Monday, November 25, 2013

Remember to give thanks...if you're allowed

"All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, goddamnit. My life has value." - "Network," 1976

It's no secret that if you're a regular working man or woman in America these days, you've taken one body shot after another for a long, long time.

Why? Because we're at the bottom of the ladder. The lowest brick in the foundation. We live, and until we climb out of that class, nobody cares. If we never rise, nobody ever cares. And it's getting worse.

We've all read about major corporations posting record profits as the stock market edges ever higher, but that doesn't change the fact that most of us haven't seen a raise in years. Prices continue to rise while products shrink, and our pockets seem a little emptier than they used to be.

On top of all that, there's still that trembling ghost of organized labor that manages to rattle enough chains that the more sharp-eared among us can't help but realize that this wasn't always our path.

Yea. This game is rigged. It always has been, always will be.

But there's one thing that we - the people who wait your tables, tie your Christmas tree to your car, pack the shelves at your favorite store - always had, and that was the prospect of a couple days off this time of year, no questions asked. (I believe they're called "holidays.")

When I was growing up, TV portrayed them as those few days when the things that perennially haunted us, the concerns over race and color and creed and social status, didn't matter. We could all come together, at least for Thanksgiving dinner or on Christmas morning, and no matter how rough-and-tumble our lives were, things were lovely for those few hours. You spend your time with family and friends, celebrate life, and thank God you have the good fortune to still be breathing.

More and more, though, this is becoming a thing of the past, and it appears that closing a business on a holiday is simply too great a sacrifice for those black-hearted bosses whose compulsive pursuit of profit would be almost admirable if it wasn't so repugnant.

It's the new fad, you see. Instead of just making workers come in incredibly early on Black Friday, open up on Thanksgiving, too.

The Staples on Route 23 in Riverdale will be open from 8 p.m. to midnight on Thursday, which is awesome if you just can't wait until 6 a.m. the next day to buy your legal pads and $9 pens at super discounts.

Maybe their workers will be able to catch a late dinner with the people manning the Sports Authority down the highway - they'll be there from 6 p.m. to midnight, before catching a six-hour respite and coming back in.

All of them have it better than those at Walmart, which will open at 8 a.m. on Thursday and stay that way until midnight Friday. I'd hate to have drawn the short straw at that place.

These aren't the only stores doing this, of course, but they were the first three I called. And although I'm sure the corporate masters have some way of justifying the new practice to themselves and the public, it doesn't change the fact that what they're doing is a kick in the teeth to everything we believe Thanksgiving to be about. Plus, it's awfully hard to look forward to a good turkey dinner knowing you've got to cut it short to go back to Walmart.

I'm no fool, though. This is the United States, and there is nothing that won't be laid down at the altar of the almighty dollar, especially if it's just the happiness of the working people. But it's more than a little ironic that we are losing this uniquely American holiday in such a uniquely American way: by giving it up for some extra cash.

But hey, screw it. This is it. Welcome to the new world order. No raises, no unions, no worker protections, no holidays, no mercy. Don't like it? We'll fire you. Cling to someone else's bootstraps and convince them to sign your paycheck.

After all, as one manager at a store I called said, they do have some incredible deals that day.

Well. Thank God for that.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com



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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet to play Ringwood Public Library

It might seem odd to hear the strains of a Cajun fiddler emanating from a library in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. But then Michael Doucet and his band, BeauSoleil, have always made a habit of bringing the sounds of southwestern Louisiana to the places you’d least expect.

It wasn’t always the 62-year-old musician’s intent to carry the torch for Cajun music. Like so many of his generation, he started playing folk and rock as a kid after watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Yet there was always an allure to the native style that soaked the very fabric of his home state.

Pianos and fiddles were always present at family get-togethers, he said, and he learned the songs and their French lyrics in the same fashion that those from another background might learn Christmas carols. But it wasn’t until he was a high school senior that he noticed that the older generation of musicians was beginning to die off, and he realized that when they did, their music and history would go with them.

He made the choice to take music more seriously, and in the years since, he has become a sort of "semi-anthropologist" on Cajun music and culture, studying, taping, and recording the great fiddle masters of years gone by.

And although he started his band, BeauSoleil, in 1975, he never thought that, 38 years and some 35 albums later, he would be a two-time Grammy winner who has reached the highest of the music industry’s heights.

"We did that for fun. But we never thought it would sustain us… nobody thought about making a living doing this," he said with a laugh.

All the while, he’s kept true to his roots. The songs are still sung in French, and, with their slow, deliberate moods and the natural rhythms, reflect the swampy climate they rose from. There’s a mix of cultures present in every note, and the Spanish, Native American, and African influences can be heard with varying degrees of prominence.

While some might think of Cajun music as simply "party music," he said, songs like "Carencro," which chronicles a tale of lost love and murder, reflect the darker side of his writing style.

"The rhythm represents the cadence of the environment… I think that really affects it," he said.

And although most listeners outside of Louisiana and France might not understand the lyrics, they won’t have a hard time gleaning the meaning of the songs from fiddle and voice alone

"Sometimes, you don’t actually need to know what the song is about," he said. "It’s about a certain visceral feeling, an understanding, that we all share. And I learned it in French, so I think it’s good to keep it in French… I’m too ornery to change it."

That orneriness appears to run in his blood, and Doucet, who graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in English literature, said that the band’s name derives from a nickname given to one of his relatives, Joseph Broussard, who led an eighteenth-century rebellion in Nova Scotia against the English.

Captured and later deported, he eventually led other French-speaking countrymen — the Acadians — to the Louisiana territory that Doucet still resides in.

"It’s been kind of a family battle cry for a long time," he said of the word. "And we were asked to play in France in 1976, and they said, ‘[Your band] must have a name! So I said, ‘Yea, BeauSoleil.’"

There won’t be a setlist for the show at the Ringwood Public Library, which is slated to start at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 17, but that’s okay. The band never has one anyway, and he treats every audience differently. Once the place fills up, he said, he’ll figure out what they need to hear.

"It’s all serendipitous," he said.

For more information, go to ringwoodlibrary.org/newlegacy.shtml.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/music/231854291_Cajun_fiddler_Michael_Doucet_to_play_Ringwood_Public_Library.html?page=all

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Friday, November 8, 2013

Halloween musings in a sleepy cemetery

There was no more perfect place to be at midnight on Halloween than on a lantern-lit tour of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yes, it was just as creepy as it sounds, and even though the walk isn't meant to scare, the atmosphere alone makes it not for the faint of heart.

Still, the place is absolutely remarkable. Opened in 1849, it was built around what's called the "Old Dutch Burying Ground" - the same one where the body of Washington Irving's restless horseman is said to reside. There seems to be no end to the gravestones, and they are here, there and everywhere, 40,000 scattered over 90 acres in clusters and rows and rectangles, under ornate monuments and broken slabs and weeping angels.

Revolutionary war officers lie next to painters and poets, and the gargantuan mausoleums of Gilded Age industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller sit just across from the low, sturdy grave of labor leader Samuel Gompers. It's a cross-section of America's finest, and a reminder that no matter how much we accomplish in this life, we all end up in the same marble-toothed fields.

Part of the cemetery was actually constructed on an old Revolutionary War redoubt, and from that vantage point high on a hill, one can see not only the ancient trenches threading their way through the earth, but also the section of ground the headless horseman rose from before his midnight gallops.

Irving's own grave is not far away, and his tombstone stands just a little higher, a little straighter, than those littered around him.

Sleepy Hollow has changed mightily since the writer's heyday, of course, and although some landmarks from his famed story remain - most notably the Pocantico River, which was the supposed safe haven for the hapless Ichabord Crane - it looks more like a run-down college town than a place of historic significance. Like acid rain on granite, the years have worn away its charm, and what remains is not always pleasant to look at it.

And, fascinating though the tour was, I could not help but gaze at the stones with the same measure of dread I always feel when in a graveyard. After all, it's a glimpse into your own inevitable future, and that disconcerting truth is one we'd all prefer to ignore until our final hours (and even then, not so much.)

But at the same time, visits to these places can be both humbling and motivating. It's good to realize now and again that there actually is an "end of the line," that the four-digit number at the receiving end of that dash is hurtling towards us with every waking hour, and when it arrives, it will not care whether or not we feel our chapters are finished.

Therefore, I concluded, it must be our job to pack that dash with as much as we can, enough so that if there is some way for us to look back on the lives we've led, we'll be able to say that we missed out on nothing.

Chuck Palahniuk once wrote that "All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring." I disagree. He kills us anyway. But as long as there's that chance that someone can one day look upon my grave, as I looked upon Irving's, and say, "This was a man who made a difference - this is a man whose work lives on!" - it won't seem quite so intimidating.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/community/230936441_Halloween_musings_in_a_sleepy_cemetery.html


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Thursday, October 24, 2013

‘October Classic’ remains an American tradition

No matter how irrational it sounds, a part of me will always believe that deep down, every American truly understands that baseball is beautiful. They might not admit it, but if you were born on this continent, it’s there. Somewhere. I swear.

And I’m not just saying that because I’m high on the fact that my beloved Boston Red Sox are in the World Series. I’ve long thought this, and every time I sit in the Fenway stands or watch a playoff game on a chilly October night, I can’t help but think that this sport symbolizes all that we often refer to as "Americana."

If professional football — which is a great game slowly being ruined by commercial breaks, money, and rule changes in the name of "safety" — is what we are today, than baseball is what we were yesterday: methodical, individualistic, and maybe even a little obstinate.

Its modern incarnation was invented in 1845, and one look at any game in progress will show you that this pastime certainly comes from the era before electricity and advertising. The contests take far too long and mess up countless TV and commercial schedules as a result, but the players won’t take the field in the rain, so whomever is airing the game has to have a few old episodes of "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" on deck to eat up time, just in case.

It doesn’t often use instant replay, and most of the calls stand as they are, for better or worse. And even though some modern amenities like LED scoreboards or overhead lights have been added to the parks, and the players are bigger and stronger and maybe more sober than they once were, the best parts of baseball haven’t changed much since the New York Knickerbockers dropped a lopsided 23-1 decision to the "New York Nine" in 1846.

It’s tough to see this when the cameras are focused on the players’ faces, as they often are, or only showing that thin stretch of no man’s land that runs from the pitchers’ mound to the batters’ box.

But when they draw back and take the panoramic view, it’s there in all its New World glory: stands swarming with a great mass of fans, all hoping and praying and concentrating their energy on the two men in the middle of the field who face off like street-fighters in a back alley.

Then the hitter turns on a slider and the ball sails and a roar erupts as the runners spring ahead and the outfielders do their solemn work, and in seconds the ball is back in the pitcher’s hands once more.

It’s one of the few sports that, if you could somehow turn off the sound and watch from the top of the stadium, it would look very much the same in 2013 as it did in 1913. In our complicated digital age, there’s something to be said for that kind of simplicity.

So when the 2013 World Series begins tonight, and two teams that have a combined 243 years of history between them take to that lovely grass of the Fenway Park field, you know I’ll be watching.

Because even though baseball, as one Twitter user said the other day, is like "the old lady who still writes checks at the grocery store," that doesn’t mean that every pitch doesn’t give us a gorgeous glimpse into days gone by.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/229042391__October_Classic__remains_an_American_tradition.html?page=all


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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Bradley vs Marquez: Remember to pay attention tomorrow night



The Boston Red Sox, as Jimmy Fallon so eloquently put it in the movie "Fever Pitch," never let you down. They may not win every game, but there's no question that on most days during the summer, that team will take to the Fenway Park field - just like they have for the past 113 years - and play ball.

Boxers though....boxers will let you down. Boxers will break your goddamned heart. Why? Because no matter how good they are in their prime, no matter how talented or special, they've all got to get old. And when they do, and all you see is some timeworn, cement-legged relic lumbering around a ring that he used to dance around on winged feet years before, it's nearly impossible to recall what he looked like when he was that raw maelstrom of violence that once descended on the sport like a Plains tornado.

It's the same cruel trick the fates play on us all, it's true, but for a boxer, it's a much more public and painful decline, one that can arrive with cliff-like abruptness

At the same time, though, that's the reason boxing is so special. Once that champion is gone, he's gone forever, and while others will follow, some better and some worse, there will never be another just like him. It's why we have to make a conscious effort to appreciate the great fighters while they're still young - while they're still dancing.

Juan Manuel Marquez is one of those fighters.

It's been a long, long career for the old warhorse, one that's seen him take on a who's-who of boxing's finest and beat most of them in spectacular fashion - hell, even his losses were thrilling. Marquez has never shied from the clash of spears, never ducked or dodged any man who wanted a shot, and his 20-year run should be considered the handbook of how a boxer should conduct himself.

Now that it's well-known that he is in the final movements of his grand symphony, I must admit that I was sort of surprised that he didn't retire following his climactic knockout of his arch-nemesis Manny Pacquaio.

After all, what more could he possibly achieve? What crescendo would ever match the grandeur of the one that saw him standing on the ring ropes, fists raised in triumph, while an unconscious Pacquaio lay utterly broken in the corner?

As the saying goes, though, fighters fight, and Marquez is that above all else - a fact he proved once again by picking Tim Bradley as his next opponent.

It's no secret that Bradley doesn't have much power, and the only way he'll be able to hurt Marquez is if his corner throws a bat into the ring. But his style of constant punching and his tremendous heart makes him an easy mark for no one, and he is, after all, (allegedly) still undefeated. In some ways, he reminds me of Juan Diaz, who was once an up-and-coming volume puncher when Marquez faced off with him in 2009.

This bout, I suspect, will unfold much the same way that one did, with Bradley seizing an early advantage only to be sunk later on by Marquez's shotgun-shell right hand and his beautiful chains of uppercuts and hooks. I'm not sure what manner the Mexican will win in, but I am certain that this man, who may be the finest combination puncher in the history of the sport, will collapse yet another thick-skulled opponent on his way to victory.

So be careful on Saturday night. Don't drink too much, and pay attention to the TV even though others aren't - be "that guy" who's absorbed in the fight. Why? Because you're watching history, and Marquez the Warrior will not be around forever.

And when he's gone, others will follow... but you will never see another that does what he can do.

This is boxing's great curse - but also its most precious gift.

http://www.badlefthook.com/2013/10/11/4829708/marquez-vs-bradley-


Monday, October 14, 2013

'Turning off' on Mount Marcy's slopes

The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers / Little we see in Nature that is ours." - Wordsworth

For the first few thousand years of humanity’s existence, life was really all about living long enough to live some more.
It wasn’t about "finding one’s calling," or searching the self-help aisle in the local brick-and-mortar bookstore in search of some book that will finally, finally be able to tell us what’s "missing."

No. It was simpler. Gather food. Build a fire. Make a shelter. Have a family, and hope they live long enough to help you gather more food. They’re modest goals by today’s standards — so modest, in fact, that many of us feel we’re now entitled to them just because we’re alive.

It wasn’t always so, hard as that may be to believe in this world of blazing rapid-fire advertisements and pinging push notifications that bombard the iPhones, tablets, and televisions that haunt us every waking moment.

But it’s remarkable how fast that all melts away the second you strap a pack to your back and step out onto a trailhead. Within hours, you’re back to the basics — build a fire, find some water, set up a shelter — and most of your thoughts revolve around your next step.

You don’t quite sleep through the night when you’re out there, either. It’s as if your subconscious opens that long-shut eye, the one we all closed years ago after barricading ourselves behind high gates and sheetrock walls, and you become aware of every rustling leaf in the darkness. The water you filter from the stream tastes different, also — not quite so "pure." Or maybe it’s more pure, because it doesn’t have all of the chlorine we load into it, and its flavor is that of the rocks it glides over, the moss it flows through, and the fish that swim in it. You taste the earth, instead of the chemicals we’ve created from the elements we’ve found.

You realize that fire is actually pretty important. We don’t pay much attention to that, even though figuring out the cheapest, easiest way to boil water has been civilization’s primary goal since the Industrial Revolution. Nah. We ignore the groan of the baseboard or the hushed whisper of the stove’s burners until they stop working, at which point we panic.

But when it’s actually cold out, and you’re missing that aforementioned sheetrock shell, doing something as simple as pulling wood out of the ground and dragging it somewhere to burn becomes a matter of utmost consequence.

And then there’s the hike up the mountain itself, the one whose summit sits, quite literally, a mile higher than home. Taken as one gigantic mass, it’s intimidating as hell, but if you never look past the next headlamp-lit step, it becomes beatable… although you won’t ever concentrate harder on each and every footfall as you will when you’re on a slanted rock face in the alpine zone of New York’s highest precipice.

You might think this is all just some hippie-ish Romantic treatise about turning away from the modern world to "get in touch with the earth." Maybe it is. But I cannot help but feel that totally disconnecting from this information-overloaded system is necessary every so often, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t find strange comfort in seeing "Searching for Service" pasted across my cell phone screen for three straight days. (The Adirondacks, it appears, are one of the few remaining white spots on Verizon’s red invasion map.)

And that’s fine with me. Especially because after gazing out at the expansive views offered by the craggy 5,343-foot dome of Mount Marcy, coming back down to sea level to sit in a house and look at Facebook is more than a little bit of a letdown.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Pope Francis: A new day

It’s been a long, long time since I could say that I was “proud” of being a Catholic.

I was born into that religion, it’s true, but beyond the normal concerns one might have with the good book’s logic, the opinions that church officials hold about those with my particular views on a number of social issues, combined with their wretched conduct during the ongoing sex-abuse scandals, effectively turned me away from the buildings with the big crosses.

Years of reading writers like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine have led me to call myself a deist instead, and being as that’s the most open-ended and non-committal of all religious designations, I was pretty happy with that.

Until, that is, this new pope drove into town, on the four old tires of his 1984 Renault.

It’s more than a little ironic that I feel the need to call a 76-year-old man a “breath of fresh air,” but I don’t have another term for it. As an Argentine cardinal, he traded a palace for a small apartment and a limousine for a bus ride, and he regularly took to the worst barrios in Buenos Aires to perform his priestly duties (so much so that he is now known as the “slum pope”).

His single-minded obsession with the needy reminds me of Hugo’s Bishop Myriel, the virtuous cleric in “Les Miserables” who gives all he has to charity, and not only feeds and houses Jean Valjean, but lies to free him from the police even after the latter was caught stealing his silver.

Francis decries the idolatry of “this god called money,” shows remarkable humility — instead of washing the feet of 12 priests on Holy Thursday, as is tradition, he washed the feet of 12 prisoners — and makes personal phone calls to those of his extensive flock whose lives have crashed along tragedy’s reefs.

Overall, he appears far less concerned with issues like abortion than his predecessors, and his remarkable response to the question of how he’d deal with learning that a cleric under his charge was gay is perhaps most impressive: “Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?”

To say that I was shocked when I heard these words, especially after the overwhelming coldness exhibited by the last pope on the issue, is an understatement. It was that very lack of concern, that chilling condemnation leveled at those deemed “different,” that had alienated me in the first place and made me believe that the intense focus on mercy, love, and acceptance preached by Jesus was more of a polite suggestion than a church edict.

This pope is not perfect, I understand that. But he gives me hope that the church may eventually be able to leap forward a few centuries by looking back to its inception, and return to simply helping the lost and disenfranchised instead of encouraging intolerance of those it disagrees with.

When Bishop Myriel sent Jean Valjean on his way, he gave him the rest of his silver and told him to use its worth to become a better man.

Francis is handing the Roman Catholic Church his silver. Whether or not the institution uses it appropriately remains to be seen.

Now, though, he has our attention.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com


Friday, September 20, 2013

Pulling back from the NFL hype

It was a typical NFL postgame show in every respect: a duo of irritatingly excited announcers yelling over seizure-inducing graphics and hammering background music meant to dramatize every single piece of on-the-field action.

It’s effective for some, I guess, but there was something about its abrasive, P.T. Barnum-style gaudiness that made me groan out loud and turn off the television. I mean, it was only preseason, and there’s not one piece of those four games that’s worth a single $14 beer at "Insert Corporate Name Here" Stadium.

That was my moment of epiphany, one might say, my "night of fire" where I realized that the National Football League of 2013, that $9 billion-a-year megalomaniacal conglomerate, is just a far different entity, with far different goals, than the thing I grew up with in the 80s and 90s.

It was fairly pure back then. Few stadiums had domes, and snow was a permanent fixture on many a winter field as games went on in temperatures that caused whistles to freeze to referees’ lips. It was about winning, not statistics, and there weren’t a whole lot of rules.

You could hit — God, you could hit — and it was a rough-and-tumble game played by unrefined men.

Now, it’s not just a game. Every Sunday is an event akin to "The Running Man" where society shuts down, the streets are Christmas-morning bare, and every male between the ages of just-born and not-quite-dead refuses to budge from in front of their television.

Then there’s others who don’t really care about the sport, but are involved in fantasy football, and so they watch also, splitting their time between leering at the TV and compulsively checking their phones for scoring updates.

I admit that I’m a part of that particular problem, as I’m in a fantasy league that I do enjoy. But even I think that this Dungeons and Dragons for ex-jocks has created a sort of bizarre subculture filled with "writers" who understand statistics but not sports and commentators who judge a player’s value only on the amount of touchdowns he throws, not the number of games he wins.

And through all of this, there’s the NFL itself, which insists on tweaking and twisting the rules every few years to pull pro football further and further from its violent past. They say the changes are in the name of "player safety," but like any other business, it’s about protecting investments.

Eventually, I assume, it will either abolish defenses altogether (maybe replacing them with cardboard cutouts of Ronnie Lott, who would never survive in the tender NFL of today) or move to a flag-football system that’s played on a field of soft, down-filled pillows built under a rainbow.

But even with the awful mutations of the last 15 years, and the aggravating, all-encompassing fantasy craze, I still love this game. It’s dramatic and (when the league can’t help it) unforgivingly brutal, and it can still create those beautiful moments that only football can.

The older I get, though, the more I’m drawn to sports like boxing and baseball that have maintained their fundamental character a bit better and seem to revel in the fact that, yes, they’re not made for TV, but no, they’re not going to change it, and they’re sorry if you don’t like it but you can always watch something else.

The NFL, like any jilted lover, will move on, whether or not I (or any other disenchanted fans) choose to follow it. After all, when you’re making that much money, you don’t need to listen to anybody, and that league proves over and over that it will do what it wants, regardless of how its faithful feel.

Maybe it’s for the best, though. The memories have been great but the glory days have passed, and nothing upsets me more than watching the slow decline of a once-great thing.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Friday, September 13, 2013

Mayweather vs Canelo preview: Father Time looming as Floyd's biggest opponent

At its core, boxing is not about the physical attributes that so many use to define it - it's not about speed or power, endurance or accuracy, and these things, in the end, have but a minute impact on the outcome of any given bout.

In reality, this game is all about timing: throwing that straight right at the exact moment your opponent recklessly leaps in, or letting that hook go a fraction of a second after his rear hand drops. Yeah, that's what it's about: not only doing something perfectly, but doing it at precisely the right time so as to amplify its affect and maximize its pain.

Timing is why you win.

It's just as important outside the ropes, where knowing when to fight someone is every bit as important as knowing how to fight them, and the subtle differences in the words and actions of a rapacious young challenger and an aging king who's dodging the Sword of Damocles can speak volumes about that.

Timing is what just might make the difference on Saturday night.

Now, I'm no fool, and if I was a gambling man, I would not be betting against Floyd Mayweather, Jr. Rarely in boxing history has one force been so dominant over so long a period, and even at 36 years old, it's still tough to picture him losing in any fashion.

But make no mistake: this fight is as much about Mayweather's war with Father Time as it is with the baby-faced, red-haired Mexican who will be staring across the ring at him. Even Floyd is mortal, and there will come a point when, like all fine athletes, his prime has decidedly passed, and his fists can no longer capitalize on the openings his eye sees.

What's more, his Philly shell - a disposition more favored by fleet-footed young bucks as opposed to older superstars - is decidedly not a stance that suits the slowing reflexes that accompany advancing age. And although his counters are still crisp and his understanding of range remains unparalleled, the swift head movement that's pulled him just out of harm's way on so many earlier occasions has suffered, especially above welterweight.

And then there is the 23-year-old Canelo Alvarez. Muscular and intimidating, with the easy swagger that youth often carries when it's never tasted the metallic bitterness of defeat, he is a boxer with prodigious power in either hand. He punches straight, stays loose, and is, after 42 victories, as physically sharp as he will ever be. He is undoubtedly a dangerous opponent, one who can, if things go a certain way, end this fight in booming fashion.

But there's also a lot that can go wrong for Alvarez. The eyes of the world will be upon him Saturday night, and that's pressure few have even experienced, much less performed well under. Meanwhile, the man he faces has made a name for himself by, if nothing else, rising to the occasion every time it's demanded. Add to that the fact that, in prior bouts, Alvarez has gone long rounds without letting his hands go, and you've got a recipe for disaster; Mayweather, like Tom Brady, is not someone who you want to hand the ball to and say, "Go ahead, pick me apart." Most of the boxing world, it appears, expects that to be the outcome. I am not one of those.

I would be lying if I said that the dynamics surrounding this match don't remind me a little of Muhammad Ali's first fight with Sonny Liston. Nobody - and I mean nobody - picked the 22-year-old native of Louisville, Kentucky, to upset the fearsomely heavy-handed champ. Ali was a 7 - 1 underdog, and most boxing writers thought Liston would have him unconscious by the fourth. I need not remind anyone of what happened that night.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect Floyd Mayweather to answer the opening bell looking like an old Sonny Liston. I don't expect him to get knocked out, or put on his back, or stopped. But I wouldn't be all that surprised if he didn't exactly look like the fighter we're used to seeing, and if Alvarez catches him far more often than he's been caught before.

Maybe, just maybe, Mayweather actually did pick the wrong opponent this time...and when the tide turns against him, he won't be able to blunt its roll.

He, after all, will not only be brawling with Canelo under those lights - he will also be locked in the great struggle that all legends fight, once their inevitable decline is realized and their mortality is brought sharply into focus.

And that is a battle even he cannot win.

http://www.badlefthook.com/2013/9/11/4720728/mayweather-vs-canelo-preview-father-time-looming-as-floyds-biggest


Thursday, August 29, 2013

Look at your earth!

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." - Physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson

"Look at your fish!"

That was the simple four-word command given by noted 19th century naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz to his research students at Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, and it drove them crazy.
Aggasiz

Samuel Scudder, an entomologist who studied under him, wrote about that phrase in his 1874 essay, "In the Laboratory With Agassiz," where he recalled that after his initial meeting with the good professor, he was left alone with a single dead fish for hours on end, with no tools but his eyes, ears, and fingers.

When Agassiz would return, Scudder would tell him what he had learned about the specimen. Agassiz would nod, and demand he find more before leaving once again.

"Look at your fish!" he would exhort.

And so the dance went on for three days. Each time Scudder thought he couldn't possibly find anything new about his dead friend, he would notice something else that would send him careening off in some other direction. By the end of the drill, he had thoroughly analyzed every facet of the carcass laid out before him and said that in retrospect, it was an invaluable exercise.

"This was the best entomological lesson I ever had - a lesson, whose influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study; a legacy the professor has left to me, as he has left it to many others, of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot part," he wrote.

That, pure and simple, is science. But how things have changed since 1874.

Maybe it's been the super-effective misrepresentation of scientists in the media, or just that Americans, to be honest, barely have any sort of grasp on or understanding of the subject itself. But it somehow has become vogue to look upon those who spend their lives studying the world around them as crackpot alarmists who are no more than pandering mouthpieces for a certain political party.

It can be heard everywhere, from the editorial boards of conservative publications to the mumblings of drugged-up loons on AM radio, and it absolutely must stop.

Humanity, with its notoriously short memory, evidently has forgotten that everything we have, all the great pieces and processes that have elevated us to this planet's throne, we owe to science. It's always been our inventions - the obsidian arrowhead, the printing press, the radio, the combustion engine - that have separated us from the rest of the animal kingdom, and it all has come from the use of the scientific method.

We revel in the fruits of science, and rightly so. We love our tablets and wireless Internet and GPS systems, and imagining life without them is horrifying to a lot of folks.

Well, why, then, when scientists tell us that they are literally certain that our carbon emissions are warming this planet at an accelerated rate, do we, who have no background in the subject, look at them like they're the ones who don't know what they're talking about?

Why, as a recent New York Times story reported, when you can now see the "tremendous wildfires" and "gargantuan sandstorms" rage across the palette of the earth from space, and the "gunmetal exhalation of coal and fuel smoke" spread over China, do we believe that our actions don't affect the ecosystem around us?

Bill Maher once said that you can't pick the science you like, because the same process that led to the development of the iPhone is the one that's telling us that we must turn our vicious, parasitic demolition of this planet around before it's too late. And even though it all sounds like crazy talk to those who bask in ignorance, shooting messengers and hiding heads in the sand won't change that.

The scientists, after all, are just the ones looking at the fish.

We're the ones pretending it can still swim.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com



Monday, August 26, 2013

Pequannock looks to promote increased use of rain gardens

It's a new twist on an old concept: dig slight depressions into the ground to act as a traditional sort of catch-basin for rainwater — but this time, add various types of indigenous plants that thrive in wet environments so as to increase the basin's efficacy.

The finished rain garden in Andover Township that Pequannock Township Engineer Joe Golden, along with a number of citizens and volunteers, constructed.Seen here is the Andover garden when it was still a work in progress. Golden is attempting to bring rain gardens to Pequannock as a way of conserving water and making a dent in local flooding issues.

That small change not only makes the basin more aesthetically pleasing, but also better at sopping up runoff before it washes away soil and carries pollutants into the water system.

Although these "rain gardens" are still a relatively new concept in the stormwater management field, they've gained traction with Pequannock Township Engineer Joe Golden, who recently completed an application for a $2,000 grant from Rutgers University's "Sustainable Jersey" program in order to fund a local course on the practice.

His plan, he said in a Thursday afternoon phone conversation, is to use the money to hold the class, and then have those that attend construct a demo rain garden somewhere on public property so other residents can see firsthand how they work.

Golden is already certified by the university as a rain garden specialist and trainer, and has built several of his own, including one at an Andover Township school that helped that town win a NJ Governor's Award for stormwater management in 2010.

He's hoping to do something similar in Pequannock, which, what with its sandy, permeable soil and perennial flooding issues, is the ideal spot for both public and private plots.

"Rain gardens typically get about 30 percent more [water] infiltration than a lawn does," he said. "If every lawn had a rain garden, we'd have 30 percent less water [running off]… and if every property in the area installed one, we would actually maybe make a dent in the flooding."

Even if it never helped the flooding, however, the small parcels — Golden's own at his Sussex County home measures about 20-by-8 feet — are excellent for water conservation, and the combination of grass, plants, and mulch at the edge of a parking lot or gutter downspout helps "eat away the bad stuff" that might otherwise drain into local rivers.

"You put it on the end of a driveway, and it takes out the oil," he said. "It cleans the water before it gets into the ground... it's been very successful in some other communities."

Plus, he said, they are "very attractive," and can entice hummingbirds, monarch butterflies, and other bits of nature into the area.

The course would most likely be free, he said, and the town's garden, wherever it may be, could be labeled with signs and become a sort of ecosystem exhibit as well. He's hoping to find out whether Pequannock secured the grant sometime in September, and the work could be done in the spring.

He meets with the town Green Team on Monday night to discuss the plans further.

Meanwhile, the Township Council voiced support for the plan when its members heard about it at their Aug. 13 meeting, with Councilwoman Cathy Winterfield saying the concept is "pretty exciting" and Mayor Rich Phelan noting that it "sounds cool."

Councilman Jay Vanderhoff, who has an extensive background in the landscaping field, said he heard that a number of town Green Teams and environmental clubs are getting behind the idea and doing it in their own municipalities.

"It's a good project," he said.

Golden urged any residents interested in possibly taking part in a class on rain gardens to contact him at the township's engineering office at 973-835-5700.

Email:janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/221119081_Pequannock_looks_to_promote_increased_use_of_rain_gardens.html?page=all

Monday, August 19, 2013

Businesses don't care - do we?

At the risk of sounding quite a bit more crotchety than my 29 years should allow, I've got to say that it seems to be getting more and more difficult to find products of any sort that are truly "built to last" these days.

It doesn't matter whether it's (several) watches from a Connecticut-based company that embarrassingly tumble off your wrist, boxing gloves from a prominent manufacturer that come in ripped again and again due to a lack of quality control, or the cell phone that arrives from an online dealer permanently fixed to the "Glitch Out and Die" setting - it's garbage.

Everything is built from plastic when it should be metal and made in China or India or Bangladesh when it should be made in the USA. Everything is cheap, everything is disposable.

For a long time, during that mythical "golden age" of American manufacturing, it seemed like we were different. Our guys took pride in what they did, and the business owners themselves seemed to live closer to that old adage that your business was only as good as its reputation.

Of course, that might be an overly nostalgic (and maybe even false) notion of how things were, but it should be true, even if it isn't. And if it was, the corporations now, these international conglomerates of sub-holdings and parent companies birthed from the era of globalization, have forgotten it, and their awful customer service proves that they're not particularly keen on remembering.

I'm not a businessman, and I don't pretend that I understand retail, wholesale or any of the other terms that were never uttered within 500 feet of the hall that housed the English majors at Montclair State.

But I do understand that doing one thing, and doing it really, really well - whether it's forging knives, teaching piano, or putting out a newspaper - is often a recipe for success.

Diversification can sometimes equal death, especially when, in the pursuit of larger profit margins, a company forgets what its original purpose was.

I used to be the sort that hated calling up and harassing businesses about their pathetic products (a trait I often attributed to my own long stretch in a retail setting), but my frustration has simply boiled over.

Now, I'm just surprised that they've apparently escaped the cascade of angry phone calls that so often accompany widespread consumer wrath.

Maybe we feel that no matter what we say, the products we buy will keep getting smaller, cheaper, and flimsier. Or maybe we've just lowered our collective standards enough that we barely even notice that a pair of jeans doesn't last through one winter anymore.

We should not let that continue. Even if it's a losing fight, it's worth it to give them a call or send them an email just to let them know, "Hey, I'm paying attention, and I hate what you're doing with your product."

Most times they'll blow you off, but once in a while, I'll get one that actually fools me into thinking they're sincere when they thank me for "bringing this to our attention."

Sometimes, they offer a deal or discount to go along with their fake gratitude, and even though they're probably still making something on it, it makes me feel better.

It's not much, but you take what you can get. Just like them.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/220233001_Businesses_don_t_care_-_do_we_.html


Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Pequannock residents share Holocaust experience in Cedar Crest documentary

The choice in front of 16-year-old Paul Graf Loewner was stark: escape through the window, dodge the inevitable barrage of German bullets, and hide out for however long the war continued… or go with the Nazis who’d walked up to his door.
Paul Loewner

"My mother wanted me to escape through the window, and I was ready to go, but my father said it was too dangerous," Loewner said last week as he sat in a cushioned chair in the Cedar Crest Retirement Community’s TV studio. "I couldn’t do it…but I should have listened to my mother."

Loewner did not escape, and he and his father were herded into a cattle car and sent from his small village outside the Slovakian capital of Bratislava to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany.

Eventually, the Nazis tried to separate them so they could be put in different cell blocks; when a scared Loewner wouldn’t let go of his father’s hand, a guard struck him behind the ear and knocked him down.

He would see his father just a few more times before being sent to Buchenwald. After that, he never saw him — or his mother — again.

"They probably killed him the way we watched the others [get killed]," he said, looking away.

He scraped by in the dismal camp, seeing other inmates being starved and shot and murdered, until the American tanks from General George Patton’s Third Army liberated the camp on April 11, 1945.

"We were safe. We were liberated," he said with a slight accent, a jubilant smile crossing his face. "I thought it was the greatest happiness in my life up to then to be liberated."

Although the comfortable TV studio is a far cry from the cold floor of a cattle car, after seven decades, Loewner finds his memories are vivid.

And it’s memories like those that he, along with 18 other residents from the retirement community, have shared in the 90-minute documentary about the Holocaust entitled "Never Forgotten."

It was Cedar Crest producer Mike Dygos’ first feature-length production, and he called it a "huge accomplishment," especially because he already knew so many of the residents.

"To sit here and hear these stories coming out of these residents’ mouths — we see these people everyday, we see them in the hallway, and then all of a sudden they’re telling this crazy story that you can’t believe anyone would be able to survive… To attach a person you know to a story like that, it really makes the Holocaust real," the 26-year-old Dygos said.

Producer and coordinator Larry Curan, also 26, agreed, and said that learning about the Holocaust from books, as he had in school, was nothing like hearing the stories told in the voice of one who’d lived through it.
Loewner, as a child, with his sister

"That’s why this piece is so powerful: because every single one of these is a first-hand account of what actually happened," he said. "It was amazing to hear some of the things that we heard people say."

Producer Doris Sinofsky, age 85, was in high school during World War II, and said that she, like most Americans, had no idea that the Holocaust was even going on in Europe.

Although she would eventually marry a Jewish man, she still hadn’t heard the stories of the concentration camps in such an up-close-and-personal way until she watched the interviews being recorded.

Sometimes, she said, she had to leave the studio during the filming — especially when the women told their narratives.

"The things that they went through was just beyond comprehension. It was awful," she said.

The producers agreed that the hardest seat to be in, however, was not in production — it was on stage, across from the survivors, prompting them to relive the greatest horrors of their lives. The man who occupied that seat, they said, quickly became the axle around which the project revolved.

Bert Moore, the community’s 63-year-old pastoral ministries manager (a position he described as "essentially a chaplain"), came to Cedar Crest five years ago after a 25-year career as a Navy chaplain, and had already formed relationships with many in the Jewish community. After putting out the initial word that the production team wanted volunteers to speak about the Holocaust for a documentary, it only seemed natural that he would conduct the interviews.

"It kind of fit right in," he said.

In the end, about 35 hours’ worth of interviews were recorded, and all three producers were effusive in their praise of how Moore handled what could have been a difficult job.

"For someone who has never done interviewing on TV before, he really fit the role perfectly, and it had to do with his compassion," Dygos said. "Him being able to ask the right questions, and then listen to the people and be able to off their stories… We got a lot of things we really weren’t expecting."

Sinofsky agreed, and said that there were several points where, during a given interview, she would think that there was simply nothing left to say — and then Moore would ask a poignant question and the floodgates would open once more.

The chaplain simply said he tried not to make the residents feel uncomfortable.

"I don’t know that I necessarily thought it through that much," he said with a laugh. "I guess it was that I would listen to their story, and ask a question that would take them to the next step — if it seemed to me like there was a gap, I would try to bounce back and say, ‘What happened here?’"

It was also important, he said, to focus on not only the residents’ experiences in the Holocaust, but on the post-war years as well — when they immigrated, when they married, what they did for a profession, and how they ended up at the quiet retirement community in the woods of northern Pequannock. Their resilience throughout their lives, he said, was astounding.

"The thing that kept coming back to me was how amazing it was that they could have this kind of life experience, and be able to put that behind them, and move on, and have successful lives and raise families," he said. "To see how they could survive that, and turn their lives around, and I would say contribute to society in a very positive way — it was such a huge dichotomy."

There seems to be quite an audience for that sort of message. Sinofsky said the documentary has already been sent to a number of libraries and schools, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., may eventually store the dozens of hours of raw footage. "Never Forgotten" has even won a Telly Award, which honors the "very best film and video productions" from local, regional, and cable TV," according to its website.

But perhaps the most important part, said 84-year-old resident Leopold Lowy, is what can be gained by exposing the public to the horror of the Holocaust: the assurance that such a thing will never come to pass again.

A Czechoslovakian native, he lost both parents during the war years, and was on his own in a Jewish orphanage at age 12. Later, he was sent to the infamous Auschwitz before ending up at the Buchenwald concentration camp.

A lifetime later, Auschwitz remains an open wound.

"No word, no book, no pictures can describe hell on earth… That’s all I have to say. Buchenwald was very close to it, but at least in Buchenwald, they may have starved you to death, worked you to death, but not gassed," he said, his face darkening for a moment. "But this is all past. I came here, and I started a new life… You can’t live in your past. You have to look to your future."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/community/218318131_Pequannock_residents_share_Holocaust_experience_in_Cedar_Crest_documentary.html?page=all

Thursday, August 1, 2013

In Paterson, that's just the way things go

When the massive brick wall of a three-story Ryle Avenue mill collapsed on July 16, sending the roof tumbling through two floors and debris shooting into the road, it instantly became the perfect metaphor for its hometown.

The building, although it was a part of local history, had been slated for demolition because it lacked structural integrity. But, as is so often the case in the city's seized-up bureaucracy, the process stalled, and so there it sat, a rotting reminder of Paterson's once-fearsome industrial muscle, dying with one last howl as Father Time finished the job that local officials could not.

Once, mills like that made up the heart of a New Jersey manufacturing juggernaut that harnessed the power of the 77-foot-high Great Falls to produce textiles, firearms, locomotive parts, and so much silk that the word found a home in the city's nickname.

And, like so many in the state who have some Italian blood in them, my family roots wind their way back to those hulking brick-and-mortar behemoths along the Passaic — growing up, I heard many a story about my own great-grandfather, a sharply-dressed, wealthy man who owned one during Paterson's heyday.

When I was a kid, I would try to imagine what it looked like during his time, when it was a thriving boomtown of shops and tenements fueled by the energy of thousands of European immigrants streaming off the ships every day. All I could see then, through the thick glass of a car windshield, was a shattered shell that looked moments away from imploding.

But hey, it was the 80s, wasn't it? White flight, urban blight, the crack epidemic, and outsourcing took their toll, and finding a safe downtown anywhere was difficult. Hoboken was in shambles, Newark was long dead, Jersey City was rough as ever. Times Square was filled with hookers and pushers and peep shows, and the Bronx, with its crumbling buildings and tagged up facades, could have been Beirut's stunt double.

Years later, though, there's less of an excuse. Jersey City is rebounding, parts of Newark burn bright, and Hoboken is exclusive. Times Square is again the glittering jewel it was meant to be, and even the Bronx has made headway.

And then, barely limping along, there is Paterson, torn up and hemorrhaging blood from the twin bullet holes of crime and corruption.

Where is the redevelopment? Where is the falling crime rate? Why, after all these years and all these millions spent, has nothing changed?

People are terrified to even drive through, and cringe when their GPS sends them across the river` for a "shortcut." Just last month, a kid from my hometown died in the street from a gunshot wound to the neck in a neighborhood described as "the Wild West," and days ago a man was arrested for nonchalantly carrying a fully-loaded machine gun on East 16th.

The state still runs the utterly failed school system, the police force has been gut-punched by massive cutbacks, and the murder rate is unchanged. All the while, the city administration, instead of addressing the myriad of problems, recently announced that it's ready to move ahead on an initiative to — get this — debut a line a of bottled water that would be named after the Great Falls.

What the hell is going on?

Undoubtedly, some will say that I'm focusing on Paterson's many negatives at the expense of its positives — and they'd be right — but that's only because I badly want this madness to end.

And don't get me wrong, I don't know how you fix things; I'm not a municipal planner or a police chief or a mayor. But I do know that if it can be done in New York, it can be done anywhere, and that a real, solid effort to turn the city around must be made — and soon — before Paterson starts challenging Camden for a title that it wants no part of.

Otherwise, it will continue its long descent, and decaying silk mills will be the least of the worries.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/217869481_In_Paterson__that_s_just_the_way_things_go.html?page=all



Tags: Paterson, Silk City, Great Falls, New Jersey, History, Politics

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Local Civil War soldiers fight it out at Gettysburg

The idea that any one of us might one day make a decision that will change the course of the history of the world might be a little disconcerting. It would be a heavy burden to bear, to be sure, especially when we don’t know when that day might come, or what decision will do the changing.

But the reality is that, over the course of three days in 1863, men from this area — regular folks like us who lived along the meandering Pompton and Pequannock rivers in the farmland that made up Passaic and Morris counties — actually did do things that have resonated across the ages and swayed the course of events over the centuries.

Those men were, by all accounts, just like us, the only difference being that they were born earlier. They saw the same snows fall on the same hills, watched the same rivers flood in the early spring, and walked the same main streets that we do today.

Now, they are buried in our towns, mute witnesses watching from beneath stone slabs as we wait at the Ringwood Avenue traffic light or amble out of a Pequannock town meeting, utterly absorbed in our everyday lives.

In their own lives, though, they were extraordinary. And at Gettysburg, the little Pennsylvania hamlet of then 2,500 situated just 10 miles from the Maryland border, they proved it in a fashion that ensured that word of their deeds would live far longer than their bodies.

In some ways, they were like the town of Gettysburg itself — famous for nothing in particular before 170,000 soldiers converged there and caused its name to become immediately synonymous with death and devastation on an unimaginable scale, and put it on par with places like Marathon, Hastings, and Waterloo in how it would affect the path of the human race.

It may sound like hyperbole, but it is assuredly not. The importance of what happened on the overgrown, rocky heights around Gettysburg over the course of those three balmy days 150 years ago cannot be overstated, and how those brave souls from Morris and Passaic counties fought can never be forgotten.


Longest spring on record

If, after the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, the Union cause had seemed bleak, by the late spring of 1863, it was in total shambles.

The northern Army of the Potomac had been taken over by a new general, the Massachusetts-born "Fighting Joe" Hooker, and he promptly whipped the soldiers back into shape before taking them into action at Chancellorsville that May, where he was promptly defeated in spectacular fashion.

As usual, the army had performed well, but the overwhelming incompetence of its commander, who was replaced soon after, led it to failure.

General George Meade replaced Hooker, and he followed the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia north as it invaded Pennsylvania in the hopes that one last, great victory, this time on northern soil, would either clear the path to Washington or bring about foreign intervention from England or France.

Using the mountains of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as a screen, the Southerners, commanded by the legendary Robert E. Lee, were likely headed toward Harrisburg until a chance run-in between a brigade of Confederate infantry and some Union cavalry sparked the bloodiest battle in American history.



The first day’s fight

Legends abound about why exactly the rebels were marching down the Chambersburg Pike on the morning of July 1. Popular myth says that Confederate division commander Harry Heth had heard that there were shoes in Gettysburg, and moved to seize them for his troops, many of whom had made the long walk from Virginia barefoot. Others say he knew exactly what awaited him.

Regardless, when his lead brigades ran into the Union cavalry of General John Buford, a fight quickly ensued. Buford, a career soldier, recognized the value of the series of ridges around Gettysburg, and his men used their new breach-loading carbines to fight a frustrating delaying action that gave the Union infantry time to arrive.

Soon, thousands from each side had arrived, and units dove headlong into the battle as commanders from both armies sent couriers to other commanders telling them to get to the little crossroads with all possible speed. By the afternoon, Union soldiers had formed a wide semi-circle northwest of the town that held against repeated attacks until eventually, outflanked and outnumbered, they broke and ran.

It looked as if the Army of the Potomac had been defeated once again, but slowly, the panicking troops rallied on a hill with a cemetery on it just south of the town, and the Confederates, tired and disorganized, rested instead of pressing the attack.

More federal troops arrived that night, and by morning, the Confederates were facing a fortified position that extended east to neighboring Culp’s Hill.



‘They held their own’

By the morning of July 2, the Union line resembled a gigantic fish hook, with the barb at Culp’s Hill and the shank on Cemetery Ridge, which ran south away from Cemetery Hill before culminating in two rocky hills: Little Round Top and Big Round Top.

With federal troops now firmly entrenched on the high ground and the prospects of a frontal assault looking grim, Lee ordered General James Longstreet to take the 17,000 men of his I Corps and turn the Union left to attack Cemetery Ridge and the Round Tops.

Standing in his way was the Union III Corps, led by a New York Democrat named Dan Sickles. Sickles, who was made a general more because of his political affiliations than his expertise in the field, decided that the ground in front of Cemetery Ridge looked a bit higher, and thought that moving his men forward might give them a better position. What it really did, however, was create an isolated salient in the Union line; now, the shank sat a mile in front of the rest of the hook.

A good many Morris County troops were with Sickles that day, and many, like those in the 7th and 8th New Jersey, would be in the forefront of the action.

The 7th was a veteran unit that had fought in the war’s most vicious battles, and among them was the 23-year-old Lewis Kerr, who was very likely a resident of Pequannock and would be buried in the graveyard of the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains.

David Hann, a New Jersey reenactor who has been portraying a 7th New Jersey soldier for the past 27 years, said that unlike many other regiments, the 7th was made up of men from every corner of the state.

"Passaic County had a company, Morris County had a company…and you had firemen from Hoboken, watermen from Cape May, and German iron molders [in the same regiment]," Hann said.

The 7th’s mission was to support Battery B of the 1st New Jersey Light Artillery, which also had a strong Morris County contingent made up of 18-year-old Theodore F. Ackerman, 21-year-old Charles Monks, and James B. Onderdonk (age unknown), all of whom were from Pequannock and are now interred at the First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains.

Butler was also represented, and working the cannons alongside their Pequannock brethren were 17-year-old Abram Brown, 24-year-old James Walker, and John Luther (age unknown). They now lie in the borough’s Manning Avenue graveyard.

The Jerseymen were in a precarious position, however, and none realized it faster than Meade himself. Just as he was about to order them back into line, however, Longstreet’s attack began, and it was Battery B’s guns, commanded by A. Judson Clark, who "announced to the assembled corps commanders that ‘the ball had opened,’" Samuel Toombs wrote in his 1888 book "New Jersey Troops in the Gettysburg Campaign."

Southerners had emerged from the woods Battery B’s front, but the heavy lead shells quickly made them decide against attacking.

"[Clark] opened fire, using shell and shrapnel, firing slowly with good effect… the fire of the battery drove [the rebels] back to the cover of the woods," wrote Sergeant Leander McChesney in his book "History of Battery B."

Clark wrote in his official report that after repelling the attack with canister shot — tin shells filled with hundreds of little lead balls that exploded like a shotgun shell — his guns engaged the rebel artillery in a duel that the New Jerseyans would convincingly win.

"[Clark] passed from gun to gun directing the fire of each, character of missile and time of fuse," wrote McChesney. "As soon as he was satisfied with the effect of battery fire, he gave the order ‘Fire at will,’ and from that moment our six Parrott guns poured a stream of shell and shrapnel into the enemy’s batteries."

Soon, however, other rebel batteries opened on them with what Clark called a "rapid and severe" fire, and Longstreet’s infantry came in hard behind it. Battery B, along with the 7th — which Toombs wrote was forced to helplessly endure the duel — would soon be engaged in one of the most violent maelstroms of war ever seen on this earth.

Clark’s Morris County cannons, which kept up a "very destructive" fire, opened wide gaps in the Confederate ranks moving toward the Peach Orchard, and dying and mutilated men fell by the score. Still, all along the line, the Southerners surged.

The nearby 8th New Jersey, which was the home unit of Pequannock’s George Decker and Henry Morgan as well as Butler’s Isaac Ogden, was ordered to cross a nearby (and soon to be infamous) wheat field and take up a position behind a stone wall, Toombs wrote.

Numbering just 198 men, they were struck head-on by General James Kershaw’s brigade of South Carolinians, which numbered somewhere around 1,300, and in a few minutes, a "sharp, severe, and bloody struggle" commenced, wrote Toombs.

"The 8th fought with the gallantry and bravery which proved them worthy followers of the heroic Kearny," he wrote. "Their ranks were rapidly thinned, and as they fell slowly back, their colors became entangled in a tree. The remnant of brave fellows rallied around them with cheers and re-formed to meet the advancing foe. At this point the 8th was subjected to a severe musketry fire and sustained heavy losses."

Their colonel fell wounded, and by the time the regiment was relieved, it had lost nearly a third of its strength.

South Carolina and New Jersey would prove to be mortal enemies that day, and Hann said that just as the 7th’s colonel, Louis Francine, was about to order the regiment backwards to avoid the cannonade, Battery B came under direct assault from Kershaw’s Carolinians.

Battery B limbered up quickly as its horse-drawn pieces tore through the 7th’s ranks, creating a mass of confusion. To counter this, Francine had all 331 men fire once at the incoming rebels, and then ordered a bayonet charge to distract them from the retreating cannons.

Soon, the "devoted little band swept across the field with shouts of confidence," Toombs wrote, but quickly, the "hopelessness of the 7th’s effort was apparent, and all knew that any further advance meant certain annihilation for the brave Jerseymen."

"[A charge] was attempted, but the enemy’s fire was so severe that we were compelled to fall back," the 7th’s Major Frederick Cooper later wrote.

Francine went down, mortally wounded, as did Lieutenant-Colonel Price, who rallied the regiment until he himself fell. Cooper took over, and withdrew under heavy attack. The regiment lost nearly 40 percent of its number, but Kerr would survive.

Battery B, which now has a large monument on the field, fired 1,300 rounds at Gettysburg — so many, Hann said, that the barrels of their cannons had to be scrapped after the battle.

And the 7th, Hann said with no small degree of pride, had proved its mettle.

"They really stood tall against Kershaw, and you’re talking about a regiment against a brigade," he said. "The 7th New Jersey held their own."



The 13th at Culp’s Hill

Meanwhile, the men of the 13th New Jersey held a position on the extreme right flank of the Union line — at the barb, as opposed to the shank — and in that regiment were two soldiers from Pompton Lakes: the 27-year-old Capt. David Austen Ryerson and his 25-year-old brother, Peter.

It is written in the "Biographical and Genealogical History of the City of Newark and Essex County" that the brothers were of Huguenot descent, their ancestors having arrived from Holland in the earliest part of the 18th century and settling in the Pompton Valley shortly thereafter.

They’d signed up for the 13th in the summer of 1862, and at least one source attributes the decision to grief over the death of their 63-year-old father, who’d been killed leading a regiment of New Jerseyans at the 1862 Battle of Williamsburg.

The 13th had survived a lead baptism at Antietam, and by Gettysburg was considered a strong, reliable group of about 360 veterans. During the day on July 2, it had been shuffled around to provide support to whomever was being attacked, but found itself back on Culp’s Hill in the early hours of July 3 just as the Union troops were attacking to recoup ground lost the previous night.

"The Union artillery opened along the whole line, and from this time until ten o'clock a fierce, stubborn, and desperate battle was waged. On the success of the Twelfth Corps now depended the safety of the army," Toombs wrote, somewhat dramatically. "The continued roll of musketry, the deafening roar of the artillery were listened to by the waiting army with apprehension. The long lines of wounded men being carried to the rear gave evidence of the severity of the struggle."

As the fight raged, the 13th stayed mostly in support until David Ryerson’s company became embroiled in a southern counterattack.

The Confederates, consisting of mostly men from Stonewall Jackson’s legendary legions, "fought madly," said Toombs, "heroically and with a bravery which only Jackson’s men could show, but they were at a disadvantage — the Union line, sheltered by the rocks and immense boulders up to the face of which the rebels charged again and again, enabled them to inflict serious injury upon their assailants, and heavy as the Union loss [were] that of the enemy was [terrible]."

Ryerson’s company helped repulse the attack and send the rebels streaming back in disorder.

"At the first fire [the Confederates] were completely checked, and at the second they broke in confusion and fled, leaving their dead and wounded on the field," wrote one veteran.

Sometime during the fight, however, David Ryerson was shot. How serious it was, or where he was hit, is unknown, but it was serious enough that he was listed as a casualty. However, he would not follow his father’s footsteps to the other side just yet — he would live, to fight again another day.

And the Union position — all of it — was safe.



Their legacy

As the smoke cleared on the evening of July 3, it was not yet clear that the battle was over. However, heavy rains moved into the area on July 4, and Lee began the process of staging a slow, painful retreat back to Virginia. After a combined 51,000 American casualties, the great fight was over.

There would be more battles, of course — the war would last for two more grueling years — and hundreds of thousands more would die, but the southern army would never again be that strong, and the northerners would never again come so close to total defeat.



The great invasion was turned back, and the men of Morris and Passaic counties had stood firm in defense of their homes, which for once, had not seemed so distant.

Many would serve out the remainder of the war, and some would not survive it. But all who fought on the fields of Gettysburg would be able to say, without exaggeration, that they’d helped breathe new life into a nation that, at least for a few days, was in its death throes.

They were, and still are, heroes deserving of the highest honors.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Civil War, New Jersey, Gettysburg, History