Another Gallery; Balloons or Music Fest?

Gaetano found a list of current Newark art galleries and their websites in a July 17th entry to an anonymous blog begun in May of this year called "Dirty Gardener". One of the listings is for JaJo Gallery, which is not yet open, and does not show a website. BUT I got an email yesterday from the people opening that gallery:

We are opening a new Art gallery in Downtown Newark. Please check us out. we will keep you posted.

http://www.myspace.com/jajoart
http://www.myspace.com/halseyvillagearts
http://www.jajo.com/

Today's fotos are of the restored Octagon, a large brick gazebo on a low hill in Branch Brook Park. This had been in ruins for many years but is now restored to its original splendor, as these fotos, taken April 30th, show.

The July 14th entry of the "Dirty Gardener" blog shows a video about the 3rd Annual Lincoln Park Music Festival this coming weekend, July 24-27 (not 25th-27th, as shown there). I didn't get to either of the prior LPMFestivals, but might get to part of it this year. Curiously, the website of the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District ("LPCCD"; but why "Coast"??) does not provide very much information. Much more information, including a schedule of performers, appears at the Going New York entertainment website, provided by someone at FEMWORKS, a business in that neighborhood. When I met Tamara Fleming, a principal of that business, at her foto show at Newark Art Supply May 16th, she urged me to attend the Music Festival. FEMWORKS would seem to be doing a much better job than the LPCCD in getting the word out. (For some reason, the Going New York website does not format right, at least not on my machine. A panel of objects on the right cuts off the last couple of words on the right of the main text, no matter whether I look at it at 800×600 or 1024×768 resolution. My machine, however, may not allow me to judge what other people see, because on my machine, the list of archives on the right of this blog intrudes into fotos, but does not do so on another machine I have used to look at this blog. Actually, I'd like to know if most people see text superimposed on fotos, or not.)
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News 12 New Jersey has been carrying ads for a different festival this weekend, in Hunterdon County: the annual balloon festival in Readington. There may be as many as 125 hot-air balloons floating up into the sky twice a day this weekend, and I have long wanted to see something like that. I know there's an enormous balloon festival in New Mexico, the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, but this one seems pretty impressive too. I'm not about to spring for $185-$195 for a balloon ride, however. First, I can't afford it. And second, I don't want to be on the evening news if something goes wrong. "Elderly Newark man killed as hot-air balloon hits power line...".

This view from the Octagon, of the wonderful fountain in the lake, is largely blocked by low vegetation.

The Lincoln Park Music Festival is free. The Readington balloon festival costs $17 adult, $7 child in advance, $25 adult, $10 child at the door for any one day of the three-day event. You can buy them online or at any Quick Chek store. I have passed by two, one in Harrison off I-280, the other on Raymond Boulevard east of Riverbank Park in Newark.
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Following a link within Mapquest to the Solberg Airport website, I found this disturbing paragraph:

Please help us!!! Solberg Airport is currently under threat of an eminent domain seizure by Readington Township. Click the above links for more information...Contact us if you would like to help our fight.

Checking a further link, I found this:

Over the years, developers have offered us millions of dollars for our land. Time and again, we’ve refused to sell. We’d like you to know why.

70 YEARS AGO, Thor Solberg completed an [sic] historic flight across the North Atlantic, from New York to Norway. Several years later, he met with President Roosevelt at the White House and told him he thought the Nazis had invaded Norway for the purpose of using Greenland and Iceland as air bases to bomb the United States. Our father shared with the President the information he had gathered on his Transatlantic flight. Using this information, the President ordered the Coast Guard to go to Greenland. When they arrived, they found a Nazi military group installing radios to guide bombers and other war planes toward America. The Nazis were taken prisoner and their goal of bombing our country was ended. American forces then moved in and established air bases that helped support the allied war effort. [The U.S. stupidly returned Greenland to Danish control after the war. We should have kept it, as thus to surround Canada on three sides and lead Canadians to see joining the Union as inevitable and eminently natural.]

As a naturalized U.S. citizen from Norway, Thor Solberg's proudest moment came when the President called him “a great American.” This legacy is something that money can’t buy. And it’s not just a Solberg family legacy, but a legacy shared by both our nation and our community.

We hope you’ll agree that it is a legacy worth preserving.

Several of the items at the Stop Eminent Domain Abuse area of that website are undated, and it may all be in the past, since one item bears an August 23, 2006 date. If the issue has been mooted by events, airport management needs to update its website.
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I had never heard of Thor Solberg, but found a .PDF document about his achievements. He is in the New Jersey Aviation Hall of Fame, as is my "Uncle Walter" (Wittemann).

As you can see, the reconstruction sensitively fitted the restored structure in among existing trees, branches of which are quite near the roof.

On Saturday, the balloon festival includes a musical performance by someone I saw on the Tonight Show just last Friday:

Disney’s Demi Lovato, who is starring with the Jonas Brothers in the Disney Channel Original Movie "Camp Rock" premiering June 20, will perform live in concert at the 26th annual Quick Chek New Jersey Festival of Ballooning at Solberg Airport in Readington on Saturday, July 26 at 1:00 p.m[.]

Fortunately, both these weekend events go more than one day, so one person can attend both. Will that one person be me, tho? Decisions, decisions.

If anything, the renewed Octagon is a bit too much surrounded by trees and shrubbery, which partially interfere with views of and from the structure.

The Lincoln Park Music Festival is 3 miles from me; Readington, 37.4 miles. A 75-mile round trip at $4/gallon will cost me about $16 and take an hour and a half (assuming I don't get lost; I can record the Mapquest directions with my handheld dictation unit and play them back rather than try to read directions while driving). Lincoln Park is 4.5 miles and 13 minutes away. Hm.
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If only we could arrange for 125 hot-air balloons to take off from the Lincoln Park Music Festival, I'd have no decision to make at all. Organizers, think about that. Wouldn't views of balloons against urban skylines, and views from balloons of the skyscrapers and watercourses of Newark, Jersey City, Manhattan, and New York Harbor from hot-air balloons launched from the Lincoln Park area be better than the views from Hunterdon County? I'd settle for 30 balloons launched from Lincoln Park, a closed portion of Broad Street, Washington Street, Clinton Avenue and such, in a city-sized, scaled-down mass ascension. Next year! Or would prevailing winds take them all out to sea? Hm.