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Dave: You're listening to Rhody Radio, Rhode Island Library Radio Online.
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Hey there, I'm your host Dave from the Rhody Radio crew and Cranston Public Library. If you're listening to this episode when it airs, today is Election Day. To celebrate this starting point in the civic process, we're sharing an excerpt from a recent episode of our podcast Down Time with Cranston Public Library, in which we were joined by Tammy and Emily from The Womxn Project, as well as John Marion from Common Cause Rhode Island to talk about voting and other ways to get involved with the government in the ocean state.
You will also hear our regular segment, The Last Chapter, where we discuss a library or bookish-related question. This week, we answered the question, "If you could rewrite a book from another character's perspective, what character would you choose and why?"
Tayla: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Down Time with the Cranston Public Library. We're a podcast for cool peaceful love libraries where we talk about what we've been reading, what we've been watching, and what we've been loving. I'm your host Tayla and the branch librarian at the Oakland Branch Library, and my pronouns are she/her.
Tammy: My name is Tammy Brown, I use she/her pronouns. I'm one of the creators of The RI4All Video Series. I'm a board member of The Womxn Project and Womxn Project Education Fund. I'm also the artistic director of the Contemporary Theatre Company in Wakefield.
Emily: Hello, I'm Emily Brochet. My pronouns are also she/her. Like Tammy, I am a board member of The Womxn Project and The Womxn Project Education Fund. when I'm not doing that, I am teaching high schoolers and sometimes bartending.
John: Hi, my name is John Marion. I use he/him pronouns. My fancy title is the executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. I work on voting rights in various other democracy reforms.
Tayla: Fantastic. Let's talk a little bit about Rhode Island For [00:02:00] All, and what your project is all about.
Tammy: Yes, thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about it. Rhode Island For All is a video series, and there's also a companion set of resources as well. It's all geared towards learning about why getting involved in state and local politics is really important and how to get involved in state and local politics or basically policy or the legislative process. The actual series is not political, per se, but when you're talking about voting, and you're talking about policy and policy change, of course, that becomes political, and so we talk about that a little bit.
It's really aimed at getting people excited about using their voice, making their voice heard on the state and local level. It's something that we've been working on for a handful of years at this point. It's a six-video series, and they're all available online at our ri4all, that's the number 4 all.org. We made those videos, and we got a grant from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities to complete those as well as support from local donors. We've created them through The Womxn Project. We have been working on that for quite a while.
We hope that as many people watch them as possible and share them. Emily and I created a social media campaign along with it, so they're really fun TikToks that go with many of the videos. We actually, in our initial stages of conceptualizing the videos and how we wanted to-- it's a lot of potential information. We wanted to condense it down into small digestible chunks. John was a great resource early on. He was one of the people that we thought like, "Okay, we need some [00:04:00] experts in civics and civic engagement in Rhode Island because we're not."
We're just activists that got involved in politics and got involved in policy, but we're not like subject matter experts in that area. We needed some folks who are like that, so John was a great resource very early on, in terms of, what kinds of things should we say. Where do we get information? Also, at least a few different times on our website, we connect to great resources that Common Cause has about how to testify and different things like that. We're all working together to try to make this process accessible and fun for people to engage in.
For me, at the end of the day, I just want people to be able to take ownership over the legislative process, the lawmaking process, and create change in the world.
Emily: Yes. Tammy, you did such a great job. I'm like, "Okay, where do I start?" I would like to probably start and say that one of the reasons why I was so excited when Tammy came to me with the idea of the project, basically, the mission statement of the project was, let's help people understand why and how to become locally civically engaged. The reason why it felt so real for me is, as Tammy mentioned, we are activists for The Womxn Project, and I came into it not knowing how to do anything. I had no idea how government works.
I went to public school. It was a great school in Massachusetts, but civics did not make the cut in terms of what we had time to learn priority-wise. I think maybe I had seen a chart or something once upon a time that was like, "Here's your free branches, the big national government." You can tell by my [00:06:00] tone of voice there, it wasn't really like something that made a big impression to me. Of course, I'd seen the I'm Just a Bill song when I was younger, and then I was like, "Okay, here we go. Go out into the world."
Then when it became time for me to try to get involved, because I felt like I was passionate about what was happening in my state and my country, I didn't know where to start. The Womxn Project was founded on that principle, it was a group of artists and a group of local grassroots activists that came together to try to basically skillshare. Specifically, our issue was reproductive rights and access. We work to codify Roe v. Wade into state law. Bringing it from the national level, into the state level, and we got a lot of people telling us, "Oh, don't worry, that'll never happen."
We took our campaign to the streets and basically worked with art as our main tool to try to get the public aware of what was happening. That taught me firsthand how important awareness is, in lots of different ways. Awareness in terms of how the government works, and then awareness in terms of like how to use public attention as a tool to try to get policy change. Living that experience without a lot of prior knowledge was really hard, and I didn't want anyone to ever go through that. Tammy and I made this series of videos, and the videos are purposely goofy, they are silly.
They are meant to be something that you don't mind watching, because we want to try to make them super accessible. We are caricatures of ourselves in the films because we are Rhode Islanders and we have through our [00:08:00] work got our faces on enough stuff that people recognize us. I am Emily in the film and Tammy has Tammy in the films and we bumble our way through figuring out how to get involved in meaningful ways and discussing why this stuff matters and breaking down some of the most approachable steps but meaningfully powerful places that you can get involved.
Tayla: Are there also Muppets puppets in the video?
Tammy: [laughs] There's one.
Tayla: Okay. I was going to say, am I remembering right from the website because if I'm not, that's going to sound like the wildest thing to just put out there like, "Was there also a puppet?" You guys be like, "No, absolutely not." Yes, one puppet to look forward to.
Emily: We started this. I love telling the story behind the scenes because we came up with a project and we were like, "Yes, okay, we're going to come up with these videos. We're going to write them. We're going to direct them. We're going to star in them. We're going to make Muppets puppets. We're going to have props. Like maybe there'll be a song and dance routine." We were just brainstorming like crazy. Just like, every idea was valid and good, and they were.
At this time, I had never written the script before, I had never made a puppet for months, but it was like sock puppet. It was just a matter of figuring out as we go, which is just in our nature. With the activism, we figured it out as we went and then we were making videos, we've also figured it out as we went. Which is just to say, as cheesy as it is, don't let a lack of experience stop you. Start where you're at and be in community with people that inspire you and that help you figure stuff out. If you are not yet in community, Tammy and I will be your community.
Kust hop on RI4All. It's all scaffolded for you right there. All the [00:10:00] resources, all the videos. You can go on TikTok if you want shorter versions.
John: Yes, there's this big hole in our community for people to understand how government works and how they can get involved in government. I started about 10 years ago. I started getting invited because we work on process issues as an organization. I work on campaign finance reform and voting rights expansion, but also freedom of information laws and really practical things that people use to access government. People invite me to come talk to their group and be like, "Could you just explain what an open meeting is?"
We decided, okay, let's do some programming, and we branded it and build out a website. We do these 60-minute panel discussions that we tape and put on YouTube, but it's a 60-minute panel discussion. Not a lot of people watch 60-minute panel discussions on YouTube. You can see the counter on YouTube that will show that. My board we were talking about what can we do to reach a broader audience, and they were like, "Make them short and make them interesting," and I'm like, "I'm really good at this 60-minute panel discussion."
I was thrilled when these guys approached me because it was just like, "Hey." I was familiar with-- they use the term artivism, which I think is a cool term. I was familiar with the projections and other work by The Womxn Project, but it was just like, "We're going to take this thing you care about, but can only do in 60-minute chunks, or we're going to put it on TikTok," and I'm just like, "I trust you that that's a good idea." It's great because my kids are not going to watch my 60-minute panel discussion, but they're going to consume a TikTok about it.
You've got to meet people where they're at in terms of their media consumption. [00:12:00] It's great that The Womxn Project has said, well, we're going to meet people at the intersection of art and activism. We're going to meet people on these platforms that organizations like mine just are not at least right now positioned to meet people at those places. I'm just grateful that they're filling that gap because it really is a gap. We did how a bill becomes a law and we advertised it. This was late 2016, and it got shared on the Women's March Facebook page.
Within a couple hours, we filled up the room. We had to get a bigger room. We filled up the bigger room. We had to get a bigger room, and then we sold that out. Got the biggest room we could get for free. There was this sudden demand for people who'd been sitting on the bench of democracy, quite frankly, and saw their rights threatened, and were like, "I need to get involved, but I don't know a darn thing about Rhode Island government and how it works, but this group over here does." There's been a demand ever since that I've seen and it's just great that other groups are stepping up to meet the demand.
Emily: Right. I would jump in and say anybody listening to this podcast, that's a little bit of a call to action that you could meet that demand as well and jump and fill in the gap. We gratefully and thankfully have a pretty wide range, but it's definitely not everybody. What we always say when we finish-- like behind the scenes, Tammy and I did some little video premieres where we talked and showed one video at a time and gave some guided feedback and some guided steps about what you [00:14:00] could actually do to go a step further, here's the website, let's like walk you through together.
You can hear my teacher voice coming out as I explain this. The idea is we don't have your reach, beautiful listener, who happens to be listening to this podcast, so that could be something that you can do. You could share this podcast that you're listening to right now or make your own TikTok about something that you learned from our website. Or you listen to John's 60-minute YouTube and then put in the comments, "I can't wait for the times that you climb a mountain, John, with your bike," and show them [laughs] those videos that you're on."
Tammy: What you're getting out a little bit Emily is that our work and-- John, I don't want to speak for you, but I imagine you agree. Our work is an invitation for everybody to get involved. We realize too that there are many people. We all know these people. These are probably most of our friends and family who have these feelings that things are not quite right with society or they wish things were better. Or they're a little dismayed with the way their politics or the Supreme Court or things like that are shaking out these days.
They don't even connect the dots that getting involved in politics and understanding open meetings, and understanding how to testify, and just going to the statehouse, that those things are connected. That you actually can have a voice in those things and improving those things and creating the world that you want to create if you know that you can use these different methods of getting involved to your advantage. I think we're going to segue way probably soon to talking about voting, and why that's so important.
To me, voting is one step in the cycle of getting involved and engaged in trying to create change [00:16:00] is you vote for the politicians and then they get into office. Then you watch what they do. You go to their thing if you can or you look online at Capitol TV or whatever. You find a way to testify if you can, or you just keep an eye on what bills you care about. If they don't do what you want them to do-- Throughout the whole legislative process, you call them, you send them a Facebook message, you hit them up on Instagram, or whatever.
You tell them what you want. If they don't do it, then come the next election cycle, which is every two years essentially, in Rhode Island, major ones, you use your power at the ballot box again. It's a cyclical thing. We want people to be very excited and engaged in the voting process, but also that's just the way in to just being more engaged in the whole thing. It can sound a little bit overwhelming to put it that way, but it's really just a matter of, like I said, inviting people in and realizing that your voice is very important in September in the primaries in Rhode Island, and in November in the general election.
Your voice is also important in January when the legislative session starts, and February and March and April, May, and June. Your voice is always important, and we can show you all different ways to make your voice heard all throughout the cycle.
John: There's a ladder of participation. This is the metaphor I always used. The first rung of the ladder is voting, and there still aren't enough people on the first step of the ladder. The general election, maybe about half in the primary that just happened in September, 14%. We'll talk in a minute about more ways to get people on the bottom step of the ladder. Almost nobody gets to the second step. Go to a public meeting, testify at a legislative hearing. We have the easiest state in the nation to get on to the second step.
Unless you're on Block Island, all of us live about 45 minutes from testifying at the General Assembly. [00:18:00] Even if you're on Block Island, you can send an e-mail. They literally list on the General Assembly website the cell phone numbers of most of the state reps and senators. That's not happening in California, and so we are arguably one of the more accessible governments in the country. It can have profound impact on issues you care about in your everyday life.
We all get caught up in national politics, and it's easy to, but there are so many issues that are governed at the state and local level that impact us every day, that we can have an impact on if we participate, but not enough of us participate in. Those who do participate, it skews high on the socio-economic scale, it skews in a lot of different ways. It's not representative, and it's only going to be more representative if more people participate. These videos are all about getting people I think, to that second step on the ladder or higher.
Tammy: Absolutely. I think you hit it right on the head, John, that RST is very accessible. This is something that we-- our first video is called The Senator Next Door because we're trying to get people to realize that the state reps and state senators aren't just on Smith Hill, they're your neighbors. They might be your soccer coach, they might be your lawyer or your dentist, or whatever. These are regular people, we have only a part-time legislature so they work a regular job and then they go a couple of days a week to the legislature.
We want to make people realize that these people are accessible to us. Also as you allude to, we are a very small state, and because so few people actually do even make it to the first step of participation and then make it to the second rung of the ladder, if you do choose to participate, your voice is so powerful. This is why [00:20:00] the primaries was my thing this year of really, really trying to get people to vote in the primaries because you can totally have a huge difference by voting in the primaries because so few people do.
That's when the elections are actually decided in Rhode Island. We're gearing up for the general election, which is also another very important election in Rhode Island. If you missed the primary, that's totally okay. Keep an eye out for it in two years, but for now, keep your eye on November. Make sure you have everything you need to vote and check your voter registration and all of that because it's really, really important to participate in these things.
Emily: Just a quick shout out, I'm constantly thinking about our young people and how even if you're not old enough to vote yet, which was frustrating to me as a young teenager that hated any restrictions about anything that I was allowed to do, that resonates. I understand. I'm sorry, that's the system right now, but there are so many other ways that you can get involved in really powerfully rippling effects to what you do. You can testify, you can go and volunteer for a campaign for someone that you care about and want to see elected.
You can do some work of helping your friends understand civics, and you can educate yourself. You can volunteer at a local nonprofit and get involved with their activism. You don't need to be old enough to vote to testify because the laws affect you and your life as well. You definitely have a say. I've been to testimony hearings at the State House. I've been fortunate enough to go. Let me tell you, if there is an 8-year-old that has the mic and talks about how climate change is going to affect them in a meaningful [00:22:00] way, that gets heard a lot deeper than when I say the same thing at 34.
That's I say that not to put pressure on anyone, but I say that to say it's a platform and it's there for you and we all have the ability to do something. Please don't think that you are powerless in the system because you are not old enough yet to vote.
Tayla: We talked about that a lot of people aren't even going to that first rung of that latter and voting. Being able to reach that first rung, listeners when you're listening to this episode is within your reach. Only a few weeks away. John, do you have important dates for people who want to get out there and vote? I know when this comes out, mail-in ballots will have been done, but for people who want to go out and vote in person, what are their options?
John: Well, yes, I do. I just happen to have them on this nice little note card in front of me so I don't get any of them wrong. Yes, by the time you listen to this, it's actually unfortunately too late to register to vote in Rhode Island or to change a registration. We need to fix that, by the way. We have a 30-day registration deadline. Longest in the nation. It used to be 60 days, but the Supreme Court struck that down in the 1970s. They moved it to 30 days, which was the longest the court allowed. You're out of luck, but we need your help to change that.
You're going to hear this and it's going to be at the end of the period where you could try to get a regular mail ballot. You're probably not going to get to vote by mail in the regular way, but early voting is just going to have started. On the 19th of October at the regular business hours of your city or town hall, they're going to have early voting. Providence City Hall and Cranston City Hall, very importantly, are doing it offsite. They're doing it [00:24:00] at an alternative location so that it's more accessible. Just go to Providence or Cranston City website, you'll get that address.
There's 20 days of early voting in most cities and towns that's going to be roughly 9:00 to 5:00 or 8:30 to 4:30 Monday through Friday. Few cities and towns are going to be open on the weekends. I know Providence was open that weekend before the primary, at least on Saturday. Again, just check your city or town website. Early voting is very nice. Same experience As voting on election day, but there's probably not a line as you can take your time. There's something called an emergency mail ballot. Say you really do want to vote at home, but you've now missed the mail ballot deadline.
You can call the board of canvassers for your city in town and they'll try to get you what's called an emergency mail ballot or you can pick it up and bring it home. Not a lot of people do that, but if you have a relative who broke their leg and wound up in the hospital and you want to help them vote or a home-bound friend, you can help them with that. Then obviously election day is the 8th of November. Polls are open, I think, except for Block Island, which opens late. The other 38 cities and towns, they're open at 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
Important things there are, make sure you check where your polling place is because we just did redistricting, so tons of polling places have changed. It might have been school down the street might be church 10 blocks away now. Just check that at vote.ri.gov. That's where you check your registration. You can see your sample ballot. You can see where you're polling place is. Second thing is if you did request a mail ballot, [00:26:00] it has to be in the possession of the state by 8:00 PM on election day.
There's a drop box in front of Cranston City Hall in pretty much every city hall except for East Greenwich and Central Falls, where they put it in front of the police stations. It has to be in that drop box by 8:00 PM. Do not put it in the US Postal Mail because if it gets there after 8:00 PM on election day, they won't count it. We know that that happened unfortunately to a bunch of people in the primary, and we don't want it to happen to you in the general election.
20 days of early voting, starting on the 19th to the Monday before the 7th and then voting all day on November 8th.
Tayla: Beautiful. When you go, you have to do a voting selfie.
Tammy: Yes, even that little sticker.
Tayla: Oh, I thought you were going to say you have to have ID because that's a rule in Rhode Island. I thought you were going to say something like-- [crosstalk]
John: I know.
Tammy: You should bring your ID, yes.
Tayla: Yes, bring your ID. Rhode Island has voter ID laws, which aren't the best thing, but it's okay.
Tammy: We'll take a selfie.
Emily: Yes.
Tayla: Take the selfie, right?
John: Yes. On the voter ID law, we have a voter ID law. If you don't have an ID or you didn't bring the correct ID or you brought the correct ID, but it's more than six months past its expiration date, incredibly important to remember that you still have a right to vote. They're going to hand you what's called a provisional ballot. Even if you don't have any ID, if you're at the right polling place, don't walk out without having voted. If you can go get your ID, that's preferable because they're going to let you vote a regular ballot.
You have a right to a provisional ballot in Rhode Island, so don't let them turn you away from the polls without having voted on election day because of ID issues. Other point is that your ID doesn't have to have the correct address. There's a misnomer that you [00:28:00] got to have the correct address. Lots of people move, don't update their driver's licenses. That's not in the law that you have to have the correct address. That law has not been implemented perfectly. We see a lot of poll workers who have turned people away from the polls saying, "Well, you didn't have an ID."
That's they should be getting a provisional ballot.
Tayla: I didn't know that. That's good to know.
John: Take a selfie.
Tayla: Take a selfie.
Emily: Don't take a selfie with your ID. Just the sticker.
Tayla: No. [chuckles]
Emily: No, just the sticker. That's so much safer. It's way cuter, but no, for real, that's how you get your friends to vote. Make voting cute. [laughs]
Tayla: Yes. #make voting cute. [chuckles]
That's part of the energy that we wanted to bring to the project that we've been working on, is just this stuff is dry sometimes. Sometimes it's a little stressful, sometimes it's a little complicated, sometimes it's weedy in terms of how many details are out there and how much it changes and how you can get lost and overwhelmed or feel embarrassed, like I did, that you don't know how to do this stuff. Make it fun and bring a friend when you vote. Vote in numbers because it's about the numbers.
John: Those stickers, we have custom stickers now. Until a couple years ago, they had just the generic ones you could buy on Amazon. Common Cost did a little prodding and they decided to have a contest. A kid who was a high school junior, he couldn't even vote. He won the contest and we had that beautiful sticker with the State House dome and the little independent man in gold gilded at the top. We have our own Rhode Island-themed sticker, which I think is awesome.
Emily: That's incredible. Oh, I didn't know that little piece of folk history.
John: Yes, you could vote online for, there were finalists. [00:30:00] They had a little contest online, I think in 2017 maybe and that was the one that won so the blue and gold.
Emily: That's so cool.
Tayla: That's so great.
Emily: I wanted to just highlight what John mentioned in the middle of the directions. If you don't know who to vote for, you can look up a sample ballot and then take the time at home before you go to be more confident and more excited about who you're voting for. If you go to r4all.org, we've got links that bring you to the state website that John mentioned, as well as some not Rhode Island state websites that are secondary that might be helpful. It's great to vote and it feels even better when you're really excited about who you're voting for.
Taking that extra step to do your homework beforehand can make the experience just more exciting.
John: Yes. There's going to be a bunch of bond questions. Talk about boring on the back of your ballot. At statewide bond questions, every household in the state's going to get a voter handbook that explains those so you can look out for that. Then a lot of communities are going to have local questions on the ballot. For instance, City of Providence is going to have a question about electing, I think it's five members of the school board. Right now the school board's all appointed by the mayor and there's going to be a question about changing it to have a partially elected school board.
Incredibly important. Providence schools are under state control and if they get handed back to the city which is a real possibility, those people on that school board are going to be making decisions about the education of kids in the biggest school district in the state. If you're a Providence resident, you may get to vote in the election for those school board [00:32:00] members. There's a bunch of local questions in a lot of cities and towns, there's local questions in Newport and Westerly and all over the state.
That sample ballot's huge because you walk in there and you're like, "Oh, it's page four. I'm not going to vote for that. I don't know what that's about. I got to get to work." It's great to look up those questions in advance.
Emily: Yes, I remember being young and going and voting for the first time and I thought it was just who do you want to be president? I was like,"Wait a minute. There is other multiple-choice questions." [laughs]
Tayla: Yes. You didn't know it was going to be a test, right?
Emily: Yes.
Tayla Yes. No, I felt very similarly. I remember the first time I voted.
Emily: Yes. I kept looking left and right and I was like, "Why is everyone so much chiller than I am about this right now?"
[laughter]
Tayla: I'm getting test anxiety and everyone is acting like this is a normal Tuesday. If you guys all have time to stay on a little bit longer, we end the show with a segment I called The Last Chapter where we talk about a library bookish-related question. This week I thought I would ask you, not topical at all, but a fun question that I've asked before is if you could rewrite a book from another character's point of view, what book and what character would you choose?
Tammy: I feel like I can't think of the character's name because I'm suffering brain fog from COVID, but Jane Eyre from the perspective of his wife that you find out-- Spoiler alert. Sorry. The wife that's like kept away in the attic.
Emily: Her name's Bertha, I believe.
Tammy: Bertha, yes. Her husband has just locked her in this freaking attic and is now having a love affair with this random woman for like years. That who's the nanny or something. I think that would be interesting.
Tayla: I think they're actually if it's not a book, it's some like short story or essay. I think something along those veins exists in grad school like took a course about [00:34:00] race in the Victorian era and there's inklings in the text that Bertha was from one of the Caribbean islands and so was at least half Black if not more. We definitely read some essays that we're talking about what does it mean when you lock your Black wife in the attic? Like not a good look.
Tammy: Not a good look.
Tayla: No, not a good look. I feel like we vaguely read something or talked about something that was from that perspective but I can't remember. If I remember, I will put it in the show notes.
Emily: My goodness. Immediately what comes up for me is I would love to listen to like all of the Grimm’s fairy tales but from like the villain perspective about what was that all about? Like what was that decision to put the children in the oven and live in a gingerbread house? How did we get here?
Tayla: Girl, you okay?
Emily: Yes. Do I need to call somebody? You were out of wood and so the gingerbread was what? I can't even make a gingerbread house from those kids. How did that happen? Did you go to college for this? I want to know, how did we get to this? I think there's just so many interesting untold stories of those villains. If somebody writes that I need 10%.
Tayla: If you wanted just a plug for one of my friends if a friend librarian of mine does TikToks where she talks about different very fairy tales and like the original versions and she calls it F***ked Up Fairy Tales, she's Cosbrarian on Instagram, I believe she's Cosbrarian on TikTok too. Yes, so if you like fairy tale stuff it's a good time.
John: For over a decade, I tried to read Moby-Dick.
Tayla: That's my white whale. I still can't finish that book.
John: [00:36:00] Yes and it's amazing. I didn't know what the ending was until I finally finished it. Nathaniel Philbrick wrote a book called Why Read Moby-Dick? It's probably about 100 pages long but it actually it's really good at explaining Moby Dick. Then that was what got me over the hump to finally finish the book when the pandemic hit. Say this half-jokingly but wouldn't it be fascinating to get the whales' perspective in that book? Realistically having read this thing, I'd like to hear what the heck Captain Ahab was about and figure out Captain Ahab's issues that we're only guessing at in Moby Dick.
That would be my rewrite it from a different perspective.
Tammy: Along the lines of Moby Dick, Mixed Magic theater in Pawtucket has an adaptation of Moby Dick that's great. It juxtaposes the story of Moby Dick with a modern story that's related to like drug addiction. The white whale versus like the white thing which is drug-related and kind of like almost white supremacy related. It's an original production that they've done for many years in many different iterations all across the country but it's right here in Pawtucket. They just remounted it in September, but I'm sure they'll be bringing it back again.
If you're interested in Moby Dick, keep your eye on Mixed Magic Theater because they do a great adaptation of it.
Emily: Perfect. Another Moby Dick thing is the New Bedford Whaling Museum every year reads Moby Dick start to finish. Such a cool experience. Everyone that's there just hands the book off to each other. You're just listening to the book and smelling the whale oil that's in the air. It's a whole thing.
John: Very much on my bucket list. Something I haven't ever done. I think it's done like the first week of January so got to sign up soon.
Tayla: Yes. Cool.
Emily: All right. We'll all meet [00:38:00] at the Whaling Museum. [laughs] It'll be just in time for the legislative session to kick off. Folks that aren't ready for the calendar, it happens the very beginning of January. Keep your eyes peeled, check out the news, figure out what you're passionate about and see what bills are going on in our small state that you want to follow.
Tayla: All right. With that call to action, thank you all for joining me, and thank you everyone for listening. If you'd like to tell us what character you would like to read a book from their point of view, you can e-mail us at downtime@cranstonlibrary.org and you can reach out to us via social media with #downtimecpl. If you're feeling generous, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast because it helps people find the show. Thank you again for listening, and this has been another episode of Down Time.
Dave: Thanks for listening. For the full episode including our book and movie suggestions, search for Down Time with Cranston Public Library in your podcast player and learn more about our show at cranstonlibrary.org/downtime. You can also catch Emily and Tammy talking about The Womxn Projects RI4All videos in the Rhody Radio feed. There will be a link to both these episodes in the show notes. Rhody Radio is proud to be a resident partner of the Rhode Island Center for the Book and is brought to you by library staff and community members all around the Ocean State.
You can find more from Rhody Radio on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you enjoyed today's episode, subscribe to Rhody Radio and give us a review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to help us reach more Rhode Islanders. Thanks again for listening and go vote today.
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[00:39:54] [END OF AUDIO]