Mystery...in haunted, historic
Providence Rhode Island
by Donna Montalbano

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Waterfire in Providence, Rhode Island

   

One year... 
in the life of Angie Russo.
What she's reading, 
What tape is in her VCR  (she doesn't own a DVD player yet) 
What's cooking in her kitchen, and
Where her "Rhode trips" take her in New England. 
                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                     
                                             

  

                                                                                                               

January

Angie's Nightstand
                         The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.                    
     
It's cold. It's anti-climactic. I am talking about the month of January, not this wonderful spooky gothic tale that enthralls you in a way you thought never possible since you first read Jane Eyre as a precocious ten year old. A famous writer is dying, walled up in her reclusive mansion. She hires an obscure biographer to write her life story. The biographer has only one demand: "tell me the truth..." I am really good at guessing the twists and hooks of novels and I didn't see anything coming! What a thrilling, can't put down book to curl up with on a freezing January night, in a wing chair by a crackling fire.

Angie's VCR
The Shop Around the Corner, 1940, black and white. Starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.


Did you see the remake of this film, You've Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? Well, immediately erase it from your memory and watch the outstanding original that can never be improved upon. This beguiling, witty, vintage romantic comedy stars Jimmy Stewart as Alfred Kralik, who works in a small shop in Budapest, Hungary. He longs for a girlfriend, and answers a personal ad for a penpal placed by Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan.) The understanding is that they both remain anonymous. They fall in love with each other by mail, but neither realizes that they are in real life working side by side in the shop and can't stand each other. In fact, The Shop Around the Corner is well stocked with a variety of delightfully flawed characters. A bright, funny five star movie!

Seems like January is the month for catching cold...and what better comfort food for poor sick little you than homemade chicken soup? If nobody is around to make it for you, make it yourself in no time. At the first sign of the sniffles, go to the supermarket and buy:

  • 2 cups of cubed cooked chicken (buy deli chicken breast in a slab)
  • 3 cans of chicken broth
  • 1 can of carrots
  • A cup of chopped onions and a cup of chopped celery (why knock yourself out? Buy them prechopped)
  • 2 cups of packaged egg noodles
  • A few sprigs of fresh parsley for garnish
  • Saltines
  • Nyquil
  • In Touch magazine

(The following recipe will serve one patient for a day and a half.)Put aside the Nyquil, saltines and In Touch magazine for later. Bring everything else but the parsley and noodles to boil in a big saucepan, then simmer for 15 minutes more. Cook noodles separately and drain. Stir noodles into soup mixture. Salt and pepper to taste. By now you are probably fading fast, so just ladle some soup into a big mug. Forget the parsley. Grab a sleeve of saltines, go back to bed and take a swig of Nyquil. Quickly eat a saltine. Open your In Touch magazine, grab your mug of hot chicken soup...and enjoy!

Dinner and a movie are always a winning combination...and here are two streets on the East Side of Providence that combine the best of both. Thayer Street has the Avon Cinema that plays the independent and foreign films you've heard about but can't see at the cineplex. Within quick walking distance on a freezing night are two good and reasonably priced restaurants, the Greek restaurant Andreas and also The Paragon. Alternatively, head down to Main Street for a pre theater bite at jazzy cool Olive's, or the Manhattan style bistro Parkside. Then catch an indie film at the Cable Car cinema. If you're on a tight budget you could skip the big dinner and buy a wrap or a brownie or a salad right there at the Cable Car cafe. Inside the theater, you are in for a delightful surprise and I don't just mean the movie...instead of conventional movie seats you'll find wall to wall, identically upholstered cushy couches...the Cable Car gives new meaning to the phrase: "Relax and enjoy the show!" Apres theater, take a walk down Main Street to L'Elizabeth's, the Providence late night gathering place for decades...a romantic little candlelit nook filled with antiques and curiosities, and I don't just mean the patrons! Settle in a velvet wing chair or on a Victorian sofa and order a brandy from the bar...and don't forget to share the pleasure, and the calories, of one of L'Elizabeth's decadent desserts.


February


One of an outstanding series starring haunted ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux. The first line tells you this is not your average detective novel: 
    "I WAS JUST OFF Southwest Pass, between Pecan and Marsh islands, with the green, whitecapping water of the Gulf Stream to the south and the long, flat expanse of the Louisiana coastline behind me-which is really not a coastline at all but instead a huge wetlands area of sawgrass, dead cypress strung with wisps of moss, and a maze of canals and bayous that are choked with Japanese water lilies whose purple flowers audibly pop in the morning and whose root systems can wind around your propeller shaft like cable wire."


Roger Ebert loved it. So will you. The film begins with the line: "I was ten years old when I killed my father..." and then takes you back in time to rural Louisiana in 1962 and into the troubled lives of the Batiste family...a womanizing doctor father played by Samuel L. Jackson; his lovely, long suffering wife Lynn Whitfield; and their three children. Jackson's sister is played exquisitely by Debi Morgan (you will remember her from the soaps); whose husbands have all died tragically. She is a clairvoyant who can predict everybody's future but her own. This film is intoxicating, with the texture and resonance of great southern literature.

  • 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
  • 4 tablespoons of butter, softened
  • 4 tablespoons of sugar substitute
  • 2 teaspons of vanilla
  • 4 tablespoons of heavy cream
  • 1 ounce of macadamia nuts

Melt the chocolate in the microwave. Then blend in the ingredients in this order: sugar substitute, butter, cream and vanilla. Add nuts if you don't mind adding additional carbs to the mix. Spread into a loaf pan and chill until firm.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. By Betty Smith. First published in 1943.


We all know this book is a classic; arguably one of the best coming of age novels ever written. But if you read it as a child, it is time to read it again and discover all the nuances you may have missed. You "get" the book's metaphoric title from the start...just like those tough city trees that push their way through concrete and cellar gratings to touch the sun...so young Francie Nolan struggles to grow up in the mean streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the turn of the last century. Unforgettable moments: Francie's determination to read through the local library from A through Z...Francie picking out the house in a fine neighborhood she will pretend she lives in so she can attend a better school. How you root for her feisty, protective younger brother Neely who, because of an incapacitated father, has to protect and support the family! What you may have missed, as I did reading it as a child, was the dark side of this book...the shame and daily humiliation of poverty; the cruel indifference and hypocrisy of the adults in these children's lives. And shocking themes such as alcoholism, bigamy, and pedophilia. Read this book again...it will be as if you are reading for the first time. Promise.

The kids are happy to see you...and just as glad to say goodbye so they can beat the traffic back home. Rather than a late afternoon Easter dinner, throw a lovely brunch instead.

Menu:

  • Bloody Mary's. Sounds blasphemous, but aren't they bloody delicious? Vodka, tomato juice, a celery stalk and maybe some eye opening hot sauce.
  • A big, beautiful, expensive ham. (What's the worst that could happen? Leftovers? Thick dijon mustard-slathered ham sandwiches on seeded deli rye for the next week?) Cover it with a store bought fruit glaze and bake it low and slow.
  • A frittata. It's just a trendy name for an omelet you bake in the oven. You need a lot of eggs, and any ingredients you wish to add: sausage, peppers, onions, cheese, bacon...whatever. Start it on the stovetop in an oven safe frying pan, then transfer it to the oven at 350 to finish off and brown it up nicely.
  • And here is a tip for those obligatory Easter baskets. We all know that our children are never too old to want one, or to pout if they don't get one. My solution: make an Easter basket out of something recyclable. For the girls: straw hats, tote bags, makeup cases, flower pots, ice buckets or pretty wastebaskets. For the guys: fishing tackle boxes, baseball caps, lunchboxes, big thermoses or storage containers.You can fill them with candy of course but as an alternative, theme them: with office supplies, health and beauty aids, use your imagination! 
“I never can be tied to raw, new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbor rich with visionings.
Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes--
These were the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.”
H.P. Lovecraft
Sonnet XXX, Background, of Fungi from Yuggoth
Memorial Plaque, John Hay Library
Providence, Rhode Island
“I am Providence, and Providence is myself.”

H.P. Lovecraft died in the ides of March, the 15th of this month, in the year 1937, in his native Providence, which he adored and called his "glamorous old city." To visit him, take a leisurely ride down past the aristocratic mansions lining Blackstone Boulevard on the East Side of Providence and turn into Swan Point Cemetery. Search for a crooked old gravestone with the strange chiseled words: "I am Providence."

On that same historic boulevard is Butler Hospital, where both Lovecraft's parents died, insane.

Born to privilege and wealth on Angell Street, at the ripe old age of 14 he was exiled by dwindling family fortunes to "a skimpy flat...where almost nothing familar remained." Lovecraft thought himself a failure as a writer, but indeed, he is revered today as a visionary and a genius...inheritor of Poe's dark takes (Edgar Allan Poe, who also roamed the streets of Providence)...Lovecraft is considered the true father of modern horror fiction to whom Stephen King, Peter Straub and Ramsey Campbell owe a huge debt of gratitude...and maybe even some royalties...
H.P. Lovecraft set many of his stories and novellas along the familiar streets of home.
The Shunned House still exists today, on Benefit Street.
                                                                       

 



April


This quirky, utterly original book was a New York Times Notable Book and won (British) Whitbread Book of the Year. The unlikely hero has been compared to Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield, David Copperfield and a patient from an Oliver Sacks case study...but the truth is, there is nobody quite like Christopher John Francis Boone, an autistic boy who knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. Christopher cannot stand to be touched, hates the color yellow, has no understanding of human emotions and relates better to animals. He is exactly fifteen years, three months and two days old when he discovers his neighbor's dog murdered by means of a garden fork. You soon begin to realize that the people around Christopher are way more dysfunctional than he is.


You just wanna laugh? Then rent this movie...based on the classic Saturday Night Live sketch, and the best of the SNL franchise movies. The Coneheads, Beldar and Prymatt and their cone-quettish teenaged daughter Connie, are an alien family who fell to earth from their home planet of Remulak. When asked, which is remarkably seldom, they insist they are from France. They are pursued relentlessly by the INS as they seriously assimilate in the state of New Jersey...possibly the only place on this planet they could pull it off...


The secret is to marinate! Few cooks do it because lamb is a generally tender meat; but it's the best way to maximize the flavor. The day you serve it just sizzle it for a few minutes in a frying pan, put it on a pretty preheated platter and take your bow. Impresses four very hungry people and it is so easy and fast!

  • 5 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic crushed
  • leaves from 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
  • 1 pound of loin of lamb, (approx 4 chops in size or half leg ) trimmed but with the skin still on
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put three tablespoons of the olive oil, the garlic and the rosemary leaves into a small dish, just large enough to take the lamb. Add the loin or half leg, season with several turns of a black pepper mill and then turn it over in the mixture so that it gets well coated.



May
The House on the Strand by Daphne DuMaurier. Published 1963.


When we think of Daphne DuMaurier, we think of her classic haunting tale Rebecca. Yet this daughter of an English aristocrat wrote prolifically and famously throughout her career: non fiction, short stories and many gothic novels. The House on the Strand is a sci fi thriller set deep in the wilds of England's Cornish coast. Magnus Lane, a mad scientist, has let his ancient house, Kilmarth, to his friend Richard Young. Richard agrees to help Magnus with an experiment...and imbibes a potion that sends him careening back in time to the fourteenth century. The potion, and the experience becomes addictive, and Richard is obsessed...torn between two times, and two loves. As she does so well, Daphne DuMaurier twines history with romance, horror and suspense and ties it up with one last shocking twist.


Few people realize that this movie was based on a short story by Daphne DuMaurier. The idea for the story came to her one day as she saw seagulls diving and wheeling around a farmer ploughing his field. She imagined the birds, starved after a harsh winter, turning hostile and predatory; attacking the people of the little town and eventually turning against all mankind. It's said DuMaurier disliked the Alfred Hitchcock film because he changed its setting from Cornwall to the west coast of America. For the rest of us, The Birds is one of the most shocking, original horror classics of all time. Some movie trivia: Tippi Hedren had a nervous breakdown after a three day shooting of the famous attic scene, during which the birds actually DID attack her. And the schoolhouse in Bodega Bay--where the children are attacked in one of the most horrifying scenes in the movie--well, that is a real local landmark that was said to be haunted even before the filming of the movie.


Look at your newly greening lawn...and you will inevitably notice an outbreak of those humble yellow flowers that get no respect...dandelions. Pluck them out, if you must, but don't toss them away...they're not weeds, they're snacks!

You'll need: new dandelion blossoms plus:

  • 1 c. milk
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • hot cooking oil
  • 1 egg
  • 1 c. flour
  • pinch of pepper

1. Pick new dandelion blossoms, those on short stems, and rinse well in cool, lightly salted water.
2. Cut off the stem ends close to the flower heads, leaving only enough to hold the petals together, because the stems and greenery are bitter.
3. Roll the dandelion flowers in paper towels to blot up the excess moisture, then dip each one in a batter made of 1 egg, beaten, with 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a pinch of pepper.
4. Drop the batter-coated blossoms into deep hot fat (375 degrees) and fry until lightly browned.
5. Drain on absorbent paper;
6. Sprinkle with more salt, if needed, and serve at once as a hot hors d'oeuvre.


Threads of shimmering silk weave together this tale of two doomed women in 17th century Madrid, at the Time of the Inquisition. The book begins with their tragic ends...one is a silk growers daughter, Francisca de Luarca, who is accused of witchcraft, torn by the rack, praying for death. The other is a Queen: Maria Luisa, French born wife of Carlos II...poisoned because she cannot bear children.
In 1600's Spain only the aristocracy could wear silk. When Francisca first sees the new Queen, who is the same age as she, arrayed in lengths, layers, petticoats, pantaloons, skirts and slippers of silk; she thinks:
"...it was as if before me stood the work of a hundred thousand worms. I saw the leaves of all our trees shiver over her in the wind; I heard the jaws of our worms, chewing, chewing, like the noise of a great storm."
Reading Poison makes you feverish. Your real life becomes a maddening distraction.

                                                                        


July

Angie's Nightstand
The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve.

This is a story within a story. A century-old true crime mystery wrapped in a modern family tragedy. Ten miles off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire is Smuttynose Island, one of nine barren windswept rocks that make up the archipelago called the Isles of Shoals. Jean is here on assignment; to take photographs for a magazine article about the bloody axe murders that took place back in 1873 (decades before Lizzie Borden whacked her parents). She's brought along her husband, her young daughter, her brother in law and his beautiful new girlfriend. The narrative moves back and forth from past to present; where in both time zones relationships unravel, passions flare and jealousy leads to devastating consequences.

(Off) Rhode Trip. Treeless, bleak, windscoured...the Isles of Shoals are not named for shallow water "shoals", but for the schools of fish that were abundant there, in the deep cold waters of the Atlantic. On a clear day you can see the mainland, but the sight does nothing to dispel the feeling that you have happened upon wild and uncharted territory. Indeed, the lonely isles were haven and home to ghosts, pirates, murderers and mooncussers (who deliberately lured ships aground to plunder their cargo). Buried in the hard earth are the bones of shipwrecked sailors, and, perhaps, Blackbeard's buried treasure. The "Shoalers" of yore were hard drinking and hardworking fishermen who lived a rugged, isolated existence, a law unto themselves. 

In later, more civilized times, poet Celia Thaxter established an artists' retreat at the grand hotel her father built on Appledore Island. It attracted the cream of American painters and literati: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Richard Henry Dana, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier and impressionist painter Childe Hassam.

The Isles are divided between the towns of Kittery, Maine and Rye, New Hampshire. Its inhabitants today are mostly wild birds and marine life. The Star Island Corporation hosts several conferences and religious retreats during the summer season. To visit as a tourist, the best place to cast off is Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a great tourist destination in itself. Go online to islesofshoals.com and get information, rates and schedules for the Isles of Shoals steamship company. 
 
August


Close To Shore, by Michael Capuzzo.

Did you think Steven Spielberg just made up that story about a killer shark on a rampage? No...what he did was take a true event (which was even scarier) update it by several decades and change the venue. This book relates the true story of "Jaws": it is a meticulously researched adventure thriller which describes the great white shark attacks of 1916. During that long hot summer, the War to End All Wars raged on in Europe, but on America's East Coast, thousands were cooling off in the bright surf off New Jersey. The novelties of the beach in that post Victorian era made these revelers oblivious to its dangers...and now the mother of all dangers lurked close to shore. A rogue predator was about to launch the first attacks on swimmers in American history. At that time, even scientists did not consider sharks to be dangerous...the notion that a monster shark would invade the shallow shorelines to feed on tourists was unimaginable. At Spring Lake, New Jersey, in that fateful summer, a woman sat on the beach near the grand Essex and Sussex hotels. Suddenly she cried out: "That man in the red canoe is upset!" Only it wasn't a red canoe...


Angie’s VCR
Open Water . Starring Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan.

Merely contemplating the premise of this film is horrifying enough; watching it unfold onscreen is nearly unbearable. Thank goodness it is only 79 minutes long. Does that mean it's a terrible film? No, it's actually terrific; a modern horror story that lingers forever in your nightmares. Daniel and Susan are American tourists on vacation. They board a crowded dive boat going out for an underwater tour of the reef. When they surface and look around for their dive boat, they see nothing but open water. They are alone, adrift, in shark infested waters. The true story behind this movie is even more disturbing. It involved two Americans who went out on a charter boat for a dive off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The boat left them behind and it was two long days before anybody even realized they were missing. The Barrier Reef tourist industry scrambled to do damage control and rumors were circulated that the couple had committed double suicide, murder-suicide or even faked their own deaths. Several months later, a hundred miles north, a fisherman found their dive slate. On it was written: "Monday Jan 26; 1998 08am. To anyone [who] can help us: We have been abandoned on A[gin]court Reef by MV Outer Edge 25 Jan 98. Please help us [come] to rescue us before we die. Help!!!"

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Angie's Cookbook.



October


I Never Believed in Ghosts Until... 100 Real Life Encounters 1992; Collected by the Editors of USA Today Weekend

Fictional horror tales abound and they can scare the bejeezus out of us; but nothing is more frightening than the ghost stories of ordinary people like you and me who are minding their own corporeal business when suddenly they run smack into...a GHOST! Having never believed myself until I moved into my own genuine haunted house...this book scared me to death. The kind of scared when your heart starts pounding and you have to close the book and put it up on the highest bookshelf until you collect enough courage to take it back down again. USA Today editors said that an amazing number of the contributors to this book described themselves as skeptics...and often started their stories with the words "I never believed in ghosts until..." The story titles alone will chill you to the bone: "Did I Lock the Basement Door?" A Phone Call from My Grandfather" "A Woman in the Well" "A House in the Woods." And 96 more just as scary. Happy Halloween!


Angie’s VCR
Carnival of Souls, 1962, starring Candace Hilligoss. Black and white.

Filmed in Lawrence, Kansas on the frayed ends of a shoestring budget; this movie proves, as did the original Night of Living Dead, that you need money to make a first rate horror movie only if you're short on everything else that counts. A young church organist is obsessed with an abandoned amusement park; repelled yet strangely attracted to it. She is plagued by hallucinations (or are they?) Sometimes ordinary people don't seem to see her, but grotesque pasty-faced freaks accost her at every turn. The movie is accompanied by unnerving organ music that sounds as if it was played by some demented church lady. A perfect, skin crawling classic horror flick that will always dwell somewhere in your subconscious. Isn't that what you want?

                                                                        

                                                                        

                                                                        

                                                                        

                                                                        

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