Vermont versus New Hampshire

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New England is made up of six smallish states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

The territory is small, but the terrain varies greatly, and the weather varies from state to state: Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine get snow in October and November sometimes.

There are other subtle differences too.  I swear, when Partner and I drive over the border from Rhode Island into Connecticut, I can see a difference: Connecticut is more rural, and woodsier, and wetter. What happened? Did Rhode Island farmers do something that Connecticut farmers didn’t do? Or is it just my colorful imagination?

Maine is different from the rest of the New England states too. Portland aspires to be a hipster / cosmopolitan destination, but the state itself is – as Parter said recently – “Tennessee North.” It’s visibly poor and rural. No wonder it elects Republican senators to Congress.

And then there are Vermont and New Hampshire.

Vermont feels liberal and free. I love it there. I love the breeziness of Burlington, and the wind off Lake Champlain. I loved the time we spent in Bennington. I loved Rutland.

New Hampshire? Meh. It’s dull and conservative.

When you drive north into Vermont, it feels as if you’ve entered a different country. (It was a different country, for a couple of years there.) When you pass from Massachusetts to New Hampshire, it feels like – hmm – like you’ve never left Massachusetts. You really haven’t gone anywhere.

Vermont is different. Vermont is independent. It’s strange, and funny, and determined to be so.

New Hampshire is dull and New Englandish. It’s got all the things you expect it to have.

Vermont is independent and hippyish. It wants to be different. It has all the things that New Hampshire has – mountains and lakes and forests – but they’re more interesting, somehow.

Kids: if you have a choice between New Hampshire and Vermont, visit Vermont. Eat some ice cream. Have some cheese.

And tell the Vermonters that I sent you.

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Becoming a Rhode Islander

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I came to Rhode Island from Washington state thirty-five years ago, in August 1978. There were some obvious differences. Rhode Island is a tiny provincial state with a long history; Washington is a large diverse state with a much briefer history.

It took me a long time – almost until the present day – to figure out the subtler differences between the two.

I was puzzled (at first) by people who kept asking me if I was “one of the Rhode Island Williamses.” I had no idea what this meant. I finally realized they were asking if I was descended from Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island colony in 1636. I am not one of his descendants, so far as I know. But I wasn’t here more than a year or so before I became acquainted with someone who was. See? The Roger Williams family is still here. Everyone's still here. People here stick around.

They seem to like it here.

They like it so much, in fact, that a lot of people never cross the state line. I saw a cute bumper sticker in Frog & Toad the other day: THIS CAR NEVER LEAVES RHODE ISLAND.  (That’s not a joke, for a lot of people.) The Rhode Island border is a little permeable here and there – into Attleboro, Mass. in the northeast, and into Seekonk, Mass. in the east, and maybe just a little into Stonington, Conn. in the southwest – but it is generally a very watertight little enclosure, in which everyone bounces around, but which no one ever really leaves.

Which leads to the next thing: everyone knows everyone here. 

In Washington, you know the people in your community, or at least a few of them. In Rhode Island, you know everyone. Of course you do. You keep running into the same people over and over again. How can you not know everyone?

But Rhode Island is a very private club. It takes a while before you’ve really been accepted.

Now I’ve been here for more than thirty-five glorious years. People smile and wave at me in the street. I say hello to everyone, and they say hello back, because they know: deliverymen, cashiers, business owners. Even one of the homeless people downtown greeted me the other day with casual familiarity.

I’m a local, at last. A real Rhode Islander.

And it only took thirty-five years!

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H. P. Lovecraft

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As soon as I moved to Rhode Island, I discovered Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He was a local author, who died back in 1937; he wrote fantasy and horror stories and novels, often with Rhode Island / New England settings. Sometimes he used real locations (there are a couple of stories set in Providence); in other stories, he used New England settings, but gave them assumed names. (If you’re a follower of the Batman saga, and the “Arkham Sanitarium” means anything to you, you should know that Arkham was Lovecraft’s alias for Salem, Massachusetts – “witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham.”

In Lovecraft’s story “The Haunter of the Dark,” a man on the East Side of Providence (where I live) sees an oddly-shaped building on Federal Hill in the distance. He walks over to see it – and awful things ensue.

In “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” a New Englander takes a bus to a little Massachusetts coastal town and finds that its inhabitants are not quite human.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” some professors from Miskatonic University (whose campus is, of course, in witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham) seek out a horrible invisible presence somewhere in central/western Massachusetts.

Lovecraft believed in something he called “cosmicism.” In brief: the universe is utterly incomprehensible to human beings, and is in fact mostly inimical to them. Almost all of his stories show human beings as foolish pawns, always on the verge of total destruction.

My favorite Lovecraft stories involve the Great Old Ones. They’re kind of hard to explain, because they’re supposed to be mysterious, but anyway: the Great Old Ones are extra-dimensional beings lingering right off to one side of our reality. They are very powerful, and they are just waiting to get back into our world. One is Cthulhu, a gigantic horrible octopoid god-monster; another is Yog-Sothoth, a mass of glowing lights. There are many others, like Hastur and Nyarlathotep and Azathoth (who “blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity”). It’s only a matter of time before they reassert themselves here, and once they do – that’s all, folks.

So, kids, repeat after me, before it’s too late:

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

(It probably won’t help, but it couldn’t hurt.)

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Salty Brine

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I came to Rhode Island in 1978, so I missed the early career of Salty Brine. He was a radio / TV personality with a deep jolly voice, who hosted a children’s show called “Salty’s Shack.” (He portrayed a sea captain, naturally.) By the time I got to Rhode Island, he was best known for reading the school closures on the radio when it snowed. There’s a small region in northwestern Rhode Island, the Foster/Glocester area (pronounced "Fosta/Glosta"), very underpopulated, a bit more elevated than the rest of the state, which gets more snow than the rest of the state; they close school when no one else does.

And Salty would boom: “NO SCHOOL FOSTA GLOSTA!”

And children throughout Rhode Island (even those who didn’t live in the Foster / Glocester school districts) would cheer.

Salty Brine, the children’s host, the radio personality, was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1979.

Does that tell you something?

They even named a beach after him: “Salty Brine State Beach,” in Galilee.

We had local celebrities when and where I was growing up. I remember Rusty Nails the clown, who was on Portland television in the 1960s; if you watch “The Simpsons,” you’ll see a version of him as Krusty the Clown (Matt Groening, the creator of the show, grew up in the area at the same time as me).

But I do believe that nowhere are those local celebrities as beloved as Salty Brine is beloved here.

Why?

Rhode Island is small. We treasure our own. And if they’re successful (and known beyond the borders of this small state), we treasure them even more.

And I am told by people of my age from Massachusetts that they used to love Salty Brine, beamed in from Providence, back in the 1960s and 1970s.

So Salty Brine is a legend, in Rhode Island, and even outside its borders.

You see? You don’t need to reach far in life. You just need to be well-known in your little neighborhood. If you manage that, all kinds of things can happen.

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Geese gone wild

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When it rains, the geese take over the greenspace near the Providence River. There are usually at least a couple dozen of them – big fat waddlers, with beautiful light-and-dark markings. I took this photo yesterday morning:

Lots of good eatin’ there! But wild geese are tough. My sister and brother-in-law had some wild geese fly over their farm back in the 1970s, and shot a few, and Susan prepared one for Thanksgiving, and – well, we couldn’t even chew it. Wild geese get a lot of exercise.

And geese are rumored to be foul-tempered. I’m always a little timid when they’re standing in front of me on the sidewalk; I never know when I’m gonna get stampeded and squawked at. They’re smaller than me, individually, but they outnumber me. They could swarm me.

And then there are the poops. Kids, there is nothing in the world quite so vile-looking as a goose poop. It’s a big green slimy-looking thing about the size of a small cigar. And geese poop a lot. (My mother always used the expression “go like a goose.” Evidently she knew what she was talking about.)

But I like to watch them. The other day, I saw two of them pecking at one another, running around aimlessly in a circle and honking.

Get it? Wild goose chase.

Ha ha.

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The wildflowers of downtown Providence, Rhode Island

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A local photographer has taken some lovely photos of plants and flowers that occupy the property formerly occupied by I-195 in Providence (which, for the past two years or so, has been a vast green space in the very middle of the city).

I walk through that green space every day. I rejoice in it. I love my friend Oma’s comment recently: “Here in England it's not so important to drive as over there [in the USA]. In your neighbourhood it looks similar. As long as you can get to the shops, you can walk along the sidewalks and look at the flowers or the weeds.”

Notice what she said: “the flowers or the weeds.”

She and I feel the same way: weeds are lovely too. She sent me a lovely book about weeds a while back, and it was after my own heart.

Here are some of my own photos of weeds / wildflowers in the neighborhood. They’re not as good as they might be, but oh well, I’m a terrible photographer, who cares?:

CHICORY (Cichorium intybus). Beautiful blue/purple flowers. This is a picture of a lovely stand of them very near the Point Street Bridge. The roots are roasted and ground and mixed with coffee; I’ve had coffee with chicory, and it’s delicious.

BUTTER AND EGGS (Linaria vulgaris). A beautiful roadside wildflower. Not useful for anything that I know of. Also called “toadflax.” I like the name “butter and eggs” better

MILKWEED (Asclepias sp.). I mistakenly told a coworker recently that this was “Joe Pye Weed,” which is horribly wrong. The flowers are very fragrant, and the plants are attractive, and the seeds are big cloudy masses of fluff.

RABBIT’S FOOT CLOVER (Trifolium arvense). I only identified this one a few weeks ago. It’s obviously a clover, but fuzzier, and very cute. This one was huge until it was cut down by the city, but it began to come back within days. You can’t kill clover.

BIRDSFOOT TREFOIL (Lotus corniculatus). Obviously a legume, with beautiful yellow pea-like blossoms. The whole field was golden with these, until they were cut down. They too came back within days.

JAPANESE KNOTWEED (Fallopia japonica). A terrible invasive species from Asia. But it has lovely foliage and nice flowers.

DEADLY NIGHTSHADE (Atropa belladonna). A relative of the tomato. Look at this pretty little lady, with pretty purple blossoms! But she’s terribly poisonous. Notice the cute little green mini-tomato berries; they’ll be a delicious-looking red later in the season. Just don’t eat them, okay?

QUEEN ANNE’S LACE (Daucus carota). The wild carrot. This is a sweet little flower that also grew very healthily where I was born, back in southwest Washington. This is a very small specimen, but nice; I’m always glad to see it.

These are all just as beautiful as any garden flowers. More so, really, because they don’t rely on gardeners to take care of them.

They take care of themselves.

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Skunk hour

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The Providence area is full of wildlife. I wrote about fisher cats not long ago, nasty weaselly things prowling down by the riverside. Foxes are being seen this summer all over the East Side (though I haven’t seen one yet, and I would love to, because I think they’re cute). Bunnies are everywhere. Ditto big ugly garbage-eating raccoons. Ditto possums, one of which hissed at me a few years ago when I passed it on the street.

And then there are skunks.

They’re always smaller than I think they’re going to be, like kittens. Their colors are lovely. But they’re alarming, for obvious reasons, or maybe just for one very obvious reason.

I can usually smell them when they’re in the neighborhood. Either I’m especially sensitive to their scent, or my rural upbringing makes me more aware of them. (Our old family dog back in the 1960s got sprayed more than once, and I can still hear him whining and crying in my mind.)

I was coming out of the local market one recent evening. It’s only about two blocks away from our apartment, and I have my choice of two routes home: a dull route that goes straight down the avenue, and another much more interesting sidewalk that winds up the hillside and is surrounded by shrubbery. I usually choose the winding sidewalk for the sake of aesthetics (even though I know that robbers and muggers are probably waiting among the shrubs to jump me), and so I did the other night.

But a young skinny guy was coming down the walk toward me, jabbering at me. I thought (charitably) that he was speaking on his Bluetooth, but then he approached me with an earnest look on his face. “There’s a skunk up there!” he exclaimed. “At the top of the path! He’s looking very – territorial!”

“Which way was he facing?” I said. “Toward you, or away from you?”

“Toward me,” he said. “But he wasn’t moving, and he had a determined look on his face.”

That was enough for me. I thanked Mr. Skinny Bicycle for saving me from a fate worse than death, and went home via the dull safe route.

Here are the last four stanzas of Robert Lowell’s great poem, “Skunk Hour”:

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

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Pirate gardens

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There used to be a big nonsensical loop of interstate highway through the middle of downtown Providence. Some years ago, they rerouted the highway more sensibly, and tore down the old highway (which ran through some really prime downtown real estate). It’s mostly just green now: grass, and weeds, and wildflowers, and now and then (especially after a good heavy rain) huge angry geese.

When Boston redeveloped after the Big Dig, they left a nice strip of green through the heart of the city, and it’s a beautiful long narrow park snaking through the downtown area.

Providence won’t be that smart, I fear. I’m sure developers are already sparring for the land. But, for now, it’s mostly open space.

As I walk down Wickenden Street toward the Point Street Bridge, I cross a corner of this open space. And this is what I encountered about a month ago:

Some local person – “Pip” – had claimed a few square feet of it, to grow sunflowers and cosmos and various other charming odds and ends.

Within a week or so, some other people had joined Pip and made their own tiny garden beside his own.

I wanted to see this pirate enterprise prosper. I wanted to see ten or twenty more little pirate gardens spring up by Pip’s garden.

But gardening is hard. Weeds and wildflowers can grow all by themselves without care; garden flowers need water and cultivation. Back about a week or so ago, things were getting pretty dry down there, and Pip’s garden was suffering

No one ever said that piracy was an easy life.

But Pip learned his lesson. It’s been a pretty hot summer, and Pip has been keeping everything watered nicely since then. The sunflower especially is very cute (as you can see).

I’d like to see more of this. I’d like to see more people reclaiming unused land, in vacant lots and by the roadsides, for flowers and whatever they wish. I’ve tried scattering seeds and planting things in odd places myself, but nothing ever seems to come of my attempts. (I should stick to wildflowers, I suppose.)

Pip’s kind of piracy is the kind of piracy I can really support.

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Three good things: refrigerator, DOMA, Proposition 8

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My poor heart can’t stand it. Three good things happened in one day!

First of all: our old feeble refrigerator got replaced. I wrote a mild email to our landlords two nights ago about how the food in our freezer didn’t seem to be freezing properly, and the landlords replaced the fridge the very next day! And it’s lovely, and they’re lovely people over at the landlord’s office, and we love them and thank them.

Also: the lovely folks in the Supreme Court – five of them, anyway – believe that they should not overturn the California Supreme Court’s rejection of Proposition 8, and as a result, gay marriage is once again legal in the great state of California (as of July 25, 2013, at any rate).

This is nothing to me really, because I’m not a citizen of California. I’m delighted, however, for the gay people who married in California while it was legal, and who are legal again; I’m also delighted for the other gay Californians who can now line up for marriage licenses. And I’m delighted to see one more state added to the illustrious roster of states (including Little Rhody) which have legalized gay marriage.

The third good thing that happened today was this: DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act – was found, in essence, unconstitutional.

This is key.

Partner and I have long debated the issue of marriage. We’ve lived together for fourteen years, which makes us married in the eyes of any deity who matters. Rhode Island legalized gay marriage a few months ago – hooray! But would it be of any advantage to us to get married? Not if the federal government doesn’t recognize it. It would have no tax advantages, or estate advantages.

But now, after the Supreme Court’s snappy 5-4 decision, it’s a different story.

Do I hear wedding bells?

Or is it just our new (and more efficient) refrigerator humming?

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For the first day of summer 2013: A taste of winter

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I like to commemorate special days, and the first day of summer – today, by the calendar – is a special day.

I’ve lived in Rhode Island for almost thirty-five years, but I – a child of the cool foggy Pacific Northwest – still haven’t accustomed myself to the steamy uncomfortable summers here. I suffer (mostly in silence) for about two months, from late June to late August, while we fluctuate between hot / warm / humid / stormy / insufferable.

So here are some photos from last winter’s snow.

I hope you find them refreshing.

See you next January, when the world is cool and quiet again.

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Gay marriage in Rhode Island

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Wonderful news! The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has become the tenth state of the Union to legalize gay marriage!

It’s a great day. It’s not a universally great day, of course; the federal government still doesn’t recognize gay marriage, which means we’re still in the turbulent state-by-state era in which interracial couples used to live. (Imagine: it used to be illegal for black people to marry white people, and states – well, hmm, Southern states – could still forbid it. Imagine!)

Will Partner and I marry? I don’t know. Largely it will depend on whether the pros outweigh the cons. Will it have tax advantages? Maybe yes, maybe no. Will it guarantee us the right to visit one another in the hospital when we’re sick? Almost certainly yes. (This is a big plus, because we’re both getting older.) What about the rights to inheritance, and to determine what happens when either of us passes away? (Another big plus, and I don’t need to remind you once again that we’re getting older.) And if it isn't confirmed by Federal law, the whole thing can still be thrown out the window.

But don't worry. If we decide to get married, I’ll be sure to announce it well in advance.

And I warn you that I expect very lavish wedding gifts.

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Fisher cats

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Fisher cats are Mustelidae, like weasels and minks. They are the size of small dogs, and they have sharp vicious teeth. They are loners except in the spring, when they form packs.

And they are, apparently, all over Rhode Island.

The east side of Providence is now on Fisher Cat Alert. Here’s an email I received from a local source:

A neighbor just told me that there was a small pack of Fisher Cats out on our street (Everett Avenue) last night around 10 pm. They hissed at her. Also she saw a larger pack of them outside Waterman Grille a few nights ago. The manager has to go out to get them so people could get to their cars. She told me she heard that a woman walking her dog after dark on the blvd recently was approached by the pack and when they approached her dog she kicked at them. She ended up getting her foot mangled. I don't know if the police are aware of this but these animals are dangerous to small pets and their owners.

Before now, I was wary of skunks (which you can smell a mile away), and possums (one hissed at me once, a few years ago, from a neighbor’s doorstep, in the twilight), and raccoons.

But fisher cats?

What next? Siberian tigers?

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Carpet bugle

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Here in New England, spring comes in with a roar. Everything seems to bloom at once, in the space of a week or two: the daffodils, the tulips, the forsythia, the cherry trees, the magnolias.

Then there are the quieter flowers, buried in the grass. Crocus are done by now, of course. Dandelions are back, blooming as brightly as they do in July. I saw my first violet about two weeks ago. Catmint is blooming from cracks in the sidewalk only a few blocks away.

And just yesterday evening, I spotted one of my favorites: the carpet bugle.

Don’t you just love that name?

Carpet bugle is a half-weed half-garden plant. It’s springy and green, and bounces when you tread on it like – well, like a thick carpet. It raises little green flowering heads, studded with little purple flowers. It spreads like mad and creates its own landscaping, and its combination of dull green and soft purple is very nice.

Its Latin name, Ajuga, is uninformative, but its English name is perfect. It spreads like a carpet, and the flowers are little violet bugles.

It requires no care: it simply grows. Our courtyard is full of it, and violets.

And now we’re ready for summer.

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Bears of the USA

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Bears are back in New England!

 

 

A bear was sighted in North Kingstown, Rhode Island only a few days ago. And there have been bears sighted on Cape Cod too. (Which is interesting, because they’d either have to clamber over one of the two bridges to the Cape, or ride on top of a vehicle to get there. Or swim. Or ride a floating log across the Cape Cod Canal. Or commandeer someone’s Humvee. Nothing’s impossible.)

 

 

Well, it’s like the Middle Ages around here.  The bear here in Rhode Island knocked over a chicken coop and made off with one of the chickens!

 

 

Our stuffed polar bear, Carbuncle, has his own thoughts on the subject. (Carbuncle, you might recall, won the Financial Times crossword puzzle contest about a year ago. This is a picture of him wandering the neighborhood last winter):

 

 

 

 

First of all: Carbuncle is glad that the bears are back. He’s less lonely now.

 

 

Second: Carbuncle wonders what kind of bears are back. Polar bears? Probably not. Ah well. Less competition for those tasty seals:

 

 

 

 

Also: will this mean less pick-a-nick baskets for Carbuncle to steal from friends and neighbors?

 

 

I direct you to the following cartoon for more information:

 

 

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Rhode Island food; or, What the hell is a Wimpy Skippy?

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I was meditating in the third-floor kitchen at the office the other day, staring out the window, when a refrigerator magnet caught my eye: CASERTA PIZZERIA. ORIGINATOR OF THE WIMPY SKIPPY.

 

 

Oh my God. I’d forgotten all about the Wimpy Skippy.

 

 

Now, tell me again: what the hell is a Wimpy Skippy?

 

 

Simple: it’s a spinach calzone with mozzarella, pepperoni, and black olives. Here’s the story of the W. S., told in Rhode Islandese by one of Da Guyz up at Caserta’s:

 

 

 

 

Listen: my local bakery makes spinach pies with mozzarella and pepperoni. So I don’t have to go traipsing up to Federal Hill to get one of theirs.

 

 

How about an Awful Awful? That was a Newport Creamery item: a giant milkshake, “awful big, awful good.” Their advertising slogan for it was the simplest possible phrase: “It’s a drink!” And best of all: if you drink three, you get one free.

 

 

And finally: the Jimmie Gimme. It’s an egg-and-ham sandwich (basically an Egg McMuffin) served at the Modern Diner in Pawtucket. It’s a little on the greasy side.

 

 

And don’t even get me started about New York System hot wieners. You can read all about them at this link.

 

 

(Why are we so obsessed with food? I’ve asked this question before, but I still don’t understand. Food’s necessary to our survival, but then again, so are air and water. We don’t talk about air all day long, or water. Why do we talk about food, and write books about it, and argue about it incessantly?)

 

 

(Heaven only knows.)

 

 

(Now let’s go downcity and get a Haven Brothers hot dog.)

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Buzzards

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I walk to work most days – well, part of the way, anyway.  On the way, I cross the Point Street Bridge, which crosses the Providence River just as it flows out into Narragansett Bay.

 

 

A few weeks ago, I was walking across the bridge, observing the usual bird population: seagulls, ducks, cormorants.

 

 

Then, out of a bush in front of me, a huge bird rose. It flapped its wings lazily and flew away, its ass toward me, obviously unconcerned about me.

 

 

It was much bigger than a gull or a duck or a goose. Maybe a heron or a stork? They’re not uncommon here, except you don’t see them much in the winter.

 

 

But the mystery bird glanced back at me as it soared away, and its long beak was crooked.

 

 

Aha. A vulture, or a buzzard.

 

 

They also are not unknown here. There are communities that are plagued by them: they’re noisy and messy, and they eat garbage, and they crap garbage.

 

 

And in our neighborhood!

 

 

What is this, a Warner Brothers cartoon?

 

 

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Eagles eating seagulls; or, the Circle of Life

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Nature is fun, isn’t it, kids? And so lovely! You’ve got your bunnies, and pretty flowers, and dear little deer prancing through the woods.

 

 

Also you’ve got animals eating one another.

 

 

From a recent Sierra Club email:

 

 

This Sunday morning we'll be going to Swan Point Cemetery on the East Side of Providence for our "Eagles Eating Seagulls" outing. Swan Point is one of the best birding spots in Rhode Island and along with our regular winter feathered friends, we could be fortunate to see some rare finches that have come into the area this winter and hopefully the bald eagles that regularly come down to hunt along the Seekonk River. We are lucky to have locally renowned environmentalist Greg Gerritt to lead the outing.

 

 

Yes, we will be lucky to have Greg Gerritt to lead the outing. Luckier than a few seagulls I can think of.

 

 

Now, mind you, the Swan Point Cemetery is actually very lovely; it’s very old, and looks out over the Seekonk River. But there’s something peculiarly ironic about going to a cemetery to watch bald eagles rend and devour seagulls.

 

 

I never liked seagulls much. They’re big and fat, generally – they eat garbage, and seem to thrive on it – and are entirely appetite-driven. Also, they seem mentally challenged at times. More than once I’ve seen them perch near a person sitting on the ground and sneak up on them, as if they’re going to mess them up and take their lunch.

 

 

They are menaces in outdoor restaurants, especially in Rhode Island, especially in summertime; they land on your table and stare at your food.

 

 

But they don’t deserve to be ripped up by bald eagles, American national bird or not.

 

 

I’m thinking about going vegetarian. How about you?

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The Rhode Island accent and the Pacific Northwest accent

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I came to Rhode Island thirty-four years ago, and the accent baffled me for a long time. Then I understood it. Then I tried to imitate it.

 

 

Now, decades later, I can almost manage it.

 

 

It took me years to master the pronunciation of “Worcester.” It’s WUH-stah, with a funny breathy sound in the middle.  I said WOO-stah for a long time, and everyone laughed at me.

 

 

“Sure” is easy: SHOO-wah. I say it all the time; it’s my best Rhode Island word. It baffles the Brown students who work for me; they've never heard anything like it, and they’re sure I’m a local.

 

 

“Cheryl” is, of course, CHEV-vil. I kid you not.

 

 

It goes without saying that I came here from the Pacific Northwest with no accent at all.

 

 

Who am I kidding? I sounded like Huckleberry Finn when I first got here. When I go back to the Northwest, I listen to my relatives talk, and I think: Are we serious? Do we really sound like that? Did I ever really sound like that?

 

 

When my brother Leopold says my name – “Loren” – it comes out sounding something like “Lawwrn.”

 

 

I speak quickly and nervously. I probably always did. But quick and nervous is appropriate for the Rhode Island accent; a lot of people here speak too quickly for their own good. It’s okay if you only get a few words here and there; most of the time, it’s enough.  I have an acquaintance here who speaks so quickly, the words seem to overlap one another.

 

 

But, even after all this time, when I go back to the Northwest, or when I talk to someone from the Northwest, the local dialect starts coming back to me.

 

 

We have “groshry stores” instead of “grocery stores.” “Washington” is “Worshington.” It’s curtains for you if you say “O-ray-gone” instead of “Orrygun.”   “Idaho” is “EYE-dee-hoe.”

 

 

After I’d been in Rhode Island for a year, I called one of my banks in Worshington State to transfer some money. After a moment on the line, the bank lady said, sounding just like Ado Annie in “Oklahoma”: “YOO SHORE SOUND FAAR AWAAY. WHERE AARE YOOU?”

 

 

And, without thinking, I bellowed back: “AH’M IN RHUDE AAHLAND!”

 

 

Seriously.

 

 

Or, as we say here: Foh shooah!

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Greggs: the Rhode Island place to have Gentile food

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Rhode Island, as I’ve said before, is a good place to put on the feedbag. We have tons of places to eat, and a surprising number of them are good: in Providence alone, we have Hemenway’s, and Red Stripe, and Cassarino’s. We have our share of chains like Shula’s and Fleming’s, and they are very good also (Partner and I are very partial to Fleming’s).

 

 

But sometimes you don’t want to spent $100+ for a meal.

 

 

And, for those evenings, there is always Greggs.

 

 

Greggs is only found in Rhode Island. There are four locations: Providence, East Providence, North Kingstown, and Warwick. (I’ve never eaten at the Warwick location. Maybe someday.)

 

 

They serve Gentile food.

 

 

They have sandwiches, and pasta dishes, and salads. They have wraps. They have liver and onions, to which I am partial.

 

 

Most significantly of all, they have huge delectable-looking cakes, which rotate inside big glass enclosures. You can always see them out of the corner of your eye while you’re dining.

 

 

Usually we skip the cake. Sometimes, however – especially if we go on Monday or Tuesday, when they’re having a special – we are forced to have cake, because it’s part of the meal, and we’ve already paid for it. We take it home with us, and it’s always wonderful.

 

 

The clientele is funny: lots of older people, lots of big families. It’s not expensive. It’s comfortable, and the waiters get to know you after a while. One of the waiters at the North Main Street location (who has a wrap named after him) still knows me after all these years, and still brings me a martini without asking. I mean, really!

 

 

Rhode Island is a great place for food. But you can’t always eat steak or lobster. Sometimes you want something simple and comfortable.

 

 

It is for this that Greggs exists.

 

 

So let’s go to Greggs. I’ll have the liver and onions, and you can have whatever you want.

 

 

And afterward, maybe a piece of cake.

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The Electoral College

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The Rhode Island Secretary of State, Ralph Mollis, recently sent me the cutest email invitation, as follows:

 

 

Following the second-highest turnout in state history, our remarkable election year will officially end this Monday when we convene RI's Electoral College for the purpose of casting votes for president and vice president.

 

 

 

The historic ceremony will begin at noon when the Kentish Guards in colonial military garb will escort the state's four Presidential Electors and other dignitaries to the House Chamber, where the event will take place.

 

 

 

If you would like to attend the ceremony, please RSVP to elections@sos.ri.gov because seating in the House Chamber is limited. Capitol TV will also televise the ceremony live on Channel 15 on Cox Cable and Full Channel and Channel 34 on Verizon. In addition, we will set up TV monitors in the State Room to accommodate anyone who cannot be seated in the House Chamber.

 

 

 

State Rep.-elect Marvin L. Abney of Newport, Emily A. Maranjian of Providence, L. Susan Weiner of East Greenwich and Mark S. Weiner of East Greenwich have the honor of representing RI. By federal law, the state Democratic Party got to select the electors because Democrat Barack Obama won Rhode Island's popular vote.

 

 

 

This is sort of adorable, in the way that the Beefeaters in the Tower of London and the Swiss Guards at the Vatican are adorable. We’re a small state, so we like ceremonies; it’s easy for pretty much anyone in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to attend this, if he/she wants to. Notice the reference to “colonial military garb”: we’re one of the original thirteen colonies, right?

 

 

 

The Electoral College is a charming but unnecessary leftover from the early days of our Republic. But it needs to get lost. We need to elect our President and Vice-President by popular vote, nothing more, nothing less. Our history would be very different if we’d done this; there have been four elections (1824, 1876, 1888, and – surprise! 2000) when the popular vote went against the electoral vote.

 

 

 

There is an initiative running around among the states: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. In brief: states are declaring that they will give all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote (so long as enough other states sign onto the compact).

 

 

 

Sadly, the only states to sign onto this compact so far are progressive/liberal states in the Northeast and West.

 

 

 

The red states seem suspicious of this initiative. I’m not sure why.

 

 

 

Maybe they just love their Kentish Guards.

 

 

 

Kids: time to put away childish things. Let’s get rid of this relic, the Electoral College, once and for all.

 

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