Great article [Butler Caregivers Raise Money and Volunteer to Restore the Blackstone Boulevard Park], I’m so glad to see the word get out about this cooperative project! One minor detail
came out wrong – I was trying to express that trees often lose their lower limbs over time and we
don’t put tags on higher limbs because they would be hard to see. I didn’t mean to suggest that
the limbs get higher as the tree grows (they don’t).
Carrie Blake, East Side
Dear Providence Eye,
While I’m delighted to see the coverage [PVD’s Celebrity Turkey is A Welcome Reminder of the City’s Other Residents – and the Natural World.] of Esquire the Turkey, you should be aware that he’s not the only turkey-about-campus in Rhode Island — Rhode Island College, where I teach, has “Gerald” (see below), who’s a frequent subject of the college’s social media posts. (see below)
Perhaps there are more?
Cordially,
Russell Potter
Russell A. Potter, Ph.D. FRCGS
Professor of English
To the Providence Eye:
Many thanks for the Eye’s continuing focus on the Port of Providence. The Eye’s PortDay last May was my first in-depth encounter with the Port, a great learning experience. I visited the fascinating Providence Water Treatment Plan (which purifies 40-50 million gallons on an average day and is considered one of the best in the country); took a tour of the 140 acre Port of Providence (which is leased by the City to Waterson Terminal Services for 30 years); and attended a seminar of the People’s Port Authority (PPA).
More recently, I took PPA’s Toxic Tour of the Port, a chance to see the port from the outside, though most of it is hidden by high fences and other barriers along Allens Avenue. The oil fumes, however, were unmistakable, and are a major source of the asthma and other ailments afflicting residents of Washington Park and South Providence disproportionately. And we also visited the only public access sites, inadequate for use by the surrounding neighborhood: Collier Park, owned by a private investment group, and the final block of Public Street, closed off from the water by rip-rap.
Later I followed up on my own, searching for a trail that circumnavigates the harbor – and found that there isn’t one. Only two short trails starting from the Save the Bay headquarters, far within the Johnson & Wales campus, one ending at the Johnson and Wales football field, and the other blocked by a high wall of ProvPort . Surely the Providence Harbor deserves to be viewed by all who want to see more of the City’s economic powerhouse (where the cables are made for the windfarm-to-be, and a major import site for timber from Scandinavia), and how it integrates with the waterfront.
Your October 29 article continues this thread and alerts us to sustainability grants that will be offered by the City early in 2026, as part of its agreement with Waterson. We’ll be watching.
Sarah Gleason, East Side
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