Some Artsy Events Upcoming in New Jersey

• Rutgers Gardens will be having a photo contest in early September. I am tempted to enter or at least to visit Rutgers Gardens (a short drive from Highland Park) a few times over the next few months and take photos of the lovely grounds and flora. (hat tip: Jill)
• Raritan Valley Community College will be showing the ballet Sleeping Beauty in late March. I would love to take my daughter, but it is the week before Passover. I will be “industriously” cleaning my house for Passover.

Jacob informed me via Twitter that he has already started working in his garden. Have you?

Yesterday we (my family) were in New York City for a wedding – a very, very happy occasion. The wedding was the Faculty House at Columbia University, and I took a photo of this red brick building (Wien Hall) as we walked from the (expensive) parking garage to the wedding. My middle son, who convinced me to take my smaller camera so I would pay more attention to the wedding and less to taking photos, said we would have gotten to the wedding a few minutes sooner if I had not stopped to photograph a few buildings on the way.

At the beginning of a Jewish wedding the groom is marched to the bride accompanied by dancing friends and family and by musicians. The musicians at this wedding were from the orchestra Nafshenu. The groom then checks to make sure it is really his bride (as biblical Jacob got tricked, the groom wants to check).

The red in the photo was in the musicians’ eyes – I selected the red in Photoshop using the magic wand tool, desaturated the red, and adding back in enough color so their eyes looked brown.

On the subject of cameras and photographers, there were many photographers at the wedding (I believe some were friends of the bride and groom). I was jealous of their gigantic lenses, as was my father’s cousin, who said there is no end when it comes to desiring good photography equipment.

In New York City one can pay to park one’s bicycle. The bicycle fees were considerably less than the car parking fees.

For more photos with a little or a lot of red:

If it’s a Sunday morning and my daughter wants to go on a trip, I often head over to Lucy Banta’s Twitter account njfamilymag. Every day she tweets activities in New Jersey, most for children but some for adults, too. This past Sunday I found out about a play called “If You Give a Pig a Pancake & Other Story Books” at Raritan Valley Community College Theater. So the daughter and I headed over to Raritan Valley Community College to watch the show. It was a lot of fun; I especially liked the dramatizations of How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long and the Lily’s Big Day by Kevin Henkes.

Our main disappointment with the show, however, was that the actors did not come meet us outside the way we had experienced at the Forum Theater in Metuchen. RVCC also has strict rules about no photography during the show.

This coming Sunday, however, I won’t be needing to check Lucy’s account; I’ll be heading over to the Highland Park Public Library to watch the annual Teen Film Festival. My son told me he wrote the script for one of the films and put together a short animation film as well. It’s my birthday that day, so come join me in the celebration!

I found out by reading Carl in Jerusalem that the National Museum of American Jewish History will be opening in November 2010 in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is only a little over an hour away from Highland Park by car, so we will aim to head to the new museum after it opens.

I’ve been wanting to post my photos from our trip to the Cape May County Zoo in southern New Jersey from last August. I hope you enjoy the tour.

I think they painted a mailbox zebra colors and wrote “Zoo Donations.” The zoo is free, so donations are greatly appreciated.

I don’t know what kind of bird this is, but it was wandering around, mingling with the zoo guests. Maybe a guinea fowl?

This is a bald eagle. It was hard to photograph him in his cage.

The flamingos were fun to watch. See that gull who looks like he owns the place?

Here’s Mr. Gull again, resting with the flamingos.

I cannot remember the name of this animal, but it had tons of energy.

Giraffes are beautiful animals.

Animals behind fences, like the leopard, were harder to photograph.

This zoo guest had a great time. Photos of family come out nicer when everyone is having fun.

NJPlaygrounds has more photos of the zoo and the nearby playground.

Thanks for coming with me to the zoo!

We visited Allaire State Park back in early November. Here are some of the doors and windows of that pretty park. The above building in the historical village was closed, but many were open.

Strictly speaking, this is not a door or a window, but it is OPEN – so it’s like a gateway to the bakery. I enhanced the saturation of the colors in Photoshop.

We were able to visit the original home of the Allaire family. As I said on a previous post, we were not allowed to photograph inside, but here’s the doorway to that interesting home. It was said to still be inhabited by a descendant of the original Allaire founder in the 1950’s, and that 1950’s owner kept a horse in his kitchen. Eccentric.

This was a vertical photo, so I increased the canvas size to make it horizontal, and then I used the clone stamp tool and the blur tool to get the main part of the photo to extend a bit into the side areas.

What is that white board that looks like a door but is curiously up too high to be a door? Where there once steps there? I didn’t notice this until today, when I was looking through these photos. Does that happen to you; do you find mysteries in your photos that you didn’t recognize when you were on the scene?

These are windows in the train of the Pine Creek Railroad, which is next to the Historical Village. The train ride just goes around in circles, but we did get to see some deer as we circled about.

For more windows and doors, visit Window Views (hosted by Mary the Teach):

Is this what Thanksgiving dinner looked like in the 19th century in New Jersey? Or a meal on the go when traveling from New York City to Philadelphia? Note the two-pronged sharp fork. We learned at Allaire that’s how forks used to look, until someone figured out it was safer to have a three-pronged less sharp fork. And they ate the food with the knife, using the two-pronged fork to hold the meat steady.

On My Blog

  
  

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• Pesky Settler hosts the Kosher Cooking Carnival. Check out the recipe for sourdough naan bread. That looks yummy.
• Ilana-Davita reviewed Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard, by Deborah Rey. You can learn more about Deborah Rey on her blog.
• Eva Abreu is running a New Jersey Social Media 2009 Hall of Fame. You vote via Twitter, use hashtag #NJSM09, and nominate outstanding users of Social Media in New Jersey.
• I loved Robin’s Red Hibiscus so much I decided to link to it here!

I have been working at getting interviews with Central New Jersey small businesses, and I plan to start a new series that I have nicknamed “Wednesdays With.” I won’t necessarily limit it to businesses in Central New Jersey, but that’s where I have been asking…hoping to get good, fun responses soon.