Wintertime is special. In the face of bleak weather and wracking cold, humanity still finds a way to infuse joy and warmth into a season when everything in nature has slowed or died. And since it is a near universal sense of celebration found in a multitude of forms across myriad cultures, the winter also […]
Caucacity /kɔˈkæsətɪ/ (n.) The audacity of New World Caucasians who feel entitled to assume privilege and consent when interacting with other cultures not their own. It was a warm summer evening at the Mashpee Wampanoag powwow on Cape Cod, Mass. For the dancers and drummers, the excitement of joining friends in ceremony and performing in […]
As the veil between the worlds thins this Halloween night, this time-travelling Irishman stepped into the land beyond the horizon to learn more about Rhode Island’s illustrious departed. Julia Ward Howe, abolitionist, suffragist and poet; May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910 Julia Ward Howe was an early and commanding voice of the suffrage movement. Her […]
Those of you who read my columns on a regular basis are familiar with my belief in the First Amendment and the value I place in its position as an intrinsic civil liberty. Opinions may differ, but the right to express one’s ideas are tantamount to the country’s notions of democracy, and upholding your right […]
Native America occupies a shady area in the mainstream national consciousness, but the indigenous people of the Americas have neither vanished nor must be seen as an intangible unknown forced to linger on the fringes of society. Rhode Island-based documentary filmmaker and founder of Providence Pictures, Gary Glassman, has long been interested in the wealth […]
The world loves a cartoon baddie, and in Donald Trump we’ve got a villain straight out of “Scooby Doo.” But in either two or six years, we will say goodbye to a man who has gifted more to political satire than George W Bush, and that will be that. But it won’t, because in Trump […]
The art of mixing whiskey and beer originated in Butte, Montana, during the copper boom of the 1890s, and while the practice has evolved somewhat since then, it took a bit of inspiration from a Pawtucket brewer and a legendary Irish distiller to perfect (in my estimation, at least) the concept. Working in tandem with […]
Point a stick anywhere in the US and you will hit a handful of craft breweries, but the same cannot be said of the nation’s distilled spirit scene. With only three distilleries in the entire state of Rhode Island (Sons of Liberty (1425 Kingstown Rd, S Kingstown), White Dog (560 Mineral Spring Ave, Pawtucket) and […]
This story is not a new one. Young people are drifting from the political system, and the establishment is blindly scrambling to stop the decay. But the response from the mainstream frequently leans toward patronizing and slander rather than leveling and understanding. All that is a symptomatic consequence of a much larger, scarier truth. In […]
Wampanoag means “People of the First Light.” Having lived in Cape Cod for at least 10,000 years, they are one of the longest continuous cultures in the Americas. In 2015, the Obama administration placed 321 acres of land in Taunton, Mass, into the trust of the Department of the Interior (DOI) for the development of […]