I took this photo last week of the creek that runs on the edge of Highland Park.
Above are some garden shovels that got poured upon in some recent rains.
As we’ve been getting more rain than snow (update: it snowed today a bit), please feel free to leave your favorite rain song as a comment. Or if you’re in a snow zone, snow songs are welcome, too. Drought victims choose as you like.
A tree of red berries is around the corner from my home. I first noticed it for a Sky Watch post.
One of the members of our local Shade Tree Advisory Committee identified the tree for me as a hawthorn tree. She called me from the tree and said, “Leora, did you see the thorns on this tree?” I hadn’t, but in the above photo I circled in pale yellow where the thorns are, close to the tree and not obvious.
Another way she could tell it was a hawthorn was from the bark.
I had just learned about hawthorn berries from Mimi’s post. It seems that they are edible!
For more photos of my tree, go to my Flickr account. There’s another hawthorn berry tree in Highland Park on South Fourth Avenue.
I discovered last week that Highland Park Public High School is a great spot for a Sky Watch post. I drove by a few days later and saw the cupola (is that the right term? more cupolas here) against a sky of blues and pinks. Too bad I was driving kids and had no camera with me.
In other news, my red berry tree from last week was ID’ed as a hawthorn. Here’s the post about the red berry hawthorn tree.
For more Skywatch participants, please visit:
There is a creek or brook a block away from my home, so I went down there to take some photos for Watery Wednesday.
The creek wiggles its way through the edge of Highland Park and Edison, in between private houses. I do hope people aren’t putting too much pesticides on their lawns that will leach down into the brook, but I’m sure I hope in vain.
For more watery photos, visit Watery Wednesday.
I would prefer just to be writing about the sunset my daughter and I saw on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park earlier this week. When we got into the car and I took my camera, she made me promise not to photograph any flowers on our trip. But she didn’t say anything about sunsets.
Unfortunately, there is too much urban drama going on in the home city of photo blogger magiceye. As I type this post, I am wondering about the safety of the Chabad rabbi and his wife, trapped by terrorists in the Nariman house in Mumbai. (Update: Chabad Rabbi and his wife in Nariman house reported killedtortured and then murdered, and more than 125 too many reported dead in Mumbai). Thank you to Dina in Jerusalem for posting about this. To use Twitter for updates, go to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23mumbai or click http://hashtags.org/tag/mumbai/. For updates on Chabad, http://search.twitter.com/search?q=nariman (Nariman is the name of the Chabad house in Mumbai).
An upsetting post about the Taj by an eyewitness
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’ll say I’m thankful that there is an America.
After visiting the Native Plant Reserve in Highland Park, I went to the riverside and took some photos of the river. In this photo you can see the bridge for trains (thanks, Cosmic X) that go past College Campus of Rutgers University, over the river, and through the edge of Highland Park and Edison. I’m hoping to photograph the train tracks in a future post.
See Google Maps to see where this is.
I then turned and faced into the sun and photographed the bridge that leads from Highland Park into New Brunswick. The bridge is at the end of Raritan Avenue.
Here’s the same Route 27 bridge; you can see a bit of the office buildings in New Brunswick in this photo (I think that may be the Hyatt Hotel and further back, some condominiums).
For more watery photos, visit Watery Wednesday.
My World is a meme played by people all over the planet. For more information and to see other places and wonders, visit My World.
I took a trip down to the Native Plant Reserve in Highland Park last week. And when I say “down”, one does go down: Highland Park is on a little hill, and the Native Plant Reserve is down by the Raritan River. It looks bare now, but in the spring many new buds will open up.
In the spring I’ll come back and photograph the little signs and their accompanying plants.
This tree looks proud. The little sign below says it is a white oak.
More about the Native Plant Reserve.
I read a review on VosIzNeias and one on the Jerusalem Post (ht: Seraphic Secret) for a new film for women called “A Light for Greytowers”. It fascinated me: a girl is separated from her parents and sent to an orphanage where a cruel matron does not want her to keep her religion.
Just my luck (or was it hashgacha pratis, Divine Providence), I got to see the movie last night. It screened at a local synagogue, Congregation Ohav Emeth in Highland Park, to a full room of women and teenage girls. It turned out the movie was not just a Jane Eyre story re-created in Jewish form. It was also a musical, and a funny one at that! Some said it reminded them of Annie. I thought of Oliver Twist and “food, glorious, food.” Another friend said it evoked “The Little Princess”, Jewish style.
Here’s the plot as described on the Kol Neshama website:
This thrilling musical adventure follows Miriam Aronowitch from Czarist Russia to Victorian England where she and her mother, Anya, have taken refuge from the Cossack pogroms. When Anya becomes critically ill, however, twelve-year-old Miriam finds herself abandoned in an English orphanage — appropriately named Greytowers — and at the mercy of its cruel matron, Miss Agatha Grimshaw. Only the strength of her faith, imbued in her by her beloved mother, enables her to withstand the torments and bleakness of Greytowers and to rekindle the light of Judaism in the hearts of her young companions.
Some of my favorite scenes included one where the young orphan girls are being taught by a previous, kindlier matron on how to make brachos (blessings) on their food. Another, earlier in the film, depicts two silly sisters (who look like the aunts from James and the Giant Peach) singing to the girls about nutrition. The whole movie is a parody of many English stories, such as the scene where a captain’s wife comes to visit and sings of her loneliness. The woman who plays the cruel matron is a funny and fabulous actress.
And the movie has a happy ending, too!
I do have to say, however, that the emphasis on “gam zu letova”, this too is for the good, did get to me a bit. If one is using the film as a teaching tool, there really is no room for explaining the unhappy endings, which, unfortunately, do happen too often in life, especially in Jewish history.
A while back I wrote about a rally in Highland Park in front of the Ten Thousand Villages store.
One of my friends, Harry Glazer, was one of the organizers of that rally. He wrote the following letter to the Highland Park Mirror (a local newspaper), explaining the nature of the rally (and graciously agreed to my posting the letter on my blog):
As one of the organizers of the rally held in front of the Ten Thousand Villages store in September, I hope to clarify.
The Mennonite Central Committee has hosted [Iranian President Ahmadinejad] for dinner not once, not twice, but three times as of his September visit. His pronouncements and actions have only become more menacing in the years since he’s hobnobbed with the Mennonite Central Committee and other like-minded peace groups.
And if the purpose of dining with an enemy is not influence their views or acts, then how does a faith community justify showing respect to someone who espouses such blatant religious hatred?
Our protest was held in front of the Ten Thousand Villages store in recognition of the fact that the store sends a significant portion of their profits to their parent organization, the Mennonite Central Committee. So in a very real sense, a purchase at Ten Thousand Villages supports the Mennonite Central Committee’s legitimization of Ahmadinejad, as well as other activities by the group that demonstrate a complete lack of balance with regards to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
I have no problem with the fact that Ten Thousand Villages sells goods made in Palestinian areas or that the Mennonites send humanitarian aid to those areas. I do take issue with the attitude of the Mennonites that the conflict is mostly Israel’s fault.
I can say, as well, that it pains me to have to oppose Ten Thousand Villages, since I respect and value ideals of the store – to sell handcrafted goods that are manufactured by workers in underprivileged areas across the globe, thereby providing income to those struggling to support themselves and their famillies. This is a noble mission and, sadly, few other avenues exist to support these artisans in the same honorable fashion.
With sorrow, though, I recognize that I cannot shop at Ten Thousand Villages because some of the money spent there goes to defame a struggling democracy, Israel, which is regularly besieged by enemies with no regard for civilized rules of conflict. Worse yet, the funds spent at Ten Thousand Villages also contribute to efforts to honor a mortal enemy of my friends and relatives, an enemy currently seeking nuclear arms to make good on his word.
A cause may seem noble on the surface, but sometimes when you find out more on how the money is spent, one gets more cautious about giving.
As a continuation to the My World post on Raritan Avenue, this week I’m featuring a Sky Watch on Raritan Ave. Above is a glimpse up South Third Ave in the center of Highland Park.
A street scene between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, one can see a Bradford pear tree with its red fall foliage (now gone and bare).
Here’s an ambulance from Woodbridge zooming along past my favorite toy store, Over the Moon Toys. We are fortunate that two excellent hospitals, Robert Wood Johnson and St. Peter’s, are just over the bridge from us in New Brunswick.
While standing in front of the supermarket on Raritan Avenue a few days ago, my daughter and I were privileged to view this sunset.
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