1988

Tattoo you
March 9
Evelyn McDonnell went under the needle and mused on its meaning.

Where once there was smooth white flesh, a black cat now curls on my back -- legs outstretched, tail permanently lashed in a backwards S. I check it daily in the mirror: yes, it is there. At night, it turns into a living creature -- myself unleashed, eyes always open, daring people to judge me now . . . You wonder whether to tell people, what they will think, what you will think in 10 years. And then, when you're sitting at your straight job, wondering how you got stuck doing the 9-to-5 thing, you smile and concentrate on the creature on your back, coiled, waiting for the night's escape.

A poet's life
May 4
Michael Harper became Rhode Island's first state poet 10 years ago. Johnette Rodriguez spoke with the Brown professor.

On a recent rainy Friday afternoon, Harper reflected on his work, his life and his new title. He stressed the importance of poetry in everyone's lives, mused on the lack of support for poets in contemporary society, and looked forward to finding ways that could help everyone "get in touch with the poetic substance of their lives."

"Art fortifies," Harper asserted. "The lesson I get over and over is how transformational the aesthetic moment is. If you just give yourself up to it, it will provide you with the kind of succor that oftentimes you need, as a participant, as a listener, as a reciter.

"The question we should be asking all of ourselves is: you know the light that's in the eyes of kids -- the kind of vitality? Why is that beaten out of people when they're in their 20s or 30s? Why do they go dead?Whose fault is it?

"People really do have transformational capacity," he reaffirmed, with unwavering optimism. "The problem is that they often remain voiceless."

End of an era
July 20
Talk about coincidences. Lupo's closed (to make way for "luxury condos") the same week the NewPaper was purchased by the Boston Phoenix. Big changes in the Biggest Little. Ty Davis, Bill Flanagan, and Jim Macnie contributed to the tale of the Heartbreak Hotel.

Before Lupo's, there was nothing. Downtown Providence in 1975 was a ghost town after 5 or so. The movie theatres had all closed up, the big department stores (except for the Outlet) were already memories, the relatively new Civic Center was still trying to be the sports hall its developers had envisioned, the Performing Arts Center was a shabby old whore called the Palace showing 99-cent movies, and a promising theatre company called Trinity Square would hold "rent benefits" at places like the Custom House and Leo's to avoid eviction. (T.D.)

About a year ago, DickReed and I were at New York's Bottom Line, when Steve Forbert, the young songwriter, waved us over to the table where he was sitting with Doc Pomus, the old songwriter. "Bill, Dick," Forbert said, "do you fellas know Doc Pomus?" "No," I said. "It's great to meet you, sir." Doc Pomus took one look at us and said, "Did you hear?They're closing Lupo's!"

That's a true story. I guess we just looked like Providence guys. Rumors of the closing of Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel have circulated for years, but since 1987 that dark pendulum of inevitability has swung closer and closer to the dark end of Westminster St. As I write this, in mid-June, in Manhattan, the end of Lupo's comes up in conversation all the time. Klem just passed up tickets to Yankee Stadium 'cause he wanted to whip Rizzz into shape for the farewell shows. I spoke to Young Adult Jeff Shore yesterday and he said, yeah, it's really happening this time. Just a couple of hours ago I was at Carnegie Hall and bumped into John Andrews, the ex-leader of the Luncheonettes and the Mundanes, and he said, "I hear Lupo's is about to go.' So it figures Lou Papineau would call and say the NewPaper's getting the obituary together. Well, I'm sorry to see it happen but I'm happy to help organize the wake. (B.F.)

Lupo on opening a new Heartbreak Hotel:

"I'm looking for that perfect compromise between being dirty and being clean. I think my greatest ability is finding the level of acceptable sleaziness. And when I do, I'll transport a proper amount of it to another club."

That's going to be a challenge, but I've never felt a stronger rallying force than rock 'n' roll. And if constraints of physicality deter our yen to soak up the man's far-flung diversity (on stage and off), then 13 years of Heartbreak Hoteldom has taught us nothing. Like other bastions of Providencia here and gone -- Joanne's, the Met Cafe, Haven Brothers -- it transcends its rickety wood-and-nails shell. Lupo's, as we all know in our hearts, is a state of mind. (J.M.)

Moving on up
September 8
In the first issue under the Phoenix's logo, Peter Kadzis worked his Nostradamus re: a 21-year-old college student trying to win a seat in Rhode Island House of Representatives.

Imagine this scenario: Patrick "Kid" Kennedy defeats [incumbent John] Skeffington. Kennedy cultivates a reputation in the General Assembly as a down-to-earth reformer who gets things done. His next move? To unseat U.S. Representative Fernand St Germain, the Democrat even Democratic challengers charge with corruption who also appears unbeatable at the polls. Final move -- the U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Democrat Claiborne Pell, who, after all, won't live forever.

The other half
October 13
Though the Newport City Council still tends to spend most of its time policing drunk out-of-towners and skateboarding kids, NewPaper writer Coleen Curran showed that, in a city so associated with the rich and famous, there are, under the surface, far bigger
problems.

With the rent for a nothing special apartment averaging at $600, homelessness has become a big problem in Newport and eviction is the number one reason. It is estimated that 52 people a month go without shelter here. They sleep outside or in a car. Newport ranks third highest in the state, right behind Providence and Central Falls, in the number of persons living below the poverty level.

Dark days
November 17
The tinkering currently going on with Rhode Island's abortion legislation lends Johnette Rodriguez's reporting of URI Professor Bernice Lott's first-person account of a pre-Roe v. Wade abortion relevance 10 years later.

"I was told to bring $300 in a brown paper bag in easy-to-cash bills and to bring sanitary napkins in the bag as well," Lott continued. "I reported alone at 7 a.m. before his regular patients arrived and was told to follow him to a back room, in which there was a table -- like a kitchen table -- that I was to climb onto. There, without any anesthesia or a nurse present, he proceeded to perform a D&C, accompanied by my screaming -- and one shot of penicillin. He was annoyed with me and told me to shut up," she recalled.

Cooking the books
November 23
With Rhode Island's welfare benefits seemingly stuck at 64 percent of the federal poverty standard, then-Governor Ed DiPrete's director of the Department of Human Services, Nancy Bordeleau, showed just what the magic was behind Reaganomics. Johnette Rodriguez straightened out the figures.

Bordeleau [toted] food stamps, fuel assistance grants and Medicaid to bring a welfare family's income over the poverty level. Her reasoning reflects [how], with such sleight-of-hand arithmetic, conservative politicians and blindered bureaucrats have turned their attention toward budget cuts . . . and their own salary increases and away from basic human needs. Though welfare recipients did eventually win a 5.3 percent increase, over Bordeleau's recommendation of four percent, she received a 12.4 percent salary increase.

Living in America
December 1
As the Southeast Asian refugee population in South Providence exploded, Coleen Curran gave readers something to think about when telling their parents how cheap the Pad Thai on Broad Street was.

Of the Southeast Asian refugees living in South Providence, well over half live on incomes below the poverty level. Nationally, the economic figures on Southeast Asian refugees are not better than they are in Providence. Two out of three Southeast Asian households headed by refugees who arrived in this country after 1980 live in poverty. Recent Indochinese refugees, 50 percent of whom are under the age of 22, are more likely to be poor, unemployed and on welfare than any other ethnic group in America.

NO PARKING!
December 22
Since 1928, when the city first banned overnight parking, people have been bitching about parking in Providence. Though Pam Steager was as annoyed as anyone about the cold walk home from the garage, she considered the issue to be more about public safety than anything else.

Because of the recent rapes on the East Side of Providence, the fear level of women walking the streets at night dramatically increased. Those of us who have cars have an already somewhat protected environment. There is, however, that gap between parking lot and home, and, since Providence continues to be one of the last cities to not make any provisions for on-street resident parking, that gap can be dangerously wide and dark.

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