Hi Gallery
555 Broad Street
Central Falls, RI 02863

6:00 – 8:00 pm

401.331.7424
401.215.8785

What is Civic Tourism?

Mission: To reframe tourism’s purpose, from an end to a means–that is, from a market-driven growth goal to a tool that can help the public preserve and enhance what they love about their place, while revitalizing the local economy.

This conference - Civic Tourism 2 - will bring a lively discussion to New England this autumn! Our conversation at the conference will be about rethinking the economics of tourism, connecting citizens directly to the touring public, and telling the next tourism story. This conference will focus on a new way to think about and do sustainable tourism. The conference will be held October 15-18, 2008 in Blackstone Valley, Rhode Island.

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Thursday nights have been popular at the Avery lately, thanks to everyone for coming out and for all the compliments on John’s award-winning (probably) and superdelicious sangria. On the menu tonight is our new mango flavor for the red, and Pinapple Coconut, which is rapidly becoming everyone’s favorite. Stop in tonight, excellent tunes provided by DJ JR. Sangria Thursdays, tonight at the Avery in Providence

A documentary backed by Warren Buffett and Pete Peterson warns of the impending collapse of the federal finance system, weighed down by a staggering $53 trillion of debt, exacerbated by enormous and growing trade deficits and shrinking industrial capacity, and undercut by ballooning taxpayer credit failure.

I.O.U.S.A. débuts tonight in 358 cinemas nationwide, including Showcase Cinemas in Warwick. (8 p.m.; $12.50) It’s been selling out, so you may be wise to pay the extra online purchase cost.

Tonight’s showing also features a special one-time live (via satellite) interview, and you may submit questions at the official website.

Noah Merrill, former director of the Providence chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, has co-founded the organization Direct Aid to Iraq. He explains its underpinnings in detail over here.

Key paragraph:

4. We can do better

Americans who are opposed to this war are narrowly focused on the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, but we can do better. The US peace movement – itself narrowly focused on the withdrawal of troops – has a crucial role to play in expanding this vision. We must make it clear that Americans have a responsibility to be part of building a movement for a future of peace in Iraq, a movement that acts in partnership with Iraqis, and with Iraqis in the lead.

I couldn’t agree more that it’s still very important for those of us who want withdrawal to make it clear that we don’t want to forsake Iraqis. Since day one of the conflict, a significant subset of people who are kind-hearted, and were originally against the invasion have conflated withdrawal with abandonment — something much of the media has seized onto, to marginalize anti-war organizers by framing them as naive and/or cold-hearted.  We need to make it clear that we believe it to be our moral obligation to work with Iraqis to rebuild their country, on their terms.

A video of one of the Iraqi children, maimed by the American bombs, whom DAI has been able to help:

If you have a playlist named ‘Party Time’, ‘Beach Blanket Bingo’, or maybe ‘Weed’ you need to get this song on it now. The new cd by The Dandy Warhols is loaded with great new jump-up-and-down songs, but this one is definitely my 2008 summer anthem. Just try and sit still listening to this. They are playing up in Boston in September, but it’s at the Wilbur Theater… seats! How can you sit in a seat and listen to this band? It’s not physically possible. Will somebody please book this band in a club for me?

In the recent issue of The Agenda a gentleman by the name of ‘Area C’ bemoaned the dearth of medium-sized bands touring through Providence. Amen to that. If you want to see avant garde noisemakers, or some folkie plucking away at a glockenspiel with a pitchfork, you can find that no problem. And there is the overblown crap at the Dunk and Gillette. But what about the bands in between? Why did I have to go up to Boston to see Earl Greyhound, Mute Math and Louis XIV to name a few? I miss The Met something fierce.

Providence’s only outdoor movie screen continues through September! This week we’re screening MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.

Every Thursday movies will be screened at dusk on the corner of Westminster St. and Union St. Pop hits, local shorts, even some music performances.

As always, introducing the show are International shorts presented by the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Bring your friends and family down for a drink, some eats, and a free film. Movies start at Dusk, blankets welcome!!!

RIPTA board chairman Robert Batting resigns.  (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe he’s the one who admitted to never having even ridden the bus, as of the time of his appointment.)

We’re a dense metro area — the nation’s most compact, in fact.  We should have one of the nation’s premiere transit systems.  Let’s just hope somebody with a decent ethic flies under the Governor’s radar, and into Batting’s seat.

To get you in the mood for what I have to tell you, here’s a video of your girlfriend, Artemisbell, getting aboard the Fun Bus and heading out on the highway.

Ahhh, good times.

Anyway.  I live in Elmhurst, the neighborhood that nobody’s ever heard of between Smith Hill and Mount Pleasant.  There’s a lot of trees and at least one homosexual on every corner (really!) and there’s not one but two LaSalle Bakeries and in general it’s a very quiet and pleasant place to live, even if you do occasionally get woken up by neighbor-children or deranged birds screaming their tiny little dumb heads off for half an hour right outside your bedroom window.

Anyway, all summer the Friends of Elmhurst have been putting on a summer concert series in Fargnoli Park.  Fargnoli Park, in case you didn’t know, is notable mainly for two reasons.  One is that it’s directly across the street from a house that has two (2) cars parked on its tiny front lawn; the other it’s the it’s on the site of the last working farm in the city.

Unfortunately, most of the concerts in the park have gotten rained out, because this is the least summery summer ever.  But tomorrow, or today I guess, marks the series’ big finale.  Weather permitting.

I’ll be on my way to New York tomorrow afternoon (or today afternoon, I guess) so I’ll be missing out on the Big Nazo puppets, cookout, Polynesian dancers (!), dunk tank, local artisans and vendors, and something called The Fun Bus. (see above)  But you should go, even if you don’t live in the neighborhood.  Did I mention the Fun Bus?  It’s brought to you by the Friends of Elmhurst, whose mediaeval font selections make my day pretty much every time I walk down Smith Street.

If you’re reading this and it’s before 10 AM and you’re not at work or otherwise occupied–a longshot, I know–you should head down to the Washington Park Library (1316 Broad Street), where some community members are staging a rally to get the branch opened again.  I posted about the ridiculous situation at Washington Park last month, and it seems like nothing’s changing…

The rally’s being organized by Open Table of Christ, one of several churches in the neighborhood that have been struggling (for two and a half years, now) to see their library reopened.

(And I promise to mention things like this a little more punctually from now on.)

Sick of the Olympics? Tonight on Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil — NRA vs. PETA. The second season of this show has been every bit as good as the first. Past advocates have included Patton Oswalt and Greg Giraldo. (He is my hero — the day he graduated from Harvard Law he said “Screw this”.)

10:30pm/Comedy Central

Mia Tais and Thigh Highs

The Old Money Honeys vs The Sakonnet River Rats

Friday August 22^nd

Bank of America Skate Center

2 Kennedy Plaza downtown Providence

Doors @ 7pm  starts at 8

Half time performance by the Chasers

After party will be held at Snookers  with a performance by Mustang Cobra!

This match will determine which teams will face off at our championship bout on September 19^th

Word that Scott Mackay is leaving the Providence Journal has brought a dark cloud over my sunny day. ( Though reading his kick-ass statement made me feel a little better…)

Newspapers are going down the tubes. Downsizing is necessary, they say, as there’s just not a profit in this biz anymore. And what is the Belo Corp. doing to make the ProJo better?

I can’t roll my eyes far enough into my head at the Providence Journal’s new “In Her Shoes” initiative to attract a female audience. What sorts of things will be featured? What makes “women’s news” any different from the news I seek every day? « read more »

Man… I need to get back into lucid dreaming.  I had a really good go at it a couple nights ago for the first time in like a year.  I think I held it together for a full 2 minutes, in dream-time — and I think it was the first time the light-switch trick was my way in.

I am the grandson of Polish immigrants, who fled in the 1920s and 30s for obvious reasons. I went to Jewish day school; I grew up learning the stories of boats of Eastern Europeans turned away from American and British shores, dooming their passengers to imprisonment, and, for many, to death. I feel a deep solidarity with immigrants who’ve left home to try to create a better, safer, life — and a particular sympathy for the Guatemalans and Dominicans and others who came from countries whose attempts at democracy and stability have been consistently undermined by our own government.

This is from today’s NYTimes. I can’t take it any longer.

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From the Steelyard peeps: 

Registration has begun for the Steel Yard’s Fall Community Courses!

We have plenty of new courses to offer:  Welding in a Week, Industrial Casting Techniques for the Kitchen, and more!  Also, we welcome the return of Slip Casting and TWO sessions of Basic Bike Maintenance (weekday and weekend).

Whether your thing is metalworking, ceramics, jewelry, glass or bicycles, there are plenty of chances to get your hands dirty and let the creativity roar, so sign up today!