Shellpile

2011-01-05T14:01:00.000-05:00

Life lists

I've written before about Facebook and the interesting human behaviors it engenders. Lately I've been thinking about the way people approach their 'friend' roster. Some, seeing Facebook as a way to keep people in their lives informed, limit their friends list to a relatively small group of friends, relatives and maybe business associates. They can be reasonably assured that the news they put out there will be seen and appreciated by people who actually care.

Others collect 'friends' in a way somewhat reminiscent of birders' quest to see and record as many different species in their lifetimes. Among these folks, there seems to be a desire to catalogue every person they meet. Take, for example, a woman who took one of my Ellis Island tours. As we were parting, she showed me the screen of her smartphone and asked if she'd spelled my name correctly. She wanted to add me to her friends list.

She knew virtually nothing about me, nor I about her. We'd spent one hour together, tops, yet she wanted to include me on her Facebook roster of people she'd met in New York.

I can kind of understand the quest to reconnect with old classmates or work colleagues, but total strangers? What good could come out of inadvertently letting people you don't know into the details of your life? It always seems that the people who have the largest friends lists are the ones who record every waking moment on their Facebook page, and they often have very loose privacy settings. Just about everyone can see what they're posting. Is it really wise to let virtual (or even total) strangers know you're on vacation? You don't know who these people are, and you have no idea whether they'll be tempted to rob your house while you're away.

When I asked this woman (politely, of course), why she would want to 'friend' me, she said that then I could contact her whenever I visited the Minneapolis area, and that there'd be a bed in their guest room for me. Really? Seriously? Once again, you want a virtual stranger to stay over at your house? Maybe I'm just cynical, but that doesn't sound very wise.

Cataloguing birds on a life list is harmless, and it's unlikely a peregrine falcon would have its Facebook privacy settings restricted, anyway. Oh, and anyone who studies birds can easily figure out when they'll be away from their nests. Then again, they don't have very much to pilfer, either. And I doubt they keep life lists of people they see.

As for Facebook, I think I'll keep my friends list a bit more contained.

2010-12-28T09:56:00.005-05:00

The perils of PC-ness

In my previous life, the holiday season was always a bit of a perilous time of year. It was my responsibility to write a year-end message from company leaders to their employees.

For the most part, the leaders were mindful of the diversity of the workforce, given it was a multinational company. We worked so hard to address the non-American employee population, in fact, that US employees would complain at times.

Myself, I generally enjoy learning about different cultures and presenting things in new ways, so it wasn't all that difficult for me to adapt. As a communications consultant, I appreciated that I didn't have to constantly reinforce the need to recognize that our workforce included people with different traditions, points of view, belief systems and orientations. There were times, however, when it would reach ridiculous proportions. I'd wonder where the line was between being sensitive and doing back flips to avoid offending one cranky person who likely would find something to complain about, no matter what we did.

The holiday message brought all of that to a head.

It goes without saying that we couldn't say "Merry Christmas," given a sizeable non-Christian population. If we started listing all of the holidays that our employees might celebrate, the roster would get pretty long and we'd be in danger of missing one and inadvertently creating a rift.

"Happy New Year" sounds as if it would fit the bill, yes? Not so fast! We had a small staff in China, and they'd be celebrating the Lunar New Year in late January or early February. It's a massive event, with Chinese from all over the world converging to reunite with their families to celebrate Gung Hei Fat Choy! So, happy new year was out, though we did have to acknowledge it somehow.

Oh, and there was also the family issue: no doubt those without spouses or children would be unhappy if we told them to enjoy the holidays with their families.

There was one thing that wouldn't be culturally fraught: the company essentially shut down between Christmas and New Year's as a cost-saving measure. But that was emotionally charged. Some employees would still be working to handle customer issues that came up during the holidays.

After taking all of that into consideration, I'd come up with something like this:

"At this time of year, we like to send good wishes to all employees. No matter what you celebrate (or when), we hope you enjoy it with whoever you're spending time with. Enjoy your time off, but even if you have to work and serve our customers (and thank you so much for doing that so well), try to relax and spend time with those you love, feel ambivalent about, or have to tolerate."

Then I'd have to find four different ways of presenting essentially the same message, because I worked for four executives who wanted to send greetings out.

One of the execs would invariably ignore what I wrote for him and send out his own message, which usually read something like this:

"Thanks for a great year. Merry Christmas to you and your family."

I still get PTSD at this time of year, just from thinking about all this mishigas.

2010-12-08T15:54:00.002-05:00

We all shine on.

Hard to believe it's been 30 years since John Lennon died. Somehow it seems odd that I've had more years on earth than he did.

I remember being a high-school junior in the winter of 1980, and deep in my initial admiration phase for the Beatles. My crush at the time was a fellow-Beatles lover with more than a passing resemblance to Paul McCartney, but really he was just an entry drug of sorts, encouraging me to delve deeper into the phenomenon that was the Fab Four. From Paul the cute one, I shifted my attention to George the mystical one who opened my eyes to Eastern philosophy. I was never a massive John fan, but I respected his complexity and his capacity for deep thought and questioning the status quo. In total, their songs spoke to me in a way no other did, both the words and the music behind them. But John's lyrics were always the ones with deeper meaning.

Today's New York Times asks where readers were when Lennon was shot at 11 p.m. on December 8, 1980. I was home, already in bed and asleep, yet I can still vividly remember a scrap of a dream I had that night. It was the Ed Sullivan Show, in black and white, and the Beatles -- just three of them -- were performing. Ringo and Paul were there, as one could clearly see from the figure behind the drums and another playing a left-handed bass. But was that John or George with the guitar? Before I could figure it out, before the camera went to closeups, the dream dissolved.

When the clock radio came on to wake me the next morning, the first thing I heard was Richard Neer on WNEW-FM: "If you're just waking up, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but John Lennon was killed last night." The synchronicity of the radio switching on just as Neer started his sentence seemed too surreal to be possible. It only happens that way in fiction, not in real life, and it certainly doesn't happen after you have a bizarre dream about a missing Beatle. Besides, it didn't make sense. Lennon hadn't been doing anything vaguely controversial. He'd just been living his life with his wife and kid and three cats on the West Side. Yeah, he and Yoko had just released Double Fantasy, but that didn't seem to be cause for anger. After everything he'd lived through, who'd want to come after him now?

As his death came to prove, sometimes there's no sane answer to why people act out so violently. It seems that the lesson that violence teaches, is how valuable peace and kindness truly are. And that lesson won't ever die, because, as trite as the expression might sound, the Beatles' music will always live on, each recording sounding as fresh and relevant as it did the day it was released.

2010-11-12T15:10:00.001-05:00

The curse of the accordion

Q: What's the definition of a gentleman?

A: A man who knows how to play the accordion, yet doesn't.

I have two accordions in my apartment. I'm not proud of this fact, yet it is so. How did this happen, you ask? Well, it's a long story.

First, the origin of the accordions. My mother's Uncle Al was a semi-professional musician. While he had a day job as an electrician or mechanic or something, he and some friends had a band that played VFW halls, local dances and the like. At some point they might have even done a few road trips.

For whatever reason, he gave my mom some instruction, but she didn't really take to it. And there, she had an accordion. She can't quite remember how or when one accordion became two, perhaps when Uncle Al died. What we do know is that when she and my dad got married, the accordions left her parents house with her.

I grew up knowing about the big accordion because it was plopped into my bedroom closet when we moved to my childhood home. I guess it ended up there because I was a baby at the time and didn't have many possessions to store. Once in a while I'd pull it out and try to play it; I was a budding musician and had some keyboard skills. Without instruction, however, attempts were futile. Not only did the bass buttons trip me up, the whole thing was horribly unwieldy for a kid who was always small for her age. It's one thing to pick up a big sax or sit in front of a piano, but when you have to constantly squeeze and pull big bellows, it's not hard to lose momentum.

Then, of course, I got older and two things happened (well, three): breasts, and the realization that the accordion is just not cool.

When I left my parents' house, the accordions stayed behind (Not mine! Not mine! Not mine!).

Then recently a friend of mine mentioned he was looking for a decent accordion. He's an accomplished organist and plays at a church and a synagogue, and he thought some of the shabbos songs would work particularly well on an accordion. Cool! Figuring I'd do a mitzvah on two ends, I asked if he wanted to look at the one I knew was still stowed in my childhood closet. He was game.

Now, making offers like that on my mom's old stuff is fraught with peril. Through the years, she's mused about disposing of stuff, only to balk when I find a way to find it a good home. This time, though, she quickly agreed. The parents, you see, have taken on a big clearing-out mindset as they've gotten older. Not that a lot of it is happening. They're just thinking about it. It's got to indicate something about her regard for accordions that she was all too happy to have me haul the thing away, even though it's probably the last thing she has of her uncle's.

By the time I got to the house to pick it up, it had become two accordions: the big one I remembered, and a smaller one whose case has a really cool vintage Eastern Airlines sticker on it. They both look pretty good for their age; though the key veneers are kinda cracked in places, the bellows are in good shape. With a tuning, I think both might be perfectly serviceable.

The question was whether my friend would want either (or maybe both). It took a few weeks for us to synchronize calendars so he could look at them, even though I'd volunteered to drive anywhere, any time to meet him. I was frightened that two accordions might start spawning baby concertinas in my apartment. After all, one had already multiplied to two.

When the day came, my buddy took a good look at them, playing both. Yay, they make music! Sadly, he declined my offer. No amount of pleading would convince him to take one. (Well, okay, I didn't try all that hard.)

So now I'm stuck with two accordions. I don't play either of them. Does that make me more of a lady than the guy who won't play just one?

Just call me Myron Floren.

2010-11-11T08:51:00.003-05:00

The Big Tree

Every year, the people at Rockefeller Center pick the massive evergreen that will grace the plaza for the Christmas season, and I'm reminded of the big tree that stood in the front yard of my childhood home.

Our tree was a constant in my youth, taking up a larger and larger part of the front yard. While it always loomed big from my perspective, I'd guess that in my own tiniest years, it was probably only six or seven feet tall, just the right size to be decorated. One of my dad's creations with the Super-8 film camera was a stop-action movie of my sister hanging homemade ornaments on it. Dad had saved a bunch of soup and sardine cans, painted them in bright colors and affixed large hooks. He might have even strung lights on its branches.

Over the years, the tree got taller and taller, and people living on the side street of our corner property would use it as a landmark in directions for visiting friends. It got way too tall to decorate properly and grew beyond the height of our split level house, taking up a bigger and bigger circumference of lawn.

At some point after I moved out of the house, my parents got concerned about its health and talked about taking it down before a storm did the honors. Why not contact the Rockefeller Center people, I suggested. How cool would it be to have our tree admired by visitors from all over the world? Mom and Dad dismissed the idea out of hand: the tree's branches were sparse in patches, maybe a bit uneven. The people from New York needed a perfect tree. But who, I always wondered, had a tree that size that was perfect? Were there people out there who tended to these behemoths with the doting care you'd give a prized orchid? Most likely, Mom and Dad didn't want all the attendant fuss that comes with a famous tree, even if they'd get free tree-removal service and some replacement landscaping for their trouble. They're private, self-reliant people. They like it that way.

And then one day I stopped by to visit and the tree was gone. The front lawn was empty, but for a bare spot where the stump had been and roots and shade had prevented grass from growing. I'd had a hard day already, and the absence of the tree set me to tears. How could it just be gone? Maybe it would have been even worse to see it get taken down bit by bit, but it was a massive shock to see it had just disappeared, likely turned to mulch without as much as a grateful farewell. It never got the grand curtain call I'd always wished for it.

That was nearly 20 years ago, and even now, as I watch the TV segment outlining the history of this year's tree, I have a moment of remembrance and regret for our tree. In this year's story, the reported noted that most trees of the appropriate height are reaching end of life, just as ours was. And on my regular December visits to Rockefeller Center, I've seen that several of the trees over the past few years have been a bit sparse at points, just as our tree was.

I guess that as nature warrants, the tree's remains gently decomposed somewhere and have nourished other plants, which is something to be happy about. Nonetheless, in my mind, it'll always be the tree that could have been.

2010-10-22T09:48:00.004-04:00

What's in that black disc, and why does it sing?

My volunteering duties at Thomas Edison's labs include a demonstration of Edison's favorite invention, the phonograph. While we have a bunch of disc turntables, the demo is always done on an earlier cylinder machine that's closer to the Old Man's original tinfoil phonograph invention.

I can remember seeing this demonstration in my younger days and being able to make a quick connection between the grooves on the cylinder and the grooves on the 45 rpm records I had at home. I can even recall making a crude record player with a pin and a piece of paper shaped in a cone. The physics behind the whole thing are really so simple that once explained, a child could do it him or herself. You could see the metaphorical light bulbs illuminating their minds as they got the concept.

Today what strikes me is how difficult that connection could be for kids who have spent their whole lives listening to CDs or computer files. The whole concept of a physical transference from a shaped groove, through a diaphragm that moves the air to form soundwaves... is gone. They press a button to start the sound process, but they don't see anything move, except maybe an animated status bar on a screen.

As we move farther and farther away from that actual tactile, physical representation of recorded sound, I wonder if the disc will become as exotic as it was when first introduced. Eventually, will children wonder at the miracle of sound coming off a round black piece of vinyl? Or, God forbid, will they eventually come to believe that the iPod represents the advent of recorded sound?

2010-10-14T14:43:00.002-04:00

As the world rejoices the rescue of the 33 trapped Chilean miners, the cynical part of me wonders how their experience will ultimately be trivialized by corporate America.

Because, as you know, we can't pass up the opportunity to turn a monumental success of the human spirit into a banal teambuilding exercise. This makes 'trust falls' look like child's play.

I'm saying this with a bit of experience behind me. Several years ago, at a company retreat, I was forced to join one of several teams that was attempting to determine what we'd do if our plane crashed in arctic Canada with limited supplies. My vote was to knock off the company lobbyist with dinner knives from first class, and use his carcass as bait for the polar bears we'd then trap and kill for meat and fur.

Not surprisingly, nobody wanted to be on my team the following year. And, of course, I was just kidding. I'd originally wanted to suggest cannibalism.

So how does the miner story apply to corporate life? Not surprisingly, some aspects of the ordeal could be very similar to the multi-day team meetings I've had to attend. You're trapped in a windowless room, able to communicate only with the other people in the meeting. Fresh air is scarce and resources are limited. Unappetizing food is provided sporadically. There's likely jockeying among the participants for status and power. Alliances are made, and eventually, as hope for rescue flags (at least in the corporate example), the tired group puts aside grievances to focus on the sole mutual goal of getting the hell out.

The Chilean miners are (at least from what we know now) the example of what happens when everyone pulls together. What would have happened if they hadn't? Well, they would have ended up the same way most corporate departments do: fractured, with plenty of backbiting and sucking up to management.

What did they have that corporate meeting-goers wouldn't? A lot, presumably. In today's cost-cutting, profit-enhancing business climate, notoriously-stingy corporate budget approvers would never sign off to sending actual entertainment (even the screen, projector and DVDs the miners got) to a sequestered group of employees. And let's face it... the rescue would probably be held off until the next budget cycle.

2010-01-12T14:17:00.004-05:00

Welcome to New Jersey

I've been volunteering as a tour guide at Ellis Island for a couple of months now, and it's been a real boon to my general sense of adventure and thirst for arcane knowledge.

Being a Jersey booster, one of my favorite parts of the tour is when I get to welcome people to the Garden State. Huh, you say? I thought Ellis Island was in New York. Well, yes and no. Here's the deal:

Both Ellis Island and Liberty Island are on the New Jersey side of the state boundary that tracks down the Hudson River and through New York Harbor. Way back in 1834, the states entered into a compact that put the islands under New York jurisdiction, and both states agreed that the surrounding waters were New Jersey territory. Eventually, the islands were bought by the US government to build forts and, ultimately, the Statue of Liberty and the immigration station.

Over the years, as immigration boomed and more space was needed for medical facilities to handle thousands of sick newcomers, the US government enlarged Ellis Island and built more than 30 buildings there. What was once about 5 acres became well over 20, consisting of fill taken from Manhattan and Brooklyn during the excavation of the New York City subway system.

Not much was said about Ellis Island's provenance until the immigration station was restored and opened as a museum in 1990. In stark contrast, the many buildings on the island's south side remained in disarray, and questions came up about what would come of them. Would they be torn down in favor of new construction, perhaps a shiny new hotel or casino? Given that the island is just a half mile from Jersey City, the state of New Jersey wanted a strong voice in any decision about the island's future. And certainly, monetary issues came into play, too. As it stood, visitors paid New York sales tax on anything they bought at the souvenir stands and snack bars on Ellis and Liberty Islands. Who would get the tax revenue from any additional profit making enterprises on the island?

The issue was settled in the time honored American tradition: a law suit that reached the US Supreme Court. In their infinite wisdom, the Justices looked back to the 1834 compact for guidance. Noting that the states had agreed that the naturally-occurring islands were New York land in New Jersey territory, they carefully drew the state boundary to include the original land within the larger, man-made landmass we know today. While the vast majority of the immigration museum rests within the footprint of the original island, tiny bits rest within New Jersey. And more than 80 percent of the total island, including the entire south side hospital complex, is part of the Garden State.

It's pretty ironic from the perspective of logic:

The original island, which one would reason is in New Jersey since it's west of the state border, is actually part of New York.
The "new" part of the island, constructed of soil and rock from New York City, is actually part of New Jersey.

And the status of the south side buildings? The non-profit Save Ellis Island is working with the National Park Service to raise funds for restoration of the hospital complex, with an eye toward opening an institute on world migration and health. All of the buildings are stabilized to prevent further decay, and one, the Ferry Building, is already open for guided tours. They're expecting that a second building, the hospital laundry, will be restored and open later this year for visitation.

2009-11-26T01:44:00.001-05:00

Gobble gobble, indeed

Thanksgiving in my family has never been a huge event -- just the parents, my sister and me, with the rare guest (I think I might have invited the college boyfriend once or twice). In fact, it's one of the things I'm thankful for most of the time. Very little stress is involved, unless my mom gets caught up in something she absolutely has to try for the first time, and it doesn't work out. The rest of us don't really care. For the most part, we're all just happy enough to get the standard meal and relax with each other.

Growing up, I felt that we were kind of abnormal in that we didn't have a million people over, or that we didn't all go to my grandmother's house for a big gathering. Somehow, it didn't seem quite American for it just to be us four, in our own house, no guests, but as I got older, I started seeing the wisdom of it. I could never figure out why it is that so many people (women, mostly, I've observed) have to make everything perfect and declare the whole day ruined if the cranberry sauce comes out runny or someone forgets to bring something. Isn't the whole point supposed to be around gratitude and togetherness?

That's not to say we didn't have our unusual aspects -- things that really would have made us weird. When I was 10 or 11 years old, my father took the wall oven out of the kitchen. I think he said there was a gas leak or something, but the bottom line was that he deemed it unsafe. That left a big, gaping hole in the wall, and true to my mom's chronic procrastination, the hole never got filled with a new oven. She had grand ideas about redoing the kitchen, and to this day, there's no oven and a decor that could be the tableau of a Smithsonian exhibit about Eisenhower-era suburban life.

After a bit, the parents bought a combination microwave/convection oven which did a nice job of cooking a turkey, albeit spinning on a carousel in an oven on a microwave cart. It was the period between the gas oven's departure and the advent of residential nukers that created the issue.

My parents were big fans of the Weber grill, the kettle-like structure that was noted for being a true revolution in traditional backyard cooking. The neighborhood kids thought it looked weird, compared with their parents' traditional grills, but my dad, ever the scientific thinker, knew better. The shape and lid of the Weber would more evenly distribute heat from the charcoal, as air circulation could be more ably controlled by vents in the lid and kettle. He was truly a man ahead of his time, or at least ahead of the Luddites down the street.

So the question at Thanksgiving became: do we splurge and go out to a restaurant for dinner, or do we use the Weber grill? Being both cost-conscious and resourceful, the parents opted to go for the grill. I don't know what's more embarrassing to a pre-teen and teen girl: that there's a big, built-in-oven-sized hole in the kitchen cabinetry, or that Mom and Dad are wrestling with a 15 pound turkey in front of a charcoal grill in the backyard on an overcast, 45-degree day in November. Never mind that they'd be doing the traditional stressed-out Thanksgiving bickering about the right way to do things. To their credit, though, the bird always came out okay, even in the years when it rained or hailed Dad had to set up the Weber in the garage and leave the door open. You can imagine how novel that looked on Christmas day.

Now, of course, you hear a litany of stories about outdoor Thanksgiving cooking. There's the famous turkey deep-fryer that demands a backyard for use. And any number of celebrity TV cooks talk about the wonderful flavor imparted by roasting a bird over an open flame. Mom and Dad truly were ahead of their time.

Yeah, it was embarrassing to be different when being like everyone else was so important. But then I wouldn't have the story to tell. That said, I really wish they would get that kitchen redone, or at least get a new oven. The trusty convection oven broke, and my mom brought the turkey over yesterday to cook. I'm not sure how she's warming it up today, but no doubt there will be another good story.

2009-11-11T13:30:00.003-05:00

If history exists in a vacuum, does it really exist?

Capitalizing on the good weather while it lasts, I made a trip up to Paterson last week to check out the Great Falls and environs. While I've visited a ton of historic spots in New Jersey, Paterson had yet to make the list, for reasons I couldn't fathom.

For those not familiar with the city, it was America's first planned industrial community, conceived by Alexander Hamilton, the nation's first secretary of the Treasury, among other things. Counter to Thomas Jefferson, who saw America's future as largely agrarian, Hamilton believed that the country's best chance for economic independence was through industry. If we could manufacture our own products, from our own resources, we'd have little need for imports from our former European rulers. With others who felt likewise, he was instrumental in the creation of the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures, or SUM, which then built Paterson's industry.

Through a clever system of raceways, the Great Falls of the nearby Passaic River provided hydropower to run mills and factory turbines. Eventually, the city became home to the Colt gunworks, the Rogers Locomotive works, and a variety of textile mills. In fact, Paterson was known for a long time as Silk City due to the strength of that industry within the city. Thomas Edison located one of his Illuminating factories there, as did the Wright-Curtiss operation that built the engine for the Spirit of St. Louis.

Over time, the series of water raceways was replaced by a more efficient hydroelectric plant near the falls that continues to serve the local power grid. And as suburbanization populated the area upstream of Paterson, a good portion of the Passaic's water was shunted off for other purposes. Now on most days, the Falls, while still impressive, are but a trickle of what they were over 100 years ago.

Paterson itself continues as a gritty, working-class city, though much of the industry has left the same as it has in many US cities. A productive artists' colony now makes its home in some of the mill buildings, and there's been some effort to preserve the history that's all around. In fact, Congress recently voted to fund a management plan for the area, which earlier was designated a National Historical Park. With any luck, that will bring much-needed attention -- and tourist dollars -- to the city. There are a lot of National Park geeks who would visit a phone booth in a remote corner of Nebraska if it were on the Parks list (I should know. I'm one of them.)

It's really pretty astounding that Paterson hasn't gotten more attention, given its location, Hamilton's involvement, and the impact of its founding on Americas economic history. Perhaps the industrial aspect was what held it back as a tourist attraction: how many people make it a point to visit gritty, working-class cities? In an upwardly-mobile, striving culture like ours, how many people want to be reminded that there are people still pushing their way up the ladder? Paterson has long been home to recent immigrants -- people who don't necessarily speak the language, and have different traditions. We all know how that makes some people nervous. Most of all, though, I think people just don't know it's there.

There's a great little welcome center near the Falls, and when I visited, I was welcomed by a city resident who was a wealth of information. He spent about an hour with me, outlining history of Paterson's founding, interesting facts about Alexander Hamilton (i.e. had things gone differently, he might have been our first African American president. Yes, you read that right. His mom was Creole.), the best local restaurants, and American traditions that have their roots in the city. As we talked, I couldn't help but wonder why in hell nobody knows any of this.

New Jersey's Department of Tourism is missing the boat on Paterson and a host of other locations around the state. Barely funded, the department doesn't seem to have its marketing act together, and historic sites are suffering for it. For a while I've been entertaining the thought of starting a tour company that would bring the state's hidden history to life, but I find myself in a bit of a quandary. I see the potential of New Jersey history as as great product, but I don't know if there's enough of a market for a tour business to be profitable. In this state, we spend a lot of time bemoaning that we're in the shadow of New York or Philadelphia, much like the younger brother of the high school quarterback who keeps trying to tell the football coach that he's a pretty great running back, himself. Beyond marketing the shore and Atlantic City, the state doesn't seem to see the point of standing on its own. Sure, we'll always be dependent to an extent on those cities, but there's got to be a way to use some of that to tell the uniquely New Jersey story. What does it mean to be the middle ground? This state's residents suffered greatly during the Revolution distinctly because we were that midpoint between the two colonial cities. There's a story to be told there, but the powers that be don't seem to recognize that.

It's all pretty depressing.

2009-10-28T09:58:00.003-04:00

Things fall apart... the center cannot hold

Last year I wrote about the gradual decay of the buildings at Sandy Hook's Fort Hancock. In particular, I lamented the condition of Officers' Row, the sturdy yellow brick homes that stand along the bay side of the fort and were once home to army captains and first lieutenants.

After not having visited for about six months, I dropped by at the end of September. While I honestly didn't expect any rehabilitation to have taken place, I was shocked to see the degree to which the Park Service was pointing out its own failure to maintain the structures. Now, in addition to the decaying porches and missing windowpanes, visitors are greeted with warning signs staked between the houses. It's one thing to post no trespassing stickers on the doors. It's quite another to admit that the condition of the place constitutes a public danger. That day, two park personnel were using a hydraulic platform to repair some fallen brickwork that looked truly dire -- the yellow brick facade had come off one of the front corners of a house, exposing the deteriorating brownish red brick beneath. Repointing one damaged area on one decomposing building was akin to sticking some used chewing gum in a crack at the Hoover Dam: nice try, but it won't stop the disaster from happening.

Buildings all over the Park Service system are meeting a similar fate, but things are supposed to be different at Fort Hancock. A developer named Sandy Hook Partners had plans to restore many of the buildings for various uses, including a cafeteria for visiting groups, as well as some offices and common use areas. While a percentage of the restored structures would be closed to the general public in favor of tenants, at least the buildings would be stabilized and occupied to prevent further decay. My question: what's going on, and why no visible progress?

This past weekend I made another visit, this time for the park's annual Fort Hancock Day. As luck would have it, I got there just in time for the first ranger tour of the day. The park's historian was bringing visitors to a couple of the remaining gun/mortar batteries, even allowing access to areas that are normally closed. Of course, we all know that I'm a big fan of closed areas, so I couldn't wait to see what's behind door #1. At the mortar battery, he brought us through a tunnel between the mortar pits, showing us the area that had been enclosed for an anticipated poison gas attack. We walked farther on to one of the two front pits of the battery, which is slowly being reclaimed by nature, a veritable sandy jungle of indigenous plants and trees. There are plans to clear it out, just as there are plans for everything else at the fort.

Next, we walked to Battery Granger, slowly crumbling behind a chain link fence and warning signs. After explaining the significance of the battery, the historian did exactly what I hoped he would: welcomed us past the gate and up a set of stairs to the gun platform. He didn't bring us to any of the interior areas, but still, this was a treat I hadn't expected.

The tour ended there, and while the others walked on to tour Battery Potter, I strolled back to base with the historian to chat about the restoration efforts that were supposed to be well underway by now. He told me that the developer had insufficient financial backing to move forward with its plans to restore and use the structures, so the Park Service recently nullified the arrangement. "If I won the lottery..." I started, and he replied, "me, too." In particular, he wants to restore the Officers' Club, one of the oldest structures on the Hook and absolutely beautiful inside, according to him. Check out the link above for a photo.

It's hard for me not to get on my soap box when I've got the ear of someone at the Park Service. In fact, purely by happenstance at the recent reopening of the Edison National Historic Park, I met a ranger who just recently got a promotion to oversee the maintenance on all of the NPS properties from Maine to Maryland. Like every NPS employee I've chatted with, he was very sympathetic to the plight of the non-restored park structures. Not yet familiar with the Sandy Hook situation, he noted that there's a tremendous backlog of repair work that needs to be done throughout the park system, just to keep things as they are today. Never mind restoration -- that would take billions the agency doesn't have.

The Edison site just may hold the answer. After a six year closure for restoration, it's simply a sight to behold. Two additional floors of the inventor's labs are now open for visitation, along with other side-buildings. There's now a comprehensive audio tour and informative signage, and visitors can wander relatively freely where they once had to take a guided tour. General Electric and Sony, whose technologies benefitted from Edison's insights, made major contributions to the total $12 million spent on the restoration.

The cost estimate for Fort Hancock is six to seven times what was spent at Edison NHP, but perhaps corporate funding can make a dent for just a few structures. The fort was an ammunition proving ground for quite some time, and also the site of a few firsts in artillery. Might there be a defense contractor who'd be willing to kick in some money to preserve the history of a critical part of New York's historic defense system?

2009-10-26T09:08:00.010-04:00

Driving into a tableau

The older I get, the more it's proven to me: happiness comes in surprising ways, but only if you're open to it.

Sunny days seem to be the exception this year, and Indian summer wasn't looking very promising. Then the fates smiled on us last Wednesday and we were afforded a warm, blue-sky day, the perfect occasion for a road trip. Not sure of my destination, I gassed up the car and headed south. Sandy Hook, maybe? Asbury Park? I'd figure it out on my way down.

Several weeks ago I'd found my way down to the Pinelands and the mysterious non-town of Ong's Hat, and something drew me that way again. Maybe it was the daydreaming I was doing about starting a tour company of the state's lesser known historic spots. Anyway, I headed down the Parkway to Route 70 and points west.

Now that I know where Ong's Hat is, it was an easy jaunt to get there. I wanted to get a photo of the shut-down tavern that stands at the former site of the famous treed hat . That done, I drove aimlessly about the side roads, many of them not charted on my GPS. There were bunches of farms and fields of cornstalks gone brown, along with a few stands selling cranberries and surprising amounts of seafood. Even this rural, lightly developed area held relatively densely-populated enclaves of tract homes from place to place, apparently the residences of employees from the nearby military installations.

The cranberry stands got me thinking about the bogs I'd passed on my first recon of the area. No doubt they were flooded now, and deep into the harvest. That brought me down Route 72, and then one of the county roads, through Chatsworth and past the old General Store. Along the way, I stopped briefly to take photos of damp bogs through my car window.

Then I saw them. A trio of cab trucks with big bins on the back, parked on an earthen berm right next to the side of the road. As I got closer, I saw the conveyor belt and the glistening of wet cranberries floating within the confines of a big yellow floating boom. Workers in hip waders were shaking the submerged berry bushes with the tools of the trade, then pushing the crop with wooden boards to the end of the conveyor, where they were scooped up and ultimately dropped into big crates on top of the trucks, where another worker used another board to distribute the load evenly. Water streamed from the bottoms of the crates, having been transported up along with the berries.

This was all happening within feet of the edge of the road, as if it were some sort of demonstration arranged by the tourism bureau. It was like one of those Sesame Street segments on how food gets from the farm to the supermarket. Who could resist stopping to take pictures? In fact, someone else already had. I pulled to the side of the road and rolled down the window to grab a few shots.

I felt a little weird about stopping just to watch other people work, but the crew seemed okay with it and even waved over when they noticed I'd stopped on the opposite shoulder. Stepping out of the car, I crossed the two-lane road to get a better view. As one truck would be filled with berries, the worker atop would jump down and wave the next truck into position as the laden truck drove off and hook around to the county road to drop its load at the main barn. Meanwhile, the workers standing waist deep in the bog would keep the crop coming through the conveyor as long as a truck was beneath to catch it. It was a well oiled process, and it struck me that in essence, it probably hadn't changed in years. Maybe the conveyor was faster than an old one, or the booms were sturdier rubber, but there were no computers, no outsourcing to cheaper labor thousands of miles away.

Other people stopped and got out of their cars from time to time as I watched the crew, and to a person, they all had broad smiles on their faces. We exchanged greetings and brief statements about craving cranberry muffins or expecting to see the two farmers from the Ocean Spray commercial, but mostly, we were all taken in by the beauty of the tableau before us. The blue sky reflected in the flooded bogs, contrasted by the yellow boom and ripe red cranberries. The warmth of the sun, and the anticipation of Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry sauce. I just stood there with a dumb grin on my face. Yeah, I could have been mulling over how nice it is to see agriculture still operating successfully in New Jersey, not paved over or replaced by McMansions. Yes, it's great to see that the Ocean Spray cooperative run by member farmers, is doing a heck of a job in creating new products and broadening the appeal for cranberries so the bogs will keep operating profitably for years.

But none of that was going through my mind at the time. If I was thinking at all, it was about how much fun it was to watch, and how I couldn't wait to share it. This is New Jersey.

2009-10-02T12:59:00.004-04:00

Mining and connecting

Wednesday was my birthday, and I decided to celebrate by taking one of my traditional wanders through another part of the state. Since I've been on an Edison kick lately, I chose to look for the site of one of his lesser-known enterprises, the iron ore mining venture in Ogdensburg, NJ.

A web search unearthed the location for me: Edison Road, just off Sussex County Road 620. With maps and GPS in hand, I got in the car and took the ride west via interstate 280, to Route 15. While 620 wasn't on the GPS, I was able to locate it without too much fuss, and then kept my eyes peeled for Edison Road, on Sparta Mountain. I arrived to find the stone and brass marker erected by Sussex County not too long ago, and a sign with topographic mapping of several trails that ramble through the woods. No other vehicles were there, not surprising for a Wednesday morning.

I parked and found my way in, quickly coming upon some narrow stone-walled drainage canals with rebar briefly protruding the tops. To the right was a sinkhole with a sign helpfully noting that sonar measurements found it was 86 feet deep at points. Wow. I walked in a bit farther to find a transmission tower right of way (ironically) and a few more crumbled walls. There wasn't as much to see as I'd hoped, but the reason for Edison's mining was clear. Many of the rocks and boulders showed the clear signs of oxidized iron.

I figured that there had to be more ruins in the woods, or at least some really good trails, but I didn't think it wise to explore them solo. The cellular coverage up there can be spotty, and if I got into a jam I'd be literally shouting into the wilderness. Resolving to return with my exploring buddy, I headed back to the car.

Just as I reached the trailhead, a Jeep Wagoneer pulled up, and a man, little girl and two rambunctious dogs came out. Naturally the dogs came running at full tilt to check me out, until the man called them back. Introducing himself as Rob, and shaking my hand, he asked if I'd been out to the ruins, and when I recounted my exploration, he told me there was a LOT more I'd missed, and if I wanted, he could show me where. He's explored a lot of the woods, some with an older man who actually wrote a book on Edison's mining operations.

Something about him and the little girl made me trust them. That, plus my new resolve to let people help me and do nice things for me more often, got me to agree to tag along with them for a little bit. As we hiked along, he explained that he was originally from South Carolina and had moved up here with his wife for her job. He really enjoys geting out to the woods in Sussex, had been surprised at how much there was to see, and how nice it is. Yeah, New Jersey tends to be that way.

In any case, he was right -- there is a LOT more to look at from Edison's operations, much of it reclaimed by nature since the mine closed (coincidentally, 109 years ago to the day of my visit). If you didn't know better -- and there wasn't so much rebar jutting out from the stone walls and the ground -- you'd think you'd stumbled on an ancient village. Along the way, too, I started remembering why it is that I've enjoyed hiking in the woods so much. It might have been that the little girl reminded me of myself when I was just a little older than she, when I'd play for hours in the woods across the street from my house. Back then, I'd have gone nuts over finding the ruins of a real building among the trees and scrub.

We parted company after about 45 minutes, and I ambled back to my car. Along the way, I got to thinking about another time when someone just happened to show up at the right time: my trip to Bandelier National Park in New Mexico. There, as in Sussex, I was traveling alone, looking for ruins with no-one seemingly in shouting range. At Bandelier, however, it was ancient Native American cliff dwellings, and you needed to use a series of ladders to get to them. As I'd approach a ladder, I'd question if it was prudent for me to climb it without a spotter. Every time, someone would appear, seemingly out of nowhere, offering a word of encouragement or a firm hand to hold the ladder secure as I climbed up. The uppermost cave was said to be used for sacred ceremonies, and reaching it was a transcendent experience in more ways than one. In fact, I still draw on my memories of being there whenever I need to center and calm myself.

That experience reminded me about a lot of things. Sometimes you just have to have faith that what you need will be there when you need it. You have to be willing to let other people help you, even when there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to help. Sometimes people don't NEED a reason to help. Sometimes things are just meant to happen at a certain time and certain place, and you just need to accept it. Perhaps Rob and young Willow came by the other day to remind me.

2009-09-12T14:59:00.005-04:00

Chowing down

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have a thing for road food. That term, in my mind, refers to chow you order at a counter (preferably outdoor, at a drive-in and not a drive-through) at an old food stand that has no relation to any kind of fast food chain. No waitress service, or if there is, it's in an area adjoining said walk-up counter. Mostly, it's hot dogs and hamburgers, though other regional specialties (Italian hot dogs, Texas weiners, etc.) do qualify. Most of them hark back to the '20s or '30s, before suburbanization, when most of the highways in New Jersey were routes to the countryside and it made sense to put up a hot dog stand at the side of the road for hungry travelers.

It wasn't until my college years that I got a serious taste for these joints. Oddly enough, my parents never took my sister and me to any of the local places. As a kid, I successfully petitioned my dad to stop at the White Castle in our town, out of sheer curiosity. It was a classic tiny box of a Castle (that's all there was in the pre-Harold and Kumar days), and on a Saturday night the parking lot was filled with undesirables, yet Dad agreed to go in for a bag of rats. Somehow I knew there was a road food junkie lurking within that middle-management exterior. (The Castle, incidentally, is the one exception to the rule that road food doesn't come from chains.)

College brought me a road food cuisine guide in the form of Marty, college student/computer programmer by day, road trip leader by night. He's the one who introduced me to the White Rose System, a landmark just a few miles from Rutgers-New Brunswick. Open 24 hours with the exception of Sunday, the System is acclaimed for three things: incredibly good California cheeseburgers, the fact that they have your order bagged and rung up within three seconds or less of when you've finished ordering, and the persistent rumor that all of the guys behind the counter are ex-convicts who live in a small building behind the joint. There's diner-style seating available at the front counter, or against the front window, but if you're there at prime-time (after the bars close) it's also worth eating on the hood of your car so you can watch the sea of humanity entering and leaving the place. I hesitate to post their website; it looks like the menu has gotten a lot more diverse over time, and I don't know how I feel about that.

While Marty and I never dated (neither of us had the desire), the fun we had in checking out the System and other greasy spoons prompted me to add 'preference for road food' to the criteria by which I judge potential boyfriends. Don't get me wrong: I like getting dressed up and going to nice restaurants, but I'd turn my nose up at any man who'd turn his nose up at the aroma of fried onions and hamburgers nestled in a gently steamed bun. (I'd like to say that I was the inspiration for Shake Shack, but alas, I was not.)

Anyway, I digress. Back to local joints, the classic in my hometown is the Galloping Hill Inn, founded in the '20's at a confluence of roads aptly called Five Points. It's the quintessential hot dog and beer kind of place, and when I was a kid, it looked like something you'd find on some rural road -- whitewashed exterior with ordering windows on both the street- and parking lot sides of the building, and a porch with picnic benches. The ordering process is not for the hesitant: customers crowd the broad (8-10 foot wide) window to shout out their orders as the counter guys randomly call "next." Often chaotic, but efficient. There's also a small dining room with waitress service.

Like most road joints, atmosphere is half the experience at Galloping Hill. In more recent years, they've closed the street-side windows and put an awning over the back of the building to create a vestibule and dining area. Sadly, they appear to be going for a diner look now, with enamel walls, chrome accents and faux-pressed tin ceilings above the porches. Fortunately, my standard order is none the worse for wear: a 'complete' hot dog (kraut and mustard) and cheese fries with a generous amount of the tasty yellow stuff. Yum.

Five Points is a very busy intersection, so you can't really blame the Galloping Hill guys for moving the transactional part of the business to the back of the building for safety. When my sister and I first started going there in the mid-eighties, we'd eat our meals on the street-side porch and count the near-miss accidents. While we never actually saw a collision, we heard one once, first the screech of tires and crash of car against car, then the very loud string of obscenities expelled by one of the drivers. Jersey road food ambiance -- can't beat it.

2009-07-05T16:38:00.002-04:00

Rethinking derring do

I've done my share of stunts that scared the crap out of me -- skydiving (three times), hang gliding (one ill-advised venture), cycling down the side of a volcano (once). Having done those and more, I've come to think that the real satisfaction comes not in doing them, but in being able to say that I've done them, if that makes any sense. I'm reminded of something that software entrepreneur and former skydiver Tom Siebel said about his experience: after you've done it a bunch of times, it's no big deal. You leave the plane, you pull a cord and you float to the ground.

Usually, I bring a certain level of bravado into the experience, believing and telling friends that it's not such a big deal. Then I end up white-knuckling the entire thing, though most would say they were exhilarated by it. Think about it -- how many people go skydiving and just say 'feh' afterward? Not many. So what's the deal?

Recently I took a mule ride down a narrow path carved into a 1600 foot cliff face. I'd never ridden a mule before, the trail was anything but smooth, and the mule, well, what they say about mules being stubborn is true. In hindsight, my biggest issue wasn't about the trail or the cliff. It was that I didn't have control over the mule. Intellectually, I knew that she'd walked the route countless times and wasn't any more interested in taking a header off the cliff than I was. I just had issues with not being in charge. As soon as I mounted her, she'd started meandering over to the other mules, with me helplessly riding atop her, and the trail wasn't any better. After several of her attempts to prance the outside edge of the path to pass a slower mule ahead of us, I was thinking twice about taking the same route back to our origin. Yeah, I was considering hiking a steep and rocky three-mile path, rather than riding the mule back up. Ultimately, I decided to take the chance with her, and I'm glad I did. When I tried my best to just go with the flow, she took charge and expertly got us back to the trailhead.

After that trek, I came to a realization. Maybe it wasn't the experience I thought it would be, and maybe I'm a bit more of a wimp than I'd like to admit. Maybe I was really uncomfortable, even a bit scared, but it did teach me something. Sometimes when you take a risk, even when it doesn't feel good and you had no control, you can at least get some satisfaction from having given it a shot. You just keep moving along, and you survive. And maybe once in a while, you realize that giving up control isn't so bad.

2009-05-25T20:17:00.004-04:00

Revival

Since I moved to the town where I now live, I've enjoyed walking among the older houses, many of which are Victorians well over 100 years old. Many, if not most, have been lovingly cared for by house-proud owners who truly appreciate the details of their homes and seem to take joy in painting them in beautiful color schemes, the trim contrasting from the rest of the house.

I've always loved old houses and have fantasized about owning one, taking care of it like a living, breathing family member. Not surprisingly, I have a few favorites, and even one or two I'd love to own if the circumstances were right (winning the lottery, marrying wealthy, you get the picture). I keep an eye on them just to see if their owners are treating them well, because when you own a house like that, you're just a caretaker for the time being, making sure that the home continues to contribute to the character of the neighborhood. So far nobody's screwed up by tearing any of my favorites down or putting on hideous additions. As I said, this is a town that values its history.

There's one, however, that I'd been totally mystified by -- the haunted house of Orchard Street. The architecture itself isn't quite my style; I've been drawn in for another reason. It's looked totally abandoned. Tall shrubs at the property line hid a veritable jungle of a yard, with overgrown trees and ivy and all kinds of whatnot. I never saw any activity there, and the few times I passed by at night, there was no light peeking out from within. Either no-one lived there, or it was occupied by a hermit. Maybe the Collyer brothers? Was this my town's version of Grey Gardens?

One day a few months ago, I passed by to find the house standing in a bare yard -- the trees and shrubs and ivy had all been bulldozed away. And there was a large construction dumpster stationed on the side street of the corner property. On one hand, it was fascinating to see the house standing in the sunlight, while it had been obscured for so long. On the other hand, I was afraid it was going to be torn down any moment. It stood on a double lot, big enough to accommodate a huge McMansion, or maybe even two of them. Then again, wouldn't they have just taken it down with the trees if they were going to clear the lot? And nobody's building on spec in this market.

Needing answers, I started searching the web and found a real estate sale listing, which said the property had been sold last fall for just under $500k. That's cheap for this part of the country. The house, if in good condition, would have gone for twice that. My curiosity whetted, I found some old newspaper articles mentioning society events that had taken place in the house. Its previous owners had gone on a three-week European tour in the early '60's, and the owners well before that had hosted a sumptuous party with a string orchestra, with guests including the co-founder of Sperry and Hutchinson Green Stamps. Obviously, this house and its people had been something at one time.

Even more curious, I went to my source, a friend who grew up in town and knows people. He was the one who brought the happy news. The house was bought by a couple who are spending $1 million, more or less, to renovate it. In fact, a few days after I found this out, I saw a sign in the yard, advertising the company that's apparently doing the kitchen and bathroom work. And now many of the windows have been taken out, the openings reframed. With the windows removed, you can see ladders and whatnot inside, and that many of the walls seem to have been stripped down to the lathe.

When you've watched countless older houses get plowed under for the sake of McMansion 'progress,' it's a bit of a relief to watch some old bones get refurbished. I wonder what it was that convinced this couple to renovate rather than build, especially given the cost. Do they have some sort of tie to the house? Is there a reason they've fallen in love with it? I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out, and I do wonder: would they mind if I one day knocked on the door and asked to come in?

2009-01-12T19:36:00.004-05:00

You're being watched.

Yammering, twittering, whatver it is: for a society so concerned about being watched, we’re certainly making it easy. The explosion of social networking websites offers you the chance of using virtually any communications technology to update your 'status' line anywhere you are.

"Dave is at the laundromat."

"Shalini is eating a panini."

"Michele is updating her Facebook status."

I know it's supposed to give your friends a view into how your day is going, but really, it's annoying. Is anyone really that interesting? And how are you supposed to have a life if your whole life is punctuated by pauses to update people on what you're doing?

Since I got more liberal in who I've been 'friending' on Facebook, I've gotten a new perspective on this. Where it might be moderately interesting to know that an especially brave or reckless friend is getting a manicure before going bowling, I don't really need to know that someone I barely know is going to the DMV.

And when you actually kinda dislike one of your 'friends,' it actually becomes kind of fun to mock them. (Can you call them 'Facebook frenemies'?) One is especially pretentious and enjoys dropping famous names into his status lines. He's always saying that he's hanging out with celebrities, when the truth is that he goes to a lot of fundraisers that well-known people happen to frequent. How insecure do you have to be to say that you commiserated about the Giants with Kathie Lee Gifford at a cocktail party? Like any b-list celebrity is actually going to remember or care about your theories on what the team should have done during the playoffs.

It does raise the question, though: if I mock someone who's pretentious and insecure, does it make me pretentious and insecure by association? I'll have to ask Oprah what she thinks. She should be here any minute.

2009-01-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

Say yes more often this year.

2008-12-31T19:02:00.003-05:00

A man, a horse and a duck walk onto a bus...

Today's New York Times reports a veritable explosion in the species of service animals roaming the streets and public transportation. While dogs have long helped blind people navigate through their every day lives, therapy dogs and cats have become more prevalent in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices. Certain breeds of monkey have also helped stroke patients with their daily tasks. Now, apparently, just about any animal on Noah's Ark is making a difference.

The Times story opens with a few paragraphs about a blind woman who is aided by a miniature horse. Apparently they're a great alternative to the average guide dog. They live about 30 years, a time span in which the person in need might expect to retire five or six service dogs. And yes, horses can be house trained. However, they're not quite as convenient for public transportation. Unlike a guide dog who can curl up at his/her person's feet, the guide miniature horse has to stand at the bulkhead -- or in first class.

Other people -- many with mental illnesses or severe emotional issues -- have found that a particular cat, bird or even ferret can provide therapeutic calming guidance.

Now, I'm a huge fan of animals and know first hand what a wonderful impact they can have on one's life. Nonetheless, the story got me thinking of that old joke, "a horse walks into a bar..." What if a horse, a cat and a parrot went into a bar with their people?

Punch line, anyone?

2008-12-30T14:15:00.004-05:00

Separated at birth?

Disgraced (and disgraceful) Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Shameless (and shameful) burger pusher, Big Boy.

Maybe it's got something to do with that clearly uh, sculpted hair on the gov, but the comparison was almost instantaneous as far as I'm concerned.

2008-12-27T20:21:00.004-05:00

Asbury Park, December 27, 2008

From the boardwalk...

2008-12-07T06:22:00.004-05:00

Missing what's not there

Several weeks ago I took a final trip to Shea Stadium to see a game before the ol' toilet is torn down and the Mets move to Citi Field. Shea, of course, is adjacent to Flushing Meadow Park, the site of two World's Fairs, first in 1939 and then in 1964-65.

Introduced to the world in “The Great Gatsby” as “the valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens…. ” the wastelands of Queens were transformed into a wonderland of the future.

The centerpiece of the park, of course, is the Unisphere, a massive stainless steel globe standing in a fountain pool. The iconic structure has been featured in everything from TV commercials to fashion ads to movies -- while you might not know where it is, you've surely seen it at some point in your life. For a while I'd considered getting out there to take some photos, and now I realized it might be a cool road trip: get a few shots of the globe, maybe get some snaps of Shea as they take it down, and check out the ruins of the World's Fair.

Perhaps due to my experience in at Man and His World in Montreal, I thought I'd find a bunch of abandoned or little-used buildings once I got out to the site in Queens. Stuff I found on the web supported the thought that the New York State pavilion observatory towers, at least, were still there, rotting in situ. At the very least, I wanted to find the giant road map of the state that had once welcomed visitors there.

When I got to the park I found it was huge -- not surprising -- and well-used on a beautiful fall day. It was Sunday and the soccer teams were out in force, the diversity of their ethnicities creating a veritable World Cup competition.

I parked next to the Queens Museum of Art, the former New York City building and ice rink, which once served as the first site of the United Nations assembly in New York. The structure looked suitably neglected on the outside but still functions as a museum, housing an accurate scale model of New York City.

That day, the Unisphere fountain was dry, serving as a rink for skateboarders. I later found out that the fountain now only operates during the US Open, held in September at the US Tennis Center nearby. All the better for my photo plans -- I was able to get a bunch of very arty shots, including a few from directly under Antarctica. Pretty cool.

While some other structures still stand, the vast majority were removed after the close of the Fair and are in use elsewhere. Standing in the park, looking at the mature trees lining broad walkways and fountain pools, it's hard to believe that a veritable city once stood there, with millions strolling the grounds and trams gliding above. There are bas relief murals showing scenes of both World's Fairs, but for the most part, the park doesn't show much of its previous use. Of all of the ruins I've visited, musing over what once was and isn't anymore, it's the most departed of all.

2008-12-06T22:12:00.004-05:00

Friending: a verb

Last winter I finally took the plunge and joined Facebook, ostensibly for the professional networking opportunities, but also to see if I could link back up with friends and former acquaintances from the past.

It's been an interesting experience on several levels. First, I've come to realize how much I tend to categorize people into different segments of my life. I take the word 'friend' to heart and though it's a loose term taken lightly (and even as a verb) on Facebook, I've thought twice about some of the friend requests I've gotten, and even some that I've sent out. People I barely know -- some of whom I don't necessarily like -- have sent friend requests to me, and I've been hesitant to send out invitations to other people, thinking that I may be presuming too much of the acquaintanceship. After all, one's Facebook friends can see all of the activity you put on your page. If you tend to compartmentalize your life the way I do, it's a bit scary to open yourself up to that much observation.

Likewise, you're apt to find out some interesting things about people you don't know that well. I recently took an improv class in New York, and while I knew a lot of the people in the group were younger than I, I didn't find out just how young until we all started friending each other after our graduation show. The woman who'd basically labeled herself as the class Methuselah is more than 10 years younger than I am. And most of the other people were born sometime during my college years. I have no clue if they realized how old I am, but it made me wonder, and it freaked me out a little.

But yeah, it has made me realize how much I do hold back. There have been times in my life when I have been extraordinarily open with people, but then other times I've been told I'm hard to get to know, that I put up a wall. The internet can serve as a cathartic environment, kind of like talking to a stranger on an airplane or a bar, and the anonymity is a hugely freeing factor for me, personally. But the big question, really, is what is the risk? Yeah, from a professional standpoint, you don't want to be known for some freaky hobby or association, but what are the chances? And really, what's the harm in people knowing who you really are? Maybe I need to take this a little less seriously and enjoy it for what it is.

2008-12-05T19:47:00.002-05:00

Penn Station, NY

2008-11-09T18:51:00.002-05:00

Campaign promise kept?

Last Tuesday night, in his first speech as president-elect, Barack Obama announced to his daughters that they'd earned the right to get the dog he and Michelle had promised them. As the grown-up child who'd never been allowed to have a pet other than fish, this vow really resonated with me. I mean, Obama was telling the world -- not just his kids -- that a puppy would be joining the family in the White House.

It's one thing to break a campaign promise, but one to your two little girls? And it's not like he can now take the dog away if they don't walk him or her as they promised they would. If he doesn't come through on this one, he's gonna look like a jerk.

This led me to think about other pronouncements Obama could make as his daughters get older. Imagine the turns the average press conference could take:

"US troops have started a staged withdrawl from Iraq, to end in 15 months, when Sasha will get a Barbie Dream House, but only if she cleans her room."
"We will achieve a balanced budget, at which point Malia will be allowed to wear makeup -- but just lip gloss, no red lipstick."
And if there's a second Obama term: "Following the enactment of the new healthcare initiative, Malia will be permitted to date, as long as we meet the boy first."

Of course, the Clintons probably tried that last promise with Chelsea -- and see where that got them.

2008-11-01T22:34:00.002-04:00

The last, desperate throes ....

I'm not a big one for endorsing candidates, but given the passion of the season, I feel compelled to say a few words about the tenor of the presidential campaign.

There's clearly a sea change here -- a broad contrast between a hugely popular candidate who's more or less kept to a positive message, and his opponent, who seems to think that cultivating fear will punch his ticket to the White House, even if it means he goes against everything he used to say he stood for.

These days, it's impossible for any one person to effect change in government. Between Congress and the lobbyists and God knows who else, there are too many voices, too much money involved, for anything to change too quickly or too easily. Of course, a skilled manipulator can manufacture a crisis or enemy to color peoples' perspectives, but as we've discovered, that only works for so long. And the Founding Fathers intended that the balance of powers would prevent any one branch of government from having too much control. That's why I don't put too much stock in campaign promises -- they're too easily dashed.

I just look at character. Who's the candidate I feel I can trust to represent us well to the rest of the world? Does either candidate have another reason to want to be president -- like does he have daddy issues to resolve? Which one do I trust not to insult my intelligence?

I'm really looking forward to a change. I'm really tired of the rest of the world hating the US and thinking we're stupid for having elected our leadership. And I'm sick of politicians pissing in my face and telling me it's raining.

2008-10-13T20:14:00.002-04:00

Where in the U.S. can one get a decent Toasted Special?

One of the most wonderful -- and frustrating -- parts of travel is being turned on to local delicacies, things you can't find at home.

While in Southwestern Ireland several years ago, I acquired a taste for Toasted Specials, recommended by a Kerryman named Donal. We were in a small pub in a remote town, and he advised that they were very good. Somehow it seemed that even though he was a lineman for Irish Telecom, even he couldn't have visited that pub often enough to know their special was good. But at that point, I knew nothing about Toasted Specials, including that it's not the 'special of the day,' it's just the name of what might be considered the National Sandwich of Ireland. In other words, it's the same, no matter where you go. In effect, it's Ireland's version of a McDonald's hamburger, only better.

The Toasted Special is merely a toasted ham, cheese, tomato and onion sandwich. That's it. Pretty much any pub you go to will have the ingredients on hand and can toss one together for you. And yes, it tastes as good as it sounds, though I must admit that you could put melted cheese on a shoe and I'd eat it with gusto.

Now here's the odd thing: for as ubiquitous as the Toasted Special is in Ireland, it's virtually anonymous outside. Try looking for it on Wikipedia: not there. Try Googling it: barely there. In fact, I couldn't find a decent photo of one. Meanwhile, there are reams of tributes to Taylor Ham, which is a rare find outside New Jersey. Not that I'm complaining about Taylor Ham, but with all of the other Irish stuff that people obsess over, you'd think that a pub sandwich would get a little more airplay. And there are a lot of Irish people in the New York area.

So does anyone know where I can find a decent Toasted Special? Or do I have to go all the way back to Ireland to get one?

2008-09-29T20:42:00.004-04:00

Shea goodbye... say hello again...

Last Thursday I took my second and final trip to Shea Stadium. And then I watched yesterday afternoon as they held closing ceremonies for the park... after the traditional collapse of the entire season.

It's funny, I haven't been following major league baseball for a long time, but going to the game brought back those really hopeless days of 1980. Those were the times when every game was broadcast on Channel 9, called by Ralph Kiner, Bob Murphy and Steve Albert, and when we weren't in school, my sister and I watched every inning. Given that the team finished the season with a 67-95 record, we gained a lot of character that summer.

And I never imagined I'd cry at seeing Craig Swan and Doug Flynn.

2008-09-22T20:23:00.004-04:00

American culture pervades yet again...

It's a practice as old as war: occupation forces tend to impress their cultures on the the 'host' community, either intentionally or inadvertently. Consider, for instance, the broad appeal of SPAM in certain sectors invaded during World War II, and the bizarre cargo cults that still expect Jon Frum to return with washing machines and Coca Cola.

Most recently, the ultimate kitch has arrived in the Persian Gulf, as I discovered while shopping online for lawn ornaments. As you'll see here, pink flamingos have made it to Iraq.

Now, I have to admit that I have been the proud owner of a pair of pink flamingos since college, when a friend and I conspired to litter the university president's lawn with them. For years, they held a place of honor in my bathroom, but more recently they've been nesting in my garage. I never once thought they could migrate to the Middle East as a morale builder for the troops. They're not really desert birds, after all --they subsist on shrimp and shellfish.

I wonder: what must the Iraqis be thinking of this? Do they curse the pink plastic birds, or do they honor them? Do they secretly covet them? Will the troops take them home when the US packs up, or will some of the petroleum Phoenicopteridae remain as invasive species? And the scariest question of all: will more flamingos start appearing in front of Iraqi homes?

And then what's next? Garden gnomes?

2008-09-18T20:56:00.002-04:00

It doesn't pay to be crabby.

Incidentally, tomorrow, September 19, is Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Arrrrrrrrrr!

2008-09-17T20:47:00.003-04:00

Nobody ever died for dear old Rutgers

(Okay, a little corny, but it's actually a song from a Broadway musical!)

Walter Seward, Rutgers class of 1917, passed away earlier this week. Check out the story in the Rutgers Daily Targum. More to come from me later this week. Bottom line, you've gotta love a guy who can sing all the old school songs.

2008-09-12T20:36:00.004-04:00

Tell us how you really feel.

One of the things I like about working a job with 'global' responsibilities is the figures of speech you learn along the way. For someone with an ear for language, it can be a real treat.

At the outset, you have to remind yourself to assume positive intent. Take, for example, the Irish, who, when you say something favorable, will respond with a hearty "brilliant!" Having lived in the highly sarcastic New York area my whole life, I was inclined to believe the person was making fun of me, because what I'd said wasn't especially creative, ingenious or original. Then I realized that the same person would exclaim, "brilliant," if I said I'd call them back in five minutes. So I let it go.

The Australians, appealing as their culture is, have especially colorful expressions, many of which you can't reason out for yourself, between the accent and the mix of what must be some sort of aboriginal-based slang. But they're generally nice enough to explain. Obviously, you have to be really careful, and if you're a little confused, it never hurts to ask for a little clarity. Though I did learn that it is definitely not a good idea to tell a British person that someone is walking around with a puss on their face. No, not good.

I can't imagine how many people I've confused with my habit of spouting spontaneous analogies. Seems the more frustrated or wound up I get, the more I'm inclined to come up with colorful ways to describe it. A lot of times, it's one a lot of people know, say, "Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining." Others are a little more unique:

"Like wearing a ballgown to a barn raising" -- putting way too much fuss into a task that requires little attention and will generate little return.
"Being given crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel" -- being woefully underequipped to complete a mammoth task successfully and creatively.

Wow, now I forget the others. Anyway, when you're on a roll, it's hard sometimes to stop and explain to people for whom English is a second language. One of my coworkers once got a call from another colleague who was on a conference call with the both of us and got the full treatment. "What is this barn raising," he asked her, "and am I expected to dress up?" Oh, boy.

2008-09-09T19:34:00.001-04:00

Hey Pacific Islanders....

Tell me where I should visit and what I should do if I do go to Micronesia in March!

2008-09-06T15:56:00.005-04:00

Putting some distance between...

I've had an off-again, on-again desire to go to Micronesia for many years now, since I heard of the remote group of islands way, way west of Hawaii. I'd first learned about them when the PR firm I worked for started representing Continental Airlines, the operator of the only scheduled flight service to the region. Continental Micronesia does an island hop from its Guam hub to Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Yap and Palau a couple of times a week. It's not like I was getting any travel out of the job -- just that it got me thinking, and reading. Then I found out that Yap has stone money, and that just made it even more intriguing. I've made trips for more ridiculous reasons than that, though this would be the farthest, distance wise.

The region also has a huge World War II history and is a renowned diving destination, given the sheer volume of wrecked warships. On land, several of the islands still show signs of habitation by military during the conflict -- old buildings, transport equipment rotting in place and so forth. I've always been fascinated by the use of these islands as strategic hopping points during the war. Who doesn't remember the stories of the old Japanese soldiers hiding in the jungles for years past the war, not knowing of the surrender? A couple of years ago, at the Millville Airport down Jersey, I came upon an old transport plane marked Kwajalein Atoll -- pictured here.

What's more, the culture, while influenced by the West, like everywhere else, is still going pretty strong, from what I understand. In any case, it's bound to be a lot different from New Jersey. And the wanderlust always seems to bring me back to who I really am, as opposed to who I find myself having to be far more often than I'd like. Gotta do something about that. Not that I have any illusions about going native, selling my wool coats, packing up the cats and heading to the Pacific. It's just getting away from the corporate thing. And being in an environment where random people are friendly, as a rule.

Being several hours (and the dateline) west of Hawaii, it's one of those places you'd better make the most of while you're there. Chances are you aren't going to go back anytime soon, at least from the mainland US. To get a sense of how air travel works in the region, take a look at this post from a fellow blogger who lives in the Marianas and chronicled an experience taking the Island Hopper.

Anyway, I finally decided that I want to take a couple of weeks off (at once!!!) in the spring and make a real trip someplace off the beaten track. This seems to do the trick, though I still have to seriously work out the timing of the travel and whether my aging body can manage the inevitable disorientation caused by a series of long flights and time zone leaps. After all, it would be a real bitch to get all the way there, end up with a weariness-induced migraine and nowhere to buy Motrin.

Hey, worst case scenario, I do ten days in Hawaii, and get to Molokai and Midway this time. If that's the consolation prize, I'm doing pretty well.

2008-09-02T06:38:00.006-04:00

What's changed?

Over the past few days we've seen a lot of history: the nomination of the first African American presidential candidate by a major political party and the first time the Republicans have selected a woman to run for vice president.

The thing that has really struck me, though, is that it's the first time that people of my generation have taken the national stage at this level. Barack Obama's just a few years older than I, Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin are my age. Somehow I find it amazing, given that I'm still grappling with the fact that I'm a grownup. It reminds me how little I've achieved, but that's another story.

Michelle Obama, especially, struck me. I first realized it a few months ago when there was all that tsimmis about the senior thesis she wrote at Princeton. She'd studied minority alumni of Ivy League schools and theorized that they tended to diverge from their ethnic communities following graduation. In reading about this, I found that when she was at Princeton, black students accounted for just about four percent of the population. There were 94 black students in her class. I was stunned: I was at Rutgers during those same years, and I saw that many black students on an average visit to the dining hall. What do you gain from being in an environment where everyone looks like you?

Even more shocking, her white roommate's mom had lobbied the deans to get her a new housing assignment. And what's disturbing now: the current Princeton student population is only about four percent black, though there is a higher percentage of students labelling themselves as 'other' on the question. So has anything really changed? You'd think that by now, an Ivy League school would be all about creating a learning environment that exposes students to different points of view and different backgrounds. You'd think.

I'm still trying to parse out my feelings on all of this, and I'm not especially eloquent on them. But I guess we're of a generation now where people don't care so much that a successful person is black. They might notice it, but it doesn't have the same impact it once did. And maybe to a point, it's gotten to where a successful black person isn't accused of playing white just because he or she has gotten somewhere in life. The old guard who, by necessity, had to fight harder because they were black, are now being succeeded by the people who were children then and are now benefitting from their elders' hard work.

We've seen the same thing with women; I get the feeling most of the time that the successful 20 and 30 somethings never even considered that they 'weren't supposed to' have what they have. Some would see that as ungrateful. I see it as progress. And to get elected, women don't have to wave the feminist flag and a liberal agenda. It's kind of cool to not vote for the woman because she's too conservative for your liking. That, my friends, is progress.

So getting back to the thesis here, it feels good that my age peers are making it to the top. Whether I agree with their politics is irrelevant. The fact that it's more about their stands than their gender or race is what makes me happy.

2008-08-31T16:33:00.012-04:00

In tatters ....

Spent some time at Fort Hancock / Sandy Hook today, noting the accelerating decay of the fort's buildings. Seems every time I stroll down Officer's Row, I see another sign of benign neglect. Allegedly there's a plan in place to restore many of the buildings and make them into offices, or hospitality centers, but whoever's doing it seems to be taking their own sweet time. Meanwhile, I grow more suspicious as I see broad swaths of tar paper on roofs where the shingles have blown off.

And wooden porches continue to deteriorate to the point where they give, dangerously, when you put weight into your step as you trod on them. Probably worst of all, I'm seeing more and more windows whose panes are missing, allowing who knows what to get inside. And the upper half of one double hung window has dropped, its counterweight probably having snapped in the frame.

Kinda makes you wonder if they'll let them rot to the point where more than half of them won't be salvageable. Then, oops, well they'll have to just tear them down. The development agency that redid New Brunswick took the same approach to a host of old buildings in what used to be the wharf area of the city. Dozens of buildings that had been there since Colonial days were just shut up and left to sit until they were too dangerous to enter. They got torn down, conveniently, in favor of new townhouses. Call me cynical, but...

Meanwhile, I continue to notice things I hadn't seen before, mostly window dressing. Who moved out and left the curtains behind? And 30 years later, they still hang, faded and filmy, but still intact. I've never felt them to be haunted, but as I walk between the houses to check them out, I think about some sort of spirit peering out from behind those curtains, watching me. Watching something.

2008-08-24T19:40:00.004-04:00

Knocking a buzzard off the proverbial wagon...

Yesterday I made a huge mistake. It all started with this video, taken at the oyster (clam?) processing plant at the piers at Bivalve, gateway to Shellpile. Watch and listen...

Now, most of the people I mentioned in the video were either at the wholesale shellfish market, or taking their boats out to the Maurice River. And I realize now that the reason I hadn't seen anyone on previous trips was because it was the dead of winter. When, by the way, the smell wasn't quite as bad, but still present.

To reach the spot where I took this video, I drove down a road whose macadam pavement surrendered to finely crushed shell. I splashed through some watery potholes along the way. And thankfully, I never got out of the car.

From there, I drove back up to State Route 49, noticing as I went along, that the smell, though faint, seemed to permeate the area. Funny, but I hadn't noticed it on the way in. Gosh, I thought -- how awful must it be to live around there with that smell! Maybe one gets used to it over time...

Route 49 is about five miles from Shellpile, and I made my usual stop at the Wawa at the corner of the Mauricetown Bypass. Getting out of the car in the crowded parking lot, I observed the smell was still present. Oy. Don't these people notice it?

Taking back roads to the Parkway, it finally dawned on me: somehow I was bringing the smell of spoiled raw shellfish with me. A rogue oyster hitching on my catalytic converter? Hmm... And then it hit me: the potholes. I'd unwittingly splashed rancid bivalve leachate all over the undercarriage of the car. The stink followed me all the way home... made a temporary home in my garage... and finally departed at the car wash this afternoon.

2008-08-18T19:53:00.005-04:00

Living the faith

Earlier today I happened on a story on CNN.com about missionaries who are refusing to leave a Chinese airport after being stopped for bringing Bibles into the country. It seems that while the Communists are okay with you bringing in scripture (Bible, Koran, Torah, what have you) for your personal use, they have a bit of a problem with you bringing in enough to share with 300 of your closest friends. The missionaries refuse to leave till their Bibles are returned to them.

In any case, this story reminded me of a conversation I had with an innkeeper when I stayed at a nice bed and breakfast called the White Egret, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It's a small place -- just three guest rooms -- and it was off-season when I was there, so I was the only guest. That can be a little uncomfortable, as you don't know whether the innkeeper understands the boundary between friendly morning chat and being a total pest. Fortunately, Joanne knew just how much conversation was enough in the mornings.

Interestingly, in just a couple of days and a few brief conversations, I learned that Joanne is a woman of deep faith who lives by her beliefs. Very matter of factly, she mentioned that she and her husband were going to Guatemala in a few weeks to help build schools, something they and their fellow church members did often. Being a wary skeptic, I waited for what I thought would be the questions about whether I'd accepted Christ as my personal savior ... you know, the typical Bible-thumping spiel. But it didn't come. She just mentioned her good works the way you or I might mention that we went down the shore on a summer weekend. In fact, I think it came up after she expressed some wonderment that I'd drive to North Carolina all by myself, a young woman on my own.

What really threw me, though, was when she mentioned that she'd done some missionary work in China when she was younger. I'd say she was in her mid-fifties, so this would have put it back in the 60's or so. She and a friend packed some Bibles in their suitcases and somehow found their way to China. They were detained by guards at the border.

As matter-of-factly as she talked about China, she mentioned that she and her friend were beaten by the guards for daring to bring religious materials into the country. I can't remember how they got out, but I do recall the pure equanimity she displayed in relating the story. She clearly wasn't telling me for shock value or sympathy, and if she harbors any resentment, she sure didn't show it. Nor did she express any of that hyperbolic, holier-than-thou "oh, I pray for their heathen souls" crap. It seemed she'd made peace with the situation, and that's all she needed to do. It was just something that happened in her life, while she was following her calling.

Again, here was another regular person who does extraordinary acts and had suffered for doing the right thing, but you'd never know it. In a world where so many people demand a parade when they give a dollar to charity, it's always remarkable to meet someone who's done so much and asked nothing in return. I guess that's what true faith and true humanity really is.

2008-08-11T20:19:00.002-04:00

Avon calling.....

2008-08-08T20:32:00.005-04:00

The new bennies

There's a group organized on the Jersey Shore called Benny Go Home, Benny being the derogatory term for partying summer rental people in shore communities. The line is that the name comes from the initial letters of the cities they come from: Bayonne, Elizabeth, Newark and New York -- but the term has been pinned more loosely on anyone who lives north of the Raritan River.

The Benny Go Home people eschew the geographic qualifications in favor of assessing potential Benny-tude by attitude. In other words, the real Bennies are those who disrespect the shore communities and their residents by treating the towns like their own personal playpen -- and shitting all over it.

Ken Pringle, the mayor of shore town Belmar, recently got into trouble for profiling the unfortunate Benny subspecies, the Staten Island Guido, in his Belmar Summer Rental News. During his long tenure, Mayor Pringle has moved to turn the town from a raucous 24 hour party to a more family-oriented destination, and a nice place for year-rounders to live. It's a worthy goal, but he should know better than to use his own press to malign the only place on the East Coast that's more misunderstood than New Jersey. His wife was PR flack for Jim McGreevey, so maybe that says something.

All that said, I've been noticing my own form of Benny -- those coming from Manhattan on the Sandy Hook ferry. For a while, they only came for the clothing optional Gunnison Beach, so I never ran into any of them unless that beach was overcrowded and they deigned to keep their pants on. But now that more people have heard about the beach and the nice boat ride, they seem to be all over. Unfortunately, my favorite beach in the park is the one closest to the ferry landing, so I get an earful. You can see the Brooklyn skyline and the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which I've heard referred to as Manhattan and the George Washington Bridge, respectively.

Now, I don't have anything against people coming from the city to ride their bikes or hang out on the beach (well, as long as they're not sitting too close to me). I do take issue with those who act as if the place didn't exist before they first heard of it. An apt analogue is the Ugly American who goes to another country and marvels when they find their hosts have running water, electricity and pizza.

Last week, I was treated to the prattling of two couples with kids, including an eight-year-old boy who was allowed to run around naked. They seemed surprised that there was a nice beach in New Jersey. I overheard one of the women telling the other adults, "Oh, there used to be medical waste washing onshore all the time. Then they cleaned it up and built all of this a few years ago, and started running the ferry from New York, and people started coming here." Typical hipster New York thinking -- everything was shit before you discovered it. The medical waste issue was for a few months something like 15 years ago. Gateway National Recreation Area was opened in 1974, thank you, and Sandy Hook was a state park before that.

Maybe I'm not being tolerant, but it seems to me that if you're at someone else's house, you treat it with respect and don't impose your ignorance and superiority on it. It led me to wonder if Pringle's Staten Island Bennies and the Manhattan Bennies were really all that different. Which, of course, would probably mortify the Manhattanites. Who don't realize there are some nice beaches in Staten Island, too, and the ferry to get there is free.

Hmm....

2008-08-07T20:53:00.004-04:00

Huzzah! Blog the Blogger!

Every once in a while I check Google Analytics for a sense of the traffic Shellpile gets. I think we've topped out at about five or six hits on a given day, only a few that stay for more than a few seconds. It's fun to see we've gotten repeat visits from as far away as South Korea. Needless to say, I'm not in it for the traffic, but it's great to get the occasional affirmation from a stranger who stumbles on the site.

So, I just checked and found that my July 4 post on the Morristown celebration had gotten a few hits over the past few weeks. That's great, but I wondered why -- I hadn't promoted it or linked to any other sites. Doing a little detective work through Analytics, I discovered that the Morristown Green section of NJ.com had quoted directly from that page! How cool is that?

2008-08-05T19:27:00.003-04:00

Everybody's got a story ... but maybe not a home

Surely you've seen the 44 pound cat who made the news last week. Not only tragically obese but a victim of foreclosure, Powder the cat hit the media jackpot when he ended up in the animal shelter in Camden County, NJ. After CNN, NBC and a ton of other media outlets ran his story, hundreds of people contacted the shelter to adopt him. The shelter is now evaluating candidates and expects to have Powder in his new home in a week.

This is a common occurrence: a stray dog has an unusual experience, or a cat hoarder's home is raided, and people come out of the woodwork to adopt them. And, of course, the Katrina dogs and cats were a hot commodity for a while. The common theme is that it seems people are compelled to adopt that one dog or cat. Okay, maybe that's too cynical; perhaps they were truly moved by the circumstances and want to help that particular animal. In any case, you have to wonder if they'd be just as adamant about adopting one of the many anonymous cats and dogs who languish in our nation's shelters.

Each stray has his or her own story, their own little tragedy. The shelter where I volunteered was fortunate to have someone who wrote great profiles for each animal's Petfinder.com page. Nonetheless, I sometimes wondered if it might do the animals some good if we, well, elaborated on their circumstances just a tad.

What about that litter of kittens? Maybe they're all named after cities because they were born in a FedEx truck on the Turnpike.

Or how about that pit bull in the corner crate? He stopped a bank robbery!

If it finds them a good home, what's the harm? What, after five years is the dog going to fess up that the war stories are all BS? It's not like he's going to run for president. And even if he did, it wouldn't make a difference.

2008-07-21T23:29:00.000-04:00

Will there be cookies?

I've had it with interminable, pointless business meetings. I'm not talking about the ones where there's an actual problem that needs to be solved. I'm talking about the ones where one person is so frightened of being held accountable for a decision he came to independently that he has to get a half dozen people involved. These are the meetings where the talk goes on and on and there's usually a need for a follow-up meeting -- at which no decision will be made.

If you've worked in corporate America, you know what I mean. They're the meetings where the "team" is supposed to come up with a recommendation, but it's useless because no-one in attendance has the power or budget to make any real decisions.

Sometimes you just have to suck it up and attend. Other times you can try to come up with a reason to skip it. It usually helps if you can invoke the name of someone important who conveniently needs your attention at just the time the meeting is being held. But sometimes when you get the invitation, you can't quite tell if the topic is legit or bogus.

I've decided that from now on, I'm using my own criteria to decide which meetings are truly necessary.

Will there be cookies?

This is an infinitely fantastic criterion. With corporate budgets being cut to the bone, the chance of there being refreshments is remote. If the person is desperate enough to have you there, he'll make the accommodation, at which point you can up the ante: Will there be Pepperidge Farm cookies? I really like those Milanos.

No? Oh, well, I'll have to catch up with you later.

It's a no-lose situation. Maybe people get you the Milanos, and they think you're crazy, but heck, you have good cookies to distract you during the meeting.

An aside: at my last job, there was one week in which I only had two meetings. I thought I'd gotten away with something until around 4 p.m. that Friday, when I got stuck in an elevator. For 15 minutes, I was stuck between the ninth and tenth floors, waiting for maintenance to open the doors for me. I came to realize: if you didn't have enough meetings in a given week, they'd force you to have one with yourself.

And no, there were no cookies.

2008-07-13T16:53:00.009-04:00

Never fear...

The porkroll and cheese sandwich has returned to the Asbury Park boardwalk. I grabbed one at Mayfair this afternoon.

Just beware of the five dollar soda.

2008-07-08T20:06:00.008-04:00

I hope I get it...

Another weekend jaunt had me on the train to New York with no set destination in mind. I let my gut draw me to the Theater District. I'd figure out what show to see when I got there.

It had been a while since I'd seen a Broadway show. I think the last time was in September 2001, when my friend Ingrid took me to see Chicago for my birthday. Just three weeks after the attacks, New York felt very fragile, and the usually mundane hop into Manhattan felt like an act of bravery.

Regardless of the circumstances, stepping into a Broadway theater always brings nostalgia and a sense of unrealized ambition to me. For a time in adolescence, I'd wanted to be a stage actress, and I can't help but identify a little with the actors, singers and dancers in the shows. How incredible must they feel, to have realized their dreams!

These days, there seems to be a wealth of good shows to choose from, and with the revival of A Chorus Line closing in five weeks, it seemed like the logical choice. Despite the legendary 15-year run of the original production and the supposed parallel to my own ambitions at the time, I hadn't seen it.

The opening minutes of the show's audition scenario brought me back to a forgotten episode of my life. My junior high school acting-fever days coincided with the first few years of the show's original run, and my friend Heather shared my desire to be on stage. She was an avid Backstage reader, especially the back pages where the open call notices were printed.

One night she called me to report that A Chorus Line was having an open call that weekend, Actors Equity card not necessary. Did I want to go with her? The New York bus stopped on her corner and went almost directly to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, just a few blocks from Times Square and the audition studio. It was that easy.

Every concern I brought up was answered: Uh, I can't dance. "That's okay, they show you the steps before the audition. You can follow everyone else." Don't you need a resume and a headshot? "You were in the Summer Music School production of Oklahoma! That counts for something! And you can bring your yearbook picture." Well, okay, let me see if I can go.

My mom blew a gasket when I asked. She'd denied many more reasonable requests; this one was the Triple Crown winner of the bad judgement derby.

Take the bus with your friend from school? (I don't know her mother -- she must be evil!)
To the Port Authority? (and this was before it was cleaned up)
Walk through Times Square? (This was Travis Bickle's Times Square, not Disney's)

Needless to say, I didn't go, even though Heather suggested ways we could get to the city and back without Mom knowing. After some initial pouting, I wasn't all that broken up about it. It just didn't make sense to me to audition for a singing/dancing role I didn't have the skills for. I knew what I was good at, and I knew my limitations.

My memory is a bit hazy, but I'm pretty sure that Heather went. Naturally she didn't get a part -- she was only 14 and didn't have the singing or the dancing -- but I give her credit for getting that far. Sometimes you do have to go for it.

Myself, I'd rather have the character shoes and the headshot first, thanks.

2008-07-07T21:36:00.016-04:00

Visiting the Big House

Too much to do, too little time. Too much time, can't think of what to do.

Past several days, I've been off from work, doing one of those lovely "staycations" (a.k.a. 'holi-stays'). I could have swallowed hard and spent a ton of money on an airline ticket to elsewhere, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Instead, I decided to stick close to home and do some day trips, go down the shore, make a trip into the city.

Today I came up blank. The weather’s been changeable since Friday, so the beach was out. I considered a trip to Salem and maybe Shellpile, but I just wasn’t up for it. I needed to go somewhere, so I checked my file.

I keep two folders of places, things and stuff that looks interesting. One is a literal folder, for stuff I clip from the newspaper. The other is a virtual folder of bookmarks in Internet Explorer. Today the paper file didn’t cut it, so I checked online and found Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.

Eastern State is one of those great, scary places that's notorious among the cult of urban explorers. Built in the 1820s as a model penitentiary on the outskirts of Philadelphia, it stands fortress-like, with castle turrets and thick, thick walls. Eventually it became overcrowded and run down, even as the city grew outward to envelop it. More than 100 inmates escaped over the 150 years the prison was in operation, which, surely, was a major factor in the decision to shut it down. It was home, however briefly, to men and women, both obscure and famous, like Al Capone and Willie Sutton. (Capone's reconstructed, plushly-furnished cell is shown at the end of the video below.)

The initial concept was that each prisoner would have his or her own small cell and an adjoining outdoor 'exercise' area; they would see no-one, allowing time for significant contemplation of the wrongdoing that put them there. Cells were organized along cellblocks that intersected at a central point, like the legs of a spider. As the prison grew to accommodate a growing number of criminals, the individual exercise yards were eliminated in favor of new cells, and prisoners were doubled up.

Today, the prison is dungeonlike in atmosphere: a sea of peeling paint, falling-down plaster and dripping leachate from holes in the roof. During my visit, a sudden burst of rain reverberated through the cellblocks, making the already humid atmosphere even clammier. It's hard to believe that just 40 years ago, it was heated, wired for light and had running water... and that there was paint and plaster on the walls to make it habitable.

A few of the cellblocks are open for wandering, while others are closed, but you can poke your nose in from the central area or from the outside yard. Some of the cells are open to walk into. They're all pretty much the same and are all pretty creepy. One cellblock is specifically noted as being haunted. Grrrreaat.

There's also a sampling of art installed around the prison -- a Guantanamo cell set up in a cell, time lapse video of light entering and leaving a hallway, and 19 ghost cats. They're the specters of a colony of felines that took the place following its abandonment. And it's a game to find them around the grounds, adding a bit of whimsy to a scary place. The truly odd thing is that they all have contented little smiles on their faces. Never imagined that the Cheshire Cat would be staying at the Graybar Hotel.

2008-07-04T20:51:00.003-04:00

Huzzah! Huzzah!

July 4 is one of my favorite holidays. No matter how screwed up government is these days, and no matter how frustrated I may be by current events, I'm a patriot, and I relish the chance to celebrate it. It's amazing to think about the chances our forebears took in rebelling against the great superpower of the 18th century. It's even more amazing to think that they prevailed.

Not far away from me is the Morristown National Historic Park, one of many "George Washington slept here" places in New Jersey. Valley Forge gets the press for misery, but Morristown was the site of two epic winter encampments of the Continental Army. Valley Forge had disease, but at least it was relatively warm. Morristown had disease plus persistent, sub-freezing weather and feet (yes - FEET) of snow, blowing through the flimsy soldier tents and hastily-constructed log huts. Washington and some aides stayed at the home of the sympathetic Jacob Ford, closer to the Morristown Green.

Every July 4, the Ford Mansion hosts a reading of the Declaration of Independence and a musket salute from the Jersey Blues - the third New Jersey Regiment. Far from a solemn event, the reading takes on a raucous tone, with the reenactors encouraging audience members to shout huzzahs and heckle King George during the airing of grievances. There's nothing quite like hearing the words of 1776 punctuated with a clearly 21st century "no he di-in't!" Everyone has a good time, and in the process, we all get a better view into an event and people we thought we'd already known so well.

What gets me every time is the accuracy of John Adams' vision of what the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the signing would be like. He told his wife Abigail that Independence Day "should be commemorated with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forever more." It's a day for fun, for celebrating what it means not to be oppressed. The pursuit of freedom.

And he was sure it would happen -- that America wouldn't be a flash in the pan. The following years would be challenging for him and for the country, but it's the belief that got him through it. And even with all of the crap that happens here -- a lot of it self-perpetuated -- that confidence is at the core of what America is. And it's what has to give us the courage to continue to hold ourselves and each other accountable to the vision.

2008-07-03T19:38:00.006-04:00

Didn't see it coming...

Every loyal Springsteen fan knows the line from Fourth of July Asbury Park (Sandy) -- 'The cops finally busted Madam Marie for telling fortunes better than they do..." Doubtless, a lot of the people who come from far and wide to make the Stone Pony pilgrimage and take some photos of her small Temple of Knowledge on the boardwalk. Hours were sporadic, but visitors were invited to call her; she was more than willing to come over and open up shop. I was tempted a few times, myself, but never did.

Marie Castello died Tuesday at the age of 93. According to an obituary published in the Asbury Park Press and distributed in an e-mail by the folks at Weird NJ, she hadn't been sick, just wasn't feeling well lately.

While she'd closed the Temple during the boardwalk's extreme low period in the '90s, she continued to predict good things for Asbury's comeback. After yet another set of would-be saviors went belly-up in '94, she told the Star-Ledger: "I most certainly knew the developers were going to come to a bad end, but I stayed here because this is the beautifullest boardwalk in the world. Sure I could have warned people in town, but who's gonna listen to me? But I'll tell you this: Asbury Park is gonna come back bigger, I mean much, much bigger than even before and it's gonna happen in the next three years. Trust me, I know these things."

Her timeline was more than a little off, but maybe she's right, and maybe the Castellos will be able to get their share. When I was down there last weekend, I noticed they'd hung a new red and white striped awning on her Temple of Knowledge. Apparently her great-granddaughter has taken up the family business. The joint venture partners who are renovating the boardwalk buildings lowered the Convention Hall flag to half staff, so you can be sure they won't be taking down her shack anytime soon.

Requiat in pace, Madam Marie.

2008-06-30T20:55:00.002-04:00

I stand corrected

AllAsburyPark.com notes that the Mayfair will return to the Asbury Park boardwalk this summer. No word on Taylor ham and cheese sandwiches, though hope springs eternal.

2008-06-29T11:58:00.011-04:00

Dang.

Summer is here with a vengeance, with the classic New Jersey humidity. Since I didn't want to chance a sunburn with my physical scheduled for Tuesday, yesterday's jaunt wasn't to Sandy Hook, but to Asbury Park.

It's the weekend before July 4, and they're still working on the boardwalk concession buildings. Some shops have already opened, though you could barely tell from the boardwalk because the doors were closed and no shop signs are up yet. They do look nice, though, with stucco facings and energy-efficient tinted glass doors.

Not surprisingly, the building that's the nearest to complete is the one closest to Convention Hall. Formerly home to the last operating Howard
Johnson's restaurant in New Jersey, the flying-saucer-shaped restaurant building attached to the rest of the pavilion has been open the whole time. It appears that its upper floor, once HoJo's banquet room, is soon to reopen as a chichi supper club. Other storefronts in the building show 'opening soon' signs that seem to attest that their new occupants will appeal to a similar demographic.

Amid all of this, there's still a forlorn "Place orders here" sign on the outside wall of the next building over, a remnant of the Mayfair hot dog/hamburger/soft ice cream stand that once operated there. The joint always kinda skeeved me out -- and that's saying something, coming from me -- but it left me wondering. Once all of these shops are open, where on the boardwalk is a girl gonna be able to find a decent tube steak, a slice or a Taylor ham and cheese? Mesclun salads and fruit smoothies are nice, don't get me wrong, but to me, they don't quite jive with the Jersey shore.

In an effort to bring Asbury out of its doldrums, are they going too far in the other direction? I'm not advocating the cheap and tawdry honky-tonk atmosphere of Seaside Heights, but let's at least make it possible for a family who actually lives in AP (not in the condos) to go to the beach for the day without having to take out a bank loan. Granted, I'm talking here without a lot of information to go on, but it's not looking good.

Then again, we'll see what the market will bear. The downturn in the real estate market could put a dent in condo sales in the new buildings, and maybe the promised influx of the demographic will come a lot more slowly than originally hoped for.

Just before I drove out of town, I stopped by one of the new developments, with a thought of looking at one of the model properties. Once I walked in the lobby and assessed the decor, though, I turned to leave, walking past two men who sounded as if they were involved in the building's operations and maintenance. A classic Jersey guy, one of them called after me, "Arent'cha even gonna look?"

I was going to ignore him, knowing half the reason he asked was to flirt (those guys always do), but stopped to tell him, "Not my style. I'm a hot dog and fries kinda gal."

Smiling, he replied, "Now, that's what I like!" He and his companion laughed, and I was on my way.

2008-06-21T21:24:00.005-04:00

R & R

Now that it's summertime, thoughts turn to vacation, even if you know your work schedule in August is going to be so busy you won't be able to leave the office a few hours early on a Friday afternoon.

The other day I was thinking: when you're a little kid, the cool places to go are theme parks where you can pretend to be an important adult. Maybe it's Cinderella or Batman, or even an Amazon steamboat captain, but in any event, you're not a kid. You're a grownup with a really cool job.

Then, when you get older, you've probably blown your shot at a cool job, so you want nothing more than to be a kid with no job at all. People pay good money to go to Club Getaway, which is just a giant summer camp that doesn't force you to play dodgeball. And think about it: what more is a spa but a nursery for giant newborns? They massage you and coo over you and wrap you up in cozy towels. All that's missing is being burped.

I think we should take it a few steps farther. Forget about being a kid again. Consider all the stuff you weren't allowed to do as a child that you swore that you would do once you grew up. That's what my theme park for adults would be all about. Here are just a few of the attractions:

You'll Put Your Eye Out Land -- for fans of A Christmas Story and everyone who was disappointed when lawn darts were taken off the market.
Run Up the Down Escalator -- the line would be really long for this one, and it wouldn't move very quickly. Bonus ride: sliding down the railing from the top.
Throw Pennies from the Balcony -- maybe you'll hit someone, maybe you won't, but you won't get yelled at.
And, of course, don't miss lunch at the Five Second Rule Food Court, where everything on the menu is dropped on the floor just moments before it reaches your table. Extra points for ordering the spaghetti.

Jump on the beds! Play in traffic! Slurp up at the public drinking fountain with your lips directly on the spout! It doesn't matter!

Needless to say, I'll have to find a somewhat less litigious country to build this park in, or the last attraction will be Get eaten by sharks.

2008-06-15T11:05:00.005-04:00

Getting rid of squirrels -- the Jersey way

For as long as I've known him, every summer my dad has planted enough salad vegetables to keep us and a few lucky neighbors in produce for much of the growing season. It's not unique to suburban New Jersey; in fact, many of us keep a small list of people we keep away from in August, just to avoid having to accept bushels of unwanted zucchini.

With gardens, of course, come pests. Dad has never been big on using chemicals or poisons in the garden, and over the years he's found his own ways of dealing with the random bugs, worms and small animals that come calling. One, though, is both persistent and perennial.

The organized crime syndicate of the suburban garden is the squirrel family. They hone their skills in the winter through attempts to steal from my mom's bird feeders. In the summer they escalate to eating the apples (only the ones on the trees, mind you, not the ones that have fallen to the ground). And of course, when they do get to their quarry, they take one bite of the fruit and move on to the next one. Needless to say, it's rather frustrating when you've been watching a particularly nice tomato grow to perfection, only to check the garden in the morning to find it's been sampled by a fluffy-tailed rodent.

Dad has tried many ways to address the problem. Chicken wire did nothing but make the garden look like some sort of detention camp. He set hav-a-heart traps and released the thief into the woods across the street, but it only returned (he swears it's the exact, same squirrel every time). He even went as far as to pull out his old slingshot, which the squirrel laughed at once he realized it would only knock him out for a bit. Dad's a really bright guy, totally sane, but the thought he put into some of the ideas left me wondering if there might be other projects that would benefit from his ingenuity more. Like solving the global warming problem, perhaps.

Then one day he told me he thought he had the solution to the one-squirrel crime wave. Yes, he was still using the trap, but he wasn't releasing the culprit across the street. He was bringing it to another, bigger county park about five miles away. That seemed like a sensible solution for a recidivist squirrel. But I started getting worried when he continued his account of the, uh, disposal.

"I put him and the trap into the trunk," Dad explained, sounding a little like Paulie Walnuts explaining how he and Chrissy got the Russian to the Pine Barrens. "Then I drove around for a bit before I headed to the park, so he'd get disoriented." Between that, the distance and the fact that the park is on the other side of a very busy highway, Dad was reasonably confident that the squirrel wouldn't come back. In fact, I think he even suggested that when the squirrel's family noticed he'd disappeared, they'd think twice about coming into the garden. Little would they know that the capo-di-capo of the Family was living in witness protection.

I guess I should have been relieved it only went that far. My parents do have 'connected' neighbors, and while they aren't the type to ask for favors, who knows what could have happened in exchange for some zucchini flowers and basil.

All I can say is, God forbid a deer gets in the yard.

2008-06-01T20:04:00.012-04:00

It's coming along ....

Another beautiful summery day, another trip to Asbury Park. I'd thought it would be a little too cool to hit the beach at Sandy Hook, so I figured I could head on down to the boardwalk if the Parkway traffic wasn't onerous.

I really should have packed for the beach. By the time I got down there, it was 80 degrees, beautiful sunshine, perfect for setting a towel on the sand and digging into a good book. There was lots of foot traffic on the boardwalk and a lot of cars parked nearby; I didn't realize it, but there was a big Gay Pride celebration going on a couple of blocks inland, so lots of people were coming in for that, too. On the boardwalk, one of the pavilions is nearly fully renovated, with signs saying the stores will open in a few weeks.

There's always a surprise for me when I head down there, and this time it was the Carousel Room of the Casino. Long boarded up, its intricate windows protected, it was always surrounded by a fence far enough away to allow me to get a decent photo. The photo to the left gives you an idea of the distance I had to contend with, even on my last visit just a few weeks ago. I could have gotten physically closer, but not by much, and my view would have been obstructed by chain link fencing.

This time, the temporary fencing was close enough to the building that I could walk right up. I've always liked the Medusa-like brass face medallions above the doorways, and now was my chance to get a closer look. The whole exterior is covered in intricate pressed metal designs -- seahorses, spiderwebs on the cornices.

As I walked around from the street-side toward a body of water on the other side, I noticed that the fencing stopped. I could walk right in if I wanted to.

For a moment, I hesitated, but then a cyclist zoomed past me and wheeled right in. Hey, I said, if he can do it, so can I. Nothing was stopping either of us -- no warning signs, no closed gates, no sawhorses, no alarms.

The cyclist told me that the room had been open like that since Friday, and that the plan was that there'd eventually be a food court of some type there. No carousel, I guess. That's a shame. Looking up at the vaulted circular ceiling, I could imagine old, Edison-style incandescent lightbulbs ringing the rafters, gaily illuminating the space, the song of a calliope livening up the room.

In any case, I was surprised to find that the creepy feeing I had had -- and sometimes still have -- when entering the Casino was entirely absent when I walked into the Carousel Room. Maybe it was the openness of light and air streaming in. Or maybe it was that so much of it was new -- the ceiling, the poured-concrete floor, a plaster wall not far away. In any case, it felt hopeful rather than eerie.

Later I found that there's to be an art show there next Saturday, as part of the monthly First Night downtown. It'll be the first real life there in a long time; the last use was as a flea market. I guess one can hope.

2008-05-26T12:21:00.006-04:00

Insult to injury

In his most recent weekly radio address, President George Bush encouraged Americans to mark Memorial Day with a patriotic gesture, like placing a flag at a veteran's grave. When he says things like that, I suspect he envisions some sort of 1940's Hollywood scene of small boys in Cub Scout uniforms reverently walking from gravestone to gravestone, saluting each fallen warrior with tiny hands at brows.

"Honor a vet. Plant a flag."

I wonder how that makes our Iraq veterans feel. Due to advances in battlefield medical practices, troops hurt in the Gulf are coming home after suffering severe injuries that would have put them in caskets in a war even just a few years ago. Many suffer debilitating brain damage or loss of limbs. In many cases they come home to hospitals that would be deplorable even in a war zone. We've all heard the stories about conditions at Walter Reed, supposedly among the best of all military hospitals. And don't get me started about the lack of protective equipment that landed so many of these injured in the hospital to begin with. I suppose the part of Bush's radio address that exhorted people to hold bake sales for body armor was edited out when saner heads prevailed.

Seems to me that honoring veterans -- standing behind our troops -- starts with taking care of them. Show them the same degree of loyalty they show their country. You put them in harm's way, you protect them. If they get hurt, you do your damnedest to fix them. You live up to your end of the bargain.

I find it frankly insulting that when these men and women are basically asked to be targets, and when they're cycled in and out for multiple tours of duty, our president thinks that a flag or a pat on the back is thanks enough for their bravery. For putting their lives on hold and leaving their families. And for sustaining injures that change their lives forever.

Is Bush the only one who thinks it's enough? I'd like to hope so. Nonetheless, it's sad to think that the one person who does... is the one who's in charge.

2008-05-25T08:11:00.003-04:00

Memorial Day, Small Town America...

I live so close to New York City, and in such a densely-populated area, that I tend to forget that I live in a fairly small town -- less than 25,000 people total. It's been around since the Revolution in one form or another, and there's a great deal of pride in community.

Days like tomorrow, it really comes out. The township Memorial Day parade gives every community organization the chance to assemble and show its pride in our country and our town. My first year living here, I went in a show of patriotism, expecting to see the high school marching band, the scouts, a veteran as grand marshall, maybe a jeep or two, and I wasn't disappointed. However, I wasn't expecting to see many of the others that assembled and marched, like:

The Red Hat Society
Every type of township vehicle (DPW front-end loader, anyone?)
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (who knew?)
The local Elks 'Hogs' motorcycle group, roaring through suburbia
Residents of the local seniors housing in their air conditioned minibus, waving from behind tinted windows

Everybody has their chance to march through the streets, albeit only briefly through downtown (still haven't figured that one out, either), and down tree-lined residential neighborhoods. And they all get the same enthusiastic greeting from the folks along the parade route.

I don't know if there's a conscious effort to be so inclusive. I can only hope that someone in the township recreation department has a private smile as he or she grants permission for some of these groups to march. I like to think that there's someone there who enjoys the slight, very slight degree of weirdness it lends the town.

And I'd like to hope it's not the same person who organizes the pumpkin drop after the annual Halloween parade. There's no better use of one's tax dollars than parking a fire department ladder truck in the middle of town to hurl a huge orange gourd from 30 feet to the pavement below. And for some odd reason, the kids love to run to grab the big pieces.

Gotta love living in a town that has stuff like that. And before I moved here, I never knew this kind of benign weirdness was lurking.

2008-05-24T10:38:00.002-04:00

Baiting the hook

Back on the topic of random contemplation, I'm reminded of a CEO I once knew. As his communication support, I accompanied him to work locations for breakfasts with small groups of employees, usually blue collar workers and mostly men. My job was to listen quietly and record any questions or issues an employee might have that warranted some research, so we could get back to him.

An understated and shy man, the CEO didn't mix with others easily. Combined with the usual perception about executives being approachable, his reticence made the atmosphere a little uncomfortable at the start. Understanding that, he asked each of the participants to share a little information about himself -- job, length of service, hobbies.

Jim, the CEO, would get the ball rolling by talking about his career and sharing a little about his family and hobbies. He always got a favorable reaction when he mentioned his summer house in the Maine woods, where he'd do some woodworking and puttering around.

I got to know the stories very well after a while. My favorite was his fishing story, where he'd row out to the middle of Sebago Lake with rod and reel for a few hours. He'd been doing it for years without ever catching a fish, mostly because he never baited the hook. He used the time to think, bringing the fishing gear only so that the neighbors wouldn't wonder why he was on the lake, doing nothing. Mainers, it seems, are a practical lot and aren't big on meditation.

So, every time I'd accompany Jim to an employee breakfast, I'd hear the story, wait for the punch line and chuckle along with the rest of the folks. One day he stopped in mid-story, looked at me and said, "you know, you've heard me tell this story many times, and I always say I never catch anything. Last weekend I caught a fish!" Apparently that's what happens when you put a nightcrawler on the hook.

It's funny -- that story has been popping up in my mind a lot lately. How so many people put the line of intention out there but don't bait the hook with the energy it takes to get what they really want. Sometimes if you do the work to get what you're looking for, you still don't get it -- often a crushing blow. Maybe the act of not working for it is a weird way of guaranteeing you always have the hope of getting what you want. While you still don't get it, at least you don't have to address the disappointment.

Or maybe you just need to meditate on it ... is it what you really want? ... before you work to get it. You could spend your whole life paralyzed by that. That's probably even worse than trying and not getting it. I've spent a lot of time in that position lately, and I'm sensing that maybe I just need to get off my ass. Either make something happen, or resign myself to being vaguely dissatisfied (or just plain annoyed) for the rest of my life.

You have to admit: making a conscious choice is leagues better than just letting things transpire. And maybe for once I'll work to get something, rather than feeling I'm fated to get only whatever is handed to me.

I just have to figure out what it is I want.

2008-05-20T23:13:00.003-04:00

Isabella Rossellini, when asked in the New York Times Magazine if she was married, said, "No. I have been married twice, I have two children and I am now single. I don't mind it. Some people say, 'You have to date. It's good for you.' But it's not good for me if I don't like the men."

2008-05-17T20:15:00.002-04:00

Third Saturday in May

The first few really nice Saturdays of spring tend to bring out the best in people. Today I took a wander through lower Manhattan, taking the PATH to the World Trade Center and then going where the spirit took me. Just warm enough, and nicely sunny, it was a great day to take a walk, and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of nice encounters I had.

Started by dropping into the shop of my new favorite costume jewelry designer, Michal Golan. Great vintagey-looking stuff, and hard to limit myself to just two pair of earrings.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after that, except find some interesting subjects for photography. I've studied maps of Manhattan many times and often wonder about those little streets on the East River side. Some of them have been there since the days of the Dutch ... others a little more recent, but not by much. A few, in fact, are called 'slips,' perhaps like a boat slip. Anyway, as I approached Old Slip, I found the New York City Police Museum, housed in the old Precinct One building.

The 1939 WPA Guide to New York City describes the First Precinct Police Station as "a grim, solid structure reminiscent of a fortified Florentine Renaissance palazzo." While relatively small, it's an impressive edifice, and as I stopped to admire it, a gentleman introduced himself and explained the history of the place. Unlike me, the unofficial Asbury Park history teacher, this man had a connection to the museum. He welcomed me in, gave me a quick review of the contents and sent me off to take a look. Interesting place to check out if you have an hour or so, especially if you've exhausted the supply of the usual New York tourist destinations.

Seemed that after that, I kept running into friendly people who chatted me up just for the sake of chatting. And while I ran into a lot of tourists, they weren't the friendly ones. The amity came from food delivery people, a woman walking her dog (and her child who wouldn't allow a leash), your standard passers by -- so many folks who had no reason to say word one to me.

Maybe it shouldn't seem so remarkable that people should take a few moments to be pleasant to each other rather than just walking on by, but it is. New York has the classic rap for being unfriendly and downright rude, which has never been entirely true. That said, I was struck by just how friendly it actually was today.

I don't know. Maybe it was the weather; maybe it was me. Maybe it was the karma I was putting out there. Maybe you find what you're looking to get. Whatever the answer, it was a nice experience.

2008-05-10T21:29:00.012-04:00

Ask her -- she looks like she knows.

Sometimes, purely by chance, you get a glimpse into what, maybe, you should be doing with your life.

I visited the Asbury Park boardwalk today to see how things are going on the renovation of the pavilions and, of course, the Casino. Though the day was overcast, temperatures were in the mid 60's and there were plenty of people walking around. I got some cool shots of the Casino entrance in a large puddle on the walkway floor ... thanks to a photographer who directed my eyes downward by focusing his camera to the ground as I was striding through.

Walking out and onto the boardwalk, I was stopped by an older couple and a young woman who asked me if I knew anything about the building. New Hampshire natives, their range of knowledge of the city was defined by Bruce Springsteen and the Stone Pony.

Oh, boy, did they stop the right person. I gave them the Readers Digest version of the past, present and future of the Casino and the rest of the boardwalk. Fortunately the architect's rendering was posted right behind us so I could show them the half of the building that had been torn down, beyond repair. On their asking, I gave them a few nuggets of information on Ocean Grove's Methodist camp meeting, too. I also mentioned the shops and restaurants on Cookman Avenue -- nice little plug for my friends over there. (And why didn't I point them to my photos??? Grrr... )

We chatted amiably for a few minutes and closed the conversation exchanging thanks. They appreciated the time I gave them, but in my mind, they'd given me the favor of sharing my arcane New Jersey knowledge. It's not often that I have such a receptive audience. I had a goofy smile on my face halfway to Convention Hall.

Now, one would ask, why don't I do this for a living? For a minute I mapped out some potential ways to promote my touring skills, but then I got distracted. The bigger reasons of why not are fodder for about six months of therapy that I haven't focused on. Better to be unhappy at leisure, than work to be content.

Nonetheless, this know-it-all stuff has to come in handy eventually.

2008-05-07T20:46:00.000-04:00

2008-05-04T18:50:00.000-04:00

Is she kidding? (Please tell me she's kidding.)

So, the latest New Jersey political circus is the three-ring divorce suit between former governor and self-proclaimed gay American Jim McGreevey and his estranged wife, Dina Matos.

For the record, I was shocked by his proclamation four years ago. I'd always thought he was Canadian. In all seriousness, anyone who'd had any view into the state's political community knew it all along. Nobody really cared, and certainly few thought it was reason to resign. We all knew that it was more about the shady political dealings of his friends, and that they were coming dangerously close to his doorstep. And we didn't like him because he had a sense of entitlement that led him to honestly believe that, for example, he was right for spending state money on personal things like having his parents accompany him on an official/sightseeing tour of Ireland.

Apparently Dina got the entitlement in the custody battle. She's suing him for upwards of $10,000 or more per month in alimony and child support, stating that she wanted to maintain the lifestyle of a first lady, which he'd taken away from her by resigning and maintaining a private life with a wealthy gentleman friend. They both claim to be broke, though both Jim and Dina wrote tell-all books and did high-profile promotional tours, visiting Oprah, Jon Stewart and Larry King, among others.

This whole thing smells weird. I understand she's angry, though I find it incredulous that she could have been the only person in New Jersey who didn't know he was gay. I understand why she wants to put the screws to him. But for five figures a month?

She justifies the sum by stating it cost her that much to maintain the first lady image when Jimbo was governor. Apparently she did so many public appearances that she'd have to change her outfit three times a day as not to be seen in the same clothes twice. As if there is so much media interest in New Jersey's first lady that anyone would notice. And as if there's so much interest in her as a private citizen that she has to uphold that image. Hey, lady -- Talbots makes good quality, classically-styled clothes. Keep wearing the ones you have.

Maybe she's suing the wrong party. I guess we should all be happy she's not looking to get a state salary as official clothes horse. Then again, maybe more of us should have gone out to buy those books, instead of surreptitiously reading them at Barnes & Noble and putting them back on the shelf. Perhpas if they'd made a little more money there, they wouldn't be bothering us with all this silliness.

2008-04-26T07:55:00.004-04:00

Funny what you remember ...

When I was a little kid my family went to Montreal on summer vacation. My parents always seemed to find places that nobody in my school had gone to or heard of. Then again, if it wasn't Florida or the Jersey Shore, chances were that the place was unknown to my classmates.

When we went to Montreal, we went to Man and His World, and the amusement park next door, La Ronde. Both were leftovers from Expo 67, the 1967 World's Fair. Like virtually every other world's fair, this one had had exhibits and pavilions for various countries and industries: the United States building was a big Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome. There was even a model Habitat 67, an experiment in economical apartment living. Several of the buildings stayed open after the fair closed, thus becoming part of Man and His World.

It was pretty cool for us as kids and as Americans. Given that this was during the Cold War, it was fascinating to go into the USSR pavilion and see actual Russian stuff without all of the anti-Communist propaganda. I can recall getting a couple of souvenir wooden toys there, including a carved bear on a platform that appeared to wash his hands when you swung the attached ball beneath the platform. It had Cyrillic lettering on the bottom, and I remember that my mom was concerned that we'd be stopped at the border and questioned about it. Needless to say, we didn't stop by the Cuba pavilion for cigars, either. There's a great site here with information and photos of most, if not all of the attractions.

As much as I remember the exhibits and the incredibly fun rides and playground, what still sticks in my mind is the deserted part of the park. While the operators had continued to run most of the place as a going concern after the fair closed, several of the buildings were shuttered, and a whole area of concessions, restaurants and so forth was closed up behind fences. For the most part, it wasn't visible at ground level, but you got an eyeful if you used the minirail or gondola ride to get from one end of the park to the other. I can remember fanciful buildings -- something very Seussian in nature, very futuristic.

I don't know if the rides went over the closed area during the day, but I can vividly remember gliding over it at night. The area was darkened but for a few safety lights, and even at the age of seven or eight, I was fascinated by the idea of this formerly vibrant and even festive-looking area being shut down. Even as that young child, I felt the sense of having missed something by not being there when it was open. What was it like? While we had fun, it must have been delirium when everything was operational.

Man and His World eventually closed in the mid '70s, and LaRonde is still open as a Six Flags amusement park. The islands on which the Expo took place are now a public park, and at least some of the buildings were removed to the countries they'd represented. The futuristic apartment complex is still open, and a much desired place to live in Montreal.

And as I did a little research to get information for this post, I was once again hit by how amazing the passage of time is. Thinking about that young child who imagined the world that had been there that she missed, I'm struck by the fact that that part of me hasn't changed much. Likewise, I know she would have found it so cool that more than 30 years later, she'd be able to summon up a bunch of stuff about it on a screen sitting in her living room, just by typing a few words into a box.

Sometimes when I remember places like Man and His World, I consider going back to see what's there now. Somehow I think it's better just to check it out on the web. Less chance for disappointment.

2008-04-21T12:29:00.004-04:00

If cats get communion, what's the sacrament?

With the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to New York, we've been treated to a wealth of data about him and his pre-election life, including some of his hobbies, likes and dislikes.

As it turns out, the Pope is an animal lover with a specific fondness for cats. While in his previous Vatican job, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cared for the cats in his neighborhood, who often walked him to work in the morning. In fact, following his election to popehood, his housekeeper worried about who would take care of the kitties after he moved to the papal apartment.

Unfortunately, even if you take the travel and time-consuming nature of his job out of the equation, the Pope can't have cats now. Interestingly enough, he suffers the same restrictions of so many other apartment dwellers: no pets allowed. Forget about the strays in the courtyard; he couldn't bring his two indoor cats with him, either.

What's that all about? I mean, he's the Pope. Doesn't he have the right to change the rules? I sincerely doubt that God put a 'no cats' clause in the lease. And what happens if he breaks the rule? Does he get kicked out of papal housing? Does he get fired?

You have to wonder if maybe this whole pet restriction thing has played into papal elections in the past. There's been a great deal of conjecture over the secret discussions that take place, so the potential is there. Imagine it: the College of Cardinals takes the vote and informs the winner that he was selected by his peers to get the big job with the big hat. And the lucky cardinal turns it down when he finds out he can't take Fluffy and Purr Purr with him. Who knows? Maybe that's what it would take to get the rule changed.

I have to believe this rule is a fairly recent phenomenon. Turns out that Pope Paul VI was so crazy about his cat that he once dressed the feline in Cardinals' clothes. Perhaps Felix Cardinal Catus got defrocked after missing the litterbox once too often, or for breaking the rules of celibacy. One bad apple spoils it for the whole barrel.

2008-04-11T21:03:00.004-04:00

You've got to be kidding

In the movie High Fidelity, John Cusack, as the music snob/record store owner Rob Gordon states, "It's what you like, not what you are like. Books, records, films, these things matter. Call me shallow, it's the fuckin' truth."

I have to admit it -- I agree. I've shut down matches on eHarmony who claim the last book they read and enjoyed was The daVinci Code, just as I have turned men down who think 'alot' is one word that means 'many.' In fact, several (but not 'alot') of them have been offenders on both fronts, which makes it even easier. I've been called a snob for it, but, to quote, "these things matter."

I fear I've been judged similarly, but perhaps more benignly. Having learned that I majored in English, my neighbor, a retired English professor, regularly invites me to plays I have no interest in, and I'm too ashamed to admit that I don't really like Shakespeare all that much. She's a very nice person, and I'm sure she wouldn't think less of me for my tastes, though she did lament once that one of our otherwise intelligent neighbors preferred Harlequin romances to literature. And despite her kindness, when she called to see if she could borrow a copy of George Eliot's Middlemarch, I couldn't tell her I'd never read it -- nor wanted to.

The funny thing is that no matter how well versed any of us are, we're all subject to others' snobbery. While one person feels that anyone who reads and understands Ayn Rand is a genius, another may think the person is a poseur.

Sometimes it's almost laughable, like a noted tome sitting on a bedside table, never read. Is it meant to be some sort of turn on? 'Wow, this guy's deep.' I thought we were supposed to have gotten past this in college.

And why does it seem that the most indecipherable foreign film gets five stars in Time Out New York while something like Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle gets panned? All of that got thrown out the door for me in early adulthood, when one of the biggest snobs I've ever worked with insisted that I had to see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure because it was her favorite movie.

I could never figure out the pecking order. I still snicker when I hear the Smiths on the radio, recalling the "Morrissey is God" grafitti in the bathroom stalls at Douglass College. Silly girls, Clapton is God. Get it straight. But who trumps whom -- a guy who learned how to play guitar from Buddy Guy, or some British dude whose songs all sound the same?

This differs from the quirkiness I brought up in a post last year, but it has a similar impact when used as criteria for who you let into your life. Some of us are just more selective than others, or maybe we just have odd ways of being selective.

Then again, I guess the real test is what you do when you find out a longtime friend never actually read whatever it is that you consider to be a requirement of everyone you have in your life. Do you ditch them?

Man, that would be shallow.

2008-04-04T22:47:00.003-04:00

Forty years

Today is the 40th anniversary of the day Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, and as expected, there were scores of remembrances, rallies, speeches and news reports to commemorate the civil rights leader's life and work.

What's always struck me about remembrances of Dr. King -- his birthdate, specifically -- is the tendency to categorize them as 'black' or 'African American' events. Yes, he did tremendous good for the black community, that's undeniable. But I think that restricting our thoughts to what he did for one part of the population is rather limiting.

It occurs to me that when inequities are brought to light and corrected, we all benefit. Well, except for the people who perpetuate the discrimination. It's often been said that society wins when smart, caring and talented people are given their just opportunity to contribute regardless of background or ethnicity. Yes, a woman or a black man or Asian or whoever should be able to be president just as a white man can. However, I'm thinking much more locally -- the ordinary people in our lives.

I'm just glad to have the opportunity to know people and like or dislike them on the basis of who they are as individuals, and not let irrelevant factors get in the way. I think about the people I've met and built relationships with that I might never have met if we lived in a world that had never had people like Dr. King. Those folks aren't necessarily doctors or teachers or other authority figures. They're friends, classmates, coworkers, "ordinary" people who have made a difference somehow in my life. Some of them have been people I didn't necessarily like, but then I've found that often you learn the most from the people you like the least.

Our lives become enriched when we get to know people different from us. It's that simple. Our eyes get opened a little farther, and hopefully we can learn from what makes us different and see what we have in common. And maybe we can have some fun and enjoy each other's company. How about that?

2008-04-02T22:33:00.006-04:00

With fans like these...

As most people in New Jersey know, James Gandolfini of The Sopranos fame is a proud alumnus of Rutgers University. In fact, his buddy Mario Batali used to be a line cook at one of my favorite lunch places in New Brunswick, Stuff Yer Face. I still have this weird fantasy of going to Babbo and asking for an Emily Boli and a Molson on tap.

Anyway, I found this poster on a great blog called Where is the Line Between North & South Jersey?

Click on the image and take a look at what it actually says. Needless to say, Don Imus would think twice...

2008-03-31T20:18:00.003-04:00

In Memorium

I was saddened today to hear of the death of Dith Pran, the New York Times photojournalist whose escape from his native Cambodia was portrayed in the movie The Killing Fields. He was 65 and suffered from pancreatic cancer.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dith a few years ago, when he was reporting on an open house at the Edison Labs in West Orange. His kindness and the lightness of his presence struck me, especially given the sheer horror of inhumanity he'd witnessed and been victim to during the Khmer occupation of Cambodia. He had every reason to be angry and bitter, but he just didn't seem to be the type to waste his energy on resentment.

Apparently that was just the way he lived life. In an obituary today, his friend and fellow journalist Sidney Schanberg said, "His gift was his ability to handle extreme situations and never lose his balance. He didn't let horror change him. He kept looking for the good in people." And he spent much of his free time working to convince people not to let the horrors happen to anyone else, ever again. (The Times ran an informative obit in today's paper, which you can read here.)

It's funny - for some reason he came to mind the other day, and I recalled that he'd mentioned we might run into each other again sometime, maybe in the park near my home, where he liked to take pictures. I wish we had.

May he rest peacefully.

2008-03-27T20:47:00.007-04:00

ce n'est pas une maison de deux familles

Somewhere in downtown New York. I wish I could remember where. Broadway, I think?

Ya gotta wonder what happened here. Product of a family dispute? A bad divorce settlement?

Or perhaps Rene Magritte is having some fun with us.

2008-03-25T18:59:00.009-04:00

Peep? Peep?

Okay - I'll admit it. I'm a fan of Marshmallow Peeps. You know -- those marshmallow treats shaped like little chicks. Well, not eating them -- they're too sugary. But the concept of them.

Of course, when I was a kid, they were one of the staples in the Easter basket, along with the jelly beans and foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. Inevitably, the plastic Easter basket grass would become stuck to the Peeps scar where they'd been separated and raw marshmallow remained. And it goes without saying that they were stale five minutes after the Easter bunny left them.

At that time, naturally, there were only yellow Peeps (as it should be). With line extensions, Peeps are now a multitude of spring colors that honorable chicks would never choose for themselves. A few years ago, Target had the exclusive on red Peeps. And now, Peeps products are available nearly year round. You can find Valentine's hearts and Christmas trees, gingerbread men and snowmen. There are now even Peeps cats and ghosts for Halloween. Imagine that in your treat bag.

Fueled perhaps by nostalgia, the internet is rife with websites with alternative uses for Peeps. Some are purely food related. My mom, not the most whimsical person in the world, surprised us a few years ago by using Peeps as marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes for Easter.

Others are more artistic -- like the "Peeps show" strip club. Yet more are focused on making a statement -- like the Peeps Stations of the Cross, which I can only imagine was a protest against the commercialization of the holiest day on the Christian calendar. (Easter bunny: harmless childhood icon, or godless infidel?)

A few years ago, I decided to use Peeps to make a statement about the dangers of nuclear proliferation. Here's a small part of the photo montage:

(Warning: children and those with weak hearts should go no further)

Before the carnage.

Just a brief exposure can be extremely deleterious (microwave: one minute on high)

The aftermath.

A sad commentary on the power of atomic energy, perhaps, but also yummy when combined with chocolate-covered graham crackers.

2008-03-11T21:03:00.009-04:00

Kewl!

So after all this time of photographing the remnants of Asbury Park past, I've been afforded the opportunity of sharing my stuff with the public. My fellow blogger at Under The Sun Furnishings is displaying a couple of my Casino photos along with one from Convention Hall and another of the departed "This too shall pass" wall. Check 'em out if you're in the neighborhood. (Support your local artist, and all that.) Pretty cool stuff, if I do say so myself.

Was down there Saturday, in the wind and rain. What a trip. Stopped by the boardwalk first, to find it was both spooky and active. Workers were busily continuing the demolition work on the concession buildings, yet the fog and rain made the entire scene eerie. You literally couldn't see more than about 20 feet beyond. About equidistant from the Casino and Convention Hall, I jumped out of the car to see if I could get some photos from the boardwalk. Couldn't see either building, and the beach beyond the railing was a blanket of fog. I could just barely hear the ocean roar above the wind and rain. Scary stuff. Would have been really cool to get some pics of the Casino in that weather, but I was a little afraid for my camera and even more freaked about the fog inside the building. Spoooooky!

On a trip up Asbury Ave, I found the Metropolitan torn down in earnest. All that stood at that point was the newer, Howard Johnson-looking addition and a fireplace from the original part. Through the chain link fence, and especially in the driving rain, the scene looked like Dresden after the bombing. I mean, that day, the world outside looked like one of those black and white war documentaries. I half expected to see some bombed-out refugees picking through the rubble. If my car weren't red, I'd have been convinced I'd stepped into 1942.

I stopped the car next to the fence and put on the hazard blinkers so I could jump out for a few snaps, and as I did, I saw an older gentleman across the street in his car. He made some random comment about these crazy girls taking pictures of wrecks, or something like that. Hey, but the photos look like Dresden after the bombing! Well, with a '60's era high rise in the background. In any case, you've gotta get it while you can. Tomorrow it won't be there. Literally.

2008-03-06T17:49:00.007-05:00

More open doors ...

With so many distractions this week, I never did get back to the rest of last Sunday.

Took the long way home from Asbury Park, up the coast to Sandy Hook. The last time I was there, you'll recall, I saw a host of open doors, open gates, entries to places I wasn't supposed to go. This time, when I drove down Officers' Row, all of the front doors were secured. However, when I drove on the service road behind the homes, I saw a young couple coming down the stairs from the back entrance of one of the houses. I'd have thought they were just walking down from looking through the window in the door, but the young man was clearly pulling the door shut behind him.

Now here's a possibility, I thought. The couple looked a little surprised, and maybe worried, that someone had seen them leaving the house, so I kept driving slowly, pulling into the driveway of the house two doors down. I made a point to look as if I was interested only in looking at the disintegrating curtains in the windows of the next house over. Then I slowly walked over to the open door house.

To me, the appeal of the closed houses is more about the mystery of the lives that inhabited them than actually seeing the construction or the layout. One of the houses has already been turned into a museum, so I know what the first and second floors look like. I wonder more about the scraps of things people forgot to take with them when they moved out, why they forgot to take the curtains down, and about the faces that peered back at themselves in those bathroom mirrors.

I really have to get over the creepies I feel every time I go someplace old and decayed. They were starting to come on even as I was looking into the bathroom window of the next-door house, imagining that I'd suddenly see a face looking out of the medicine cabinet mirror. Walking up the back stairs of the open house, the pit of my stomach ground just as it did when I skydived. What am I walking into?

Peering in through the back door window, I saw falling-down peeling paint, cellar door ajar and the hint of a really bad yellow vinyl-covered stool. From a visit to the museum house, I knew the kitchen was to the right. I noticed that the door was unlatched, and when I pushed it a little, it cracked open.

I still couldn't go in. The door opened easily, but I couldn't take that first step in. Instead, I gently pulled the knob toward me to close the door. It still wouldn't fully nest back into the door jamb, having expanded in the salt air. Maybe it was trying to make me think twice about passing up the opportunity. Who knows.

2008-03-04T19:49:00.003-05:00

Four bucks a pound, Tony: Asbury Park, part three

Lots of stories came out of this visit to New Jersey's least-used boardwalk.

On the drive down on Sunday, I considered grabbing some lunch at the boardwalk restaurant right next to the Casino. Last time I was there, the place was basically empty, and the menu looked decent, but I'd stopped at the Windmill for a hot dog on the way down. Imagine my surprise this time to find that not only was the restaurant gone, so was most of the building. I didn't expect that, nor had I heard it was in the plans. A similar concession building a little farther down is in the process of being torn down, too.

If you've watched The Sopranos, you know the ones I mean. They're squat, basically nondescript brick buildings with wide windows facing the boardwalk. Some used to have second floor balconies that jutted over the entryways to the stores. In fact, one of those balconies featured large in one of Tony's dreams, where Sal 'Big Pussy' Bompensiero appeared as a talking fish packed in ice along with other fishes that were, uh, sleeping. The balconies were pulled down a few years ago, along with a footbridge that traversed the boardwalk. In any case, it kinda sucks that the buildings are being demolished. They're unremarkable by architectural standards, but at least there were some shopkeepers making a go of it. They build things quickly these days, but I doubt they'll get new buildings up in time for the start of the season at the end of May. Where will one get a hot dog or a slice of pizza?

Looking at the developer's website, it appears they're big builders of those higher-end malls you see at tourist destinations. Banana Republic and its brethren, as if I have to go down the shore for that. I hope it doesn't come to pass that way. I'd rather have a ton of cutesy-named boutiques than a monster Gap (I admit I shop there, but they're so ubiquitous that if there's a mall in Hell, you know there's gotta be a Gap in it).

In any case, work continues at a snail's pace at the Casino. There's a new green metal roof on the Carousel House; it looks so authentic that it took me a good minute to notice it was new. Inside the Casino, my camera finally cooperated to give me a shot of the House interior, still far from finished, but coming along. The heavy construction equipment is gone, so maybe they're getting ready for the finer work.

2008-03-03T19:12:00.004-05:00

Shellpile Under the Sun .... Asbury Park, part two

Yesterday I had the rather pleasing experience of meeting a fellow blogger who'd posted a quick note on one of my other Asbury Park posts. The proprietor of Under the Sun Furnishings had left a quick hello with a suggestion to visit, and given that I was in town, I stopped by.

Turned out her place is in the Shoppes at the Arcade on Cookman Avenue, right across from Flying Saucers, the place where I found the Two Guys memorabilia back in December. There's some pretty neat stuff in that building, if you're into unique and/or vintage items. Good vibe.

I found a cool reproduction print of one of those vintage "Greetings from Asbury Park" postcards, which will go very nicely with some of the black and white prints I've done of boardwalk architecture. Pretty soon I'm going to need to rethink my hangings -- my 'gallery' hallway is pretty much covered now.

In any case, how cool is it to meet a fellow blogger? I have to admit I felt a little weird asking, "hey, did you post a comment on my blog? I'm Shellpile!" Kinda reminded me of my Uncle Floyd Show-watching days in high school, when someone would stop me in the hall to ask if I was the one who kept getting pictures on the wall (long story for another time). I don't advertise this site, beyond a few friends and acquaintances, so whenever someone stumbles on it and admits to it, I'm relieved if they're normal. Thankfully, it was the case this time.

2008-03-02T17:53:00.009-05:00

Kitty's back in town... (ooh, what can I do?)

Today's Asbury Park trip had more than the usual purpose. First, there was a cat show to check out at the Convention Center. Second, I wanted to stop by a shop whose proprietor had left a comment on one of my AP posts. Given how friendly the shop owners tend to be in town, I figured I'd check it out.

The cat show was what cat shows usually are: weird. As a rule, I find the concept of breeding to be a bit much, given how many really great strays there are out there, prime for adoption. That's not to say that I don't appreciate a great feline, regardless of pedigree, and I know several very nice people who have purebred companions. But hey, if you want to pay $700 for a cat, I know plenty of shelters that would be happy to oblige you.

To their credit, the show organizers held a pet food drive, had some adoptable strays and held a non-breed-specific household cat competition. And, of course, there were the crazy cat ladies. 'Nuff said. I stayed about 90 minutes, enjoying the kitties.

(At this point I should say something about the vintage Convention Center, but that's for another time.)

As I headed south on the boardwalk, I saw a sign for the AP Boardwalk Rockin' Cats. Now, I've seen a stray or two there on my visits, and there's a Cat Crossing sign across the street from the old Howard Johnson's restaurant, but I didn't know they had organized friends. I didn't realize there were so many as to warrant a fan club of protectors.

The development company that's building condos and renovating the Casino apparently has a soft heart. They've made some space available to the organization at their offices on the boardwalk about a half block from the sign. I expected that their showroom might have a couple of crates, kind of like the adoption centers at PetSmart, and as I neared their building, I saw about a dozen people standing in the middle of the boardwalk, looking up to the second floor.

Looking back down at us: a host of cats, orange, black, white, brown, striped. I guess that's where they're living while they wait for homes. You'll see them in the picture above, if you study it carefully. (Click on it to enlarge for a better view.)

I'll tell you: I'm tempted, though it would break my 'one lap, one cat' rule. How cool would it be to have an orange cat named Sandy? Or a mackerel tabby named Madam Marie? Or maybe a tortoiseshell called Rosalita ("... jump a little lighter..."). Stay tuned.

2008-02-25T20:14:00.008-05:00

The romance of flight

For some cockeyed reason, I still enjoy flying. Even when I'm crammed in like a sardine on one of those huge buses with wings, the little kid in me can't help but grin when I look down from the skies and see the earth in miniature. Taxi-ing around the tarmac, I'm drawn to the most mundane inner workings of a busy airport. I wonder whether those guys who guide the planes to the jetways get a secret thrill at edging huge aircraft into their parking spots just minutes after they've crossed the continent or the Atlantic.

That's not to say I enjoy the process of getting to the plane, or dealing with nasty people or any of that. I love the concept of flight, and the romance of it. When I can block out the garbage, I can mentally drift away to a time and place when air travel was still kind of exotic and people wore nice clothes to get on the plane. Don't get me started about prop planes -- make me climb up into the cabin on a drop-down staircase, and I know I'm itching for an adventure.

Despite myself, I get nostalgic at some of the older airports. Lindbergh Field (a.k.a. SAN, San Diego) looks nothing like its past but was the home field, of sorts, to the Spirit of St. Louis. The couple of times I flew into Washington National (DCA, now Reagan) I half expected to see Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Smith, striding purposefully down the corridor.

Now, Newark (EWR): that was a glamorous airport. Once the East Coast terminus of the Air Mail, it was the busiest landing strip in the United States for a time in the late '20s and early '30s. It eventually had a beautiful WPA-style terminal and administration building with an observation deck where you could watch the planes take off and land. And it was a regular stop for the pioneers of aviation as they traveled to other places. Names of fallen flyers like Earhart and Post are memorialized by some of the access roads within the airport fences.

Needless to say, the airport's gotten a lot bigger over the years, and virtually all of the vestiges of its early glory have been obscured. Unless you know where to look, that is.

Years ago, as my plane taxied to its gate at Terminal A, I gazed down at the tarmac to see the word LINDY in bold yellow letters outlined in black. Charles Lindbergh had taken off and landed at Newark many times, so I assumed that history-minded airport workers had painted his name on the pavement. For whatever reason, perhaps the tradition still persists.

What I never noticed was the other tribute. If you take a close look at this photo, pulling the image up so you can see what's beyond the bottom edge of the original frame, you'll see two lighter strips of pavement, with planes parked on them. On the right one, you'll see "LINDY," clear as day; another is obscured by the plane parked above it. On the left, you'll see the name "AMELIA" painted twice, for Amelia Earhart. While her aviation skills are still in dispute, it's pretty neat to think that someone's keeping the faith.

2008-02-24T20:00:00.016-05:00

Resurrection

I live within ten miles of the North Jersey coastline. No, not the Jersey Shore, the Jersey coastline. Up by me, that means the thin estuaries that wind between and among our own coastline, Staten Island and a bunch of smaller islands in between. It's complicated -- you might want to look at a map.

The Dutch, who were the first to settle in New York (and that's a cool story for another time), called the waterways the Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill. "Kill" means, more or less, 'deep trench between steep banks,' or a navigable estuary. The word is a fairly common part of many places in the region, particularly in the Hudson Valley of New York. Plattekill and Fishkill are just a few examples.

The old line about the Arthur Kill and Kill Van Kull is that they were aptly named because the condition of the water there would kill anything that attempted to make either one a home. Located, as they are, in a very industrial part of the state, the waterways became dumping grounds for all manners of chemicals and trash. And more than a few people who crossed La Cosa Nostra slept with the fishes there, if any fish were there to begin with. Adding insult to injury, refineries downstream befouled the water with oil spills periodically. Cost of doing business, eh, Exxon?

I'd heard that things were on the upswing and that birders were actually seeing some notable waterfowl at a new park off of Elizabethport. Grabbing the camera, cell phone and binocs, I was on my way, with a vague idea of how to get there.

After wandering through an industrial area full of ancient factories, I came upon a small parking area leading to a short pier looking out into the Kill. A clutch of Hispanic men were standing around, eating lunch, salsa music blaring from their cars.Beyond the pier, a paved walkway stretched alongside the water, so I took a stroll down a bit. What struck me was the smell: that briny odor that comes from salt water and seaweed. No putrefaction, no funky industrial stench. Seagulls and ducks plied the waters; the geese that are omnipresent in New Jersey were surprisingly absent. In the distance was the Bayonne Bridge, the Newark skyline and the container cranes of Port Newark. The worst thing I could say was that the phragmites had choked out any spartina that might have been there.

Still, I was a little freaked out about the lack of people around, and I noticed that a couple of well, Tony Soprano-looking guys were milling around the pier area, so I made my leave.

A bit farther down the road, there was a larger parking area and marina next to a new development of market-rate townhouses. Traffic was a bit denser and friendlier; a Slavic man posed his wife and recalcitrant son on the boardwalk to take their picture against the backdrop of the remote reaches of Staten Island.

The small marina nearby was tidy, with a few craft still in the water and more in dry storage. Apparently, boating on the Kill was a real option, as most of the boats didn't look as if they were cut out for seafaring. Perhaps the future residents of the new townhomes would have their chance to motor out on the waters to enjoy a nice evening cocktail and watch the sun set over Elizabeth.

They certainly wouldn't be fishing. While the blue crab and some fin fish have returned to the Kill, it's unclear whether they're still picking up the residue of the nasty chemicals that were dumped there for so many years. It's a shame, too. Judging from the warning signs in Spanish and Portuguese, the locals have been fishing off the piers. It'll be quite some time before they'll be able to bring dinner home from a day at the Kill.

2008-02-16T07:42:00.005-05:00

Damaged goods

About a year and a half ago, I had a bit of a scare. When I went in for my annual mammogram, the radiologist saw an irregularity on the films for my left breast. A set of enlarged images were inconclusive; an ultrasound was ambiguous, so the doctor gave me a referral for an MRI at the hospital. I joked that they'd taken enough pictures that they could spare one for me to post on my refrigerator door, but when I left the place, I fell apart. I thought, this kind of stuff doesn't happen to me, as if I should somehow be exempt.

When I had a couple of hours to reason it through, I concluded that being referred for an MRI didn't mean I had cancer. People get them for hangnails these days, for Pete's sake. My logic told me that if I didn't have good insurance, the radiologist would have just told me to come back in six months for another round of uncomfortable squashes.

I had to wait about ten days to have the MRI, which, of course, gave me plenty of time to think, read up and rehearse all of the worst case scenarios. I figured that even if it came to cancer, they'd caught it early enough, I'd make it through okay and had plenty of years ahead of me. It was other stuff that got to me.

I wasn't very concerned about potentially losing the breast or having disfiguring surgery, despite the fact that many men have made much of that specific part of my anatomy. One of my friends long ago had even referred to the line made famous by Teri Hatcher in an episode of Seinfeld -- "they're real, and they're spectacular." I considered that there was a serious possibility that the statement would become only half true, but okay, that just meant that I'd have another funny line to toss out there from time to time.

I did worry about becoming damaged goods if the worst case scenario came to be. People I mentioned it to immediately assumed that it was about body image, but it wasn't. I wondered if anyone would want to be with someone who'd have the needs I'd have. I wasn't in a relationship at the time, and I doubted that anyone would want to get involved with someone who needed to be taken care of the degree I envisioned. Heck, I have a hard time asking a boyfriend to bring over a carton of orange juice when I have a cold. Who'd sign up to hold my hair back while I vomited from the chemo treatments?

Some people are actually seek out the prospect of being involved with someone who is in need of care. I find it both creepy and demeaning that someone would find me more attractive because I was sick or handicapped. I don't need a hero. Besides, I'd always suspect that it wasn't me they wanted -- it was the feeling of rescuing someone. And let's face it: that could be anyone.

And, I guess, I was looking at it from the other perspective. Until fairly recently, I've never been all that great about 'being there' for sick friends; I think I've always assumed that I'd be imposing on them, that I wasn't close enough to insert myself into such a private situation. Pretty selfish of me, huh? I suspect I might have actually lost a friend because of it.

I had the MRI (not the most comfortable experience, but tolerable), and it turned out everything was okay. In fact, my next mammogram was totally normal, and I'm half convinced it's due to a healing chod I attended, performed by Buddhist monks. (or as the radiologist joked, "Boobist.")

Still, though, it's made me think more about the concept of damaged goods, and the implications. Some people's grave limitations are visible in a handicap. Others don't manifest themselves until you've gotten to know the person well and you come to realize he or she has a serious emotional or mental problem. Having limitations and being able to attract others -- as I feared I wouldn't be able to -- is all in how quickly and easily other people can see the problem.

The irony of it all is that many times the people with the physical limitations are the healthier ones, the more positive ones, the ones who aren't going to create all kinds of head games.

2008-02-12T20:52:00.001-05:00

Credit where credit is due

Anyone who's gone to school or had a job has had the nasty experience of someone else trying to take credit for their work. I can remember it happening as early as the third grade, when one of my classmates took my work out of the teacher's in-basket, erased my name and scribbled their own in its place. As if.

Apparently this phenomenon may be deeply rooted in animal instinct.

A friend tells me that when she was a child, her mom regularly walked their mutt Lady with a neighbor, who was absolutely nuts about her poodle Pierre. The purebred couldn't do anything without being praised to the sky, including, uh, taking a dump. He'd dutifully trot to the curb to do his business, and as he squatted, she'd kvell over him as if he'd just won the Nobel Prize. My friend's mom never commented on anything Lady did. It was enough to give the poor dog a complex.

At a point, though, Lady caught on. Desperately seeking approval and praise, she would stoop over other dogs' droppings whenever she found them. She'd look up with pleading eyes, waiting for someone to notice and lavish her with kind words. It never worked, because the droppings were usually old and dessicated. In fact, if her human were convinced they were Lady's, the poor dog would have been in for an enema.

So, what's the point of the story? Well, I guess it's that if you're going to stoop over someone else's poop, all you're going to get credit for is shit. If that.

2008-02-05T20:50:00.000-05:00

Change?

I'm reminded lately of the presidential inauguration in 1993, when the keys to the White House went to the other party for the first time in 12 years. Being that we worked for Democratic lobbyists/fundraisers who were hobnobbing in Washington that day, my coworkers and I figured we had carte blanche to watch the swearing-in on the boardroom TV.

Sitting in the room with us was our lone Republican lobbyist, a major fundraiser for the elder Bush. He was a good guy (for a lobbyist, at least) but obviously wasn't in the jolliest mood, so we stepped lightly around him that day. As the bunch of us scanned crowd shots to see if we could find our bosses, one of the guys said to the Republican, "Look at the bright side, Bill. You guys had a good run. It was just time for a change."

Another of the junior staff chimed in: "Yeah. Presidents are like bedsheets. After a while you have to change them, or they get moldy."

Who knows. If things get weird enough in this election, you may actually see that on a bumper sticker.

2008-02-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Mondays I usually have an appointment after work and don't feel much like cooking dinner. Tonight was no exception, so I called my local Chinese take-out on the way home.

The place where I go is always in disarray. The kitchen looks clean, but the small customer dining area is overrun with soda crates and cardboard boxes. Thus, there's nowhere to sit and read a paper while you wait. Usually I just zone out, but tonight I noticed some folding red tissue dragons hanging from the ceiling. Ah, it's that time of year -- Chinese New Year!

After three or four minutes, the counter girl came up with my order and we transacted our business. As a parting note, I wished her a happy new year.

You'd have thought I told her she won a million dollars. "You know my holiday?" she exclaimed, smiling.

"Yes, of course! Who doesn't?" And off I went, smiling.

That had me grinning from ear to ear all the way home and halfway through my shrimp chow mein. Sometimes it doesn't take much.

2008-01-29T21:20:00.001-05:00

An open letter to Victoria's Secret

There's no need to send me more catalogs.

Seriously.

Especially three times a week. I really don't need to replace my underwear often enough to warrant that kind of barrage. I only have two breasts and two butt cheeks. And it's not like I'm going to Tom Jones concerts on a regular basis.

Also, there are no men in my household looking for soft-core porn, if you're intending your mailing to serve as that.

So, please stop. Really.

2008-01-26T12:11:00.000-05:00

Poultry perambulations

I grew up in a town that was once mostly farmland, as a lot of New Jersey was before World War Two. Yes, even areas within a 25 mile radius of New York City were pasture or fields of corn, tomatoes, whatever produce you'd find in the supermarket. Over time, especially after the war, the farms were replaced by suburban neighborhoods. Nonetheless, a few produce stands and even some small farms are still around today. They sell mostly shrubbery, trees, flower plants and other stuff you'd use to spruce up your landscaping.

One such stand is on a busy street in my old hometown. While the farmland long ago disappeared under tract housing, the stand lives on. In fact, the owners kept a cranky old rooster, who strutted around the property and pecked at anyone he didn't like.

My bank had a branch a half block down and across the street from the place. A few years ago, I was driving there when I saw the ornery rooster standing on the center line of the street, frantically turning his head back and forth, perplexed. Not a sight you often see these days in suburban New Jersey.

Aloud, I asked myself, "Why is that chicken crossing the road?"

I started laughing so hard that I had to pull over.

Fast forward a few years. On a lark, I submitted the rooster encounter to the New York Times for the "New Jersey Diary" they used to carry. It appeared a few weeks later with a kicker from the editor: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To open a chicking account."

I swear, it's all absolutely true.

2008-01-24T18:29:00.000-05:00

How many miles to the gallon?

In a 1987 find only publicized recently, scientists in Uruguay discovered the remains of a rodent the size of a small car, along the country's coast. The 1-ton creature is believed to have been 3 meters in length and 1.5 meters tall, and is a precursor to the guinea pigs that so many of us had as kids. (Well, not me, but you get the point.)

Lest you get too freaked out, remember that in nature, there's usually a predator around who's at least as big, if not bigger, than any given creature wandering around the wild. Apparently prehistoric South America really was not the place to be if you were smaller than a Volkswagen. Those studying the remains believe that the bulked-up rodent might have roamed the earth during the same period as saber-toothed tigers, the bodega cats of their day. Kinda gives you a sense of perspective about the Taco Bell rats and all of that.

What really freaked me out was that the first article I read about these giant rodents said nothing about WHEN they'd inhabited the earth. Maybe I should have assumed that they were long gone, but the way the story was written, you couldn't be too sure. Way to go, Time.com! Y'all know what happens when you assume...

2008-01-20T16:41:00.000-05:00

Travel 50 miles for a dog and fries?

Despite the stereotype of overcrowding, traffic jams and overall bedlam, there are parts of western New Jersey where you could swear nobody lives. It's most surprising when one of those traffic-clogged retail-zoo-of-a-highways shrinks to a two-lane back road to nowhere. U.S. 46 is one of them, which I discovered only a few years ago. Its westernmost leg in Warren County rambles through small towns where there are more falling-down houses than there are occupied ones.

Buttzville is one of those communities, except for one tiny part. Much the way the population of the small town of Park City, Utah, swells exponentially during the Sundance Film Festival, a tiny corner of this tiny town becomes the most densely populated place in New Jersey when Hot Dog Johnny's is open.

The roadside stand does a brisk summertime business, having stood between the scenic Pequest River and U.S. 46 for 60 years. While there are places with better hot dogs much closer to where I live (Galloping Hill Inn, for one), none of them compares to Hot Dog Johnny's setting. You can enjoy your meal at picnic benches near the river while the kids play on the swingset, or just sit on the hood of your car, watching the Harley riders kick up gravel as they pull into the lot. It seems like everyone within 20 miles gravitates to the open-air counters to order up hot dogs, fries and root beer in frosty mugs. In other words, it's packed.

Today, I took a wrong turn onto 46 in Hackettstown and figured what the heck, may as well check out Johnny's. Chances were that they wouldn't be open, or at least business would be slow. Nobody would be fishing in the Pequest in the below-freezing weather, nor would most pleasure riders be out on their motorcyles.

Boy, was I wrong. The sign read "open all year," and the gravel parking lot was full. They'd installed wooden walls to create a vestibule around the counter area, which was packed. Service was brisk and friendly, as always, and there was nowhere to sit in the enclosed dining area. It was way too cold to sit by the river, so back to the car it was.

I'm not quite sure why there were so many people there. A gaggle of teenagers was debating how many logoed t-shirts to get, so maybe it was the tourist trade after all. Johnny's is on the hot dog circuit for devotees of the tube steak, so that could account for some of it.

Nonetheless, I do kind of wonder if these people come out of the woodwork when I get there, the way the fabled 'satan cults' just happen to be on the same desolate road where some teenager's car breaks down. Or maybe everyone gets the itch the same time I do to drive an hour for a dog fried in peanut oil.

2008-01-07T21:29:00.001-05:00

Ranger Envy

I don't know what it is, but every time I go to one of the National Park Service sites, I have fantasies about becoming a park ranger. Not one of those Ranger Rick types who keep Yogi away from the pic-i-nic basket, though the nature stuff is very cool. I'm more into the stories behind the places.

Rangers have the enviable privilege of showing people the finer points of historic places, and sometimes, if you let on that you're as fascinated by history as they are, they'll clue you in on some stuff they don't ordinarily share. It might be a fact few people know, or they might let you into a room others don't get to see. In any case, I sometimes wonder if they get the urge to lie from time to time. Nothing very big, like there being a basement in the Alamo. Just something relatively plausible.

I've visited the Thomas Edison historical site in West Orange, NJ several times. It's about 20 miles from Menlo Park, where he and his 'muckers' invented the light bulb (and the town was renamed Edison in his honor). The West Orange site was where his manufacturing facility was, and where his famous research and development labs were. Touring that site, your head spins with the massive number of things invented and conceived of there, many of which are just now being reconceptualized, like the electric car. More on that another time.

After moving operations to West Orange and marrying his second, considerably younger wife Mina, he bought a house close to the office, in Llewellen Park, a still-tony and magnificent enclave of homes for the wealthy. Mina basically ran the house, which was called Glenmont; Edison himself usually slept on a cot in his library at the lab and when he was home he wasn't exactly the life of the party.

When you visit Glenmont, some of the rangers will take you beyond the usual living room/conservatory/study/bedrooms tour and let you see the inner workings of the household. That's how I got to see the cook's kitchen on a small tour. Besides me and the ranger, two folks from Ohio or somewhere were on the tour, and they kept asking ridiculous questions that only proved they hadn't been listening. You know, stuff that's so anachronistic that you have to laugh, like did Jesus ride a dinosaur, or something like that.

Well, we get to the kitchen, and the ranger points out the stove. Edison, he noted, was rarely home in time for dinner, and it was a real hassle for the help to keep a coal-fired stove going so he could have a warm meal whenever he got around to coming home. Not wanting her dear Tom to eat a cold dinner, Mina had installed the very first gas-fired stove in all of West Orange.

Somehow, the Ohio visitors weren't making the connection, so I helpfully added, "you know, that was before Edison invented the microwave oven." They nodded in acknowledgment. Ah, now it makes sense. The ranger just looked at me, raised his eyes heavenward and went on with the tour, noting that Mina lived in the house well after her husband's death in 1931.

2007-12-31T19:09:00.000-05:00

Open gates, open doors

I've been visiting Sandy Hook for at least 10 years now, and I pretty much figured that I'd found everything there is to explore. When I started off on my jaunt today, I figured this visit would be dedicated mostly to walking the tideline and maybe spending a half hour or so on the birding platform on North Beach. When I grabbed the binoculars from my closet, I also pulled out the camera and my new videocamera, figuring that I could get some shots of the tide or something.

Little was I to know that I'd run into several open doors.

Driving in, I stopped by the Nike exhibit -- a fenced in Nike Ajax and sample operations trailer like the one inside the base down the road. It's actually across the road from the launch facility. While the launch area was off limits, the gate in the fence around the exhibit wasn't locked, so I was able to get some close-ups of the trailer interior, albeit from the outside. I made a quick stop at the base, too, to do a quick video travelogue of the buildings and equipment one can see from outside the fence.

A little farther up the road, I stopped, for some reason, at another narrow parking area, and found that a wooden gate across the far end of the driveway was open. Seeing nobody around and no signs warning to the contrary, I drove through to find several picnic areas I'd never known were even there. They reminded me of the camping areas at national parks out west -- sheltered picnic benches, a grill and maybe a water spigot. Pictures of Boy Scouts cleaning up the Nike base were posted on a nearby bulletin board. That made me wonder if I could hike from there to the edge of the base. I parked the car beyond the gate and walked on in.

All I found was a clearing with some sort of structure surrounded by railroad ties. When I got back to the road, someone had shut and padlocked the gate I'd driven through earlier. That was a close call.

At the very tip of the hook, I stopped by Nine Gun battery, a massive artillery staging structure built in 1902 and now decaying in the ocean air. It's probably about a quarter-mile long, stretching along North Beach. Long ago the Park Service encircled it with a five-foot fence and posted signs warning explorers to stay out, but I'd heard stories of people finding ways of getting in to wander the corridors.

Oddly enough, I came upon another gate, much like the one for the backyard of my childhood home. No lock, no blocking of any sort beyond the sign reading "EXTREMELY HAZARDOUS CONDITIONS AREA CLOSED." I checked the latch, which moved easily in my hand. I could just nudge it open, push the gate forward and walk right in. The doorways and stairs of the battery invited me in, but I thought better of exploring solo. My luck, I'd get swallowed up by it all.

My last destination was a quick ride along Officers' Row, the gorgeous old housing that's mostly been left to decay on the bayshore side of the Hook. One of the buildings has been made into a 40's era home museum, and some of the smaller ones house non-profit organizations focused on environmental issues. The others are simply sealed shut, inviting the curious to climb the rickety porches to peer in at the peeling tin ceilings and plaster walls.

Out of habit, I gazed at the houses as I passed each in turn. Then I saw an open front door. Temptation.

I pulled around to the service road and parked behind one of the houses. After a short walk I found the open door. It blew open with a passing gust, and then fell back, inviting me to approach, but I was a bit apprehensive of what might be inside, and that the porch would cave under my weight. Besides, now that the door was open, I could see from the sidewalk that it only led to a vestibule. The inner door was most likely locked, anyway.

Like a good scout, I took note of the house number and reported the situation at the Park Ranger office. Some invitations may be best accepted at a later time, when conditions have improved.

2007-12-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

Campaign cease fire: an idea whose time has come

Columnist Fran Wood, in today's Newark Star-Ledger, gives voice to what we're all thinking: with nearly a year before we elect a new president, most voters are already weary of the campaign. And perhaps the candidates, in their own ways, feel the same way.

Fran goes on to note that Rudy Giuliani's recent run to the hospital was just the result of his body saying "enough already." Hey, I know what it's like to go full tilt for days or weeks, only to wake up one day with a crushing headache that won't let me leave my bed. It's the body's way of saying, "hey, bonehead, slow down!" Fran opines that maybe sleep deprivation isn't the best thing to encourage in the future leader of the free world, whoever he or she may ultimately be.

So, we're weary of them, they're probably weary of the campaign but won't admit it. Why don't we all take a vacation?

Hey: it could work. After, say, ten days of campaigning, all of the candidates could call a two-day cease fire. Nobody makes personal appearances. Nobody does media interviews or issues announcements. Nobody takes cheap shots at anyone else. The media caravan reports on something else for two days, like the celebri-trash of the moment. The news shows won't have any problem filling the airtime. As one of the news directors at the Rutgers student radio station used to say, if you can't find any news, go make some up.

Everyone comes back relaxed -- tan, rested and ready for the next phase. Ultimately, the time off might give everyone the chance to think a bit more about what's being said and what we all really believe in. At the very least, we'll get some relief from the constant, incessant buzz.

2007-12-28T19:22:00.000-05:00

TΔH
"Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

2007-12-28T19:01:00.000-05:00

What's old is new again

Seen at the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, NY. A bit ironic, don't you think?

Are you playing square, W?

2007-12-24T18:29:00.000-05:00

Happy Festivus...

Seen in Times Square on Christmas Eve. One could only hope they didn't intend what this looks like.

2007-12-22T19:54:00.000-05:00

Asbury Park, again

Dark, cloudy day today -- one of those days when you sense it could start raining any minute. What better time to go down the shore?

Choices were Avalon, Shellpile, Sandy Hook and Asbury Park. So I took AP, wondering how far the resurrection of the Casino had progressed since my last visit in September. Oh, and I was wondering if the Metropolitan Hotel had met the wrecking ball yet.

The Metropolitan is one of those old high-class seaside hotels, 180 sleeping rooms, a nice restaurant, lounge with entertainment, the whole nine yards. Like much of the rest of historic Asbury Park, it's fallen into hard times, having its share of failed renovation attempts, blocked by corrupt, bribe-seeking local politicians.

My exploring buddy and I had had loose plans to check out the exterior a few weeks ago, when I'd read about the impending demolition, but the trip never came to be. I honestly expected the place to be reduced to rubble, so I was a bit surprised to see it still standing.

Given that the ominous weather and general desolation of the place made me a bit nervous, I just took a few shots from the car. Check out this site for much better photos than I was able to get.

Despite everything, the boardwalk was a bit creepy, too, and the wind off the ocean was cutting, so I didn't stay too long. Looks as if they're still doing work inside the carousel house, but nothing is going on within the rest of the Casino property. Weirdly enough, the pedestrian walkway is still open; in fact, lamps have been installed to up-light some of the architectural detail of the interior plaster.

Only a few people were on the boardwalk, and all but one of the storefronts were shuttered. A newish restaurant next to the Casino has limited hours over the winter but is still open for the hearty folk who walk or run the boards for exercise. Business wasn't very good today.

After strolling the boardwalk and taking pictures for about ten minutes or so, I decided enough was plenty and went back to my car.

I stopped in the revitalized shopping district on Cookman Avenue, which consists largely of antique stores and cutely-named restaurants and coffee houses. There were a few people window shopping, more having lunch, but still, I wondered how the establishments were holding up financially.

I found a place that has, among other things, a vintage framed Two Guys bag for sale, plus some fun tchotchkes, tableware, etc. Chatted a bit with the shopkeeper, who told me that foot traffic is kind of uneven but promising. I mentioned that I visit Asbury periodically to take pictures of the Casino, and on his asking how the boardwalk was today, I replied, "Creepy."

"Well, that's what you're looking for, right?"

Gotta love a kindred spirit.

2007-12-21T17:25:00.001-05:00

A working class cat is a fine thing to be (be bop)

An article in today's New York Times chronicled the phenomenon of bodega cats, the blue-collar felines who keep their shops free of vermin. As anyone who's lived or worked in a large city knows, where there's food, there's inevitably a rodent, so a good mouser is worth his or her weight in gold. And when compared to the cost and inconvenience of exterminators, the investment in kitty litter, veterinary care and some canned food is minimal. Felix comes in, rats disappear. It's that simple.

The New York Department of Health feels otherwise. Apparently, where they're concerned, having a cat in a corner market or a restaurant is as bad as having rats. Fines for having any kind of animal range from $300 to $2000 or more.

I can understand some of the reluctance to have a free-range cat in a restaurant kitchen or behind the deli counter, but the bodega issue doesn't make sense to me. The equations are simple:

Food = rats, inevitably

Food + exterminators = rats that crawl off and die in inconvenient places

The question isn't whether there are rats, it's where are they and how long will it take them to return between pest control visits. No matter what you do, they're a fact of life for anyone who runs a food establishment in New York.

So the choices seem to be:

Ban the cats and constantly deal with rats gnawing at food packages and leaving God knows what around to spread disease.
Let the cats do what comes naturally.

Anyone who's seen the video of the Greenwich Village Taco Bell rat infestation knows the answer. There, the rats looked about as big as cats and scurried around freely after the store closed for the night. One might wonder what three or four felines would have been able to accomplish there. Fast food franchisees might even want to consider rotating crews of cats to patrol their stores once a week or so.

I don' t know about you, but given the option of seeing a cat in a restaurant, or a mouse, I'll always choose Morris over Mickey. So maybe the Department of Health can come up with a compromise: let the cats stay, but require them to be tested on a regular basis for the disease and parasites rats carry. Their inspectors can check the cat's health records when they come to rate the establishment. And perhaps it will get a few more homeless animals out of the shelters and off the streets.

2007-12-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

Help! I'm being held captive in a forced-labor Chinese fortune cookie factory!

2007-12-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

Calling Sister Bertrille!

Apparently the latest extreme sport is flying. Like Batman, but without the Batcopter. Just a winglike jumpsuit, helmet and a parachute for a smooth landing.

My exploring buddy sent me a video of guys doing this ... saying I should give it a try. And the very next day, the New York Times runs a story on it, featuring a practitioner of the sport who is planning to do a flight sans parachute, landing on his belly. Two mentions in 24 hours. Must be something to it.

Now, is it just me, or do these guys look like the Flying Nun? You remember her. She was the 90 pound novitiate who discovered that the wacky wimple of her order had special aerodynamic qualities. It would explain why Sally Field is hawking osteoporosis meds: gotta have strong bones to land on your feet from an altitude of 500 feet.

In the interest of disclosure, I've done some skydiving, and had one ill-advised hang-gliding experience, and while the experiences were very, uh, interesting, I think I can say with some certainty that the best thing about having done both is that I can now say I've done them. After the third jump, I decided that I'd tempted fate enough, and maybe I should move on to something else meaningless and stupid. Like sailing from Portmagee to a speck of an island in the Atlantic in a 20 foot fishing boat.

But flying without a chute -- or real wings -- is going way far over the edge. Literally and figuratively. Unless your name is Rocket J. Squirrel.

Some would say that any of it is a bit reckless, but in the hierarchy of foolhardiness, skydiving doesn't even rank. First, it has some useful applications, i.e. surviving a plane wreck, landing behind enemy lines. In practice as an extreme sport, it has its advantages: you know you're headed in one direction -- down, more or less -- and the chute is just there to slow your descent. The necessary skill is the ability to slow down enough from terminal velocity to land without creating a crater.

The actual horizontal-type flying is a bit more dangerous, because you take gravity out of the equation. In other words, wings are there to keep you airborne. The potential for hitting something has just grown to include things you can fly into as well as things you could fall down onto. Danger in 3-D. How appetizing.

Having been affixed to a giant wing and towed to 2000 feet by an ultralight plane (read: giant wing with lawnmower engine and beach chair attached), I have a little insight into what it's like to fly at bird level and see the landscape for miles. It's pretty cool, if the thermals haven't kicked up for the day.

Flying over and next to cliffs is a bit different. Way too much opportunity to do a Wile E. Coyote into a cliff wall. And this guy wants to do it without a parachute, landing belly-first on the ground like a plane with malfunctioning landing gear.

Sorry - I'll pass. Even the video makes me a little oozhy.

It does remind me, though, that I have to schedule something stupid. It's been too long.

2007-11-23T06:19:00.000-05:00

My turn en pointe

Shortly after the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) opened in Newark, the American Ballet Theater staged a series of holiday season performances of Cinderella. As is customary, they put the call out for supernumeraries - extras - to fill the stage at the needed times. Since those roles require no dance skills, the troupe saves the cost of paid performers and takes walk-ons. I'm not a big ballet aficionado, but since I was working in Newark, anyway, I went to check it out.

The "audition" was little more than lining up in height order. The children needed to demonstrate a little grace since they'd be on stage as the Seasons, but beyond that, we adults had no idea what criteria we were being judged on. I Hope I Get It, indeed.

I was chosen as an "extra super" (an extra extra, as it were) who would participate in performances only if one of the other adults didn't show up. We were required to be there for several rehearsals and were expected to arrive an hour before each performance, regardless of when we appeared in the program. Most of us appeared only in the wedding scene, the last three minutes of the show. That meant a lot of waiting around in the large group dressing room upstairs, watching the show on closed-circuit TV.

Being backstage was a pretty cool experience. I got an up-close view of the dancers' athleticism and the hard work they put into their craft. It was also fun to watch the reactions of the little girls who were chosen to be the Seasons in the show. Looking up to the dancers with awe, they went totally over the moon when some of the ballerinas gave them their battered toe shoes.

One of the things I learned was that traditionally, the wicked stepsisters in Cinderella are played by men, I guess to ensure that they're ugly women. The dressing room for those dancers was right next to ours, so we'd clear the way for them in the hall when they'd run between scenes to change costumes. They were pretty nice guys, happy to chat with the ballet groupies among the extras.

On the Sunday of the show's run, we had three or four hours between performances, and while several of the supers went home for an early dinner, I chose to hang out at the PAC. As I sipped my clam chowder, I suddenly heard random shouting and groans, and then progressively louder audio from a football game. Sticking my head out the dressing room door, I found the wicked stepsisters watching a playoff game on the closed-circuit TV in the hallway. That would have been fine, but it was just a little weird to see two extraordinarily ugly "women" wearing heavy rouge and stripped down to their bloomers, cursing the referee. I've seen a lot of weird things at football games, but that one takes the cake.

Anyway... ultimately, I appeared in about a dozen performances since one of the "regular" supers decided she was too good to show up at the appointed hour before the curtain rose. For ten days, once a night and twice on each weekend day, I stood two people away from the Fairy Godmother during the wedding scene. I never got up the nerve to ask her to help me find my prince charming, but then, glass slippers tend to cause blisters.

2007-11-17T17:46:00.001-05:00

Under the pre-text

A recent article on Slate.com bemoaned the death of e-mail in favor of text messaging. When you consider that e-mail as a medium has been around for over 20 years now, I guess it's not surprising. Nevertheless, I posit that we've still got some time to go before it goes the way of 8-track tapes.

People are apt to say that this is another one of those youth-driven trends. However, I've been noticing with greater frequency that middle-aged folks are doing it, too. It became most evident to me when I started dating again. At first I thought it was something the men had learned from their teenagers, but then I got a number of texts from a man with no kids. Come to think of it, he had the maturity level of a 17 year old, so it made sense.

Though I do text at times, I'm still trying to reason the whole thing out. Yes, texting is useful when you're in a place where it would be rude to talk on the phone: business meetings, funerals, group therapy sessions. It's also helpful for quick reminders: "pick up milk," "meet me at 8," or, in the case of a text a former boyfriend got from his ex-wife, "you continue to be a complete asshole." It does have a sense of immediacy that's lost when you step away from your PC, but I just don't see it totally replacing e-mail as a mode of communication. You can't really get a good story across in 150 characters or less (well, the ex's ex did). And those little buttons are tough on your thumbs.

Going the next step, I'm totally mystified as to why some people have entire conversations by text. For God's sake, they have a phone in their hands! They could just dial the number and talk, which is much quicker than the back and forth with thumbs flying. And texting while driving brings it to a new level of absurdity. Potentially lethal absurdity. If it's really that important, pull over and make the call.

So what is it that people are avoiding? If we're so loathe to actually talk, or to share more than a dozen words at a time, maybe we need to reconsider our relationships.

2007-11-16T22:52:00.000-05:00

Spy vs. Spy

A squadron of nuclear weapons ringed major U.S. cities during the Cold War, undetected by the vast majority of Americans. Until the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles in the early 70's, the last defense America had against Soviet incursion was the Nike Ajax missile, and then the nuclear-tipped Nike Hercules. And many Nike bases were located in suburban neighborhoods, not always or entirely known by the residents of the split-level ranches nearby.

Most of the bases have been dismantled, but there's still one in pretty decent shape at Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook in New Jersey. It's within the Gateway National Recreation Area, which was created in 1974 after the Department of Defense decommissioned it and transferred ownership to the National Park Service.

I had the opportunity to check out the base a few weeks ago. There's just one missile on display, unarmed, and the golfball-shaped covers aren't on the radar platforms anymore, but the control centers are still there. About the size of a small Ryder rental truck, they could easily be pulled up and trucked to another location, just like an old-time diner. Oh, and they're incredibly ugly and depressing inside, kind of like a submarine.

The Park Service is allegedly working to stabilize and restore the base, but right now they're letting visitors check out the trailers and other parts of the base in their current, crappy condition. Though the electronics have been removed, you can still get a sense of the technology that once tracked and controlled nuclear weaponry. It's pretty wild to think that there's more powerful circuitry in my pocket PC than there was in that whole set up. In fact, our guide pulled out a huge floppy disc, the older, bigger brother to the 5-1/4 floppies I remember from my early computing days. Oh, and while there are still plenty of switches and dials on the control panels, someone thoughtfully removed "the button." I guess you can never be too careful.

I also got a kick out of an old phone booth on the base. It still had a rotary phone with a 201 number, though that area code hasn't been accurate in nearly 20 years. It seemed weirdly out of place, a relic of normalcy in a kind of surreal doomsday environment. My thoughts turned to the scene in the satirical Dr. Strangelove , when the one sane officer left on the base is reduced to using a pay phone to contact the Pentagon during an attack ... and Ma Bell won't spot him the 55 cents for the long-distance call. You have to wonder if the Fort Hancock phone booth is there for the one sane officer left... And, of course, there's always Maxwell Smart and the secret entrance to CONTROL. In any case, the Park Service is keeping it there for eventual restoration.

As I took a few snapshots, I realized that had I gotten into the base with a camera 40 years ago, I'd have landed in a military jail. Now photos of the equipment are posted here, for all to see, without any penalty to me. Maybe some Russian blogger like me has posted photos of nuke base phone booths, too. Glasnost.

2007-10-31T20:30:00.000-04:00

The frost is on the pumpkin...

... the long pants are on the UPS delivery guys.

Well, the shorts had a good, long run this year.

2007-10-18T19:33:00.000-04:00

Partly cloudy with a chance of shorts

It's been unusually warm lately in New Jersey. Not freakishly warm, just enough to mean you don't need a jacket most of the time, sometimes even at night. That's kind of strange for mid October.

At the same time, I've noticed that UPS drivers are still wearing their famous brown shorts at this late date. Now, as a much referenced article in the Onion joked a few years ago, many people believe that the start of spring is heralded by the first set of bare UPS knees they see.

Conversely, perhaps autumn is ushered in by the disappearance of said knees beneath a pair of trusty brown trousers. This year, though, it doesn't seem to be happening.

I've often wondered if there's some sort of corporate policy, an annual memo, perhaps, that tells the drivers to change from long pants to short. Maybe the memo didn't go out this fall. Or, maybe there's something more sinister going on.

Not to belabor this global warming thing, but in recent years we've seen and heard much about the indications of an environment in peril. Usually it's the polar ice cap. Sometimes it's tropical sea animals showing up in northern climes. Maybe now it's the UPS guys.

Maybe they know something we don't.

2007-10-13T20:13:00.000-04:00

Why not do it anyway?

Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize will certainly add more fuel to the global warming debate. You know, the war between the people who say it's going on and there's something we can do about it, and those who say it's all a bunch of hooey and climate change is all a part of the cycle of the earth's environment.

The thing that strikes me is that even if it is just a cycle (and I don't think that's the case), there's no harm in reducing pollution and conserving resources. No private citizen has a vested interest in having more pollution in the air. Major polluters, well, you can see that it costs them more to run clean operations than dirty, but that even seems a bit short sighted. After all, you gotta figure that your customer base will shrink a bit when you can buy shorefront property in Utah.