RIer on top of Mt. Washington, Jamestown water, Cobblestones gone: Top stories for the week

Here are some of The Providence Journal’s most-read stories for the week of Nov. 19, supported by your subscriptions.

• Have you ever wondered why when you go to grocery stores in other states you can often pick up beer or wine on a single trip? In 46 states, grocery and convenience stores can sell beer, wine or all kinds of alcohol. But Rhode Island is one of the four – joined by Alaska, Maryland and Delaware – where people have to go to a package store. Why is this the case? We explored it in a special edition What and Why RI.
• If you’re into birds and you’ve heard about a new effort to rename species now named after historical figures, the good news is that you’ll have to learn new names for only two birds that breed in Rhode Island. The American Ornithological Society announced the renaming project earlier this month in an effort to be more inclusive of people of different races and backgrounds who are interested in birds. Here’s what it means for birds both breeding in the state and those that pass through.
• A Rhode Island high school hockey powerhouse is about to embark for a new playing home. On Tuesday afternoon, Mount St. Charles announced on its website that it will be leaving the RIIL and heading to the NEPSAC beginning in the 2024-25 academic year. Take a look at why the change is being made now.
• The fall high school sports season came to a close with Thanksgiving games, find all the scores and game stories at providencejournal.com/sports.

Here are the week’s top reads on providencejournal.com:

University of Rhode Island graduate Jay Broccolo’s office may offer the best view in New England, but it comes at a high price – temperatures that can plummet to 47 degrees below zero and winds that can gust over 200 mph.

Broccolo, who grew up in Westerly, where the highest point is 249 feet, works as the director of weather operations at the Mount Washington Observatory, on the highest mountain peak in the Northeast, at 6,288 feet.

“We all like to call it the best office view in New England,” Broccolo, 36, said in a recent interview.

To make observations and tend to the equipment, which can ice over quickly, weather observers venture out of their shelter once an hour and spend five or 10 minutes gathering information on factors such as temperature, wind speed, barometric pressure, visibility and precipitation type.

Sometimes the wind is so strong “it will suck the air out of your lungs,” he said, and will “definitely blow you over and continue to blow you over.”

The owner of a Jamestown house whose well ran dry several years ago will now be able to tie into the municipal water supply here, after town leaders – facing multiple lawsuits – agreed to reverse course and allow her to connect to a main located 200 yards south of her house. 

The plight of Christina DiMeglio was first detailed in a Hummel Report investigation that published in The Providence Sunday Journal in September 2022. Town leaders acknowledged in 2021 that DiMeglio was in “dire straits” ‒ but denied her request to tie into Jamestown’s water district, saying they were concerned about having enough water to supply future development. 

That resulted in DiMeglio’s lawyer, Joelle C. Rocha, pursuing multiple legal avenues including: an appeal to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, a lawsuit in federal court, an appeal to the state’s Water Resources Board and legal action against the town’s tax assessor. 

Journal columnist Mark Patinkin’s mom, June Patinkin recently passed away. He shared his remembrance of the family matriarch in a column appearing on Thanksgiving.

From Mark’s words: When I think back to my mom, who at 95 just left us, it’s always a summer day, on our childhood block, and I will tell you what I remember about her most. She was … there. There in our red brick home when we came inside for lunch after doing the things boys do, and at day’s end, there again.

And I was sure, as children always are about their mothers, that of course she forever would be.

Yet I am writing this now because her sun finally set. Our sun, really.

It should be said that it was June Patinkin’s time. And yet, like so many elderly moms and grandmothers, even in infirmity she remained our center, the figure we gathered around. Indeed, in taking her leave, she called us all home, her message clear, to hold on to each other as tightly as she had done with us.

Patrick Crowley first made headlines in Rhode Island by chasing then-Republican U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee around in a George W. Bush mask and flight suit.

Later, he exposed then-Gov. Don Carcieri’s failure to pay $12,000 in property taxes on his luxury condominium in Florida.

FWIW: he also had a Donald Duck costume he wore around the State House when lame duck Carcieri went to war against the state’s public employee unions. (His theory: “We can call him all the names we want. We can lawsuit this and grievance that. Let’s just make fun of the guy … That’s how you beat a bully.”)

With George Nee easing back as the president of the state’s AFL-CIO, Crowley – the current secretary-treasurer of the 80,000-member amalgam of labor unions – will be taking the helm for the remainder of Nee’s term when Nee sets a retirement date. His four-year term runs through December 2025.

The intersection of Westminster and Dorrance Street lost a little bit of its charm recently, as bumpy cobblestones were replaced by asphalt paving.

According to Mayor Brett Smiley’s administration, the intersection had to be dug up for necessary utility work, and the city made the decision not to replace the center cobblestone medallion afterward.

The city determined that the cobblestones “were damaged too significantly by the frequent bus traffic on Dorrance Street,” and needed to be removed “to improve traffic safety,” spokesman Josh Estrella said. (RIPTA buses typically travel down Dorrance Street after leaving Kennedy Plaza for destinations in the West Bay.)

The decorative brick crosswalks surrounding the medallion were also ripped up as part of the utility work, but Estrella said that those will be replaced in the spring.