In what amounts to a pretty unsurprising find, human cultures have been fascinated by gender norms, and more importantly flatulence, since the dawn of civilization. Thus spake
Reuters:
The world’s oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.
It is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq and goes: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”
In recent years, Providence has not only seen a new convention center and a revitalized waterfront, but historic corridors have also been restored to their Revolutionary-era glory, giving the Rhode Island capital an architectural sense of place. But these cultural trappings, more commonly associated with overcrowded metropolises, have not caused this city of 200,000, near the banks of Narragansett Bay, to lose its small-town flavor. Drivers still request their initials on license plates, sandwich shops let regulars run a tab and Mayor David N. Cicilline greets residents by name and lists his home number in the phone book.
For the record, the Times ended their Friday and Saturday nights at the Black Rep and Local 121, which sounds pretty true-to-life. And did you know that the original State House, “where, in 1776, Rhode Islanders declared independence two months before the rest of the country,” used to be on
Benefit Street?
Espresso at Caffe Dolce Vita, brunch at Nick’s on Broadway, and dinner, oh so predictably, at Al Forno. Sounds like a typical weekend!
In particular, my favorite, the
Marquis de Lafayette. In 1777, at the age of nineteen, the wealthy aristocrat offered his military services as an unpaid volunteer to the Continental Congress, and was given the rank of major-general. (Nineteen!) Clicking immediately with George Washington, he was instrumental in the Battle of Rhode Island and the defeat of the British at Yorktown. Lafayette returned a few times after the war, always to a hero’s welcome. This included a visit in 1784 to the Golden Ball Inn on Benefit Street, a four-story party hall next to the old state house, where the women of Providence made a very favorable impression on him. The Golden Ball Inn was torn down in 1941. Quel dommage.
The highly regarded PBS series P.O.V. is running
Traces of the Trade, a look at the slave-trading history of Rhode Island’s DeWolf family. Director, and DeWolf descendant, Katrina Browne takes a hard look at the human toll that is the source of her own good fortune. Apparently not all family members were keen participants.
The film follows ten DeWolf descendants (ages 32-71, ranging from sisters to seventh cousins) as they retrace the steps of the Triangle Trade, visiting the DeWolf hometown of Bristol, Rhode Island, slave forts on the coast of Ghana, and the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba. Browne pushes the family forward as they struggle through the minefield of race politics. Back home, the family confronts the thorny topic of what to do now. In the context of growing calls for reparations for slavery, family members struggle with the question of how to think about and contribute to “repair.” Meanwhile, Browne and her family come closer to the core: their love/hate relationship with their own Yankee culture and privileges; the healing and transformation needed not only “out there,” but inside themselves.
The DeWolf mansion at
Linden Place in Bristol is open to visitors through Columbus Day. Judging from the website, the museum would rather tell of ’seafaring’ and ‘exploits’, but they do mention the slave trade.
… let them eat ROCK! Okay, let me get this straight, Ted Widmer, noted historian and director of the
John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, was once guitarist Lord Rockingham of the Boston band
The Upper Crust? Am I the only one who did not know this? The band is still fopping and rocking, but after the recording of “The Decline and Fall of the Upper Crust” Mr. Widmer left to become a speechwriter for President Clinton. (In all honesty I’m not altogether sure if he is even in the above photo, but does it really matter?)
He may be known to some locals as the trouble-making Martin Van Buren buff biographer who shook up the Atheneum lecture series; or to Slate readers for his
Moby diss (thank.. you.. Ted). Today the ProJo ran a
profile and a generally favorable
review of his new book ‘Ark of the Liberties: America and the World’. I met him once and liked him right away, but now I really really like him.
Let Them Eat Rock is the 2004 Upper Crust documentary featuring Mr. Widmer, as well as the title of their 1995 album.
Big plans are afoot to generate more activity in and around Kennedy Plaza this summer, including poor little Burnside Park. There are some regular weekly events planned, like a Friday Farmers’ Market, as well as some big events such as the Heineken Latino Celebration July 6th (please tell me they’re planning a Dos Equis Oktoberfest) and the Roller Derby on July 25th. But the one you have to start thinking about now is the
IndieArts Festival on July 19th. First, there are still table-spaces available for vendors (it’s BYOT). To get on board contact Jen or Chris Daltry at
What Cheer Antiques, 7 South Angell Street,861-4244. Jen spoke today with the
Providence Journal,
“It’s really a pretty neat park, with the fountain and the statue and it’s definitely underutilized,” said Jennifer Daltry of What Cheer Antiques & Vintage, which is helping to put together the festival.
Organizers are even tying the event to its new host site and its massive statue of Burnside. The best sideburns will win a prize, an homage to the Civil War general famous for his facial hair.
The sideburns competition is very much in the planning stage but there is talk of at least two categories; one for the purists who grow their own, and another for the DIY types who might artfully apply grass clippings and dryer lint with spirit gum. Women are welcome in both categories.
The
Providence Preservation Society is hosting its 29th Annual Festival of Historic Houses on Friday and Saturday, June 6 and 7, 2008. The Festival is the signature fundraising and educational event for PPS and is an opportunity to showcase well-preserved buildings in Providence’s varied neighborhoods. This two-day event will feature a spectacular array of diverse and unique properties in Providence’s Fox Point Neighborhood.
From the Projo:
This is a self-guided walking tour, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with all the houses within about a half-mile loop. All the locations are disclosed when you purchase a ticket and pick up a map and guide at Brown University’s Maddock Alumni Center, 38 Brown St.
Just when you thought there was nothing else that Hillary’s minions could say or do to make you dry heave in terror (like, for example, claim that perennially pampered Florida voters are facing
Zimbabwe-esque levels of political oppression), Harold Ickes has gone and done it.
Yes, it’s true that today’s
DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting was an overall win for Obama, in that, shitshow* notwithstanding, the Committee decided to seat the FL and Michigan delegations with half-votes each, and to give Obama the uncommitted delegates from Michigan. Yes, Obama is still going to be the
nominee, as he now has 2050 delegates, needs 2118 to clinch, and will pick up at least 40 between now and the final primaries in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, meaning that he needs only 20 of the remaining 200 superdelegates to finish the job. And yes, Hillary did indeed have every right to fight for her desired outcome, which her surrogates did in a losing effort to seat the Florida delegation with full votes before unanimously backing the half-vote compromise.
But Harold Ickes needs to get a grip. When it came time to talk Michigan, a state where Obama (and Edwards) had taken his name off of the ballot, where “Uncommitted” had garnered 45% of the vote, where turnout was absolutely
anemic because there was only one candidate running (in Soviet Russia, election wins you!), Ickes had the gall to say that Hillary should get her delegates and Obama should get none, and then got so huffy about it that he threatened to take that dispute to the convention.
Huh? For a campaign that has been playing fast and loose with the word “disenfranchisement” it’s pretty befuddling to think that counting the results of an election with only one candidate on the ballot, where more people stayed home than voted, without any consideration of those factors is not basically the worst solution. Wouldn’t such a solution
disenfranchise those non-voters? And what about all of the African American voters who went with uncommitted, you know, the ones who will be absolutely crucial to winning Michigan?
“Fannie Lou” Ickes cannot be bothered with such trifling matters. Here he is debasing himself in a duke-it-out with Sen. Carl Levin:
Liberal elf and Princeton economist Paul Krugman sez that
almost 80 percent of us drive to work alone, thus stupidly hastening the demise of our planet and the collapse of our economy.
So where are all the WWII-referencing posterz about how driving alone is driving with Chavez, or
OPEC? Not exactly the same thing, granted.
If you’ve ever driven Tillinghast Road in East Greenwich, been part of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, or traveled back in time to early 19th century Rhode Island and run for office, you are part of a grand story that’s
coming to a close. The old-ass law firm now known as Tillinghast Licht, founded during the Late Cretaceous (in 1818) is set to fade away over the next six months. Maybe you know it by one of it’s different names:
In the early 20th century, with William Tillinghast still a member of the firm, Tillinghast & Tillinghast merged with another firm to form Tillinghast & Collins. It was the first of several mergers in the last century, all that saw the Tillinghast name remain preeminent. In the 1970s, Tillinghast, Collins & Tanner joined with Graham, Reid, Ewing & Stapleton. In the 1990s, Tillinghast Collins & Graham merged with Licht & Semonoff to form Tillinghast Licht & Semonoff. The name was later shortened to Tillinghast Licht to make it easier to say, according to Riedel. In 2000, it merged with the Boston firm of Perkins Smith & Cohen and called its Rhode Island office Tillinghast Licht Perkins Smith & Cohen, but the firms split several years ago, and Tillinghast Licht returned to its former name.
And Noah LLC begat Shem, Ham, Japeth and Jones, who begat Esau and Esau, who begat Dewey, Cheatam and Ezekiel…
Lo! What news from yon goodly port of Bristol, cradle of patriotic fanfare and tricolor medians?
Buddy’s back in the parade? By my troth!
BRISTOL — He won’t ride atop a horse borrowed from the Providence police, and a helicopter (most likely) won’t drop him off at the Bristol County Medical Center or Colt School. But Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, one of Rhode Island’s most colorful characters and a long-time fixture in Bristol’s Fourth of July parade, is coming back to town this year.
Bristol Fourth of July Committee parade chairwoman Judy Squires told her fellow committee members last Wednesday night that Mr. Cianci will “march” in the parade through his affiliation with WPRO radio, where he holds a job as an on-air talk show host. There will be no horse, she said, but Mr. Cianci will likely be driven down the route in a red car donated for the day by Tasca Ford.
The longest continuously held July 4th parade in America, Bristol’s Fourth of July Pomp-down is also the storied-est. The former Providence Mayor’s history with this grand old fest, in turn, comprises some of it’s richest modern moments.
Also in this years parade, the World Series Trophy!
(more…)
Tonight from 6:30 to 8:30 don’t miss the opening of “Beyond the Birds and the Bees” - a public exhibit revealing the history of sex education in America over the last 100 years produced by the Public Humanities grad students at Brown. By looking at the military, schools and the ways that parents have explained the whole mess of intercourse perhaps we can better understand the state of our youth today. I wonder if there will be anything on
rainbow parties … John Nicholas Brown Center, 357 Benefit St.
Or do you just stumble through life thinking about food and sex? My new neighbor recently asked me about the enormous wall near our building and I was shocked at how little I could tell her. Happily today’s ProJo has all the answers. Robert Emlem has written a
great piece about the history of this huge wall that runs from Angell to Hope to Lloyd to Arlington Streets, enclosing several Brown athletic fields. As recently as the fifties this was a working farm and asylum for the poor, a bequest from Ebenezer Knight Dexter.
Obama’s
speech yesterday addressing race and the manufactured Jeremiah Wright controversy was brilliant and moving. Whether you agree with that assessment or see him as a crafty politician giving another pretty speech, it is notable for the fact that he actually dared to speak to the voters about a difficult issue as if they were mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.
It is unfortunate that we have to praise him for what should be the standard in American political discourse, but the fact remains that such forthright maturity is decidedly not the standard. All that remains to be seen is whether the voters (and pundits, and media, and his political opponents) actually are mature adults capable of nuanced understanding and rational discussion.
Entries
In what amounts to a pretty unsurprising find, human cultures have been fascinated by gender norms, and more importantly flatulence, since the dawn of civilization. Thus spake
Reuters:
The
Tonight from 6:30 to 8:30 don’t miss the opening of “Beyond the Birds and the Bees” - a public exhibit revealing the history of sex education in America over the last 100 years produced by the Public Humanities grad students at Brown. By looking at the military, schools and the ways that parents have explained the whole mess of intercourse perhaps we can better understand the state of our youth today. I wonder if there will be anything on
