Ocean Notion

Suddenly Rhode Island has a new logo and slogan. Didn’t need one for going on 400 years, though many were bandied about waiting for a sucker to buy. One could only “Hope” that “What Cheer, Netop” could have evolved past “Greetings, Friend”, “Hi, Neighbor”, or something crooked legislators and secret societies whisper among themselves. Could try anagrams, as did superstitious 17th Century colonists, to find contemporary hidden agendas within, such as: Cheap Whorer
Help Wretch Atone
No Teacher Wept
Path to Nowhere
Poe, Thence Wrath
Thwart Heap Once
We Cheat, Ne’er Hope

Catch phrases having 14 letters don’t cure disgust, fear, or triskaidekaphobia generally felt when considering relocating assembly plants or corporate headquarters to this coastal playground.

But words don’t have much meaning anymore since journalism died and was buried by propaganda infotainment used to sell useless products and whip up resentment. Sure, as article describes, there might well be proportionally more smart Rhode Islanders, but you can hardly attribute this to the 13 institutions of higher learning, since students can’t wait to leave for more fertile ground once they graduate. You don't have to be very bright to notice how desperate circumstances have become. Smartest people find ways to thrive independently and refrain from rinky-dink political ambitions imagining them a preposterous stepping stone to national stage.

A common sense belief holds that every Rhode Islander has brooded over its slate gray bay and watched waves thunderously crash away. Not true. Have actually known Northern grown Rhode Islanders who never visited Narragansett or Newport where bay meets sound, perhaps peeked at brackish Providence River from I-195 while passing. In fact, interstate throughways within borders aren’t close enough to sea to see the slightest glimpse. Only a small subset of residents have fished, hung five, sailed, stink potted, swam, or worked waves off shores. Yet discriminatory logo depicts a sail, and registration plates show a perfect surfer pocket atop Ocean State legend, mere marketing hype, not marine truth.

Privileged individuals have time to promote their own version. Although there’s aquaculture, shipping, and 348 miles of tideline, what Rhode Island is mostly about involves empty buildings, exit ramp panhandlers, failed businesses, fiscal crises, garish graffiti, lawmaker indictments, legal prostitution, miserly banking, nonprofit begging, tax exempt churches and colleges, urban blight, and yokels who don’t know enough to turn off the lights and walk away from a zoom through transportation nexus unwillingly built by taxpaying residents bled dry by government mismanagement. Nothing too cool or warm about any of this, should have known dark and humid just wouldn’t have flown in the long (5 word state name) and short (4 letter motto) of it.

After imploding project towers up Hartford Avenue, they now want to turn iconic Industrial Bank (Superman) Tower into another tall warehouse for impoverished renters. Developer wants contributions from tax coffers for this new “Project”. Creative capital? Without an adjacent parking garage, no emergency care facility or supermarkets nearby, or similar services within walking distance, who else would want to live there? If not for the major mall next to statehouse, downtown would be a ghost town. The Outlet Garage once served same purpose, now a college campus pedestrian quadrangle. Almost all important buildings require security screens, since they seem to deem undesirable most who roam streets. Eagle Square with both market and parking has better per capita occupancy. Abusive ticketing at metered parking keeps visitors away. Success would flow from steady traffic turnover and will to invest, but mayor still acts as if capitol were some vital metropolis instead of worn out gotham no longer beholden to old money.

Spring here is generally a foggy transition from frosty slop to sultry sweat that keeps you indoors or inside cars, while greenery hints then surfaces under summer haze. You might have an occasional notion to seek ocean for a few months each year, but that’s all. Brooks, rivers, streams and tributaries relentlessly keep pace right alongside, so cause disgrace and define place more than anything occupying this simple space. Blackstone, Kickemuit, Moshassuck, Narrow, Palmer, Pawcatuck, Pawtuxet, Pocasset, Providence, Sakonett, Seekonk, Woonasquatucket, and Wood Rivers carved its plots and terrain. Sensibly excluding Big, Branch, Chepacet, Clear, Ten Mile, and West, called rivers but really streams, maybe “13 Rivers, 13th State” better represents Rhode Island, since no ocean actually touches any border.

Drops, puddles and trickles are humble, cling together, and dream of rejoining seas, among planet’s most powerful forces alongside gravity and insolation. Marketeers know that adjectives bright, deep, and powerful caress conceit, not describe accessible, comfortable, local, lowly, preferable reality. A well worn shoe depicts Rhode Island better than whatever cryptic slogan or stylized notion some outsider decides from internet sources having never been or lived there.