Ridgewood NJ, Roughly 45% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions each January, and since money is our top stressor, it’s clear that many of our pledges will be financial in nature. In recognition of that, WalletHub today announced its 10 Financial Resolutions for 2017 in order to help progress-minded people attain Top WalletFitness in the new year. This report comes on the heels of WalletHub’s 10 Financial Predictions for 2017, helping to provide a roadmap for financial improvement after the ball drops.
Below you can find a quick rundown of our resolutions, which are based in part on conversations with a panel of leading finance and consumer psychology experts.
Thoroughly Review Your Credit Report & Sign Up for Credit Monitoring
Pay Bills Right After Receiving Your Paycheck
Repay 20% of Your Credit Card Debt
Use Different Credit Cards for Everyday Purchases & Another for Debt
Ridgewood NJ, This holiday season round out your table with rustic root vegetables and colorful produce – the side dishes and ingredients of the season. From savory to sweet, these sought after vegetables have a ton of natural sugars and are loaded with vitamins, bringing you and your guests a healthy and delicious dish to add to the table.
Kings Food Markets Nutritionist, Shari Bilt Boockvar, MS, RDN Nutritionist, works closely to select options from Kings that offer a variety of inspirational root vegetable recipes to round out your table this season, including:
Spiralized Butternut Squash (video): Spiralizing never seemed so fun especially in our Spiralized Butternut Squash with Italian Sausage Ragu video.
Shari explains, “This season has a bountiful array of colorful produce, which provides a wonderful source of beta-carotene, potassium, fiber, and other nutrients. Enjoy them simply roasted with olive oil, garlic and seasonings or in a beautiful crudité.” In addition to these inspirational recipes and simple basics from Shari, Kings offers a great assortment of classes to further inspire your meals this holiday season taught by some of the area’s top chefs:
Elegant Christmas Dinner: Chef Theresa Merges leads this interactive class as guests will learn to make the ultimate elegant Christmas dinner including Oysters Rockefeller, Tomato Mozzarella and Basil Stacks, Prime Rib with Garlic and Horseradish Crust.
Celebrate Chanukah with Family Kids/Teens with Parent: Make it a family affair and learn to make classics like Potato Latkes 3 ways – Traditional, Sweet Potato and Spaghetti Squash, Homemade Applesauce, Beef Barley Soup, Grandma’s Rugelach.
New Year’s Eve Party: Ring the New Year in the right way with a menu all guests will be sure to enjoy including Spiced Nuts, Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts, Creamy Crab and Artichoke Dip.
To complete your holiday table Kings offers fully catered meals in their Catering department, covering all of your bases, including root vegetables as well as holiday staples such as Mini Crab Cakes, Kings Apple Pie, Kings Classic Carrot Soufflé and even custom floral arrangements for all your holiday tablescaping needs.
How To: Spiralized Butternut Squash Ragu with Italian Sausage Ragu
Ridgewood NJ, Hailed as an emerging young talent, Maestro Steven Fox, the 38-year old Music Director of Bergen County’s acclaimed Pro Arte Chorale and other musical organizations has received critical praise in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe and more. Now, as Artistic Director of New York’s Clarion Music Society, he has been nominated for a 2017 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance of the Year, for their recording of Maximilian Steinberg’s Passion Week.
Steven and The Clarion Choir recently travelled on a State Department sponsored tour to St. Petersburg and Moscow for the Russian premiere performances of Steinberg’s long-hidden 1920s liturgical masterwork.
The Pro Arte Chorale congratulates Steven on this significant musical achievement, and is honored to share his talent with our local communities in Bergen County and Northern New Jersey through our concert programs.
Founded in 1964, the Pro Arte Chorale is one of New Jersey’s foremost volunteer choruses and is considered one of the top-ranked regional choruses in America. The Chorale has appeared at such major concert venues as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Carnegie Hall, and has performed with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and American Symphony Orchestra.
Pro Arte is committed to supporting local education endeavors and to enriching the lives of its audience and the broader community by exploring a variety of classic musical traditions over more than six centuries, up to and including Opera Choruses, American Spirituals and even Broadway Show Tunes.
To find out how you can become a supporter of Pro Arte or to learn more about its upcoming schedule of performances, visit www.ProArteChorale.org.
Pro Arte Chorale is a nonprofit volunteer chorus of about 50 auditioned members, committed to the public performance of classic choral music in Northern New Jersey and the New York Metropolitan Area. Now in its 53rd consecutive annual concert season, Pro Arte is supported by its operating income and by contributions from individuals, corporations, foundations, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Ridgewood NJ, Each year, when December comes rolling in, so do the inner doubts and reflections that are part of our year-end experience.
Did I succeed? Has my business or career grown? Is my family happy and healthy? Do I have enough money to get them the gifts they want?
All these questions are nagging at me as I run from one Christmas party to the next. I can’t help but wonder why success is measured by our society in tangibles… I cannot measure my success in tangibles, nor do I want to, as this is not in sync with my passions or my values.
For me, success is measured by the intangible not by the tangibles we think we see! What does that mean? The tangibles we see are the big house or car that you already physically own. We think these things matter because of others’ expectations of what we should have to be successful and to be of a certain social standing. Having these tangibles is then a way to prove to others and yourself that you have succeeded.
This brings me straight back to the nagging questions I have about success and how we measure ourselves and others.
As I watch my colleagues talk about their accomplishments of the past year, I see a picture in my distant memory of a mother decorating a tree. Christmas, too, is about intangibles… For my family, Christmas was steeped in traditions; however, the only thing I truly recall was the gift of being together, thus the intangible… When did Christmas become such a big industry that we as families have become a slave to it?
We seem to focus so much on giving and receiving tangible gifts that we forget that they will not be remembered. Think back to your childhood while reading this and you will remember the smiling faces among the things that you treasured, but not really what was in the wrapped presents!
Sadly, this truth is not reflected in our talk and in our actions. Your child will go back to school after the holidays and teachers and friends will immediately ask “What did you get?” and not “How was your Christmas?”
Today, there is so much pressure on every member in a family to outshine everyone around you at work or school that I truly feel sad for those that forget that there are so many things we cannot see but they are there. They truly matter!
Here are a few examples of intangibles that matter every day: knowing that you can count on that one person to help you through difficult times. Every child who knows deep down that their parents will help them even if they are mad! Or what about the immense satisfaction a mother feels when her child takes those first few steps. Or the ability you have to put a smile on someone’s face, just because you can! In all our milestones, having someone encourage us as if we were an athlete crossing the finish line. That happy face in the crowd that clapped just a bit louder than everyone else… That, ladies and gentlemen, is success—when we have that one friend or relative who gives us courage to be ourselves!
How others make you feel cannot be seen but boy—can you feel it! All these examples are intangible—not evident, untouchable, we cannot see them. But that does not mean they don’t exist. In fact, I wish that people paid more attention to the intangible. Why?
If you ask any human being who they value the most, they almost always answer family. Then I ask what do they value most, even though geography, culture, and personal values might influence the answer to this question, the overall response I have heard the most is “some form of security.” Which often equates back to family.
So is success then not logically how each individual values and cares for their families and friends?
At the end of a person’s life, don’t we consider a person successful, not by their job, but by how well they treated their family and friends?
Set aside your self-doubt, the nagging questions, and dump the pressure to look good, and instead count the family members and your friends who are in your life. Your relationship with each individual and the joy it brings can be the new measure of your success!
So during this month of giving, forget for one moment all of the materialistic gifts—the tangibles that we obsess too much over—and try to concentrate on giving as many intangible gifts as you can to everyone around you. The gift of yourself, being there, listening, laughing, being truly present are the gifts that matter most and that will be truly remembered.
A few action points if you would like to give the gift of the intangible:
1. If you are a parent and have adult children, write down a short story of something your child did when they were younger that moved you and that is locked in your memory forever!
2. If you are a parent of a child, you can suggest they make a coupon book for you instead of a tangible gift. For example, they can give you a coupon with breakfast in bed. Or a coupon where they clean out your room!
3. If you are a friend searching for the perfect intangible gift to give another friend, share a fond memory together that you hold dear. The receiver will sit in awe hearing it!
ABOUT GABRIELLA VAN RIJ
The leading voice of the Kindness movement, Gabriella van Rij (www.gabriella.global) is a speaker, author & activist for kindness whose presentations blend humor, original analogies and her life story to create a rare perspective-shifting experience that speaks to all and that provides the tools audiences need for more productive relationships. Gabriella has been seen by millions on Dr. Phil, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX.
Rurik Posted: I took this on a trip to Paris in 1969.The Eiffel Tower is one of the most famous structures in the world and the symbol of Paris.Millions visit it every year.An interesting tale behind the building of the Tower.When the the plans were announced in the 1880‘s a committee of 300 leading citizens of Paris issued the following statement, per Wikepedia:“We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection … of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.”Makes you think of their present day Ridgewood descendants, the Vocalantis, those self absorbed fools who are unable to see past the tip of their noses.
this was posted on Facebook in the “it take a Ridgewood Village ” group on Monday December 19th.
While Mr Halaby attempts to use the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of what the rejection of Aronsohn’s flawed vision of Ridgewood could mean we suggest the Nazi occupation of Paris a more fitting symbol.
Here is a small history lesson:
Germans attacked France and quickly defeated the French army in 1940. The French government departed Paris on June 10, and the Germans occupied the city on June 14. During the Occupation, the French Government moved to Vichy, and Paris was governed by the German military and by French officials approved by the Germans.
For the Parisians, the Occupation was a series of frustrations, shortages and humiliations. A curfew was in effect from nine in the evening until five in the morning; at night, the city went dark. Rationing of food, tobacco, coal and clothing was imposed from September 1940. Every year the supplies grew more scarce and the prices higher. A million Parisians left the city for the provinces, where there was more food and fewer Germans. The French press and radio contained only German propaganda.
Jews in Paris were forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge, and were barred from certain professions and public places. On 16–17 July 1942, 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children and 5.919 women, were rounded up by the French police, on orders of the Germans, and were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The first demonstration against the Occupation, by Paris students, took place on 11 November 1940. As the war continued, anti-German clandestine groups and networks were created, some loyal to the French Communist Party, others to General Charles de Gaulle in London. They wrote slogans on walls, organized an underground press, and sometimes attacked German officers. Reprisals by the Germans were swift and harsh.
Following the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the French Resistance in Paris launched an uprising on August 19, 1944, seizing the police headquarters and other government buildings. The city was liberated by French and American troops on August 25, and General Charles de Gaulle led a triumphant parade down the Champs-Élysées on August 26, and organized a new government. In the following months, ten thousand Parisians who had collaborated with the Germans were arrested and tried, eight thousand convicted, and 116 executed. On 29 April and 13 May 1945, the first post-war municipal elections were held, in which French women voted for the first time.
Ridgewood NJ, Over the last few weeks Jeff Voigt publicly slammed Mayor Knudsen for looking into complaints against the Financial Advisory Committee. He also implied our Mayor acted unjustly and had broken the law. However, he never gave specifics and failed to substantiate his allegations. As if that wasn’t enough, he then turned to social media and started a “behind closed doors” movement to talk about his beef with Mayor Knudsen.
Residents responded to his social media posts demanding transparency along with a public explanation and proof of his allegations. Jeff Voigt has yet to respond.
Residents response to Voigt’s public message, “You publicly berated the Mayor and implied that something illegal was going on. A PUBLIC explanation is due. Lies, bullying and back door talks will not be tolerated. PROVE IT OR RESIGN.”
If you missed it, here are links to Voigt’s attacks.
As any avid book reader can tell you, immersing yourself in a great book can make your brain come alive. It sounds romantic, but science is now proving this to be true.
When we read, not only are we improving memory and empathy, but research has shown that it makes us feel better and more positive too. Science has shown that reading has some amazing health benefits, including helping with depression, cutting stress, and reducing the chances of developing Alzheimer’s later in life.
If you’re one of countless people who don’t make a habit of reading regularly, you might be missing out. This infographic provided by The Expert Editor might just inspire you to become an avid reader, for your health’s sake.
Let’s just hope that residents don’t fall into the slumber again that allowed these shysters to get where they did. We’ve all learned a valuable lesson that taxpayers get screwed far more at the local level than at the Federal level.
“Let’s just hope residents don’t fall into the slumber again”…that’s pretty funny. Aside from the usual social gadflys that rattle about everyone else is and will always be in a slumber. Don’t you get it? That’s exactly the way the union thugs want it and 90 % of the dopes in Ridgewood are more than happy to oblige. Nobody cares….
Unintended consequence of the “pedestrian has right of way” laws is pedestrians feeling invulnerable. They are not. Sometimes well-meaning drivers simply don’t see them. Cars are easier for pedestrians to see than the reverse. Solution? Repeal these pedestrian laws and give cars right of way. Then pedestrians can cross when it’s clear (or when a driver allows them to). As long as they do they won’t get hit. If they don’t then it’s their fault.
Ridgewood NJ, the Ridgewood Board of Education will be holding its regular public meeting on December 19th at 7:30 pm.The meeting will be held at the Ed Center, 49 Cottage Place, Ridgewood, NJ.
The public is invited to attend the meeting, or watch it live on Fios channel 33, Optimum channel 77, or on the “Link in Live” tab of the district website at www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us.
Ridgewood NJ, New bank at the site of a former gas station on Godwin just up from Garber square and the Ridgewood train station is starting to look like an accident waiting to happen.
In a recent email a reader pointed out; “How will people drivers try to make a left into their from town side approach Its entrance looks to be right next to the whole foods exit only driveway ..add in a Ped crosswalk right there and you have a problem, Houston. So much for Village planning. A no left turn from town might solve it but the drive thru bank will likely not stand for that, most days traffic comes from town. I’m sure the drive up is a selling point. No problem from midland park side if town nor soft exit towards the train side if people let them merge into the deadman’s curve.”
CDC: Walk This Way! Taking Steps for Pedestrian Safety
December 18,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood Nj, According to the CDC and as many readers have noted over the years on the Ridgewood blog it is important to take steps to be safe when walking on roadways. This includes exercising caution at intersections and crosswalks and increasing your visibility at night by wearing retro-reflective clothing and carrying flashlights.
Walking is good for your health, and it’s good for the environment too. But before you head out on foot for a stroll, power walk, or errand, there are important safety tips to remember.
What’s the problem?
Pedestrians—people who travel by foot, wheelchair, stroller, or similar means—are among the most vulnerable users of the road.
In the next 24 hours, on average, 430 people will be treated in an emergency department for traffic-related pedestrian injuries.1 In the next 2 hours, on average, one pedestrian will die from injuries in a traffic crash.2
A total of 4, 735 pedestrians were killed in traffic deaths in 2013,2 and more than 156,000 were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries. With numbers like these, it’s critical to understand the risks and learn how to stay safe.
Who’s at risk?
Pedestrians of all ages are at risk of injury or death from traffic crashes, but some people are at higher risk.
Male pedestrians are more likely to die or be injured in a motor vehicle crash than females.2
Teen and young adult (ages 15-29 years) pedestrians are more likely to be treated in emergency departments for crash-related injuries compared to any other age group.1
The rate of pedestrian death generally increases with age.2
In 2013, 34% of all pedestrians killed in traffic crashes had a blood alcohol concentration of greater than or equal to 0.08 grams per deciliter.2
As pedestrians, children are at even greater risk of injury or death from traffic crashes due to their small size, inability to judge distances and speeds, and lack of experience with traffic rules.
One in five traffic deaths among children ages 14 and under are pedestrian deaths.2
Take Steps for Safety
Whenever you’re walking, keep these tips in mind:
Whenever possible, cross the street at a designated crosswalk or intersection.
Increase your visibility at night by carrying a flashlight and wearing retro-reflective clothing.
It’s safest to walk on a sidewalk, but if one is not available, walk on the shoulder and face traffic.
Avoid distractions such as electronic devices that take your attention off the road.
