Rutgers Gardens will be having a photo contest in early September. I am tempted to enter or at least to visit Rutgers Gardens (a short drive from Highland Park) a few times over the next few months and take photos of the lovely grounds and flora. (hat tip: Jill)
Raritan Valley Community College will be showing the ballet Sleeping Beauty in late March. I would love to take my daughter, but it is the week before Passover. I will be “industriously” cleaning my house for Passover.
Jacob informed me via Twitter that he has already started working in his garden. Have you?
Yesterday we (my family) were in New York City for a wedding – a very, very happy occasion. The wedding was the Faculty House at Columbia University, and I took a photo of this red brick building (Wien Hall) as we walked from the (expensive) parking garage to the wedding. My middle son, who convinced me to take my smaller camera so I would pay more attention to the wedding and less to taking photos, said we would have gotten to the wedding a few minutes sooner if I had not stopped to photograph a few buildings on the way.
At the beginning of a Jewish wedding the groom is marched to the bride accompanied by dancing friends and family and by musicians. The musicians at this wedding were from the orchestra Nafshenu. The groom then checks to make sure it is really his bride (as biblical Jacob got tricked, the groom wants to check).
The red in the photo was in the musicians’ eyes – I selected the red in Photoshop using the magic wand tool, desaturated the red, and adding back in enough color so their eyes looked brown.
On the subject of cameras and photographers, there were many photographers at the wedding (I believe some were friends of the bride and groom). I was jealous of their gigantic lenses, as was my father’s cousin, who said there is no end when it comes to desiring good photography equipment.
In New York City one can pay to park one’s bicycle. The bicycle fees were considerably less than the car parking fees.
We visited Allaire State Park back in early November. Here are some of the doors and windows of that pretty park. The above building in the historical village was closed, but many were open.
Strictly speaking, this is not a door or a window, but it is OPEN – so it’s like a gateway to the bakery. I enhanced the saturation of the colors in Photoshop.
We were able to visit the original home of the Allaire family. As I said on a previous post, we were not allowed to photograph inside, but here’s the doorway to that interesting home. It was said to still be inhabited by a descendant of the original Allaire founder in the 1950’s, and that 1950’s owner kept a horse in his kitchen. Eccentric.
This was a vertical photo, so I increased the canvas size to make it horizontal, and then I used the clone stamp tool and the blur tool to get the main part of the photo to extend a bit into the side areas.
What is that white board that looks like a door but is curiously up too high to be a door? Where there once steps there? I didn’t notice this until today, when I was looking through these photos. Does that happen to you; do you find mysteries in your photos that you didn’t recognize when you were on the scene?
These are windows in the train of the Pine Creek Railroad, which is next to the Historical Village. The train ride just goes around in circles, but we did get to see some deer as we circled about.
For more windows and doors, visit Window Views (hosted by Mary the Teach):
Dinner at East Jersey Olde Towne Tavern
Is this what Thanksgiving dinner looked like in the 19th century in New Jersey? Or a meal on the go when traveling from New York City to Philadelphia? Note the two-pronged sharp fork. We learned at Allaire that’s how forks used to look, until someone figured out it was safer to have a three-pronged less sharp fork. And they ate the food with the knife, using the two-pronged fork to hold the meat steady.
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Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
Pesky Settler hosts the Kosher Cooking Carnival. Check out the recipe for sourdough naan bread. That looks yummy.
Eva Abreu is running a New Jersey Social Media 2009 Hall of Fame. You vote via Twitter, use hashtag #NJSM09, and nominate outstanding users of Social Media in New Jersey.
I loved Robin’s Red Hibiscus so much I decided to link to it here!
I have been working at getting interviews with Central New Jersey small businesses, and I plan to start a new series that I have nicknamed “Wednesdays With.” I won’t necessarily limit it to businesses in Central New Jersey, but that’s where I have been asking…hoping to get good, fun responses soon.
New Jersey has many old-fashioned villages, and East Jersey Olde Towne in Piscataway is in biking distance of our home. So my husband and middle son biked out there last week, and my daughter and I came later by car.
Since this is a post for Ruby Tuesday, I focused on photos with a bit of red. There’s the schoolhouse. All of the buildings were moved to this spot from elsewhere in Central New Jersey.
We had fun in the one-room school house, with its pretty red gingham curtains.
Throughout the buildings there are a lot of fake place settings, showing how food might have looked or been served. The buildings are from a variety of periods in New Jersey history.
This sign, with its red border, says the “In the 1970’s, the Indian Queen Tavern was relocated from New Brunswick to East Jersey Olde Town in Piscataway. In 2003, archaeologists uncovered artifacts from the original site of the tavern in New Brunswick.” (On display were a toothbrush, a comb, a shaving mug and a chamber pot.)
On our way out, I photographed this colorful bush, with its red fall foliage display.
The Three Little Pigs is showing at the Forum Theatre in Metuchen, New Jersey. For more information, including times and how to get tickets, visit the Forum website.
Allaire State Park - Re-enactment of vote of 1836
Yesterday we had the fun of visiting Allaire State Park in Farmingdale, New Jersey, including the historic village and the train ride. The historic village featured Election Day 1836 – should women get the vote? The man without a hat was arguing with the women suffragettes to his right that that was a ridiculous notion.
The actors played their roles with great oomph and and in an impromptu fashion – they talked directly to the audience (there was no stage, and we were part of the show). The boy on the right was handing out blue ballots for his party, and he handed them only to the men in our party (my husband and a friend), but not to the women. I joked that I could influence my husband’s vote by telling him for whom to vote. My daughter and her friend, however, wanted the pink ballot party to win, no matter what the agenda, so they kept sneaking into the building to cast ballots for the pink party. They succeeded once or twice, but they also got caught and got a good “scolding” – all in good fun.
I wasn’t allowed to photograph the insides of the Allaire Village buildings – too bad, there was a lot of good history. We took the short train ride near the village at the end of our day. I’ll post the train another day, but here’s a great ghoulish guy at the train stop. He’s just there around Halloween time, have no fear.
For more photos with a little red or a lot of red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
I took this photo of flowers at Howell Living History Farm in western New Jersey in the middle of the summer. This shot was taken with the sepia setting on my camera.
This photo was taken a few minutes later, in full color.
Mary is celebrating the 50th round of Sepia Scenes. Glad I was able to share in this one. And WordPress tells me this is my 900th post.
