culture – RI Future

September 20, 2015

Inaugural Ocean State Oyster Festival a success

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Saturday marked the first ever Ocean State Oyster Festival, celebrating the resurgent and exploding oyster industry in Rhode Island, held at the Riverwalk in Providence.

Attendees were both curious and hungry. Smiles and a light-hearted attitude infected all those wandering around the festival looking for the next shellfish to slurp.

“For me it’s the history, the direct heritage of it all,” said Steven Thompson, a Warren Town Council member who spoke at length the “rebuilding” of the oyster industry in his town, which he said was “decimated”and is now growing again.

Farms from across the Ocean State came to display and provide the all-important oysters while music played and smiles were brought to nearly every face.

Oysters on ice from Salt Pond Oysters, shucked and ready for slurping.

Oysters are a cornerstone of Rhode Island heritage. According to the Ocean State Oyster Festival oyster farming as far back as 1900 was a thriving industry in RI, Point Judith Pond provided an unmatched bounty of oysters. The industry grew fast with the exponential boom putting immense pressure on local oyster populations. Over fishing decimated the shellfish nearly driving them into extinction. The growth of industry drove itself into near collapse.

About 20 years ago Rhode Island sustainable aquaculture movement began and sparked the current oyster farming climate.

“It’s blowin’ up. From a few farms 15 years ago to now almost 50,” said Travis Lundgre, an employee of Salt Pond Oysters.

When asked why he loves it Lundgre said, “The calm of it all. Oyster farming is just different, different from every other kind of farming.”

Jesse Kwan, of the Oyster Country Club, called them “the foundation of the oceans.”

In Rhode Island, oysters are the quintessential local food, with nearly every farm supplying restaurants around the state almost exclusively. Some of the larger farms, including Salt Pond Oysters, Walrus & Carpenter Oysters, and Salt Water Farms, do export their stock to other states and around the country as well.

“You could eat one and I could eat one and we’d taste two different things,” said Lauren Nutini of Salt Water Farms, the largest oyster farm in Rhode Island.

With programs like the Blount Shellfish Hatchery at Roger Williams University, Blount Fine Foods, based in Warren, provided the endowment to create the only shellfish hatchery in Rhode Island. Warren was historically an oyster farming community and now that same community is pulling together in efforts to restore the oyster farms.

The farms themselves use sustainable farming techniques to ensure the oysters not only thrive but provide a healthy ecosystem around them. One such practice is “reseeding” or pouring the old shells back into the farms allowing the baby shellfish something to latch onto and grow before popping off and being harvested.

Oysters filter nearly 50 gallons of water a day, with some farms having 6 million animals, that’s over 300 million gallons of water being cleaned cumulatively a day for years as they mature and grow.

“There’s nothing better after a day at the beach,” said attendee Fred Jodry, “It’s a mouthful of the ocean.” Jodry explained his intrigue with the resurgence of oyster farming in Rhode Island. “Industry took it out, and it’s nice to see this coming back.”

March 2, 2013March 2, 2013

Working Class Hero: Rocky Balboa or Ann Romano

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Maybe Michael Corleone moving to Tahoe left a bad taste in our mouths. Maybe we wanted him to legitimize the family business instead of going gangster. Whatever the reason, the Hollywood hero of the ensuing year was not the privileged prodigal son, it was the working class Italian-American.

Remember Rocky Balboa and Ann Romano? As “The Godfather” fell from fashion, both “Rocky” and “One Day at a Time” captured America’s heart. They both became heroes for how they handled their lots in life.

In fictional Philadelphia Rocky was working as a mob thug while moonlighting as the underachieving bum at the local boxing club. While over in the mythical midwest Ann was living the American dream – married with two beautiful daughters in the suburbs. Then fate intervened for them both. Rocky got a random shot at the heavyweight title and Ann got a divorce.

Before his luck turned around, Balboa was such a disappointment he had just lost his locker. Apollo Creed, the heavyweight champ, needed a chump for a publicity stunt and he picked the Italian Stallion for his nickname. Once Rocky got his shot, he could not only self-will himself to become the best boxer in the world, but his entire life got better. His new girlfriend, Adrianne, miraculously became more atractive the more he trained.

And he didn’t even have to win to become a national hero. He was selected at random and lost. But he got second chance and won. He then went on to defend his title against all sorts of popular enemies of mainstream America: a big, black guy who had the nerve to speak his mind and ask for equal treatment, a steroid-shooting Soviet, youth.

Watch this scene from Rocky 3 to see why America hated Clubber Lang so much:

Ann Romano experienced a very different career trajectory. After her divorce, she moved with her daughters to the big city (actually, Indianapolis) where she got a job in advertising and fended off awkward passes by the building superintendent. She fell in love again, but her fiance died in a car accident. Her kids had a series of tough teenage experiences. She changed jobs a couple times, and had a host of ups and downs with her family. In the end, her oldest ran away, her youngest married a dentist and she went into business for herself. Schneider moved to Florida.

Rocky’s got his own statue in Philly and no one has thought about Ann Romano until Bonnie Franklin, the actor who played her, died yesterday. But which one do you think is more of a real American hero?

November 21, 2012November 24, 2012

This Thanksgiving

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I wonder what would happen if this Thanksgiving holiday was more traditional. I am not thinking of the harvest festival celebration of abundance common to all cultures, but of the practice of public days characteristic of the Pilgrims and Puritans themselves.

These public days were the opposite of Thanksgiving as we have come to know it. Rather than a secular celebration of abundance and consumption, these special days were set aside for contemplation, fasting, the public admission of faults, and petitions for reform and redemption. They were spiritual as well as communal occasions. Indeed, they began in Europe as Calvinist holidays which substituted for abandoned Catholic holy days. Whether called to petition the Almighty for relief from hardship and suffering, or to give thanks for having received such assistance, they were undertaken to seek the possibility of redemption.

Our forebears recognized the need for being redeemed. They understood, too, that the possibility of redemption came only with open and honest confession, with the asking of forgiveness, and with the public resolution to amend one’s ways.

Go to the State House in Boston to see a mural commemorating one such famous public moment: “1697, Dawn of Tolerance… Public Repentance of Samuel Sewall for his Actions in the Witchcraft Trials.” Sewall was a prominent churchman and leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and had been one of the Salem witch trial judges who condemned over thirty women and men to death. He helped preside over twenty executions before they were stopped by the governor. But four years later he had had a change of mind and heart, and stood in front of his congregation at the church we now call Old South during a fast-day service, as his minister read his public statement accepting “the blame and shame” for the injustices of the witch hunt.

What we remember as a dawn of tolerance for the nascent community was surely a transformative moment for at least one congregant, Thomas Sewall himself. In the years that followed, he strove not only to reform his ways but to improve his society. He went on to write and speak on behalf of radically enlightened beliefs – the virtue and godliness of Native Americans, the moral necessity of abolition, the rights and equality of women – and so helped lead his colony, and our country, to a more perfect future.

This kind of community reform, founded on the basis of the social obligation we owe to others to reform ourselves, is certainly no less necessary today. So while we have much to be thankful for even in hard times, more is required of us than gratitude. George Washington said in his original Thanksgiving proclamation that we should ask “pardon [for] our national and other transgressions….to render our national government a blessing to all the people.” Abraham Lincoln, when he established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, implored the Almighty “to heal the wounds of the nation” by expressing “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.”

We could do the same.

This Thanksgiving, a moment of reflection will bring readily to mind a host of transgressions both national and personal. With the acknowledgment of wrongdoing, we just might begin to have real hope for change; with the acceptance of blame, we can begin to rightfully believe in change’s possibilities; with a humble pledge to each other to repair the harms in which we have been complicit, we can yet know the power of redemption.

March 10, 2012March 11, 2012

Providence: My Favorite Town

There’s a show tonight at Machines with Magnets that I won’t be going to, but it will be King Hell awesome. I think The Silks are one of the best acts on wheels right now, even though I’m not really a roots music kind of guy.

Based on the advice of my friend Lord Giovanni, we brought The Silks up to the shop to cap off one of those morale-boosting days, and they positively CRUSHED it. It’s not easy to please true-to-life factory types, ultra-genius engineers and, well, me. But they had 100% of the people smiling. The support card tonight includes The Atlantic Thrills, who will rip your face off and gave up a stellar performance at last year’s Wooly Fair.

The wider music scene in PVD also includes The Rice Cakes clever post-pop, The ‘mericans ‘mericana as well as RI Future’s own Alex Moore’s The Invisible Hours psychedelic pop and Reza Clifton‘s soulful hip-hop to name but a few.

Okay, enough with the name-dropping link bait. You get the point.

Next month will mark my 20th anniversary as a Providencean (with a few years as a Bucketeer), and right now is the best it’s been. I realize that RI features some particularly ugly statistics and that some, even many folks are having a tough time. But for me, this is the most satisfying life experience to date.

Why? It’s the cult-chuh!

Compared to What?

Here’s the thing. It’s not like I moved here from South Carolina or the ‘burbs of VA. I’ve lived in Boulder, CO; San Francisco; Burlington, VT and East Jeezum, VT.

There’s obviously a pattern. I’ve always actively sought a liberal or progressive political culture and an active local arts scene. While I didn’t choose to move to Providence, I choose to stay because I really love it here.

It’s fashionable to bash on Rhode Island, and even I was pushed over the edge by my DMV-ing last week. But these negatives quickly fade away when I have so many stimulating and satisfying options from which to choose. When I hear people beef about RI, I really don’t get it. What do you want out of life, people?

Of course, Providence isn’t for everybody, and to each his or her own. I know that one frequent commenter is quite satisfied with the VA ‘burbs, although another person I know is positively hating it down there and can’t wait to come back. I’ve had family reasons to go to South Carolina many times, but I’m hoping I never have to go there again as long as I live.

To each his or her own. Fair enough.

Three One-of-a-Kind Examples of Awesome

If you’ve never been to a show at Machines with Magnets, you have missed a fabulous and unique experience. (GO TONIGHT!) MwM in Pawtucket is a recording studio, an art gallery and a performance space. And all the parts are strong. They’ve recorded both Battles records, local heros Deer Tick and a lot of other highly demanding artists. To call the shows in the gallery/performance space “intimate” does not express the immediacy of the experience. It is at once world-class, entirely approachable and actively supportive of the local scene. Where else can you cite that’s like that?

Wooly Fair, of which I am a part, is head and shoulders above any arts event I’ve ever been to. What makes Wooly so amazing is the complete and utter lack of support from anybody who’s not an artist or creative of some sort. There’s practically no corporate or civic sponsorship, and to date, it’s been almost entirely volunteer-driven. That leaves us free to create what no highly sponsored event can – total madness.

Lastly, Thee Red Fez is my favorite restaurant anywhere. Well, Bazaar in Amsterdam gives it a run for its money. It may be the ultimate expression of Providence-ness. Founded by a (married) couple of punks, it makes eclectic seem boring. The vibe is young and lively, and the menu is constantly changing with a focus on local ingredients. Chef Ed Raposa is a food genius. Breaded, deep-fried kim chee. Quod erat demonstrum. I’ve taken numerous clients there, and one – a true world traveler – paid it the ultimate compliment of photographing the menu and sending it to a friend as part of their ongoing best-menus game called “Where Am I?” None of the three guesses was “Providence”, and the revealed answer was met with complete incredulity.

This posting of some dozen-odd examples only scratches the surface of the outrageously rich cultural life that makes Providence such a great place to live. In conclusion, I like it here.