Superb article about the final months of the presidential race... truly well done on the part of the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/obama-campaign-clawed-back-after-a-dismal-debate.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp
Thursday, November 8, 2012
New Jersey's reason to believe
It was long after midnight that I came upon him, sitting in the dunes of the Seaside Heights beach, wearing the flannel jacket I’d let him borrow some time during the infamous occasion known to high school seniors as "prom weekend."
He was (and is) one of my closest friends, and we had gone down the Shore to celebrate the ultimate mile-marker of freedom that was graduation.
As expected, the three-day party had gotten way out of hand, and ironically both of us had sought quiet respite by the ocean for that final night. Although I can’t remember what we talked about, we lingered on that sand for hours, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and staring out at the surf that lends a raucous soundtrack to every minute of every day down there.
Ten years later, in the wake of the most ferocious storm in state history, Governor Christie said it best: that Shore of our youth, with the memories of so many lazy days and long, wild New Jersey nights, is now gone.
The boardwalk has been annihilated, the amusement-park rides lay in cold, watery ruin, and the dancing carnival lights have been extinguished.
It didn't stop there, of course. The destruction isn’t limited to that lovely stretch of coastline, and even those of us who have sat on mile-long gas lines only to return to homes that lack heat, electricity, water, or phones are lucky when compared with those whose houses were destroyed by the thousands of trees felled by Sandy’s wrath.
Bad though it may be, the shock is wearing off. It’s time to remember that all is not lost and that the comments from individuals hinting that although the Shore will be rebuilt, it "will never be the same," simply have no place here.
We must remember, always remember, that we are from New Jersey. Yes, we may be bloodied and bruised, but then again, we’re used to that. We live in the shadow of the most spectacular city on earth, and we are the eternal pariahs because of it. While New York has always sparkled and gleamed, we grew up in that dark jungleland across the river filled with the outcasts and broken heroes.
Our rough-and-tumble cities, lying under highways and lit by flickering street lights, are ridiculed, our accents are (inaccurately) mocked, and the ever-unfunny "What exit?" joke is constantly uttered by the lips of the idiotic, but still we endure, because all those years of abuse have infused in us a distinctive fighting spirit that lets us face down any challenge, great or small, all the while saying with bared teeth, "Go ahead. Try it."
Yeah, we know that the Shore was never the cleanest, or nicest, or most refined set of beaches in the country, but then we’ve never been the cleanest, nicest, or most refined set of people.
We’ve had that chip on our shoulder since the start, and our darlings, from Jim Braddock and Frank Sinatra to Bruce Willis and The Boss, have always been the underdogs, the mavericks, the ones who were never supposed to win but did anyway — and did it with style.
There are few states as mangled, but as tenacious and gritty, as New Jersey, and few places whose citizens will never stop the fight even when it seems the bleeding just won’t stop.
Make no mistake: we will need to muster every bit of that grit, every drop of resolve, to recover from this, but we must remember who we are and where we come from. Although our homes may be buried under sand and trees and water, we will get up off the pavement once again, as we always have, in spite of the world’s best efforts to lay us low.
Long ago, while facing a different sort of calamity, Winston Churchill famously said, "If you’re going through hell, keep going." Seventy years later, and it doesn’t matter whether that hell is standing alone against the perpetual darkness of fascism, or rebuilding your shattered life in the wake of a natural disaster, we must keep going.
There is no question that we will rebuild, or that New Jersey, like Great Britain, will prove that the most desperate moments in our hardscrabble lives often lead to our finest hours and greatest triumphs.
We will be back. We will be better. And you can count on it.
As expected, the three-day party had gotten way out of hand, and ironically both of us had sought quiet respite by the ocean for that final night. Although I can’t remember what we talked about, we lingered on that sand for hours, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and staring out at the surf that lends a raucous soundtrack to every minute of every day down there.
Ten years later, in the wake of the most ferocious storm in state history, Governor Christie said it best: that Shore of our youth, with the memories of so many lazy days and long, wild New Jersey nights, is now gone.
The boardwalk has been annihilated, the amusement-park rides lay in cold, watery ruin, and the dancing carnival lights have been extinguished.
It didn't stop there, of course. The destruction isn’t limited to that lovely stretch of coastline, and even those of us who have sat on mile-long gas lines only to return to homes that lack heat, electricity, water, or phones are lucky when compared with those whose houses were destroyed by the thousands of trees felled by Sandy’s wrath.
Bad though it may be, the shock is wearing off. It’s time to remember that all is not lost and that the comments from individuals hinting that although the Shore will be rebuilt, it "will never be the same," simply have no place here.
We must remember, always remember, that we are from New Jersey. Yes, we may be bloodied and bruised, but then again, we’re used to that. We live in the shadow of the most spectacular city on earth, and we are the eternal pariahs because of it. While New York has always sparkled and gleamed, we grew up in that dark jungleland across the river filled with the outcasts and broken heroes.
Our rough-and-tumble cities, lying under highways and lit by flickering street lights, are ridiculed, our accents are (inaccurately) mocked, and the ever-unfunny "What exit?" joke is constantly uttered by the lips of the idiotic, but still we endure, because all those years of abuse have infused in us a distinctive fighting spirit that lets us face down any challenge, great or small, all the while saying with bared teeth, "Go ahead. Try it."
Yeah, we know that the Shore was never the cleanest, or nicest, or most refined set of beaches in the country, but then we’ve never been the cleanest, nicest, or most refined set of people.
We’ve had that chip on our shoulder since the start, and our darlings, from Jim Braddock and Frank Sinatra to Bruce Willis and The Boss, have always been the underdogs, the mavericks, the ones who were never supposed to win but did anyway — and did it with style.
There are few states as mangled, but as tenacious and gritty, as New Jersey, and few places whose citizens will never stop the fight even when it seems the bleeding just won’t stop.
Make no mistake: we will need to muster every bit of that grit, every drop of resolve, to recover from this, but we must remember who we are and where we come from. Although our homes may be buried under sand and trees and water, we will get up off the pavement once again, as we always have, in spite of the world’s best efforts to lay us low.
Long ago, while facing a different sort of calamity, Winston Churchill famously said, "If you’re going through hell, keep going." Seventy years later, and it doesn’t matter whether that hell is standing alone against the perpetual darkness of fascism, or rebuilding your shattered life in the wake of a natural disaster, we must keep going.
There is no question that we will rebuild, or that New Jersey, like Great Britain, will prove that the most desperate moments in our hardscrabble lives often lead to our finest hours and greatest triumphs.
We will be back. We will be better. And you can count on it.
Pequannock officials, residents angry over slow-moving utility
Local officials are running out of phrases to describe their frustration with Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) as 10 days removed from Hurricane Sandy, just under half of Pequannock remains without power.
On Tuesday, Mayor Rich Phelan said that about 44 percent of the township has no electricity — according to JCP&L's website, that equates to about 1,965 customers — and residents' patience has run out, especially because they're not seeing utility trucks working in the streets.
Weary, frustrated citizens have been calling, said Phelan, but he is no longer sure what to say.
"We don't have a magic number that we call JCP&L on; it's the same phone number that everybody else has," he said. "It breaks my heart to tell them that there's nothing I can tell (the residents)…there's absolutely nothing."
Although he's participated in several conference calls with the JCP&L officials, he called them "a joke," and berated the utility for offering information that has "absolutely no local connection" to what is going on in the streets.
"I don't want to hear how many linemen you have in the State of New Jersey — I want to hear when you're going to get to Sunset (Road), when you're going to get to Jackson (Avenue)," he said. "This has just gotten ridiculous, beyond ridiculous, and there's no information, there's nothing."
He was told that there would be another 1,200 homes restored by Tuesday night, but said that not one had been brought on-line.
JCP&L spokesman Mark Nitowski said that with 51,000 customers still out of power, Morris County is "one of the hardest hit" of the utility's service areas, and that a large amount of tree damage was to blame. And, although he said that the utility has brought power back to about 944,000 of its 1.2 million customers in NJ, that statistic likely provides little solace to those sleeping in the cold, dark houses in places like the Village.
There was nothing in particular about Pequannock that was slowing down the restoration process, he said, but unfortunately, "no matter what storm hits, there's always going to be the one area, the one individual customer…that are the last ones to be restored, and they're going to be frustrated and upset."
However, he still could not offer information about the township, such as what streets will get electricity first or when, and said only that the utility is planning to have "the vast majority" of its customers restored by Wednesday night.
"We appreciate the continued patience…it's just a process to get to that point," he said.
When the outage ends, Phelan said, he's going to be pressing for changes in the way the township deals with the utility. He suggested Morris County municipalities withhold payments to JCP&L to force it to recognize their anger over the affair.
He also wants a point of contact that town officials can call for specific information about their region, and wants a better understanding of the power grid as a whole.
"We're going to actively go after this," he said.
Nitowski said that there is an area manager that handles the region, but Phelan remarked that the rep had offered no local information, only the same responses that the power company as a whole was offering.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/177803071_Pequannock_officials__residents_angry_over_slow-moving_utility.html
Pequannock struggles through week without power
By Steve Janoski
Even as residents of a partially-darkened township are itching to finally shut down their generators, flip on the lights, and enjoy the modern amenities they've spent the past week without, they must have patience, said Mayor Rich Phelan, because there are few answers regarding when power will be fully restored.
The First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains saw over a dozen trees fall in its graveyard, which has tombstones that date back to the 18th century.
Township officials were told by Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) on Tuesday to expect the outage to continue for seven to 10 days, he said, and that timetable remained in place on Friday afternoon, even as power was slowly being brought back to areas like West Parkway and Sunset Road.
Although he hoped that 75 percent of the town could be back online by Sunday, residents must still hold fast, the mayor said.
"I know it's difficult under the circumstances," Phelan said Thursday afternoon. "I know people are angry… I'm not making excuses for (the utility) but you have to take this into perspective — almost the entire state is without power, and you're talking an enormous amount of destruction. That will take a while to restore."
However, he bemoaned the lack of information disseminated by JCP&L, and said that "it would be nice" to have more updates in regards to when the grid will be up and running again.
"I don't think they're giving us good answers, but I don't think they're giving anyone answers," he said. "Their standard answer has been 10 days, and they haven't deviated from that."
Although JCP&L spokesman Chris Eck said that the utility prioritizes emergency locations such as hospitals, apparently Chilton Hospital was not on the list — the West Parkway medical center was out of power from Monday night to early Friday morning, and relied on its diesel generators to maintain the electricity for about 155 patients.
Hospital officials were frustrated by JCP&L's unresponsiveness throughout the week, said Anna Scalora, Chilton's director of marketing and public relations, and they're worried that with major tropical storms and nor'easters becoming more the rule than the exception in New Jersey, another extended outage isn't far off.
"We need to talk about a long-term strategy (with the utility), because this is not acceptable and it can't happen again… they've had this pattern of unreliability," she said. "We really have to have a plan together."
Fortunately for the hospital staff, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reacted with what might be unprecedented speed: a generator — along with a crew to install it — arrived at around 4 p.m. on Thursday, allowing the hospital to reach about 60 percent of its electrical needs.
Eck could not explain why JCP&L took so long to restore Chilton's power, although he suspected that it was because there was "simply so much damage between their source of power and their building" that it took that long to get to them.
As far as the rest of the town, Eck said that the utility doesn't issue hard dates for restoration because if unknown variables arise, it would be forced to rescind it. With more than 450 damaged utility poles, 12,000 downed trees, and 830,000 of the company's 1.1 million customers in New Jersey out of power (including 3,805 in Pequannock as of Friday), there could be quite a few variables.
He also noted that just because residents don't see a truck on their street doesn't mean that no work is being done; generally after a big storm, he said, the utility first fixes its high-voltage lines, which serve the substations that in turn distribute power to feeder lines that run into neighborhoods and business districts.
"Oftentimes, after a storm like this, customers are frustrated that they don't see a truck in their neighborhood…but the reason for this is that we're still working up-line from you," he said. "The amount of time (it takes) will depend on how many breaks there are in the lines between their house and the power source. If there's 50 miles of wire that the storm tore down, it will be 50 miles of repairs."
Eck said that the utility, which has called in crews from as far away as California and Washington State, is hoping to have the majority of its customers online by about Wednesday, but with the amount of damage that was caused by what was "absolutely the worst storm in (JCP&L's) history," he expects pockets to remain without electricity for up to a week after that.
The blackout has also affected the township's schools, which were closed all of last week. A decision on whether to open schools on Nov. 5 is expected to be made by Superintendent Victor Hayek on Sunday night.
Once power is restored and the traffic lights on Route 23 begin functioning again, the mayor said that he expects life to normalize "pretty quick," and it's unlikely that the damages will have any lasting effects on the township's budget. A flood, he said, would have been much worse due to the enormous garbage collection costs that inevitably follow the event.
"Flooding would have had a severe impact, but I don't think this is going to be anywhere close," he said.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/177202291_Pequannock_struggles_through_week_without_power.html
Even as residents of a partially-darkened township are itching to finally shut down their generators, flip on the lights, and enjoy the modern amenities they've spent the past week without, they must have patience, said Mayor Rich Phelan, because there are few answers regarding when power will be fully restored.
The First Reformed Church of Pompton Plains saw over a dozen trees fall in its graveyard, which has tombstones that date back to the 18th century.
Township officials were told by Jersey Central Power & Light (JCP&L) on Tuesday to expect the outage to continue for seven to 10 days, he said, and that timetable remained in place on Friday afternoon, even as power was slowly being brought back to areas like West Parkway and Sunset Road.
Although he hoped that 75 percent of the town could be back online by Sunday, residents must still hold fast, the mayor said.
"I know it's difficult under the circumstances," Phelan said Thursday afternoon. "I know people are angry… I'm not making excuses for (the utility) but you have to take this into perspective — almost the entire state is without power, and you're talking an enormous amount of destruction. That will take a while to restore."
However, he bemoaned the lack of information disseminated by JCP&L, and said that "it would be nice" to have more updates in regards to when the grid will be up and running again.
"I don't think they're giving us good answers, but I don't think they're giving anyone answers," he said. "Their standard answer has been 10 days, and they haven't deviated from that."
Although JCP&L spokesman Chris Eck said that the utility prioritizes emergency locations such as hospitals, apparently Chilton Hospital was not on the list — the West Parkway medical center was out of power from Monday night to early Friday morning, and relied on its diesel generators to maintain the electricity for about 155 patients.
Hospital officials were frustrated by JCP&L's unresponsiveness throughout the week, said Anna Scalora, Chilton's director of marketing and public relations, and they're worried that with major tropical storms and nor'easters becoming more the rule than the exception in New Jersey, another extended outage isn't far off.
"We need to talk about a long-term strategy (with the utility), because this is not acceptable and it can't happen again… they've had this pattern of unreliability," she said. "We really have to have a plan together."
Fortunately for the hospital staff, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reacted with what might be unprecedented speed: a generator — along with a crew to install it — arrived at around 4 p.m. on Thursday, allowing the hospital to reach about 60 percent of its electrical needs.
Eck could not explain why JCP&L took so long to restore Chilton's power, although he suspected that it was because there was "simply so much damage between their source of power and their building" that it took that long to get to them.
As far as the rest of the town, Eck said that the utility doesn't issue hard dates for restoration because if unknown variables arise, it would be forced to rescind it. With more than 450 damaged utility poles, 12,000 downed trees, and 830,000 of the company's 1.1 million customers in New Jersey out of power (including 3,805 in Pequannock as of Friday), there could be quite a few variables.
He also noted that just because residents don't see a truck on their street doesn't mean that no work is being done; generally after a big storm, he said, the utility first fixes its high-voltage lines, which serve the substations that in turn distribute power to feeder lines that run into neighborhoods and business districts.
"Oftentimes, after a storm like this, customers are frustrated that they don't see a truck in their neighborhood…but the reason for this is that we're still working up-line from you," he said. "The amount of time (it takes) will depend on how many breaks there are in the lines between their house and the power source. If there's 50 miles of wire that the storm tore down, it will be 50 miles of repairs."
Eck said that the utility, which has called in crews from as far away as California and Washington State, is hoping to have the majority of its customers online by about Wednesday, but with the amount of damage that was caused by what was "absolutely the worst storm in (JCP&L's) history," he expects pockets to remain without electricity for up to a week after that.
The blackout has also affected the township's schools, which were closed all of last week. A decision on whether to open schools on Nov. 5 is expected to be made by Superintendent Victor Hayek on Sunday night.
Once power is restored and the traffic lights on Route 23 begin functioning again, the mayor said that he expects life to normalize "pretty quick," and it's unlikely that the damages will have any lasting effects on the township's budget. A flood, he said, would have been much worse due to the enormous garbage collection costs that inevitably follow the event.
"Flooding would have had a severe impact, but I don't think this is going to be anywhere close," he said.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/177202291_Pequannock_struggles_through_week_without_power.html
Proposed Frankenstorm creates fears of flooding, high winds
The great fear, Pequannock Township Manager Dave Hollberg said on Thursday afternoon, is that a separate west-bound storm will collide with the hurricane as it arrives, drawing it into the continent and feeding off its energy to create a massive low-pressure system that would rival 1991's now-infamous "Perfect Storm."
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Pequannock has their two game winning streak snapped
By Steve Janoski
PEQUANNOCK — If the past two weeks' wins against Boonton and Whippany Park were big steps forward for the Pequannock Panthers, Friday night's 35-12 loss to the Kinnelon Colts was a full step back as the team fell behind early and was never able to recover its momentum.
Most of the points came from the Colts' brutal duo of quarterback Sean Robbins and receiver Connor Villante, who hooked up five times for 205 yards and three first-quarter touchdowns of 40, 50, and 71 yards.
Robbins also managed to hit receiver Joe Presti mid-way through the second for a 19-yard touchdown that extended the lead to 29-0.
"It's so hard to simulate what it is that they do in practice, the speed and the physical play that they presented to us," head coach Ed Kopp said after the game. "We kinda challenged our guys to go 'mano y mano' with their wide receivers, make (Robbins) throw the ball…but Robbins is a hell of a player and you gotta' tip your hat to his performance."
The game was not without its highlights for the 2-6 Panthers, however — as always, senior quarterback Luke Foukas led the way, and his hard running would lead him to the endzone twice — once in the second quarter, and again in the culmination of a six-minute drive late in the fourth that saw him turn three fourth-down conversions before scoring on a 23-yard dash.
He would finish with 25 carries for 193 yards, but Kopp said the strain of playing both ways is taking a physical toll on the keystone player. However, with Pequannock receivers dropping a number of balls throughout the game, the coach's options sometimes appear limited.
"Ultimately, we need to be able to throw the football…it's hard on a kid to tackle on defense, then run as hard as he is …and then sit back in the pocket and throw the ball," he said. "(Foukas) has been a solid performer all year-long, we just need to get a little bit more out of everybody else."
There were other bright spots as well: the Panthers defense, so porous in the first half during the midst of Kinnelon's fireworks show, strengthened in the second half as well — twice, they stifled the Colts' red-zone drives, and forced them to go for field goals of 26 and 32 yards (both of which kicker Evan Argiriou made.)
However, there were no moral victories for the Panthers, said Kopp.
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/175184761_Pequannock_has_their_two_game_winning_streak_snapped.html
Friday, October 19, 2012
Vernon poet S. Thomas Summers to read at the Ringwood Public Library on Oct. 20
By Steve Janoski
RINGWOOD — Of the thousands upon thousands of books written about the Civil War, there are but a few that, instead of relying on battle maps, lists of dates, and casualty rolls to tell a black-and-white history, seek to illustrate the conflict’s sanguine horrors by peering through the eyes of those who fought — and fewer still that abandon flowery prose and adapt the terse, sheer style of poetry in order to do it.
The book, published by Anaphora Literary Press and written from the perspective of a southern everyman named Hercules McGraw, uses poetry to follow this "uneducated, rural, pig-farmer kinda guy" through America’s greatest tragedy as he fights for the South only to learn that "the cause" was not quite what he thought it to be.
Summers, 43, teaches English literature at Wayne Hills High School and at Passaic County Community College, and said that his character’s motivation stems from a hope to one day have enough money to purchase a slave (which he considers the ultimate status symbol) in order to impress his girl, Martha Lane. Should slavery be abolished, he reasons, that will never happen.
But as so often happens, the horrors of war bring out both the best and worst in men — and although McGraw is himself an active participant in creating some of those horrors, he also witnesses the bravery of the former slaves who have put on the blue uniform to fight against their oppressors.
In the end, said Summers, he realizes that they are no different than he.
"He gains a huge respect for them because of what they’ve been through as a persecuted race, and he sees that they’ve fought as hard he has," he said.
The epiphany leads McGraw to lose interest in both Lane and the southern cause, and his metamorphosis is completed when, upon returning home, he helps a slave escape on the underground railroad. Although Summers acknowledges that at first glance, he appears to have little in common with his simple farmer, writing through McGraw’s eyes gave him a deep understanding of what the man might have gone through, especially as he explores the parts of history that "fall into the cracks, that the historians can’t see."
"As I wrote, I kind of became my character… in the back of my head I was bleeding, I was scared, I was crying, I was doing everything that he was," he said. "It’s why at readings, when I read certain poems I sometimes tear up because it’s become so personal to me."
There’s also the larger narrative, Summers said, in which McGraw could be any man, in any war, that gazes into the Medusa-like eye of combat and suffers the consequences of witnessing that which is "not for humans to see" — even the juxtaposition of "Hercules" and "McGraw," with its demigod lead followed by a routine Irish surname, reflects the God-like power of giving and taking life the common man possesses during battle.
"The things that these guys see and experience… it messes (soldiers) up, because they’re not supposed to see this, they’re not supposed to decide who lives and who dies," he said. "I thought that was meant for the gods."
But, Summers said, much of the writing process was not so dark, and he enjoyed experimenting with the unfamiliar southern dialect to create phrases that his character might actually have uttered.
"I liked the way they talked, I liked the metaphors they used, it was fun for me as someone who has grown up in the North, who doesn’t talk like that, to make that voice authentic was the fun part," he said.
He’s now in the process of writing a sister book, which will speak on the Civil War from the point of view of an educated northern English teacher who, although he is a pacifist, enlists due to a feeling of being obligated to protect his students, many of whom had signed up to fight. But that story may not have such an upbeat ending, the writer said, as the former pacifist discovers a darkness within him that he never knew existed and finds out that he is indeed quite good at killing.
The projects are certainly keeping Summers, who has been writing poetry since college, busy; although his first works weren’t quite up to par, he joked, he has honed his craft over the past 20 years, and has since had works published in The Atlantic, Loch Raven Review, and Literary Bohemian. His interest in the Civil War has been more recent, however, and stems from his first reading of the famous novel-turned-movie "Cold Mountain." Initially, he said, he picked it up because its construction mirrors the Greek epic "The Odyssey," which he often teaches to high school students, but he was soon enveloped in the drama.
"I thought it would be interesting to read the book…but that reflection stirred my passion; it was no longer just dates and battles, it was people and blood and heartache and victory," he said. After a few visits the fields where the violent fights took place, there’s been no turning back.
"It’s been pretty much all I’ve written about since," he said.
Summers will be reading at 1 p.m. at the library, which is located at 30 Cannici Drive, along with poet David Vincenti, who will offer a "view of the life of astronomer Galileo Galilei." Vincenti’s poems have appeared in the Paterson Literary Review, the Edison Literary Review, and The Journal of New Jersey Poets, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. For more information, call the library at 973-962-6256.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
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