A Rhode Island tradition, courtesy of the Greens:

12th ANNUAL BUY NOTHING DAY
WINTER COAT EXCHANGE
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28th, 2008 10:00am - 2:00pm

If you have a coat to give, please drop it off.
If you need a coat, please pick one up.
State House lawn (directly across from Providence Place mall)

Not for nothing, but Kent Willever had an interesting choice for a bit of office decoration when he took up the job as executive director of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission.

As I wrote in 2002:

An illustration of Don Quixote seems like an appropriate image for the man who faces the challenge of restoring the battered reputation of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission.

[A]ll is not bleak for the Republicans. There were two notable Republican winners.

I agree with Matt and with David Carroll, who takes up the topic today in a ProJo op-ed: as Rhode Island struggles with joblessness, Providence's Working Waterfront should be stregthened, not weakened.

Today, the piers and wharves of the Providence River handle ships and barges that bring in gasoline, home-heating oil, cement, highway rock salt and coal.

[image from thebrothersbulger.com]

During Colonel Brendan Doherty's appearance this morning on Newsmakers, I was surprised when he responded to a question about Louis "Baby Shacks" Manocchio, the reputed head of organized crime in Rhode Island, by referring to him as "Baby Shanks."

It had been my impression that "Baby Shanks" was a mistaken derivation of the actual nickname.

Deb Dormody sends along word about the Bank of America City Skating Center:

Skating rink opens to the public on Friday, November 21 at 6pm with admission & rental prices at the same rate for the last four years

PROVIDENCE - The cocoa is hot and the skates are sharp at the Bank of America City Center skating rink - one of New England's most popular destinations for winter fun.

Guess those privacy concerns aren't putting too many people off (NYT's the Caucus via Halperin):

According to officials at the Obama-Biden transition office they have received more than 200,000 applications for positions through the online form on the Web site Change.gov.

The site invites job-seekers hoping to get hired at the White House, or in any federal department, agency or commission to submit an “expression of interest” form as a first step.

During the bygone heyday of Raymond L.S. Patriarca, some inferiority complex-plagued Rhode Islanders took solace in how the New England Mob was headquartered out of a storefront on Atwells Avenue.

Now, although LCN has continued its longstanding fade across the country, public fascination (as well as that of the press) continues when Mob-related stories burst into the spotlight

In terms of furthering the third-party cause in RI, Ken Block sends this along:

This will take less than one minute of your time. The Moderate Party of Rhode Island has an important meeting next week with Rhode Island Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis. At this meeting, we will be asking Secretary Mollis to consider proposing legislation to level the financial playing field for new political parties in Rhode Island.

A few weeks back, the Phoenix offered a look at the third-party presidential candidates on the RI ballot -- not much, admittedly, but more than I saw anywhere else locally.

Now, writing in the Sun of Baltimore (h/t Romenesko), journalism professor John F. Kirch says that democracy suffers when the news media ignore longshot candidates and the ideas they espouse.

What some call an overly generous social safety net has enabled Rhode Island to have a relatively low proportion of uninsured residents. With high unemployment and other economic woes, however, access to health-care is worsening.

Writing in this week's Phoenix, Marion Davis describes how those who lack health insurance can get help, from community health centers, prescription drugs, and the Rhode Island Free Clinic to HealthAccessRI, hospital care, mental-health coverage, and more.

UPDATE: Gawker weighs in.

Arthur Jr. is widely believed to want his son to succeed him at the paper. Given where things stand now, the first question is whether Arthur III would even be interested in the headache of a job.

Given where the Times and indeed all newspapers are headed, it's hard to imagine Arthur III anywhere but on the online side of the operation.

Amid the bleak landscape described in the previous post, there's a bit of good news:

1) the cost of heating oil, which threatened to pose another crisis this winter, has declined, at least for the time being, to a more manageable average of about $2.60 a gallon.

2) Federal heating assistance to RI is significantly up, to $38 million this year, from $20 million last year.