Mallomars' NJ Connection

There was a sale on the hugely expensive cookie, Mallomars, at the East Orange ShopRite recently, but a limit of two packages per day. I got there two days during the sale period, so got a total of four little 8 ounce packages, saving $2.70 on each with my "Price Plus" card, beyond a 50-cent sale price, for a total saving on each of $3.20 x 4 = $12.80 on a mere 2 pounds of cookies. The extraordinarily high regular price ensures that I would rarely buy them, even when I was still working and making a fair income.
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It wasn't until days later that I chanced to read this note on the back of the box.

Mallomars were created by Nabisco in 1913 and first sold to a grocer in West Hoboken, NJ. The metropolitan New York City area boasts the most loyal Mallomars fans. More than 70% of all Mallomars sales are generated in the shadow of the Big Apple.

They might be able to sell more outside this area if they'd lower the price. I had never thought of Mallomars as a factor in the higher cost of living around here.
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Wikipedia offers more information, some of which I did not know, about this expensive treat.

In the US, Mallomars are produced seasonally at Nabisco. A graham cracker circle is covered with a puff of extruded marshmallow, then enrobed in dark chocolate, which forms a hard shell. Mallomars were introduced to the public in 1913, the same year as the Moon Pie (a confection which has similar ingredients). The first box of Mallomars was sold in West Hoboken, NJ (now Union City, NJ). * * *

Because Mallomars melt easily in summer temperatures, they can become difficult to find during the summer: they are generally available from early October through April. Devoted eaters of the cookie have been known to stock up during winter months and keep them refrigerated over the summer; though paradoxically, Nabisco markets other fudge-coated cookie brands year-round.

On eating some, I discovered that I am not keen on the dark — bitter — chocolate used in Mallomars. It reminds me now of the terribly disappointing discovery I, and many other children, made when we got our hands on a bag of chocolate chips intended for cookies, and ate them as tho they were candy. Yuk. It is only the sweetness of the cookie around them that makes the unsweetened chocolate chips palatable, and only the marshmallow and graham cracker in Mallomars that makes the dark-chocolate covering passably acceptable.

Ribbon-Cutting, Schools Stadium

About 1,600 words, 35 fotos.

On September 2d I showed some pix of the new Schools Stadium at dusk, but it is best seen in brite sunshine. Fortunately, the ribbon-cutting ceremony September 9th was held on a gloriously sunny morning. Unfortunately, there was so little advance notice (perhaps 16 hours from the notification email to the start of the ceremony), that there were very few members of the community in attendance. Lots of media, but very few neighbors. (I took something like 90 fotos that day, which took a lot of time to process thru my graffics program. Obviously, I cannot use 90 fotos in a single blogpost, so it took me a while to decide which were important to use, both esthetically and as regards their narrative value. I decided not to rush this post online, in that these posts stay online for YEARS, so it is far more important that they be of lasting value in saying something meaningful about Newark rather than fast.)

I didn't know all of the dignitaries on hand, so didn't know to try to get them all in this first shot of the group.

The day was so brite that the camera shut down the exposure so much that some fotos required extensive litening in my graffics program.

Cami Anderson, the new Superintendent of the Newark Public Schools ("NPS"), did a cheer with the four Barringer High cheerleaders present.

Two easels displayed informational posters of the Stadium project. But they were in a crowded space, so I didn't get in close to read or fotograf them.

Nearby was a Newark city flag. I could see again that the version with block-lettering below the scroll (which I show in the 2d foto of my post of August 31st) is not official.

In the second picture below, North Ward Councilman Aníbal Ramos is at the podium, and you can see some dignitaries to the right that my first picture of the group did not show, including former Superintendent Marion Bolden, who was credited by the speakers with proposing the complete replacement of the old stadium when the costs of repair or mere renovation proved prohibitive. I give credit where credit is due, but also blame where blame is due. Ms. Bolden was part of an extreme, antihomosexual action by the NPS when a foto of a gay couple being close was struck out with black, permanent marker, from a high school yearbook. That was contemptible and inexcusable, and the excuses made thereafter, that they thought the people pictured were not graduates, were flimsily contemptible. So I detest Marion Bolden. Still, if it was she who came up with the idea of replacing the old, dignified but crumbling Schools Stadium with the new, magnificent Schools Stadium, I have no problem with giving her credit for that — as long as the blame for her contemptible, antihomosexual action with regard to expensive yearbooks continues to attach to her.

NPS fotografer Howard Best takes a picture of the Superintendent with cheerleaders. I had met him at a student-art display at the Newark Museum years ago, and reintroduced myself.

I had seen Ramos in person a few years ago on a walking tour of Forest Hill conducted by the grande dame of Newark preservation, Liz Del Tufo. He has become very noticeably grayer in the few years since (and might as well have put on a bit of weight), but he still looks very good.

In checking for Ramos's first name, I found his website and saw a word missing in the very first sentence. Doesn't anybody use proofreaders anymore? I find Aníbal a very odd choice for a name for an ethnicity derived from the Roman Empire's province of Hispania, in that it is the Spanish form of Hannibal, the worst enemy the Roman Empire ever had. Hannibal's family contended with Rome for control of the Iberian Peninsula, and Hannibal himself launched a devastating attack upon the heart of the Empire from modern-day Spain. But Spanish is a Romance language; and Hispanics are called "Latins", after the language of Rome. So why on Earth would any "Latin"o name a child Hannibal?

After some other dignitaries had spoken, Mayor Booker took to the lectern, and started with a joke, in this approximate form. "I suppose most of you know who I am. But if you don't, I'm Will Smith." (I don't remember what Booker was pointing toward when I took this foto.)

Booker did not grow up in Newark, but played high school football in Bergen County. He said he graduated with a 4.0 and 800 — 4 carries per game and 800 yards. Here, he poses playfully with the Barringer football team and cheerleaders, whose home stadium the "Schools" Stadium is.

He looks pretty dashing, so I guess he had already lost the weight he gained during the early part of his second term. Two days ago, the Huffington Post published an article, "Cory Booker Loses Weight, Gets Fashionable For Menswear Magazine" that leads off:

We've got our fair share of stylish American politicos, from senators to First Ladies. But city mayors? Not too many come to mind.

But Newark's Cory Booker is making a case for himself, dropping weight and suiting up for the most recent issue of Fairchild Fashion Media's Menswear. The second-term mayor, known for making hard decisions in his New Jersey city to some spectacular results, also made the decision to get stylish after gaining 50 pounds.

"I was so stressed, with massive layoffs and terrible police negotiations, I gained 50 pounds," Booker tells Menswear. "Even my relaxed jeans weren’t fitting me."

Not everyone will be upset at Booker's suffering a bit from his bad decisions. I for one would much rather have two extra cops at work with the money that could be saved by slashing the salary of each of a bunch of top mayoral aides and department heads. City government is about public service, not self-serving, and I feel the State Legislature should put hard limits in place for salaries in municipalities of various sizes.

A woman stood by with giant scissors. At least the cuts that device was to make didn't hurt anybody.

I am of the era when $100,000 a year was a phenomenal salary, and when matched to generous benefits, much more than any employee of a city should expect. I saw a news story during public discussion of Booker's insistence on cutting police officers' pay and benefits that said, if I remember correctly, that there are a passel of top Booker Administration officials who make well over $100,000 a year.

The football team and cheerleaders were put in front of the ribbon for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. While that was a sweet thing to do, it did block the view of the actual cutting. Someone should have held the ribbon up for everyone to see. The super-sized scissors actually worked.

The Governor of the entire State of New Jersey makes at most $175,000. Everyone else in the governments within this state — including quasi-governmental authorities — should make a LOT less. A New York Times story from November 19, 2006 says that Booker's own salary is $130,721 (down from Sharpe James's preposterous $200K). That's about half a dollar per resident, which doesn't sound so bad except as compared to the Governor. Newark has about 278,000 people; NJ, about 8.8 million, a ratio of 1:31; but the Governor makes only 1.3X as much as the Mayor. And the Governor makes only 1.75X as much as each of those many $100K+ City officials.
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People who want to make a lot of money should work in the private sector. Period.

Here, you can see right thru the ticket booth, which was not in use for this free event.

Once the ribbon was cut, we got to enter the Stadium. This first interior view shows the "home" stands, about 30 rows high, and the giant blue bear head on the 50-yard line.

Here's the "visitors" stand, half as high.

But there's still this great view of the front of the Stadium as seen from inside.

The turf is, alas, artificial, but that permits it to be permanently marked with various brilliant colors.

Those brilliant colors form, among other things, this giant blue-bear face, seen closer than its first appearance in this post, above.

Around the field were running tracks, I think cushioned rather than rigid. This next foto shows the complex pattern of lane markings for different-length races.

There is a curved track.

I don't know what the triangular markings are for.

On the curved track, the starting positions for the 200m length are arranged to correct for the curvature of the track.

There is also a straight track, with starting positions all at the same line.

The far end of the straight track appears in this next foto diverging from the rounded track. St. Francis Xavier R.C. Church is the large building in the background on the right.

Here you see it past the visitors' grandstand.

In this picture you can see a soccer goal turned the wrong way around, behind the American-football goalpost, which just happens to frame, perfectly, St. Francis Xavier.

At the south end of the Stadium complex are smaller areas for two baseball fields and shotput. The building beyond is the First Street School, which was supposed to be closed but has, I think, been reopened due to enrollment pressures.

This netting surrounds the shotput circle.

And there are scoreboards angled away from each other for the two baseball fields. What there are not, however, are extensive stands for spectators. Why is that? In the foto that includes the First Street School, above, you may see two small sets of bleachers to the left of the post in the chainlink fence, just inside the sidewalk beyond the field. That appears to be the entire viewing area for each baseball game, perhaps 10 rows of bleachers, 15 or 20 feet wide apiece. I accept that football has displaced baseball as our national game, but to downgrade baseball so massively as to provide so little seating "strikes" me as offensive.

I did not know what this concrete pad and V-shape marked-out area was, but figured after a bit that it was probably for shotput. A Google search for shotput images showed me to have guessed right.

There's not much decoration to this new Stadium, but there is this bas relief outside the locker rooms. Everything else, but the arches, clocktower, intense colors, patterned concrete walkways, and lush streetlites, is strictly functional, but in such good proportions and taste as to impress as very refined.

The new Schools Stadium is a first-class facility of which Newarkers can be very proud.

'Brick City Sound Riot'

I mentioned yesterday that there was a music festival at Kilkenny Alehouse overlapping the opening receptions at Index Art Center and Kedar Studio of Art a block and a half away, around the corner.

I wanted to take a couple of fotos of the setup, maybe a short video, then head out. But it wasn't a free event, which is understandable, considering the 40 bands scheduled to play, and I don't have press credentials. (I had credentials for the Newark Peace Education Summit, but in general do not.)

So I contented myself with a foto of the banner outside Kilkenny's Central Avenue window, and a second foto, of the whiteboard sign at the entrance to the stairway up to the performance area. When I reviewed the latter picture in my graffics program, I saw that there was small writing around the bottom and both sides. I zoomed in within my graffics program and offer here a better view than people who saw it in person were likely to have had.

I think the writing probably lists the band names, but didn't check them all from the NJ.com story linked to above. The view above is the left side of the sign. The view below, of the bottom.

And this last shows the right side.

The name "Brick City Sound Riot" may seem to older people to be totally tasteless, in making lite of a six-day disaster that left 26 people dead and ruined the reputation of this city for decades. It also reconnects the word "Riot" with "Newark", a connection we were beginning to escape, since younger people didn't know anything about the Riots. There are advantages to Newark in the inclination of the young to disregard the past. If this music festival achieves its own fame — it's supposed to be an annual event, going forward — that may become the only association most people come to have between "Newark" and "Riot". Or perhaps the name will change between this inaugural event and future such events (if they indeed happen). I hope the festival went well, and not just continues but also grows in the future.

Pix from Latest Shows at Index/Kedar

Over 2,000 words; 16 fotos.

I attended the "Seed Bomb" show at Index Art Center ("IAC"), and the "Monsters, Saints, and Cool Summer Dresses" show at the adjoining Kedar Studio of Art. "Seed Bomb" is a group show of twelve Master of Fine Arts candidates at Montclair State. "Monsters..." is a group of tiny, glowing works by New York street and subway artist Amy Young. In addition, there were a number of paintings by Scott Lewis in the Reception Room at the back of IAC. Unless I have missed descriptions somewhere on the IAC website, the Reception Room shows seem inadequately described and promoted by IAC.

In the first two fotos today, there is an area on the floor of the main gallery covered with seeds of various kinds, that people were both allowed and expected to disturb rather than step around, as one would ordinarily do with art on a floor.

Later, you could see that the seed-covered area was indeed disturbed, perhaps deliberately rather than accidentally.

I got to the show unfashionably late (it always being a problem for me to get away from all the demands at home), and had less than half an hour before the announced close at 10pm. Fortunately, Index isn't rigid about closing time. Indeed, the only venue that seems to be thus rigid is City Without Walls, which will flash lites off and on to push you out to permit the gallery to close on time.

The lower group of seedpod-like brown objects on the floor in the foto above contained one central pod that rocked back and forth. It reminded me of a Mexican jumping bean, which I have once seen.
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This next group of objects reminded me of Newark artist Robert Lach's wonderful stick nests suspended by wire from the ceiling of the second floor of Gallery Aferro in October 2008. I don't know who the artist is, here. A lot of galleries nowadays show only sequential numbers by artworks rather than labels in words and numbers explaining who the artist is, what the title and medium are, and when the work was made. I don't have the time, energy, or inclination to track down such info. If a gallery or artist wants me to offer that information here, they can send that info to me, specifying the foto in this blog, in numberical order (yes, I meant that; why does "number" take "numerical"?), and I will add the info as I find time.

Here's another group of fabric(?) seedpod artworks on a wall toward the back of the main gallery, with one of the globular artworks from the immediately previous foto showing on the left.

This stand holds a stack of a printed page comprising a diagram and description, in an old-fashioned typewriter font, about a health machine that does absolutely nothing but was promoted by some writer decades ago. The schematic diagram shows how to assemble a 'machine' that has no moving parts and that could not, in scientific terms, accomplish a thing. The artist even said that you didn't actually have to build that machine in order for it to work (or not-work). But the artist nonetheless urged people to take a copy and follow the instructions to bring him(?) good health and long life. That should not help, but couldn't hurt, I suppose.

Shortly before the exhibition's announced closing time, I saw that the seed-scatter mid-floor had been pushed in various directions. Unfortunately, unless some of the seeds stuck to people's clothing and were taken out of the gallery to somewhere they could encounter soil and moisture, the disturbance to the initial display will not have resulted in growth of new plants. I find it very hard to eat foods like strawberries, blackberries, or rice, that have or are seeds that could be planted and give rise to new life. When I do eat one of the extraordinarily (freakishly?) large strawberries we have nowadays, I'm inclined to peel the seeds off, dry them out, and plant them. I in fact do have both one strawberry plant and one blackberry plant growing in my backyard, but from starter plants from the Springfield Avenue Home Depot in Newark. The soil where I planted them, however, needs very great enrichment if I'm to get any fruit. And the squirrels, raccoons, possums, and possibly outdoor rats in semi-suburban/semi-wild Vailsburg get to my strawberries before they ripen.

The back part of the small Index space is called the "Reception Room", and ordinarily serves not as an overflow space for the exhibit in the main gallery but as a separate exhibition space for a different artist. This time, it's Scott Lewis.

Lewis's paintings are very colorful, and thus, tho grotesque, nonetheless decorative. I don't know that I'd want to be around them for an extended period, tho.

DC Smith, one of the principals of IAC, asked what I thought of the show. In that we were both in the Reception Room at the time, I took his query to mean the Scott Lewis part of the show, and answered, of that artist, something like, he seems "Strange, but probably not dangerous."

I asked Lowell Craig, another IAC principal, if Scott Lewis was present, because I wanted to get a foto of the artist by his favorite work. (I was, frankly, intrigued to know what the guy who created this ebullient but grotesque work looked like.) He had already left. Lowell may have said that Lewis might have gone to a music festival at Kilkenny's Ale House a couple of blocks away. (I dislike names like "Scott Lewis" because either name could be a given name or surname, so you always struggle to make clear whom you mean, respectfully, without being either too familiar or too distant.)

I found that the more of Scott Lewis's works you can include in a view at a given time (as above), the richer and better they looked. It's like a crazyquilt, in which a single patch might be unappealing, but a whole array of patches proves very pleasing.
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The Lewis artworks on display bore, nearby, descriptive texts I didn't have the patience (or good vision; I need to get distance glasses, because my near-vision specs are for work at a computer, 24" or less from my face, and in good lite) to read thru extensive descriptions. I like to look at art and get a sense of it just from looking. I would read for more info except that I have to do so much reading, and writing, in the course of my life generally, that I'm not keen on reading anything I don't absolutely have  to — esp. if it is in the insane spelling "system" we suffer in English. It infuriates me that there are well over 300 ways to show the 42 sounds of American English or 43 of British English. I can deal with the madness, but deeply resent having to.

Kedar Studio of Art, which shares the second floor of 585 Broad Street with IAC, displayed a bunch of (physically) minuscule artworks by a New York City artist that are ideal for the small exhibition space available at Kedar. (I think that's pronounced ke.dór, where the OR is as in "borrow".) That exhibition reminded me of the wonderful Lilliput show (August 2-23rd, 2007) at Index's predecessor in the same space, with most of the same principals, Red Saw Gallery. My post about that striking show, on August 3, 2007, does not presently contain the fotos, which were erased from the Internet when AOL closed all subscribers' online-storage areas. I have all those fotos on my hard drive, but don't have the time to restore them to the Internet by uploading them to Picasa, captioning them there, and lifting the new location into every blogpost from which they were deleted. That process, for all the posts affected, would take something like 100 hours, 200 hours,, or even more.

I asked Kevin Darmanie, principal of Kedar Studio, if the artist of his show was still there, and he said yes, then offered to introduce us. On being introduced, I told her (Amy Young) about my blog and that I sometimes use short videos in it, then observed that the LED lites in her artworks at Kedar lent themselves to video, so asked if she'd be willing to speak to my visitors, which she consented to do. Here's that video (2:00 in length). Kevin accommodated my request for a little less lite, to show off the fact that many of her artworks were internally lited. Alas, the background noise from Index, immediately outside Kedar's space, made hearing Amy difficult. Kevin thought to close the door, which I hadn't thought to ask him to do. But somebody opened the door, then spoke to the artist during the video. "The best-laid plans of mice and men...". Thanks anyway, Kevin. (Does anyone ever call Kevin Darmanie "Kev"? For that matter, does anyone ever call the other prominent Kevin of Newark arts, Kevin Blythe Sampson, "Kev"? I never have.) The screenprint below should be clickable. Or you can go directly to the video's place on Blip.tv, http://blip.tv/el-craigo/amy-young-at-kedar-studio-of-art-newark-5583703.

Afterward, Amy (if I dare call her by her first name, this being the United States, where we instantly first-name everyone we are introduced to, absent reproach about doing so) asked if I'd like to have one of the artworks in her show, because she gives them away. I said I dare not have anything that flashes, because it would not long survive my cats. She said I could put it up high, but I pointed out that something flashing out of reach is likely to drive a cat to desperate measures to get to it, so I had to pass. I appreciated the offer, tho.
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Amy Young's show closes this Saturday, the 24th. (Kedar's gallery hours are Saturday, 1-4 pm, and by appointment.) If you miss this show but ride the NYC subways with any regularity, you might in time run into some of her work in your travels.
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As I was getting ready to leave ("miles to go before I sleep" and all that) Lowell looked into the main gallery and saw it was still, well after 10pm, "packed". Cued by that observation, I took this foto of people happy to stay on.

As I headed down the two steep flites of stairs from Index, I was keenly aware of people behind me, but they were very patient with me. One, a black gent who lit up a cigar on emerging from indoors onto the sidewalk, said his mother had had knee surgery (which he assumed, correctly, I had also had), and we talked about what medical science can and cannot presently do. The other guy, who was either Oriental or lite-skinned Hispanic, seemed also engaged in this discussion of what knee surgery can and cannot accomplish, or in where it led, to a discussion of the music festival at Kilkenny's that I was thinking of heading to. (The people of the Americas are believed to have originated in East Asia — the Orient — and traveled over a land bridge produced by the lowering of the ocean during the last Ice Age; so it's not always easy to know if someone is Oriental or aboriginal-American.)
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These two gents said that Index was handing out a free-drink coupon for the Kilkenny's event, but I hadn't known that and didn't get one. It turned out not to matter, however, because it wasn't a free event, and I have almost no interest in music so wanted to stop in only to take pictures.
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The Index show runs through October 7th. Gallery hours are Thursday, 6-9 pm, and Friday and Saturday, 1-4 pm. Viewing appointments are also welcome.