One of Rhode Island’s Oldest Independent Charities On a Saturday morning in April, a committee of half a dozen people gathered to decide how more than $100,000 will be spread to three dozen agencies in the Providence area. They are today’s stewards for one of Rhode Island’s oldest independent charities: The Providence Shelter for Colored […]
Navigating the Labyrinth of Social Insurance Becky Kelsey is in a great mood this Monday afternoon, laughing and smiling for her mother Jodi. It is a lighter moment in what can often be challenging days. Becky, who is 33 and lives at home, has a severe form of cerebral palsy. She can’t speak or walk, […]
Nearly 2,000 bills have been filed since the beginning of this year’s general assembly session. Only a fraction have made it to the governor’s desk so far and the majority of those are bills that would allow certain individuals to perform marriage ceremonies. So The Hummel Report decided to take its annual look at some […]
Every Thursday they converge, seemingly out of nowhere: a core group of volunteers who will unload two pallets of food in about 20 minutes. It is an efficient operation and this group has it down to a science. They are some of the nearly 100 people pitching in at Tap In, an all-volunteer outreach organization […]
An unresponsive university president doesn’t look good For more than a decade, the University of Rhode Island had a national reputation as one of the most unfriendly campuses for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. Those students didn’t need The Princeton Review to tell them how hostile the environment had become; they had been […]
For the Love of Theater The energy level is high on a Wednesday night in February as three dozen kids head into their final rehearsal of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. They’ve been practicing for nearly two months, but with opening night now on the immediate horizon there’s the usual mix of excitement, anticipation […]
House Speaker Gordon Fox Resigns The irony was not lost on anybody who has spent any amount of time at the Rhode Island State House. On a quiet Friday morning last month, the Rhode Island State Police, accompanied by agents from the FBI and IRS, swooped in, making a beeline for the third-floor office suite […]
Schools becoming a “fixer-upper” Like many schools of its era, Harry Kirzirian Elementary off Chalkstone Avenue needs a lot more than a facelift. From the outside, the school looks like it was built in 1959. But it isn’t until a visit inside that you truly appreciate the challenging conditions that teachers, staff and 600 […]
Mike Kelly’s experience with The Hummel Report The million dollar advertising campaign is one that you probably have seen on television, on Facebook or on billboards around the state. And it was one of those ads that caught Mike Kelly’s attention in December. So he checked out HealthSourceRI’s website and quickly got the answer he was […]
It is the building where many Rhode Islanders got their first driver’s license or had a car registered. The old DMV on Smith Street left more than two decades ago, allowing the state Department of Transportation to take over its first-floor offices. Let’s just say that time has not been kind to the building, which […]