We're hearing from Clever Commuters and the AP that all train service on the Northeast Corridor is suspended out of Penn Station due to low voltage on the line. UPDATE: We hear Hoboken train service is operational. From Clever Commute:
Due to Amtrak power supply problem, all Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast Line and MidTOWN DIRECT trains are being held at stations. Service is temporarily suspended.
Heavy rain and loud thunderstorms have just hit Baristaville. There's a severe thunderstorm watch until 10 pm, and a remote possibility of a twister. From the National Weather Service.
DOPPLER RADAR HAS INDICATED SOME WEAK ROTATION WITHIN THIS STORM. WHILE NOT IMMEDIATELY LIKELY.A TORNADO MAY STILL DEVELOP. IF A
TORNADO IS SPOTTED.ACT QUICKLY & MOVE TO A PLACE OF SAFETY IN A STURDY STRUCTURE.SUCH AS A BASEMENT OR SMALL INTERIOR ROOM.
Just in from Janice Harayda, a report that a small apartment building in downtown Montclair was hit by lightning:
Before I leave Washington to work back in the district for the August recess, I wanted to update you on some important issues I am tackling.
On Wednesday, July 23 at 6:45 p.m., I will host my first ever Telephone Town Hall Meeting. By innovatively using basic teleconferencing technology, I will be accessible to constituents throughout the Eighth Congressional District without asking you to leave the comfort of your home. Many households will receive a phone call from me with an invitation to join in on a discussion of federal issues most important to New Jersey families.
Participation is toll free, and I encourage you to take this opportunity to ask me any question you may have. For more information, please call my office at (973) 523-5152 or visit my website at www.pascrell.house.gov. To participate in the teleconference if have not received a phone call by 6:45 tonight, please call in to (877) 229-8493, PIN 13933.
It's all about solidarity says Vanity Fair here in their response to New Yorker's controversial Obama cover. Still, the mock-up won't see the light of newsstands anytime soon -- it's just for show online (maybe that's good since it looks a lot like this).
Plenty Magazine did a state by state survey of green hotspots around the country and New Jersey only ranked three mentions. Green Jersey says they need to look harder.
But in New Jersey, just three green spots are listed: Down to Earth, a Red Bank restaurant that has actually closed; the 132-year-old Chalfonte in Cape May; and the Nets, the first NBA team accredited as carbon-neutral.
There are so many others. We bet we could find three in a fair number of towns.
The blog includes a bunch of green recommendations here. Tell us your favorite green hotspots in Baristaville (in addition to Pat Kenschaft's garden).
The good news -- there's less traffic on NJ roadways than expected. The bad news -- we'll probably end up paying for it. From the Star Ledger...
Traffic and toll revenue are down on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway despite the summer tourism season.
Toll transactions on the parkway in June were down 4.3 percent compared to the same period last year. Revenues dipped 4.8 percent on the turnpike compared with June 2007.
The Barista went to traffic court in Montclair yesterday afternoon. Not to fight a ticket, but to watch other people fight theirs. And yes, as suspected, the room was filled with people caught for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
People caught in the "Cops in the Crosswalks" undercover initiative are steamed.. The ones we've heard from (by e-mail and at parties) report that they never saw the cops posing as pedestrians. And they're furious that they were caught up in an enforcement "mill." Several vowed to fight their tickets in court. So I expected fist waving, moral outrage or at least a few jutting chins.
But traffic court does not lend itself to theatrics. The entire thing is highly scripted, starting with the line-up in front of prosecutor Kenneth Strait, who offered the pedestrian violators all the same deal. You've been charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian, a charge that carries two points. Plead guilty to a lesser charge of "unsafe driving," pay $440, and the points are dropped.
The $440 represents a $157 fine, $33 costs and a $250 surcharge to the state.
One of our fave editor/photographer/bloggers, Eric Levin, may have been feeling a tad guilty about sneaking a photo INSIDE the dessert carousel at an outer-outer- Baristaville diner (Palisades). He did manage to capture the frosty appeal of the confections, as you can see (sorry, Eric, once I pulled your perfectly exposed pic into photoshop my right hand went a little crazy on the hue/saturation adjustment.) Read more about his guilty inner dialogue here
A burglar hit Midland Ave. in Montclair Thursday night and, Goldilocks-like, picked three separate victims. In the first house, apparently entered by a rear window, the burglar must have found nothing worth taking; no items were reported missing. In the second house, entered by a back door, the burglar took one laptop, two wallets, two Blackberries and one lesser cellphone. But the third house, that one was best of all: the burglary, who entered through an unlocked front door, walked away with two Apple laptops and an iPod.
A similar crime rash took place over the weekend on Vincent Place in Montclair, where three unlocked cars were broken into. From the first car, the thief got a pair of yellow Maui Jim sunglasses. From the second, the thief took two pairs of $200 sunglasses. And from the third, the thief got a cellphone and an MP3 player.
Moral of the story? Dear reader, we leave that up to you.
If Pat Kenschaft didn't exist, we'd have had to invent her. Montclair's ultra-green organic gardener put her garden on display last weekend as part of an open garden tour. Today, in an e-mail to her large list, she reported the tour from her point of view, and the most interesting part by far was her revelation that she never waters. Well, almost never.
It's hard enough to be speak your native language when you're profoundly deaf, but 35-year-old Darby Leigh took it the extra step when he learned Hebrew well enough to become a rabbi.
Last week, he signed on as the new assistant rabbi at B'nai Keshet, Montclair's Reconstructionist synagogue. This YouTube video gives a glimpse of what it took.
Want a splash of yellow for your kitchen table? There are dozens of Black-Eyed Susans for the taking at 499 Ridgewood Ave., Glen Ridge. Just don't take the containers.
Hoffman LaRoche, the pharmaceutical behemoth that sits between Baristaville and Clifton Commons, is moving its corporate headquarters to California. The Star Ledger reports that LaRoche also plans to take the name of the California company it is acquiring: Genetech.
Although the Hoffman LaRoche plans to keep its Nutley campus for R&D, the news is a shock for the local economy.
Yesterday afternoon, Debbie sent me out to shoot some photos of people "beating the heat" in Montclair. It was her way of keeping me from beating the heat myself.
We already think Bloomfield is pretty fab, but a group named For A Better Bloomfield (FABB) thinks things would be much better if the municipal government tossed party lines and became nonpartisan. From the site...
Why is a change in government good for Bloomfield? With this being a historic election year calling for change, many of our fellow citizens have complained that our municipal government has been too politicized and controlled by outside political influences. We concur with these citizens. The voters have been disenfranchised by these outside political influences. These outside political influences have resulted in tax increases of more than 10% on average per year in recent years, uncontrolled spending, increase political patronage, increase in no bid contracts, jobs going to political party operatives, refusing "Pay to Play" legislation, and generally a lack of accountability to the citizens who vote our municipal government into office.
Have you ever wondered why our municipal candidates spend tens of thousands of dollars for an
$8,000 or $12,000 position as Council Members or Mayor respectively? Where is all of this money coming from? Outside political influences controls the money and can control whether a candidate wins or loses.
To get a referendum on the ballot, signatures are needed here.
Early this morning, at approximately 4:45 a.m.,South Orange Police responded to a report of burglary and fire which had occurred at an East Clark Place residence in South Orange.
Baristaville has more authors and illustrators per square mile than probably any other corner of suburbia. Among those hitting store shelves in recent weeks: Montclair's Dave O'Neill and Verona's Ed Shankman, who've collaborated on two delicious new children's books: "The Boston Balloonies" and "I Met a Moose in Maine One Day."
I'm a tough sell when it comes to kids' books. ...
Carl Bergmansonmade history by attempting to recall Gov. Jon Corzine, but as a deadline looms, getting the recall question on the ballot seems unlikely. From Newsday...
The effort's chairman, Carl Bergmanson, said Monday they have less than 100,000 signatures. They need 1.2 million signatures to get a recall question on November's ballot.
Bergmanson said the group faces a Wednesday deadline to submit petitions but won't be doing so, unless they get an unexpected surge in petitions.
The state's recall law took effect in 1995, and this was the first time anyone tried to recall a New Jersey governor.
"It looks like we're not going to becoming anywhere close to hitting what we need, unfortunately," Bergmanson said. "Obviously, we're disappointed, but we're pretty happy with the response that we did get."
Everyone has a story, but some are better than others. Montclair resident and New York Times media columnist David Carr takes readers on a wild ride through his volatile past of crack, violence, hitting bottom and finally redemption. Read Carr's story here, (excerpted from an upcoming book, The Night of The Gun) where you can also click on a video of Carr discovering through interviews with people from his former life, just how wild things got and what happened with that gun. My favorite part of the story is Carr's ending...
Three homes were easy pickings for burglars last week in Montclair. Two homes in 200 block of Midland Avenue and one on Parkway near Edgemont Park were burglarized; all homes had a back door left unlocked, creating a favorable environment for what Capt. Manny Ayers of the Montclair Police Dept. calls "crimes of opportunity."
The burglaries took place between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m. on Thursday morning. In some cases, the homeowners' dog barked, but the homeowners didn't pay attention at the time. Computers and cameras were snatched.
The moral of the story: We're not in Kansas, people. Lock your doors!
For some reason, I forgot to publish this post last month. Thought I'd publish it this evening because we can all use a little cooling off after these last few steamy summer days.
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