Fasting Moving Thunder Storm Rips through the Heights Section of Ridgewood
6/23//2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ , A fast moving thunderstorm on Tuesday ripped through a two (2) square block area in the Heights section of Ridgewood shortly after 3:30 PM on Tuesday, leaving at least two (2) downed trees in its wake and knocking out power to several residences. No injuries were reported and damage to structures appeared to be minor in nature. Ridgewood PD, FD and Emergency Services units responded along with a tree crew from the Ridgewood Parks Department. Streets affected were: Waiku Road, Windsor Terrace, and Wastena Terrace.
“If you haven’t seen Citizen Kane , some consider it to be the Best Movie ever made” , PJ blogger and the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, 0n Wednesday nights from June to August 9:00pm (as soon as the sun sets and it’s dark enough to start rolling!) – The Ridgewood Guild will feature a complimentary movie for your enjoyment! Pack a picnic basket, bring your family and pull up some turf in Van Neste Park. Movies start when the sun goes down…about 9pm (8pm in August). June 10 – Star Wars June 24 – Citizen Kane July 8 – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off July 22 – Momma Mia!!! (Special Event) August 5 – Murder on the Orient Express August 19th – Harry Potter .
“There’s only one person in the world who’s going to decide what I’m going to do and that’s me.” –Charles Foster Kane
On the film’s debut in 1941, the New York Times acknowledged that Citizen Kanewas “one of the great (if not the greatest) motion pictures of all time.” The paper hedged its bets, however, adding that “it was riding the crest of perhaps the most provocative publicity wave ever to float a motion picture,” and that this “pre-ordered a mental attitude.” The whirlwind surrounding the making of Citizen Kane is well known. Orson Welles, the brash prodigy of stage and radio, earned the envy and scorn of Hollywood veterans by striding onto the RKO lot with an unprecedented contract awarding him a three-picture deal, a massive budget, and the final cut of his first film—the Holy Grail of filmmaking. The controversial subject of his cinematic debut riled one of the most powerful men in the world, and upset the delicate balance of the studio system. Orson Welles earned every drop of ink written about his impending career in film.
Seventy years later, however, it’s clear that the New York Times need not have qualified its glowing review. As Times film critic A.O. Scottrecently remarked, “Citizen Kane shows Welles to be a master of genre. It’s a newspaper comedy, a domestic melodrama, a gothic romance, and a historical epic.” And it is still considered the best film ever made. In 1998, the American Film Institute polled 1,500 film professionals. The result was “100 Years… 100 Movies,” and Orson Welles’s masterpiece lorded over the list. Ten years later, the AFI commissioned another poll. Citizen Kane retained the top spot. As noted by the late, influential critic Kenneth Tynan, “Nobody who saw Citizen Kane at an impressionable age will ever forget the experience; overnight, the American cinema had acquired an adult vocabulary, a dictionary instead of a phrase book for illiterates.”
The contract that gave birth to Citizen Kane was an unthinkable gamble by RKO, but the studio had good reason to bet on Orson Welles. At 20, he lorded over Broadway, first with Voodoo Macbeth, a reworking of the “Scottish play” set in the Caribbean and starring an all-African American cast. He followed triumphant reviews by establishing the Mercury Theatre and rewriting Julius Caesar, setting it in Mussolini’s Italy. The curtain rose to universal acclaim. In a 1938 cover story,Time magazine wrote of Welles, “If the career of the Mercury Theatre, which next week will be six months old, seems amazing, the career of Orson Welles, who this week is 23, is no less so. Were Welles’s 23 years set forth in fiction form, any self-respecting critic would damn the story as too implausible for serious consideration.”
photos courtesy of the Ridgewood Police Department
June 23,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Police Department is hosting the 2nd annual Chief Michael Feeney, Jr. Police Academy scheduled from Monday June 22nd 2015 to Tuesday June30th. The academy is open to Ridgewood Residents entering 6th 7th and 8th grades in the fall of 2015.
This year’s academy will feature demonstrations from The Ridgewood Police Department, Bergen County Sheriff’s Department K-9 and Bomb Squad, Police Motorcycles, Ridgewood Emergency Services, Ridgewood Fire Department a Helicopter landing as well as demonstrations from various other agencies. A field trip to the Bergen County Law and Public Safety Complex in Mahwah is scheduled for Wednesday June 24th. This year we added a trip to see a Jackals baseball game at Montclair State University on Wednesday July 1st 2015 the day after the academy graduation, attendance is optional. The cadets will also be asked to March in the Ridgewood 4th of July Parade.
The Junior Police Academy has proven to be a valuable experience for all involved and has provided a vital link between the Police Department and the youth of Ridgewood. Further, the Junior Police Academy has afforded students a deeper understanding of the Police function as well as an increased ability to see what the Police and the community can do to serve the Village. The overwhelming success of our first Junior Police Academy class has far exceeded the expectations of everyone involved. This program attracts a highly motivated group of recruits, and the Instructors thoroughly enjoy their interaction with these young people. We look forward to another great class.
Ridgewood NJ, The 4th of July Committee has spotted this past Sunday, the first chairs out for the parade! A whooping 13 days in advance of Ridgewood’s 4th of July Celebration might be a new record!
Join Ridgewood’s July 4th Committee to help with Parade & Fireworks!
The Ridgewood Fourth of July is looking for volunteers for the Parade and Fireworks. Please volunteer as a parade marshall or for the evening program. All volunteers receive a signature Ridgewood Fourth of July t-shirt and a free ticket to the evening entertainment and fireworks. As we are a non-profit we can also offer community service hours to students. Please contact us on Facebook, at RidgewoodJuly4th.com or attend our volunteer meeting Wednesday, July 1st at 7:30 p.m. at the Firehouse. The Ridgewood Fourth of July Celebration is an all-volunteer organization supported entirely by private donations. Support the Tradition.
Don’t forget to donate at www.RidgewoodJuly4th.com every dollar counts. This day would not be possible without your support!!
RIDGEWOOD, NJ, Ridgewood, New Jersey’s premiere authentic Neapolitan trattoria A Mano, proudly welcomes to its staf, multi-award-winning pizza chef Michele D’Amelio. The decorated pizza maker from Italy, has been appointed to head pizzaiolo overseeing the Neapolitan pizza-making team, and is already heating things up by crafting special pizzas for the restaurant.
Born in Avellino, Italy in 1988, it was in Lioni, a small town outside of Naples, where D’Amelio was raised, and his fascination with pizza-making blossomed. At a young age, each week D’Amelio played with dough his mother used to bake bread in the family’s wood-burning oven. He quickly learned to make pizza for the family, and years later at age 19, began working at a local pizzeria. In 2010 his passion for pizza pinnacled in the opening of a family-run pizzeria, Chest’é Pizza, in Lioni.After honing his craft, D’Amelio’s competitive spirit kicked in and he entered several prestigious pizza competitions.
In 2010 he took the second place title in the Regina Margherita Association’s Margherita STG competition in Naples, Italy. Next, in 2013 he traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada with the Caputo/Orlando Foods’ team of master pizzaioli and was crowned first place champion in the Italian Style category at the International Pizza Expo. In 2014, D’Amelio was awarded second place in the coveted
Pizza World Championship in Parma, Italy.Eager to promote internationally the product of his homeland, the prize-winning pizza-maker accepted a two-
year consulting position to help open Pizzeria Testa, a Neapolitan pizzeria in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and ultimately settled at A Mano. Said D’Amelio, “I am very proud to be able to share pizza Napoletana with people in the United States. There is nothing quite like authentic Neapolitan pizza, and at A Mano, we make pizza with the same methods used in
Naples for more than 300 years. Tradition is important and something that should be passed on. It’s culinary history.”A member of the elite Italian pizza-governing organization APN (Association of Neapolitan Pizza Makers), D’Amelio has been granted authority to ofer APN certification to aspiring Neapolitan pizza makers who train under his guidance.D’Amelio has made his first culinary mark at A Mano by crafting masterful creations which will run as specials on weekends beginning June 26th. Highlights include:
Pizza Fiori: imported smoked bufalo mozzarella, zucchini flowers, zucchini, fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil
Pizza Pugliese: homemade mozzarella, fava beans, Italian ham, peas, fresh basil, extra virgin olive
Pizza Terra Mia (“My Land” – tribute to D’Amelio’s home – ingredients are imported from the Naples’s area): cherry tomato sauce, imported bufalo mozzarella, basil leaves and extra virgin olive oil (cherry tomatoes from Campania, bufalo mozzarella, olive oil and flour from Naples)
A Mano is located at 24 Franklin Avenue (at Chestnut Street), Ridgewood, NJ. Hours of operation are:Monday through Thursday, 11:30AM–10:00PM, Friday and Saturday 11:30AM-11:00PM and Sunday 12:30PM–9:00PM. Tel. 201.493.2000, www.amanopizza.com, www.facebook.com/AManoPizza
The financial state of states: The truth may scare you
State government tax revenue is only 5 percent above its pre-recession level.
Eric Rosenbaum | @erprose
State finances across the U.S. have been described as stable but slow growing. Six years into the post-recession economic recovery, that statement may be accurate, but the full truth may be more troubling.
A handful of states are caught in a real pension fix. A few statehouse budget battles in recent months have been notable for their heightened drama—Kansas, where huge tax cuts backfired on Gov. Sam Brownback; and Louisiana, where a member of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s own party referred to his budget plan as “money laundering.”
But it’s not the extremes that have state budget experts concerned. More states have been unable to complete budgets so far this year than is typical, and the situation points to long-term spending problems—from K–12 education to Medicaid and infrastructure—that will persist.
“The picture is more gloomy than stable, and state fiscal conditions might be better described as stagnant,” said Lucy Dadayan, senior policy analyst at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.
TRENTON — Casinos in north Jersey? The odds are against it.
A Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll of 913 New Jersey residents released Tuesday found 56 percent oppose allowing casinos outside of Atlantic City, while just 37 percent support it.
“The public is questioning the logic behind allowing the spread of casino gambling,” said Krista Jenkins, a political science professor of political science and director of PublicMind. “They don’t seem to be sold on the idea of saving the gaming industry in the state by allowing it to spread.”
And despite a major push in recent months by politicians and business people who want to expand casino gaming, public opinion has not moved significantly from the last time FDU asked the question in February.
“This degree of attentiveness isn’t turning many people on to the idea. or the premise that the money can and should be rightfully used in places other than where the casinos are ultimately built,” said Jenkins
The polls are important because allowing gaming outside of Atlantic City would require an amendment to the state constitution. That requires voter approval.
North Jersey lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson), want to put the question on the ballot this year. South Jersey lawmakers have resisted that, even though some – including Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) – have been open to allowing casino gambling in northern New Jersey if hundreds of millions in proceeds go towards helping Atlantic City rebuild.
Supporters of expanding casino gaming have proposed dedicating $100 million a year in north Jersey casino proceeds to the struggling resort, which saw four casinos close in 2012.
JUNE 23, 2015, 3:57 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2015, 10:19 PM
BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Bergen County’s recent bid to be the first county in New Jersey to add drones to its toolbox for handling emergencies comes amid a growing national debate over the use of unmanned flying machines by government agencies.
Leaders of the county’s emergency management operation are seeking freeholder approval to acquire two drones, which would be used for purposes ranging from finding a lost child to getting a bird’s-eye view of a fire or disaster.
Civil liberties advocates say that’s fine. But they worry that what they termed “mission creep” could open the door to other uses for the new technology and lead to questions of who is watching whom and for what purpose.
JUNE 23, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2015, 9:25 AM
BY MARK KRULISH
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
With its lengthy hearings dedicated to multifamily housing cleared from the docket, the Ridgewood Planning Board refocused its attention on master plan reexamination discussions, which resumed on June 16.
The board focused on the historic preservation aspect of the master plan, which begins with the historic preservation plan. The village’s Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) recommends to the Planning Board which properties and structures it believes to be worthy of preservation. The board can choose to follow those recommendations or adopt its own.
The HPC recommendations were presented last Tuesday and a representative was on hand to answer questions from board members. Among the recommendations was to include the entire B-1 zone within the village’s center historic district. Village Planner Blais Brancheau is recommending its inclusion be further studied.
“You have these little pockets that can change and be developed non-historically, which would end up totally out of place with what’s there,” said Joe Suplicki, vice chairman of the Historical Preservation Society. “We want to try and keep the continuity there. If something is changed, it’s going to fit in with what’s there, it’s not going to look historic, but it will not look 22nd century.”
The HPC also proposed adding a stretch of Franklin Avenue all the way to Irving Street and sections of the Ridgewood railroad station not already included in the historic district.
Study shows ‘maths mastery’ experiment improved children’s scores in English schools after just one year
Schools in England experimenting with east Asian teaching methods have seen an improvement in children’s mathematics skills after just one year, according to a study.
The research, published on Thursday, which represents the first hard evidence that introducing a Singaporean “maths mastery” approach into English classrooms can influence results, found a “relatively small but welcome improvement” in children’s performance.
The report’s lead author warned however that the mastery programme should not be seen as “a silver bullet” and called for it to be tested over a longer period in a greater number of schools in order to build a fuller picture.
Policymakers have been studying teaching methods in east Asian countries such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea, which dominate the Pisa international league tables measuring children’s academic achievement. Children there are on average more than one year ahead of their western peers in maths.
The mastery programme differs radically from current maths teaching in England, with fewer topics covered in greater depth, and every child expected to master the topic before the class moves on. Teachers hold weekly hour-long workshops to discuss lesson planning.
The study, led by UCL Institute of Education and the University of Cambridge, evaluated the impact of a Singaporean-inspired teaching programme in 90 English primary schools and 50 secondaries where it was taught to more than 10,000 pupils in year 1 (aged 5-6) and year 7 (11-12).
After a year they saw a small increase in children’s maths test scores compared with pupils in other schools which was roughly equivalent to one additional month of progress over the academic year. The programme is designed to have a cumulative effect, with the full benefit evident after five years.
CNBC data analysis shows outbound flow from high-tax states.
John W. Schoen | @johnwschoen
Everyone complains about taxes. But millions of American households apparently are doing something about it: Picking up and moving.
A CNBC analysis of tax data and figures provided by two major national moving companies shows that states with the highest per-capita taxes, for the most part, are also seeing the biggest net migration out of those states.
Take Connecticut, for example.
Earlier this week, the Nutmeg State’s legislature approved a collection of new taxes to close a two-year, $40 billion budget to help pay the multibillion-dollar tab to repair and replace the state’s dilapidated roads and bridges. The package includes a 50-cent-per-pack hike in cigarette taxes and a bump in tax rates on corporations and the state’s wealthiest earners.
The budget battle drew heated debate, along with threats from large employers like General Electric, which issued a rare statement that it might consider moving its Fairfield headquarters.
Republican opponents warned that the tax hikes would likely drive residents to flee to lower-tax states. One legislator suggested that a local moving-and-storage company up for sale should do a booming business moving households from the state.
“I think the best buy in Connecticut right now is a business for sale in Westport,” Michael A. McLachlan, R-Danbury, told the AP earlier this month as the debate wore on. “For $650,000, a sharp investor can get up and increase this business into a mega moving company, because that’s what people are going to be doing, starting today.”
Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason
Post published by David Niose on Jun 23, 2015 in Our Humanity, Naturally
The tragedy in Charleston last week will no doubt lead to more discussion of several important and recurring issues in American culture—particularly racism and gun violence—but these dialogues are unlikely to bear much fruit until the nation undertakes a serious self-examination. Decrying racism and gun violence is fine, but for too long America’s social dysfunction has continued to intensify as the nation has ignored a key underlying pathology: anti-intellectualism.
America is killing itself through its embrace and exaltation of ignorance, and the evidence is all around us. Dylann Roof, the Charleston shooter who used race as a basis for hate and mass murder, is just the latest horrific example. Many will correctly blame Roof’s actions on America’s culture of racism and gun violence, but it’s time to realize that such phenomena are directly tied to the nation’s culture of ignorance.
In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are“lies straight from the pit of hell,”(link is external) where the chairman of a Senate environmental panelbrought a snowball(link is external) into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president(link is external), it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.
In considering the senseless loss of nine lives in Charleston, of course racism jumps out as the main issue. But isn’t ignorance at the root of racism? And it’s true that the bloodshed is a reflection of America’s violent, gun-crazed culture, but it is only our aversion to reason as a society that has allowed violence to define the culture. Rational public policy, including policies that allow reasonable restraints on gun access, simply isn’t possible without an informed, engaged, and rationally thinking public.
By Victor Morton – The Washington Times – Monday, June 22, 2015
National Democrats tried Monday evening to raise funds off the South Carolina Confederate flag flap.
In a blast email sent after 7 p.m. Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said the issue of the Confederate flag, which zoomed to the front of national consciousness after a white supremacist was charged with nine counts of murder after a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, was “not over yet.”
The email says Gov. Nikki Haley’s announcement is not legislation and asked recipients to answer the question, “Should South Carolina take down the Confederate flag from its state Capitol?”
It reads, “41,338 people have recorded their answer — but we still haven’t heard from you,” it asks the subscriber by name.
A person cannot answer the survey question at the DCCC site without putting in an email address, which gives the DCCC the ability to solicit contributions.
Once the person answers the question and provides an address, the page reads, “Thanks for taking the instant poll today! Now take the next step: Donate $3 or more to support Democrats, and we’ll send you this free ‘Yes. I Voted Obama’ sticker in the mail!”
TRENTON — Moving a step closer on its fast track to the governor’s desk, the Assembly Appropriations Committee voted up acomplex bill aimed at modernizing and streamlining New Jersey’s voter laws today.
Along party lines, members of the committee debated and ultimately passed the bill, introduced by Democratic leaders in both houses last week and dubbed the “Democracy Act” for its intended goal of increasing voting rights access to certain demographics in the state. Sponsors of the bill say it would make it easier for residents to register to vote and vote in state elections by implementing measures like online voter registration, same day registration, and new technologies at the ballot boxes — all of which would help increase voter turnout in the state, which ranks 39th in the country in terms of registered voters at 64 percent, with an average voter turnout of 54.5 percent. (Brush/PolitickerNJ)
TRENTON—State Democrats plan to advance budget bills Tuesday that raise taxes on high earners and corporate profits to shore up the state’s underfunded pension system, a proposal likely doomed because Republican Gov. Chris Christie has pledged to veto any tax increases.
The annual budget dance in Trenton typically leads to interparty fighting in June, but observers said that this year’s proceedings were particularly defined by gridlock, resulting in more political theater than fiscal negotiations. (Haddon/Wall Street Journal)
