Photo: David Pepin
Alan Burdette recently donated his 100th pint of blood to the Rhode Island Blood Center.
 

By DAVID PEPIN

“It gives me my buzz. It’s just cool,” Alan Burdette says of the approximately six times a year he has a needle stuck into his arm.
Don’t worry – he’s not having a controlled substance pumped into his veins. Instead, he’s having a life-sustaining substance pumped out.
On Aug. 9, in the Rhode Island Blood Center Bloodmobile in the parking lot of WPRI-TV 12 in East Providence, Burdette donated his 100th pint of blood since becoming a regular donor 28 years ago.
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Rev. Jonathan A. Malone may impart some lessons to his flock from the pulpit of First Baptist Church of East Greenwich, but when he sits down at his laptop, he moves easily into the role of inquisitive student.
On his blog, Theological Snob   (theosnob.blogspot-.com), Malone holds forth on his own religious views, books he’s read, and his work on a doctoral degree from the University of Dayton. He makes it clear that the blog, which he began in 2006, does not necessarily reflect his parish.
“I’m happy if my parishioners read it, but it’s not meant as a newsletter,” he says.
The blog, he says, represents a more academic than spiritual point of view. Therefore, some of the humor (and language) is quite different from what he will say in church.
The humor points out truths and absurdities in the world, but in a way that’s so specific that it’s hard for others to get past,” Malone, 36, who came to East Greenwich in 2008, says on a recent morning in his office.
 

"I ain't no Einstein, Bubba."

ByJONATHAN GIBBS

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Forget Beaver. Leave it to Nietzsche (Freddy), a man who could be described as The Anti-Norman Vincent Peale, to best summarize he perspective of those who view parenthood with trepidation and repugnance: “Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.” Coming from a guy who also famously declared, “God is dead,” this should not be so surprising; but on the other hand he was not a man without compassion, as he died after a psychotic episode triggered by the witnessing of a horsewhipping. Perhaps then, it is possible that human kindness can stand alongside fear – and even dislike – of children.
  And so it is that the very idea of parenting is a polarizing activity that can sterilize or terminate friendships by driving off those who are in either of the two camps, parent and non-parent. Those who do not have children see the children-bound as dippy, overly sentimental mush-brains who put too many bad, abstract sunrise and tree pictures with horrid color patterns on their refrigerators; and those who are children-bound see the childless as shallow, fun-chasing introverts with unhealthy attractions to furry mammals that they end up speaking to as if they were humanoid children. They look at our children as if they’re Mormons in a strip club and we look at the childless as if they are lap dancers at an Amish wedding. We are both uncomfortable and fearful that the interloper at opposite ends of the child spectrum will embarrass us into a crazy reaction.
  Both sides are right. And both sides are wrong.

By David Pepin

The School Committee's plan to outsource custodial services was put on hold Wednesday in Kent County Superior Court.

Associate Justice Bennett R. Gallo granted the union representing 19 school custodians a temporary injunction barring the committee from signing a contract with Tennessee-based SSC, the firm it chose to administer custodial services.

BY ABBY FOX

When Joy Feldman got sick with an autoimmune disease 16 years ago, left undiagnosed by doctors, she realized she would have to take health into her own hands.

By JONATHAN GIBBS

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Until I took part in the conception and subsequent birthing of a child, I had always kept children somewhat at a remove. I knew they had physiological accoutrements and the need to use those things in order to store and produce energy. I further understood they would eventually need to jettison and unload from their systems the byproducts of that industry. I knew, in other words, to let my nose tell me when to leave the room and summon the rightful owner – or at least operator – of the aforementioned young quasi-industrialist.
    But their psychological properties perplexed and frightened me out of the few wits I possessed. For one thing, they seemed to have special powers of insight. My nieces used to be able to tell when I went through heartbreak of some sort. I imagined they could see big, spiny roses bursting out from my chest, shedding moisture-laden velvety red petals only they could see. If I had to baby-sit them, I believed they would just as easily  detect any weakness in my resolve to oversee their behaviors, and that knowledge  could  result in their tying me up and going all feral and Wild Child on me. I feared them reenacting episodes of Bob, The Builder TV shows using grown-up power tools, or, worse in terms of familial relations, joining a pseudo-Jonestownian cult and committing revolutionary suicide underneath the swing set.
  

 

By Jonathan Gibbs

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With this column, I seek to combine my old-timey newshound self with my new modernized news self, mix in the blogosphere’s self-indulgent tendencies and spew forth the jumbled thoughts in my head straight onto this page in one furious blast.  In this neo-gonzo Frankensteinian journalism, I will wed Al Gore’s Web with Gutenberg’s printed word by dumping my random thoughts once a week no matter how ludicrous, slight or weird.  Finally, absurdity will get equal treatment with profundity.
In my endeavors, I promise not to cheat by using any actual book as a reference; I will to rely on SpelCzech and Wikipedia in lieu of a dictionary and encyclopedia. If I need a word – or fact – and can’t find it in my memory or online, I will make one up. As for rules of grammar, syntax or order of events depicted, I will go with the spirit of most blogging: if I have forgotten a rule, I’ll just make up a new one. Self rules rather than grammar rules will rule.

One of the commonly-held perceptions of the news reporter is that we are a predatory band of self-absorbed egomaniacs with inferiority complexes always on the lookout for free food, worthless baubles and attention, carrying an over-developed sense of justice which we wield with self-righteous venom in order to bring those who are smarter, better-looking and more wealthy than us to their knees with the slightest of justifiable legal and/or moral provocations.    
Okay, fair enough. That pretty much true. I’ve been known to  line my threadbare herringbone jacket pockets with plastic baggies and bring home handfuls of ziti and meatballs. I've palmed campaign buttons from tables for no reason other than the candidate’s name amused me. Somewhere I’ve got a “Futz for Selectman” button. Really.

BY ABBY FOX

Photographer Stan Strembicki has been scouring New Orleans churches, graveyards, backyards and other haunted places for years to remember what’s been left behind after Hurricane Katrina, in series such as “Memory Loss” and “Lost Library.” He’s also reveled in Mardi Gras and studied and taught for years in Florence, Italy. But to a New Englander like him, “there’s no place more exotic than the South,” he said, after being honored Thursday night in this year’s Wall of Honor class at East Greenwich High School

By JONATHAN GIBBS

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Once or twice a week after deadline and the paper is put to bed (which I guess means it’s laid down onto its deathbed) my son and I get in my truck and go an adventure around town in a search to combine work (mine) with pleasure (his).  Last week we went into the office, and there in front of the reception desk was a blonde, blue-eyed girl about his size (38 inches) and age (3). As soon as I set him down, he walked in as straight a line as a toddler can walk, looked the girl in the eye and without preamble, announced pleasantly, “My name’s Nathan.”
Getting no immediate response as the girl moved closer to her mother while looking to her for guidance, threw down his trump cards – a paired suit of hearts – vulnerability tied to trust: “I live on Hawthorne Ave.” Her continued indifference left him nonplussed, and in those two acts I saw how much more mentally healthy a post-toddler can be than an adult. It made me ponder what happens in the intervening years between childhood and adulthood to complicate and entangle our human emotions so wretchedly that we end up erecting blast barriers around our hearts.
I still struggle with the truism that it’s none of my business what other people think of me. I can be in a crowded room with 40 people all of whom are fully engaged in a deafening, boisterous chant exclaiming my continued greatness in all things, yet if there’s one person in another house, half a block away in a closed bathroom with the fan running and the radio blaring, and he happens to mutter, “What a dope that Gibbs guy jerk is,” that’s the voice to which I’m listening.