1993

Face the Nation
January 7
Punk rock. Nobody did it better than Neutral Nation. Michael Caito paid tribute at the end of their road.

Frustrated! Gotta get out . . . out of this life . . . of this town!

So goes the refrain from "Frustrated," which may very well be the last song Neutral Nation ever records. After 10 and a half years of sweating, screaming, searing shows, a zillion load-ins, load-outs and soundchecks, it's finally coming right down to it:The Last.

Never, ever let it be said that they were dogging it at the end, mere pathetic hangers-on waiting for that last deal like some dazed wino mooching his way toward his final, fatal fifth. Their New Year's Eve show (with the equally stoked Jungle Dogs) was textbook: furious rock and roll, showcasing a band not hanging on for dear life, but closer, rather, to the absolute apex of their playing power. They just plain rocked the house.

Care-less
February 25
After a Rhode Island Health Department report cited more than 75 percent of Rhode Island nursing homes as being deficient in some area of care, Steven Stycos found some depressing things going on with the care of your grandparents in Rhode Island homes.

[At the Village House Convalescent Home] two rooms had feces on the floor, and four others had "persistent unpleasant odors." Inspectors also found seat cushions stained with feces, and a resident's shoes stored on top of a "used bedpan that had brown matter on it." In addition, a dirty rectal thermometer was found stored next to uncovered clean thermometers.

Sporting news
May 13
Though it looks like the Brown women athletes' suit against the university for Title IX compliance might finally get settled, in 1993 the landmark case was making waves throughout the tertiary educational system. Aldina Bixpa-Vazao saw just what it was that made the Brown case so interesting to other schools.

Women's sports advocates say the case has captured the attention of college administrators around the country. That's because Brown had one of the best records (second only to Harvard) in women's athletic opportunities. If Brown is not in compliance, then no school is.

A matter of trust
June 17
In her first feature for the Phoenix, Jody Ericson looked at how some Rhode Island divorce lawyers can take advantage of trusting women clients.

Maria Del Rosario Vallinoto testified that sex between her and [Edmond DiSandro, her attorney] was never consensual, that DiSandro, a respected trial lawyer for 32 years, had essentially raped her during their 18-month relationship, threatening to deliberately lose her case if she didn't sleep with him. It is indicative of a more widespread syndrome in which some unscrupulous divorce attorneys take advantage of the power they yield over female clients. And coercive sex isn't the extent of the damage. Lawyers have also been known to use pressure tactics to overbill the women they represent or to make them give up their assets, often their homes, to pay legal fees.

The poor get poorer, continued
September 2
In what had become a Sundlun tradition of cutting benefits to anyone who couldn't stand on two legs to protest, Lisa Prevost saw the governor take aim at the poorest of the poor in the '93 budget: those who rely on General Public Assistance.

This year's reductions in GPA, the state-funded welfare program of last resort, came on the heels of cuts instituted just last year. Senator Myrth York says advocates for the poor were bowled over by Governor Sundlun's budget proposal this year. They planned to try and repair the damage done from last year's cuts, but instead found themselves battling to maintain the status quo. Linda Katz, a lawyer for Rhode Island Legal Services, calls the budget-cutting measure "indefensible for an enlightened society."

The song, not the singer
November 12
Bob Gulla, who took over the local music beat while Michael Caito took a breather, caught up with one of the area's most distinguished songwriters.

"If you're a songwriter, the thing that makes you different from other songwriters is the song."

Don't be fooled. Cheryl Wheeler's simple platitude states much more than the obvious. In a world where folk music is fast becoming post-modernized and the line between country and folk and pop and rock gets more transparent and blurred by the day, the song -- that flimsy piece of musical art -- is indeed the difference.

Cheryl Wheeler separates herself from the madding folk crowd with small piles of these things -- tender, witty, and literate. Like the best singer/songwriters, she uses our world as her palette, our selves as her models; each song is a pointed daub of emotional color.

Drunk with power
November 19
It's the hospital. You trust it, inherently. But if you were an indigent and intoxicated alcoholic in the Rhode Island Hospital emergency room between the first and 11th of November, maybe you shouldn't have, said a whistle-blowing nurse who blamed the hospital for performing unnecessary treatment on intoxicated patients without their consent. Tatiana L. Fish and Lisa Prevost felt the issue to be a tricky interpretation of legal policies.

Federal regulations governing informed consent do make an exception under certain conditions. But intoxication alone is generally not reason enough to deny people that right, says Brown professor of philosophy and biomedical ethics Dan Brock, a nationally recognized medical ethics expert. "Typically it would be the case in a research setting that you'd secure a consent from a surrogate if there were some need to do research on some [intoxicated] subjects. [Intoxication] wouldn't waive the consent requirement," Brock says.

Art attack
November 26
Yeah, so all we ever see of RISD kids is them hanging on the tiny strip of grass on Benefit Street known as "the Beach," looking all life-of-leisure-esque. Tim Gower expelled the myth that Art School is simply a place that rich families send their 18-year-olds to play with paint and clay for a few years before they decide what they really want to do.

Art school as four years of doodling, wearing berets and hanging around coffee shops? RISD students, and their counterparts at other schools, dismiss the notions. For some, all-nighters become part of the routine early in the semester. One RISD freshman, sporting a wad of gauze on his middle finger, explained that he'd accidentally lopped off its tip with an X-Acto blade at 3:30 that morning, wearily trying to finish a project.

The outsider
December 3
Though Myrth York barely lost in her quest for the governor's office in 1994, she succeeded in both unseating the incumbent, Bruce Sundlun, and in getting young, progressive democrats excited about both the election and politics. Lisa Prevost saw York's success to be a result of her corruption-beating paradigm.

More important for York's chances, say her supporters, is her standing as the ultimate outsider to the incestuous circle of back scratchers. With corruption continuing to plague the state, her outsider status could overshadow her vulnerabilities. "Myrth is moved by human feeling, as opposed to political ambition," says Scott Nova, executive director of the progressive coalition Ocean State Action. "She will stand apart for that reason."

Oblivious offense
December 10
When ProJo sports guy Jim Donaldson raised the ire of the URI Latin American Student Association by saying of the Morocco and Colombia soccer teams, "I can't wait to see the results of the drug tests after that one," and by referring to that match up as a "Battle of the Lowlifes," our sports guy, Chip Young, noted that Donaldson had a reputation among his peers for racism.

People see what they see, and so be it. But Jim has a track record of offhanded -- possibly oblivious -- comments that smack of racism and homophobia and have drawn fire from readers. Even colleagues who admire his writing have privately made mention to me of his less-than-considerate views in this area, saying it may not be intentionally malicious, but that what you see is what you get.

My hometown
December 31
December 1993 wasn't, it seems, Pawtucket's best month for national publicity. The sensitive Rudy Cheeks -- a Pawtucket native -- was a bit hurt by all of the Pawtucket-bashing in the media.

First, a character on Nurses refers to Pawtucket as "the pits." Then the Boston Globe calls it "a hardscrabble city" and a "desperate place." The city should be named Dangerfield, RI . . . If I'm not mistaken it was [Damn Yankees] temptress Lola, conjured up by the devil to mess with Joe, the hapless ballplayer protagonist, who had logged some time in Pawtucket. All I'm sure of is there was some sort of connection between Pawtucket and the Devil and apparently, there still is.

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