Café, a concession by Meldgie to the fact that Rhode Islanders will always call things by what they once were instead of what they are. So when Quick Rick’s in Wakefield, which has been a fast eats pit stop for generations, turned over to a woman named Jessica it became Jessica’s Quick Rick’s. And when the Joyce Family Pub (or “Joyce’s”) in Matunuck was sold a few years back to an Irish woman named Tara, it became Tara’s Joyce Family Pub. That is, until recently, when she renamed it Tara’s Tipperary Tavern. But it will be at least 40 years before folks around these parts stop calling it “Joyce’s.”]
For the record, Harrison traces “bubbler” – meaning a water fountain where the water bubbles up from the spigot – to the Midwest, where the earliest known reference dates back to 1911. Most Rhode Islanders grew up with the word pronounced “bub-luh” but meaning the same thing, although there aren’t many of us left who date back to 1911 to tell the rest of us whether we were drinking from bubblers back then.
The book begins with a New England chapter titled “Wicked Pissa.” Most New Englanders will recognize the majority of expressions, although I was taken with “the frog run of the sap” (meaning the last batch of maple syrup you collect during the season, just about the time the frogs appear) and “gurrybutt” (the empty bowl that accompanies orders of clams, mussels or lobster at a fish shack or seafood restaurant and used for shell discards). A “killhag,” common to Maine and New Hampshire, is a trap used to catch a variety of animals. To “put the oakum on him” is to shut a guy up for good. (Oakum is a tarred hemp mixture used to seal the seams on boats.)
As for people living in the Other 44, some Southerners call a heavy rain a “frog strangler.” “Old Scratch,” a term for the Devil, was coined in New England but is still in use in parts of the South. That region also has more than one term for “the blues,” including the “mulligrubs,” which traces its etymology to a medieval English word for migraine, and “the weary dismals,” an expression heard in Tennessee as well as Virginia and North Carolina, which share the Great Dismal Swamp.
Iowans will eat a “loosemeat sandwich,” a concoction of ground beef and onions on a bun, known elsewhere as a “sloppy joe.” Lottery cards are known as “pickles” in Nebraska because they’re traditionally sold out of pickle jars. Avocados in Louisiana are known as “alligator pears” and French toast in New Orleans is “lost bread.”
Residents of Seattle have an expression, “the mountain is out today,” meaning those rare occasions when it’s clear enough to see Mount Rainier. (A local variation in praise of sunny weather, not mentioned by Harrison, is “it’s a three-bridge day,” spoken by residents of the East Bay on clear days when they can see the Mt. Hope, Newport (Pell) and Jamestown (Verrazzano) bridges bending over Narragansett Bay.)
Alaskans call whisky “arctic wine” and snowmobiles “iron dogs.” A “beignet” is a New Orleans-style doughnut without the hole, similar to Rhode Island’s (and New England’s) “doughboy,” which tends to be rounder, like the bellies of its eaters. In the Southwest, the same plump, powder-sugared confection is called a “bunuelo.” Other New England expressions for doughnuts include “boil cakes,” “cymbals” and “huffjuff” or “huffle juffle.” Some Connecticutites call them “holy pokes” while Mainers might refer to them as “Baptist bread” (or “Baptist cake”) in honor of the dough being immersed.
This week’s question: What’s your favorite regionalism?
Monday, August 8, 2011
State of the State
Following up on last week’s post on the “State By State” essay collection, published in 2009, I thought a summary of the addendum might be of interest to Rhody readers, wherein each state is ranked in a variety of categories.
Rhode Island ranks:
43rd in population.
42nd in population increase.
12th in foreign-born population.
29th in population born elsewhere in the U.S.
45th in birthrate.
9th in median age. All six New England states were in the top 10, including Maine (1), Vermont (2), New Hampshire (7), Connecticut (8) and Massachusetts (10).
18th in gross state product per capita.
34th in bankruptcy filing rate at 28 percent. (Tennessee came in first at a whopping 109.9 percent.)
21st in mean travel time to work.
47th in unemployment rate. (From the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Feb. 2008. We all know what happened later that year, when the economy collapsed. Since then, Rhody’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled and ranks consistently in the top five.)
43rd in military recruitment rate.
18th in percentage of population claiming no religion.
9th in public education expenditure per pupil.
32nd in voter participation rate.
42nd in oil consumption per capita.
43rd in gasoline consumption per capita.
44th in violent crime rate.
41st in incarceration rate.
35th in breastfeeding rate.
43rd in population without health insurance.
34th in toothlessness rate at 17.9 percent. (West Virginia is first at 40.5 percent.)
44th in obesity rate.
5th in alcohol consumption. (Only Wisconsin, North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa drink more.)
26th in cigarette consumption.
43rd in divorce rate.
47th in suicide rate.
47th in highest monthly temperature.
27th in lowest monthly temperature.
Also, Rhode Island is one of seven states with no roller coaster.
Most importantly, Rhode Island was at the top of the list in one category, ranking first in Table 17, “Classic Movie Theaters and Drive-Ins Per Capita,” with a score of 143.1. (Source: Cinema Treasures.)
What does this mean? We drink a lot, but typically aren’t violent or criminal in nature. We stay married. We don’t tend to jump off bridges. We’re thinner than the average Americans. We don’t severely deplete energy resources. We spend more than most on education. We used to have jobs. There aren’t that many of us, all things considered, but those of us who are from here tend to stay here. We miss the Cyclone, the Corkscrew and the Flume*, and we still like to watch movies in places that have a little character.
Leading to this week’s question: What’s your favorite old movie house in Rhode Island?
[Blogger’s note: Starting next week, Half Shell will be burrowing in the sands of Lambert’s Cove, enjoying a Monday-to-Monday beach rental on the Vineyard, which means…look for our return on Tuesday, Aug. 23, when we’ll be rocking some serious surfer tan and clam belly. Until then…]
*Technically, a log ride, not a roller coaster, but it belongs in the discussion of lamented amusement park rides.
Rhode Island ranks:
43rd in population.
42nd in population increase.
12th in foreign-born population.
29th in population born elsewhere in the U.S.
45th in birthrate.
9th in median age. All six New England states were in the top 10, including Maine (1), Vermont (2), New Hampshire (7), Connecticut (8) and Massachusetts (10).
18th in gross state product per capita.
34th in bankruptcy filing rate at 28 percent. (Tennessee came in first at a whopping 109.9 percent.)
21st in mean travel time to work.
47th in unemployment rate. (From the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Feb. 2008. We all know what happened later that year, when the economy collapsed. Since then, Rhody’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled and ranks consistently in the top five.)
43rd in military recruitment rate.
18th in percentage of population claiming no religion.
9th in public education expenditure per pupil.
32nd in voter participation rate.
42nd in oil consumption per capita.
43rd in gasoline consumption per capita.
44th in violent crime rate.
41st in incarceration rate.
35th in breastfeeding rate.
43rd in population without health insurance.
34th in toothlessness rate at 17.9 percent. (West Virginia is first at 40.5 percent.)
44th in obesity rate.
5th in alcohol consumption. (Only Wisconsin, North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa drink more.)
26th in cigarette consumption.
43rd in divorce rate.
47th in suicide rate.
47th in highest monthly temperature.
27th in lowest monthly temperature.
Also, Rhode Island is one of seven states with no roller coaster.
Most importantly, Rhode Island was at the top of the list in one category, ranking first in Table 17, “Classic Movie Theaters and Drive-Ins Per Capita,” with a score of 143.1. (Source: Cinema Treasures.)
What does this mean? We drink a lot, but typically aren’t violent or criminal in nature. We stay married. We don’t tend to jump off bridges. We’re thinner than the average Americans. We don’t severely deplete energy resources. We spend more than most on education. We used to have jobs. There aren’t that many of us, all things considered, but those of us who are from here tend to stay here. We miss the Cyclone, the Corkscrew and the Flume*, and we still like to watch movies in places that have a little character.
Leading to this week’s question: What’s your favorite old movie house in Rhode Island?
[Blogger’s note: Starting next week, Half Shell will be burrowing in the sands of Lambert’s Cove, enjoying a Monday-to-Monday beach rental on the Vineyard, which means…look for our return on Tuesday, Aug. 23, when we’ll be rocking some serious surfer tan and clam belly. Until then…]
*Technically, a log ride, not a roller coaster, but it belongs in the discussion of lamented amusement park rides.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Jhumpa's take
To write the Rhode Island entry in the book, “State By State: A Panoramic Portrait of America,” featuring 50 writers opining on 50 states, editors chose Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who grew up in Kingston. The book itself is a fascinating kaleidoscope of Americana. Essays are wildly inconsistent in tone and presentation, which is part of the appeal. Like the old joke about the four blind men touching different parts of an elephant and describing something other than what it is, these authors don’t capture sense of place comprehensively, but by not even trying to go for the whole elephant, collectively they do convey a sense of what is peculiar.
(Some partnerships are odd. Massachusetts gets native son, John Hodgman, best known for his appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and TV commercials for Macintosh computers. Now a transplanted New Yorker, Hodgman’s Bay State rambling seems to miss its mark: “I guess that I am from Massachusetts. But I never felt at home there, and, really, no one ever does.” Yeah, well. No. Having lived there myself, and having shared conversations with countless residents from the Cape and the Islands to Boston to the Berkshires over the years, I’m fairly confident in saying that many feel very much at home in Massachusetts and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Hodgman does allude to the state’s sports mania, which he doesn’t share…a point emphasized by the error in the following sentence: “The local sports teams – which I am told are the Baseball Red Sox, the Football Patriots, the Basketball Celtics, the Hockey Bears, and of course the famous Boston Lobsters of the World Team Tennis League – are an obsession.” Yeah, well. No. Lobster sarcasm aside, it’s the Hockey Bruins. Your Stanley Cup champion Hockey Bruins. The Bears are a football team that plays in Chicago.)
Lahiri is a good choice to represent Rhode Island, even though her short stories and novels often draw upon her autobiographical experiences of feeling alienated in the culture she grew up in. After some cursory geography and history, she moves into memoir, sharing details about her upbringing in “a place originally called Little Rest.” She’s at her best when engaging in the tactile sensations of the place, as in this paragraph:
Another wonderful section follows in which Lahiri contrasts her father’s contentment about living in Rhode Island with her mother’s agitation…including a sad passage about her mother getting racist notes and anonymous hate mail while teaching at a South County elementary school. The anecdotes balance the state’s charms with its under-the-surface ugliness, but Lahiri resists the temptation to catalog the litany of little injustices that occur here. So I’ll return to the section on her father, because I think she gets at what makes Rhode Island an appealing place to live for many of us who choose to do so:
Two quibbles: Throughout the article, Lahiri refers to “Dell’s” – instead of Del’s – lemonade. And she mentions the “Ghiorse Beach Factor,” which was actually just the “Ghiorse Factor,” a meteorologist’s numerical shorthand for describing the inherent beauty of any particular day, well known to all Rhode Islanders. After noticing Hodgman’s “Hockey Bears,” and these two typos in the only two pieces I’ve read so far, I have an idea. Next time, how about 50 editors from 50 states?
What makes Rhode Island unique as a state?
(Some partnerships are odd. Massachusetts gets native son, John Hodgman, best known for his appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and TV commercials for Macintosh computers. Now a transplanted New Yorker, Hodgman’s Bay State rambling seems to miss its mark: “I guess that I am from Massachusetts. But I never felt at home there, and, really, no one ever does.” Yeah, well. No. Having lived there myself, and having shared conversations with countless residents from the Cape and the Islands to Boston to the Berkshires over the years, I’m fairly confident in saying that many feel very much at home in Massachusetts and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Hodgman does allude to the state’s sports mania, which he doesn’t share…a point emphasized by the error in the following sentence: “The local sports teams – which I am told are the Baseball Red Sox, the Football Patriots, the Basketball Celtics, the Hockey Bears, and of course the famous Boston Lobsters of the World Team Tennis League – are an obsession.” Yeah, well. No. Lobster sarcasm aside, it’s the Hockey Bruins. Your Stanley Cup champion Hockey Bruins. The Bears are a football team that plays in Chicago.)
Lahiri is a good choice to represent Rhode Island, even though her short stories and novels often draw upon her autobiographical experiences of feeling alienated in the culture she grew up in. After some cursory geography and history, she moves into memoir, sharing details about her upbringing in “a place originally called Little Rest.” She’s at her best when engaging in the tactile sensations of the place, as in this paragraph:
The Atlantic I grew up with lacks the color and warmth of the Caribbean, the grandeur of the Pacific, the romance of the Mediterranean. It is generally cold, and full of rust-colored seaweed. Still, I prefer it. The waters of Rhode Island, as much a part of the state’s character, if not more, as the land, never asked us questions, never raised a brow. Thanks to its very lack of welcome, its unwavering indifference, the ocean always made me feel accepted, and to my dying day, the seaside is the only place where I can feel truly and recklessly happy.
Another wonderful section follows in which Lahiri contrasts her father’s contentment about living in Rhode Island with her mother’s agitation…including a sad passage about her mother getting racist notes and anonymous hate mail while teaching at a South County elementary school. The anecdotes balance the state’s charms with its under-the-surface ugliness, but Lahiri resists the temptation to catalog the litany of little injustices that occur here. So I’ll return to the section on her father, because I think she gets at what makes Rhode Island an appealing place to live for many of us who choose to do so:
My father, a global traveler, considers Rhode Island paradise. For nearly four decades he has dedicated himself there to a job he loves, rising through the ranks in the library’s cataloging department to become its head. But in addition to the job, he loves the place. He loves that it is quiet, and moderate, and is, in the great scheme of things, uneventful.
Two quibbles: Throughout the article, Lahiri refers to “Dell’s” – instead of Del’s – lemonade. And she mentions the “Ghiorse Beach Factor,” which was actually just the “Ghiorse Factor,” a meteorologist’s numerical shorthand for describing the inherent beauty of any particular day, well known to all Rhode Islanders. After noticing Hodgman’s “Hockey Bears,” and these two typos in the only two pieces I’ve read so far, I have an idea. Next time, how about 50 editors from 50 states?
What makes Rhode Island unique as a state?
Monday, July 25, 2011
Art, Unanchored
There’s a big boat hanging out in Newport this summer that describes itself as a “floating art gallery.” Dubbed Sea Fair, the world’s first mobile mega-yacht art gallery chose Newport as its Summer Hang, docking at the Newport Shipyard, where owners hoped to attract lovers of art and fancy boats to its 228-foot-long luxury digs.
The plan was to interest tourists in viewing three decks worth of sculpture, glass, jewelry, fine furniture and contemporary photography and painting, while also giving them a look-see at a handful of masterworks by the likes of Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Most of the works range in price from $3,000 to $35,000. There’s enough space leftover for two outdoor bars, an international coffee bar, an open-air bistro and a glass-walled restaurant. But after a flurry of early interest this summer in Newport, the fourth largest privately owned yacht in the U.S. has pulled anchor on the idea for a few weeks, citing vendor disappointment at the relative lack of daily patronage.
The yacht plans a trip to Martha’s Vineyard later this month and a return engagement in Newport during the lead-up to Labor Day.
Organizers thought the Newport destination made sense, given the art yacht’s popularity in Sarasota earlier in the season. But last year’s yellow lobster drew a bigger crowd to Newport. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Tough economy everywhere – especially here in Rhody. Newport skews the data somewhat, and there are plenty of rich folks zooming around these parts in July and August, but the state on the whole is a collective of proud, working-class folks with ties to family traditions and the old world (Ireland, Portugal, Italy) that values a bargain and distrusts anything that comes with too many dollar signs – unless it’s the lottery.
We are home to the nation’s first bargain stores and family restaurants that live by the credo of selling big portions for cheap. We make art but rarely buy it. And during our glorious summers, we have a million ways to get on a boat or on the water without paying admission or feeling as if we’re underdressed.
Still, the under-whelming support for the art yacht has given me an idea for a classified advertisement.
WANTED: DINGHY
(Or reasonable rowboat facsimile, such as a whaleboat, dory, lifeboat or currach. Perhaps even a raft. For purposes of artistic experiment.)
Bottom Feeder, a.k.a. Art Dinghy on the Half Shell, would be the world’s first rowboat art gallery. Small enough to dock anywhere on the Rhode Island coast, the boat needs to have enough room for the rower, one patron and one work of art. Maiden voyage to launch with a viewing of “Dogs Playing Poker.” Refreshments will be served at our outdoor coffee thermos and flask of rotating spirits.
Outside of traditional galleries and festivals, where would you like to see art in Rhode Island?
The plan was to interest tourists in viewing three decks worth of sculpture, glass, jewelry, fine furniture and contemporary photography and painting, while also giving them a look-see at a handful of masterworks by the likes of Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Most of the works range in price from $3,000 to $35,000. There’s enough space leftover for two outdoor bars, an international coffee bar, an open-air bistro and a glass-walled restaurant. But after a flurry of early interest this summer in Newport, the fourth largest privately owned yacht in the U.S. has pulled anchor on the idea for a few weeks, citing vendor disappointment at the relative lack of daily patronage.
The yacht plans a trip to Martha’s Vineyard later this month and a return engagement in Newport during the lead-up to Labor Day.
Organizers thought the Newport destination made sense, given the art yacht’s popularity in Sarasota earlier in the season. But last year’s yellow lobster drew a bigger crowd to Newport. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Tough economy everywhere – especially here in Rhody. Newport skews the data somewhat, and there are plenty of rich folks zooming around these parts in July and August, but the state on the whole is a collective of proud, working-class folks with ties to family traditions and the old world (Ireland, Portugal, Italy) that values a bargain and distrusts anything that comes with too many dollar signs – unless it’s the lottery.
We are home to the nation’s first bargain stores and family restaurants that live by the credo of selling big portions for cheap. We make art but rarely buy it. And during our glorious summers, we have a million ways to get on a boat or on the water without paying admission or feeling as if we’re underdressed.
Still, the under-whelming support for the art yacht has given me an idea for a classified advertisement.
WANTED: DINGHY
(Or reasonable rowboat facsimile, such as a whaleboat, dory, lifeboat or currach. Perhaps even a raft. For purposes of artistic experiment.)
Bottom Feeder, a.k.a. Art Dinghy on the Half Shell, would be the world’s first rowboat art gallery. Small enough to dock anywhere on the Rhode Island coast, the boat needs to have enough room for the rower, one patron and one work of art. Maiden voyage to launch with a viewing of “Dogs Playing Poker.” Refreshments will be served at our outdoor coffee thermos and flask of rotating spirits.
Outside of traditional galleries and festivals, where would you like to see art in Rhode Island?
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Sunny Side of the Tweet
A good friend once described me as a “social media Quaker.” Another called me a “social media snob.” Both may be right. I don’t deny the pervasive influence or potential benefit of the social media revolution, but I’ve mostly chosen not to join the party, remaining friendless on Facebook, having exactly one tweet to my name (a crude and snarky post that may end up being my Twittertaph) and only signing up on LinkedIn to try to locate someone I couldn’t find any other way. Even though, working for a newspaper, there’s a certain amount of pressure to stay plugged in to everything, everywhere, at all times, I resist the impulse personally for reasons of health and sanity, and professionally because I think in today’s culture the intensity of 24-7 cyber-immersion results in communication that is skewed to being almost entirely reactive rather than reflective. And what’s missing from the debate in the political arena, on the airwaves and on Internet comment boards, where so many of the participants prefer to act like monkeys throwing feces at one another, is the measured, reasoned and thoughtful approach to argument and analysis that can result in positive progress. Social media is a ceaseless echo chamber. Some of us just need more distance, space, quiet and time to think through problems, consider solutions, become inspired, stoke our imagination, create, invent or discover what's meaningful and valuable in our lives.
Another friend and I once had an idea – that we’ll never follow through on, so I’ll give it up to the universe – for a T-shirt company to compete with Twitter. We’d wear a different shirt every day, each bearing a new message. Some examples:
HAD A BAGEL TODAY.
LESS FACEBOOK. MORE FRESH AIR.
WHAT WOULD JESUS GOOGLE?
That kind of thing.
In the meantime, for those who are interested, the most popular Rhode Islander in the Twitterverse is Audrey McClelland, a working mom, writer and former fashion executive, who “vlogs” (video blogs) daily fashion advice. The last time I checked, which was also the first time I checked, she had 16,906 followers, ranking No. 1 overall in the Ocean State, ahead of such members of the Rhody Twitterati as Gov. Lincoln Chafee (No. 29), Rhode Island Monthly Bride (No. 93) and Rhode Island Weather Alerts (No. 98).
What Rhode Islander would you most like to follow on Twitter?
Another friend and I once had an idea – that we’ll never follow through on, so I’ll give it up to the universe – for a T-shirt company to compete with Twitter. We’d wear a different shirt every day, each bearing a new message. Some examples:
HAD A BAGEL TODAY.
LESS FACEBOOK. MORE FRESH AIR.
WHAT WOULD JESUS GOOGLE?
That kind of thing.
In the meantime, for those who are interested, the most popular Rhode Islander in the Twitterverse is Audrey McClelland, a working mom, writer and former fashion executive, who “vlogs” (video blogs) daily fashion advice. The last time I checked, which was also the first time I checked, she had 16,906 followers, ranking No. 1 overall in the Ocean State, ahead of such members of the Rhody Twitterati as Gov. Lincoln Chafee (No. 29), Rhode Island Monthly Bride (No. 93) and Rhode Island Weather Alerts (No. 98).
What Rhode Islander would you most like to follow on Twitter?
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