Blogfinger

 

PEGGY LEE:

 

Jersey tomato report by Eileen and Paul Goldfinger at Matt’s Market in Belmar. Now is nearly peak season for those summer treasures.   8/12/25

 

 

 

 

September 21, 2025  update:   We have not been enthused about this summer’s tomatoes from New Jersey in mid-August.    But we went back to Matt’s now and found that the red fruits are now  better:  very good but not excellent.  And they still have very good corn. Wegmans has neither:  Jersey produce will be around through October. The Asbury Saturday Sunset Market will be open until Thanksgiving.

 

 

 

Here’s a suggestion for this beautiful tomato crop in New Jersey.  We love tomato sandwiches. The concept is easy.  We like “Hey, Peach’s” sourdough* sliced bread, lightly toasted. Use Hellmann’s mayo and avocado slices. A slice of cheese is good;  for example Mozzarella. And a slice of Vidalia sweet onions for the daring.  (The Vidalia season is near the end, but Wegmans has some fine sweet onions from Peru.).    Note that in the 17th century  Peru supplied  Europe with silver  but now it’s onions.

After that you are on your own….but do it now while the Jerseys are peaking.

We like Matt’s Market and Garden Center for their huge selection of Jerseys.  They also have a large variety of local fruits and veggies; and Jersey corn.

 

Matt’s:    Take Memorial Parkway to the bridge.  Take 35 north by the Belmar Marina and turn left  at the Windmill onto 71 north.

Go past Mr. Shrimp, and Matt’s is a short distance ahead on the left.

I am thankful that my name isn’t Mr. Shrimp.   Girls: Would you date a guy named Mr. Shrimp?

 

Bonus suggestion for summer dinner:   Get lobsters. Wegmans will cook them for you, or do it yourself.  Serve them with beautiful Jersey corn and a salad.  And how about dessert at Days—if you have room.

• The best sourdough bread around is at “Hey, Peach” bakery in Bradley Beach, 126 Main Ave,  owned by Erin and James of Ocean Grove.  They are open Thursday to Sunday 7-3.

 

*”Am Yisrael Chai”  means  “The People of Israel  Live.”    It is a slogan of solidarity among Jews. It is used to express strength and unity, typically in the face of adversity, but also in moments of peace and prosperity.”

 

“Love and Marigolds.”  Michael Danna from the score of Monsoon Wedding.

 

 

 

 

Spanky and Our Gang.   “Sunday Will Never Be the Same.”

 

 

 

A Waiter in Paris on my OG bookshelf.    Published August 9, 2022 with widespread distribution.  Paul Goldfinger’s  photograph is on the dust covers around the world.

Paul Goldfinger photograph.  Ocean Grove, NJ.   I have a credit on the inside of the dust cover. The actual print has been posted here on Blogfinger.net

Here is a link      https://wp.me/pqmj2-p6g :

You can also see an original print hanging in “Cheese on Main”  in  Ocean Grove,  New Jersey.  It is the only signed print currently on display, and you can get terrific Stilton cheese from Susan over there. That would be an English selection to go with Edward Chisholm’s fine book.

 

 

 

I was excited to see the finished product. My  photograph of Left Bank waiters was chosen for the dust cover, and it was thrilling to see that some designers had the print match the black and white of the photograph.

My  book copy was sent to me in June by the Octopus Publishing Group in London (Thanks to Giulia Hetherington whose musical name sounds so English…or “Anglais” as the book’s author says.)

I sent her one of my original B & W photos taken in the East Village.  It turns out that she spent time there with friends in a rented “flat” just a few blocks from where my New York  image was taken. She was thrilled with the gift.

So it is now officially published on August 9 , and many reviews and ads are already popping up on the Internet.

The book has been getting good reviews since the launch date including by the Wall Street Journal., the Daily Beast, Air Mail, London Review, The Guardian, Paris Review, Good Reads and Publishers Weekly.

Here is a short review from the publisher:

“An evocative portrait of the underbelly of contemporary Paris as seen through the eyes of a young waiter scraping out a living in the City of Light. A waiter’s job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door . . . is hell.

“Edward Chisholm’s spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you beneath the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world–and right into its glorious underbelly. He inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you’re fighting your colleagues for tips. Your colleagues–including thieves, narcissists, ex-soldiers, immigrants, wannabe actors, and drug dealers–are the closest thing to family that you’ve got. It’s physically demanding, frequently humiliating and incredibly competitive. But it doesn’t matter because you’re in Paris, the center of the universe, and there’s nowhere else you’d rather be in the world.”

 

“A Waiter in Paris” is available in Kindle, but without my photo.  Most of the reviews include a  picture of the book’s cover, so anyone who reads a review or walks into a book shop all over the free world will see my photo, and that is a huge thrill.

 

 

WYNTON MARSALIS:  “You’re My Everything.”

 

 

 

I was stationed as a cardiologist at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. We were transferred after 5 years of residency  in New York City. Eileen taught in Spanish Harlem.     We had two little boys and we found a cute townhouse in Virginia Beach.  Most of the families were Navy.   Eileen loved her kitchen which looked out at the front yard.  I drove my new Triumph Spitfire to work every day.  The plant in the photo was her first garden.

We loved New York, but this was something special for so many reasons.

 

Stan Getz and Gary Burton.   “Little Girl Blue”

 

 

 

 

ERIC CLAPTON:

 

n August 2001 National Geographic posted a 3 page article about OG. They led with this photo, but most of the misleading article was about the religious life in the Grove, as if nothing else existed. Click once to enlarge.    The crew spent a week here with many photos obtained with a camera drone.

I

Below is a Blogfinger history over time of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association   (OGCMA.).  It’s long but worth it:

Paul Goldfinger, MD,  Editor-in-Chief,  Blogfinger.net.

 

 

Days Ice Cream (founded 1880), Pitman Avenue, Ocean Grove, New Jersey.   Paul Goldfinger photograph. Blogfinger.net.

2021 Ocean Grove beach. The CMA cannot avoid change over time. These Grover girls in their summer clothes would have caused Stokes to blow his top.      Paul Goldfinger photo. Blogfinger.net

154  years ago the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association was organized, and despite setbacks through the years, it has continued to grow and to dominate life in Ocean Grove.  So how did the Association get from there to here, and what is its future?

In 1869  a group of fundamentalist Methodist ministers got together with like-minded church members and set up the OGCMA which was legalized by a charter from the  N.J. State Legislature.  They proceeded to buy 260 acres of barren Jersey shore land in Monmouth County where only a few people lived.  And then they set out to create Ocean Grove.

Their goal was to develop a summer Christian campground at the Jersey shore which would be run by the Association. Their dream was to seek “holiness and perfection” as defined by their strict Methodist church doctrine.

They would establish governance in the Grove based on religious laws and enforced by their own police.   They could legally create ordinances, a library, and a municipal court.  In essence they were founding a new town, although Stokes said that Ocean Grove was more religion than municipality.

The CMA wanted to have a planned community with geographic isolation for those who would visit in the summer.  Those limiting elements included the sparse boardwalk with no stores or amusements, a 600 tent village, an auditorium, water on three sides, and an infrastructure to make it all work.

“Perfection” would require tight social controls which governed the life-styles of those in attendance.

Within a few years of the founding, small permanent homes were constructed with simple Victorian designs. The houses were laid out close together in small lots to help implement the restrictive blue laws. And on Sunday there would only be church. A  rule book spelled it all out.

The second President of the CMA James N. FitzGerald, of fountain fame,  had high hopes for the future of Ocean Grove.

* He said, “If our grounds can be preserved from invasion by forces that would destroy our distinctive features and from influences that are inimical to the great object that we have in view, and if in the spirit of true consecration we adhere to and exemplify the great scriptural doctrines which we  are set to maintain, we should move forward to even more glorious achievements in the name of the Master.”

At first the Grove was made part of Ocean Township. Then in 1879, Neptune Township was carved out  of Ocean with the Grove as an appendage.   But the CMA remained as the primary governing authority in OG,  and the CMA governed there until 1980.  However Neptune held the central power.

We don’t know what sort of peculiar deal the CMA made with the Neptuners, but Neptune permitted those OG ordinances and blue laws.

Historians Mr. and Mrs Richard Gibbons said, in 1939, comparing the Grove to other shore towns, “The only points of difference were the unique laws that have always made Ocean Grove stand apart from other communities in this country and, in fact, throughout the world.”   In other words, other shore towns were also set up from scratch, but this was the only theocracy.

Troy Messenger **said, “Ocean Grove was the longest-lived ecclesiarchy {A government ruled by or in conjunction with a religion; a church-state} in American history.  From its founding in 1869 until 1979, it operated under a charter that guaranteed the Methodists of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association municipal powers to create a utopian village that offered safe haven from the demands of the city.”

The legislature and then the courts ruled that anyone who lived in the Grove had to pay Neptune taxes, and that included the CMA.  There were bitter fights over the years regarding taxes, and the earliest CMA leaders were outspoken against the Neptune taxes.

Because the CMA needed control, they paid the taxes and refused any services from Neptune—that changed later.

At first the Grove was to be a summer project, but it wasn’t long before some residents stayed year round.

After the Civil War, camp meetings became the rage in many locations, and thousands of visitors came to OG, mostly by rail, to attend crowded religious services, sometimes on the beach.  There was an Illumination Night at Wesley Lake which attracted over 20,000 tourists.

OG was a religious camp ground, but many tourists and residents came more for the vacation.

So Ocean Grove was built up, and many of the key buildings were constructed during the first 30 or 40 years—  including the Great Auditorium.

The CMA was allowed to own all the land “in perpetuity.”  And the courts ruled that the residents had to pay Neptune taxes on their lots even though the CMA owned the lands.   This irritating ruling was never followed  with appeals. A contemporary court might see it differently.

After WWI, religious fervor began to fade around the country, but the CMA continued to govern and control life in the Grove according to their religious themes, even though a variety of less religious or secular citizens were making the Grove their home.

As more and more people came who weren’t so interested in the religious life style, the CMA had to make adjustments, but they never gave up their plan for a Christian seaside resort.  There were compromises regarding the tight controls, but Stokes said that the Sunday driving ban would never be changed, and many thought that the Camp Meeting concept in OG would collapse if the “gates” were to come down.

But they did come down.  1980 marked the beginning of a major change:  A series of court rulings resulted in turning over governance from the CMA to Neptune Township.   The CMA governance was ruled to be  unconstitutional by the N.J. Supreme Court who spoke in terms of church vs. state.

This ruling was an explosive and disheartening event in the history of the OGCMA.

And with that most of the blue laws  (except 2) were disallowed.

Many Grovers thought that this ruling would be the end of the CMA as we knew it,  turning OG into a typical shore town spiced with Victorian architecture and some Christian traditions, but instead, the CMA made adjustments and continued to thrive.

It was a blessing in disguise for them because they were relieved of some aggravating responsibilities while retaining the powers which they coveted through their Neptune and Trenton connections and they could retain their significant land holdings in and around the Grove and continue their social and religious dominance in town along with their many summer programs.

However there was push- back in the mid-1980’s. The Jersey Shore fell into physical decay and social troubles, including in Ocean Grove.  There were riots in Asbury, and OG suffered declining tourism, declining population, and deterioration of the Victorian housing stock.

Socially there were mental cases in abundance, poverty, crime, drugs, declining home values, prostitution, and large numbers of poor and medium income seniors.  People nicknamed the place “Ocean Grave.”

In the 80’s and nineties an activist OG Home Owners Association with political connections took center stage, and with the support of 1,000 members fought to get the town back, and they began to succeed.

But the history of the time does not mention any contribution by the CMA. They were mainly interested in their religious lives which continued as before.

As things began to dramatically improve into the  mid-1990’s, the Herb Herbst-led HOA was the hero which saved the Grove.

Some citizens had a vision that the HOA would lead the Grove into a new family oriented, prosperous, secular middle-class era which would create a balance with a declining CMA.

Also the end of the  ’90’s  brought further demographic changes with empty nesters, retirees, academics, artists, celebrities, and professionals moving here.  We interviewed some of them. They came to the Grove and fell in love with our quaint town. They also came with money to refurbish their decrepit Victorian houses, and year by year the streets began to look better.

A new Master Plan was developed in 1990.  That plan insisted on rezoning all of the Grove for single family housing and to protect our historic designations.

The HOA also wanted to promote more secular tourism, while the CMA pushed for more religious tourism. The CMA leaned further to the  religious right and, as an example,  went so far as to institute daily Christian music aerobics at the beach.

Into the 2000’s, the CMA decided to push ahead with its  “mission” including more contemporary religious activity such as Christian rock bands in the Great Auditorium and to pay little attention to a secular vision to create more of a middle class and more diversity in town. Saturday night secular shows were discontinued.  Neil Sedaka never returned, so he wrote “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.”

When the planners of the North End showed up in 2007, they ignored the Master Plan and pushed for  outrageous zoning changes.   Neptune governance  approved those changes  by declaring the property “a zone in need of redevelopment.” That was, in our opinion at Blogfinger, illegal.  But it was never challenged in court by anyone.

Unfortunately the Home Groaners were  supportive of the North End plan and its necessary zoning changes and they have never done an about-face even though that plan would  change the Grove forever.

In 2007 the gay population clashed with the CMA over a civil union in the Boardwalk Pavilion.   Sparks flew  and passions were ignited; and it revealed that the CMA could not completely isolate itself any longer and ignore the secular townspeople.   In fact, the CMA was found to be discriminatory with regard to the Boardwalk Pavilion.  One error which the media usually makes is to say that the 2007 brouhaha was about a “gay marriage.”  It was not.  The issue was a legal “civil union.”

In  2008 I interviewed CMA President Scott Rasmussen and asked him what the relationship would be between the CMA and the secular residential community in Ocean Grove.  He said that the CMA would devote its energies to its “mission.”   That’s when I learned  what the CMA’s policy would be vis a vis secular Ocean Grove.

Troy Messenger**, in his 1999 book “Holy Leisure” said, “Like many communities shaped by a strong religious tradition, there is an official and an unofficial Ocean Grove. That is, some in the community cling tenaciously to traditional devotional practice, while others quietly live lives in the same place with little concern for its religious heritage….In truth, individuals in Ocean Grove have always represented varying degrees of commitment to the ideals of holiness theology espoused by the CMA. From the outset some came more for the recreation than the religion.”

“Today, the diversity of Ocean Grove’s residents and visitors is greater than ever and is evident in striking juxtapositions.”

In 2018, Grover Ted David researched and published his latest book Forgotten Ocean Grove “God’s Square Mile”—New Jersey’s Most Interesting Beachside Town”  In the introduction he describes his “task of pouring through dusty libraries for many pieces of OG history.”

He finds “pieces of the historical puzzle that when carefully assembled create the modern day Ocean Grove.”  David says that since 1889 there have been times when the Grove faltered, besieged by problems from within and without.”   But now he says, “Revitalization and renewal are the order of the day.”

That may be true for the CMA, but not so much for those who live here and are not very interested in the religious programming.

Troy Messenger also sees optimism for the future if the current CMA “continues to evolve from a closed resort exclusivity to embrace new diversity which the CMA could view as  opportunities rather than threats.”

An example, he says,  “might be to engage the gay community in dialogue and ministry.  The CMA needs to redefine itself also by recognizing liberal Methodism, municipal politics, and the changing economy and ecology of the Jersey Shore.”

Unfortunately Messenger forgot to mention that growing  constituency, the residential community in town, and his optimism for the CMA seems unlikely to bear fruit.

And then there is the HOA, 21st century edition. Prof. Karen Schmelzkopf,*** author, had high hopes for them, but they have been useless in terms of working on behalf of the residential community in town. In fact they supported the Neptuners who are about to allow that abomination–the North End Plan–to bear fruit.

So here we are in 2023 where the Camp Meeting continues to expand down the religious road. They avoid political advocacy, but their religious attitudes, like many evangelical groups, lean right.

The 2023 CMA summer activities booklet speaks for itself.

And the  secular populace here is adrift with everyone for himself, extracting from Ocean Grove whatever makes themselves happy here.  They show little interest in activism or community.

Local groups such as the Chamber of Commerce fail to support any changes in town, unlike typical small town Chambers across America. They and others such as the Historical Society mostly keep to their own interests.

The future of OG is uncertain.  Unlike Messenger’s vision, the CMA will try to remain separate and distinct, pursuing its “mission.”

Yet, despite that goal,  the CMA all too often dances too close with secular OG instead of remembering “separation of church and state” where CMA properties are used as “public thoroughfares.”

They will not be able to have it both ways in the future.  The CMA cannot succeed if it continues to march backwards.

We hear that there may be a split in the Methodist Church, and it will be interesting as to how that will affect the OGCMA and secondarily the rest of OG.

OG has reached a fork in the road. Will the CMA continue to take us all in opposite directions? Paul Goldfinger photo.

After 1980, and especially recently, they have missed an opportunity to join with the resident secular community to find common ground.

The CMA will miss the boat if the Grovarian citizenry finds ways to redefine itself.

A new more iron-clad Master Plan is necessary to forge a vision for everyone who lives here.  We need more minorities, more young residents, a middle class, and more diversity.  We need more culture, more help for the poor–especially about affordable housing, more concern about historical preservation,  more adult education, more community spirit, and more programs for the resident  Grovarians.

We need a Neptune governance which would be more responsive to the needs of OG’s voters,  homeowners and renters. And we need more adherence to State land use laws; and no more condoization.  There is still an opportunity to deny the North End plan.

And we need less crowding in season.   Most mega events should be stopped and tourism reduced.  And the CMA, which is now even more invested with religion and less involved with the town, should consider being a greater  part of the community to create some balance.

 

The OG North End soon to become Asbury Park South. The CMA could still change its mind as could the HOA and/or Neptune Township.    This plan violates the spirit of the Master Plan.     It would be wonderful if the various factions could voluntarily come together for the common good, but they can’t even agree on a parking solution. A good goal would be to secede from Neptune. It may be possible. Paul Goldfinger photo. 2018. Blogfinger.net

 

 

IRA SANKEY   performing in the Great Auditorium c.1890  recorded on wax cylinders.  “A Shelter in the Time of Storm.”

 

 

SOURCES:

a.   Ocean Grove 2021 Summer Program Guide

b. History of Ocean Grove   1869-1939  By Mr and Mrs Richard F. Gibbons

c. Story of Ocean Grove 1869-1919  by Morris S. Daniels

d.  Holy Leisure:  Recreation and Religion in God’s Square Mile  by Troy Messenger** 1999

e. Forgotten Ocean Grove   Ted David 2018

f. Personal communications:  Herb Herbst,  Ted Bell, Scot Rasmussen, Jack Bredin, Steve Valk

g. National Geographic  August 2001.  ZipUSA series   Ocean Grove

h. Perspectives on Ocean Grove.  By Richard E  Brewer in 1969

i.  God’s Square Mile:  A Christian Walking Tour of Ocean Grove. By Karl and Pam Schweizer of OG

j.  Steve Valk is a social scientist from OG.  Here is a link:

https://wp.me/pqmj2-phW

k.   Blogfinger archives.  see search box at the top of this page.

l.  K. Schmelzkopf,*** Landscape, ideology, and religion: a geography of Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Journal of Historical Geography, 28, 4 (2002) 589-608