Though I entered Saddle River County Park from Fair Lawn, that’s not the only suburb encompassed by its 577 acres. It also runs through five other Bergen County towns: Glen Rock, Paramus, Ridgewood, Rochelle Park, and Saddle Brook.
I can
never get enough of bodies of water, and though the crisp air may have kept
more people from venturing outside, I was happy to take the path around this
pond without bumping into crowds.
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"Mi
Casa, Your Casa 2.0" is an interactive artwork, a series of open,
house-shaped frames, each roughly 8 feet wide and nearly 10 feet tall. Designed
by Mexico-based studio Esrawe + Cadena, it’s open to the public as part of
Lincoln Center’s Big Umbrella Festival.
The piece
only lasts as long as the festival, through April 26. On the warm, sunlit afternoon
when I took this photo, many visitors were taking advantage of the installation
while they still could at this New York entertainment and cultural mecca.
In contrast to the costumed characters that have come to populate (or, if you prefer, litter) this center of the Manhattan entertainment world, this musician was intent not on sight but on sound, blowing sweet notes into the rapidly warming air.
It felt like such a blessing and relief, amid the high
temperatures and the annual presence of the IRS, that I just had to take his
photo.
A few
weeks ago, with winter still holding Bergen County in its icy grip, I wrote a post about such a sculpture in front of the Maywood Public Library.
Then, in
late March, I came across one with the same idea, which I’ve photographed here:
“Reading Together,” in the Children’s Reading Garden in the lawn outside the Teaneck Public Library.
This
bronze sculpture was created by New Jersey artist Judith Peck. It’s a charming
centerpiece of the garden, which was dedicated 30 years ago this coming July.
A couple
of hundred people followed the solemn procession through the streets
surrounding the church.
I took
this picture on the steps of the church, where this recent tradition of the
Passion narrative began with Pontius Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus and the
scourging of this man of peace at the hands of Roman soldiers.
It took
much preparation involving multiple people for this devotional practice of pageantry
and pathos to occur. Congratulations to all the organizers.
Then
yesterday, I saw something unusual, which I tried to capture in this photo. At
that point early in the day, a large round hole had opened beneath a thin arch
of snow overhead.
I peered
more closely. I could see drops falling from the arch. Higher temperatures
(they reached the high 70s later in the day) would, before long, eliminate that
thin white veneer overhead.
And so it
proved. This morning, the hole was gone and the snow pile was even more noticeably
lower.
Continued
above-freezing temperatures, along with rain over the next few days, should
eliminate the white stuff at last, leaving only a memory of a storm that for a
while left streets impassable and frustrated those of us who had to shovel.
With that
said, though not be as well remembered today as he might have wished, Horace Greeley was a person of consequence in 19th century America, and
it wouldn’t hurt anyone passing through this area of Lower Manhattan to learn
at least a bit more about him. This outdoor sculpture is as good a place as any
to start.
In the New
York area, the only press lords besides Greeley with designs on the Presidency
were William Randolph Hearst (who never made it higher than Congress) and
Michael Bloomberg (whose 2020 Democratic primary campaign failed dismally,
despite $60 million of his own fortune).
Greeley,
at least, filled an expiring Congressional term before being nominated in 1872
by both the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties. He lost that fall to
Ulysses Grant—then, only a few weeks later, died, worn out in body and mind by
the race, the recent death of his wife, and a bruising, losing struggle to keep
his paper, the New York Tribune, out of the hands of a business rival.
Well
before that, Greeley had made his mark as a tireless editorial voice for westward
expansionism, free homesteading, the rights of labor, agricultural improvement,
high tariffs, the beneficial impact of immigration, and most important, abolitionism.
His
influence was so considerable that in 1862, after his open public letter to Abraham Lincoln advocating the confiscation of slaves held by Confederates, the
President felt compelled to make one of his most famous explanations about the
connection between freeing the slaves and preserving the Union.
For all
his high-mindedness, Greeley earned a parallel reputation as an eccentric. His
public advocacy for causes such as vegetarianism, spiritualism, and utopian
socialism were considered especially fringe for his time.
Moreover,
what people encountered when meeting him in person—his oversized, floppy hat
covering unkempt white hair, a threadbare white coat, and a high-pitched voice
that could erupt irritably—led cartoonist Thomas Nast to caricature him,
repeatedly and unforgettably. (See this May 2008 blog post from the National Portrait Gallery on how Greeley was depicted.)
You’ll see
little of that in the far more respectful monument in City Hall Park, created
by John Quincy Adams Ward, one of the foremost sculptors of the day. The
artist, Greeley’s daughter Gabrielle recalled, “spent hours studying my father
as he worked in his office [and] after his death took a mask of his
face."
The statue
shows Greeley sitting in a Victorian easy chair, with a copy of the Tribune
spread out loosely over his knee—not just scrutinizing it for appearance or
content, but perhaps contemplating how he could keep it from descending into
the sensationalist abyss occupied by competitor James Gordon Bennett of the New
York Herald.
When the
monument was unveiled in 1890, it stood in front of The Tribune’s
building. By 1915, with the paper leasing corner, ground floor space in its
building to a drugstore, the monument was moved to where it was originally
intended: across the street, in City Hall Park.
The actors
and crew can be seen in the background of this photo. I didn’t want to move
closer lest it aggravate production assistants who would, of course, loathe distractions
on the set of this adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's acclaimed short story
collection.
Why did
the producers choose Sparkill, an upstate New York hamlet so small (less than 1,400 people) that if you sneeze,
you’ll miss it? Beats me, except that the state must have offered quite a
financial package to attract this business.
A local
businesswoman warned me before I drove up from Northern New Jersey that it
might be difficult to find parking near her store because of the movie
out-of-towners. So it proved, but I didn’t mind walking the few extra blocks.
Movie
location shooting can be tricky. Whatever publicity and dollars that might
accrue to the town often don’t mean much to local businesses that have to cope
with what sometimes turn out to be annoying and protracted disruptions of their
normal routines. What shows up on the screen may not be worth the turmoil.
My town,
Englewood, NJ, was the site of two Woody Allen movies, for instance. In Annie
Hall (1977), you can see the marquee of the then-still existing theater,
the Plaza, for up to a minute. Two years later, his script for Manhattan
called for what was evidently a satiric take on a Nazi rally. But you’d never
tell from the final cut: there’s only a scene of Woody and Tony Roberts driving
back into New York as evidence of something more.
It was a
more dismal outcome than another movie shot there the same year, the Peter
Falk-Alan Arkin farce The In-Laws. Any time I know it’s on TV, I can’t
wait for one of its maniacal car chase scenes, shot at the
southern end of my block, with my longtime church clearly visible in the
background.
A much
different experience unfolded in autumn 1999, when Robert Redford shot many
scenes for The Legend of Baggar Vance in Savannah, Ga. While on
vacation, I watched him on two consecutive days directing stars-in-the-making
Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron in a courthouse scene. Onlookers
cheered wildly each time the actors waved at them in breaks.
Savannah was especially popular with filmmakers in the Nineties, with Forrest Gump also being shot there. But residents I talked to back then seemed to have especially fond memories of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Despite what many might have thought from his Dirty Harry scowl, Clint Eastwood
evidently personified geniality, posing for pictures with many star-struck
locals.
But I
couldn’t help but smile when I saw these figures. They evoke what so many of
us—including current and former librarians like me—know: that the best time to
foster a love of reading is when children are young.
Nowadays,
it’s even more urgent that we realize this, as so many digital distractions
exist, far beyond what our parents and grandparents feared with the rise of
television.
Make that two
mammoth piles. The one seen here was in the park. Another was in a single spot
in the parking lot.
Believe it
or not, these piles were even wider and higher when the tractor finished its
work. I’m just hoping that Mother Nature will take care of the rest in short
order and reduce it all to large puddles.
Then came
the news that four weeks to the day of that big storm, another, with maybe even
more snow and higher winds, was going to hit.
I wasn’t
in the best frame of mind, then, when I drove out to Overpeck Park,
not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ, for the kind of walk I hadn’t been
able to take in weeks. Despite large puddles in spots, many other area
residents felt similarly and circled the large track on the field.
If
anything heartened me as I thought of what was to come within 24 hours (and
even as I type this, I can see the flakes following), it was that earlier this
winter, the days would have been shorter and I wouldn’t have able to take the attached
picture of the glorious late-afternoon sky—and that it might take less time for
traces of this latest brutal storm to disappear.
Until late
yesterday, that is, when I saw the first awful news of yesterday’s campus shooting
that left two students dead and nine others injured.
Among the
photos I took 10 years ago was this one of the 95-foot-tall campanile
clocktower on the Quiet Green adjacent to the Van Wickle Gates, Hope College
and University Hall.
Carrie Tower was named for
Carrie Mathilde Brown, granddaughter of Brown University namesake Nicholas
Brown Jr., whose death in 1892 after 16 years of marriage devastated her
husband, Count Paul Bajnotti of Turin, Italy. The widower left this tangible
reminder of his wife in the city where they first met.
Preeminently, then, Carrie Tower stands for the enduring power of love—a force so strong, according to the monument's inscription, that "Love is Strong as Death." The truth of that statement will be tested in the days ahead, not just at Brown but in gun-maddened America.
Ten years
ago this past May, as part of the Toni Morrison Society’s “Bench on the Road”
project, the novelist attended a public ceremony commemorating an
individual who was part of the vast diaspora resulting from the forced “Middle
Passage” from African freedom to American slavery.
The
project took its name from Morrison’s 1989 observation about the lack of public
places “to think about…to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of
slaves.”
This
roadside monument honors Cynthia Hesdra, a former slave who became a
successful businesswoman and property owner in Nyack. As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, she aided others from the South in achieving the liberty and
opportunity she had come to enjoy.
The Underground
Railroad involved the transfer of an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people to
freedom—a mass movement in which countless ordinary citizens performed extraordinary
deeds. They changed America forever by defying legally sanctioned, government-sponsored,
shameful racism.
Visitors passing
through Nyack would do well to ponder how Cynthia Hesdra did her part, and how
each of us could do ours now.
I took
this shot from a hill overlooking Veterans Memorial Park in Nyack, NY—a good
vantage point to see so much of the Hudson River in Rockland County.
What’s on
this display in this photo I took reflects the traditional Mexican observance
of DÃa de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”). This corner attracted quite a throng
of parishioners at the conclusion of the morning Mass I attended, and, I
imagine, all the others this weekend.
I am sure
that many of my readers who grew up in Bergen County either walked through the 40-acre
park, played in it or drove past it. Dedicated by a former township mayor in 1940,
it was renamed in his honor 19 years later. It was constructed with money from
the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal federal agency, to help hire
workers.
Government
assistance enhanced the park, too, including a Green Acres grant during the administration
of Gov. Chris Christie that built the current sportsplex, including a 60-ft. softball
field, 60-ft. by 90-ft. baseball fields, two basketball courts, football/soccer
fields, four tennis courts, and a handball court.
You can
see the sportsplex in the background of this photo I took while in the park, as
I made a circuit along the walking and bike paths. I gloried in the changing leaf
colors and the blanket they formed on the grass, along with a quiet only broken
by the sudden steps of two deer off to my right.
Recently I
took this photo several miles from my home. What you see here is only half of
all of the figures on the lawn and front porch of this suburban house.
Nor does
this photo convey the sounds coming from this ghoulish assembly. Just passing on the street—not even stepping on the lawn—is enough to elicit the
witch on the right-hand side, for instance, to cackle, “Lost your way? Don’t be afraid—I’ll show you!
Heee-heee-haaa-haaa!”
This year,
Halloween splurging on decorations, masks, makeup, costumes, and candy has
continued, despite the threat of tariffs. According to the National Retail
Federation, Halloween spending is expected to reach $13.1 billion this year,
breaking its prior record of $12.2 billion.
Omar Villafranca’s CBS News report from a month ago indicates that consumers are
hitting discount stores and merchants are absorbing as many of the tariff costs
(5% to 19% on costumes manufactured overseas) as possible, but there’s only so
much they can do. A fog machine sold by a Fort Worth merchant mentioned in the
article, for instance, sold for $58 last year but $74 now.
And
chocolate candy? The price of the cocoa used for this has more than doubled
since the beginning of 2024, a casualty of changing weather patterns (heavy
rains followed by El Nino-induced droughts leading to black pod disease and
crop rot, according to a USA Today report earlier this month by Betty
Lin-Fisher and Carlie Procell).
