Bridal Party

So much happens around me as I travel thru Newark that I can't speak to it all, nor especially in timely fashion. Two such serendipitous moments occurred on May 15th, when I was trying to get to the Tibetan march to the Passaic in which Buddhist monks were to pour most of the sand from the mandala in the Newark Museum into the River during the Newark Peace Education Summit weekend. As I drove up Washington Street and arrived at Central Avenue, I saw a group of people who had apparently emerged only recently and nearby from a wedding.

I took a picture, then drove on to try to find out when the Buddhist monks were to head off to the River, and saw the wedding celebrants again, forming in front of a large brick wall for fotos.

Tamara of Newark Pulse had an all-Newark wedding this past year. There are many outdoor places where a bridal party might take wonderful pictures, as, for instance, in Branch Brook Park during the Cherry Blossom Festival. But I would not for an instant quarrel with the choice of this bridal party in taking pictures before a brick wall in Brick City not far from the Newark Museum. It all depends on what you want to remember, and there is so much good to choose from in Newark, a city with intensely urban backdrops, such as brick walls aplenty, of many different hues, and joyously natural backdrops, such as blossoming cherry trees in bloom or the lush plantings outside NJPAC. I was very, very pleased to see this bridal party stake a Newark location for group fotos.
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I later found the Buddhist march and followed it to the Passaic River, where I saw this post-'marital' pair of geese with their adorable babies.

Newark is a place for weddings, babies, nature, and bricks. Among many, many other things.

Last Solo(s) Show of 2011

I attended, briefly, the closing reception on December 16th of the last art show of the year at Solo(s) Project House. There was also supposed to be a holiday party after the artist Marc D'Agusto spoke, but the (odd)choice of a Thursday rather than Friday or Saturday produced poor attendance, so things wrapped up early. Still, there were things well worth seeing in that double exhibition, by D'Agusto and Hannah Craft. I'll show a few now and save a few pix to enliven the announcement of the first Solo(s) show of the new year, whenever that might be.

Several of D'Agusto's paintings have graced the hallway between the lobby and main exhibition space of Solo(s) Project House for months. But the show in the main space was new to me.

D'Agusto's work entails a lot of architectural imagery, of constructed buildings and ruins of buildings, rust, etc.

The Solo(s) institution allows alteration of the exhibition space in ways you don't expect of most galleries, so that concrete dust and fragments on the floor are part of the wraparound experience you walk thru rather than merely look at.

There were things on the floor, on the walls, even hung from the ceiling.

D'Agusto's severe, hard paintings and sculptures were paired with soft, feathery hangings just outside the main exhibition space, by Hannah Craft.

Solo(s) remains one of the most inventive of Newark's exhibition spaces, and I look forward to whatever 2012 — which we can all finally say with "twenty" at the beginning: 20-12 — will bring.

Aside:  Before the Millennium began (on January 1, 2001, not 2000, since there was no year 0, only a year 1 from which each millennium dates), I wondered how long it would be before we would say "twenty" in the name of years. I had heard, but doubted, that the proper rendering at the time of a year like 1905 was not  nineteen-oh-five but nineteen-five. That wouldn't make very good sense, because that would produce "195", not "1905". In any case, a few people started saying "twenty" only this year: "twenty-eleven" — which would more mellifluously have been said "twentyleven". At the beginning of the year, very few people said "twenty". After about August, it became more common. But many of us have held out until 2012. I expect that next year everybody will be saying "twenty-twelve".

Curiously, there has been a revision after the fact, of earlier years to "twenty"-somethings: well, at least "twenty-ten". Nobody said "twenty-ten" at the time, but you may hear it in the future. I doubt we will ever hear "twenty-eight" or "twenty-oh-eight", but we'll find out soon, once the "twenty" habit has been established with twenty-twelve.

Part of Hannah Craft's installation at the ceiling outside the main exhibition space.

Clock-Tower Area of NJIT

On June 27th, I made a list of 27 topics I thought to address in this blog. Today, I reviewed it and found that I had addressed 13½ of them. Exactly half. Today's topic was on the list as undone, and now I get to check it off too. Don't you just love checking off items on a To-Do list? It's one of my favorite things.

Frequent visitors to this blog may have noticed that I'm partial to public clocks and clock towers, of which Newark has a fair number. I'm not sure I have even discovered all of them. After all, I've lived here for only 11½ years, and haven't been to every neighborhood of this extraordinary city. I shall, in due course, get to all neighborhoods, if not to every block.
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There is one clocktower I have seen many times, in the central plaza of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I was exiting the Robeson Campus Center of Rutgers-Newark (adjacent to NJIT across MLK Boulevard) after an art reception last May when I heard music from up the hill. I walked up and found it coming from this clock tower.

Once I had taken a picture of the tower (partly washed out by the brite sun, alas), I looked around at parts of the campus I hadn't fotograffed before.
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NJIT is behind the old Central High School. (I showed pix of the exterior of the new Central High in a post from November 2010 and interior on December 17th of this year. This next foto shows the Summit Street side of the earlier Central High. I don't know if that was the main entrance, or the main entrance was the one on "High Street" (now MLK Blvd). In any case, both façades have some architectural detail appropriate to the era in which the old Central High was constructed (I don't have a year). The old Central High is nothing like so magnificent as the new. See? Some things in the New Newark are BETTER than their equivalent in the Old Newark.

The clock tower is on a bricked plaza, and some brick paths lead out from the plaza, as is appropriate for Brick City.

The litter receptacles, benches, and other elements of the plaza are dignified and handsome, as befits a campus that has a school of architecture and design.

NJIT is definitely an urban university, but it doesn't have the cramped feel of some other urban colleges (e.g., Lehman or Hunter in Manhattan). Beyond its own campus, there are the campuses of other nearby universities, from Rutgers on the east (and little Berkeley College in a single building on Broad Street) to the University of Medicine and Dentistry (UMDNJ) on the west. There are dormitories on both the Rutgers and UMDNJ campuses, and University Centre (deliberately spelled wrong, in the affected British fashion) provides student housing near NJIT. I wouldn't ordinarily link to a commercial video, but a University Centre video shows a housing center with extraordinary amenities that many people would not associate with Newark. I can't vouch for the claims, but it sounds like a great place to live for students from a number of different colleges, not just within Newark but as far afield as Bloomfield College to the north and Kean University to the south.

There is an overpass between Fenster Hall and another building. That overpass frames the clocktower, looking south, and a seating area, looking north.

When I was growing up, there was no such thing as the New Jersey Institute of Technology. It was then known as "Newark College of Engineering", and was very famous and prestigious here in NJ. Was "Newark" replaced by "New Jersey" to be more inclusive, or just to remove the taint of the Riots and the bad reputation of Newark after the 1967 Riots? The name change was made in 1975. Earlier, the "University of Newark" was annexed by Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey, and made the "Newark campus" of "Rutgers", commonly called "Rutgers-Newark". Again, was that done as a step up, or a step away from Newark? How about the "New Jersey Performing Arts Center" (NJPAC: said like "en jay pack")? Why not the Newark PAC?

I'd like to see some pushback, to restore the prominence of "Newark" in the name of various institutions located in Newark. Maybe we need not rename existing things. After all, to have "New Jersey" this or thats in Newark does suggest Newark's centrality to New Jersey, Newark being the effective cultural capital of NJ as NYC is the cultural capital of the United States. Jersey City may have renamed its teachers college to "New Jersey City University", but J.C. all too commonly deludes itself into thinking itself the "Sixth Boro" of NYC. Mind you, few to no New Yorkers think of Jersey City as a Sixth Boro, but if that delusion makes Jersey Cityans (-ites? something else?) happy, fine. Newark harbors no such illusions but is solidly within New Jersey, and happy to be so. J.C. would be much more important as a second boro (Boro of Hudson) in a Greater Newark, along with Elizabeth as a third boro (of Union), than as a sixth wheel to NYC.
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Even if we accept past name changes that removed "Newark" from this and that, we might push for some great new things to bear the name "Newark" as proudly as many things in Manhattan are called "New York" this or that. When Prudential builds its new headquarters building, which it should make its very tallest Prudential building worldwide, perhaps its name should not be just "Prudential Tower", which is the name of various Prudential buildings in places like Boston and Tokyo. Nor "Prudential Center" — we have one of those already, an arena — but, say, "Prudential Pinnacle at Newark".

Thank goodness the Newark Museum never changed its name to the "New Jersey Museum". They're not ashamed of Newark. I guess I will renew my membership, after all, which expires on the 31st. I'll just ignore some (temporary?) financial stresses and assume that since I've made it past many financial ups and downs in my 67 years, I'll overcome this one too. When I was young, I looked slitely like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, and I certainly identified with his slogan, "What, me worry?" When you make it past multitudinous alarums and excursions to age 67 (as I did last week), that can become a personal motto of power — esp. if your short-term memory has weakened and you just can't remember your problems! A fool's paradise is still paradise.
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If I win the MegaMillions jackpot of $206M tonite, I might just build a great Newark tower myself, and fill it with organizations and staff to work on my various projects, plus draw in the doers and dreamers in this region, into a gigantic, creative co-op to work on many artistic, political, and social problems of this benited planet. All the tenants would have access to a great, low-cost cafeteria, and to tenant lounges where they could mix in a relaxed, nonformal setting, and stimulate each other's creativity thru such contact with people outside their own areas of specialization. Of course, I suppose it's possible I won't win the lottery. But a lottery ticket is an admission ticket to a splendid world of "what ifs", isn't it?

This view out from the central portion of the NJIT campus shows a university building close in, and the Colonnade Apartments, by "starchitect" Mies van der Rohe, in the distance. Not every university's school of architecture is within blocks of major works by the father of modern architecture. The Colonnade and two Pavilion Apartments buildings comprise three Mies buildings. In Newark.

My Christmas Card (Another Man's Video) to You

[This is a block-copy of a post from last Christmas. I am repeating it not because I don't have other things to put up, since I always have much more to put up than I can deal with; nor because I get lazy around the holidays, because I'm sometimes tired but never lazy; but because it says what I want to say again, and incorporates a wonderful Christmas video (not of my creation; my video skills are nowhere near up to such a wonderful creation). I showed here a week or so before 2010's iteration of this post a bunch of fotos of the crèche in St. Lucy's that the video below also deals with. My fotos were taken mainly without flash, so have less glare than some of the fotos in the video slideshow below. Unlike my post of Nativity-scene fotos, the video shows the church overall and various things on its grounds as well as the enormous crèche. Even if you remember the video somewhat from prior years, you may nonetheless enjoy it this year. I did. More than once, I find it so wonderful. If you click on the link above the video and the picture does not come up, but only sound, click on the embedded image of the start of the video. Then both shifting images and sound should come up. You can click on the TV-screen icon to blow the video up to full-screen size. If "St. Lucy" doesn't sound familiar, think of the Italian, "Santa Lucia".]

It's that time again, when I think of a magnificent video slideshow with music, by "charles1789", of many fotos of St. Lucy's Church at Christmas (http://blip.tv/file/733465/ — 8 minutes and 42 seconds long), to music by Andrea Bocelli and the late, great Sergio Franchi and Luciano Pavarotti. I embed the video here, but the explanatory text on Blip.tv below the video is worth reading.

Koats4Kids Tuesday at JFK Ctr

I mentioned the first Kars4Kids winter coat giveaway in Newark last December 21st. This year's event occurs Tuesday, December 20th.

A press release about this year's event says, in part:

Kars4Kids car donation program announced today that they will be hosting their 2nd annual coat giveaway in Newark, New Jersey next week. The event was planned in conjunction with Mayor Cory Booker’s office, and the mayor is expected to attend the event.

"After the enthusiastic response we received last year, we knew we had to do this again in 2011," said a Kars4Kids spokesperson, "there is so much pain in the economy right now, and everything we can do to ease that pain even slightly is so important."

Last year’s coat giveaway took place at multiple locations throughout Newark, with lines stretching in some areas for many blocks. To ease congestion and for a smooth distribution, this year[']s event will be held at one central location in the heart of Newark[,] at the JFK Recreation Center[,] 211 West Kinney Street[,] at 11:00 am [till the coats are gone,] and is open to the public.

The giveaway comes just as the weather begins to turn colder and winter really starts to take hold on the east coast. [Winter actually starts a half hour after midnite Wednesday into Thursday.] "It’s unacceptable to have kids that simply do not have adequate winter wear," said a Kars4Kids spokesperson yesterday[.] "[W]e as an organization and a society have an obligation to do everything in our power to ensure that every child, wherever they live, whatever background, religion, or ethnicity, has a coat that can protect them from the winter weather. We are coordinating closely with Mayor Cory Booker and we hope to see him there, wearing a Kars4Kids T-shirt and helping distribute the coats."

Local law enforcement agencies will be on hand for crowd control and to ensure orderly distribution. There will be a cordoned[-]off area for media and press representatives

Where:
JFK Recreation Center
211 West Kinney Street
Newark, NJ

When:
Tuesday[,] December 20th at 11:00 am

Kars4Kids is a 501(c)(3) charity operating nationwide.

There are a video and some fotos of one of the sites used in last year's koats giveway, Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium, which would seem to me a better location than the JFK Center, for having a lot more space out front. I hope Kars4Kids judged the space requirements correctly.

Master Plan Open House

I attended the December 7th Open House at which members of the general public could review the proposed changes to the City of Newark Master Plan. That Open House, and another on December 10th, were held in the cafeteria ("Dining" area) of the magnificent new Central High School on 18th Avenue.

There were tables, to the left in the foto above, at which one could review maps of the present and proposed plan, by neighborhood. On the right were tables with presentations by subject matter. If you had a suggestion, you could write it on a PostIt and place it on the poster in that area. I wrote that we need marinas and housing on the Bay and River.

The meeting was not crowded, but I saw some familiar faces, including James Street activist Bill Chappel and the Ironbound Super Neighborhood's Lenny Thomas. Bill found the man who did much of the drafting of the revised maps, and I listened in to a discussion of why the James Street Commons Historic District is included in the Downtown Business District rather than University Heights. Bill finds the behavior of some of the 45,000 college students nearby to be objectionable at times, and is pleased to put at least some distance in the public mind between James Street and the kids.

After the people in attendance had had some time to review the materials on display, a couple of officials made brief presentations. I spoke to one of them, to mention my concerns about some of the things I noticed, and to make a general point. He was Arcelio Aponte, Director of Operations & Management of the Economic and Housing Development section of the Office of the Deputy Mayor. He recognized me and said he had been on my blog earlier that very day, so saw my mention of wanting to attend.

The overall point I wanted to make is that I'm afraid the master plan is too timid, and not nearly aspirational enuf. I said I would like to see highrise housing authorized to ring our big, largely empty county parks, like the one in my area, Vailsburg Park. That would increase the use of those empty spaces. The only county part that seems well utilized is Branch Brook. I used Manhattan's Central Park as an example of what I would like to see develop in Newark, and made the point that not only would the park make for a spacious view from the highrises, but the highrises would also make for a better, urban view from the parks. That is to say that part of the magic of Central Park is the views out from it, not just into it.

The "Light refreshments" were sandwiches and iced tea or lemonade. I was surprised that there was no coffee, which I would have had. I don't care for iced tea, esp. in cold months. Hot tea, sometimes. Green tea. The tea in Chinese restaurants, sure. But not iced tea.

I said Newark's planners should prepare for greatness. He saw that as a return to Newark's past (before the vast loss of population to white flite), but I said no, we should think bigger than Newark's past. I asked if there have been discussions with near-in parts of our area, such as East Orange and Irvington, to coordinate the development of a Greater Newark. I said that part of great cities is great physical size, and Newark's current 24 square miles doesn't cut it. We need to expand geographically, as by annexing at least the more urban areas like E.O. and Irvington, both of which are so depressed and financially stressed that they should welcome annexation. I don't recall whether I made the point that the state has wanted to reduce the costs of municipal government thru shared services, but merging municipalities more than just services would be even more helpful.

I reviewed the maps of my area, Vailsburg, and consulted the legend to find the meaning of the color my immediate neighborhood was printed in. It indicated single-family housing, so I mentioned to Mr. Aponte that I think we should (in line with a more ambitious Newark) permit highrises on major thorofares, such as South Orange Avenue in my area. I realized only later that the present proposal might not permit the (disparagingly-named) "Bayonne boxes" that have sprung up in profusion, here as elsewhere in the city, in that many of them are set up as two units, or even three, as allows a person of middle-class income to offset some of the costs of buying their own home by renting out part of it. I think we must permit that, whether we encourage it or not.

I mentioned to the woman tending the Vailsburg table, who lives on my street closer to SOA, that there are some small apartment houses presently, and that as long as most housing is single-family, that shouldn't be a problem. I mentioned that I think the upkeep of the housing and the curb frontage is better in the owner-occupied houses than in absentee-landlord houses. (That might obviate objections to Bayonne boxes with more than one dwelling unit, in that they would be owner-occupied housing.)
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We got to talking about my seeking a mortgage modification on my own house, and that the whole subject area is very complicated. She said that the Urban League has a housing counselor who might be able to help me, and gave me her fone number and email address. I'll have to frame my questions and contact her.

I spoke with a young man at the open space/parks area, and mentioned that I think we need a lot of vest-pocket parks in areas of low-density housing, because tho most have modest yards, few homeowners have a private basketball (half-)court or any of the other amenities (water wall, chess/checkers table, handball court, badminton court — whatever) that a vest-pocket park would have. I asked if there was provision for such parks in the proposed master plan. He said yes, and pointed to an item on the poster. I think that "vest-pocket park" makes the point better than a reference to parks or community gardens in vacant lots. Words have power, and the term "vest-pocket park" is familiar to many people from its use in Manhattan, so it has a certain panache that the other wording does not. Community gardens can be tricky, tho they are certainly worth attempting, in sunny locations, with raised beds.
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As I was getting ready to leave the cafeteria, North Ward artist Noelle Lorraine Williams was entering. I greeted her and cued her in to how materials were organized.
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I then took some fotos of the great open area from the main entrance to Central High. We didn't have any such gathering place and atrium in my high school, Middletown Township H.S. in Monmouth County. There is some artwork around the new Central High's atrium. And there are some comfy chairs for rest and socializing. I don't know how crowded this wide-open space ever gets, in that I was there well after regular school hours. After hours, it seems palatial, so some titefisted people might resent this splendid new building. I think it's a good idea to show kids how much society values education, and allow them to enjoy their surroundings when at school. Besides, it's already built, so there's not much point to complaining that it is too luxurious. I thought I'd raise the issue, to argue a different point of view, that great buildings are part of a great city, and great schools deserve great buildings.


There were some handouts at the various tables, but I had to ask if they represented materials on the website, because, bizarrely, the URL of the website did not appear on any printout I saw. That is a very serious oversight, which I correct here: http://www.newarkmasterplan.com/. You'd think it would be .gov, but it's .com. Some of the webpages I looked at within that site loaded very, very slowly on my machine, but did eventually come up. Other parts of the City's website are linked to from that website. For some incomprehensible reason, the type on most pages is GRAY rather than black, and tiny. Who is responsible for such stupidity?

Artist Talk, Holiday Party at Solo(s) Thursday Nite

There are two interconnected events at Solo(s) Project House tonite (why Thursday?), one an artist's talk, the other a holiday party afterward.

Solo(s) Speak: MARC D'AGUSTO
View: "OF METAL & BONE"
Followed by: Solo(s) Project House Holiday Celebration!

This Thursday, December 15, 2011
7 - 10 PM
Refreshments Served

Thursday, December 15th join us for a holiday-inspired evening of cocktails and conversation with featured solo artist Marc D'Agusto. D' Agusto['s] body of work, "OF METAL & BONE" is currently on display at Solo(s) Project House and opened during the 2011 Annual Newark Open Doors Tour in October. We invite you to take a final glance at it, speak to the artist and stick around afterward for the Solo(s) Project House Holiday Celebration.

ABOUT:
MARC D'AGUSTO, "OF METAL & BONE"
October 21 - December 16th

"Shifting through the rubble of contemporary life, my work examines the nuances of transformation. I address catharsis and the shedding of the old self to the essence of becoming a renewed generative identity, the journey of ruin to renewal."

D'Agusto's work explores traces of discarded history, addressing new beginnings through his own UNIQUE process. Through a series of layering actions: build up, peel away, scrape down, and build up again -- he has developed a ritual manifestation of our daily movement through life.

With a subtle wink to post-apocalyptic imagery this journey of ruin to renewal utilizes images of buildings, architectural forms and constructed spaces as an allegory for the framing of the human body and mind. Iron and concrete is the skeletal frame, glazing and veneers the skin and dressing; the illusion of space, memory and thought. Remnants of images often appear in his work reminiscent of excavated artifacts, relics of a deteriorating past, memories of events or places.

http://www.marcdagusto.com/

Foto from an April 2011 show at Solo(s), not of Marc D'Agusto's work. The man on the right is Kevin Darmanie, owner of the Kedar Studio of Art. I don't know who the woman is.

Artists sometimes have a very skewed idea of what people want to see, and D'Agusto's website is one of those that bear no resemblance to what the ordinary person wants to know and see. It is apparently skimpy on images and information (you have to click farther into the site than you would ordinarily expect, to find more pictures). In this case, less is definitely not more. Websites should not be puzzles you need to spend a lot of time to figure out. They should, instead, be portals wide open to obvious inquiries, so people find, immediately, what they are looking for.
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Artists may sometimes need ordinary people around them to interface with the wide (real) world. They sometimes create websites that are so bizarre and unhelpful that regular people cannot make sense of them. An art site that should be rich in images can turn out to be severely impoverished, visually, as is D'Agusto's. What was he thinking? I may have presented more pix of his work than his website initially seems to. See my posts of May 28, 2010, July 20, 2010, and March 25, 2011.
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In any case, tonite's double event is at Solo(s) Project House, 972 Broad Street, Newark, NJ 07102; www.solosprojecthouse.com; info@solosprojecthouse.com.

About the Solo(s) Project House
The original Latin and Greek roots of PROJECT mean "something that comes before anything else happens", and that is precisely what Solo(s) Project House is in a nutshell; evolving projects around a completed one. A space where gallery and studio are elbow to elbow, where the rigors of creation are coupled with the satisfaction of completion. The gallery is a sound stage upon which the house residents can imagine their months of creativity displayed from beginning to end. A true partner in the exhibit process, the artists are [or artist is] commissioned with a curatorial role that gives the visitor a 360[-]degree view of the creator[']s vision. Far from an original white[-]walled space, SPH is a home for experimental installations, avant[ ]-garde performance art and a myriad of media art. With an ever[-]evolving pool of artists from various cultural and personal experiences[,] SPH is a true melting pot of artistic expression.

I have inserted a few grammatical and punctuation corrections or additions. Artists are not to be expected to be grammarians, any more than grammarians can be expected to be artists. These are entirely different disciplines. I would not dare to suggest so much as a fraction of an inch variance from a single line of an artist's drawing or painting. But I know English grammatical, syntactical, and punctuation conventions, which we cannot really expect artists to know as well as writers do. To each his own.

Solo(s) Project House is located at 972 Broad St. Newark, NJ 07102. SPH is free and open to the public Wednesday-Friday from 12-6pm.

Today's other foto is of a sign outside the Rodino Federal Office Building, which is right alongside 972 Broad Street, where Solo(s) resides. I saw and fotograffed this sign after a Solo(s) reception, to show what I regard as a preposterous and indefensible waste of taxpayer dollars, a project to clad a perfectly good Federal building in different materials. Why? Are the windows leaking? If they are, surely we don't need to replace the entire exterior, but only fix the leaks. If they are not, why on EARTH are we wasting hundreds of thousands of even millions of dollars on replacing the perfectly good and distinguished white-concrete exterior of the Rodino Building now in place with a different exterior? That would be an absurd waste of money even if the Nation were flush with cash. When we are desperate to cover expenses for necessary public programs, such as helping poor people with heating over the winter, this re-cladding is inexcusably, indefensibly OUTRAGEOUS.

New Jersey on TV

Long post, over 2,600 words, with 26 fotos.

I was watching some television after 11pm last Friday, and thought I might let you know how I see TV. Remember that tho I was born in NJ, I lived in Manhattan for 35 years, so am especially acutely aware of this hugely underappreciated and oft-denigrated state, not just of this appallingly underappreciated city, now that I'm back home. New Jersey is supposed to be innately funny, along with placenames with a K-sound. I don't know why. But NJ is often made the butt of jokes. Recently, however, NJ has become very often mentioned in national media.
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At 11pm, I watched an episode of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, now in syndication in our area on channels 5 and 9 (both owned by Fox). The character "Leonard Hofstadter", played by Johnny Galecki, is from New Jersey. I don't think the city/town is ever specified.

Today's fotos are from the Index Art Center and Kedar Studio of Art opening receptions last Friday evening. If I know the artist, I state it, but there were a lot more artists than the prior notices had indicated.

At 11:35, I turned to The Tonite Show with Jay Leno. In his monolog, Leno attacked Jon Corzine for continuing to think, in the private sector, like a U.S. Senator. Corzine was Senator from New Jersey.

Then Leno mentions an invention out of Stevens Institute of Technology that will turn off a cellfone automatically when a person starts to drive. Stevens is in Hoboken — New Jersey. Both my brother Brian and our effective grandfather (my grandmother's second husband, so not our biological grandfather) went to Stevens.

Then Leno makes a 'joke' about the [hideous, loathsome] bear hunt in New Jersey, saying that the hunt isn't going well because when the bears heard they were in New Jersey, they shot themselves. So very (un)funny. (Why doesn't the State just sterilize a significant portion of the bear population? And deer population? We tranquilize and tag bears that wander into the yards of suburbanites. Why don't we sterilize them at the same time?) There were, remarkably, three mentions of New Jersey in one Leno monolog, tho people might not have been aware of that because "New Jersey", as such, was not mentioned in all three.

Bobbleheads in painting by David Dziemian, with the painter shown putting them in place (I assume).

I switch to Letterman for the Top 10 list, and Letterman mentions something that happened in Kandahar, Afghanistan, then says that he and Paul Shaffer were in Kandahar, well, not downtown Kandahar, but in the suburbs. And Paul says "Short Hills". That's in New Jersey (our county, Essex), not Afghanistan.

I turn the TV off for a while, to tend to email and online news. When I look up and see the time is 12:51am, I turn the TV on, late, for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. In the email/Tweets segment, Ferguson says something about 'classy, fancy Princeton University' seeming even classier for being in New Jersey. He then says that that's the perfect offense to everyone, because it insults Princeton for being in New Jersey, and insults everyone in New Jersey outside of Princeton too.

After Ferguson, an (old, syndicated episode of) Comics Unleashed includes a comedian talking about Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown. Whitney Houston ("the most awarded female act of all time, according to Guinness World Records") is from Newark — New Jersey.

Later, the repeat of a Tonite Show from a week ago includes Mike ("The Situation") Sorrentino of Jersey Shore fame. He is actually from New York State, but gained fame (and fortune — he mentioned to Jay that he owns a Ferrari and Lamborghini!) in New Jersey.

This is all in one nite, Friday, December 9, 2011 (tho Ferguson's show starts after midnite, so his "Friday" show is technically on Saturday, as is the 3:05am repeat of the Tonite Show).

Left wall shows Dziemian paintings; right wall, fotos by Warren Young. The crowd has mainly retired to the well-occupied Reception Room for drinks and conversation. No food or drink is permitted in the gallery.

Apart from what I saw in this one nite, other prominent NJ mentions have appeared this week, in TV and other media.

Chris Christie was 'dissed' and subjected to "the people's microfone" (a group of unamplified people repeating in unison one speaker's words) in Iowa when announcing his endorsement of Mitt Romney for President on Wednesday.

I'm 'lichen' this foto.

That rambunctious incident was captured in a Fox News video broadcast in Philly. Chris Christie is (obviously, for being the Governor) from New Jersey. Unfortunately.

This foto would seem to be sideways, if one can judge by the streaks of rust running 'down' to the left rather than to the floor of the gallery.

Christie even made an odd New Jersey reference at the time:

The governor waited for them to finish and tried to make light of the situation.

"I hope you all enjoyed it," Christie said. "They'll be working at the Marriott down the street. Please remember to tip your waiters and waitresses, all right? Now let's see, where was I before I was so New Jersily interrupted?"

Reception Room works by Benjamin Griffin. Management seems to have curbed the indoor smoking for at least part of this reception. Permit me to express the thanks of all nonsmoker visitors for that consideration.

Chris Christie was born in Newark, and went to Seton Hall Law School, in Newark.

I think it might have been Craig Ferguson, also this week, who was talking with "Geoff Peterson", his robot-skeleton sidekick, about the two of them replicating the interplay of famous comedy duos.

Remaining fotos today are from the Kedar Studio of Art, the same nite. This first shows one large painting and a number of smaller works.

Ferguson's first thought was Laurel and Hardy, but Craig (Ferguson, not me, nor Lowell Craig of the Index Art Center) didn't like that because he'd have to play the fat one (given that Geoff is only bones, not really "skinny", nor "skin and bones", because he has no skin). Then Ferguson thought, naturally enuf, of Abbott and Costello, but again didn't want to do that because again he'd have to play the fat one. Abbott and Costello were both from New Jersey. He might also have mentioned Martin and Lewis — and Jerry Lewis was born in Newark. New Jersey.

This is the rest of the large painting shown above.

New Jersey or New Jerseyans appear in media in other situations all the time. When I see Shaquille O'Neal or Queen Latifah in a commercial, or hear Queen Latifah in a voiceover, I think "New Jersey" — and, more particularly, "Newark!", for both Shaq and Latifah.

These bracelets made from forks are among the jewelry and many other small-scale artworks at Kedar.

Shaq was, indeed, on Jimmy Kimmel Live!  this past week, with his little girlfriend, who actually picked him up and carried him on her back several feet. When Kimmel tried to replicate that, he failed, miserably.

Kevin Darmanie, owner of Kedar Studio, has hit his stride with small pieces suited to his gallery's small space. This foto makes some of them seem even smaller, because the young man is unusually tall.

Jersey Shore is referenced all over the tube and in other media, as is the show The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Another nationally-shown cable TV program is Jerseylicious. Alas, there are not, as yet, any shows about or set in Newark. The atrocious, evil cable show The Sopranos did show some Newark sights now and then. Someday, perhaps, a moral, admirable TV show will be set in Newark. If our stolen TV station WNET were still in Newark, rather than NYC, it might create a nationally popular TV show one day. But WNET was moved — lock, stock, and barrel — to New York City, and focuses NO attention on its FCC city of license. Why the HE...CK doesn't Booker sue in Federal Court to force New Yorkers to unhand our TV station?

This bin of small, mounted fotos by Colombian-born Newark fotografer Luisa Pinzon, is one of two I have seen in recent months. The other was at the Art Kitchen this summer, when I took a friend who came to visit from NYC. Earlier this month, Luisa was holding an auction for fotos in a themed collection called "Fashion Fades, Style is Timeless", which was on view at the Coffee Cave. Alas, the link she sent in an email did not work. Her website also does not format correctly on my machine, even at a higher resolution (1024 x 768) than I usually work at (800 x 600). On some pages, she has lite gray text on a white background, which is very hard to read. It is possible to make a webpage adjust to whatever resolution a visitor uses, and to use crisp black type on white for legibility. Webmasters have to think about what the viewer needs, not just what the webpage publisher wants to show. My blog, for instance, sometimes has fotos that overlap text in the right column when first they appear, but once newer blogposts are added above, the earlier posts are pushed lower, and the text in the right column clears the wide fotos. I suppose I should strive to put only vertical fotos in early positions, but I really don't know how far down the text in the right column goes, and it gets longer over time.

Steve Buscemi (which he pronounces bue.sém.ee, not the more-like-Italian bue.shém.ee, which I had assumed is the way it was said) hosted Saturday Nite Live last week, and mentioned that he is in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, which is set in Atlantic City. That is, in New Jersey. (Alas, that series is made in NYC, not any part of NJ. I find that detestable and indefensible.)

Checking TV listings, I might see This Old House, and think, "Kevin O'Connor [the host] graduated from St. Benedict's Prep in Newark."

At any time, a commercial for the Broadway show Jersey Boys might appear. The show is about The Four Seasons, three of whose singers were born in NJ (2 in Newark) and all of whom were raised in NJ.

This odd foto is by Spencer Frohwirth, whom I showed, in a video, as the dj at a Solo(s) Project House reception this September. I took his card from the dj table, and it says "Mixed Media Sculptor", "Music Producer", and "Art and Music Educator". No mention of fotografer.

Even The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, which airs on Antenna TV (channel 11-4) at 2:00 and 2:30am Sunday thru Thursday (technically Monday thru Friday, given the 2am start time), sometimes mentions New Jersey.

George met Gracie in New Jersey. And George mentions having played Red Bank and Newark during their vaudeville days. In fact, I've heard Newark mentioned in more than one Burns & Allen episode. I think I might also have heard a reference to Newark in an episode of Maude (which is shown on Antenna TV at 10:00 and 10:30pm Monday thru Friday), and an episode of All in the Family (9:00 and 9:30pm). "Edith Bunker" has family in NJ.

An episode of The Jack Benny Program (Antenna TV, 3:00 and 3:30am) this week mentioned Molly Pitcher, a heroine of the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth (the county I lived in from age 9 or so to 20, but in Middletown Township, not Freehold, where the battle took place. I have been to the Freehold battlefield. There is, alas, nothing to see there).

And yesterday, AOL news hilited this story:

After a week of surprising challenges to his authority, Vladimir Putin faces a new one from one of Russia's richest and most glamorous figures – the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets says he will run against Putin in March's presidential election.

The story goes on to mention that the current Russian President has a Facebook account. That of course makes, in my mind, a second connection to New Jersey, and more particularly to Newark, of Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million matching grant to Newark Public Schools. I do not know if any of that money has been applied to the schools yet. Moreover, the credit at the bottom of the article mentions a reporter in Newark. So Newark is again connected to aspirations to the presidency of Russia.
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Has there ever before been a time when there was so much about New Jersey in media? I certainly can't remember any such time, but I'm only (a bit short of) 67. Perhaps 70 or 100 years ago New Jersey was mentioned more. But I doubt it. Of course, not everyone knows that all these things they hear about have a New Jersey — and also, in some cases, Newark — connection. But we do, don't we?

These are rings, made from copper. I have several copper bracelets for men that I bought at either the Collingwood or Englishtown flea market, in Monmouth County. My father liked to go to the flea markets. In his last months of terminal cancer, he couldn't drive himself, so my sister Sue Ann took him most weekends, but every now and then I spelled her, and bought (on separate occasions) a great teddy-bear cookie jar and my copper bracelets, while wheeling him around. I could see why he liked that place.They also held an indoor auction, which I didn't mesh with. It occurs to me only now that I almost never wear these great copper bracelets, perhaps because I associate them with the sadness of my father's last months. But I shouldn't feel that way, because I bought them when we were together, so wearing them should give me a connection to a happy moment in a sad time. My father and I were very different, but shared some enthusiasms, such as these flea markets and spring-flowering bulbs. My only quarrel with him on the latter is that he insisted I get up early in the day to plant them, whereas I was always a late-day kind of guy. But my front yard is filled with spring-flowering bulbs. Dad would approve.