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Archive for the ‘Feature article’ Category

A Slightly Subversive Christmas Wish

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article, tagged on November 30, 2012| 3 Comments »

A portrait of the author

By Charles Layton

Here is my problem: I don’t want anything for Christmas.

I don’t need clothes, I’m retired. My daily uniform is jeans and flannel shirts. My closet and attic are bursting with stuff I never wear. I put on a suit and tie about once a year – twice if it’s a really bad year.

Do I need gloves? Not really. I have two pairs.

A new parka? – got one last year, and it’s great.

How about a watch? Don’t wear one anymore. Like I said, I’m retired.

People used to give me music CDs and books at Christmas, but now I download all that to iTunes and Kindle. There’s nothing to wrap and put under a tree, unless it would be an Amazon gift certificate, which is embarrassingly unfestive.

I have all the electronics I can use. Desktop computer — check. Laptop — check. iPhone — got a new one. iPod – got one. Digital recorder — got one, seldom use it. Camera equipment – I use my wife’s. Don’t need more.

I don’t have an iPad or any other kind of tablet device, but that’s because I can’t figure out what I’d use one for, or why I’d want to carry it around.

What about some tools? I have all the tools I need. Anyway, I really don’t know how to fix anything.

You would think that having all the possessions one wants in life would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? And for most of the year it is. I am happy, I am blessed, my cup runneth over.

But come December, thanks to the commercially oppressive nature of the season, having all my earthly needs already fulfilled is awkward. Not wanting more makes me seem standoffish, alienated, uncooperative. I remember that my father used to feel something similar. “Christmas ought to be just for children,” he would say. I now think I know what he was getting at.

I stroll the malls, checking out the stores, and there’s just nothing there that appeals. If they were selling extra closet space, I would ask people to give me that.

I understand that people like to give gifts, that the impulse is natural and good, and I hate to be a Grinch, although I do recall that in the Dr. Seuss story the spirit of Christmas survived and flourished after the Grinch stole all the presents.

Here’s what I’m thinking. What if, this year, I just ask all my loved ones, instead of giving me something, to make a donation to the local food pantry or to Hurricane Sandy relief.

Would that be so awful? It’s what would really make me the happiest.

But OK, if anyone still insists on giving me something, I guess I could use some socks.

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An Ocean Grove Favorite Suffers Storm Losses

Posted in Feature article, tagged on November 29, 2012| 2 Comments »

Kenny Vance standing on the wreckage of his home. NY Times photo. Nov.29, 2012.

By Paul Goldfinger

In today’s NY Times, it was reported that Kenny Vance, the marvelous singer songwriter, lost his oceanfront home in Belle Harbor, Queens, during Sandy.  The 68-year-old Vance has been a favorite during the Doo Wop concerts in the Great Auditorium. Along with his group the Planotones, he has brought his authentic sound to Ocean Grove on many occasions.

Kenny was entertaining on a cruise ship when his home in the Rockaways was demolished by that horrendous storm. It was in his house that he stored all the mementos going back to his origins singing harmonies on street corners in Brooklyn or looking for an echo in the showers of his high school. He lost original tapes, photographs, recordings and writings that would have provided the unique ingredients for a future book.

Here is the link to the Times article plus one of his songs below. We wish Kenny Vance all the best as he recovers from this devastating event. We know from the article that he is philosophic about the situation and that he will continue his scheduled appearances. In searching the wreckage, he found a photo of himself with the late Johnny Maestro, and this touching moment is what the Times reported:

“Performing is my medicine,” he said, adding that his most poignant find in the wreckage was a photograph of him performing with the singer Johnny Maestro, who died in 2010.

“I cried when I found that,” he said. “I realized that I’m lucky, because I’m still here.”

NY Times article about Kenny Vance

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Beachfront Coming Back to Life.

Posted in Feature article, Ocean Grove photographs, tagged on November 3, 2012|

Bikers on the Ocean Grove beach. By Mary Walton

By Paul Goldfinger

Saturday. November 3.  We were at the beachfront photographing the cleanup when we noticed that some people were  down at water’s edge, not picking up debris, but just enjoying the beautiful sunny day.

Bev Fisher recently moved to Ocean Grove with her husband Herb.  She has three rescue dogs (Roxy, Rooben and Oscar.)  Even though she has no power at home, she says that they are burning lots of candles.  “A lot  of candles spark romance,” said Bev.  She says that she and Herb are “talking to each other—communicating” thanks to the absence of the usual distractions such as TV. Bev has been inviting neighbors in for hot showers and snacks.  As for her walk on the beach, she said, “I’m very happy.”  I asked her if she was showering with the neighbors.  She laughed and said, “If the power stays off, it could come to that.”

David Lee, a turf farmer,  was all alone doing some surf fishing.   He is the first fisherman we have spotted down there since the storm.  He was using metal lures and some reddish surgical tubing for bait.  David used to live in Ocean Grove on Cookman Avenue  and he often returns to fish.  Today he caught some bass, but they were too small to keep.  David  is from Neptune now. (The town, not the planet)

Mary Walton spotted the bikers on the beach.  The sand was so hard that bikers could actually ride there.

Grover Bev Fisher with her three rescue dogs.  Paul Goldfinger photo

Neptuner David Lee caught some bass. Paul Goldfinger photo. Left click for full image.

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Try the Grouper Head

Posted in Feature article, Photographic Gallery, Color, tagged , on October 12, 2012|

Chinatown. Flushing, Queens, NYC. Seafood market. By Paul Goldfinger. Left click for full image.

SOUNDTRACK:  If you like fish, especially Grouper head, a true delicacy, then you want it to be fresh caught, so we recommend that you take a slow boat to Chinatown.   Here’s Carol Weisman with that very musical sentiment.   PG

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Heaven and Hell on the Internet

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article, tagged on September 28, 2012|

St. Isidore — patron saint of the Internet?

By Charles Layton

This week, in a restaurant, I happened to glance at a man and woman sitting at a nearby table. The man had his hands in his lap, his head bowed and eyes lowered, and I just assumed that he was saying grace. But then, when I was able to see his hands, I noticed his thumbs were moving. He wasn’t praying, he was text messaging.

Actually, he could have been praying. Many people use their Internet gadgetry for religious purposes. They attend live-streamed church or synagogue services. They log onto prayeronline.org, where one can submit a prayer request to the website’s “prayer team.” Or they teleport themselves to any number of little cyber-chapels where one can do one’s own praying in peace and quiet. These sites are the natural descendants of Dial-A-Prayer, which dates from the 1950s, when telephones actually had dials. (Today, of course, we have Dial-A-Prayer.com.)

Some years ago there was a movement in the Catholic Church proposing Saint Isidore of Seville to be the patron saint of the Internet. There was even a prayer people could recite as they went online. It asked that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, God should “direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and let us treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter.” (If only.)

It’s hard to think of any aspect of our lives that hasn’t immigrated onto the Internet. Religion, yes. Education, yes. Commerce and shopping, definitely yes. Filing income tax returns, yes. Work, yes; millions of people telecommute from home, and millions more, even if they’re in an office, conduct business online. This includes those many millions worldwide who send emails telling me I’ve won the Spanish National Lottery.

Our children and grandchildren are showing us how social life will be in the near future; it will be centered online, with messages and photos and videos flashing at ever-increasing speed throughout the neighborhood, the school, the city, the world. Have you not noticed that, unless forbidden to do so, children will text message at the dinner table? Or while sitting beside you in a car? Or late into the night, lying in the dark in their little beds, their intent little faces dimly illuminated by the phone screen?

Courtship and sex online? – Let’s not even go there.

Politics and diplomacy? Just recently we’ve seen an interesting example in the movie “Innocence of Muslims,” which seems to have originated in California and led to riots and murder in North Africa. It’s not unthinkable that our next war will not only be covered on YouTube, as wars are now; it will be started by YouTube.

In the early ‘90s Ross Perot, as a presidential candidate, promoted the idea of electronic democracy, or E-democracy as it is now called. He argued that direct democracy, the kind the Athenians had, was preferable to indirect (representative) democracy, and that, thanks to computers, this would now be practical. We could hold town meetings via computer, we could vote via computer – and not just vote to elect our public officials; we could all, as E-citizens, vote to decide specific policy.

For instance, should we bomb Iran? That’s a question too important for a relatively small group of government officials to decide. Let’s have a national E-poll of all the citizens.

But if we ever do go that far, I might have to take refuge at Dial-A-Prayer.com.

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Confessions of an Academic Cheater

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article, tagged on September 12, 2012| 5 Comments »

By Charles Layton

The Harvard cheating scandal was in the paper again this morning. Every time I read about this it reminds me of my own career as an academic cheater.

Like the cheating at Harvard, mine was complicated. But here’s the difference: my cheating turned out to be one of the high points of my life as a student. Let me explain.

I wasn’t much of a student in high school. My early school years had been too easy. I had pretty much gotten by on glibness. So when I reached high school I had no idea how to study. And by then, I was at a point where I could no longer finesse my way through a test. It was study or flunk.

This became apparent in Miss Barkley’s American history class, where, at the end of the first semester, we faced a massive final exam, which would determine the greater part of our grade. And because I had (as usual) goofed off in class, I wasn’t at all prepared.

So I decided to cheat. And not in a small way. I was going to cheat on a colossal scale. I enlisted my friend Bobby, another goof-off, in the enterprise. We got excited about it. We were going to be the best cotton-pickin’ cheaters that school had ever produced.

We spent the better part of the weekend preparing elaborate “cheat sheets,” which we intended to smuggle into class on Monday morning and consult secretly during the exam.

We poured our most devoted energies into preparing those cheat sheets, which were to be miniaturized so we could hide them up our sleeves. We condensed the semester’s material into a shorthand outline, which we then painstakingly copied out in tiny lettering on long, inch-wide strips of paper – just enough info to answer a “what was” type of question.

“Whiskey Rebellion, 1791, grain farmers, tax.”

“Louisiana Purchase, 1803, Jefferson.”

“1st bank of the U.S, chartered 1791, Alex. Hamilton, Secy of Treas”

We wrote on both sides of these paper strips, and then we Scotch taped all the strips together to make one long strip, maybe four feet long. Then we rolled these long strips into double rolls, so that, with a deft flick of thumb and forefinger, we could scroll them this way or that way to retrieve the facts we needed for a given question.

Having accomplished this, we practiced looking up those various facts. Bobby would say to me, “XYZ Affair,” and I would scroll the strips until I found the notes on that.

“War of 1812,” I’d say, and Bobby would scroll to that spot on his sheet.

By Monday morning we had it down. We were pumped. We were confident that we could find any fact, quickly, and inconspicuously enough so as not to get busted. We were really going to put one over on the hawk-eyed Miss Barkley. Oh boy.

The bell rang. In we went to class. The tests were passed around.

“Begin.”

I answered the first question just fine, without resorting to my cheat sheet. Then I answered the second question – again without consulting the cheat sheet. I remembered the pertinent facts just from having copied them down so carefully.

And so it went. I ended up going through that entire test without a single peek at my beautiful cheat sheet, which remained coiled like a sleeping worm just up my sleeve.

As I handed in my test paper and walked out the classroom door, it struck me that while I had thought I was preparing a clever way to beat the system, what I had really been doing was studying. Yeah. So that’s what studying was.

I had distilled the relevant information from the textbook, I had sorted and organized it, written it down, reviewed it… Totally by accident, I had discovered how to cram for a test. By hook or by crook, you might say.

I felt like a total idiot of course. Because instead of being the devilish, romantic outlaw I had set out to be, I’d turned myself into a studious nerd.

I used that stumbled-upon method of study, though, for the rest of my days. Omitting, of course, the part where you compress the information into a small paper roll and hide it on your person. That part – the unethical part — was the one step in the process that turned out to be a waste of time.

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There’s No Business Like Show Business in the Great Auditorium

Posted in Feature article, tagged on September 10, 2012| 20 Comments »

Is this a marvelous venue for a Saturday night show—or what?
Paul Goldfinger photo ©  click left for full view; then arrow back

By Paul Goldfinger

Quite a few Bloogers have been complaining about the Saturday night shows that occur on fourteen occasions each summer in the Great Auditorium. Some have said that the acts are has-beens who only appeal to seniors. Others think that more famous or younger  performers would be better, while yet others wish there were more parking and air conditioning. Some hate the Doo Wops so much that they would rather watch Broadway flood on a Saturday night.

It’s not clear what the bottom line is all about with these complaints, but they all seem to think that the Camp Meeting could have bigger crowds if only they changed their programming. This outpouring of appreciation arose after the CMA announced that they lost money on the Saturday night shows. As it turns out, the amount of money lost (money collected minus expenditures) was a small negative amount. Ticket sales were down, but Johnny Mathis was cancelled at the last minute because he needed emergency hip surgery. In addition, due to the economy, tickets are down everywhere — not just at the Great Auditorium.

Although no explanation is necessary from the CMA, you should know that these shows are very expensive, and the more famous acts can cost $100,000-$200,000 or more and are thus not affordable unless ticket prices are raised considerably. In addition, the costs for the shows have to be increased beyond the performers fees; there are thousands of dollars for sound and for advertising.

Perhaps you have noticed how inexpensive the GA show tickets are relative to others in the area. Tickets to Count Basie to see Fiona Apple cost $100.00 for the balcony and they go up from there.

The CMA is in competition with some major venues including the Paramount in Asbury Park. You can see Kiss at the PNC Bank Arts Center, but orchestra seats cost $100-$187. Many of the competing theaters are open all year, unlike the GA, so they have more flexibility to make money.

The target demographic for the Saturday shows in OG are families from towns around this area who may want to bring children to a show like Abba. Those folks want wholesome entertainment at an affordable price, and even though the GA has 5,000 good seats, that doesn’t mean that the 2,700 tickets that Sedaka sold are chicken feed.

The Count Basie has 1,500 seats, so 1,500 tickets is a good night for them. The other advantage a place like Count Basie has is that they can run a show for 3-5 days in a row or longer. This lets them make more money than the Great Auditorium, which has a very limited availability situation. It also gives them access to shows that won’t come for just one night.

The CMA is a private organization that likes to do their programming the way they do — and they are doing just fine.  That’s not to say that they don’t welcome your suggestions, but you have to understand the complexity of the situation.

SOUNDTRACK: Listen to Ethel Merman. She knows the situation:

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Conversations We’ve Heard

Posted in Feature article, tagged on August 21, 2012|

Not being oblivious downtown.       By Paul Goldfinger

The scene is New York’s Greenwich Village. I am walking near Washington Square Park — jeans, T-shirt, camera in hand and Blogfinger hat on my head. The hat is part of my Grover uniform. It’s green with red lettering and looks like what the soldiers wear while pounding the bush looking for the Taliban.

A couple is coming from the opposite direction. As they pass, she glances my way. A momentary pause and then I hear:

“Blogfinger? Didja ever hear of that?”

Isn’t it funny how some people observe everything while others are oblivious. This woman took two seconds to notice me and my hat, and then come up with a question about it.

That was a special moment. She had a brief visual experience, enough to spark a comment, and I enjoyed what she said. It actually was a sort of conversation, even though we did not speak to each other.

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OG is Busting Out All Over—-Has It Turned a Major Corner?

Posted in Feature article, tagged on June 24, 2012| 9 Comments »

Main Avenue, Ocean Grove. PG photo.   Click once to view full screen; then back arrow.

By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger

Saturday, June 23: It seems that Ocean Grove is coming alive in a major way, and it’s only a Saturday in June. For those of you who didn’t get here today, there were sunshine and happiness all over the place, from porch gatherings, beach goings, bike riding, barbecuing, schmoozing and yakking, eating (specifically hot dogs at the GA and strawberries at the Auditorium Pavilion), ogling, shopping, fiddling (Violin Academy of OG in the pavilion), making (out), posturing, perambulating, playing, and parking.

It seemed like a perfect storm of people, fun, and energy at this rejuvenated Jersey Shore beach town, energized by evolving demographics.

Each year since the turn of the century, the Grove has become more and more alive, as if it now has reached a critical mass and has turned a corner. If  anyone ever again calls it “Ocean Grave,” he should be tied up and paraded down Main Avenue by a band of teen- age girls in bikinis, the Kazoo Band from Days, the kids violin ensemble, the commenters from Blogfinger, a couple of drag queens, and finally fifty or more screeching children with their dogs. (If you want to suggest other participants in this “turning the corner parade,” just comment below.)

This summer will probably be pretty wild, so hold onto your hats, your beach chairs, your bikes and your martinis, because OG has arrived.

Meanwhile, here is the tail-end of the Strawberry Festival at about 7 p.m. in the Auditorium Pavilion. The audience  for the evening  concert  (The B Street  Band—only three letters away from E—–an actual rock concert in the GA) is starting to arrive, the water sellers are setting up, live classical music drifts off among the ocean breezes, all mingling with the voices of happy people all over the place.

OG has definitely rounded a bend and is facing a bright future.

 

 

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Draining the Urn — Saving a Piece of OG History

Posted in Blogfinger News, Feature article, Ocean Grove feature article, Ocean Grove news, tagged , on June 11, 2012| 3 Comments »

Joshua Reinhart (top), Darrell Dufresne (left) and Andrew Nolan preparing to install a drain pipe in the bowl. Reinhart and Nolan are from Ocean Grove Hardware. Photo by Mary Walton

By Mary Walton

Long plagued with drainage problems, Ocean Grove’s oldest and largest historical urn is undergoing much-needed repairs that include a new drainage system.

Ted Bell and Darrell Dufresne, volunteering their efforts for the Historical Society of Ocean Grove, have supervised the work. The cost is being underwritten by a $1,225 matching grant from the Monmouth County Historical Council, based on a proposal written by Bell and Rose Myers.

When town fathers erected the urn in 1875 on the southeast corner of Founders Park, they apparently gave little thought to what would happen when it filled with water. There was no drainage system, said Ted Bell, “as far as we can tell.”

That was corrected in 1995, when interior piping was installed and the urn was refurbished. The solution turned out to be only temporary. The urn filled with water that froze in cold weather, cracking the bowl and ruining the piping. The drainage failure became apparent when the Ocean Grove Beautification Project planted the urn with flowers.  They drowned.

In the new system designed by Dufresne, flexible PEK piping will run from a hole drilled in the bowl of the urn down through the hollow base and out one side. Holes drilled on either side of the crack have halted its spread, and will be invisible when the urn receives a fresh coat of green paint.

To prepare the urn, Dufresne said, it was necessary to remove dead plants, many pounds of dirt and so many marble chips they filled a barrel. The interior  has been scraped free of rust and dirt and painted. Much of the work has been carried out by Ocean Grove Hardware. When the side panel was removed, Bell and Dufresne found two time capsules — red metal boxes — placed there when the urn was rededicated in 1996 following the restoration. They will be returned to the base until some future generation decides it’s time to open them, Bell said. “I’m not going to be around.”

On the scene Monday, Dufresne said that a lot of Grovers had stopped by to offer input. As an engineer by profession, he has often been in the position of receiving friendly advice. That offered by Grovers has been typical. “Most have told me why this wouldn’t work!”

The Historical Society welcomes donations toward Ocean Grove’s share of the matching funds.

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PhotoNews: Adopt a Poodle.

Posted in Feature article, tagged on May 26, 2012| 4 Comments »

Knox, photographed in Ocean Grove. PG photo.

Kathleen Reilly is a Grover who loves standard Poodles. We met her today walking a magnificent 12 month old rescue dog named Knox. Kathleen is “fostering” the dog in the hopes that someone will adopt him. Kathleen is active in the Poodle Club of America and the Mid-Atlantic Poodle Club. For more information, let us know, and we will give you Kathleen’s phone number.

Kathleen Reilly with Knox

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“Everything’s Happy” in Jen’s OG Garden on Mt. Tabor Way.

Posted in Feature article, tagged on May 26, 2012| 1 Comment »

A peony is the star of the show in Jen’s garden. PG photo

It was a glorious morning today, Saturday, when we spotted Jen working in the beds surrounding her purple Victorian home. She is an enthusiastic gardener who has successfully transformed the periphery of her corner property  into an English-style natural-looking garden. She is especially enjoying her efforts this spring, because the plants are doing so well.

Allium balls are surrounded by roses and lambs’ ear. Daylillies await their turn in the back

According to Eileen Goldfinger, Blogfinger’s food and garden editor, the warm winter and the cool spring, coupled with light rains, have resulted in remarkable results in gardens around the Grove.

Delphinium are tall and purple.

The most obvious change has been the early emergence of roses all over town. Usually roses bloom in June, but they began flowering this April, and now they already are almost past their peak. Jen tells us that some annuals that usually vanish due to winter are now blooming again. Her perennials are also  coming in larger and with more blooms than usual. The foxglove’s “as high as an elephant’s eye and it looks like it’s climbin’ clear up to the sky.”  (lyric courtesy of Rodgers and Hammerstien from “Oklahoma” opening song.)

It’s such a happy day that we need some music to go with it. Hurricane Smith delights his girl with “flowers every day…and walks along the Milky Way.” What would you say if you had that?      —Paul Goldfinger

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A New House to be Built on a Very Important OG Site

Posted in Feature article, tagged , on May 16, 2012| 3 Comments »

Richard Kimak takes a lunch break. Kimak Builders is a family owned construction business from Wall.

By Paul Goldfinger

Years ago there was a historic hotel at the foot of Ocean Pathway called the Queen. It was a landmark, and Teddy Roosevelt had stayed there. At one time it had been two hotels which were combined into one. It was in poor condition when Mr. Jack Green, a local realtor and contractor, bought the property. Before he had a chance to develop it, it was blown down during a nor’easter — c.  1995.

After that, a single family home was built on the most westerly part of the property, and the remaining part stayed an empty lot.  Most of you probably know that lot on the north side at the end of the Pathway, and you probably wondered why it was still empty.   Mr. Green commissioned the well-known architect Cate Comerford to design a home for his personal use, but eventually he chose to live in a condo which he built on the Pathway.

Now, if you go down there, you will see a 3400-square-foot single family house being erected on the site. The address will be 10 Ocean Avenue, although the long side of the structure will be on the Pathway. The house will be a spectacular building that will take about 14 months to complete. (It took less time to build the Empire State Building.) The original plans by Ms. Comerford will be used.

The new owner, who is from Chicago, will use it part-time. According to the general contractor, Kimak Builders of Wall, the house will have five balconies, a turret, an elevator and two magnificent fireplaces. No composite materials will be used. The exterior will have five types of cedar sidings. The interior details will also be amazing.

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