The Beach That Summer

THE BEACH THAT SUMMER

copyright 2013 www.gwaynemiller.com

(From Vapors, the just-published v. 2 of my collected short stories, companion to the Thunder Rise trilogy)

 

That summer, Sand Hill was overrun by crazies. Try as you might, you couldn't get away from them -- not at the beach, not in the bars, not even in your own backyard.

I don't mean the summer people, the Applebaums and Lodges, the Bloomfields and Morgans. They came that summer, as always, but they stayed even more to themselves inside their Victorians and Capes. I don't know how many installed burglar alarms or hired guards or took up arms, but I guarantee you there were a lot.

No, they were a new breed, strangers to oldtime islanders like me. Out-of-towners, drawn by the big-city papers and the checkout-counter tabloids and that big story on network news the day before the Fourth of July. Just for fun, I stood on the bridge one morning and checked license plates. It's a two-lane job, and both those lanes were busy the hour I was there. Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, a few New Yorks, a couple of Ohios, even a California -- that's what I saw. I don't claim every one of them was drawn by what was going on, but I'd bet you a shore dinner most were.

We had gorgeous weather that summer, absolutely picture- postcard perfect the whole way through, and that didn't help, either. Come Labor Day, an islander -- a sailor whose business it is to know such things -- counted the rainy days and came up with a total of five. Even the thunderstorms stayed away that summer.

Of course, the crazies would've come anyway, fair weather or foul. I knew that. Most every islander knew that. The authorities knew it, too, and the frustration of it nearly drove them mad.

See, there was a crackle in the air that summer on Sand Hill. A tension you couldn't hide from. A tension that was strongest out on West Shore, where all of them were found.

*****

Paula Hempson was first. I knew Paula -- about as well as anyone else, I guess, and that was none too well at all.

She was a loner -- a seamstress by trade but a drinker by profession, an overweight woman about my age, 47, who lived with a couple of strays in a trailer out by the landfill. Once in a blue moon you'd see her at Jake's Cafe, swilling beers alone at the end of the bar, clothes unkempt and hair dirty, looking for all the world like somebody who'd just poisoned her overbearing mother.

June 8, they found her body -- what was left of it -- on a tidal flat off West Shore.

West Shore is the island's scenic gem, three miles of beautiful white sand that belongs in Florida or South Carolina or Hawaii, not southern New England. Three miles of clean, virgin beach, not a hot dog stand or a windsurfing shop in sight. State land, the only reason it's stayed undeveloped for so long.

West Shore -- since I was old enough to walk, I must've been there a million times, swimming, fishing, clamming, falling in love with it again and again and again. I had my first woman on West Shore. She was 36 and I was 17 and she took me there in her car, a '51 Plymouth, and we shared wine and a blanket as we watched Fourth-of-July fireworks. She disappeared years ago -- there's still talk it was murder -- but I never forgot her, or that night.

I say they found Hempson's body, but it actually was a 10-year-old girl. She was the daughter of Jake Cabot, the selectman, and she was out there clamming when she stumbled onto it. As Jake later told it, first she screamed, then got sick, then finally ran like the devil himself was after her -- ran straight to the police station, a full mile away.

Sgt. Ross Miller was on duty that afternoon, and he knew Jake's little girl well enough to know she wasn't bull-crapping about what she'd seen off West Shore. After calling her dad, he got in his cruiser and headed down. On the way, he called Rescue One.

I was at home, camped out in front of the TV, when I heard the chatter over my Bearcat. In half a minute, the fire horn downtown was blaring. I heard a second siren -- somebody'd decided to send an engine, too. I got in my Jeep and headed after it.

When I got to West Shore, half the department was already there (but not a single other soul), sloshing knee-deep through the incoming tide on their way out to the flat. I headed out with them, curious, but also strangely edgy and...

...excited isn't quite the word.

Nobody spoke, but everybody felt it, what I was feeling. There wasn't going to be any rescue today, we saw that right off, only a cleanup we'd be seeing in our dreams for months to come. I don't blame that girl for getting sick. I damn near did myself, and I've spent my adult life in fishing boats -- not the pleasantest of places to be, especially a week after a full catch.

Paula was face down, three-quarters submerged, bobbing gently as the waves licked over her. With his billy stick as a prod, Sarge Miller turned her over.

That's when we saw -- total evisceration. I think we all gasped. I think we all said a silent prayer. We stood, not wanting to look, unable to turn away, wishing that the sea would swallow the body up again so we could go home and forget we'd ever seen it. Ten seconds, half a minute, a minute -- who was counting? The time went by and we were still there, lost in our thoughts, the sea lapping against our boots, a few gulls skimming low over the water, the sun pinkening as it started down toward evening.

Finally, Sarge Miller said in an unsteady voice, ``OK, boys, we got work to do. Tide's gonna beat us, we don't get a move on.''

Sarge's order was like a rock through glass. In no time, we had the body on the sand, safe from high tide.

Buzz Aldrich went across the sand to his four-wheel-drive to have the station call the ME's office. The rest of us moved off some and lit up cigarettes.

*****

Sarge Miller was the first to use the word ``shark.''

It was, as events would later prove, a most unfortunate choice of word. It was a word that would come back to sorely haunt him, and the island, and the state -- a word that would be misinterpreted and misquoted and misused so badly that for part of that summer, at least, it would seem like our lives were being scripted in Hollywood, and we were actors in a real-life Jaws. It was wrong, as we would find out -- about as wrong as you can get -- but then, the beginning of that summer, that's what we believed.

Now, it would be one thing if Sarge made his assessment over beers at Jake's, but he didn't. He made it in to a reporter.

His name was Storin, and he worked for one of the Boston papers. Storin was on the island that day getting notes on Sand Hill's summer set when the siren blew and we tore-assed down to West Shore, him not far behind. I remember thinking that Sarge was going to tell him to take a flying leap when he strolled up, dressed in tan slacks and a button-down shirt, Mr. City Slicker himself. Only he didn't. He didn't say boo when Storin pushed straight past us, barely a word of hello, to get a better look.

``Mauled,'' Storin said simply when he strolled back. Mauled -- it was the word we'd been wracking our brains for.

``You got it, my friend,'' Sarge said.

``Homicide?'' Storin asked casually as he pulled his notebook out of his back pocket.

I saw that notebook and cringed, and I figured by that point alarm bells should have been going off inside Sarge's head. They weren't. Maybe he was shocked. Maybe he didn't understand the press. Maybe he'd been cozying up to Jack Daniel again.

Whatever the maybe, he was just as cordial as can be.

``No person could have done that,'' he said, as Storin scribbled crazily. ``Had to be something from out there,'' he finished, sweeping the expanse of the sea with his right arm.

``You mean shark,'' Storin said, and that's when he pulled the tape recorder out of his pocket.

You knew, listening, that the guy had Jaws dancing in his head. You knew he couldn't wait to get back to Boston to write it. You knew, if you knew anything at all, that his story would draw the media to Sand Hill like gulls to a homebound trawler.

Even then, Sarge didn't come to his senses. ``That's right,'' he said, spitting into the sand. ``I mean shark.''

*****

The Herald put Storin's story on Page Three. It mentioned Jaws, quoted Sarge Miller extensively, and included a list of documented shark attacks around the world the last 50 years.

Beyond that -- well, what more could it have said?

The ME wasn't talking and there were no grieving relatives to be quoted. I understand the police phone rang off the hook the next day, and I understand that Sarge Miller got reamed but good by Chief, but until Marjorie Peters, that Herald story was it.

*****

Mark Peters was second.

It was after him that the lid blew off Sand Hill. It was after him that the crazies took over the beach.

I wasn't on the island the day he washed up, June 30, but Chief gave me a description over Rolling Rocks at Jake's Cafe. Thank God, no kid found him. That kind of thing could have scarred another kid for life -- just ask Jake. No, this time, a guy from state Environmental Affairs had the honors. Spotted him through binoculars on a law-enforcement patrol of West Shore, about a half mile north of where we fished Hempson out of the surf.

Spotted him and then threw his lunch, just like Jake's girl.

Like Hempson, Peters was a shadow figure, a ghost. He wasn't poor like Hempson -- he had a nice waterfront cottage, what was rumored to be a nice fat nest egg in a First State trust. The other particulars were identical: Mark Peters was lonely and alone.

``Looked like Hemspon,'' Chief said, ``exactly like Hempson,'' and he knew he didn't need to say any more. I killed my Rolling Rock and ordered a double Cutty. Chief followed suit. We sat together on our stools, silent as the mahogany under our elbows.

Silent, that is, until another double Cutty was history. That's when Chief whispered: ``It ain't no shark.''

I didn't catch his drift, not immediately.

``Somebody wanted it to look that way,'' he continued, ``faked it like a shark. Mark Peters was murdered.''

``You're kidding.''

``I wish I was. Lord, how I wish I was.''

``How can you be sure?''

``We got a note. Hand-written. Arrived at the station an hour after we fished him out. Certain details in that note are consistent with certain preliminary findings from the ME. And there was a drawing. Very precise. Very gory. Made me sick.''

``Holy smokes.''

``There's more,'' Chief said on our third Cutty. ``Hempson wasn't any shark, either.''

``You can't be serious.''

``I am. ME's report came back.''

``And--''

``--and it seems we got a nut on the loose.''

*****

The papers and web went ape over Mark Peters. TV joined right in. By Friday night, the island was crawling with reporters and photographers and bloggers -- I mean crawling, the way an army of ants'll crawl over something sweet that's dripped down your kitchen counter.

Who cared if Chief was urging restraint, was insisting nothing was definitive, that no sharks had ever been sighted within miles of Sand Hill? Who cared if the ME took pains to explain that the natural action of seawater and bacteria have a certain disgusting but distinctly deteriorative effect on human flesh?

Who cared?

This was the rarest of opportunities, probably it would never come again, a summertime Jaws in real life and all there within a couple hours driving time of the big East Coast cities.

*****

If you wanted to put a date on when we first felt the crackle in the air that summer, first really felt it, it's fair to say it was at 6:39 p.m. on Sunday, July 3.

I knew it was coming, and I guess most other islanders did, too. Hadn't we seen the big-shot film crew sticking cameras in shoppers' faces on their way out of Franny's Market? Hadn't we seen three shiny new Lincolns parked outside Clipper Inn? Hadn't they rented Bill Weather's 44-foot Chris Craft, mooring it for an entire afternoon off West Shore? Hadn't there been a helicopter?

We knew the report was coming, but still the force of it was overwhelming -- introduced, as it was, by Brian Williams.

I remember that report like it just ended. It opened with an aerial shot of the island, the water shimmering like diamonds in a jewelry-store display case, and then it cut directly to West Shore, where a pretty-boy type was standing alone with a microphone, the wind tousling his hair, this terribly somber look on his face.

``Fear has struck this quintessential New England resort,'' he said, or something very close to that, ``fear that man's greatest natural enemy is prowling these beautiful waters. Fear that a great white shark which has apparently claimed two victims will go for more before the long hot summer is through...''

The day after that broadcast. That's when it got crazy to walk the beach.

Crazy, because for a spell, it didn't seem the off-islanders were ever going to leave. Crazy, because everyone knew why everyone else was there -- to wait, to watch, to hope in the sickest fashion that they would be the ones there when... when it happened again.

And nobody doubted it would.

All day, they were there, and well into the evening. They parked their Broncos and Winnebagoes and played Frisbee and set up Volleyball nets and lit charcoal fires on Hibachi grilles and the younger and more foolish ones, the gold-chained men with their painted-toenail women, dared each other to wade in. From the dunes, you could see them -- shadowy characters in a bad dream.

Few islanders walked deep down the beach from then on that summer, but I did.

I did because I'd always done it, always been in love with the smells and sounds and sunsets you get there, only there, on West Shore. I did because I'd been going there since I was a kid. I did because stress and tension magically dissipated there, carried away on the warm summer breeze. If I'd been a poet, I think I would have camped out forever on West Shore. The poems I would have written would have been soft and billowy, like clouds, not angry and irrational and unforgiving, like the world around us.

Once a day, I walked West Shore, end to end, three miles in all. Once a day, invariably in early evening, when the sun was dropping down to kiss the sea and the breeze was stiff enough to keep the black flies grounded.

I carried a .38 that summer, and sometimes, the razor-sharp stiletto I picked up in New York years ago. I carried them -- and carrying them gave me security. Few islanders walked West Shore that summer, but when they did, they carried weapons, too.

After Billie Robards, it would have been crazy not to.

*****

Billie put an end to all the shark talk. There were two good reasons for that. One was where they found her: in the West Shore dunes, 100 yards, easy, from mean high tide.

The other was the letter that was mailed to the editorial offices of the Providence Journal.

It arrived July 14, hours before they found her, decapitated and limbless, so there was no question it was authentic. They never published the full text of that letter, which had a Providence postmark, but word got around the island pretty quickly about what was in it: Billie's name, a drawing, a plea to ``stop me, I can't control myself,'' all of it in black felt pen.

``He's sick, really sick,'' Chief said to me, and I could see the desperation and frustration and the something I hesitated to call fear in his tired blue eyes.

I knew Billie.

Knew her personally, and well. She was married to Will Robards, the skipper and owner of the Liza D., a Sand Hill trawler I'd crewed on for years. Will's boat had kept me in dough times when times were rotten, and for that, I was eternally grateful. His wife was a peach, a 40-year-old brown-eyed peach with a wonderful laugh. I used to run into her in the market, at the gas station, wherever, and we always exchanged pleasantries. For years, she'd made it a point to stop by the house Christmas Eve to drop off her home-baked goodies. ``Bachelor's Special,'' she'd say, and we always laughed heartily as we toasted our mutual good health.

After Billie's autopsy, they quietly exhumed Paula Hempson and Mark Peters, allowing the pathologists to conclude that one person almost certainly was responsible for all three deaths. It answered the question the papers had forgotten to ask: Just what had Hempson and Peters been doing swimming off West Shore, anyway?

If they loved Shark, they went berserk for Maniac on the Loose.

They'd smelled blood, real honest-to-God fresh-flowing blood, blood that seemed certain to flow again if everybody only waited a spell, and now there was no stopping them. Somebody joked that every fourth person on Narragansett Avenue was a reporter from there on out, but I didn't laugh. One knocked on my door, and I live half a mile from the main drag. Forget downtown, Jake's Cafe, the docks. Things were at a fever pitch, nobody seemed sane anymore, everybody had a theory and a suspect and...

...and that crackle was in the air.

I don't know how else to describe it. I think back to that summer and I can hear it inside my head, a loud, painful crackle, this terrible thing that prickles the hairs on my neck.

``All that publicity can only be encouraging him. Sons of Satan, every one of these reporters.''

If Chief said it once that summer, he said it a hundred times, and he was right, he was right. That was the bitch of it; everyone knew what the publicity was doing, but we were powerless to stop it. A great country, America, isn't it? You could see this sick puppy, living alone, catching the evening news and getting all worked up about his latest victim -- a steam-filled pressure cooker set to blow again, and no one there to turn the burners off.

Off-islanders still walked West Shore -- for the most part, only in the bold light of day now. And they did it in tighter and larger clusters than before -- the foolish illusion of strength in numbers, I imagine. But mostly, after Billie Robards, they stuck to the docks and the restaurants and Jake's, endlessly, morbidy fascinated with the Shore Stalker, as they came to call him.

I kept walking West Shore, my hand a little tighter on my .38, my eyes straining a little harder, every passerby a suspect. I kept walking because I was determined the Stalker couldn't keep me from the place I loved so. I kept walking because I always had.

*****

Victims four and five were found Aug. 14, three days after a letter arrived on Chief's desk. The State Police sent it off to the lab for analysis, but it didn't take a criminologist to see that the same hand had penned both letters.

I got a photocopy of that letter from Sarge Miller. Photocopies were worth their weight in gold that summer. ``Stop me,'' the letter said. ``Please, I beg you, stop me.''

Nothing else.

I forget their names -- they were off-islanders, a honeymooning couple in their 20s from Pennsylvania. Their car was found in the West Shore lot, and there was some dispute over whether they had known what was happening on the beach that summer or had wandered there unsuspectingly through impossibly bad luck.

Even after them, the curious came, but they came in much smaller numbers. By late afternoon, West Shore would be deserted, whatever off-islanders there had been having retreated to the safety of the motels and bars. After Aug. 14, the only people I met on my evening walks were cops and a couple of old salts who'll be out there surf casting the day they drop the Big One.

We islanders drew tightly together then -- for solace, more than protection. I bet there have never been more floodlights sold than that summer, more German Shepherds bought, more shotguns oiled and loaded, mine included.

For all that, it was an uneasy camaraderie.

Media or no media, one fact could not be exaggerated: there was a cold-blooded killer out there, and who's to say he wasn't your Uncle Joe or your Cousin Henry? Who's to say he wasn't sitting right there with you in Jake's, or standing with you at the checkout counter, or behind the wheel of the car in front of you coming over the bridge? Who's to say it wasn't Jake, or Will Robards, or Chief, or Sgt. Ross? Stranger things have happened.

Truth was, we were an island scared to death.

Up in the capitol, there was a sense of urgency you usually see only after hurricanes or blizzards. The governor went on TV to announce creation of the Sand Hill Task Force, what he described as the state's largest, most ambitious crime hunt ever. State Police, Sand Hill Police, the National Guard -- they were all in on it.

The Shore Stalker was going to be caught, yes he was.

Except he wasn't.

One week, two weeks, three weeks went by, Labor Day was just around the corner, and there hadn't been an arrest. Thank the Lord, the Stalker was quiet, but the authorities were no closer to finding him than they'd been all summer.

They tried everything -- roadblocks, unmarked cars, armed men in the dunes. They searched cars, boats, crunched names through national data bases, run up the biggest overtime bill in the history of Rhode Island law enforcement. Eventually, the American Civil Liberties Union began to squawk. It was that big.

That unsuccessful.

``It's the goddamndest thing I ever saw,'' Chief told me on Sept. 3, two days before the Board Of Selectmen fired him. ``It's almost like this guy doesn't really exist.''

He wasn't the first to think that. I'd thought it myself.

*****

Labor Day came and went, and the Stalker didn't strike, and then it was Columbus Day, and Christmas, and we were into the New Year. The papers and TV moved on to other places, other tragedies.

Still, he wasn't caught. There wasn't even an arrest.

So here it is, Friday of Fourth of July weekend, and the traffic into Sand Hill is noticeably heavier, and every islander is remembering last summer and feeling strangely skittish and...

...and that crackle in the air is back, louder than before.

I close my eyes and I can hear it, feel it, excruciatingly painful, like the first stab of a migraine at the back of your skull.

They won't admit it, of course, but the authorities are convinced that there's a better-than-even chance the Stalker will be tempted this weekend. Something about the pattern of last year's killings, they say, something about the renewed publicity, something the handwriting experts say they can see in his letters.

Another one, you see, was received by the new Chief today.

So they've closed off West Shore for the weekend, and they're turning back cars headed into the parking lot, and they're warning people not to go out alone, and there are rumors that National Guardsmen will be patrolling the beach around the clock.

But I fully expect that some fool will still walk the beach this weekend. Some poor drunk slob slipping past the guardsmen and wandering the dunes, those sprawling, magnificent dunes.

I expect that I might see that slob. I plan to be there, as usual, walking the beach as the sun is setting and the soft summer breeze is blowing gently in off the water.

Just like last summer.

#eWave: The Digital Revolution, @projo series

The entire ongoing series is now in one place on The Providence Journal site: the place for the stories, polls, graphics, video, stills and The Journal's eModule, a new way of storytelling for the digital age. I will be updating this page as the series unfolds throughout the year, with links to stories and more. Or you can visit the eWave series site.

Here's a breakdown, week-by-week. Don't forget to follow our Tweets -- #eWave Also, visit our eWave Facebook page. And we are now also on Tumblr.

 -- Part One, Sunday, April 26:
Complete with interactive graphics, an innovative timeline, a reader poll, video, still photos and more, The Providence Journal on Sunday, April 28, began a continuing series about the impact of technology on people where they live, work and play. The first installment of #eWave: The Digital Revolution is available online.

Dawn Glasberg and her family, Part One of #eWave: The Digital Revolution.
Journal Photo/Steve Szydlowski

And our #eWave Facebook page is now live. We invite you to Like it and join the discussion. And please Tweet, using our hashtag, #eWave

Along with the main story, the first-day package includes:
-- Five reader surveys about your own digital use, spending and habits that you can take, embedded in the main story.
-- An interactive graphical snapshot of everyday people's tech use in years from 1984 to today, by my colleague Paul Parker, Mr. Data himself.
-- A very cool timeline of tech milestones, large and small, from the first computer, the ENIAC, in 1946, to April 2013, when smartphones and surveillance cameras helped identify two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.
-- A fine video by my colleague Steve Szydlowski of a day in the life of Burrillville residents Dawn Glasberg and her family, whose story will be told in the main article to be published on Sunday.
-- A sidebar about Dawn's personal tech evolution, which began with a high school computer class in her 1992 - 93 senior year at Burrillville High School and continued with the early days of AOL. 
-- projo social media director Pam Cotter's advice on keeping kids safe in the digital era.
-- Colleague Kate Bramson's story about a new app started by some Providence entrepreneurs.
-- An editor's note on why we decided to devote so many precious resources to this topic.

>>>><<<<

-- Part Two, Sunday, May 5:
The data dig: Researchers mine mother lode of tweets, posts for clues about what makes us tick

Looking at ourselves...
Journal Photo/Steve Szydlowski

The second-day package includes:
-- Several polls, embedded throughout the main story.
-- First responses to the #eWave series.
-- R.I.-area tech meet-ups.

>>>><<<<

-- Part Three, Sunday, May 12.
Safety vs. privacy: New technology a boon to law enforcement, potential threat to civil liberties.

Jason Wayne Pleau at his arraignment for the 2010 murder of David Main during a holdup at a Woonsocket, R.I., bank. Pleau's lawyers asked that his statements to police after his arrest in New York City be thrown out because authorities had zeroed in on his location by tracking his cell-phone’s “pings” off cell sites without a warrant. Journal Photo/Mary Murphy

The third-day package includes:
-- More polls throughout the main story.
-- A precursor to our #eModule, a new way to tell stories. Full eModule coming May 26.
                                                     >>>><<<<
  Part Four, Sunday May 19.
 -- Providence Chamber of Commerce's tech-savvy Garage.

>>>><<<<

Part Five, Sunday May 26.
-- Your Brain on Digital: Rewiring the modern brain

Tom Murphy and Sandor Bodo/Providence Journal

 -- eModule, a new way to tell a story. Stay a minute, an hour, or more... up to you.
-- Brown professor Dima Amso on young brains, older brains.
-- Wheaton College professor Rolf Nelson on the virtues of video-gaming.

 >>>><<<<

Part Six, Sunday, June 2.
-- An online badge of success. The digital badge movement.
-- Another eModule: digital badges.

 >>>><<<<

Part Seven, Sunday June 9.

-- How one family with members from Denver to Dubai stay in touch.

-- Photo gallery of this family, whose matriarch is in Providence.

-- Balancing social media, and in-person relationships.

-- Pam Cotter with some more great advice.

  >>>><<<<

Let me thank my many colleagues at the paper who joined together in true collaboration to conceive this series and bring its debut to fruition -- print, visuals, social-media, online, design, tech people and more, from front-line reporters to editors at the top. Folks, this is journalism in the digital age.

Technology, of course, has profoundly transformed media and the newspaper industry. Below is a montage of how The Journal and long-gone Evening Bulletin were delivered in decades past. I love the biplane, vintage Charles Lindbergh, but have to wonder if it was a Journal promotional stunt...

The way the paper used to be delivered. Photo of montage that hangs on Journal cafeteria wall.

A Nearly Perfect Summer

 Thirteen years ago, The Providence Journal published my tenth major newspaper series, A Nearly Perfect Summer: Travels Through Old-Money Newport, about the time I spent immersed in Newport Society. The six-part series, which ran from July 2 - July 7, 2000, was the basis for my 2010 documentary movie, Behind The Hedgerow.

The late (and last) grand dame Eileen Slocum, central character in A Nearly Perfect Summer, the series, and Behind The Hedgerow, the documentary movie.

In our fickle world of technology, the series has disappeared from Journal servers (though it remains internally in our archives). So I was pleased to find a copy of Chapter Three, the whimsical 'Midsummer Nights,' on The National Museum of American Illustration site, virtual home of the museum that is owned and operated by my Bellevue Avenue friends Judy and Laurence Cutler.

So take a look at 'Midsummer Nights,' Chapter Three, in its original form.

Because he is retiring as Journal executive editor this week -- his last appearance in the newsroom is this afternoon, in fact -- I must mention my friend, colleague and mentor Tom Heslin. Tom edited the series, helping transform it with his exquisite touch into one of my most popular works ever. Thanks, Tom, and best of luck!

Tom Heslin, as we remember him from his three decades in the Projo newsroom

1st Story in Public Square Conference a Success!

Jim Ludes, me, Dana Priest, and Sr. Jane Gerety, president of Salve Regina University.

 More than 150 people braved a wet and windy spring Friday in Newport, R.I., to attend the launch of the Story in the Public Square program, a year-round initiative of Salve Regina University's Pell Center and The Providence Journal that will feature more events in months and years to come and an active ongoing online resource and presence, www.publicstory.org After more than a year of planning, Story co-director Jim Ludes and I agreed our launch was a success.

Dan Priest. Journal publisher and CEO Howard Sutton, and Gary Hart. Journal reporter Paul Grimaldi, who covered the event, is in background.

The conference featured the inaugural award of the Pell Center Prize for Story in the Public Square to The Washington Post's Dana Priest, above, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Former Colorado senator Gary Hart, below, delivered the keynote address in Salve's Bazarsky Hall.

Gary Hart. "We need stories to tell us where we are [and] where we are headed," he said.

In the morning panel, print and broadcast storytellers, a community leader, and a best-selling novelist discussed ethical storytelling -- and told some compelling stories of their own.

L to R: Moderator Karen Bordeleau, executive editor of The Providence Journal; novelist Karen Thompson Walker; BU professor Chris Daly; URI political scientist Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz; WBUR's David Boeri; and the NAACP's Jim Vincent.

The afternoon session included a screening of The Providence Journal's award-winning documentary, "Coming Home," and a discussion moderated by Salve professor Donna Harrington-Lueker with panelists Iraq war veteran John DiRaimo, a central figure in the film;  the Rhode Island National Guard's Lt. Col. Richard Duffy; Journal columnist and film narrator Bob Kerr, a Vietnam veteran; Elizabeth Roberts, lieutenant governor of Rhode Island; and me.

We also honored the winners of our first annual student storytelling contest. First place wen to Sophie Zander, a junior at Ursinus College in suburban Philadelphia. Honorable mentions went to Ron Farina, a student at Central Connecticut State University, and Madelin Schlenz, a student at Community College of Rhode Island.

The conference was blogged and with the hash tag #SIPS13, got a lot of Twitter traction.


We urge Friday's participants to take a brief survey. 


And we hope to see everyone at our fall event, topic TBD, and our 2014 spring conference. Please send any suggestions on topic, speakers, panelists, potential award winners and anything else to my email.

Three-camera setup for Story in the Public Square

Salve Regina University is pulling out all the stops to ensure great coverage of the Friday, April 12, launch of the year-round Story in the Public Square program, a partnership of Salve's Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy and The Providence Journal, with major grant support from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.

Pell Center  head Jim Ludes checking the stage at Bazarsky Hall on Wednesday.

 The day-long program will include a keynote address by Gary Hart, an award to Washington Post staff writer and two-time Pulitzer winner Dana Priest, two panels, and announcement of winners of the student story contest. Setup began on Wednesday...

Salve Regina's Jamie McGuire, teacher and filmmaker, video production chief, on Thursday.

Footage from the conference will see a variety of uses, including a PBS broadcast and more. Jamie McGuire is using a three-camera setup, in Bazarsky Hall; another setup will be used in beautiful Ochre Court for interviews of key participants. We also expect good media coverage and lost of Tweeting -- hash tag for the event is #SIPS13 As in Story in the Public Square 2013, first of a series of annual spring conferences. Other events are planned throughout the year, and we have already established a vigorous online presence, please visit www.publicstory.org

Two of the three cameras under Jamie's control.

Checking the equipment late Thursday afternoon.

Novel 'Asylum' published: in memory of Frank Beazley, and to benefit Zambarano Hospital

Crossroad Press has just published Asylum, the second book in my Thunder Rise trilogy (stay tuned for book 3, Summer Place). Asylum is available as an Amazon exclusive on Kindle. Proceeds will benefit patients at state Zambarano Hospital, in Pascoag, R.I., home of the late Frank Beazley, inspirational artist, poet, champion of the disabled and my dear friend (proceeds will go to Patients for Progress, the fund Frank started). The story of Frank, in my 12-part 2006 Providence Journal series, is my favorite of the many narratives I have written. Frank died in 2012.

I hope Asylum will appeal to readers of horror and mystery -- who may already have been drawn into the vortex of the mountain I call Thunder Rise, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. The trilogy stories begin in my first novel, Thunder Rise, first published in 1989 and recently re-released in digital format, and soon also to be an audio book.

Here is the blurb for Asylum on Amazon:

With the support of his wife, Sharon, young neurosurgeon Nick Emin has left medicine to pursue his longtime dream of architecture -- and now he has just won his first big contract, to design a luxury resort from the remains of an old state psychiatric hospital that lies in the shadow of Thunder Rise. It seems his decision to quit operating was wise, after all, despite the criticism he endured when he put down the scalpel.

Taking up temporary residence near the long-closed Elmwood State Hospital, Nick is slowly drawn into the institution -- and back in time, to when Nazi-inspired experimental surgery on the mentally ill was conducted behind the old brick walls of Elmwood. And not just lobotomy, once so widely practiced in America...

The pull of Nick into Elmwood’s past is no random development or horror-novel cliché. With his neurosurgical expertise, Nick has been called for a specific reason, by a specific person he will come to know well -- someone of great importance to him. When Sharon becomes pregnant with their first child, Nick begins to understand.

But first, the enigmatic Saint Peter and his friends have a mission for Nick that pits him against Elmwood’s inhumane administration -- a mission of salvation with terrible consequences if it fails.

>>>><<<<

Asylum is fictional, but its essential elements are real: the long, tragic history of institutionalizing the mentally challenged and disabled, and others society deemed as "unfit." This history spans America (and many foreign nations), and Rhode Island, where I live, has its own shameful past. Some of my earliest stories for The Providence Journal were about abuses at the Ladd Center and Institute of Mental Health. In part because of the public-service writing of The Journal, both institutions are now closed. I invite you to read more about the impact of public story on public policy.

And take a moment to read the essay with which I introduce Asylum:

A note to readers

This is entirely a work of fiction. I created the characters and events.

But I did not create the historical circumstances in which Asylum is set.

Not so very long ago –– within my memory as a journalist who covered their dying days –– American institutions for the mentally ill and disabled were as depicted in these pages: warehouses that often became laboratories for the mistreatment of our fellow human beings. Residents suffered needlessly, and endlessly. Time dragged. The real world faded until it was gone. Hydrotherapy, insulin, electro-shock treatments, lobotomy, forced sterilization, all of which are mentioned in this book -- all were real. All were commonplace. Untold numbers of lives ended beneath unnamed concrete markers in potter’s fields.

Since the 1980s, when I began covering these issues for The Providence Journal, many of these institutions have closed. I would like to be able to report that our society’s treatment of the people who once filled them has become more enlightened. And while there are some communities where this is indeed the case, and while I know of one institution where care is compassionate and first-class –– Zambarano Hospital, in Pascoag, R.I., where Frank Beazley, to whom this book is dedicated, lived for so long –– overall, little has changed. Many of the mentally ill and disabled are now imprisoned –– one institution having replaced another. Many are on the streets, lost, abandoned, and often abused. Some are war veterans, which adds an additional layer of national shame.

And all remain subject to ugly stigma that pervades our society. Stigma that is based on the absurd notion that disorders of the brain are somehow different than disorders of any other organ. 

Are we so lacking in compassion?

Have we learned nothing?

Creativity and spirituality

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and other acclaimed works, speaks about the relationship of creativity and spirituality in the current issue of Spirituality & Health magazine. Highly recommended.

I found this passage particularly enlightening:

"I think creativity is entirely a spiritual practice. It has defined my entire life to think of it that way. When I hear the way some people speak about their work, people who are in creative fields who either attack themselves, or attack their work, or treat it as a burden rather than a blessing, or treat it as something that needs to be fought and defeated and beaten. . . . There is a war that people go to with their creative path that is very unfamiliar to me. To me, it feels like a holy calling and one that I am grateful for."

Read the full interview. 

Elizabeth Gilbert, courtesy Spirituality & Health.

Gina, Carlos, Don and Gil

Carlos Ferreira and Gina Russo, Station site, 4 p.m., March 15, 2013.

I met Brazilian journalist Carlos Ferreira at the Providence train station, where he had arrived on Amtrak Regional 172 from New York. We stopped at the newsroom of The Providence Journal, where he met editors Karen Bordeleau and Sue Areson, and reporters Tom Mooney and Tracy Breton. Like me, they have long been involved in coverage of the Station nightclub fire.

Carlos, from the newspaper Zero Hora, published in Porto Alegre, a city of almost 2 million, is among the many journalists who have been covering the January tragedy at Santa Maria nightclub club Kiss, where 242 died in a fire eerily like the Station. He was here in America to write stories about our people touched by our fire. He had reached out to me after I wrote an op-ed piece for his Brazilian newspaper group, where I had connected with editor Deni Zolin of Diário de Santa Maria.

 I had arranged for him to meet Gina Russo at the West Warwick club site. She got there about the same time that we did on Friday afternoon. It was cold, but sunny.

Gina, one of the truly great people of Rhode Island -- we are so lucky to have her -- talked with Carlos about her experiences and the experiences of the families and friends of what she calls these “one hundred angels,” whose memory she has vowed to keep alive even as she continues to help survivors heal. She gave him an autographed copy of her book. At one point, I thought I saw a shadowy figure in the woods behind the crosses. Next look, the figure was gone. I exchanged a puzzled look with Gina. She seemed to suggest that the unexplained was not uncommon here, on this sacred ground.

And then the figure reappeared: a bespectacled middle-age man with a backpack and an old camera. When he stopped near the shrine to Derek Johnson, whose father, Bob, I have written about, I went over and asked if he was a friend of Derek. No, he said, but he had met “Mr. J.” during the tenth-anniversary week and become a friend of Derek’s dad. 

His name was Don Haddock, from near Boulder, Colorado. Shoots only in black-and-white, only with real film, and only on his ancient Ricoh camera. Not a professional photographer, though passionate about his work, which is quite good, as I found visiting his website. He told me that when he is inspired by an event, he will sometimes hop on a plane and go shoot it -- the 2010 BP oil spill, for example. When he heard about the tenth anniversary of the Station fire, he decided to come. And when he got home after being here February 20, he didn’t have all the shots he wanted. So he got back on a plane, and here he was.

When I introduced myself, his eyes grew wide. Well, maybe not literally, but hearing my name took him back. A few years ago, he said, he had found a short video whose images and sound -- the sound of wind chimes on a cold winter day -- had moved him deeply. He had the video on his iPhone. Said he watched it frequently, both haunted and soothed by the music and scenes. Said it was one of the reasons he was so strongly compelled to fly in from Colorado, to pay personal witness to this place with 100 crosses.

It was a video I shot on the sixth anniversary of the fire. It has not been posted on The Journal web site for some time. I don’t even have a copy.

Don thanked me profusely for creating it. I didn’t know what to say. Four years, 2,000 miles, Brazilian visitor Carlos, survivor Gina, a Friday afternoon in March, a stranger who hopped on a plane -- could this be only coincidence? I have felt many powerful emotions in my many visits to the site: among them, sadness, anger, admiration for people like Gina. This was a different kind of power, something at once remarkable and strange.

So I introduced Don to Carlos and Gina. Four of us, from such different worlds, literally and figuratively, brought together for one moment.

And as we four stood there talking, cars began to pull in. One had two men who knew no one directly involved in the fire, but who had always wanted to visit, and this was the day they chose. Another car had two women I did not speak with; another, a man with a boy. And still another, with New Hampshire plates, was driven by Gil Talbot, a professional photographer. He was here to shoot the University of New Hampshire hockey team, which was playing in Providence that evening. He, too, knew no one from the fire, but had wanted to visit the site since reading John Barylick’s book, Killer Show.

So I introduced him to Gina -- and to Carlos and Don.

An hour or so had passed. The sun was weakening; it was time for new friends to part. I suppose it was like that many nights when music played and people talked and laughed and swapped stories at The Station... many nights, that is, until the last.

Gina and Gil left. Carlos wanted to see some more of West Warwick, as did Don, who had gotten to the site by bus, so I drove them around the town, past abandoned mills. Then we drove to Warwick, where I dropped Carlos at his hotel and Don at the airport. 

I headed home, pondering the meaning of chance.