Ahhh Providence. What can I say about our little capitol. It started off as a seedy, gang infested area, too dangerous to travel at night and the 3rd most violent city in the country, to a hopping, cultured art and music scene with quite a bit less seedy and gang infested areas. The difference has been amazing and we've come a long way. Surviving enough crooked politics to inspire a movie (for real) and unspeakable losses like The Station Nightclub fire tragedy in Warwick, we plug ahead, iced coffee in hand.
RISD, (considered one of the best art schools in the country) is on the East Side and has produced students from David Byrne (The Talking Heads) to Gus Van Sant (Goodwill Hunting and Milk) to Barnaby Evans (creator of Waterfire.) The entire HBO series 'Brotherhood of The Hill' was filmed in Providence's Federal Hill and many films have been, and continue to be shot here. Steven Speilberg was drawn here to film 'Amistad,' Brad Pit for 'Meet Joe Black', Jim Carrey for 'Me, Myself and Irene', and of course 'There's Something About Mary.'
It must be the geography....30 minutes any way will get you from the beach, to the city, to the country and urban downtown. I have met people from California who say the skies here are just as blue as theirs, and people from Ireland say the rugged coast and famous seafood remind them of there homeland. one
Right now though we continue to have the highest unemployment rate in the country (finally dropping to 12%, at one time being 14%) Every day is a struggle for this mostly working class state, but we know there are worse situations in the world like Haiti, and the people here still want to give and give. We are blessed. We are lucky. And we are always thinking thinking of others.
Hi Jen, thanks for your notes on my post! Glad to meet you and welcome to blog land :)
ReplyDeleteI used to read so much and now it's so few and far between. I currently am reading a book called Tathea by Anne Perry. It caught my interest at the library and it started off great with really elegantly written. I was a 1/4 of the way in and not sure where it's going & picked up The Lovely Bones and finished it in a day- so now I'm back to trying to get the rest of Tathea. I'll let you know what I think when it's done. RI sounds beautiful...except the cold winters, hate those here. Your cat sounds awesome, you will have to post a pic!