Nothing but a land grab. National Elks see that the value of land it sits on is far more worth than the money they collect from members, fundraising. In other parts of the country Elks clubs sit on property worth $5,000, $10,000 etc. Ridgewood Elks is worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. Interesting also, is that a couple of years ago the Elks got “help” in lowering their yearly tax burden; therefore devaluing their assessment. How convenient for whoever will now be purchasing this property. Stay tuned to see who will be purchasing this land grab. Any guesses who??
Truly sad. This Lodge while once in not the best of shape was making improvements by leaps and bounds. A new group of dedicated and excited officers took charge and were taking a no prisoners approach in their efforts to get the Lodge back on track. They had won awards for membership gains (I believe over 40 new net new members in a year), started an Antlers group that was very active in the community, had won several community awards for their local efforts. Looking at the decision from the GF, losses were cut by 81% in a single year (yes a single year) which by definition means revenue was significantly higher (by tens of thousands actually). All signs that the lodge was on the rise in a major way.
This Lodge could have been salvaged. When objectively looked at they were one, maybe two years at the most away from meeting all the requirements of an All American Lodge. That is how far they came in a very short amount of time. Can you imagine that story in the national magazine?
Just look at the effort they put into saving their charter to see how much love and dedication they felt for their Lodge. They never gave up on the Elks or what the Elks stood for. They worked hard to right all the past wrongs, they put their hearts and souls into the place and were making real and accountable progress.
Yes, a sad day that another Elks lodge is gone but even sadder that this one could have been rescued and then been held out as an example that when a team works TOGETHER anything is possible. I say this is an opportunity lost to showcase a potential success story of how to climb that mountain and reach the top.
Great news on Valley. Performing Arts Center is a great idea. It is going to be so appealing for Jay-z, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Justin Bieber to ditch MSG for the beauty and diversity of our village. Whoever came up with this idea should be kicked out of Bergen County altogether. The only way this Arts Center would be useful is if Rurik performed his monologues on the stage. I would pay 50 cents for that.
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Library’s Auditorium Gallery commemorates Ridgewood’s 12 residents who perished during the World Trade terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. This quite solemn tribute has been the the custom in Ridgewood the past 15 years . It gives resident ,coworkers and friends a change to reflect .
Ridgewood NJ, this is a Recommended Reading List from C.S. Lewis ,looks like it time to hit the Ridgewood library.
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.
Lewis wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. C. S. Lewis’s most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Aeschylus, The Eumenides (5th BCE)
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (c. 429 BCE)
Aristotle, Poetics (335 BCE)
Virgil
The Georgics (29 BCE)
The Aeneid (29-19 BCE)
Lucian, Vera Historia (2nd)
Apuleius, Metamorphoses/The Golden Ass (late 2nd)
Unknown, Beowulf (8th-11th)
Unknown, The Song of Roland (11th-12th)
Laȝamon, Brut (c. 1190-1215)
Unknown, Huon of Bordeaux (c. 1216-1268)
Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda (early 13th)
Dante, Divine Comedy (1308-20)
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales (late 14th)
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)
Unknown, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th)
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (1485)
Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (c. 1516)
Arthur Brooke, The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562)
Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia (late 16th)
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590s)
William Shakespeare
Romeo & Juliet (1591-5)
Twelfth Night (1601-2)
The Winter’s Tale (1611)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1590-7)
Henry V (c. 1599)
John Donne, “The Apparition” (early 17th)
Michael Drayton, “The Shepherds Sirena” (1627)
Thomas Browne, Urn Burial (1658)
Jean Racine
Andromaque (1667)
Phèdre (c. 1677)
John Milton
Paradise Lost (1667-74)
Samson Agonistes (1671)
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712-4)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (1726, 1735)
Voltaire
“Micromégas” (1752)
Candide (1759)
Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
William Beckford, Vathek, an Arabian Tale (1782)
James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)
William Wordsworth
“Michael” (1800)
The Excursion (1814)
Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice (1813)
Walter Scott, Guy Mannering (1815)
Benjamin Constant, Adolphe (1816)
John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819)
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Witch of Atlas (1824)
Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala (1835-49)
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
Charles Dickens
The Pickwick Papers (1836)
Great Expectations (1861)
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848)
Edward Fitzgerald, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859-89)
Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857)
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)
George Eliot, Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life (1871-2)
Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872)
Lewis Carroll, “The Hunting of the Snark” (1874-6)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island (1883)
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Edwin Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)
John Ruskin, Praeterita (1885)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
H.G. Wells
First Men in the Moon (1901)
“The Door in the Wall” (1911)
Beatrix Potter, Tales (1902-1930)
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (1904)
E.R. Burroughs, Tarzan (1912-1965)
Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives’ Tale (1908)
James Stephens, The Crock of Gold (1912)
D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913)
Gertrude Stein, “Sacred Emily” (1913)
James Branch Cabell, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919)
Kafka, The Castle (1926)
Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan (1946)
J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (1954-5)
In today’s standards-based education system, the main focus is on teaching skills rather than content. There’s a prevalent idea that it matters less what students read just so long as they are reading.
But according to E.D. Hirsch, professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia, that’s bull.
Some of you may know Hirsch through his famous advocacy of “cultural literacy”—the idea that some amount of “shared, canonical knowledge is inherently necessary to a literate democracy,” and that students in a particular culture should have common exposure to certain texts and concepts.
Until all the other Ridgewood problems are solved (Habernickle, high density housing, garage and most of all,Valley!) I can’t see the Village spending one cent on the library. It is already huge for a town this size and it has an auditorium that it rents out. (Check into how often it is rented and that will show you a need for maybe something extra on Sundays when they entertain but it is certainly not being put to daily usage. Why would one think the Arts Center would be any busier?
The builders want a busy downtown, parking, condos and amenities to attract new residents. Put your money where your mouth is and build the arts center yourself. The underutilized library is trying to expand their mission. Why don’t they just cut staff to meet the new reality. We all do research online, and read newspapers and books online.
They need to scale back. What percent of residents actually use their tutoring/classes/clubs! Where do they find parking, after all the “reserved for staff” spots there are few for patrons.
The proposed high density housing is not meant for empty nesters. They want city-like amenities for city folks who already know what it is like to live in cramped quarters.
From the July 2015 Ridgewood Library Board of Trustees Meeting
A couple of library board trustees said they want to move ahead with the original plan, which called only for the renovation of the library, and add in the construction of a performing arts center next to the library and village hall. This would turn the library and its surrounding area into the cultural hub the members are seeking.
The cost of the library renovations alone is estimated at around $5 million, according to Ralph Rosenberg, who was responsible for the renovations 20 years ago. Rosenberg has agreed to advise the trustees throughout the process as “owner’s representative.”
The estimated cost of the renovations, including the hypothetical performing arts center, is unknown.
(Community News | At the Library | Ridgewood Inside NorthJersey.com)
See any common threads here?
Board of Trustees Ridgewood Library
John Johansen, President 12/31/2015
Elisa R. Legg, Vice President
Arlene Sarappo, Secretary 12/31/2018
Gail Campbell, Treasurer
Christine Driscoll 12/31/2018
John Saraceno 12/31/2017
Janis Fuhrman 12/31/2018
Paul Aronsohn, Mayor
Albert Pucciarelli, Mayor’s Delegate
Dr. Daniel Fishbein, Superintendent of Schools
Linda Diorio, Superintendent’s Delegate
Don’t we have auditoriums in EVERY school which can be rented for a very reasonable price. Why do we need a performing arts center? Not to mention that the property is in a flood zone.
Yes, the National Elks organization appears to have been “gotten to”, at least indirectly, by a cabal of local supporters of the idea of building a performing arts center where the Elk’s Lodge now stands. The Local Elk’s club membership is probably reeling at the treatment they have been receiving from their national – level hierarchy. The tax status of the property on which the Elk’s Lodge now sits appears to have also been the subject of hijinks or skullduggery of some sort. Its valuation was dropped by more than half, if memory serves, with no apparent explanation for the change, which sounds like a setup.
A performing arts center should be a private undertaking, if at all. There is no way it will break even.
The library should stick to their mission. Entertainment is not a public sector responsibility.
The head of the Library Ms. Green has for the last 10 years complained that there is no enough parking for the library. she has suggested that that people using Veterans Field park anywhere but the Library Parking. She even wanted the police intervene. So now the the brain trust at the Library want a performing arts center. They may say that the will raise the money for this by donations but like the turf field we are stuck with all the expenses after it built. It like the gift that keep on giving.
Performing arts center is not needed and placing it adjacent to the library would be a huge mistake. The driveway between the buildings should never have been removed, and this would ensure that it could never be restored, as I have hoped since they removed it. Why do we allow the library and other entities to go hog wild? As one comment above notes, between the library staff and patrons, village hall staff and visitors, band shell attendees, and sports participants and observers, the lot is often full precisely when such an event would be taking place. Attracting more cars to the same parking lot would be a nightmare, especially as people giving up and leaving all had to circle around and exit via that ridiculous narrow driveway with a 90-degree angle and speed bumps. And nobody could get to the library for a BOOK. FORGET IT!
RIDGEWOOD LIBRARY COOLING CENTER – PSE&G PREPARED FOR THIS WEEKS HOT WEATHER
July 7,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Public Library will be available to provide a cool environment to residents. It is open to the public Thursday 9 – 9; Friday 9 – 6; Saturday 9 – 5; Sunday 1 – 5.
Ridgewood Professional Firefighters FMBA Local 47
Be aware and cautious if working or playing outside for an extended period of time today and until the current heat wave ends. If you feel any of the symptoms, call for help
PSE&G: With temperatures expected to be in the 90s this week, PSE&G is monitoring weather conditions and has additional personnel on hand to handle any power interruptions as a result of the high temperatures. Our call centers also have extra personnel on duty to speak with customers, and additional appliance service technicians are scheduled to assist with central air conditioner repairs.
We prepare for summer all year long by replacing and reinforcing electric circuits and other equipment, using helicopters to inspect our high-voltage transmission lines, and conducting employee training and summer readiness drills. Although we expect to have no problem delivering the additional power our customers will need to stay cool, we are keeping a close eye on the weather and will have the personnel on hand to respond to any outages.
To report power outages or downed wires, call PSE&G’s Customer Service line at 1-800-436-PSEG (7734). You can also report outages online by logging into My Account at pseg.com. To report power outages via text message, and receive outage updates by text and email, sign up for MyAlerts. Our mobile-friendly website includes an “Outage Map” that is updated every 15 minutes and displays the location and status of power outages in PSE&G’s service area.
If experiencing difficulties with central air conditioning units or other appliances, PSE&G customers can schedule a WorryFree** repair service appointment online by logging in to My Account, or calling 1-800-436-PSEG.
Here are a few easy and inexpensive ways you can save energy and money:
Turn off everything you’re not using: lights, computers, etc. Use dimmers, timers and motion detectors on indoor and outdoor lighting.
Close blinds and shades facing the sun to keep the sun’s heat out and help fans and air conditioners cool more efficiently.
Close doors leading to uncooled areas. With central air, close off vents to unused rooms.
Ridgewood NJ, What if everyone in Ridgewood read the same book? What conversations could we spark?This summer the Ridgewood Public Library Foundation invites its community to read one book, the same book, and connect through a shared reading experience.
The Boys in the Boat Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown If you live or work in Ridgewood, we hope YOU participate in Book discussion groups, activities, contests and events will be offered July through September.
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is a non-fiction book written by Daniel James Brown and published on June 4, 2013.PlotThe non-fiction book is about the University of Washington eight-oared crew which represented the United States in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and narrowly beat out Italy and Germany to win the Gold Medal.There are two backstories. One illustrated how all nine members of the Washington team came from lower middle class families and had to struggle to earn their way through school during the depths of the Depression. Along with the chronicle of their victories and defeats in domestic competition, the reader learns the importance of synchronization of the eight rowers as they respond to the commands of the coxswain and his communications with the stroke, consistent pacing, and sprint to the finish so that all team members are left completely exhausted and in pain at the end of a competitive race.The second backstory begins with a depiction of Hitler decreeing construction of the luxurious German venues at which the Games would take place. Along the way, the book also explains how the Nazis successfully covered up the evidence of their harsh and inhumane treatment of the Jews so as to win worldwide applause for the 1936 Olympic Games, duping the United States Olympic Committee among others.All comes together with a description of the final race. During the 1930s, rowing was a popular sport with millions following the action on the radio. The victorious Olympians became national heroes. In accordance with the strictures of amateur athletics, the boys sank into relative obscurity after their victory, but were still better off than their parents, and for the rest of their lives proud of their accomplishment.
FROM WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA
Ridgewood Nj, a reader says ,”The (Elks)club membership is dealing with over zealous state reps ( in very fancy tuxedos mind you) who have been gunning for the lodge for years. It’s not business, it’s personnel. The membership has retained councel who will defend their interests. This includes the building that does NOT belong to ANYONE other than the clubs membership via a holding corporation to protect it from situations just like this. So forget your theory’s , forget about the library and forget about ANYONE getting anything that belongs to the lodge.”
Ridgewood Nj, Come join us for the 2016 Ridgewood Guild Film Festival’s International Night at the Ridgewood Library on Tuesday, April 19 at 7:00pm! We’ll start with 3 shorts at 7pm, followed by the feature film, Timbuktu, at 7:30pm. We hope to see you there!
Ridgewood NJ, With the holiday season quickly approaching, maybe its time to slow down and think about what we are truly thankful for. In tomorrow’s new monthly discussion, Ted Talks Together, we will be watching David Steindl-Rast’s talk, “Want to be happy? Be grateful?” All are welcomed to join us today, November 11th at 1pm. Feel free to bring your own lunch or purchase from the Library’s cafe.
David Steindl-Rast was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. He received his MA degree from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Vienna (1952). He emigrated to the United States in the same year and became a Benedictine monk in 1953 at Mt. Saviour Monastery in Pine City, New York, a newly founded Benedictine community. With permission of his abbot, Damasus Winzen, in 1966 he was officially delegated to pursue Buddhist-Christian dialogue and began to study Zen with masters Haku’un Yasutani, Soen Nakagawa, Shunryu Suzuki and Eido Tai Shimano.[1]
He co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies with Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Sufi teachers, and since the 1970s has been a member of the cultural historian William Irwin Thompson’s Lindisfarne Association. His writings include Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer,The Music of Silence (with Sharon Lebell), Words of Common Sense and Belonging to the Universe (co-authored with Fritjof Capra). He also co-founded A Network for Grateful Living, an organization dedicated to gratefulness as a transformative influence for individuals and society.
