From Brady Duklee:

The US side of the Nicaraguan organization ATRAVES (for Asociación TransAmericana de Voluntarios En Solidaridad in Spanish) is proudly based here in Providence, at co-founder Brady Dunklee’s home in Washington Park. ATRAVES works in health, education and development by supporting community-led initiatives in Nicaragua with resources and volunteers– volunteers like you, perhaps?

Come find out. This Saturday from 7:00 - 10:00, ATRAVES is having a benefit dinner featuring homemade Nicaraguan food: indio viejo, gallo pinto, tostones and more… as well as beer and wine, and possibly some Flor de Caña for sale. There will also be a silent auction of beautiful pottery made by artisans ATRAVES works with in San Juan de Oriente, a video call to shout-out the simultaneous party in Managua, and opportunities to learn more about their work.

They are asking for $20 or what you can pay for dinner / $10 or what you can pay if you’re not eating. Brady also asks that you send a quick RSVP to him at beto [at] atraves [dot] org, just so he can be sure there’s enough food for you. It’s a low-key, casual thing at his apartment at 146 Verndale Avenue, Providence RI 02905, and all are welcome. www.atraves.org is the website, and funds are helping their efforts to build a small clinic and health education center in an extremely impoverished neighborhood of Managua.

UPDATE: Whoops.  Yes, this post is redundant, per the post of a few slots down.  Sorry for eroding whatever veneer of professionalism we might have retained.

ORIGINAL: Forbes says that we’re the fourth most stressful city in the country*. Though all of the cities people from here seem to want to move to — DC, Boston, New York, Chicago, LA, and San Fran — are in the top ten. So it can be interpreted as an accolade — more evidence that Providence is out-sized, playing with the big boys, in league with all the heavy hitters.

*Is that before or after we get wasted and do all those drugs?

Wesli wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but we just noticed that it was languishing on the Side Blog. Also, there was a caption under the photo which was screwing around with the formatting. It read “Hartford and Atwood, in Johnston: Our economy, and our business appeal, can only move as fast as our people. How many cars to buses are visible here?”

CNBC scored each state on “40 different measures of competitiveness,” then ranked them in “ten broad categories.” In overall aggregate, Rhode Island ranked #48, ahead of Hawaii and Alaska.

We scored about average in Workforce, Quality of Life, Technology and Innovation, and Education. We scored well below average in Access to Capital, ahead of only about a third of other states. And even worse in Cost of Living, ahead of only one fifth. The four remaining scores are where we bombed out.

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Death has been no friend to the glitterati this summer. In truth, Summer 09 is playing out like a real-life celebrity slasher flick, and this weekend was no exception. Frank McCourt and Walter Cronkite are the latest victims cut down in the prime of life, and Hollywood has been left wondering: who’s next?

While we at the Daily Dose do not currently have the technology to accurately predict the identities of any future casualties, we can remind A-Listers and D-Listers alike of The Rules, a practical how-to guide for surviving the most gruesome of horror films:

1. Never have sex. This is important! If David Carradine had simply gone on a tour of some Buddhist temple instead of having Thai trannies tie his junk up with shoelaces* he’d probably still be alive today.
2. Never drink or do drugs. This is your brain. This is your brain on Jesus Juice and Demerol. Got any questions?
3. Never, under any circumstances, say “I’ll be Right Back.” I have absolutely no way of proving this, but I think it’s pretty obvious that Billy Mays probably spoke these exact words right before he left us for that big OxiClean infomercial in the sky.

With roughly six more weeks left for brazen rule breaking, who do you predict will throw caution to the wind and fall victim to Summer of Celebrity Death 09? Our comment lines are open and waiting to hear what you have to say.

*Allegedly, and according to a fellow reveler at the PKL shindig at Nick-A-Nees last night.

We failed to post about last night’s meeting, but here’s a blurb on what we missed, and what’s to come:

An upcoming event: A Pre-Sign Up meeting is being held at Trinity Brewhouse, April 22, at 7:30pm. Bring your questions and help us do a head-count of the teams. We’d like to admit 14 again this year… Check the Calendar for details.

And of course: Signups!! May 2nd. Teams better bring it: Manifesto (make ’em good this time), team roster and cold hard cash.

• Manifesto! Sing a song, do a dance, yell and scream, give us all you’ve got. Show us your uniform, present your theme, and make it good. As an example, the best manifesto last year: The returning team of Zomboree took the stage. Now, we all know their deal by now… brain-hungry zombies, we get it. So what did they do? One syllable escaped the captains mouth when she was hacked apart and dissemated by her team-mates in a bloody brawl that took all of 10 seconds. That’s what we are talking about. Quick, surprising, funny and horrible all at once. Don’t make this into the Gong Show – if your manifesto is a Peter Jackson trilogy, you will be cut off.
• Team roster needs to be no less than 15 names, and not made up ones. Give us the email and phone number for the Captain/Co-captains.
• $300 entry fee required, will be returned if your team does not make the cut. Cash is preferred, but as we had to go and get a bank account, checks are acceptable. Make them out to Jason Hogue or Jarrett McPhee – the Providence Kickball League is not a legal entity so you can’t make the check out to that.

First game of the season will be May 30th, 2009: Stan Lutcha Field, the Armory

Hit up the PKL page and scroll to the bottom for footage of one of the most infamous events in PKL history, to get yourselves in the mood…

Head over to Everyman this afternoon to share in good memories of John “Crawlin’ Snake” Mac who left the party too damn soon.  There may be other music-type tributes going on — I’m not sure how the event will play out — just head over and hang with his friends and fellow musicians.  You can go check out his myspace for a sample of his stuff but be prepared for his headline.  Next to his picture — “I’m the next dead blues guy”.  I think ya just gotta laugh along.

Saturday, 4pm to 8pm, cash bar, Everyman, 311 Iron Horse Way (555 Valley Street)

I just love that yesterday’s dire article in The New York Times about our floundering home state includes the crazy URI fight song, which really can’t be appreciated without the little staccato handclap just before the above phrase (I perform this song with some frequency).  But there isn’t too much else to rejoice in here.  I will add that they illustrated the piece with a picture of a boarded up “office building” on South Main Street with which I have had a passing familiarity — and yes, it was an office building in that it had been carved up, rented out and some people had desks.  I would just hate to think that people in, say, Houston are laughing at our office building.  So Houston, if you are reading this, I want you to know we have many tall and shiny buildings that are also empty and boarded up.

At least the piece ends on an upbeat note with a recent transplant, Marjory Garrison, singing our praises.

Ms. Garrison moved to Providence last summer from Brooklyn and became so captivated that she started her own recruitment campaign, plastering neighborhoods in Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn and Seattle with posters that shout “Move to Providence!”

“It has so much going for it, and so much of that is still under the surface in a lot of ways,” she said. “I think people here believe that once you crack that open, anything is possible.”

Well then, let’s get cracking.

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market –
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories
packed in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That’s it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren’t the same.

-John Updike

Public Service Announcement: Don’t stick your tongue to a frozen pole like this kid in Indiana. And try to be a good chum and not dare your friends to do it, either.

If we’ve learned nothing from 25 years of “A Christmas Story,” at least we can imagine it’s gotta be reeeeeally tough to get a Band-Aid to stick there.

We’re proud to present the newly redesigned ProvidenceRollerDerby.com with more of what you love. Below you’ll find a brief introduction to our new design and what it has to offer.

• Simple, Clear and Consistent – Providence Roller Derby has made every effort to create a Web site that’s simple, clear and consistent. No matter where you go on the site, you won’t be surprised by confusing clutter.
• Easy to Navigate – Each page is equipped with a drop-down menu. Simply move our mouse over any choice on the navigation bar, and you’ll be able to go wherever you want in one easy click.

In the months to come you can expect regular additions to our news and events on the front page. Make sure you sign up to get our newsletter!

Also, Providence Roller Derby is still recruiting for the 2009 season.

Yves Montand - Les Feuilles Mortes

…in Bhutan.   In my mind, utilitarianism is still the most legitimate guiding principle for governments — you know, trying to do the stuff that makes it easier for people to lead rich, fulfilling, happy, lives.

While GDP is a piece of the puzzle, it’s far from the complete picture — it’s a means to end, rather than the end in its own right.  And it correlates to happiness to varying degrees:  GDP is probably a better indicator of ‘GNH’ in a country with an equitable distribution of wealth than in one riddled with inequities, in one with industry that doesn’t pollute than in one that does, etc…

It’s nice to see this stated as a guiding principle in burgeoning democracy.  (Info on how GNH is measured, here.)

NO free ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s is supposed to be giving out a free scoop of ice cream today from 5pm to 8pm to celebrate democracy and stuff — and that seems to be true elsewhere around the country — but the gentleman at the Meeting Street location says they will not be participating. Well I, for one, will be taking my fat American ass elsewhere. 421.1114

Indeed, the problem appears to be fewer mammals.

All of your cute n cuddly favorites, from the super intelligent dolphins, to bulky, lovable whales, to apes and cats and hyraxes are dying off in a horrible evolutionary cataclysm, termed an “extinction crisis” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, the director general of the I.U.C.N., a network of campaign groups, governments, scientists and other experts.

The group’s annual Red List just came out, and it includes at least of quarter of all of earth’s mammals. That. Blows. So. Much. In only slightly less depressing news, a third of the planet’s amphibians are also in the crapper. While I’d like to believe otherwise, I have the feeling that the Chevy Volt is not going to solve this problem all by itself. And as Dose readers know, my enduring raison d’etre is the hope that, somewhere in the Yangtze, the Baiji lives.

Meanwhile, some “leading geneticist” says that human evolution is breaking down because men aren’t waiting until they’re old to have kids, because old men’s sperm is more unstable and therefore more likely to contain the mutations that power the evolutionary process. Oh, that and now you can be a total moron and yet manage not be killed off by nature before procreating.

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about what with our mammal problems. more »

Prisons are supposed to make us safer, right? Prisons are supposed to be places of rehabilitation, reflection, and order, right? The AP reports:

CRANSTON, R.I. (AP) - An inmate at the state prison is facing a felony assault charge for allegedly beating another prisoner. George Ortiz is scheduled to be arraigned in District Court in Warwick on Monday afternoon on a charge of felony assault. He’s serving a sentence for domestic assault.

Ortiz is accused of assaulting Robert Bainter during a fight Friday in the prison’s minimum security building. Bainter was taken to Rhode Island Hospital with a serious head injury and was listed in critical condition. The Rhode Island State police are investigating the incident and say some kind of argument between the two led to the assault.

The ProJo says:

State police Maj. Stephen O’Donnell said yesterday that on July 4, Ortiz and Robert Bainter, 20, got into an argument, and then Ortiz hit Bainter in the head three times. Bainter fell, striking his head and suffering severe head trauma, O’Donnell said.

Apparently, Ortiz assaulted Bainter with a sock full of Combination Locks.  Do our inmates have rights to life, safety, and security? Yes, and this tragedy underscores the ways in which the hollow austerity of the ACI does little to rehabilitate offenders and disregards the well-being of it inmates.