Newport Daily News
PORTSMOUTH David Rosenberg has put on literally thousands of events for people over the past decades, like the Newport Winter Festival, but Saturday was a time when his friends wanted to put on a little event for him.
They hired a master ice carver to create a champagne-related sculpture on his front yard as a toast to him from the Aquidneck Island community.
Rosenberg recently was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer, and has been undergoing radiation treatments at Dana Farber Institute in Boston and chemotherapy and other infusions at Newport Hospital.
Rosenberg is taking this on full tilt, like he does with so much else in his life.
Jim Gillis
Thank God someone has a plan.
Evan Smith, head honcho at Discover Newport, and his team have developed a plan to rebuild a tourist economy ravaged last year by the coronavirus . festivals, weddings, full-scale nightlife all scuttled by the pandemic.
People are under the impression that once most of us are immunized, we can tear off our masks and dance in the streets as if it s August 1945.
Not so fast.
There are new strains. And some countries have seen reinfection months after declaring victory. Some of what Smith wants to do depends upon how long the virus lingers and how significant new strains are.
WaterFire, an award winning art installation by Barnaby Evans, is a series of one hundred bonfires suspended just above the surface of the Providence, Woonasquatucket, and Moshassuck Rivers. The artwork, which is usually visible from April to October on selected dates, went virtual in 2020 because of COVID-19.BARNABY EVANS
PROVIDENCE â A little over a year ago, Rhode Island was bustling with visitors exploring the Newport mansions decorated for Christmas and poking into boutiques on Westminster Street in downtown Providence before seeing a live show.
A few months later the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything, and 2020 became a year of canceled or reimagined events, from the Newport Jazz Festival to the International Boat Show, the popular South Countyâs Seafood Festival, and even WaterFire, which some consider to be the face of the tourism industry in Providence.
Newport Life magazine
Strolling downtown Newport any weekend last summer, you’d never know a global pandemic was wreaking financial havoc on the city. Streets were crowded with cars, pedestrians shuffled along sidewalks and wharves, while restaurants and retail shops were bustling.
But busy-ness doesn’t beget business. While the sheer number of visitors to our City by the Sea looked high, the numbers paled in comparison to years past. And tourists didn’t spend enough to bail out the community’s retail, restaurant and event sectors from the three-month quarantine hole and its roller coaster aftermath. While some businesses, including Griswold’s Tavern, faced such hardship that they closed permanently, others like the Fifth Element and Samuel Durfee House Inn remain cautiously optimistic. Some, like Groovy Gator and Conanicut Marine, expanded operations. Meanwhile, the events industry is on thin ice as winter’s quiet season brings no surefire solution.
R.I. awards 43 direct support grants to large hotels, arts and culture organizations
THE MARRIOTT PROVIDENCE DOWNTOWN on Orms Street was awarded $1 million in a direct support grant from the R.I. Commerce Corp. as part of a hotel and arts venue support program / PBN FILE PHOTO/STEPHANIE EWENS. PROVIDENCE – The R.I. Commerce Corp. will distribute 43 direct support grants to large arts organizations and hotels that suffered substantial losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, totaling $8.7 million. The awards, announced Dec. 17, will be distributed among all applicants that met the requirements of the program, according to Matt Sheaff, a spokesman for…