It should be abundantly clear to anybody who has read my work over the last years of published pieces here at Motif: I love the city of Providence. Everything about it to me exudes quiet charm, limitless narratives, and alluring architecture, all set to the soundtrack of an artsy yet brutalistic urban landscape. This admiration […]
And I to clasp her waist wandered all the earth, with wars and mountains, with sands and thorns. – Pablo Neruda Providence, Rhode Island greeted Alexis with grayness on a rain-soaked Tuesday in fall. He arrived via Peter Pan bus from New York, and disembarked at Kennedy Plaza. He had waited twenty years for this […]
Admittedly, much of my work has focused on the familiar and where my upbringing was centered: the South Side and the West End, where I lived for the first forty years of my life. Even the East Side has garnered much love among my musings, given my career path and where it has led. For […]
It was an A-line dress, the same shade of yellow as a taxicab with no pattern or print. It was cinched at the waist, with spaghetti straps, pleated along the bottom and reached down to the knees, more or less. The vintage clothing and antiques store on the city’s ever-evolving, artsy West End was proud […]
Menacing gray clouds were gathering over Providence this past July 8, threatening to put a damper on the opening night celebration of the 2025 48 Hour Film Festival at the historic Avon Cinema. Director of the festival’s RI chapter, Mel Rainsberger, had started sending out emails early to the expected audience, urging caution and warning […]
Darkness descended on the denizens of Providence one brutally hot evening in mid-July for approximately seventy-two minutes during a city-wide blackout. While some of it may have spilled over into the neighboring towns of Cranston and Pawtucket, it remained tightly within city limits, affecting every neighborhood, side street and main thoroughfare. Experts would later attribute […]