Below a Providence street as it crossed over the water, I once came across a large wooden crate-like structure hanging by heavy cables, only easily visible or accessible by boat. Liana Araujo-Lane saw my picture of it and wrote in with an explanation—thanks, Liana!

“I believe that that cardboard wood thing was a project of a student at RISD for a while. She lived in it and commuted to school with a kayak every day. she had to co-ordinate her commuting times with the tides…it was pretty interesting. I learned about this from a teacher I had over last summer at RISD who was friends with this girl.”

Random notes for Rhode Islanders:

• 90.3 FM (WRIU) makes a great change from 95.5 WBRU. Even after listening for more than a year, 90.3 still plays lots I haven’t heard before, and their unvarnished DJs are the polar opposites of the annoying ones that used to try way too hard at 99.7 "the edge" (now defunct). Unfortunately, being a small college station, they switch off completely during the summer.

  I can’t quite say that you won’t catch them repeating anything, because one evening last week, they left the same CD shuffling in the player for hours. I heard the exact same songs (Erin McKeown, Distillation) on three separate short car trips over a two-and-a-half-hour period, starting at 6:30 PM. When I was listening at home after 9, a DJ came on and apologized for being a little late.

• artinruins.com has lots of pictures and background info on the Providence buildings that will be torn down, or have already come down, as a result of the I-195 relocation project. I walk by Thurston Manufacturing (their link) and the former Providence Machine Company (their link, my photo) almost every weekday on the way to lunch.

The Providence Machine Company building, on Eddy St. in Providence. (The small words on the sign say "Inquire Within".)