New Jersey « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

New Jersey

2023 2024

Happy New Year! Are you over it yet?

Bah humbug to that, I say. This is going to be a great year! For a time. We’re in control of our perceptions about things from there. So, I say to you, have a great ~~2023~~ 2024. Happy new year. Peace on earth, good will toward man. Additionally, here’s to food in your belly, spare items when and where you need them, and minimal downtime of your internet connectivity.

Let’s look at some photos I took last week, which will be the official wrap up of last year, here, on the official keeper of such things.

(kennysmith.org, the official keeper of such things — since 2004.)

I’ve come to think of this as the daily commute of the Canada geese. I don’t know why they’re still around here. Shouldn’t they be flying south? Instead, it’s just to the southwest in the morning, and the northeast each evening. Maybe they’re doing test flights or getting in the base miles.

So there I was in a Mexican restaurant, washing my hands, and I saw this by the door. At first, I was amused by the name of the product. And then, I chuckled at the location of the can. That gave way to appreciating the accidental photo composition, which was quickly replaced by wondering why I was doing all of that before dinner.

I went to the bank, a branch, or possibly just a company itself, that never gets visited. The one teller was surprised to see a person walk through the front door. It was all solid and old and quiet and vacant. But I liked this chair.

Same seat, from the other side, just so we can admire the craftmanship of the upholstery.

The branch manager was a young woman, swift and certain and equally surprised by seeing a human being in her workplace. It struck me as a nice place to spend a part of a career.

I wonder if the chair was comfortable.

In my life, I have traveled some, I have not seen every place and every thing. So this is probably in error, but: I’ve never seen these colors of winter anywhere but in the ancestral haunts. They’re limping through a severe drought just now, and so the clover is a mystery, but the grass is always like this in the winter, and the leaves are always like that this time of year, curled, desiccated and showing no hint of their previous beauty. Here, though, it always just feels like a pause between seasons rather than an end of one. I don’t know why that is.

I saw this house one night. I don’t know the story of that pig, but you get the sense it must be important to someone inside. There’s just the one, and they carefully spotlit the thing.

I believe this one was taken the same night. We were standing in the driveway talking to the neighbors when I looked up.

I haven’t done a lot of running this year because, well, I’d rather ride my bike. Or swim laps. Or do most any other thing I can think of. And so the running has been minimal. I did a two-mile run in the neighborhood, and late in the week we did the dam run. My lovely bride likes the dam run, an out-and-back that we do on most every trip back to the valley. You park in a park’s parking lot, run a mile over a long bridge, then up a hill for three-tenths of a mile, and then work your way along some beautifully maintained TVA trails, until you get to the Wilson Dam. We run halfway across the dam, and then turn back. Here you’re looking back at the bridge, the Singing River Bridge, from the dam.

That route gives you a 10K. I haven’t run a 10K since last December, in Savannah, because see above. With that in mind, given the cool air, the late hour, and the unambitious mist that couldn’t turn itself into a real rain, I told my lovely bride that I would run with her until I couldn’t. And then I would trail along, and double back when she met me again. So there we were, still together at the dam.

And there she went, back across the dam and back toward the car. So I just … kept on running. Caught her, passed her and then we wound up finishing the run together, victorious yawp and all.

That night, I believe it was, my mother suggested Chinese takeout food. We went to pick it up and, there on the counter next to the register, were these two boxes. For some reason, the idea of buying fortune cookies by the batch amused me.

When we got back, I passed out the food and my lovely bride quickly pronounced the little soup chips to be the good ones. I’m not sure how she knew that while they were all still in the baggie, but she was correct. And they were better, and less expensive, than the cookies.

We saw this in the airport on Saturday night in Nashville. Sunday morning, after weather elsewhere delayed our plane, we got back home long after 2 a.m. But we got back. The night before last, then, I made it to bed at about 3:30 a.m. After a week of almost getting on a regular sleep schedule, establishing a routine that would approach a normal person’s sleep schedule, I am immediately back to this.

But the art dangling from the ceiling was cool. We looked at that wondering what it was made of, and how many different sorts of places you could install that. (Not many.)

Last night, we did a thing we weren’t able to do before Christmas. We went to one of the charming nearby small towns and walked among the lights and looked at the store fronts along a half-mile stretch on Main Street. We drive through it from time to time and, daylight or at night, it is perfectly charming. But, finally, we walked and lingered and enjoyed. Lots of antiques, two book stores, three chiropractors, boutique clothing, rental spaces, restaurants and so on. Perfectly charming. It only took us six months to explore it a bit.

This was on one end of our little walk.

I know this fire company traces its roots back to 1704. (The oldest formal unit in the country is found in Boston. It is only 25 years older.) Given the age, and the prominent placement, there’s a great story behind that bell you can see upstairs. I’ll have to ask around about that.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you what was on the other end of our walk. And, probably, talk about riding bikes and whatever else comes up.

Happy 2024!

cycling / history / markers / New Jersey / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Dec 23

This took 223 years to write, and is incomplete

This morning was about grading. I paced things out perfectly. There was a big digital stack of things to read and comment on. Each item unique, each requiring some feedback. And that’s the thing, really. How much feedback? I, you’ll be surprised to learn, often have a lot to say. Hopefully some of it is useful. Hopefully some of it gets read.

So I read through and grade and give feedback on one assignment, then take something else off the list, and then back to that. It’s time intensive, but could be beneficial, so I approach it with great care, spreading them out a bit to bring the same enthusiasm to the last as I did to the first. I’ve been going at this since Monday evening. Today, I’ll finish them.

At lunchtime, I went downstairs for lunch, oddly enough. A study break. I had my sandwich and looked up into dark clouds. Storm cloud dark. And then this happened.

It was 40 degrees, I checked as that stuff was falling out of the sky. That changed my carefully planned out list.

I had two lists, actually. One on paper, and another in Word. The Word list got changed. So, more grading, and some writing, because there was no way I was going to go outside in the snow. Shame, too, I had figured out the whole day and had time for a nice medium-length ride. So organized was I! But it snowed for 45 minutes. It was just starting to gather in the grass when the cloud moved out. I did more school work while I waited a while to see if it was really over. To the northwest a sliver of blue broke through.

So I went for a bike ride. The plan was to combine the two usual routes. This would give me a pleasant 35-mile route, and I was going to enjoy all of that, me and my many layers of cycling clothes that keep out the wind. Here’s the last of those clouds moving off, during the first route, about 15 miles in.

I shot a little video soon after that. The last two times I’d been through there this time of day I saw deer running through the field into the tree line. Two rides ago, four deer ran alongside me, a race to the woods. Last time, I counted seven in a full-on sprint.

White-tailed deer can run faster than I can sprint, but I kept up with them. They might have been running at half speed. But, this time, I was prepared. I was going to round that curve and capture a bit of video of a whole herd of deer jogging to my left.

No deer showed up today.

Five miles later, on the second route, all of the old snow clouds were gone, and we were set to experience a beautiful sunset. This was actually going to be a problem though.

I started too late. The sunset came too early. I was still going the wrong direction. So I cut it short, turning south so I could eventually head back the other way. And then I started making deals with my legs. I would really like to make it back to the left-hand turn before it gets dark. Or, at least back to the red light at the crossroads.

I did both, but just barely. I saved about three miles by turning around early, and even so, my last mile tonight was in the dark. Good thing I cut the ride short.

This is the 19th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment we’ll have seen 37 of the 115 markers in the Historical Marker Database.

I did not find this marker today, but about a month ago. It was sunny and cool, but I didn’t linger long. The sun was headed to it’s home in the western sky and I had to get back on the road. But you have to stick around long enough to admire a bit of history.

We’re at the oldest AME church in the state, where members can trace their history back 223 years and was apparently the only church from these parts at the founding conference of the AME Church in Philadelphia in 1816.

Philadelphia had a lot of Georgian architecture, which influences the building here. Perhaps that has something to do with the early church leadership, as well. Rev. Reuben Cuff, the son of a former slave, began preaching in a log cabin out in the countryside a few miles away. Oral tradition has it that after the elder Cuff’s owner died, he might have married that man’s widow. The couple had three sons, who had some formal education, which wasn’t locally guaranteed. That last link makes some small leaps about Reuben and his brothers, based on the stories that have been passed down over the years. Like any personal 200+ year old story, it can seem plausible, if the base of it is accurate.

The rest of the story goes that Reuben had nine children with his first wife, and three with his second wife. He died at 81 in 1845. He’s buried in a small family cemetery, near his father. You can see his house here. That research finds he had the only stone house in the township, more than three dozen acres of land and a barn.

In 1839 an arsonist burned the old church building, but the congregation eventually rebuilt. This one, in the Classical Revival style, opened and took the Mt. Pisgah name in the 1870s.

A quick search shows me one photo of the interior of the church building. That organ has two sliders and 20 stops. It dates back to the 1960s.

There’s a small cemetery, which was established in 1860, attached to the church. A 20th century Cuff is buried there.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll see a building that predates this church. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

And now to work on some lecture notes.

adventures / cycling / Friday / New Jersey / photo — Comments Off
17
Nov 23

Sometimes, you get lucky

We have a well. And all of the well apparatus is located in our basement. I have never had a well before, but both sets of my grandparents had them once upon a time and both of them had the well guts in a little outbuilding and, basically as far as I knew until we looked at our new house, that was how it was done.

In the course of puttering around the basement — it’s a pretty awesome space, and not just because we went without a basement for 13 years — I noticed that there are some stickers affixed to the well guts. Fine, let’s be technical: the machinery. The tank and filter and the piping that connects everything. Hereafter referred to as the well’s guts. On the sticker for both the tank and filter, you can detect a pattern emerging. This one gets serviced every year. That one every two years. And in the fall! So make a mental note of that, and when late October rolled around I called the well people and said, come on out and meet the new neighbors, why don’t ya? Also, give me a well education.

The well guys are booked pretty solid these days, it turns out. Even the manager of the joint seemed impressed by the volume he was dealing with. So it took a while to get them out. And, since we’re talking about it here, you can safely surmise that today was that day.

And not a minute too soon, it turns out.

The guy goes down to the basement with his two crewmates and looks it over. I was not sure, at first, if he was passing a stone or reacting to what he saw. It was the latter. He described the problems he saw, forecast what they would turn in to and then said “I have this on the truck, or you can wait … ” but there’s really no waiting.

Do your thing, well surgeon.

His crew gets to work, quietly, efficiently and solve the problem. Out came the entire old tank.

In went a new tank. At first, there was some worry about the new tank because they couldn’t find the o-rings. (They found them.) I said “I grew up a Challenger kid; I know o-rings are a big deal.”

The head guy misheard me, and asked if I said I worked on the Challenger. (No. I was in the third grade. Also, not a rocket scientist. He doesn’t know the last part, couldn’t know that, but how old does he think I am?) One of his assistants didn’t know what the Challenger was. So I started explaining the space shuttle, all the while thinking Make this short. He doesn’t care. And that’s how I got into a conversation about o-rings.

This was about the time the old tank was brought up from the basement. Here’s the underside.

The guy pointed to some particular points, used some technical terms. Rust was one of them. He said we had a few days, maybe a week or so, before this exploded. And then a flooded basement, aggravation, insurance claims, etc. Sometimes, you get lucky.

I had a lovely 27-mile ride this evening. This afternoon, really, but it goes from light to dark in the blink of an eye. I pedaled over to one of the neighboring towns. We drive through there, but hadn’t ridden to it yet. And it was no big deal. Nice empty roads for the most part. In the town, they were decorating the museum with Christmas lights and going about the beginning of their festivities. They do it up big, for a small place, or so I gather. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Because I knew time and light were working against me, I took a slightly different and more familiar route back to the house. And, just before I got there, I was rewarded with this view.

I got inside at about 4:38, and this matters. Into the garage. Off come the bike shoes and helmet and jacket. Stop the apps, turn off the taillight, shed my gloves, all of it one smooth practiced sequence. I looked at the time, glanced at the GPS and thought, I can make it.

It being the inconvenience center, which closes at 5 p.m. It’s only about seven miles away and through town and I have to load the car. But if I make it today, I don’t have to do it tomorrow. So I shed the cycling kit and put on an old shirt and shorts and, still sweating, load up the car with the garbage cans and recycling. I drive. The GPS says I’ll get there at 4:57. And what do you know, I got there at 4:57.

The guy that mans the place is serious about time. It’s Friday and he’s got dinner on, I’m sure, but he’d already pulled his pickup down to the gate and was preparing to close it when I pulled in.

Got time for one more quick drop off?

“I close at 5,” he said. He held his out, fingers wide. almost pointing with his palm, making the emphatic point about time.

He let me in, and I understood I was supposed to feel bad about it. There was another guy dropping off his rubbish, too, though, so I stopped pretending to feel bad. But I did hustle. It was 4:57 when I got there. It was 5:01 when I again saw the guy that worked there, waiting to lock up behind me.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

I would like to apologize to him and his wife for making dinner one minute later than necessary. But he was a gentleman and I was grateful for the gesture. It won’t happen again. I hope.

On the drive back, I saw this view, to my left.

The photo is timestamped 5:10 p.m.

Back to the beach! Which is where we were Sunday afternoon! And I’ve been rationing out photos to keep this space busy looking during a busy week! Exclamation point!

While the photos I shared from Cape May yesterday included both an accidental and intentional overexposure, here is a deliberate underexposure. Sometimes you need a dancing silhouette.

Here’s one more shot of the Cape May light house. Built in 1859, automated in 1946 and still in service. It is the third lighthouse to announce this part of the coast. The remnants of the first two are now underwater. Going to the top will cost you a climb of 217 steps, and a small fee. They say you can see 10 miles away on a clear day like this one.

This is all part of a coastal heritage trail route. “A park in the making,” the sign says. You can check out maritime history — fishing villages, light houses, forts and more — coastal habitats, wildlife and historic settlements. It’s a lovely area. And, this time of year, no tourists. We’ll surely go back for another visit soon.

We had a mid-afternoon snack at a local shop, one of the few places that was open on Beach Avenue, the main drag. My favorite New Englander ordered a lobster roll and talked me into a shrimp roll. It was a good choice.

Texas toast, basically, stuffed with shrimp and drizzled with a cocktail sauce. Hard to go wrong.

So we sat there, just over the dune from the shoreline, and had some seafood and counted ourselves lucky for the experience.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

adventures / cycling / history / markers / New Jersey / photo / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Nov 23

We are rich in colorful photos today

So much typing. Some of it was even for classes. Where I must now turn attention toward grading. Friday. Or maybe Tuesday. Probably Tuesday.

That’s how it is, plotting things out around the this-and-that. I keep thinking I’ll find a rhythm to it. All of campus moves on rhythms. And, sometimes, it seems distinct enough that you can almost see it. Almost reach it. Almost find the way to shape your work into the rhythm. That’s happened twice this semester, then something will conspire to break that up. This week it’s four days of extra things, but I think I wrapped that up today. It’s always my doing. The last time I got hung up on being sapped of energy, and a desire to not do a thing. The time before that it was sleep-related. It’s all my doing.

But things must be done! And so they are done.

In tomorrow’s we’ll talk about public service announcements. Tonight I am finishing a text-heavy slide deck and breaking up two classes into groups.

For today’s bike ride I changed it up. After the first seven miles, the usual straight road through the wintering farmland, I turned right instead of left to ride along the river in the other direction. It’s a fast two lane road with broad shoulders and Phragmites on both sides. On your left there’s a bit of light industry and some empty strips of land running right up to the river. On your right is farmland, some of it just over a high embankment. Everywhere, you’ll see Phragmites.

Before long you’ll run across this bridge, which has no name. This is in a spot with a lot of water, and I’m not even sure if the inlet it spans has a name, but this little bit of water does feed into a creek a bit farther away that takes it’s name from a village — or vice versa. Who can be sure?

Just don’t park, fish, swim or do anything else on this bridge. There are signs.

Soon after that, I took a right turn, and pedaled three miles into a small town, busy with commerce and warehouses and, just then, a shift change. Got off that road to get away from that. That was an unexpected thing, so my hastily laid out route was no more, but this was a good thing. The sun was going down, I was heading south and to my right I found four great spots for future sunset photos. Happy accidents.

To get back to where I needed to be I had to ride a familiar rode in reverse, in skies that were getting darker with each turn of the pedals. And, as is my apparent habit, this was when I passed two police cruisers. (This time I had my light, and it was on!)

No legs at all in this ride, so it seemed silly to tally up miles on neighborhood roads, but that’s what I did.

We are fully in the season of no legs, I’m sure of it now.

More photos from our trip to the beach on Sunday. Here are some of the birds of Cape May, as glimpsed from a distance and photographed with a 55 mm lens. (Never occurred to me to carry a longer piece of glass.)

It was a lovely day. Had a great time. Saw a lot of birds.

And, look, more reedy sea grass!

In tomorrow’s space-padding installment of our afternoon trip to the beach we’ll actually see the beach.

Speaking of bike rides, it’s time to learn more about the local history. This is the 16th installment of We Learn Wednesdays. I ride my bike across the county hunting down the local historical markers. Including today’s installment we’ll have seen 34 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.

These are from a ride I took on the last Saturday of October. It was still warm, but got dark before I got back to the house. And that’s because these two markers were all the way at the other end of the county. I’m pretty sure that tracking down these two, at a state park, make the longest ride for this project.

So we’re in Parvin State Park. The pine barrens and the hardwood forests meet in the area, which is quite ecologically diverse.

The markers I wanted to find were in the state park — a place with a long and complex history. The first Europeans came into the area in the 1740s, but there’s plenty of evidence of Lenape habitation before that. In 1796, Lemuel Parvin dammed the Muddy Run stream to power a sawmill, thus creating a lake, named after him, and the future state park, that also shares his name. Turns out he’s buried in a cemetery I went right on Saturday, not too far away. In 1930, the state bought the acreage to make a park. The Civilian Conservation Corps developed much of that park, which, in 1943, was a summer camp for the children of interned Japanese Americans. The next year it was a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers captured in Africa.

These cabins have been there for almost 85 years, now. Pardon the photo composition, I shot all of these as I coasted by — almost literally shot from the hip.

They’re closed right now for upgrades, the cabins, though the park is open for business.

The first CCC men working there made up Company 1225, which was formed in 1933. They got food, clothing and lodging. They made $30 per month. They were required to send $25 of that home. They stayed there until 1937, clearing forest, making trails and roads and the like. Some of the pavilions that first group made are still standing. Company 1225 also built the main beach complex and several bridges

In late 1937 Company 2227V, comprised of World War I veterans, came to life. Skilled workers, they put on the finishing touches, making the picnic area and completing the landscaping. They also made all of these cabins.

There was a big flood in 1940, and Company 2227V tried to save the dam at the lake, but nature won the battle. But the CCC built a new dam, which happened just after the U.S. entered World War 2. The CCC camp was closed in May of 1942.

There are two signs in the park, which sprawls nicely as all parks should. And while the first sign was right where I expected it, this one was harder to find. I basically stumbled upon it by chance. It was the last little place I was going to look before heading out. The time was getting late, I had to get back up the road and … there it was!

There was no time to try to figure out which of these things are still around. It was enough to see the view. I bet those CCC guys appreciated the opportunity to make a little money, and they had some nice views to enjoy, too.

Some of them, they helped make. And, for 80 years or so, a lot of people have enjoyed the fruits of their labors.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll head back to the 19th century. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Tomorrow: class, the beach and a video from this park.

adventures / cycling / New Jersey / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
14
Nov 23

A lot of keyboard time today

I spent a lot of time staring at the computer screen today. It was productive, right up until the point when things got blurry. That’s a mental distinction, not a visual one. I just keep typing when that happens, hoping it still makes sense after that and wonder why it happens more quickly these days than it did, once upon a time.

I assume this is a conditioning issue, or a problem with the spatial mechanics of my desk and chair. Maybe it could be that I sit in a westerly direction. Could be the altitude. Maybe the water or the air. Definitely has nothing to do with age.

Some of today’s typing had to do with Thursday’s classes. So I have some time to circle back and check that work, at least.

It could also be the changing of the clocks. I am still having a difficult time adjusting to two aspects of it this year. First, the time of day when a bright sunny day turns to the early silver gray before twilight and just how rapidly night comes on here. It’s fast.

I did get out for a bike ride this evening. I set off at 4:37. I bumped into a neighbor, who is also a cyclist. He was walking his dog, Prudence, so we chatted for a moment, before he cautioned me that I wouldn’t have much time. But I have a light, and lots of sun and I was just going to ride around here, I said.

I set off on one of the regular routes, heading the opposite direction. I pulled the pin 22 minutes and five miles and change in. I should turn left, to follow the regular route, which would give me a 21-mile circuit. But I turned right, realizing the hour — it being all of 4:59 at that point, and the light was fading fast. Two miles and seven minutes on that road before I take another right. And then, a half-mile later, one more right. Now I’m back on the road that leads to our subdivision. I’ve been out 32 minutes and gone just over seven miles. It’s now 5:09 and it seems like a good idea to just keep it within the neighborhood.

So I spent the next 50 minutes in a two-mile stretch, covering three neighborhoods, back and forth, back and forth, to get an additional 12 miles and change, and almost all of that in the dark.

When I got into our neighborhood, I met my lovely bride, who had returned from campus and was taking a walk. She saw me first, of course. Guy on bike, bright-as-the-sun headlight. I rode the circle and saw her one more time.

All of this was very slow — ’tis the season — but I did enjoy one 18 mile per hour split, very early, and did set a PR on one Strava segment. Barely had a chill, until right near the end. Funny how that happens.

Here are a few more photos from our Sunday afternoon trip to Cape May this past weekend. I’m stretching these out to cover the week.

We’d just turned away from one marshy inlet or pond — all of this being in the area of some brackish water that looks distinctively different and yet the same — where we’d watched ducks look for a late lunch and swans judge everyone. That was our first of two such observation points where we could spy on the waterfowl, but as the trail looped us back into the woods, the sun was dancing perfectly on the leaves.

It isn’t a hike, I don’t think, when the trails are so well maintained as all of this, but it was a splendid place to be. And, if you’ll notice at the top of this photo, the implication is that part of the trail is not only tree-lined, but offers a canopy.

I like pictures like that for some reason. They’re a dime a dozen, but I don’t care. It isn’t a metaphor, but there’s just something about not knowing what’s next that makes it an intriguing visual. I stopped my lovely bride from walking into the shot, but before she figured out what I was doing, she stopped to pose for a picture or two. This one is one of my favorites from that little sequence.

Still smiles like a little kid. I have digital scans of all of her childhood slides to prove it.

More from the beach tomorrow, including some actual clues we were at a beach! And, also, we’ll see more of the local historical markers in another installment of We Learn Wednesday. Do make sure you stop back by to check it out.