South County Church of Christ Minister Clarence Campbell with some of the material the Wakefield chuch gave to those who suffered through the recent flooding in Rhode Island.  In addition to shovels, rakes, cleaning products and clothing, the  church gave away nearly 700 boxes of foodstuffs, personal items and paper plates and plastic cutlery. Each box contained 60 pounds of products that were made available through donations by the Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort in Nashville,TN.  'This is why we are here as a church," said Rev. Campbell. "Giving service to others who are in need is what we are intended to do."

The church gave away nearly $200,000 worth of food in two weeks. 

By Jonathan Gibbs

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I am starting a new newspaper column  as of today, right now with these first caffeine-fueled stabs at my laptop. In it I will 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, one take as it were, as if I was actually blogging. I will  attempt to wed the Web with the printed word by dumping my random thoughts once a week no matter how ludicrous or cogent they may be.  Absurdity will get equal treatment with profundity. And I can’t cheat by using a real, actual book as a reference; I have to rely on SpelCzech and Wikipedia in lieu of a dictionary and encyclopedia. And if I need a word – or fact – and can’t find it in my memory or online, I will make one up. And as for rules of grammar, syntax or order of events depicted, I will go with the spirit of most blogging: I break a rule, I’ll just make up a new one.

It snowed today. As a thoroughly modernized human I usually get my exercise by taking an hour to walk nowhere on a treadmill and lift bars of metal that end up in the same place as they started, on a rack with other bars of metal.
So when I saw the snowfall this morning, I thought, ‘Oh, look at the fortuitous opportunity with which I have been presented so that I may get my exercise  – and help my family proceed along their daily comings and goings in the bargain!’

By JONATHAN GIBBS 

The manner in which we respond to disaster and calamity does more to define us as community than any other actions we may, or may not take in our everyday lives. Our political stands on school and town budgets, our complaints about employment opportunities, our environmental stances on wind, solar or deep water natural gas portage – all that gets pushed to the back burner when the high water comes and puts our backs against the wall. Do we pass the test of helping others less fortunate than us, and in some cases those who are in (literally) the same boat as us? Do we do what we can to help clothe, feed and shelter people who are in dire need of life’s basic necessities.

  We took that test this past week, and we passed. There are a myriad number of stories of people helping people over the past week when Hell and high water both arrived in the same package. Some of the help came from local sources.

  Hasbro, Inc., headquartered in Pawtucket, R.I., donated $100,000 to the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Red Cross to help families affected by the devastating floods that gripped the state.

  Banks, not exactly considered in the same light as the Sisters of the Poor in recent years, have come through with tangible, necessary ways to help. Citizens Bank is offering Flood Disaster Bridge Loans to business customers who have applied for federal disaster aid assistance from the U.S. Small Business Administration as part of the federal government's response to the severe storms and flooding that began on March 12. Webster Bank announced special assistance, including reduced rates on new loans as well as payment deferments on existing loans for consumers and businesses that suffered flood damage over the past week. They will offer unsecured home improvement loans at an interest rate that is 2.5 percentage points below the standard rate. In addition, Webster is offering priority processing that delivers the check to the borrowers within one week from the time of application. Washington Trust announced that the Bank has made contributions totaling $27,000 to the United Way of Southeastern Rhode Island and local

community groups to assist those affected by the extensive flooding and power outages.

  These are only some of the business contributions made. There are more such examples and we apologize for anyone not mentioned.

   It may be true that charity begins at home, but it does not always end there. Perhaps even more inspiring than the business response to the floods has been the response of community groups and individuals who do not offer a huge check in terms of a total, but nonetheless offer more than they could perhaps afford to give. Ten percent of what someone makes in a week is a lot, even of it is ‘only’ $30. In these economic times, these donations by so-called everyday people brings a feeling of closeness to others that is as warming to the soul as a hot bowl of soup at a community shelter is to the stomach.

   These ‘small’ donations add up, and the love with which they are given injects a jolt of energy that spawns a volunteered effort to deliver and distribute the donated food, water and materials. A case in point occurred with a Washington County Church last week. Wakefield’s South County Church of Christ Pastor Clarence S. Campbell received a call on Thursday from one of the church’s sister organizations, asking if he thought a 53-foot trailer full of food, drinking water and cleaning supplies. Not one to put his hand to his chin and ask himself, “How soon is now?” and respond to the caller by saying “Let me see what I can do,” Campbell paused for one flap of a hummingbird’s wing and all but shouted “Heck, yes!”

The food, water and assorted cleaning supplies were donated by The Churches of Christ Disaster Relief Effort in Nashville,TN. After unloading the truck on Friday with the help of 20 teenagers from the local Job Corps, the church was left with $100,000 worth of donated food, water and cleaning supplies. Over the past weekend and early part of this week, the Jonnycake Center, the Southern Rhode Island Volunteers organization, the RI Food Bank and the veterans organization Operation Stand Down in Johnson have all accepted the church’s offerings.

 What makes the above story compelling is the $100,000 not only came from out of the blue, but that it was derived from small donations by individuals, many of whom are senior citizens, to a disaster relief organization located nine states away. The people who gave that money to buy the essentials we all need to keep our bodies upright, breathing and moving forward did not know to whom they were giving such sustenance. Donations to charity represent a complex social decision in which the benefits for the giver are abstract and indirect, unlike decisions involving primary reward or money where the benefit is concrete. But when a stranger helps a stranger with no expectation of a reward, that is truly a blessing, and in that way, last week’s pain, heartbreak and loss can be somewhat softened.

The only thing I like talking about more than I like talking about myself is talking about something I like. And I like Wilco, the band I heard with my own ears (which I also like)  at Lupos last Sunday night.

Wilco has expanded, refined and honed its sound constantly and consistently since its formation in 1994 by guitarist Jeff Tweedy and bassist John Stirrat, both alumnae of the seminal roots rock band Uncle Tupelo. Following several permutations that produced some breathtakingly incredible albums such as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summerteeth, Wilco hit another gear in 2003 with the addition of several new musicians.

  The current lineup of Tweedy, Stirrat, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone, keyboard player Mike Jorgenson and drummer Glenn Kotchie has been together since 2003, producing some of their best work with some of their most mature song writing and impressive musicianship. They have been on tour for much of that time – since their inception, really – developing an approach to their sound that is about as democratic and unified sonic organism as a band can get. They know what they each can do and they allow each other the room to do it. Rhode Islanders got a rare chance to witness a band at its creative peak play live in a small venue (for them) at Lupos in Providence Sunday night. They did not disappoint.

   They started their nearly three-hour show with one of the most direct declarations of band-hood: ”Wilco (The Song).” A rocker that is fueled by Kotchie’s driving drums, bells and chimes and a guitar hook that sounds like Thor’s chainsaw being driven too deep into a hardwood, the band gives an unabashed shout-out to a loyal bunch of fans with words that announce they offer themselves as “a sonic shoulder for you to cry on . . . Wilco. Wilco. Wilco will love you, baby.”

  Tweedy is an unlikely frontman. Wry and dry, more disheveled than grungy, outfitted in English professor at a cocktail party attire, Tweedy looks like a permanently bemused man who uses the expression “yeesh . .” a lot. He writes smart lyrics and has a dead-on knack for great pop hooks that aren’t too light or too poppy. While the rest of the band gets co-song writing credit on an awful lot of their songs, it is clearly Tweedy who supplies most of the gristle in the band’s sound. Beginning with Summerteeth, his song structures, pacings and tempo changes sound as if The Beatles had been atomized, reanimated and been released fully-developed into the 1990s. A fine rhythm guitar player as well as singer, Tweedy comes across as a reluctant rock star who can’t quite believe he didn’t just wake up from a bong-dream in a Mid-western prep school.

  The rest of the band plays along with Tweedy, never acting as if they are just backing him. Kotchie is not only dervish-like fast and polyrhythmic, but also is extremely musical in his drumming. He uses – but never overuses – chimes, gongs, marimbas and cymbals. He also knows how to use he silence between a beat as an integral piece of the song. Jorgenson fills a lot of space in the music, constructing detailed, complicated landscapes for the music to live and breathe in. Mellotrons, pianos, organs and even a theremin are all judiciously by Jorgenson and Sansone.

 Cline shreds like a mad scientist with an in a lab made of six strings, effects pedals and an number of devices to abuse his guitar into sounding like a kitten’s teardrop hitting a cotton ball one moment to a threshing machine tearing off an elephant’s trunk the next. He looks like a slightly addled science teacher until he begins throttling his guitar to wring train wheels grinding over a dead body sounds and then he looks like someone Jeffrey Dahmer would fear.  His playing goers from beautifully delicate to joyously dissonant, sometimes in the same four-bar measure, such in “Radio Cure,” one of the songs they played from their classic Hotel Yankee Foxtrot.

  One of the highlights from the show was the three-guitar attack by Tweedy, Cline and Sansone on “Impossible Germany,” in which Cline winds through a snaky, jazzy solo full of stops, starts and runs until a dual-guitar refrain is picked up by Tweedy and Sansone that perfectly harmonizes with Clines continued soloing. The music drives up in intensity until it breaches, and drops off. The three also get involved in a driving storm of flashing guitars on “At Least That’s What You Said.” Starting off slowly, it is moved into a pounding frenzy by Tweedy’s descending guitar run that is picked up by an axe-wielding Cline that takes the song into a  place where the air is made of cottage cheese. Well, not really, but it feels like it.

  Another highlight of the show came in the form of a breather. The band played an acoustic set that included some of the material from their Mermaid Avenue collaborations with Billy Bragg in which they put a raft of the late Woody Guthrie poems to music. Surprisingly it also included one of their most consistently mesmerizing and elevating distorto-mations, the transcendent “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” Performed with acoustic guitars at a relaxed pace, the song took on a completely new feel that gave a really weird song a really warm feel.

  After the acoustic set, the band picked up the pace again, playing a lot of their old favorites, all of which they wear comfortably, like a broken-in pair of snakeskin boots. Songs that are both tense, smart, relaxed and loose. It was good to see such a monster band in a venue so intimate.

  That said, I have several things I want to say as a cranky old fussbudget. Hey, you with Mickey Mouse ears-looking hairdo, sit down. Hey you, big-headed, fat, sweaty doofuss  playing air guitar with your left hand in a pose that doesn’t actually form a chord: Stop bobbing back and forth like the band knows you’re there for them. They would hate you.  And almost everybody else who spent $40 to blabber loudly to your dates: You have nothing to say worth saying once, much less having to repeat it five times. And all of you jabbing your hands in the air with fingers extended like you know gang symbols, you don’t know gang symbols and I hope the next time you raise your hand the disturbed air molecules that constitute what we call music bands together as a sonic laser and amputates your hand at the wrist. Wilco loves you, baby. They’ll reattach it after the show.

쇓

 Photo: Angelena Chapman
Opwonya Innocent talks with students after a video screening.of a movie about the abduction of children for military purposes in the Third Worls.  Innocent is a Ugandan child-soldier survivor who was abducted by Joseph Kony's LRA rebels and nearly died from a beating he received after he was discovered trying to escape.

BY ANGELENA
 CHAPMAN

EG High School students got a taste of something a world a way in an up-close and personal way March 26 as the Invisible Children team came and spoke to students as part of the video screening organized by junior Kate DePietro and the rest of the Invisible Children club.
Traveling with the team was Opwonya Innocent, who had himself been abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda and forced to learn to fight as a child soldier. That same day Innocent was abducted his father was slaughtered. “My dad had always been my best friend on earth,” Innocent said. Kony and the LRA continue to abduct and massacre hundreds, with another attack striking the Congo only two days after the screening at the high school in what has been called a 24-year war.
The Invisible Children club was organized by DePietro during her freshman year. She says when she saw the Invisible Children movie she was “so moved by it,” that she “felt like an obligation to do it.” She explains it as when people say they feel a calling.
“Scared as heck” she went right into the office at the start of her high school career and knew exactly what she wanted to do. The club has since grown to a solid 10 members, she says, with up to 15 being involved in both the club’s and Invisible Children’s international events.

Photo{ Abby Fox

Robin Kall, the East Greenwich resident who’s had her own radio show “Reading with Robin” for more than seven years now on WHJJ, was interviewing the authors of “Secrets of a Jewish Mother,” on Saturday morning, just in time for Passover.

Jill Zarin, author of “Real Housewives of New York,” her sister, radio personality Lisa Wexler, and their mother, Gloria Kamen, wrote the book and they’ll have another event Sunday, June 6 at 4 p.m. at the Hilton in Providence.

Kall estimates she’s interviewed nearly 400 people on the radio. “I enjoy finding out things about the author that might not come out in other interviews,” she said over e-mail. “I like to see where the conversation takes us; I rarely follow my own notes...if I did the show could go on for hours! ...

I have been fortunate to have met many of the people I have interviewed over the years and many I consider to be friends.”

Up next, she said, is Reading Across Rhode Island on May 1 (see readingacrossri.org for details) at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet. readingwithrobin.com is her web site.

Photo: Abby Fox
Tammy Flanagan, president of the animal protection league, with brother-and-sister Pomerians Gizmo and Bella, two residents at the Greenwich Bay Animal Shelter.

BY ABBY FOX

The East Greenwich Animal Protection League may not survive by the end of 2010, because of donation declines and financial pressures, said Tammy Flanagan, president of the league, at Monday’s town council meeting.

“There’s a very great possibility we could be out of business come December,” she said.

The group’s savings has decreased by nearly half, she said, from $130,000 last year to $74,000, and the group is dipping into their money-market account just to pay the bills.

By KRISTIN COSTA

Previously known as Animal Crackers, the Salty Dog Spa at 847 Main Street in East Greenwich is a safe and comfortable place to bring your dog for grooming. The shop, which came under new management four years ago, is run by Laura Rotelli. This charming, friendly spa is different from many others; they welcome any size dog, from a teacup Chihuahua to a much larger breed and they do more than just the standard clipper-work when it comes to trimming dogs’ coats.

Photo: Abby Fox
Giulio Cataldo, a sixth-grader at Eldredge in T[shirt above and in inset), helps out with the “Toying with Science” presentation by Garry Krinsky (in hat above) at Hanaford and Eldredge elementary schools last Thursday. Krinsky’s is one of several programs put on by the Cultural Organization of the Arts every year.
 

Photo: Abby Fox

An early morning fire last Wednesday was brought under control quickly, due in large measure to a quick response time by the East Greenwich Fire Department. 

Pictured, inset, from left to right: Lt. Michael Sullivan and firefighters Mark Collins and Bill Purcell, of Engine 1; Firefighter Tony DeLuca of Engine 2; Firefighter Seth Archambault, who was on dispatch for this call; and Lt. Joseph Richardson, Ladder 1. (Not pictured: Firefighter Bob Gardner, Ladder 1; and Firefighter Michael Monaghan, Engine 2.)