I had the pleasure of marching in uniform with Troop 55 of Highland Park/Edison, New Jersey in the Salute to Israel Day Parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America are some of the first marchers in the parade. We are right behind the Veterans of America. First, we had to get there:
At left, we leave from Edison, New Jersey. At right, we are in Penn Station, New York.
A lot of waiting for the parade to start:
Finally, we march:
There were a lot more schools and floats from many organizations that we missed, because we wanted to get home. In particular, it would have been nice to see RPRY(my children’s school) and TABC(the high school my son will attend next year). But they weren’t marching until much later.
This one is a reflection in the window of a New York apartment building:
So here are some of the tired scouts, sitting down this time in Penn Station:
We got to ride on these cool double-decker trains on our train ride back to New Jersey.
See also Elinka’s parade pictures.
My daughter wanted a picture of her standing in front of our favorite toy store in Highland Park: Over the Moon Toys. She told me not to put up the one with her squinting (which may have been a better shot of the store).
Do you have an old-fashioned, mom-and-pop style toy store in your area? Or just chain stores? We like Over the Moon Toys because it’s friendly(the store is owned by two sisters, and varying family members are behind the register), they have a nice selection of toys, and they wrap presents beautifully–yellow and pink tissue paper, blue and green tissue paper, multi-colored ribbons, colorful dotted paper, your choice. If your child walks into the store when you need to buy a gift for a friend and says:”I want this and that and this and that”, they have a gift registry. So you then tell your child to put the items she wants on the registry, so when it’s time for her party, she can tell her friends to check the registry.
My daughter is standing in front of the store with her brand-new Webkinz that she bought with the money her saba (grandfather) gave her before Pesach. Webkinz are a big craze among kids in America; you buy the little stuffed animal, then you go online to take care of it. What’s really funny is when my daughter plays on the computer at our house with the little boy across the street who’s on his computer at his house, and they go into the same room in the Webkinz game and make their Webkinzes jump and down together on a trampoline.
Do you like zoos?
My husband wanted to go somewhere. My daughter wanted to go: first to the beach. Then to an amusement park. Then to a zoo. I liked the beach idea; I started thinking about Ocean Grove. Well, somehow we ended up at the zoo. Turtle Back Zoo in Essex County. I did suggest Popcorn Zoo, which saves animals. At least at that zoo there is a reason for the animals being behind cages. But my husband argued that it’s a longer drive. And Turtle Back does have the train and carousel.
Do you have mixed feelings about gawking at a bunch of animals in a cage?
First, we have to wait in line. So then my husband thinks out loud about how if we had gone to Popcorn Zoo, maybe we wouldn’t have had to wait in line?
Finally, we are in the zoo. After looking at a little fountain, finding the restrooms, buying my daughter a Chex mix snack in a vending machine, we then look at some animals.
Here’s one. I think it’s a bison (according to Victor, see comments, this is Highland Cattle):
We stop looking at animals for a bit, because we’ve come upon: the CAROUSEL! Much more fun to ride on a large plastic leopard that goes up and down:
As my husband and daughter examine a few more animals behind bars, I examine people:
Here are two Central New Jersey moms:
I spot a cute guy. He deserves his own photo:
Here’s how my daughter lets us know that she’s had enough looking at bears from the Ural Mountains and chickens and would like to go on the train:
We find the area for the train, and what do we need to do but wait. I people watch:
Finally, we are on the train. My husband figures if we had to pay for the train, like we did for the carousel (the carousel costs $2/ride), the line would have been shorter. The train takes us on a short ride through the woods, and we see: A lake. Some trees.
After our train ride we gawk at some orange fish:
After examining some endangered amphibians of New Jersey and enjoying the company of some otters, I spot a zoo person holding 2 dead rabbits. “Ew,” I say, “what are those for?” They’re going to feed them to the alligator, my husband tells me. And sure enough, there are all these people standing around the alligator cage watching the alligator chomping away. My husband and I agree this is a bit of a tacky activity.
At left is the baby alligator we saw moments later.
My daughter agreed to go on a pony ride, so that was the next activity. We also saw a cage that supposedly held a groundhog. I couldn’t see the groundhog, but the hole under the little hut in the cage looked suspiciously like the hole under our garage.
Oh, by the way, our neighbors down the block have now caught 11 groundhogs (some were babies) and let them go in Johnson Park.
The zoo has sculptures all around, mostly of animals, but this one is of a boy and a girl:
My daughter took that photo herself. Aren’t digital cameras great for teaching kids?
The best part was photographing the bear.
And this is by far the longest photo essay I’ve ever written.
Found this article Eating Nuts Greatly Reduces Your Risk of Heart Attack and Cancer so I thought, good time to talk nuts! (more on thyme and nuts under the photo).
According to the article, nuts won’t make you fat:
Nuts contain lots of fat, and many people are still operating under the food industry induced belief that fat makes you fat, so nuts are often shunned. But research does not support this conclusion. In the Nurses’ Health Study, the frequent nut consumers were actually a little thinner on average than those who almost never consumed nuts, and daily supplements of almonds or peanuts for six months resulted in little or no increase in body weight. Nuts apparently satisfy hunger and provide a wealth of nutrients, creating a feeling of satiety and comfort. This results in an overall lessening of food consumption.
I eat raw almonds as a snack throughout the day. I leave them in my refrigerator and just grab a few when I am rushing to get my kids or to an appointment, especially when I’ve forgotten to eat a decent lunch.
One topic the article mentions is soaking nuts before eating them. I’ve never heard of this, so I did a little more research. I couldn’t find any evidence of an actual study that said one needs to soak nuts. To me, I like nuts as a fast food, so the soaking would be really annoying, if it were a requirement. Do you think all the people in the nut studies quoted in the Natural News article soaked their nuts? I found one source that said the soaking isn’t necessary. But I have no idea what her background is that she is able to make this claim.
Enough for now on trying to weed out useful information on the internet.
Above are my raw almonds, which I decided to photograph in a bed of my thyme. I grow thyme in front of the house. It makes a great grass substitute. The thyme spreads itself all over (sometimes it needs a haircut) and produces pretty little lavender flowers for a few weeks in the summer.
Mason Resnick has his Memorial Day Parade (Highland Park and New Brunswick march down Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, New Jersey) photos online.
Check them out and say hello to Mason!
In between working on intriguing posts for your enjoyment and taking care of my family, I do website work for a number of Central New Jersey businesses and organizations. Sometimes it takes a while before my work becomes public, but recently I edited a number of web pages that I can share with you:
- Yesterday, I put the Rutgers Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life’s
Fall 2008 Public Events. Note that in December Dara Horn, author of The World to Come, a book recommended by Mother in Israel, will be speaking at Rutgers.
- The Highland Park Public Library has a bug poster to advertise summer programming for children. The bug poster, by children’s book illustrator Harry Bliss, is part of a national program called Collaborative Summer Library Program, so you may see a similar one on another library site. I just added some text to make it unique to our library.
- New Jersey School of Dental Assisting had me add their newest schedule, information about tuition and financing, and a new field on their contact form.
- I did some edits for Wilkin & Guttenplan, an accounting firm in East Brunswick, New Jersey, including an animated gif of Best Places to Work award logos that you can see on the bottom right of the Careers page.
I will soon be working on a new online course for the Rutgers Bildner Center. The courses are free; so if you have some time to do a course, go to the Jewish Studies Online Studies page to take the Bible & History or the Israeli Political System. Also, I’ve been working a site for a local firm that is not yet public.
Do like salads? Do you like elegant salads? Do you like the idea of being able to go to your backyard (or a container for plants, if you don’t have a backyard) and pick a pretty flower and round, green, tangy leaves to put in your salad?
In order to present to you nasturtium, the flower pictured in this watercolor, I wanted to show you a picture of this edible plant. Instead of showing a photograph, I decided to do a watercolor. When you paint, unlike in a photograph, you can choose what you want to present. So I decided to emphasize the flowers (which will become pretty petals of orange, yellow or red in your salad) and the round-shaped leaves.
The nasturtium seed looks like a shriveled chickpea. It grows easily: all you need to do is poke it with your finger into the ground. Don’t plant nasturtium where you have precious grass; the nasturtium plant will take over, and come frost time you’ll have a bare spot where you used to have grass. But I find it fairly easy to grow. The first summer I tried there was a drought in New Jersey, and these plants did not do well. But recently we’ve had a lot of rain, and my little germinated nasturtium plants are already sticking two round little leaves out of the ground.
More about nasturtium here.
I added a little WordPress plugin called Subscribe to Comment that allows you to check a little box on the comment form so you can get follow up comments in your email. A reader asked about it, so I decided to implement the plugin. Feel free to try it out (I always enjoy your comments, in general, all of you!).
I found a recommendation for the plugin on this WordPress blog called WebDesignerWall. If you like funky, beautifully designed web pages, it’s worth a peek.
There are a multitude of WordPress plugins, and some seem quite fun. Simple Recent Comments is one I must do soon. Maybe I’ll add it to the bottom, along with a list of archives of posts. I should try out some simple stats package, but those you won’t see. Unless I tell you. Oh, yes, I could tell you…another post idea!
And here’s an experiment with a blockquote that has a different border and background than the one I standardly use. More fun with WordPress.
As an additional experiment, I am going to set this post to be published at 3:15 am EST.
Anticipation, an empty street with onlookers:
Finally, the parade begins:
The Highland Park politicians march toward the front of the parade. The woman in the red hat is Mayor Meryl Frank. Elsie Foster-Dublin, a councilwoman, is wearing a red blazer and waving. Jon Erickson is on the far left. Padraic Millet is new to the council.
Oops, missed one. At the left is Councilman Gary Minkoff. One of the nice things about living in a small borough like Highland Park is you can be on a first name basis with the politicians.
Gary looks like he is having a nice time, saying hello to the many folks he knows. Including us.
And the parade continues:
New Brunswick marchers are part of the parade. The dancers are always a treat:
If you play on a Highland Park Recreation softball team, you get to march in the parade. My daughter saw a friend from her ballet class marching with her mom:
Here are some Girl Scouts (actually, Brownies). We know some of these girls well.
The Cub Scouts marched next. This is the first year in a while that I am not marching; my son is now a Boy Scout, and he is up in a Boy Scout camp in Northwest New Jersey this weekend. Having a grand old time, I’m sure. He called yesterday to say he was on top of a cliff.
This is Mason Resnick, a professional photographer. And a friend. Here are some photos he took of the Highland Park Street Fair.
And more here by Mason. And here, too.
Wouldn’t be a local parade without the firetrucks:
Highland Park First Aid Squad is a group of dedicated, hard-working volunteers:
If you’re still with me, the parade ends with short speeches by some veterans and by Mayor Meryl Frank. She mentioned that her father is a World War II veteran. She also said the world was more black-and-white then; now there are more shades of gray.
Here’s the Highland Park High School band:
The bands (there was more than one) played the National Anthem. We said the Pledge of Allegiance. Towards the end, someone sang God Bless America. At the very end, a band played Taps.
Part of the end of the ceremony was laying a wreath under the Doughboy statue.
Next week I will probably be marching with the Boy Scouts in the Salute to Israel Day Parade in New York City.
We have this statue down the street from our house. It’s referred to as the “Doughboy.” That’s where the Memorial Day parade today ends.
American men who fought in World War I in France were called “doughboys.” It’s such a strange name, I decided to find out how the name came to be. The term goes back as far as the Mexican-American War of 1846-47, referring to the infantry.
From this site on World War I:
Independently, in the former colonies, the term had come to be applied to baker’s young apprentices, i.e. dough-boys. Again, American soldiers probably were familiar with this usage. This version of doughboy was also something of a distant relative to “dough-head”, a colloquialism for stupidity in 19th Century America. When doughboy was finally to find a home with the U.S. Army it would have a disparaging connotation, used most often by cavalrymen looking down [quite literally] on the foot-bound infantry.
More on Memorial Day:
