Criminal Code Duello

I was perusing the website that lists R.I. criminal offenses some time ago (who doesn't) and came across this anachronistic gem:

§ 11-12-2 Challenging or accepting challenge to duel. – Every person who shall challenge another to fight a duel with any dangerous weapon, to the hazard of life, and every person who shall accept a challenge to fight such duel, although no duel be fought, shall be imprisoned not exceeding seven (7) years nor less than one year.

Here is what I must know about this:
a) When was the last time someone was prosecuted under this law?
b) How hard would it be to get locked up for it? Not actually engaging in one, but simply invoking the challenge? If stood within earshot of a police officer and said to a friend, loudly and clearly and without laughing, "I hereby challenge you to a duel of honor! Pistols at dawn upon the Statehouse lawn, with hazard of life. I demand satisfaction!" and the friend said "I accept!"...would we be arrested?

(This is comprehensive and fascinating by the way: Wikipedia - List of Duels. Who doesn't love a good list?)

Valuable Relics coming to Bristol Parade!

Bristol, my home town, inventor of the 4th of July Parade, should have an interesting day this July: the Red Sox 2007 World Series trophy, and recently incarcerated ex-Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci will both be marching.

The Bristol Phoenix, on Buddy's history with the parade:

Mr. Cianci incurred the wrath of chief marshal Dr. Manuel Luciano DaSilva and town officials after he crashed the chief marshal's reception, which was being held under a tent at the Bristol County Medical Center. Mr. Cianci, who had just been elected mayor of Providence, had not been invited to attend. Despite being turned away, Mr. Cianci showed up anyway — via helicopter.

"Guests ... were less than delighted to see Cianci arrive; the downdraft from his helicopter props threw up billowing clouds of choking dust under the tent canopy," Mr. Simpson writes.

Five years later, in 1980, Mr. Cianci crashed the parade again, when he arrived at the Colt High School athletic fields via helicopter.

"They smuggled me in like the Trojan Horse," Mr. Cianci was said to have quipped later.

Other years include stories of Mr. Cianci falling off horses, being "un-invited" from the parade, and being called "rude" by the parade chairman. But one of his most storied connections to the parade and Bristol's residents will mark its 25th anniversary this year. For the last quarter century, one of Mr. Cianci's toughest stretches of the parade route has been 2 High St., the house owned by Raymond DeLeo. In 1983, shortly after being indicted for assaulting Mr. DeLeo over a rumored mutual romantic interest, Mr. Cianci defiantly marched by his house, pretending not to notice him. Over the coming years, guests in Mr. DeLeo's yard were known to turn their back when the mayor approached.

The rift ballooned in 2002, Mr. Cianci's last year marching, when guests in Mr. DeLeo's yard sang him an impromptu song in "honor" of his recent indictment on corruption charges that would eventually send him to prison for five years:

"For he's a RICO felon, for he's a RICO felon, for he's a RICO felon, which nobody can deny," they sang.

The last time Cianci marched (in 2002), shortly before being convicted of racketeering, he got a standing ovation. After his Napoleon-like exile, his return should be fairly amusing.

As for the trophy, that was arranged by Jeremy Kapstein, the guy who sits directly behind home plate at every game, and therefore has a position of influence with the team. He came down to Bristol for some seafood and had the misfortune of running into a parade official who managed to finagle it through "two or three months of e-mails, phone calls, back and forth letters and even a hastily arranged meeting among Mr. Kapstein and Fourth of July Committee officials in the parking lot of the Verizon store on Route 6." Nice.

[Some pictures from 2006, 2007]

Terrible Job, RI

I thought Clinton would win here, but 58-40? Awful, just awful. At least my East Bay was the closest. I blame Warwick...not to mention the voters who live in Swan Point for this one.

I'm also going to blame the media for coming up with the idea that a net loss of 5 delegates in Texas equals a win for Clinton. Or the idea that gaining ~6 delegates when trailing by roughly 160 is some kind of dramatic, race-altering victory. This was probably the worst possible outcome for Democrats, the primary is simply going grind on forever with Hillary getting more and more desperate and vengeful. As many have pointed out there is absolutely no chance that Obama will be overtaken in delegates, meaning that if Sen. Clinton wants to contest the nomination she'll have to go against the will of actual voters with some type of tortured logic about how even if she got less votes she won all the votes that "mattered" in retard states like Ohio. (In her speech Tuesday night she said that Ohio knows how to "pick a president." Definitely. Thanks for re-electing Bush, morons!) In any case, the only way she can become the nominee is by overriding the will of actual voters, a concept that does not seem to bother anyone in her campaign. Instead of admitting that the only way to win is a party-rending reversal of popular intension, it seems that she'll soldier on, using Republican-style arguments against her opponent, trying to get the delegates from Florida and Michigan (where she coasted through on name-recognition, and being the only candidate on the ballot, respectively) added to her total, and generally dividing the 'crats.

After Super Tuesday when it seemed likely that the primary would stretch on forever I contemplated the idea that Puerto Rico would end up being relevant. I was sort of kidding to myself, but now I am actually annoyed. Territories that are barely part of the US should not get to have twice as much clout as certain states that, though small, belonged the original 13 colonies. Speak American, Puerto Rico! Or else get back in line with the other soon-to-be-but-not-yet-states like Quebec and Lithuania.

Alright, enough of this politics stuff. I'll get back to being irreverent shortly. It's just that this is the first time I've bothered to vote and I think I've learned an important lesson: one vote never makes a difference.

Battle of Rhode Island

Despite our near total lack of delegates, Presidential-types have been campaigning in our little state. Last week, it was here that Clinton gave her sarcastic "the skies will open" remarks. Saturday Obama came here to mock her mocking him. McCain and Huckabee even came to visit both of the Republicans who live here. There have been radio and TV ads on non-stop. It is quite a thing to see anyone campaigning for president here. I certainly can't remember the last time anyone actually cared how we voted. So starved for attention are we that when Kennedy gave a speech downtown in 1960, we named the plaza after him.

Judging by that, I wouldn't be so surprised if we renamed Rhode Island College "Obama Island College." I went to see him there last weekend and I must say, it lived up to the hype surrounding his rallies in every way. There were so many people that it took at least 2 hours to get inside. The line coiled through 2 parking lots when we arrived and was soon snaking down a hill and out of sight. It is estimated 10,000 people showed up, but only half were able to get in. Because of the high-number of umbrella-related assaults every year, people were forced to abandon them outside the doors. When we finally did, it was packed shoulder to shoulder and despite the fact that everyone there had been on their feet for about 3 hours already, the crowd was so enraptured that they would have strangled every Clinton voter in the state, with their bare hands, if asked. At least I would have. It is predicted that Sen. Clinton will carry RI tomorrow, and if I had to, I would probably bet on it, but after seeing the excitement surrounding Barack's only visit I would be surprised if it isn't close. With such a small electorate, the movement of a few thousand voters translates into a fairly large percentage.

The RI Attorney General gave a good speech in which he referred to Barack as "President Obama" at least twice, probably not by accident, and implored the crowd to "suck it up and get it done" like a tough-but-fair JV hockey coach. Then, in what was probably the most comical moment of the day, Rep. Patrick "Patches" Kennedy came out and delivered 5 minutes of screechy, overheated oratory by way of introduction. It was funny because of how incongruous it was -- instead of working his way up to a frenzied pitch, he just strode out, turned his volume all the way up, and hit us like a wall. He sounded a lot like an exasperated Gene Wilder, come to think of it. Since he and Obama addressed the people stranded outside beforehand, he may have already been worked up, but it still just sounded as though he had spent the morning shouting at the top of his lungs for practice. Ironically, he was talking about the importance of inspirational verbal skills in the political process.

Rhetoric-wise it was pretty much the standard stump speech of the past few months, for those familiar with it. Probably my favorite moment was his shout-out to our former-Republican, former-Senator, permanent-bad-ass Lincoln Chafee (who was about 20 people in front of me in the line to get in).

Real change isn't voting for George Bush's war in Iraq and then telling the American people it was actually a vote for more diplomacy when you start running for president. The title of the bill was `A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.' I knew what it was, Lincoln Chafee knew what it was! [Crowd erupts] It was a vote for war. Linc Chafee knew the score!

The only thing missing was some actual references to Rhode Island. In fact, he mentioned Texas twice, presumably due to exhaustion (which it is hard to blame him for). I was disappointed though that in his 10 minute soliloquy about "hope" he didn't make the connection to our state's motto. The crowd, at least the native RI-fraction of it, was waiting for this, and it just never happened. It was actually possible to hear individual people shouting "Hope is our state motto!" and "Look at the flag!" during quiet moments, so frustrated were they by the absence of this obvious observation.

Still though, it was a barnburner. If he is elected, people will surely remember events like these for many years.



Projo, RIFuture, ProvidenceDailyDose

This Primary is Killing Me

So I have been paying a bit too much attention to the presidential primary lately. I ought to know that I get nothing in return for this attentiveness other than anxiety and the ability to make shallow and occasionally witty observations about politics to my friends. And yet, I can't help myself. I like reading about history, and trying to understand human events.

So hopefully, by dumping out the contents of my brain in this blog entry I can get it out of my system and get back to worrying about things I have some control over.

First of all, I like Obama. This would not be a problem for most people, but I like being contrary, and instead everything about me is right in middle of his demographic. I'm 23, male, well-educated, from a liberal state. I am in academia and going into science. I use facebook. I am not religious. I have a gmail account. This is his wheelhouse.

And pretty much everyone I know is supporting Barack. It makes me feel silly to be part of this mob, but it just can't be helped. I wish I wasn't so predictable, but I actually like Obama, and can't begin to imagine how cool it would be to actually like the president, rather than to simply prefer them to the alternative. There is though, a certain "empty vessel" quality to him that causes supporters to believe that he reflects their own attitudes more closely than he probably does. Fortunately for me, I'm not obsessed with the minutae of anyone's views. Presidents do not get to determine the exact details of any policy, those are decided in Congress. I just want the president to be a smart Democrat who doesn't annoy or anger me, so that I can ignore the news more easily. It is the broad outlines that are important. I think he would help build a solid majority in the House and Senate, inspire the public to embrace more progressive views and take advantage of the fact that the country is listing leftward right now. Unlike most Democrats in recent memory he actually appears to have a spine, and doesn't simply water-down rhetoric to appeal to the mushy middle that doesn't actually prefer to vote for candidates who seem to be apologizing for their views. Electing someone like that would really help me get back to ignoring the news.

There is a thing George W. Bush did when he was running in 2000 and 2004 where he would drop cloaked biblical references into his speeches to signal religious votes that he was one of them. Obama seems to be doing the same thing. The best example I can think of off the top of my head: every speech I have heard him give uses the word "science" or "scientists" at least once, whereas this is not something other candidates make a point of doing. This seems like code for bevy of issues that are important to the left like global warming, evolution, stem cells, and religion in politics. Well, not to mention the fact that he has actually expressed opinions about these things too...

Here are some thoughts in no particular order about the candidates:

The night we bombed Iraq I tossed and turned for hours before puking and falling to sleep in a cold sweat. And not because I am some hyper-sensitive humanitarian, I just knew it was going to set off a cascading, long-term disaster in about 50 different ways. Anyone who knew less than I did, as a (then) 18 year old college freshman, about Iraq in 2003 should not be president. They probably shouldn't be anything.

I have heard a lot of people say "We all know that both candidates have an equal chance of winning the general election..." Back up there, hypothetical person, "we" don't know anything. This statement is untrue for several reasons. Firstly, Clinton sets up a lousy contrast with McCain. Her primary campaign is based on the notion that she is experienced by virtue of (in the minds of most people) being famous for longer than her opponents. 7 years in the Senate, wherein she regurgitated Bush's talking points, caved on practically everything of importance, and supported the war, shouldn't count for much. McCain spent roughly the same amount of time being tortured in Vietnam, and then another 30 years in the Senate. Equating the years she spent attending the funerals of minor world leaders with those he spent being an actual Senator is going to seem pretty flimsy. When she tries to take advantage of public sentiment favoring withdrawing from Iraq he'll simply remind us that she voted for it. Obama on the other hand will draw much cleaner distinctions. He can hammer McCain non-stop for his bellicosity. He isn't pretending to be experienced, and can sell his candidacy convincingly as a break from the past. He is a probably the best political orator in a generation and he is much, much younger. McCain will seem tired, old, and cranky in contrast to Obama.

Secondly, there is no elasticity in public opinion about Clinton, everyone knows her already. Anyone who already dislikes her is not going to be won over. And those who do dislike her do so vehemently. With McCain the Republican nominee, conservative voters are going to feel a lack of enthusiasm in the election...unless the Dems nominate the person they already hate more than anyone else. Obama is not well known, on the other hand, and the more people see of him, the more they like him.

Most people are predicting a Democratic win in the general election either way, but I don't see it. It seems to me that Obama would win by a significant margin and H-bomb, barring something unforeseen would lose, but probably narrowly. I'm sort of invested in the Dem race so I can't predict it with any accuracy, but unfortunately for us, the cool, inspiring candidate who the young clever people like never wins the nomination. This is what gives me a sense of dread about the rest of the campaign, but who knows.

On that same note, here is a nightmare scenario I would like you to contemplate: Sen. McCain taps Huckabee for VP to shore up religious voters. The Democrats nominate Clinton and lose. After 15 minutes in office, McCain dies, since he is about 150 years old, leaving Huckleberry in charge. Jesus replaces Washington on the $1 bill. The End.

It is so stuck-up and wrong to say this, but for lack of a better understanding of Hillary voters, I think they just don't follow the news very closely. Polls well in advance of elections essentially show name recognition. No one is really paying attention, and when asked, they simply go for the one they have heard of. When pundits are surprised about shifting trends shortly before the election day, that is really just voters waking up and looking at candidates for the (usually) the first time. My fear about this front-loaded primary was that following Iowa and NH there would just not be enough time for Barack to overcome his opponent's superior fame. He was on an upwards trajectory, and given another week or so, he likely would have won more delegates than he did. As a cynic, I was fairly blasé about his candidacy until I heard him speak, and then I was floored. The more time there is for people to hear him speak the better.

It is a minor miracle that Edwards dropped out when he did, though it was still late enough to do some damage. Edwards and Obama were splitting the liberal, thoughtful, anti-war, anti-Hillary vote. If he had not run at all, Obama would have won all 4 of the initial contests and would be far closer to capturing the nomination. Though he does indeed try promoting important issues, John Edwards seems quite opportunistic. I think he hasn't endorsed either remaining because he can't figure out which will win, and he would like something in return.

I think some of the subconscious appeal of Barack Obama is based on his name. It is so utterly ridiculous, that it triggers a rebellious impulse to support someone whose moniker conventional wisdom would deem an automatic loser. It is kind of a fuck-you to the establishment who pours over this kind of nonsense.



The next day that there will be a large number of delegates up for grabs is March 4th when RI votes along with Ohio, Texas, and Vermont. There are a few Obama-favoring contests between now and then, but there is an entire 2 weeks preceding March 4th with nothing on the calendar. We are much smaller than OH and TX, but I have no doubt that both candidates will show up and certainly both will advertise here. It is sort of cool, considering that everyone here had been disappointed that with the front-loaded schedule we would have no impact at all. Considering the paucity of contests around the same time though, it seems that we will get much more attention than we would have if we were part of Super Tuesday. And having split up Connecticut and Massachusetts, both campaigns may think they have a good shot at our precious 32 delegates. Probably by leveraging our state motto, pictured below.

Well, I feel a little better now...

Stupor Tuesday

There was a time, not too long ago, when the state of Rhode Island held their primary on Super Tuesday. But since those states decided to lurch forward little RI was left behind, on March 4th. It is the 2nd biggest day though, so if there is still an election going on I may -- emphasize may -- end up going to the polls. Nonetheless, this Daily Show clip is a pleasant look back at an era when RI wasn't at the tail end of the primaries, most of the correspondents on the Daily Show were funny, and they could send Colbert to Providence to have him interview our giant blue termite.

Roundup 1/28/08

The Hulk-out list. A compilation of the events that caused David Banner to get angry and Hulk-out.

38. Placed in a small room with a ravenous black panther

44. Kicking over a beehive and then being surprised when the bees are mad at
him

47. Being stuck in a cab in New York rush hour traffic - "You don't understand, I
have to be there by 4:00!" - "Hey, mac, it's rush hour, we ain't gettin' there til five,
so relax." - "BUT I HAVE TO BE THERE BY FOUR!!!"

84. Being placed in a room that is filled with carbon monoxide gas

Oddly, after writing about former Sen. Chaffee yesterday, I saw an environmental talk today by the guy who beat him, Sheldon Whitehouse. He seemed very direct. At one point someone asked him a hopeful question that most people would probably try to give a fuzzy, indirect answer to. Whitehouse just said, "No, I don't know anything about that" and moved on. So that was cool. Not as cool was his saying that he doesn't support nuclear power (though he admitted he might be mistaken). If climate change is the global catastrophe it is supposed to be, windmills and florescent lightbulbs aren't going to do it. Making cars as efficient as they already are in most other western nations by "2025" or whatever isn't going to do it either. And people aren't going to change their lifestyles. Wind, wave, hydroelectric, and solar, even at maximum capacity will not be enough. That calculation you do in intro modern physics about how much power you get out a pound of uranium (~4.7 gazillion volts, if I remember correctly) must be designed to brainwash young scientists into liking nuclear energy.

New Material Pushes the Limits of Blackness.

Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness.

What we need to do here, is take this material, slap in on the outside of some animal-human hybrids, and have them terrorize ordinary, hardworking Americans. People don't want to fund science unless they are panicked.

Update: As Jere pointed out in the comments, Bill Lee beat me to the punch on the carbon nanotube story, as he usually does.

Chafee: I wouldn't have voted for me either

Linc Chafee was one of the few Senators with the foresight and balls to vote against the Iraq War, and always struck me as the type of thoughtful politician who is fairly uncommon. Rhode Islanders thought so too, though he was, technically, a Republican. He lost re-election in 2006 in what was essentially a calculation on the part of voters here that his mere existence would allow the GOP to control the Senate. Since the margin in the Senate ended up being one vote, our decision to oust a guy we liked and agreed with to stop him from enabling the party we don't, proved pretty crafty. He is now essentially saying that our decision to not re-elect him was smart. The odd thing is that he didn't like the Republican leadership anymore than we did, but with the R's funding his campaign he couldn't just jump overboard. (Or as he says was afraid the prez taking revenge on RI). He's an independent now.

Of his new book, the Projo says:

The most startling revelation: Chafee must be the only senator in U.S. political history who says his defeat was the result of voters acting logically.

“The system works best when power remains in the hands of the voters,” writes Chafee. “I was a casualty of the system working in 2006, and while defeat is never easy, I give the voters credit: They made the connection between electing even popular Republicans at the cost of leaving the Senate in the hands of a leadership they had learned to mistrust.”
...
Exit polls done on Election Day showed that Chafee had a 63-percent job-approval rating, high enough, in most election cycles, to guarantee victory.
...
“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president,” writes Chafee. “Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill.

“They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”
...
The book has some through-the-looking-glass scenes; one in particular reads like Hunter S. Thompson sans drugs. As Mr. Bush pressed insistently for war, Chafee requested a meeting with CIA brass to examine the evidence against Saddam Hussein’s regime. “Sooner or later, I have to vote on this war, show me everything you have,” Chafee requests of the CIA.

“What they had, I discovered as the meeting stretched into an hour, was next to nothing,” recalls Chafee. “They showed me what they had with little comment and no enthusiasm. Someone handed me one of the infamous aluminum tubes, the kind we were told Saddam was using to enrich weapons-grade uranium while plotting mushroom clouds over America, the ‘smoking gun’ that Condoleezza Rice warned about.

“I looked at the aluminum tube, looked at the analysts and thought, I can go buy one of these at Adler’s Hardware,” the Providence hardware emporium, writes Chafee.

Adler's? Oh, snap!

Anachronism

When I was growing up, the movie theater in Seekonk Mass was mysteriously split up across a street. On one side, they had 10 screens, and on the other, they had 2 more. The smaller side always got the second-runs or generally weaker movies and the theater itself had the feeling of a gradual slide into despair. Whenever I saw a movie there it was always nearly totally empty, even on summer weekends, and you could tell the (usually singular) employee was passing the time by thinking about all the action they were missing across the street.

Anyhow, since there was one theater complex in Seekonk, but it was split in two, the two halves were referred to as Seekonk 1-10, and Seekonk 11-12. When you looked up a movie in the paper, it would have a number next to it, and that would tell you which theater it was in. Eventually, a few miles away, but still in "the 'Konk," a souped-up multiplex (also a Showcase) was erected and at long last, mercifully, the 11-12 was euthanized*. However, the 1-10 continued to exist. Since there are now two Showcases, to to tell the difference one is referred to as "Seekonk Route 6" and the other as "Seekonk 1-10." I only recently realized how absurd this is. It might as well be the Seekonk 4-14, the numbers don't refer to anything other than as a point of reference for a theater that no longer exists. More importantly, and this is very important in my opinion, the Seekonk 1-10 shows 12 movies at a time. It still has 10 screens, but the reason for calling it "The 1-10" is because there were ten movies which each have a number -- the 10 refers to the movies not the screens. So both parts of the current name make no sense. I just thought I should explain this to you, in case you ever find yourselves on the mean streets of the 'Konk.


*It was turned into something called the "Fireplace Showcase" to utilize pre-existing signage. I found this photo through google image search, but I don't know how to credit it.

Wonkette Can Suck It

Like many states, Rhode Island has a signature requirement to get on the primary ballot. Unlike many other states though, we moved up the filing date to the rather unusual December 26th, and only 3 candidates have pulled in the 1,000 needed to qualify, as of a few days ago. Obama, Guiliani, and the HRC all have at least a thousand, but Rudy only barely, and there is a good chance he'll need more, since a certain fraction of signatures are always phony. If that happens, and none of the other candidates rally, the only choice on the GOP ballot will end up being "uncommitted," which is just hilarious.

Unfortunately though, some loser website for losers was hating on the Ocean State for this state of affairs (Wonkette: Rhode Island Can Suck It). "Oh, whatever, who gives a shit about Rhode Island anyway? They probably have, like, negative electoral votes." Pretty much every state has a requirement like this, it isn't our fault if your shitty candidate can't muster a piddling 1000 signatures. Oh no, people won't be able to vote for Huckabee! This is supposed to be a bad thing? And saying we have "negative electoral votes," even lamer. If more states voted the way we do, the country would be in better shape--RI makes extremely prescient political decisions come election-time. For all their clout, Florida and Texas are not exactly a brain-trust. Providence Daily Dose puts it well,

So we require 1,000 signatures. That’s nothing new. Shouldn’t getting 1,000 Rhode Islanders to fucking sign of piece of paper be a doable task for a person who wants to be the elected leader of the country?...

The real entity that can suck it is whatever parallel universe coughed up the lousy d-bags who make up the bulk of our 20 candidates and who are apparently less inspiring then we might have given them credit for, and also the stupid system that makes us so neglectable. We’re a casualty of war. We’re a victim here. Suck it?

Besides, if the other candidates really need those signatures so badly, they can swing by the North Burial Ground just like everyone else.

h/t Prov Daily Dose

Update: "Republicans Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul and Democrat Christopher Dodd have submitted enough validated signatures to appear on Rhode Island’s March 4 primary ballots, according to local boards of canvassers." Projo

Providence Now Stored in Google Streetview Mainframe

View Larger Map

Following what was surely massive popular demand, Providence, Rhode Island is now in Google Maps' Street view feature. Like any of the people in a city hit by one of these, I was determined to figure out when the Googlecar rolled through town. Somewhere on the internet this information is available, but it is more fun to try figuring it out. It has to be somewhere between July 29 and when I took my air conditioner out of the window...

Anyhow, I haven't yet found myself or anyone I know, but I'm working on it. It seems like it was taken over a day or two, one of time that was sunny and one that was overcast-- though it could be a single very long day. The sunnier parts seem to feature a lack of parked cars, which suggest it was a weekend day...unless it was late summer, when no one was doing anything. The banners for the Red Bull Soap Box Derby which took place October 13th are up, so it cannot have been much later than that. I don't think there is any non-obsessive way to figure out how long those things were up, but I don't remember them around when I moved in August 22nd. July 29th, when Blue State Coffee opened is the absolute earliest it could be, since there are obviously people going in.

And then I realized that you can read the bill on the Avon. Since the "Jane Austen Book Club" opened there on Friday, October 5th and ran there by itself for at least a week before being joined by another film that constrains it pretty well. Especially since the PPAC has a sign for the comedian Brian Regan who performed on the 7th (and even gives the then current time and temperature, 8:43 AM and 52 degrees). At that time there would be a lot more people on the downtown streets if it were a weekday, and the mayor's car would certainly be next to City Hall. So that narrows it down to the mornings of Oct 6th or 7th. Since there are weddings getting out at the Unitarian church and the synagogue next to Brown Stadium, that means it was Sunday for the East Side (since Jewish weddings cannot take place on Saturday during daylight).

Sunday October 7th, 2007! QED


View Larger Map

Update: Thanks to George in the comments for the tip about Jewish wedding rules, I originally had it on Saturday.

Malled

Last month I wrote about those artists who lived in the Providence Place Mall and Monday night I had a chance to hear Michael Townsend speak at Brown. He was the one who masterminded the whole thing, the "ringleader" if you will. And now he's on the lecture circuit. He and his wife gave a meandering talk on many aspects of the "project" as they described it. I had been expecting a tour de force of art school intellectualism, but I came away with the impression that they had set up their apartment in more of a "wouldn't it be cool if we did this" attitude.

They didn't have a preplanned outline for the talk, they just brought a laptop and showed pictures, while running through a half-dozen subjects. One of the amusing things was the paranoia they felt living there. They didn't have any misapprehensions about whether what they were doing was trespassing and went so far as to wall up an open area below the 'apartment' with mall-style cinder blocks and a cheap, lockable door. He supposedly felt bad enough about stealing electricity that he'd slip a $20 under the managers door every few months (veracity dubious).

I'd been expecting to count words like "consumerism" but instead, all of the observations made were of the variety you would expect from an alien dropped into Providence with no pre-existing knowledge of American culture and the sole mission to understand every aspect of the mall. He and his wife were strangely perplexed by the ubiquity of advertising, and the way it tries to make people feel defined by possessions. This is a new thing? On the other hand, he did seem to have a lifelong obsession with the difference between public and private areas, so it wasn't as though he was making it up when it became convenient. In the 90's he found some neglected tunnel in downtown Providence, put a lock on the gate, cleaned it up and stuck a bunch of art in it. So that was weird. The mall is private property, yet it was subsidized massively by our tax money, something people forget.

Probably the most interesting revelation he made was that he never thought of living in "the netherlands" of the mall, as he called it, as performance art until they were caught living there with a couch, dining table, TV, playstation, lamps, and china hutch. So that was honest...especially because they seemed to be trying to pass it off as artistic expression right after they got busted.

The ProJo was there as well and wrote it up, newspaper-style.

Fog-addled Providence

Caw

I was walking along the street just now and I spotted an extremely large hawk sitting on the roof of a building. Providence isn't Manhattan to be sure, but neither is it the kind of place you expect to find birds of prey. Even if it isn't a concrete jungle, the city, and all surrounding areas are seriously built up, and have been for a very long time. But there it was anyway, majestically surveying Hope Street. I stood there looking at it for a few minutes, and no one else walking by seemed to notice this thing. Then as I began to walk off it started making loud 'caw!' noises. It was very cool.

Crazy Kids Live in Providence Mall

Those zany RISD kids have done it again! An artist has been sentenced to probation for creating a secret apartment in the Providence Place Mall. From the Providence Journal:

The story of their audacious stunt — they call it performance art — spilled out in District Court, after the leader, Michael J. Townsend, 36, of Providence, was arrested. He pleaded no contest to a criminal charge of trespassing.

Townsend, a self-described “professional public artist,” said the clandestine project was born of a wish to explore the phenomenon of the modern American enclosed mall, its social implications, and his own relationship with commerce and the world.
[...]

The casually furnished, unheated apartment was in a 750-square-foot loft beneath an I-beam and above an unused dusty storage room in the mall parking garage that was accessed through a door in a stairwell, according to Townsend, his fellow artists and the police.

The collective labored mightily to haul in more than two tons of construction materials and furnishings to build out and equip the space, which already had a concrete floor. Some of the material was brought in through an 11-inch-wide aperture on the west side of the mall that allowed access to the garage interior. Larger items were brought into the garage by car and carried up fire exit stairwells, the artists said.

In order to section off and disguise the space, the artists cemented together 90 30-pound cinderblocks to make a wall and then installed a generic, beige-colored industrial door. Anyone who came into the storage room would see a steep metal ladder leading to the locked door.
[...]

In a feat of derring-do likely to be savored for years by the Providence-area underground-art community, the artists illegally ate, drank, slept, read, held meetings, watched TV and enjoyed games on a Sony Playstation2 in a palace of American commercialism.

The apartment, which was relatively soundproof, contained a sectional sofa, a love seat, a coffee table, a breakfast table with four chairs, lamps, a throw rug, a hutch and paintings on the walls. Although the group had bold improvement plans, the apartment lacked running water, a refrigerator and a toilet.

Townsend acknowledged that the lack of certain creature comforts, after a while, tended to sap the thrill of being there and to curtail each stint inside.

The artists lugged in gallon jugs of water to drink, and to answer nature’s call, they would sneak out to use mall bathrooms. They did have a waffle iron, Yoto said, so meals tended to run toward breakfast food. They obtained electricity by running an extension cord to an outlet in the storage room.
[...]

The collective’s ambition to, as Townsend put it, make the apartment “super-sweet” with laminated wood flooring and other embellishments was terminated Wednesday. He and a visiting artist from Hong Kong walked into the storage room and were confronted and handcuffed by three mall security men wearing dress shirts and ties.

On the one hand, I admire them for getting away with this for so long. It isn't like anyone was using the space, and they certainly weren't hurting anyone. Furthermore, I am not surprised by the story itself at all. It is known to many that the Providence Place Mall boasts an inordinate number of hidden corridors and rooms. A friend of mine discovered, for a memorable time, a labyrinthine route that brought you from a parking lot staircase to the inside of the movie theater. The building that contains the mall is significantly larger than it appears from the inside.

Yet on the other hand, when you poke around on the guy's website, it is clear that he is trying to cloak what could be a straightforward 'punking' in a shroud of pseudo-intellectual statement-making. He refers to stowing away in the mall as a "project" and an "opportunity." He whimsically describes the inspiration behind the squat, having taken very seriously a radio ad that humorously contemplated how wonderful it would be to live in the mall.

...This, along with a wide variety of theoretical musings about my relationship to the mall - as a citizen and public artists - provided the final catalyst for making the apartment.

From those Christmas seasons to the present, I have spent the time to quietly create this space and occupy it from time to time. I cannot emphasize enough that the entire endeavor was done out of a compassion to understand the mall more and life as a shopper. It has been my utmost priority to not disrupt the security forces working at the mall, and I have gone to great lengths to make sure that my project did not interfere with their work.

Umm, except for moving your entire living room into the bowels of the building they are supposed to be protecting. Is there a more indirect way to describe squatting in a quasi-public place to hang out and play playstation with your friends? I think not. Why all the profundity? You set up residence in a massive public landmark with a fairly large security staff and stayed there for years, watching TV with your art school pals. That is more than enough to establish you as a regional legend, you don't have to muddle it up with some kind of amorphous statement about the current state of American capitalism as well.

I mean seriously, why do the cops always bust you right before you can install "super-sweet" laminated wood flooring in your critique of consumerism?

Providence

Now that I actually live off Hope Street, this poster has new meaning for me. I do live off hope!

[Mad Peck]

Happy Independence Day!

Today is a holiday.

§ 25-2-1 Rhode Island Independence Day.– The fourth day of May in each and every year is established, in this state, as a day for celebration of Rhode Island independence, being a just tribute to the memory of the members of our general assembly, who, on the fourth day of May, 1776, in the State House at Providence, passed an act renouncing allegiance of the colony to the British crown and by the provisions of that act declared Rhode Island sovereign and independent, the first official act of its kind by any of the thirteen (13) American colonies.

That is correct. Rhode Island unilaterally declared its own independence a full two months before the other 12 colonies copied our idea. So for all of that bluster about the Texan Republic*, RI actually had the guts to renounce foreign control in the face of the the whole British Empire.

It goes without saying that RI is one of the finest states, but here are a list of further reasons why we're great. A recurring theme is foresight when it comes to matters of governance.

• Enacted first law abolishing slavery, 1652.


• First armed rebellion against the British, the burning of the merchant ship Gaspee, 1772


• State bird is a chicken, the Rhode Island Red. Without a doubt the tastiest of the official U.S. state birds.


• After leaving the repressive Puritan environment of Massachusetts, Roger Williams founded the state based on the concepts of freedom of religion and thought, and is widely considered the forefather of the First Amendment.


• Immediately ratified 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery). Only state to reject Prohibition, and one of only seven not to approve of the lame 22nd Amendment (Presidential term-limits).


• Have consistently voted the right way in Presidential elections. Historically, RI has gone for the best Presidents and against practically all of the worst, with very few lapses in judgement. I would say, far fewer than any other state. There is a tendency when thinking of history to forget about the controversy at the time, as though elections weren't contentious, but of course they were. Or to rarely bother checking the scorecard on who turned out right or wrong. Well, as far as states go, we were almost always right. Often about people who had not yet revealed themselves to be horrible yet, like Hoover and Nixon, and often by large margins in elections that were otherwise close. And not just because the state is liberal, we went to Eisenhower and Reagan at least once.
  
  
  • For: Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, F. Roosevelt (4 times), Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy.
  • Against: Jackson (all 3 times), Buchanan, Hoover (both times), Nixon, both Bushes both times (by the largest margins twice).
  
  The only significant mistakes were Harding, Nixon's 2nd term (but only by 3%), and some of those lesser-known people like Pierce and Garfield/Arthur.
  So to anyone still thinking that history will vindicate our current President, I say, look to Rhode Island, my friend. He lost here both times, with RI being his worst and second-worst state. Right now his approval rating is 16%. There really isn't anyone who didn't win RI, but turned out to do a good job (with the possible exception of Cleveland or James K. Polk). And Bush Jr. is no James K. Polk.

So respect Rhode Island. We gave you religious freedom and Forth of July Parades and we can take them away.