[Spring training, 2005]

UPDATE: WHAT'S NEXT FOR N4N?

My lucky yet-to-be determined successor will resume this blog in the near future (and Scott MacKay and myself will soon be blogging over at 'RNI).

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Thanks for checking in, everyone. It has been fun, and it's nice to know that this blog is the first thing that pops up if you Google "Not for Nothing."

Friend of the blog Christina Bevilacqua, an occasional Phoenix contributor, has done great things with the Salon series at the venerable Providence Athenaeum, and the series is being opened to non-Ath members on occasion.

Tomorrow's program is particularly relevant given Obama's presidency:

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. . is none other than Lifespan CEO George Vecchione, who has earned almost $3 million in compensation in each of the last two years. Steven Stycos has the details in this week's Phoenix:

Vecchione collects almost $1 million more each year than his closet competitor, the CEO at Partners HealthCare System in Boston, although Lifespan is much smaller than Partners and the region's second-largest network, Caritas Christi Health Care, also in Boston.

Part II, with more excerpts . . .

In 2003, we checked in with the Columbus Theatre, documented the heartbreak of the Station nightclub disaster, traced the maturation of RI's Latino political movement, walked tough neighborhoods with the Providence streetworkers, and looked at how new media was influencing politics:

Randy Price, a longtime anchor who recently parted ways with WHDH in Boston, gave a striking interview with Emily Rooney earlier this week in which he sharply rapped the status quo of local TV news.

The critique from Price: local TV focuses too much on inconsequential stuff (fender benders, minor fires, the weather, etc), rather than more relevant, and more significant stories.

Here's Part I in a look back at a few of many, many stories over the last 10 years:

In 1999, Hillary Clinton fanned fears about school violence, Derick Hazard's supporters made a case for wrongful imprisonment, Providence Place landed in the capital city, and the Providence Police Department still hadn't adopted community policing:

Via ProJo:

More than 1,200 people have applied to fill 40 new jobs at the state Department of Labor and Training to process claims for unemployment benefits, agency director Sandra M. Powell said at a State House hearing in Providence.

There are so many candidates, the agency will need help from another state department just to sort through the applications and begin hiring.

As Governor Carcieri prepares to tonight deliver his penultimate State of the State address, it's worth considering the governor's once-lauded communication skills -- and how they might have been deployed to greater effect.

As I wrote in 2006:

[A]lthough it seemed clear at the outset that Carcieri was going to project a more robust presence than the quietly effective Lincoln Almond, he has emerged, to the begrudging admiration of his partisan detractors, as Rhode Island’s version of the great communicator.

What's worse -- A-Rod's spinning, or that some current and former ballplayers, including MLB.com's Harold Reynolds, are praising him as some kind of stand-up guy for acknowledging his use of a performance-enhancing substance and vowing to work with kids?

Speaking last night on MLB, Derek Jeter groused about how the list that revealed A-Rod's bad behavior was supposed to be confidential.

Once upon a time, truth and reconciliation commissions were seen as necessary for progress and healing in places such as Chile and South Africa.

From Senator Whitehouse:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) praised a proposal today by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to create a “truth and reconciliation” commission to look into certain actions by the Bush Administration:

Courtesy of Owen and Mike at Connect Providence:

Dear Providence,

Will you be our Valentine? Celebrate our great capitol at our largest gathering of the year:

I HEART PROVIDENCE
Hosted by Mayor David N. Cicilline
Tuesday, Feb. 10th, 6-8pm
City Hall, Providence

Complimentary hors d'oeuvres and cash bar available by Trinity Brewhouse.

As the RI ACLU prepares to hold a news conference today regarding the Wyatt Detention Center and the death of Jason Ng, the Boston Globe reports on how some other prisons, including the nearby Bristol County Jail, have enhanced their revenue by jailing immigrant detainees:

Bristol and other cash-strapped county jails are increasingly embracing the immigration business, capitalizing on the soaring number of foreign-born detainees and the millions of federal dollars a year paid to incarcerate them.