I couldn't resist this cheap self-referential tactic to hit the 100 post mark (in a month) for the first time. Thanks to all for reading my blog. More legit news + views will be forthcoming tomorrow, if not sooner.

Frank Caprio demurred when recently asked about his political plans, but RI Report has the details of how the general treasurer has considerably strengthened his war chest. Matt also has the scoop here:

Update 7/31: With the final numbers in, Treasurer Frank Caprio has taken the overall fundraising lead and he, along with Mayor David Cicilline, remain at the top of the Cash on Hand (CoH) category. Updated numbers are below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Original Post 7/3: The 2nd quarter of fundraising (4/1-6/30) has ended for the possible 2010 Democratic gubernatorial candidates and we can now report some numbers. Caprio had another strong quarter with Cicilline slowing down because of his focus on the city budget and Roberts and Lynch picking up some steam from their slow 1st quarters.

• Frank Caprio - Q1: 162k Q2: 165k CoH: $301k
• David Cicilline - Q1: 246k Q2: 72k CoH: $244k
• Patrick Lynch - Q1: 9k Q2: 70k CoH: $30k
• Elizabeth Roberts - Q1: 2k Q2: 45k CoH: $38k
• Scott Avedisian - Q1: $33k  Q2: 16k  CoH: $74k
• Steve Laffey - Q1: $8k  Q2: 12k  CoH: $20k

Matt has a good post about Blue State Coffee, a purveyor on Thayer Street of Fair Trade coffee. This reminded me of a piece I did a few years back on the power of consumers to make change with their coffee-buying decisions:

CAN A CUP of coffee change the world?

For embattled small-scale farmers like 28-year-old Carlos Reynoso, whose colleagues cultivate coffee beans in the western highlands of Guatemala, the daily choices of US consumers have a big impact. When most people in the US buy a $3 latte, a cup of java on the go, or a bag of beans at the supermarket, they unsuspectingly support a status quo in which poor growers in Latin America, Asia, and Africa receive as little as 20 or 25 cents for a pound of high-grade coffee. But when consumers buy Fair Trade coffee — which guarantees farmers a minimum price of $1.26 per pound — their spending fosters a variety of positive effects, not the least of which is the ability of these growers to sustain their livelihoods.

As one of six employees of Manos Campesinas, a collective that coordinates coffee exports for more than a thousand small growers, Reynoso has personally seen the impact. Since global coffee prices began plummeting a few years ago, many farmers have been unable to earn enough to support themselves, causing them to abandon the land and search elsewhere for work. Since Manos Campesinas became Fair Trade–certified in 1999, however, the heightened revenue stream has raised the income of farmers, he says, enabling their families to enjoy a better diet and their children to remain in school.

Speaking through a translator during a telephone interview arranged by the nonprofit development agency Oxfam America, Reynoso notes that Fair Trade isn’t a panacea for poverty. It does, however, offer some substantial big-picture benefits in a country fair like Guatemala, which suffered from decades of violence and anti-union activity after a US-backed coup in 1954. "Now people are realizing there are benefits to organization, and that if they can work together, they can achieve greater things," Reynoso says. There’s still not sufficient demand to sell all of the collective’s coffee through Fair Trade channels, he adds, "[But] the more that consumers get to know what Fair Trade means, the more possibilities we will have."

Although Fair Trade–certified coffee has been available in the US since only 1986, it is rapidly growing in popularity. TransFair USA, an Oakland, California–based nonprofit that monitors the product, announced this spring that it certified 18.7 million pounds in 2003 — a 91 percent jump from 2002. Equal Exchange, a Canton, Massachusetts-based cooperative (soon moving to West Bridgewater) that bills itself as the nation’s leading Fair Trade company, has enjoyed enviable growth, topping $10 million in sales and gaining recognition as one of the fastest-growing small firms in the region. Furthermore, although Fair Trade coffee represents only about one percent of the 2.8 billion pounds of coffee imported into the US in 2003 — aiding just a small fraction of the world’s 25 million coffee farmers — industry giants like Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, and Dunkin’ Donuts have slowly begun to include Fair Trade offerings among their offerings.

It’s not hard to see why proponents tend to embrace Fair Trade java with something approaching evangelical zeal. Perhaps like no other product, a cup of this coffee holds the promise of empowering consumers as a force for global good, offering at least a potential counterbalance to unmitigated corporate consolidation and the exploitation of workers in undeveloped nations. With the spread of the Fair Trade approach to other products in recent years, including chocolate, cocoa, tea, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, and grapes, the prospects seem even greater.

For conscientious coffee mavens like Rik Kleinfeldt, the owner of New Harvest Coffee Roasters, in Rumford, emphasizing Fair Trade beans comes down to doing the right thing. As New Harvest states on its Web site, www.newharvestcoffee.com, "Over the last 200 years, less and less money has gone to the people who actually make things, and more and more wealth has flowed into the coffers of people with soft hands and no shame. The coffee industry is no exception. The people who do the hardest work in making your morning cup possible, the farmers, have long received the smallest share of the proceeds. We want to do all that we can to reverse this reality."

So says Boston.com. I'm not crazy about the idea of dealing Manny Delcarmen, but something tells me that if the Gagne deal happens -- and if there's time before the trade deadline this afternoon -- Delcarmen becomes more expendable in a deal for Jermaine Dye.

As the trade deadline closes in this afternoon, I hope the Sox pull the trigger on a deal for Jermaine Dye. Although a rental, he could make a serious difference in just how they far make it in the post-season. 

WPRI-TV's Tim White will be guesting for John DePetro at 10 am today, and I'm slated to join Tim some time after that. We ran into each other at the Buddy stakeout at the Old Canteen last Friday, so I imagine the former mayor's reemergence may be a topic for discussion.

I agree with Justin's incredulity about the overly generous benefits enjoyed by Cranston firefighters:

It's amazing enough that Cranston firefighters can retire after twenty years at any age, but this is stunning:

Once retired, retirees continue to receive extra pay each year for longevity bonuses and extra pay for 15 holidays!

So, they get longevity bonuses for a job that they no longer do, as well as holiday pay for days they have off anyway. Jim Davey has more details on Cranston firefighters' new contract.

And I second Matt's observation about the mind-boggling wastefulness of our misadventure in Iraq:

Listening to more right-wing sycophants on the radio today babble on and on and on about how welfare recipients and undocumented immigrants are a drain on the Rhode Island economy, it struck me that these are the same wackos who pushed our nation to invade Iraq and who have supported the $750 billion that our nation has spent in taxpayer dollars in Iraq. Of this $750 billion, Rhode Island taxpayers have lost nearly $2 billion to the Iraq War. Imagine the kind of economic development that could have happened with this money! Nationally, do you know what we could have invested that $750 billion in instead of in a misguided war?

• a Marshall Plan for the public schools
• a Marshall Plan for renewable energy
• a Marshall Plan for American roads, utilities and infrastructure
• Full, Universal Health Care for every American
• And of course, the American Dollar would be strong and the American Economy would attract more investors than simply China buying T-bills.

Speaking of waste, did you know that there are still 34 full-time staffers at the United Nations whose job is to monitor Iraq for Weapons of Mass Destruction and it wasn’t until 6/8/07 that the U.S. put in a resolution to disband this monitoring team (from Harper’s 8/07)?

The great director was 89. Among other things, we'll always that scene in The Seventh Seal of a Medieval knight playing a game of chess with Death.

Samantha Power had a lengthy essay in yesterday's New York Times Book Review. One of the highlights is how she calls the US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual a leading reference for a revised 21st Century approach to fighting terrorism.

When the terrorists struck on 9/11, the United States military was singularly unprepared to deal with them. One reflection of the Pentagon’s mind-set at the time was the fact that the Army counterinsurgency manual had not been updated since 1986 and the Marine Corps guide had not been revised since 1980.

This lack of preparedness showed. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the armed forces did not have the appropriate intelligence, linguistic capabilities, weapons, equipment, force structures, civil affairs know-how or capacity to train security forces in other countries. “It is not unfair to say that in 2003 most Army officers knew more about the U.S. Civil War than they did about counterinsurgency,” Lt. Col. John A. Nagl writes in the foreword to the University of Chicago edition. But while the Bush administration dug in, refusing to admit how ill-suited its premises were to the new century, American military officers revised their old doctrines on the fly.

. . . .

The fundamental premise of the manual is that the key to successful counterinsurgency is protecting civilians. The manual notes: “An operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more insurgents.” It suggests that force size be calculated in relation not to the enemy, but to inhabitants (a minimum of 20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents). It emphasizes the necessity of coordination with beefed-up civilian agencies, which are needed to take on reconstruction and development tasks.

The most counterintuitive, as well as the most politically difficult, premise of the manual is that the American military must assume greater risk in order to gather much-needed intelligence and, in the end, achieve greater safety. The emphasis of the 1990s on force protection is overturned by the assertion of several breathtaking paradoxes: “Sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.” “Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.” “Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.” Sarah Sewall, a former Pentagon official who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (and a close colleague of mine), has contributed an introduction that should be required reading for anybody who wants to understand the huge demands effective counterinsurgency will place on the military and the voting public. “Those who fail to see the manual as radical probably don’t understand it,” she writes, “or at least what it’s up against.”

Is William Barbieri qualified for the long-unoccupied post of director of e-government information technology in the office of Secretary of State Ralph Mollis? According to Mollis's office, as told to the ProJo's Political Scene:

“Bill Barbieri’s professional background as a network administrator and a database systems manager is second to none. When our two top IT staffers left for the private sector, I turned to a man whose talent I have complete confidence in.” 

Will the tapping of a pal -- who was accused of using his RIPTA computer to urge support for Mollis last year among fellow employees -- help Mollis to overcome negative publicity on stories involving his children? Probably not.

While we await word on Buddy Cianci's future in broadcasting, the ProJo's Dan Barbarisi today takes a look at a question with broader implications: how will the rascal king's return to Rhode Island affect David Cicilline? (I wrote about the same question in July 2006.)

“Buddy’s return will change the public conversation about Providence. It creates another power center,” said Brown University political science Prof. Darrell West. “Buddy’s return empowers those who are unhappy with the current direction of the city.”

Cicilline, of course, is widely anticipated to be a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2010. Once Buddy gets on the air, though, he will have a forum to bedevil the man who effectively succeeded him.

If Cicilline is dreaming of higher office, the best thing he can do, [Joseph R.] Paolino said, is to meet Cianci head-on, on the first day of any potential radio show.

“Cicilline probably has advisers telling him, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it,’ but it would be better if he did.”

“Knowing what I know today, he should want to be his first guest,” Paolino said. “Buddy’s got no reason to be angry with him. There’s no ax to grind. I think David should go on his show.”

CICILLINE laughed when told of Paolino’s advice. “I’ll respond to him the next time I see him,” he said.

Mansolillo confirmed to N4N that Buddy Cianci has explored a possible talk-radio job in Boston. His anticipated future in broadcasting is "likely to be here [in Rhode Island], although there have been discussions also with Boston, an opportunity," Mansolillo said.

Cianci confidante Charles Mansolillo says the newly freed former mayor will be present at tomorrow night's WaterFire in Providence.

Asked if Cianci would make a grand entrance, the former city solicitor said, "I don't think that's been given very much thought. I don't know the answer to that question."

Mansolillo says Buddy will speak with reporters later, rather than sooner, because "he doesn't want to go through a cacophony of questions."  

Cianci slipped away from a media gaggle after a late lunch -- haddock and broccoli rabe -- at Joe Marzilli's Old Canteen on Federal Hill. Mansolillo threw the gathered reporters a bone this afternoon by taking questions during an impromptu press conference outside the restaurant. A short time later, with camera crews staking out several exits, Cianci, riding in the passenger seat of a gray Mercedes with Florida plates, sped away. He was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap.

Mansolillio says seven people were at the lunch, including lawyer David Igliozzi, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2002.

Is putting 75 percent of RI's hospital system under the control of one entity a good idea?

Governor Carcieri plays it down the middle:

“While the creation of such a dominant health care network raises a number of important concerns, it also creates the potential for significant positive progress on a number of fronts,” Carcieri continued.  “Done correctly, this merger could actually help drive health care reform in Rhode Island.  In particular, we expect this merger will create opportunities to improve health care quality, reduce health care costs, make the use of health information technology more widespread and effective, and bolster Rhode Island’s primary care system.”

“My administration is committed to using its powers under the Hospital Conversion Act to ensure that this merger will achieve these goals.  We will take every precaution under this law to guarantee that we have thoroughly and completely evaluated the merger proposal and its impact on the state’s health care delivery system,” the Governor said.  “Our primary objective in this process is to protect the interests of the Rhode Island public and to promote access to quality, affordable health care.”

"In the coming weeks and months, my administration will work collaboratively with the Attorney General to ensure that this merger is right for Rhode Island."

There's a lot happening in the local blogosphere. Matt had a good roundup on this yesterday. Here's some more:

-- Thanks to John DePetro for linking to N4N and some other local blogs (scroll down).

-- My conservative friends at Anchor Rising are keeping up a busy publication schedule, including the placement of a few recent op-eds in the ProJo, and AR's Andrew Morse will join the aforementioned Matt in appearing Sunday with Jim Hummel on ABC6 On the Record.

-- The RI Democratic Party has a new Web site and blog.

-- Tom Shevlin at RI Report offers his second installment on why he left the Republican Party.

-- Phoenix contributor Mary Ann Sorrentino is up with a new Web site and a blog. 

-- Providence firefighter Michael Morse, who has a blog, Rescuing Providence, reports that he plans to publish a book by the same name.

-- The LA Times reports that blogs will influence politics and policymakers (h/t Romenesko). You think?

Kerala Goodkin, editor-in-chief of the Glimpse Foundation, will be doing a reading of her recently published novel, How Things Break, tomorrow on Saturday, August 4 (5 pm) at the Wild Colonial in Providence before decamping for Washington, DC. We'll miss seeing her behind the bar at the WC, and wish her the best in DC. 

So writes Steven Stark in this week's Phoenix:

Although the press covers them pantingly, endorsements often mean little — if anything — in presidential politics. The days when a public official could deliver a constituency have long since passed. Even labor unions, once rock-solid in their bloc-ability, have been unable lately to steer their members to a chosen candidate.

Sure, endorsers may help a candidate’s fundraising efforts by granting access to their Rolodexes. And the support of a mayor can usually get a few senior citizens to the polls on Election Day. But that’s about it.

Unless, of course, the endorser in question is Oprah Winfrey. If anyone is an exception to all the rules, it’s Oprah.

From her still-popular TV talk show, to O magazine, to her book-club endorsements that regularly lift titles — any titles — to the lofty top slot, Oprah’s influence on American culture is enormous. One leading television historian has called Oprah “the most celebrated and powerful black woman in US history.” (Okay, it was me.) Life magazine has labeled her “America’s most powerful woman.” Forbes magazine went one step further, calling her the most influential person in the world. None is exaggerating.

In some polls, Oprah even ranks as the celebrity Americans believe to be most qualified to serve as president. Another recent survey from about.com ranked Oprah as the country’s favorite entrepreneur, with nearly double the votes of that ne’er-do-well Bill Gates. And a 2003 VH1 poll named her the country’s greatest pop-culture icon — beating out, for example, Superman and Elvis. It’s not just that everything she touches turns to gold; when Oprah speaks, America listens. When she tells them to buy something, they do.

So it was big news this past week when Oprah reiterated her support for Barack Obama, whom she had previously called “her favorite guy.” She’ll host a fundraiser in September. And after that? How heavily she campaigns for him could well determine the course of the Democratic nomination.

From the AP:

DALLAS Belo Corp. said Friday its second-quarter profit slipped 15 percent as it continues to struggle with weak newspaper advertising, but the results still managed to beat Wall Street's expectations.

General Treasurer Frank Caprio offered the standard boilerplate when asked about his political future during a taping today of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers. In response to the query from Steve Aveson, Caprio basically said that, for now, he remains focused on the job at hand.

While Caprio has been on a short list of possible Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Matt recently reported that he might also be looking at a Providence mayoral bid.

In other news, Caprio touted Rhode Island's new ban on state investment in Sudan, pointing to how it helped lead Rolls Royce to stop doing business in that African nation.

The treasurer suggested that downsizing state government shouldn't be that difficult, since about 1000 state employees retire each year, and about 30 percent of state workers aren't unionized. But he also said that tough negotiations will be required to scale back state employment.

Also appearing on Newsmakers this week (broadcast Sunday, at 5:30 am on Channel 12, and at 10 am on Fox 64) are state child advocate Jametta Alston and Jorge Garcia, deputy director of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families.

In the aftermath of the death last week of 17-year-old Patrick Murphy in Barrington, Bob Kerr this week had an insightful observation about Americans and alcohol:

“Our kids drink because we drink,” Father Glover said.

But that’s not the only reason. Sure, if Mom and Dad are knocking down pre-dinner cocktails — or maintaining a steady alcohol diet in the comfort of their home — the kids are going to wonder about the attraction. The underage drinking in Barrington is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for decades, and taking lives for decades, just as it has in a bunch of other places.

But there are things at work here that parents have nothing to do with and little control over. From the time a kid can sit in front of a TV, he or she is being set up to become a puking, falling down drunk.

The commercial message is as clear as a beach bunny’s smile: If you start to view the world by the fractured light spilling through the bottom of a beer bottle, then you are on your way to the party where you’ll be surrounded by six-pack abs and firm breasts and have sex and then more sex.

It is booze peddling done up like a tease. Two healthy women mud wrestle over beer and we are left with only one healthy response — “I’ll have whatever they’re having.”

It is the big difference between my time of early indulgence 45 years ago and now. There was always, it seems, the friend whose parents left for the weekend and left behind a well stocked fridge and liquor cabinet and the opportunity to get really sick with friends.

It’s gotten stranger and crazier in the last few decades. There’s pop culture conditioning going on. The message is aimed straight at raging teenage hormones — life gets better with every gulp. And, oh yeah, by the way, remember to drink responsibly.

I was reminded of the cultural influence of how young Americans are brought up with alcohol -- they're (unrealistically) not supposed to drink a drop, until they're (legally) free to guzzle away at 21, as Justin Wolff once wrote in the Phoenix:

Alcohol, we should admit to kids, plays a crucial role in social customs around the world. What's more, most adults enjoy drinking and many of them do so responsibly. In this country, there is no better way to breed trouble than to deny to a teenager the existence of something they can clearly see. The cynicism that so many of us feel in our late teens emerges with our discovery of hypocrisy, whether it be parental or governmental. Though our distaste for hypocrisy abates with age, we'd do well to recall its flavor now and then. At the very least, we shouldn't lock the facts of drinking in the cabinet beside the Smirnoff. In Europe, where the drinking age is between 16 and 18, and where parents drink more naturally in front of their children, kids don't have to learn to drink surreptitiously. As a result, they tend not to binge.

Jessica Kerry has the story in this week's Phoenix of how Brown Student Radio, years after it applied for a low-power FM license, is still waiting to year back from the Federal Communications Commission:

Unlike Brown University-based WBRU (95.5 FM), a corporate station with a professional program director and sales staff, non-commercial Brown Student Radio (BSR) is operated exclusively by students and community members. This makes it one of the rare stations whose programming is driven by taste rather than the bottom line, playing new music and unconventional genres that would not get airtime otherwise. A typical Thursday evening features a call-in show with indie musicians, classical American roots and folk recordings, and contemporary variations on the blues.
 
But BSR has struggled to reach listeners since its FM inception in 1997. The station, which broadcasts daily from 7 pm to 5 am, rents airtime from the Wheeler School-owned WELH (88.1 FM).
 
Since WELH’s Seekonk, Massachusetts-based 150-watt signal has a reach of just over five miles, the station barely reaches its target audience, if at all. And though BSR broadcasts 24/7 on the Web, it has a hard time reaching out to new listeners beyond College Hill and accomplishing its official goal of “further[ing] interactions between Brown students and the greater Providence community.”
 
Meanwhile, seven years after BSR applied for low-power FM (LPFM) license, the Federal Communications Commission has yet to decide who will operate the area’s only available LPFM station, Providence’s 96.5 FM. Of 15 groups that applied after Congress authorized low-power radio in 2000, five remain in the running, including Providence Community Radio and three religious groups.
 
While LPFM seemed like a boon for community groups across the US, the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio were quick to complain that it would interfere with commercial broadcasting signals. Congress responded by restricting the licenses to rural areas and enforced prohibitive minimum distance requirements to protect commercial frequencies.
 
A 2003 FCC study showed, however, that low-power signals, with a maximum broadcast strength of 100 watts and a 3.5-mile radius, would not significantly interfere with commercial broadcasts.
 
Last month, US Representatives Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, and Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, introduced a House bill to expand access to non-commercial community radio by relaxing the limitations originally imposed on low-power FM. With co-sponsorship by leading members of Congress, including Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John McCain of Arizona, the bill is slated to receive a full hearing in the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation and the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
 
The FCC issued more than 500 low-power FM licenses before it stopped accepting applications in 2003. The Local Community Radio Act would authorize hundreds, if not thousands more, potentially ending BSR’s license stalemate and putting it on the air full-time.
 
Expanding access to low power FM radio would allow local non-commercial groups to bypass the typical cost of broadcasting — millions to acquire even a small commercial station. An LPFM station, by contrast, would cost between $5000 and $8000 to equip, making it feasible for outfits like BSR, which is financed by grants, donations, and Brown. The bill would also increase diversity on the airwaves, counteracting the severe media consolidation of the past 20 years.

Although not everyone agrees, N4N finds Comedy Central's Lil' Bush, a send-up of our president, rather hilarious. And there are times when it's better to laugh than to cry.

Here's a sample:

Reporter: What do you think the founding fathers would say if they were alive today?

Lil' Bush: They'd be all, whoa, what's that a plasma TV? And I'd be all, like, yeah, 42-inch; I play PlayStation3 on it . . . You rule, Lil' George! And they'd probably make me the king of zombie patriots.

A new report by the DC-based Sentencing Project fleshes out a point made by the ACLU's Steve Brown in my Papitto story: that bursts of attention about the N-word and similar controversies obscure the broader and more significant impact of discrimination in this country. In particular, racial minorities are disproportionately prosecuted and imprisoned for a variety of crimes:

The report also reveals wide variation in incarceration by state, with states in the Northeast and Midwest exhibiting the greatest black-to-white disparity in incarceration. In five states - Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Wisconsin - African Americans are incarcerated at more than ten times the rate of whites.

"Racial disparities in incarceration reflect a failure of social and economic interventions to address crime effectively and also indicate racial bias in the justice system," stated Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. "The broad variation in the use of incarceration nationally suggests that policy decisions can play a key role in determining the size and composition of the prison population."

In a news release, the RI ACLU says:

Got a cat with special abilities? Who ya gonna call?

None other than Providence Journal reporter Mark Arsenault, the natural choice for the assignment to write about Oscar the cat, who, as described in the New England Journal of Medicine, "seems to know when people are about to die" at a Providence nursing and rehabilitation center.

Felines often figure in the mystery fiction of Arsenault, a versatile scribe and prolific novelist, who put aside a ProJo project for the opportunity to write today about Oscar, dubbed "the cat of death" by talk-show host John DePetro. General VonKatz, a character in two of Arsenault's novels, Spiked, and Speak Ill of the Living, is based on his own cat, Node, now 11. "I tell him 11 is the new nine," says the reporter.

Arsenault, who was pitched the Oscar story by Tim Murphy, a ProJo editor, acknowledges, "It is perfect for me."

The scribe, who patted Oscar on the head while reporting the story yesterday, calls him, "a nice cat, a chubby cat. He's not starving over there." Meeting the feline late in the afternoon "was pretty interesting . . . He seems like just such an ordinary cat, but you know that he has this . . . power." Arsenault adds that he would be more skeptical about Oscar's predictive abilities had they not been described in the New England Journal.

Node and his two sisters came into the reporter's life when he was working for the Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts, and living in nearby Westford. He caught the trio with a cardboard box and chicken salad. Hosting the trio was "like having squirrels in your home," but Node got to stay, Arsenault says, since he exhibited more poise. Asked about Node's influence on his creativity, he says, "He somehow seems to know when my writing's not going well."

Of course, with animal stories proving irresistible to newspaper editors and readers, Arsenault's tale (tail?) has quickly gone national. Here is the top of the ProJo reporter's account:

PROVIDENCE — Death walks silently among us, invisible except to the cat’s eyes.

The cat would be Oscar. He seems to know when people are about to die.

Doctors cannot say for sure how Oscar does it, but they insist the 2-year-old house cat, one of six cats at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, has foretold the deaths of more than 25 residents.

Oscar’s uncanny prophecies are described today in The New England Journal of Medicine, in an article by geriatrician Dr. David M. Dosa, an assistant professor at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

The stocky long-haired cat lives among patients with severe dementia, in an end-state ward in which death is a common event. The facility treats people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

“There are weeks that three or four people will die in that unit, and Oscar will nail every one of them,” says Dosa, “I know it’s seemingly far-fetched,” but he has repeatedly witnessed Oscar’s odd gift. “It’s a very surreal thing.”

Usually about two to four hours before a patient dies, Oscar goes to them.

He hops onto the bed, curls up, and stays with them.

The cat’s “mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing-home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families,” wrote Dosa, in his article for the Journal of Medicine.

Mike Doyle of the RDW Group tells N4N that word about changes to the board of trustees at Roger Williams University may be forthcoming within the month, and that there could be as many as 16 new potential board members. Meanwhile, I take a look in this week's Phoenix at the lessons of Ralph R. Papitto's fall:

After mounting an unsuccessful defense during two July 16 appearances on talk-radio, Papitto effectively deflated the controversy when he requested that his name be removed from RWU’s law school. Media interest in the story mostly faded, with reporters and talk-show hosts gravitating to the alcohol-related death of a 17-year-old in Barrington and a charitable fund established by the owners of the Station nightclub.
 
In time, there will be stories charting changes in the composition of RWU’s board of trustees, and perhaps looking at how well the boards of other Rhode Island institutions reflect the communities that they serve. Yet even now, it’s clear that the Papitto controversy reflected some familiar lessons.

A bad response is worse than the offense
For a striking example of how expertly private educational institutions process their own dirty laundry, consider how it has taken Brown University a few hundred years to try to come to terms with its own considerable involvement in the slave trade. Whether this would have happened without the presence of the first black female president of an Ivy League university is another question.
 
Still, the response to Papitto’s use of the N-word during a May 2 RWU board meeting is far from a textbook example of crisis-management.
 
Mike Doyle of the RDW Group, the Providence-based public-relation company, who was hired as a spokesman for the RWU trustees, squarely puts the blame, without naming her, on trustee Dr. Barbara Roberts’s decision to go public via the ProJo. “I think the board was addressing this in a discreet manner from the get-go,” Doyle says. “There was never a matter of accepting this. One board member chose to make this a public spectacle. She acted on her own, unilaterally, in a manner that ultimately tarnished the reputation of the university.”

. . . .
 
Yet the board’s efforts would have had a lot more credibility if they had been started before April, when Roger Williams was the subject of a “Notice of Concern” from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. Among the concerns cited by the regional accreditation group was a lack of diversity on the 16-member RWU board, which was composed of 14 white men and two white women at the time. (Not coincidentally, the board was stacked with people close to Papitto.)
 
And as [Jennifer] Jordan made clear in her initial story, Roger Williams opened itself to a perception that it was sugar-coating the situation when it said in a news release that Papitto’s July 9 departure from the RWU board (which he had been on for about 40 years, and chaired for the last 18) was motivated by his age and a desire to spend more time with his family. That the university has since taken this news release off its Web site indicates some level of discomfort with it.

I sum up the other lessons this way:

Get ahead of the story or it will run you over

Americans talk about race only during a crisis

Americans talk about race in a superficial way

We all know that Rhode Island can (and should) do a lot better in terms of economic development, job-creation, and the like.

But how does the following statement, as told to Ed Achorn . . .

“We are not a place where anyone would consider right now starting and growing a business,” Mr. [Steve] Laffey said.

jibe with the far more optimistic view sounded by Rhode Island's geek entrepreneurs . . .  

While there are those who routinely describe the state’s business climate in bleak tones, [Working Planet Marketing Group's Soren] Ryherd says, “It turned out that Providence has actually been a great place to start a business and to grow a business.”

Perhaps Laffey is correct to detect a worsening trend. Then again, making things sound bad may fit with his apparent plans for a gubernatorial run in 2010.

At any rate, the Providence Geeks hold their latest dinner tonight, at AS220. If you want to hear some of the good news about the Rhode Island economy, check it out.

As Matt Jerzyk notes on his site, the law student-led push to remove Ralph Papitto's name from the law school at Roger Williams University gets some attention today from the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ also sheds some light on the activist credentials of Jerzyk, who is an occasional contributor to the Phoenix:

Leading the charge for the law students was Matthew Jerzyk, a third-year student with a penchant for protest. Prior to law school, Mr. Jerzyk, 30, spent six years as a union and community organizer. This time around, he enlisted 170 law students on summer break and dispersed across the country to sign a petition calling for the removal of Mr. Papitto's name. He employed an array of digital tools -- emailing, blogging and "Facebooking" -- to galvanize his fellow students.

"It was really one of the more amazing experiences of my life," said Mr. Jerzyk, who is clerking this summer at plaintiffs' firm Motley Rice LLP in Providence, R.I. "It's an extraordinary lesson that a group of students entering the legal profession have learned: Their voice matters and they can advance the interests of justice."

Matt first came to our attention seven years ago when he described how he was moved to become an activist:

The night before his graduation from Brown University in May 1999, Matthew Jerzyk celebrated. He was standing on Wickenden Street in Providence, taking pictures of his friends, when police arrived to break up the gathering. They began arresting students and Jerzyk took a few pictures. Before he knew it, he says, his camera was taken, he was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and refusing to move, and thrown into a van with his friends.

Jerzyk spent the night in jail. Later that summer, he began looking into police practices. He wanted to know their policy on the use of pepper spray and how citizens could file complaints, but he found the police unforthcoming. Jerzyk's frustration led him to a police accountability campaign at South Providence-based Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE). In the year since his arrest, Jerzyk has taken a job with Rhode Island Jobs with Justice, a coalition of 30 community, labor, and religious groups. He's become a member of DARE, an 800-member community organizing group, and recently helped start Truth to Power, a progressive think tank focused on social, economic, and political justice. He marched in the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and with Unity 2000 demonstrators at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

As someone who grew up in the New York area (hating the Yankees all the while), I've taken a certain interest in ESPN's adaptation of The Bronx is Burning, Jonathan Mahler's account of New York and the Bombers in the late '70s. The frequent commercial breaks make me wish it was on HBO, but Oliver Platt does a good job in capturing George Steinbrenner's mannerisms and John Turturro does likewise with the combative, somewhat feral quality of Billy Martin.

I mean that as a compliment. Martin was a great baseball figure, and a very sharp contrast from Joe Torre's understated classiness. Even for those of us who didn't like the Yankees, the constant battles between George and Billy were a good source of entertainment, and they helped to enliven New York during a time when some considered the city beyond repair.

What do you get when you combine anti-semioticism and Andre the Giant? Kidding aside, this effort -- which was announced yesterday -- sounds very cool:

Providence, RI — The governing boards and trustees from both Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) today announce the establishment of a dual degree program, creating a new partnership between the two institutions. Students are invited to apply for entrance for the 2008-2009 academic year. This historic moment acknowledges and reinforces the collaborative and multidisciplinary educational efforts of these two world-class institutions, by forming a program to offer students enhanced opportunities for creative work that integrates, relates and develops diverse spheres of academic and artistic work.

The Brown/RISD dual degree program is five years in length and offers students the opportunity to be awarded a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) from Brown and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree from RISD. The dual degree program requires that students complete the existing degree requirements for both institutions by being actively enrolled in both institutions while earning two simultaneous degrees.

Currently, students from Brown or RISD can cross-register for classes, proving the viability and creative value of a dual degree program that draws extensively on the strengths of both institutions. In the fall of 2006, the exploration of formal cross-institutional programs and curricula was determined a priority by President Ruth Simmons of Brown and President Roger Mandle of RISD.

While the Carcieri administration mulls its plans for trying to trim the state workforce, ABC6's Jim Hummel is poised to air another classic You Paid For It! segment at 6 tonight. Jim has reportedly found a 40-hour-a-week employee in the administration office at the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery in Exeter who regularly left early go to her other job -- as the elected welfare director for the town of Exeter. As a result, the state has fired the worker and placed her supervisor on administrative leave, says Hummel, pending an internal investigation.

Jim McBride used to make nude-scene compilations "on VHS tapes as a hobby" before starting his successful Web site, MrSkin.com, we learned in yesterday's New York Times. The site gets blurbed in the recent Judd Apatow concoction Knocked Up. But here's the money shot, so to speak:

Given that Mr. Skin is in the business of selling access to copyrighted material without permission, it might seem logical that the company would be mired in legal challenges, but it is not. Mr. Skin bills itself as a movie-review site — though one that assesses only starlet nudity — so Mr. McBride argues that the clips can be shown under the fair-use doctrine, which permits excerpting copyrighted material for the purpose of criticism.

That legal defense turns out to be moot, though, because the movie studios not only tolerate Mr. McBride but also court him by sending advance screeners of DVD releases.

“The movie companies aren’t stupid,” Mr. McBride said. “I’m a guest on radio shows at least 300 times a year as the expert on celebrity nudity in film. If I’m on the radio talking about a movie like ‘Ask the Dust,’ and telling guys, ‘You’ve got to check it out: Salma Hayek has a full-frontal at the 33-minute mark,’ it’s going to make guys want to rent or buy the movie.”

Tom Shevlin, who operates the RI Report Web site and who helmed Bill Harsch's AG run last year, has had enough with the Republican Party. He seems fed up with both the perennial marginalization of the GOP in Rhode Island and the national party's wandering away from its principles. So Tom, like most Rhode Islanders, now calls himself an independent:

Whatever the case, the party that I signed up with; the party that I historically identify with - from Lincoln’s ideals of equality and union to Roosevelt’s trust-busting, big stick carrying, conservationism - has become sallow and aloof from its founding principles.

Conversely, I have become more obstinate in my principles; unwilling to compromise myself for the sake of a political party, averse to defending the intellectual dishonesty of party figures for the sake of a parenthetical ‘R,’ and rigidly opposed to group think.

. . . .

I’m an individualist. I believe that government and society are two different things, and the more just and independent a society is, the less need it has for government.

I’m a tree-hugger. I believe that personal responsibility dictates that we be responsible stewards for our environment. My Saturday morning pilgrimage to my local farmers market christens my weekend. And I would rather leave my children a clean environment than a trust fund.

I’m cheap. I don’t believe in spending money that you don’t have and I want to hold on each hard-earned dollar I make. I don’t believe that my wallet should be open for public use nor do I believe that the government can be trusted to spend the money it does collect responsibly.

I’m also paranoid. I can’t stand the thought of either Big Brother or the Nanny State watching over me no matter how good the intentions appear to be.

But most of all, I’m a practicing Catholic. I believe in private charity, humility, and forgiveness. And I am riddled with guilt and the ubiquity of my shortcomings. And I have a healthy fear of the consequences of my moral misconduct. 

While I think it would be good for Rhode Island to have a more competitive two-party system, Governor Carcieri hasn't made much progress toward making this a reality. So it won't be a surprise if more people are thinking like Tom.

Speaking of the difficult transition between media eras, Prince offers a fascinating example of how to do it quite successfully.

While the recording industry and some of its artists whine about declining sales, copyright issues, and the like, his Purpleness remains a font of creativity who embraces the challenges in format of the contemporary age. Jon Pareles had a great story about this in the Sunday Times.

Among other novel approaches, Prince had a copy of his latest album included in copies of the Mail, a British newspaper.

Other musicians may think that their best chance at a livelihood is locking away their music — impossible as that is in the digital era — and demanding that fans buy everything they want to hear. But Prince is confident that his listeners will support him, if not through CD sales then at shows or through other deals.

This is how most pop stars operate now: as brand-name corporations taking in revenue streams from publishing, touring, merchandising, advertising, ringtones, fashion, satellite radio gigs or whatever else their advisers can come up with. Rare indeed are holdouts like Bruce Springsteen who simply perform and record. The usual rationale is that hearing a U2 song in an iPod commercial or seeing Shakira’s face on a cellphone billboard will get listeners interested in the albums that these artists release every few years after much painstaking effort.

But Prince is different. His way of working has nothing to do with scarcity. In the studio — he has his own recording complex, Paisley Park near Minneapolis — he is a torrent of new songs, while older, unreleased ones fill the archive he calls the Vault. Prince apparently has to hold himself back to release only one album a year. He’s equally indefatigable in concert. On the road he regularly follows full-tilt shows — singing, playing, dancing, sweating — with jam sessions that stretch into the night. It doesn’t hurt that at 49 he can still act like a sex symbol and that his stage shows are unpredictable.

Not bad!