By Abby Fox

June 19, Deputy Police Chief Bill Higgins is retiring from the police department, where he’s worked for 25 years, but he’s not retiring from East Greenwich.


 

Photo: Abby Fox

Mark Thompson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at Time Magazine, came back to East Greenwich recently to receive an honor from the East Greenwich High School as an indictee into the school's Wall of Honor. Thompson is pictured here at his former place of employment, The Pendulum.

 
BY ABBY FOX

Today, Mark Thompson is a deputy bureau chief at “Time,” as the magazine’s defense correspondent. Thirty years ago, he was finishing up his stint at a very different weekly publication, the “East Greenwich Pendulum,” then called the “Rhode Island Pendulum.”

Photo: Abby Fox

What has a 750-gallon water tank, a 30-gallon foam tank, a wheel base of 188 inches, 1,500 feet of hose, a 400-hp Cummins engine, is nine feet six inches tall, and weighs 43,500 pounds?
It’s the East Greenwich Fire District’s new 2009 truck, bought for $351,000, thanks to the taxpayer vote at last year’s financial town meeting, to replace a ten-year-old vehicle that was starting to cost the district more than it wanted to spend in repairs.
The truck has gone on several important runs, including the Stanley Bostitch fire of several weeks ago, and the staff says it’s exactly what they wanted.
During Monday’s ride with driver Peter O’Donnell and Kevin King in the back, the fire-fighters said they appreciated the smooth handling, improved water tank storage – the previous truck’s capacity was 500 gallons – the great view, and the fact the second row seats face front, and not backwards.

 

Photo: Abby Fox

Norton’s Shipyard and its manager Bruce Roberts.

 BY ABBY FOX

Norton’s Marina and Shipyard, on the Warwick-East Greenwich line, is getting ready for their 43rd summer on Greenwich Bay. But the business has found that their customers are a little slower this year in signing up for slips.
“We got a tremendous amount of people very late getting their contracts in,” said store manager Bruce Roberts. Slip rentals are down 25 percent this year, he said, with 40 out of the total 285 slips still open.
Last season, all the slips were sold, but Norton’s won’t know for another month if they’ll be able to sell out again this year. “We used to have a waiting list,” he said. Not now.
A slip from April 15 to October 15 costs $99 a foot, but that’s not the only cost boaters have to consider when they make their summer vacation plans. There’s also the cost of fuel and cleaning and preparing the boat, which, added all together, can make boating seem less affordable in this recession.
“The news has been nothing but negative,” he said. “I think it’s a contributing factor to people’s feelings that a boat is a luxury.”
The result is that the slips for smaller boats, in the low 30-foot range, for instance, aren’t filling up as quickly as the high 30s and low 40-foot boats. “The 28-36 feet range has been a big part of our business,” Roberts said.
Art Director Artie Fry said he’s noticed this winter more people waxing and painting the boats themselves, rather than hiring a professional to do it, and “a lot more people are staying in the water all winter,” he said. “More peo

 BY ABBY FOX

Steven Hughes, the new fire marshal, wants you to know he’s prepared and he wants to work with you.
Hughes’ last job was for the Warwick Fire Department, as fire inspector, for seven years, before a brief stint as the assistant fire marshal. Coming from there to East Greenwich, he said, “the problems you face are very similar, but on a smaller scale.” A certified fire investigator, Hughes performed 300 investigations during his Warwick tenure.

Photo: Jonathan Gibbs

Eddie Antone-Boyd, back, aligns the lifting form of  Warwick's Tom Faiola at Workout World in Warwick.

By JONATHAN GIBBS

Man’s battle to shed weight and attain a perfectly-proportioned body probably goes back to ancient campfires, where our ancestors’ taste buds compelled them to chow down that one extra Mastodon leg or grab that one bonus handful of grubs. The balance between eating enough to power our bodies through their daily chores and eating more than what is necessary to provide that energy has resulted in ill-fitting bear skins, togas and designer dresses.  It has powered countless industries dedicated to getting unwanted pounds off by weight loss pills, powders, programs and countless devices, all of which are shilled in the backs of magazines and over the airwaves as being the One True Way to look good while eating well and exerting as little as possible.
It doesn’t work that way.

BY ABBY FOX

Xiaotian (Dennis) Wu seems to like everything he’s good at, and is good at everything he tries.
The sixteen-year-old junior at Rocky Hill School, and an East Greenwich resident since he started his freshman year there, last Thursday won the American Mathematical Society’s “Who Wants to Be a Mathematician?” contest at Providence College, competing against the eight other qualifying students in the state.

BY ABBY FOX

The dramatic arts in the elementary schools are being re-energized, thanks to the after-school work of contractor Valerie Myette, who this weekend is directing the biggest theatrical production the younger grades have seen in years.

 Artists like Kerry Manning are putting their final touches on their paintings for the sixth annual art show of the Nancy Stephen Art Gallery, this Saturday, April 4, from 1 to 6 p.m., with an opening reception, 1-3, and again on Sunday, April 5.
Stephen, who’s run a gallery and art school in East Greenwich for nearly 15 years, said about 75 of her students are going to be in the show – about 180 total paintings.
The gallery can be reached at 884-8979 and at www.nancystephenartschool.com.