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Note: the rally on Thursday is called off. President Biden is tending to his son Beau, and will not make it to RI. Send your thoughts his way.
In the middle of August it can be hard to recall February, but it wasn’t all that long ago that busloads of Rhode Islanders headed down to be part of the historic “Forward On Climate” rally that drew between 35-50,000 people to Washington, DC to demand President Obama stop Transcanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline. Since that joyous frigid day, environmental activists have relentlessly dogged the steps of the President and Vice President wherever they have traveled, conducting rallies to drive home the point, Say No To The Pipeline!
For its part, the Administration continues to play the decision on the project close to its vest. President Obama said in his June Climate speech that he would only approve Keystone “if this project doesn’t significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” Obama clearly wants to leave a strong environmental legacy and his credibility hinges on this decision. Meanwhile, Biden told a Sierra Club volunteer that he agreed with those who oppose the pipeline. These are encouraging signs, especially because a very strong case will be made that the Keystone XL would lead to massive increases in carbon pollution.
On the other hand, Obama already approved the southern leg of the pipeline. More importantly, there is a lot of money on the other side of the issue, including that of the profiteering Koch brothers whose Texas refineries would be processing the toxic tar sands oil coming out of Canada to sell on the global oil market.
It is unclear which side is winning. Millions of people have spoken out against the pipeline, but they might all be drowned out by the billions of the fossil fuel industry. President Obama has postponed the decision on the pipeline multiple times, and it looks like it may well get pushed into 2014. Our best hope is in keeping the pressure on. While unfortunately we will not be able to give Vice President Biden the #noKXL message in person as we had planned for, you can still take action here: http://www.sierraclub.org/dirtyfuels/tar-sands/virtual-chain/.
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United States Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan wrapped up her official Rhode Island appearances this morning at Trinity Rep in a 45 minute conversation with historian and writer Ted Widmer. Rhode Island’s own Governor Lincoln Chafee hosted the event, and in his introduction reminded the audience that Rhode Island takes “great pride in our history of religious freedom.” We were, he reminded us, a “trailblazer in civil rights,” especially “freedom of religion and separation of church and state.”
Historian Ted Widmer said that Rhode Island has a long “history of freethinking” beginning with our state’s founder, Roger Williams. “The worst mistake the Puritans ever made,” Widmer quipped, “was banishing Roger Williams to a more beautiful region.” Here Williams founded Rhode Island “as a kind of anti-Massachusetts where religious tolerance could be practiced. We’ve always been natural dissenters.”
Justice Kagan was then introduced to a standing ovation. She began by bringing the crowd up to date on her recent visit to Touro Synagog in Newport on the 250th anniversary of Washington’s Letter upholding the then fledgling nation’s commitment to tolerance and acceptance where Kagan was a featured guest. Though Washington talked of values that go deeper than mere tolerance, Kagan pointed out, “Tolerance was a lot better than the Jews were doing elsewhere in the world.”
Widmer asked if Kagan’s Jewish religious tradition had any affect on her legal thinking, to which Kagan replied, “No, I can’t say that it does.” She did wonder about the lack of geographic diversity on the Supreme Court, pointing out that the “court has an East Coast bias, which is a bit unfortunate.”
Kagan’s been reading Devil in the Grove, a biography of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall which focuses on his early days as a lawyer combating Jim Crow in the 1930’s south. She clerked for Justice Marshall as a law student, saying that he was a great storyteller and the “greatest lawyer of the 20th Century, before he became a justice.”
Kagan sits in the Brandeis Chair, named for Justice Louis Brandeis, a terrific legal mind and the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice. (Kagan is the eighth.) Unlike Kagan, Brandeis was the victim of terrible anti-Semitism during his tenure, even suffering a fellow Justice turning his chair away from him whenever he spoke.
The conversation then turned to the Fourth Amendment, an especially salient issue in these days of NSA spying and the prosecution of whistleblowers. New technologies bring new difficulties and challenges to rights of privacy and government surveillance. Kagan spoke of Justice Brandeis’s dissent in 1928’s Olmstead v. United States. In his dissent Brandeis anticipated new difficulties in protecting individual rights in the light of new technologies, and Kagan thought his now famous dissent reads “almost as if he’s doing a kind of science fiction.”
The Supreme Court Justices “are not the most technologically sophisticated people,” said Kagan, noting that “email is old fashioned” and “the court hasn’t even gotten to email.” Thoughts and communication are still written down on paper and hand deliver by messengers. In one of Kagan’s earliest cases, the subject of violent video games was under discussion and Kagan described a scene of the nine older justices trying to figure out how to play the games in question.
When asked is she goes online herself, Kagan said that she does read some blogs, and that the Court relies on the younger generation of clerks to keep them informed on new technologies.
Kagan explained some of the process of Supreme Court deliberations. The “black box” is the conference room consisting of one table, nine chairs, and a never lit fireplace on either side. The Chief Justice begins the conversation and each Justice speaks, in order of seniority. Kagan speaks last. No Justice can speak twice before all Justices have spoken. After this formality, “conversation breaks out” and the Justices “try for consensus.”
“When you read opinions and dissents you think [the Justices] must hate each other,” Kagan said, but, “This court is actually friendly. We have a lot of respect for each other” and “they’re really trying to get it right.”
Asked about her relationship with the most conservative member of the court, Kagan confirmed, “I have gone hunting with Justice Saclia.” She explained that her Upper West Side New York upbringing wasn’t exactly conducive to learning about hunting, but when she was making her rounds to members of Congress during her confirmation process, in 82 meetings the one question she was asked about most was gun rights and Second Amendment issues.
“How can I know that you’ll understand the importance of gun culture in my state?” one senator asked Kagan, to which she replied “I’d be happy to go hunting with you anytime.” The unnamed senator demurred, but Kagan promised that if confirmed she would ask Scalia to take her hunting. Scalia thought the idea humorous and was happy to have her along.
Both Scalia and Kagan, noted Widmer, are noted for the quality of their dissents. They both tend to use common language and colloquialisms. Kagan defended this style by noting that she thinks it important that her dissents read as clear and understandable, not “arcane and detached.”
“One way to communicate effectively is to speak in a language people understand… speak plainly,” and “not in Latin which even lawyers don’t always understand.” Kagan uses analogies, examples and common sense reasons to support her views.
Dissents are interesting, Kagan noted, because every once in a while a dissent becomes the basis for the way the law will become interpreted in the future. Our present understanding of the First Amendment underwent this process, as did the aforementioned Brandeis dissent in Olmstead.
This brought the conversation naturally to the influence of the wider culture on the court. The Justices, being somewhat modern people in the modern age, are surely aware of the rising tide of acceptance for LGBTQ people. Marriage equality is one issue that has, in one way or another, come to the attention of the Court. Widmer characterized this rapid shift in law as being from the bottom up, through activism and the will of the people, rather than top down, through governmental action.
“We are of this world, live in this society,” said Kagan, “There is no cutting off the court from the rest of the world, nor should there be,” but, Kagan continued, “in the resolution of legal questions there is no direct line from the political or cultural sphere and [Supreme Court] decisions.”
Before the forty-five minutes were up Kagan answered some questions about the Supreme Court and gender. There have only been four women on the Supreme Court, and they are divided by a generation. Justices O’Connor and Ginsberg came from a time when women lawyers had very few opportunities and had to work hard to make their own careers in a very unaccepting atmosphere. “I never had to suffer from overt sexism,” said Kagan, adding that she and Justice Sotomayor both owe a great deal to the first generation of woman justices.
Kagan left the Trinity stage to another standing ovation.
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While several of the ideas presented were very good (improvements to infrastructure and the city’s public schools, oft cited as pressing issues, and rightfully so) and other still were not (sports facilities have generally done little to drastically alter the economic trajectory of a metropolitan region), I couldn’t help but think that these ideas weren’t really that big. What our leaders need to do is to really think big in three ways: the local geographic sense, the global geographic sense, and the economic sense.
As so often happens in our little state, the suggestions outlined by the members of the Providence City Council are colloquial in nature. To be fair, this is their job. They have been tasked by voters with addressing the immediate needs of their wards and the city as a whole. Providence cannot cure its ails on its own as it has so often tried to do, though.
First, what our leaders – both within Providence and without – need to realize is that they exist not in these tiny economic and municipal bubbles, but in a great regional metropolitan economy that encompasses nearly the whole entire state. The boundaries between our cities and towns are arbitrary as far as the economy is concerned. The interconnectedness of our state’s economy cannot be denied, and thus in order to fundamentally alter the economic path of the city of Providence, city leaders need to collaborate with surrounding municipalities.
This does not just mean elected officials, either. This includes all stakeholders: representatives from the business community, non-profits, academia, and capital firms, to name a few, must all have a seat at the table. Changing this paradigm regarding the way we do business is essential for growth. It’s a big-tent philosophy, and while at first it may seems daunting to think about getting everyone inside, those metropolitan areas (think Denver and Cleveland) who have managed to do so have seen results. Providence will still be the hub of this metropolitan region, but it must make use of the resources of the communities surrounding it to truly alter its current economic course and thus the economic course of the state.
Second, it must look beyond its borders. Metropolitan regions who have seen changes in their economic fortunes have done so by exporting goods and services across the oceans and not relying solely on American markets. Tourism and hospitality, the marine trades, defense, and financial services, to name the biggies, are the current drivers of our local economy. These sectors are critical for our economic health, but they are not enough. The state relies heavily, for the most part (there are exceptions, of course), on domestic consumers of its wares. This leaves the rest of the global market essentially untapped. By building trade relationships with overseas markets and producing exportable products, the Rhode Island economy can grow far beyond its current size.
The third part of this new mindset involves thinking big economically. The state needs an exportable product that no one else seems to be providing on a massive scale. Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland, among others, are all massive biotechnology hubs with whom Rhode Island cannot compete. While we absolutely should not abandon our “eds and meds” initiative, it will not be the savior of our economy. We are too close to Boston and lack the institutional capacity to be truly competitive on a global basis. Again, that does not mean we should stop innovation in this sector, it just means we need to find something else to set us apart.
We also have a tremendous tourism and hospitality sector. We have some of the finest restaurants in the world and our natural resources are second to none. We can’t, however, ship Misquamicut Beach or a Farmstead cheese plate across the Atlantic. So what do we do, then? What’s the answer here? My big idea is not a new idea. It is one that has been out there for many, many years. The answer: developing the sustainability economy.
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Following is a brief history of my research into various events in the history of the City of Providence. While I realize that these incidents seem disconnected in isolation, when taken as a whole, they paint a real and imminent danger to the citizens of our town. As I explain to my many readers, listeners and followers, this story is true, and some of it really happened.
Mark Binder, Summer, 2013
The Narragansett Indians called it Clths Slaaag, which Rhode Islands founder Roger Williams translated as The Old One.
Roger Williams joked about it in his diary journal.
After a sparse meal of fish and corn, Cannonicus, the Sachem, warned me not to build my home on the hill. He said that was where The Old One, a horrific monster, lived and fed. His vivid description reminded me of the demonic stories told by Popish priests to cow the superstitious. Most probably a rabid bear.”
Roger Williams was wrong. Seventeen years later, his second son, Elijah mysteriously vanished and was discovered three days later at the mouth of a cave concealed by a fallen apple tree. The boy’s hair and skin had turned white. Three fingers on his left hand were gone, as if they had been gnawed off. Elijah had lost his mind and never spoke again.
Roger Williams heart was broken. He spent much of the rest of his life abroad in England. A scrap of paper with a crude drawing of an anchor
In 1860 when his bones were dug from the family plot to be re-interred beneath his statue in Prospect Park, the popular story was that an apple tree had eaten through his corpse, and the roots had taken the shape of his leg bones. The truth was much darker.
In his diary, Stephen Randall, a witness wrote,
The stench that emitted from the opened grave was beyond imagining. There lay Roger Williams, looking as well-preserved as the day he was interred. Yet his eyes were open, his mouth peeled back baring his teeth in a rictus of horror. When Elder Brown bent down to close the poor man’s eyes, the body disintegrated into thousands of wriggling worms. Those who were present fled, and when we returned all that remained were the roots of the apple tree, looking strangely like a leg bone.
Moses Brown discovered the mangled corpse of a slave girl in the basement of his East Side Home in 1773. No one knew who she was or how she had died,
Brown wrote,
The corpse’s condition was appalling. Her back was scarred with lines that John said betrayed the excessive use of a lash, but reminded me of both the jagged tares rendered by an animals claw and the infected ruin of a child caught in a wave of jellyfish tentacles.
A short time later, Moses Brown freed his slaves and began working for abolition.
Edgar Allen Poe, the author, was the next to write of the thing that lived beneath the Hill. In the margin of the original manuscript for the famous poem, The Raven
Poe wrote in a crabbed hand,
Only in the form of a black bird I can indicate the monstrosity. I have tried again and again to describe the Old One, but language fails me, and the words I use seem unnatural and unreal.
Following his failed courtship of Sarah Helen Power (Whitman), Poe spent weeks wandering up and down Benefit Street in a laudanum-induced haze. Many say that he never recovered.
The most direct references to the creature came from Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who is still famous for his horrific tales of the Necronomicon and The Great Old Ones with unpronounceable names. Lovecraft lived most of his life on Providences East Side, at the tip of a triangle between the land near where Elijah Williams was discovered, and the basement of Mosess Browns house.
“ that cellar in our childhood house was my constant nightmare,” Lovecraft wrote to his brother Peter near the end of his life. “While you and Emily laughed and played, I peered into the darkness. I fear that soul-destroying blackness corrupted me somehow.
More recently, on May 1, 1993, a party thrown by a group of Rhode Island School of Design Students in an abandoned train tunnel ended in horror.
The Providence Journal reported that, After the tear gas and pepper spray cleared, police found thirteen naked students, their backs bleeding as if they had been struck with a whip. One girl was dead. Police have no suspects, but report the probability of drug abuse.”
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Side_Railroad_Tunnel)
In 2003, when more than 30 house cats were reported missing, the Providence Journal attributed the disappearances to a coyote roaming the neighborhood, yet suggested that small pets and children remain inside after dark. In 2009, three homeless men who had been reportedly sleeping under a nearby bridge were also declared missing, by the police, but “presumed to have left the state.:
An article in an alternative The Agenda suggested in 2006 that the changing landscape of the City was bringing the horror to the surface.
“The rivers have been uncovered, a highway is shifting, and a billion dollar project has dug underground sewage overflow tanks beneath the hills where Roger Williams once planted his crops. What else have the construction crews dug up?”
The Agenda
Shortly afterwards, the sidewalk behind the First Baptist Church in America on Benefit Street began to disintegrate and cave in. It took several years to effect the repairs on the sidewalk and fence behind the First Baptist Church.
A city contractor reported in a brief memo that has since gone missing, “ every time we tried to fill it, the sinkhole beneath Benefit Street would fill with slimy brown ichor. We finally had to lay in rebar and cement in layers going down fifteen feet. It is possible that the missing day worker fell in and wasn’t noticed, but I doubt it.”
Even now, week after week, at WaterFire in Providence bonfires are lit in the river and haunting music is played while tens of thousands of people wander through the smoke as an ancient ceremony is reborn and recreated.
Less than six months ago, the mutilated body of a missing Brown University student was found in at the site of an old Narragansett burial ground. The details were hushed up, photographs of his corpse were deleted and television cameras were kept far from the scene.
When asked to comment bout the rumors that these and the other events documented in this article were the work of the Old One, the Mayor refused to answer. This was clearly the work of a sick human being,” he said. “We have far more pressing problems in this city in terms of education and infrastructure. Dont bother me about this nonsense.
Have the shifting lands disturbed the creature? Are the fires and the people drawing the monster closer, bringing it nearer and nearer to the surface?
It is hard to tell with all the noise. But if you listen carefully, as you wander the darkened streets of Providence late at night, perhaps you will hear a sound, a soft and slurping sound, as if a moistened finger was caressing the cartilage next to your ear.
If you hear this sound, do not stop. Do not turn around. Do not scream. It feeds on fear and despair.
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We don’t know too much about the giant leatherback turtles, the world’s second biggest reptile behind the crocodile, that summer offshore of the Ocean State and all over the Eastern Seaboard.
We know they come to feast on jellyfish. We know the females lay eggs in surf-side nests in South America, the Caribbean and as far north as Florida and that the males never again return to shore. But we don’t even know how long they live. After they hatch they swim sometimes thousands of miles out into the deep sea and even researches don’t see much of them again.
Until, that is, they are in trouble.
Such was the case on Thursday when a team from Mystic Aquarium and the U.S. Coast Guard rescued a 600-pound leatherback turtle that had become entangled in commercial fishing equipment four miles off the coast of Charlestown, RI.
Leatherbacks, so named because their so-called shells aren’t hard like other turtles, are one of the charter members of the Endangered Species list. With no natural predators other than human egg poachers, abandoned fishing equipment is the world’s biggest turtle’s biggest threat.
The turtle rescued last week got caught in some rope that was attached to a buoy 4.5 miles south from little-known Quonochontaug Beach and 5.5 miles from well-known Miscquamicut Beach (about 8.5 miles northwest of Block Island), where the ocean is about 100 feet deep.
Being too far off the coast for the Charlestown harbormaster to respond, a seven-person Coast Guard team assisted a three-member rescue squad from the Aquarium. It took them about 45 minutes to free the leatherback, said Janelle Schuh, a stranding coordinator for Mystic Aquarium.
“It had a significant number of wraps around one of it flippers,” she said.
“They usually don’t cooperate very well. There’s lot’s of flailing of their flippers,” she added, noting that their flippers are three-feel long. “Basically, they are just trying to get out of the way.”
Mystic Aquarium took video of the rescue, and released about a minute of footage to the public.
“Leatherback turtles occur relatively commonly in the Rhode Island study area,” according to a 2010 study of marine mammals and reptiles by URI marine biology professor Robert Kenney. Almost all are spotted in summer or fall, and most are seen from pleasure or whale watching boats in the same general vicinity that this where this Leatherback was found.
Leatherback strandings are relatively common in Rhode Island, however we did not have access to most of those records … of the 146 sea turtle strandings responded to by Mystic Aquarium from 1987 to 2001, 124 (84.9%) were in Rhode Island, and 120 of the 146 were leatherbacks.
Mystic Aquarium encourages the public to use its 24-hour hotline at 860.572.5955 ext. 107 if they encounter a marine mammal or sea turtle in Conn., R.I. or Fishers Island, N.Y.
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