Daily Herald the Brown
vol. cxlv, no. 5 | Tuesday, February 2, 2010 | Serving the community daily since 1891
R.I. Haitians help, pray, wait for news
Haitian librarian joins JCB
By Caitlin Trujillo Senior Staff Writer
By Alex Bell Senior Staf f Writer
Pictures and fliers line the walls of the hallway at Elmwood Avenue Church of God in Providence. There are photos of the congregation as they sing, pray and participate in other church and community events.
game, and finally, last semester, was flown to the taping in California. “I hadn’t been expecting it one way or another. I kind of forgot about it actually, but it was really exciting when I found out,” Maxfield said. The college championship
Patrick Tardieu, the chief conservator at Haiti’s oldest library — the Bibliotheque Haitienne des Peres du Saint-Esprit in Port-au-Prince — is the John Carter Brown Library’s newest visiting scholar. Tardieu arrived in Providence Monday morning after a two-week stay with family in Montreal, where he sought refuge after the earthquake in Haiti. But Tardieu’s responsibilities and status at the librar y remain unclear after the rush to get him here. Tardieu managed to escape Haiti to Montreal on Jan. 15 on a Canadian relief plane’s return trip, he said. A colleague of John Carter Brown Librar y Director Edward Widmer put him in touch with Tardieu, Widmer said. “He’s not a refugee if he has a home,” said Widmer, motioning to the library. “A network of people is coming together now that has never even existed.” Tardieu is living in housing provided by the library for its visiting
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METRO Among these photographs and posters, though, one letter stands out. It relays the news of the death of Elysee Joseph in the earthquake that devastated Haiti last month. Joseph had been the coordinator of poverty relief efforts in Haiti for the Church of God, a Christian denomination to which Elmwood belongs. In his life, Joseph had visited the church — which serves 400 members of the Haitian diaspora in Rhode Island — on multiple occasions. As the largest Haitian congregation in the state reels with the rest of Rhode Island’s Haitian community at the unfolding crisis, many are finding ways to move forward with relief efforts for their home country. Yet even as the Elmwood Church takes in donations of food and clothes for the survivors in Haiti, Rhode Island’s Haitian diaspora must deal both with the relief efforts for those overseas as well as their own private feelings. The Rev. Gerard Rhau, a preacher with the Church, was in Haiti when the earthquake struck, according to his nephew John Wagnac. While there, Rhau filmed everything he could capture on his video camera. Rhau is staying in Haiti to help with relief efforts, but upon his return to the United States he intends to edit the footage into a DVD for the congregation to watch, Wagnac said. For Wagnac, who says he “cannot count how many” aunts, uncles and cousins he has in Haiti, getting in touch with Rhau and his friends and family members who live there — including an aunt who was visiting for her daughter’s engagement party — proved to be a frustrating and frightening challenge. “The worst thing is I couldn’t get them on the phone,” Wagnac said, adding that he had no calling card and had to make the international phone calls with his cell phone. Wagnac, who has been with the Elmwood Church since he moved to the United States in 1993 and serves as its sound engineer, said if he was unable to contact anyone at all, he was going to book a flight to Haiti,
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News....1–3 Nation.....4 Metro........5 Editorial..6 Opinion...7 Today........8
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Courtesy of Jeopardy! Productions
Rebecca Maxfield ’13 competed in “Jeopardy!”’s college championship tournament, which will air Feb. 3.
Freshman’s ‘Jeopardy!’ bid airs Wed. By Ashley Aydin Contributing Writer
Rebecca Maxfield ’13 has always been a fan of “Jeopardy!,” but she never thought she would actually compete on the show. She finally got her chance in a show taped this winter and airing Wednesday night at 7:30. Maxfield competed in
“Jeopardy!”’s latest college championship tournament, which included participants from many universities around the nation. To get on the show, Maxfield said she first had to complete an online test. After scoring high enough, Maxfield advanced to an audition in Boston, where she had to complete another test. Soon after, she practiced how to play the
Prof ’s book tells the story of a cat’s eerie sixth sense By Lindor Qunaj Contributing Writer
When Oscar the cat first came to Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in the summer of 2005, he wasn’t particularly friendly. He lived on the third floor unit, where the vast majority of patients are critically ill, often in advanced stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. He did his own thing — hiding behind medicine cabinets, sitting on windowsills and just generally keeping to himself. According to Executive Director and Administrator Julie Richard, he was not the “type of cat you curl up with as you read a book.” But a couple of months later, when Jack McCullough came to visit his gravely ill elderly mother, Oscar was sitting there, right by her side, just a few hours before she passed away. The cat made national headlines after Assistant Professor of Medicine David Dosa published an ar-
ticle about him in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. Oscar has since appeared in a wide range of publications and television broadcasts. And now, Dosa is set to release a new book entitled “Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat” Tuesday. The book’s title alludes to Oscar’s ability to detect when patients are nearing death. Oscar keeps these patients companyin their rooms for their final hours. While Dosa said he was somewhat skeptical when he first heard about Oscar, it soon became clear to him and to the staff at the nursing center that Oscar was unique. Richard further explained that the situation became apparent soon after the stray cat was brought in from a local animal shelter. “Once in a great while, Oscar would basically position himself nearby or at someone’s feet,” she said. “We knew it was more than continued on page 2
S l immin g d own
Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald
As promised, pedestrians can now walk through a narrower passageway under Faunce Arch.
News, 2
Metro, 5
Opinions, 7
The blog today
AIDING HAITI WBRU spun the tracks, listeners gave the cash
’TIL DEATH DO WE PART R.I. domestic partners can now make the necessary arrangements
AN AmAZONIAN LAW Yue Wang ’12 doesn’t want to pay RI sales tax on her online textbooks
JWW GETS A NICKNAME Pop culture ruins yet another American institution
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