1982

Life in the slow lane
February 10
John Rufo visited Block Island in the dead of winter to experience the pace of tourist-free life.

It's true what they say about Block Island in the wintertime. The hotels are boarded, and only a handful of stores and service stations are open. There are two police on duty, one doctor, and one schoolhouse for kindergarten through high school students.

Noticeably absent are the 7-8000 tourists and part-time residents that make up the island's summer population. In their place are approximately 610 year-round inhabitants . . . But unlike other small towns, Block Island's nearest neighbors are 12 miles away, and that allows for a more relaxed lifestyle. But it also has drawbacks, as First Warden John "Jack" Gray pointed out: "At times it feels like a prison for newcomers.They feel confined. You either like it or dislike it intensely," he conceded.

Still in Saigon?
April 14
More than 2500 Americans were missing in Southeast Asia. John Rufo reported on the efforts of the Pawtucket-based Project Coming Home.

Tom Musco did two tours of duty in Vietnam. He called the men who fought beside him "my brothers." Many of those men never returned, and remain unaccounted for. Musco is determined to change that, and he has dedicated himself to the project.

"You can't work at something like this without becoming emotional," Musco reflected. "I knew I could count on them not to let me down."

The Freeze
April 21
Ground Zero Week rallied citizens nationwide in support of the nuclear freeze campaign. Bill Van Siclen wrote about waiting for the end of the world.

No one quite knows why, 37 years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the anti-nuclear movement should have suddenly become such an important force in society. But it has. All anyone has to do these days is pick up a newspaper or tune in the nightly news to hear about the latest anti-nuclear demonstration or teach-in or high-level defection from the ranks of those who thought they had swallowed their inhibitions and learned to love The Bomb. Somehow the questions -- social, moral, biological, and military -- posed by the existence of nuclear weapons slipped out of the Pandora's Box into which we placed them 37 years ago.

Marching for survival
June 16
Martha Vickery was among the thousands of people who traveled to New York City for the massive no nukes rally.
I returned with the Rhode Island contingent from the June 12 anti-nuclear march on Saturday night about 10 p.m., hot and thirsty, aching all over, feeling that the morning we departed for New York must have been days ago instead of only 17 hours ago.

I returned with a unique experience: having attended the largest demonstration in U.S. history, a demonstration about a potential war that was bigger than any demonstration against the Vietnam war. The knowledge that it was indeed the largest came only after watching the late news. It was impossible to tell in that ocean of people whether I was among 10,000 or a million . . . If nearly one million Americans will go to New York City and march for the cause, can the rest of the country be far behind?

Pilgrim's progress
October 20
Bill Flanagan extolled Bruce Springsteen's mature work and expanded vision when the solo album Nebraska was released.

It is an indication of Springsteen's basic optimism that when he was obscure he celebrated the joys of the average guy, and when he became successful he shifted attention away from himself to the less fortunate peers he left behind. Once he was out, he admitted that the life he was no longer part of was more difficult than his early songs suggested. One suspects that the young optimist who wrote Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. would have refused to accept the grimness of Nebraska. When he was struggling, Springsteen's songs refused to seek sympathy. But now that he's made it, his songs are generous with sympathy for others. It fits in with the American frontier ideal of the man who won't take charity for himself but is anxious to be charitable. There may be a stiffness to such pride, but there's nobility, too . . . Bruce Springsteen is, I think, rock's most important voice partly because his vision is of our whole society -- culture, traditions and changing attitudes -- and not just of rock and roll society. He knows that America is big enough to contain a man's whole imagination, and hard enough to break his heart.

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