Emails from Jim

Last Friday, 4 days after the last Town Council meeting, I received an email from Mr. Jim Mageau.

At first I was hopeful that it would lead to something interesting, but I found that hope fades. 

by Tom Ferrio

Ocean State Theatre Company Looks To Rent Warehouse In East Greenwich

Credit Evan Crawley

Ocean State Theatre Company, which leases Theatre-By-The-Sea in Matunuck, wants a year-round home, but will keep leasing in South Kingston.

By Elizabeth McNamara

New Progressive Charlestown Design

Your Progressive Charlestown staff have been evaluating a new layout of our website to make it easier to use. We decided we liked the new design this afternoon so I took a deep breath and (I think) got it all changed in about 10 minutes.

My apologies if you were using Progressive Charlestown at the time and became disoriented. All should be stable now!

UPDATE: Charlestown dodges a bullet

What goes up must come down.
(Credit: NASA)

Charlestown residents can breathe a sigh of relief: Although NASA still doesn't know exactly where the obsolete 6.5-ton satellite currently hurtling to Earth will land, they've narrowed the impact window to sometime tomorrow afternoon, at which point it won't be passing over Charlestown or indeed anywhere in North America.

Sorry to disappoint anyone who was hoping to find a nice chunk of space debris in their back yard to sell on eBay. But you can still get in on the betting action on where it lands. Although any eventual debris will most likely land in the water, if any pieces do reach land, odds are it will be either in Africa (9-4 odds) or South America (11-to-4 odds).

By Linda Felaco 

Why we haven't written about The Rogue

The punchline in today's Doonesbury cartoon hit very close to home for your dedicated staff at Progressive Charlestown.


The opening frame is at the left. You can read the entire strip here.

Playing Monopoly at the Beach, Part 2

Did Lisa DiBello help her business associate pass “Go”?

By Will Collette

In Part 1, I compared the revenue the town of Charlestown receives for concession rights at the two town beaches. Concessionaires at Blue Shutters Beach bid fiercely for the contract and, as a result, the town has received almost $60,000 in fees.

However, at Charlestown Town Beach, the same concessionaire, The Dog Pound, has held a monopoly since 2001, usually getting the contract with no competition, but has only paid $17,002 to the town. This is a pretty good illustration of why state law requires government contracts to be competitively bid.

In this installment, we’re going to look at how that competition actually works in Charlestown’s beach concessions.

A great year ahead for the Westerly Sun

Frank Glista soliciting donations for maintenance of the
Charlestown Naval Airfield Memorial

The performance of Jim Mageau and Joe Dolock at last week's Town Council meeting was a sufficient cue to start watching the letters to the editor in the Westerly Sun.

And we weren't disappointed! Competing letters by Frank Glista and Jim Mageau in Tuesday's Sun set the tone for things to come.

Death in Georgia

Barring a last-minute pardon from either the governor of Georgia or President Obama, Troy Davis will die at 7 p.m. for a crime he may not have committed.


By Linda Felaco

Things To Do in Charlestown - September 22 through 28

Channel your best Swamp Yankee, watch the acclaimed film Carolina, RI: Smallest of the Small, celebrate with Sandra Puchalski, attend a concert, do some bird watching.

We should have enough activities to keep you busy. The weather should be crisp and beautiful with some periods of showers for most of the next week.

Your tax dollars at work

When is a ban not a ban? When the CCA says so.
By Will Collette

If you subscribe to our town's Paper of Record, the Westerly Sun, I hope you saw Charlestown's PAID legal advertising on pages 16 and 17 of yesterday's paper (September 20). This is the second time town taxpayers have paid for this legally-required public advertising of Charlestown ordinance that totally bans wind to energy devices of any size, type or location.

For weeks, Planning Commissar Ruth Platner, the CCA-dominated Town Council majority and even the Westerly Sun have been saying this ordinance is NOT a total ban. It's just a pause, a time-out, that will allow Platner and her merry band of Planning Campensenos to craft a nice ordinance for resident wind energy.

We keep saying that you should READ the ordinance, not just listen to the propaganda.

Facebook changes its layout

If you were one of those people, like me, who did a "what the %$#^" about Facebook yesterday or today you should read this comic.

Teaser on the left and the entire thing here.

Enjoy!

CCA Voices of Greed blast red-light cameras

Are red-light cameras a harbinger of “failed socialism?” Or are CCA followers just idiots?

By Will Collette

The Charlestown Citizens Alliance is cranking up its anonymous voices of greed again. This time, these faceless legions are attacking, of all things, the opportunity for Charlestown to install cameras at our red lights along Route One to bust people who run those lights and put all of the rest of us in danger of violent death.

These cameras would not only cost the town NOTHING, but would probably generate revenue as the town would get a percentage of the fines for the violation.

In this town, where Colin Foote’s family still mourn his death on May 16, 2010 at the hands of a reckless driver who ran the light at Route One and West Beach, how dare the CCA launch this tirade.

Obituary: Don't Ask, Don't Tell. 1993-2011.

After a long illness, at midnight last night, the discriminatory military policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" died a quiet death. The policy is survived by the 14,346 service members who were discharged under DADT. 

The White House issued the following statement marking its passing:

Short Takes

Donna on TV
Injun Joe on the warpath
Dan Gordon goes to jail (and gets out again)
Bob Watson goes back to court
Watch out for falling space junk and, oh, 
Space aliens are attacking the Earth (and we're all gonna die)
By Will Collette

"You can see a strip of dead stuff”

Local Farmers Still Coping with Irene

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

Tropical storm Irene powered its way through the region nearly a month ago, delivering perhaps the "new normal" for our climate-changed weather: torrential rain, explosive winds and an infrequent phenomenon, especially for farmers — sea spray.

Sea spray is salt water blown ashore from the tops of waves, and the harmful salt is the reason crops aren't planted close to the ocean. But Irene pushed salty moisture far inland, destroying produce such as winter squash, corn and tomatoes across southern New England.

"We've never seen that kind of storm," said Brian Simmons, of Simmons Farm in Middletown.