The Smallening

On Monday mornings on my way to work, I listen to Scott McKay’s political commentary, which is just about the best thing about our local NPR station. Yesterday he pointed out how Rhode Island takes “small government” to the extreme, using the kind of numbers that still give me pause, even though I’ve been aware of them for years: that we have 155 separate pension systems, 77 fire departments, 36 school superintendants, and over 100 water systems (with only a handful of actual water sources). Almost every town has its own school system, along with its own board and its own teachers’ union. It’s always seemed to me that while Rhode Island is small, it’s never small enough for Rhode Islanders.

It’s like this: if you are not from Rhode Island, I will tell you I live in Rhode Island. If you are from Rhode Island, I’ll tell you I live in Cumberland. If you’re from Cumberland, I’ll tell you I live in Ashton, the particular village of Cumberland in which I live. If you live in Ashton, we’ll start getting into street addresses. I lived in Ashton for two years before I knew that I did; I was informed of the fact by a lifelong resident of Woonsocket (a neighboring town) who wasn’t satisfied to learn that I “just” lived in Cumberland. No one does, apparently. Wherever you live, there is a smaller, more specific area to narrow it down to, until you’re giving out your GPS coordinates.

When crotchety old coots write their Dagnabbit letters to the Valley Breeze, they sign them with their name and their village: Mr. Angry McMissesthepast, Albion, or Mrs. Wanda Unionstodie, Manville. The first time I saw those villages in print I had to consult Wikipedia to find out just where the hell those places were (they’re both in Lincoln, another neighboring town).  When those people die and their obituaries appear in the Breeze, they were not residents of Cumberland, but of Berkeley or Diamond Hill.

About once a month, I’ll be driving with my husband and we’ll pass a truck or a van with the name and place of its business – the village, not the city or town – painted on the side, and we’ll have a conversation like this:

Me: Hey, where’s Greenville?Him: I have no idea.

Because, you see, even though he grew up in Rhode Island, he never learned the names of those villages, because he never had to, which is in keeping with the state’s unofficial motto: If You Don’t Know, You Don’t Need to Know. I grew up in Maryland, another pretty small state, but by the fifth grade I was expected to know the names of all 23 counties, even though I’d only ever visit about six. Do the  names of the other seventeen take up valuable space in my brain? Probabossibly.

McKay points out in today’s essay that 77 separate fire departments made sense at one time because each corresponded to a different mill town, and the volunteer firefighters from each had to be able to hear the siren from wherever they were in the village. But today, that number lingers on due to that one great truth: Change Sucks. 

Thursdays of Begrudging Respect: Actual Reasons Providence May Be Considered Cool

So. As discussed previously, the Telegraph is spreading vicious rumors around the UK that Providence is the coolest city in New England. It's not to say that there's nothing cool about Providence - it's just that the things the article points out as cool are... not. It's like someone telling you to visit Disneyland for the tidy bathrooms. Now, while I wouldn't recommend someone planning an entire trip around Providence, I can see a day's diversion from a trip to Boston or, I don't know, Newport? If you're the Newport type. So if you do make it to Pro-Town, which is a name I just made up, here are some things to do while you're here that are not entirely uncool:

Have lunch at Gregg's. Oh Gregg's, I love you. I love your pickles and your rolls and your free refills and all the Rhode Island accents and the old people and the cake. Oh, the cake. Instead of a wedding cake, my husband and I got ten cakes from Gregg's! And that's about all I remember. Go on a Friday and get the fish and chips and a big piece of raspberry coconut cake, and then cancel the rest of your plans before hiring someone to roll you back to your hotel.

The RISD Museum. Shut up, it's cool. And no, it's not a student museum, even though there is some real talent among those crazy-haired, big-glasses, skinny-jeans-wearing hipster jackasses that don't look before they cross the street. Yeah, I said it.

Thayer Street in summer. IN SUMMER. For the love of all things non-irritating, don't go when school's in session of you'll be weaving in and out of throngs of Brown students, and dammit if that won't make you just... look, I can't even talk about it. Just wait until June. Then have lunch at Andreas,' see an arty movie at the Avon, and just walk around a little. It's nice.

Wayland Square. It's a cool little shopping district with an awesome cheese shop, one of the last independent bookstores in the area, and an awesome underground antique store that will keep you busy browsing for hours, as long as no one else shows up, because then neither one of you will be able to move.

Roger Williams Park. I've already professed my love for the zoo, but it's a really nice park otherwise, too. There's a carousel and paddle boats for the kids, and a little botanical garden. Don't be fooled for the sign for the "casino," though -- it's not what you think. You may just crash someone's bar mitzvah. We have the real kind, but if you come all this way just for nickel slots, I cannot help you.

Russian Sub. Wait -- that sank, and then burned. Never mind.

WaterFire. Fine, go if you're going to go. You know you are. Just stay somewhere within walking distance, okay? And try the samosas at the Indian cart.

PawSox! The Pawtucket Red Sox are the Boston Red Sox' AAA farm team, and even if you don't like baseball, you'll have a good time at a game. It's cheap, it's fun, there's ice cream... and after some games, there are fireworks. If you like that sort of thing.

The Children's Museum. It's an indoor playground with hints of learning! Actually, it's pretty sweet, and the kids just go crazy for it. I genuinely appreciate how the exhibit about the old textile mills -- where the young'uns used to work -- balance fun and learning with reminders of how good the kids have it today. (Hear that, children?)

If you visit after July 4 of this year, check out the Independence Trail! It's going to be a three-mile walking tour with 75 (only 75?!) stops of historical "importance!" And at each stop, you call a number on your cell phone and a recording tells you whether George Washington slept there or whatever! Wait -- that sounds terrible. Sweet lord.

In Praise of Loose Definitions

So. Someone is going on record as calling Providence "The Coolest City in New England?" 

I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to call a big ol’ bag o’ bullshit on this one. It’s exceedingly kind of the Telegraph to give Providence such a nice reference, but calling it the coolest city in New England is like crowning the plain, unremarkable girl prom queen because she didn't put her pants on backwards.  If this article is to be believed by our friends across the pond, then we may be seeing a lot of extremely disappointed Britons mulling around the food court at the mall this summer. Even though the writer of this article went to Brown, the piece itself has the unmistakable essence of something based on information culled from Wikipedia, Google Earth, Weather.com, and PleaseOhPleaseComeToProvidence.com to illustrate our city. Oh, and stock photos.

Let’s break this down, shall we?

Like Rome, Providence congregates around seven hills. 

I’m sorry, what? Counting hills in my head… wait, is Federal Hill actually on a hill? I suppose the ramp off of Route 10 goes up, so… And does it count as a hill if it was leveled over a hundred years ago, as Weybosset Hill was? If that’s the case, I’m going to declare that my raised ranch congregates around the Seven Hills of Cumberland. Check it.

Like few other cities, Providence gives tax incentives to artists not institutions.

First of all, why do you hate commas, British? And also, does Brown University count as an artist? If so, it can buy a whole lot of black turtlenecks and patchouli oil with all the taxes it doesn’t have to pay. Go Bruno!

And unlike any other, it was founded by Roger Williams, one of the great iconoclasts of the 17th century. Williams was kicked out of Massachusetts Bay for daring to believe in religious freedom and the separation of church and state. He founded Providence as a haven of tolerance.

You bet he did! Of course, it was more of a tolerance born of pity, since he thought that everyone who didn’t share his very specific religious beliefs was doomed to eternal suffering, and by cutting them a break in this brief life, he was doing them a right kindness. But still. Whatever gets you there, right?

It is home to Brown University — the hippest Ivy League school, founded by an 18th-century slave trader, once home to Emma Watson (of Harry Potter fame).

So, to recap, the three things worth knowing about Brown are:

1. Hip
2. Slaves
3. Emma Watson

Got it. Moving on.

Its greatest triumph is a sculpture installation called WaterFire: on selected nights throughout the year, volunteers in rowing boats stoke wood into wrought-iron urns anchored in the river, and set the logs blazing.

There’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world. The medieval smell of wood smoke in a contemporary urban setting, and the elemental play of water and fire stir an uncanny pairing of opposites guaranteed to raise hairs on the back of your neck.

Okay. Slow down, there, College. A “sculpture installation?” “The medieval smell of wood smoke in a contemporary urban setting?” So nothing burns down in London these days? WaterFire is a fairly decent block party where you buy your kid a cupcake and a glow-stick and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, for the sun to go down so some guy in a rowboat can come along and light some pots on fire in the middle of the water. The only thing “guaranteed to raise hairs on the back of your neck” is the thought of the traffic jam you’ll be stuck in after you make the three-mile trek back to the parking space you finally found after circling downtown for half an hour.

And finally:

Tiny Rhode Island has almost 3,500 miles of sandy beaches.

Snort. No. Cut a zero. California doesn’t even have 900, for criminy. And "sandy?" I guess you can't say there isn't any sand. And it sounds better than "bouldery beaches."

You know, the writer of this piece is a Brown grad who lives in Northampton, Mass., which may explain the lack of knowledge about Providence, since many Brown undergrads never seem to venture beyond College Hill. (An actual hill - and how.) And maybe it’s a diabolical scheme to get Europeans to spend their stronger-than-dollars euros here, because, you know, we really could use the money. So if that's the case, carry on! I mean, there are cool things about Providence. Actually, there are many, and being a curmudgeonly old coot, that is hard for me to admit. But for heaven's sake, don't lure a bunch of limeys (is that derogatory? I mean no disrespect) here under false pretenses. Personally, I'd fly to the UK if that was the only place I could get the garlic bread at Andino's.

And so, coming this Thursday of Begrudging Respect: actual reasons to visit Rhode Island. 

Stop it, Ohio.

This sign welcomes you when you cross the border from New York into Pennsylvania on I-90. Just to remind you that there are places that are crazier than where you live.  

I was on vacation last week, so I got to spend a whole seven days being annoyed with another state. I’m pretty sure we had the only Rhode Island license plates many Ohioans had ever seen, and to all the kids who won a game of license plate bingo after seeing our car, let me just say: you’re welcome, you poor, bored suckers. We chose a bleak little coal port on Lake Erie solely for its geographical distance from both Rhode Island and Minnesota, where a lot of my family lives, and the fact that it’s on a body of water you can’t see across, so I could pretend it was the ocean. The little farmhouse we rented was right on the water and adorable, much more so when you ignored the strip club up the street and the massive inorganic chemical plants that surround it.

Here’s one way Rhode Island differs from Ohio: in RI, if you’re at a stop light, intending to go straight through it, and the car coming in the opposite direction has its blinker on to turn left, you let that car turn left before you go straight. It is an unspoken social contract, and if you don’t do it, you’ll get an angry honk, an angry yell, an obscene gesture, or some creative combination thereof. Sure, people cut each other off all the time, refuse to use their turn signals at all other times, and generally act like total dicks to each other on the road, but woe unto you if you don’t let that other guy turn left before you go. If you do that in Ohio, however, you just confuse everyone. The guy turning left doesn’t understand why you’re letting him go first, and everyone behind you starts honking until you just go, already.

Also, in Rhode Island, we eat clam cakes, which is how we ruin perfectly good hush puppies. In northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania, they eat pepperoni balls, a foodstuff with which absolutely nothing is wrong. NOTHING.

None of it matters, though, because while I was gone, this happened. And while it goes without saying, I’ll say it anyway: it’ll be a cold day in hell before I accept that Thylacinus cynocephalus was more cat than dog. Team More Dog Than Cat forever!