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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 Several weeks after the hospital lets you take home your new-born baby, they send a nurse out to your house to see how things are going. Ostensibly it is to see if there’s any practical advice or needs the new parents might require. The motive behind that motive is to watch for signs of neglect, or worse.
  Being a mature man of principled behavior, I prepared for their visit three years ago by doing what, for me at the time, felt like the right thing to do: I borrowed a baby doll from a neighbor, put some gauzy black material around it and waited for them to come down our street, watching from a perch by our upstairs bathroom window. It was not long after Michael Jackson had displayed his child rearing expertise in very public display from a Berlin balconey, and so I readied the window and held the doll by the feet for a quick presentation of my brand of conceptual humor. “Hey, lookit us!” I was prepared to shout, “We got our own Rockin’ Robin and it’s as simple as ABC!” In hindsight it’s probably just as well they never showed up.
  

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.
  

 

Photo: Erick Brown

The St. Luke's Episcopal Church choir during a recent service. The church is celebrating its 175th year in East Greenwich.

St. Luke’s, 175 years young

If you want to know the approach of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, go straight to the altar and look around.
“What I love, is that the essence of who we are is expressed here,” said Father Craig Burlington, standing in the parish’s heart, pointing to the seven windows behind him, featuring gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and two windows of St. Cecilia, patron of musicians.

Photo: Abby Fox

Molly Harris of the East Greenwich United Methodist Church is starting up again the Christ Community Kitchen on Main Street. The program was put on hold while the church moved to Rt. 2, but it’ll be up and running again for the first community dinner, on Feb. 23

See The East Greenwich Pendulum on news stands now for more on this and other stories.

 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 rather than grammar rules will rule.
  There are 100 billion nerve cells in the human brain busily passing signals through its synaptic gaps at 100 miles-per-hour, decoding, calculating and interpreting stimuli. This organic computing system, which weighs all of three pounds when lying in a mortician’s tray, relays (before its date with a tray, of course) what the eye sees, and then begins formulating an appropriate response within 1/30th of a second. That’s how we can dodge a piano falling out of a third story window.  And when you’re talking about the brain of a three-year-old boy, you can almost hear the electricity hum.

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.