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ELIZABETH RAU
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You're new to town and you want to get all dolled up for that lecture on cognitive linguistics. What to do?
The art of the craft
You're broke. The money-sucking holidays are coming up, and you've got to buy presents for a truckload of people, including a picky cousin whose house is already chock-full of stuff that's never used.
Munchies
With all those honey-flavored oats and nuts, granola is tempting enough for Rhode Island's neo-hippie set. But add a scoop of goodwill to the mix and you invite a veritable stampede of Birkenstocks.
Public Works Dept.
Most people sit on their toilets. Some people paint them — for a good cause.
Audio Dept.
Don't put sharp knives in the dishwasher. If you're in a lousy marriage, get out. Pack light. Wise words from a doting aunt? Guess again.
Behind Bars
It sounds almost too cruel to be true: a woman inmate is shackled to a hospital bed while delivering her baby. Sadly, hundreds of women across the country endure that humiliation, an unthinkable indignity for an already downtrodden group.
Local product, global cause
In the North End of Providence, in a small factory not far from a set of train tracks and a Walmart, a new non-profit is taking up an immodest mission: ending world hunger.
Film dept.
One of the most powerful scenes in The Two Escobars is an interview with a Colombian assassin who chuckles as he recalls how his boss, the drug lord Pablo Escobar, compulsively listened to a soccer match on a portable radio as the gunshots of police hunting him down in a ditch rang out in the distance.
Airborne
They're typical teenagers. They like sports, surfing, the Dave Matthews Band, girls and any food put in front of them, except tomatoes. Oh, they're fearless too, not shy about flying off a pier in a homemade winged chariot and plunging into the churning waters below.
Exoneration
If you haven’t heard of Betty Anne Waters, the Bristol pub owner and single mother of two who put herself through college and law school in a nearly three-decade crusade to overturn her brother’s murder conviction, you will soon.
A casualty of war, and a fierce debate
Linda Bhatia gave her son’s Scout badges to his old pack and his 700 books to his alma mater, Brown University, but she will never let go of the things he had in his final days: his compass, the dimes in his pocket, his wallet, the watch he was probably wearing when a roadside bomb killed him in Afghanistan.
Gatherings
Roadblock flew in from Miami, and Tunnel Rat took the train from Jersey. But it was Baroness, aka Penelope Pappas, who got the cameras clicking at the 17th annual G.I. Joe Collectors’ Convention.
Visitations
Terry McMillan, best known for her blockbuster novels Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back , made a quick stop in South Providence the other day to raise money for the Community Preparatory School and talk shop — with 10-year-olds.
Remedy
Thirty-five years ago, a doctor took Elvy Musikka aside and told her that she’d go blind from her glaucoma if she didn’t start smoking. Marijuana, that is.
Dispatches
Thirteen years ago, a carpenter demolishing an old tenement in Amsterdam found 86 letters and postcards and one telegram hidden in the attic floor.
In the Garden
Drive south on Broad Street past the markets and churches, take a left on Somerset and there, in a clearing of raised garden beds behind a chain-link fence, you will find Phil Edmonds with his peas.
Sweets
Not long ago, a Brown student with a big idea decided to bake cookies. A ho-hum sugar cookie wouldn't do. No, this budding baker wanted something a bit more exotic.
Corrections Dept.
In her early years as a Providence police officer, Tabitha Glavin didn't think much about why women ended up in prison; her job was to put them there.
Crossing Lines
Schaefer, the Brown University student recently killed by a suspected drunk driver on the streets of Providence, left behind hundreds of friends, including soldiers in the Israeli army, with whom he served for three years before coming to Brown.
Revues
We all know RISD students like to paint and draw, but can they hoof it? Or belt out a show tune and carry a giant pencil at the same time? Well, yes, it turns out.
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