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Yesterday evening, we attended a lecture at the East Providence public library on the history of pirates and privateers in Rhode Island. It was mildly informative and entertaining. One thing I learned is how democratic pirate ships were. The crews signed a contract, agreed on how to share the spoils, voted for the captain. Only during actual combat did the captain become the dictator. The crews were multiracial and multiethnic. In some respects, this resembled whaling ships at the time. The presenter was a local* middle school teacher. During the Q&A, one audience member asked the teacher if Rhode Island history was taught at his middle school. He replied that it wasn't. I remarked to Linda that Rhode Island history wasn't taught at our junior high, either. Indeed, if you'd asked me back then to name the 50 states, I'm not sure I would have even remembered Rhode Island. *I suppose you might say that everything in Rhode Island is "local" since the state is ...

  During the interregnum between the Christmas and New Years, here's a useful reflection on the history of religious tolerance in the US featuring Rhode Island*: The Jewish community in the United States is as old as its democracy. In August 1790, George Washington sent a letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I., thanking them for their well wishes. He wrote: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” He added, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean thems...