BY Cary Africk | Wednesday, Feb 22, 2012 12:00pm | COMMENTS (1)
The following is reprinted with permission from the Montclair Watercooler.
From Wikipedia:
“Because the density of pure ice is about 920 kg/m³, and that of sea water about 1025 kg/m³, typically only one-ninth of the volume of an iceberg is above water. The shape of the underwater portion can be difficult to judge by looking at the portion above the surface.”
Building houses on Wildwood is the tip of the iceberg. Continue Reading
BY Daniel Kaskel | Tuesday, Feb 21, 2012 1:00pm | COMMENTS (0)
Millburn Township will always be home to my family. We moved to Florida in 1999 from Short Hills, but have kept in touch with many close friends and family in Millburn and Short Hills these past 13 years. In 1994 I ran for Millburn Township Committee – as a Democrat. (Running for Township Committee in 1994 as a Democrat truly reflects the love I had for the Township.) I also had the pleasure of practicing law for several years at a firm in Short Hills. While living in first Millburn and then Short Hills, my family never missed a Forth of July celebration or Halloween parade.
It is with profound sadness that I learned last week that the Millburn Zoning Board denied the Chai Center’s application for a variance very early this morning. Rabbi and Mrs. Bogomilsky became a much welcomed, valuable asset to the Township long before I moved to Florida. Their struggle to establish a Jewish institution within the Township has been made unduly troublesome and difficult, and has become needlessly costly for both the Chai Center and the Township. This is unfortunate. Continue Reading
BY Carolyn Maynard-Parisi | Thursday, Feb 16, 2012 4:15pm | COMMENTS (7)
Watching Jeremy Lin (credit: Judy Wu)
Even for the sports-phobic (present company included), it is hard not to be swept up in the phenomenon that is Linmania. Jeremy Lin, the Taiwanese-American, Harvard-educated point guard who has seemingly come out of nowhere to lead the New York Knicks to victory in their last seven games, is a golden boy across the country.
This morning on his WNYC radio show, Brian Lehrer called Lin “the biggest Chinese-American cultural icon in the history of the United States.” Even President Obama is following Lin’s meteoric rise. (Lin’s response: “I’m very, very honored and very humbled.”) Continue Reading
BY Warren Levinson | Wednesday, Feb 15, 2012 9:00am | COMMENTS (14)
Driving from my house to Manhattan means crossing five rivers: the Third, the Passaic, Berry’s Creek, the Hackensack and the Hudson. Getting across the Third can be a bitch if I happen to hit it on a rainy day when parents are dropping their kids off at the middle school, but the only one I really think about is the Hudson.
Catch the Lincoln Tunnel at the right time and the rest of the trip will take care of itself.
Or at least it used to be, before the reconstruction of Route 3 and its bridges started in earnest a couple of years ago. Now an easy ride through the tunnel on the westbound ride no longer presages getting home when dinner is still warm. Going east, the radio traffic reports (usually outdated anyway, unless Helicopter Man is eyeballing your route Right Now) cover the backup at the tunnel, but rarely deign to take note of what’s doing on lowly Route 3. Continue Reading
BY Peter Mitchell | Tuesday, Feb 14, 2012 1:09pm | COMMENTS (13)
This Great Horned Owl is part of a mating pair recently observed in Brookdale Park by my wife, Cindy Furlong. These birds are near the tennis courts and are best observed and heard in late afternoon until dusk. We heard a series of six hoots – very WHO sounding.
Thursday, Feb 09, 2012 4:05pm | COMMENTS (93)
By Adam Karl, a spokesperson for Occupy Essex.
Why is a super wealthy corporation that made $3 Billion in profit last year being given a $250 Million tax credit to build a shiny new corporate office building in Newark? Why should the taxpayers finance these billionaires?
Prudential Insurance should pay for their own office building. The Prudential “Rock” is outside Secaucus. The Arena in Newark is named for Prudential. The company has a market cap of $26 Billion and reported over $3 Billion in profits last year. Continue Reading
BY Concerned Citizens of Montclair | Wednesday, Feb 08, 2012 9:18am | COMMENTS (31)
The Concerned Citizens of Montclair (CCM) continue to advocate for a transparent municipal budget process and to request that the town make financial and operating information accessible to its residents. Via the Open Public Records Act (OPRA), CCM has requested extensive financial data from the town (data that should already be on the town’s website) and here is one of our findings relating to 2011 Total Salary and Wages for the Water and Sewer Utilities: Continue Reading
BY Lisa and Evan Robbins | Monday, Feb 06, 2012 2:00pm | COMMENTS (2)
For the past six years, our family has been involved in supporting the effort to eradicate child slave trafficking in Ghana, Africa. The fishing industry in the Lake Volta region in Ghana is notorious for using child slaves as young as age four. These children dive into murky water to untangle fishing nets, paddle boats, empty buckets of water from the bottom of the boats, do domestic work and more. In addition, the children sleep on mud floors, receive no medical care, are severely underfed, and are forced to do such physically demanding labor that it distorts their growing bodies by causing microfractures. It is truly heartbreaking. Continue Reading
BY Martin Schwartz | Saturday, Feb 04, 2012 11:13am | COMMENTS (5)
The drop in real estate prices and dried up home equity financing has made both owners and buyers unsure where to spend their limited cash today on home renovations. People question what work they should undertake, both to improve their day to day living, and to make smart choices for re-sale and long term property valuation.
Should homeowners add a new addition to gain another bedroom and finish the basement for the kids, or redo their 1950′s kitchen and update all those funky baths?
In today more complex real estate climate, a new kitchen and redone baths are the smarter investment.
Before the market nose-dived in 2008, some new buyers actually looked for older homes with strong bones, but with kitchens and baths needing serious help. Buyers wanted to bring their own creative vision and comforts to all those newly purchased spaces. Money was cheap and easy and the gleam not yet off the rose from multiple ‘anyone can do it’ home renovation TV shows. For many newly motivated home buyers, construction was quick and always finished up in a viewing half-hour. And buyers then could afford the float of carrying two homes during major renovations, before making actual moves.
Conversely, if a seller wasn’t able renovate before going to market, their funky baths and missing new kitchen was not that much of a turn-off. Home buyers and brokers just factored it all in to the final selling price.
No longer. Continue Reading
BY Virginia Citrano | Friday, Feb 03, 2012 3:00pm | COMMENTS (19)
This morning at 9:12 a.m. I got a call from my mother that my father needed to be admitted to Mountainside Hospital immediately. You’re going to see a lot of time stamps in this post because they are important. I followed my mother from her home in Verona to the hospital so we would have a second car available, and parked on George Street just before the bend where it joins Claremont Avenue while my mother drove to the Harrison Pavilion. It was 10:02 a.m. when I ran back over to help my dad into admitting (I’m getting messages from my sisters as this is unfolding.)
