FOSH garage sale, house tour, other events make for big weekend

Stuff! Stuff you must have!

Plainfield's annual monster event is upon us -- the annual FOSH (Friend of Sleepy Hollow) Yard Sale is this weekend, Saturday AND Sunday. (The 'Maidens In May' house tour is Sunday -- see separate post.)

The FOSH event draws thousands of eager bargain-hunters to Plainfield each year. The sale is from 9 AM - 4 PM both days, offering some of the best 'stuff' in New Jersey. The best place to start is along Watchung Avenue -- just look for balloons. Maps of participating homes are available at each location.

In addition, a number of other yard sale opportunities with SPECIAL EMPHASES --

• Saturday - May 21 (Rain date: Sunday). 9 AM - 3 PM. Yard Sale Benefiting Animal Support Groups. This is the 5th annual multi-household yard sale to benefit a variety of groups and organizations supporting animals. Clothing, kitchen/household, antiques/collectibles, books, furniture and more. At 1326 Watchung Avenue.
  
  
• Saturday - May 21. 9 AM - 3 PM. Annual Grace Episcopal Church Yard Sale. This year's sale is in memory of longtime enthusiast/coordinator John Eklund,  who recently passed away. Bargains galore, including kid's clothes, kitchen wares, furniture and decorative accessories, electronics, toys, jewelry and books, CDs and DVDs. At Grace Episcopal Church, corner of East 7th Street and Cleveland Avenue (parking in public lot across from church).
  
  
• Saturday - May 21. 9 AM - 4 PM. [Plainfield Symphony] FOSH Garage Sale. All sales at this location benefit the Plainfield Symphony Orchestra, which begins its 92nd season in September. At 900 Charlotte Road (corner of Watchung Avenue). Saturday only.
  
  
• Saturday - May 21. 9 AM - 4 PM. [Plainfield Garden Club] FOSH Garage Sale. Sales at this location will benefit programs of the Plainfield Garden Club, which maintains the Shakespeare Garden in Cedar Brook Park as well as other gardening and outreach activities in the community. At 1734 Sleepy Hollow Lane. Saturday only.

You won't want to miss these opportunities!

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Art Auction for PAHS tonight

 

 An art auction benefiting the Plainfield Area Humane Society is being held this evening at the Watchung Firemen's Exempt Club.

Featuring art in all media and all price ranges, the event will help fund initiatives at the Rock Avenue shelter.

Wine, cheese, coffee and dessert will be served. Major credit cards are accepted.

---

ART AUCTION
in support of
Plainfield Area Humane Society

Today | 7 - 10 PM
Tickets: $25/person

Watchung Exempt Firemen's Club
31 Mountain Boulevard, Watchung

All are welcome!

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

New Dems 'friendraiser' event tonight

New Democrats headquarters is at 508 Watchung Avenue.

New Democrats for Plainfield will host a 'friendraiser' at its Watchung Avenue headquarters this evening, to which all are invited, according to chairperson Adrian Mapp.

The event provides an opportunity to mix and mingle with the slate's candidates for City Council and the Democratic City Committee as well as to make a campaign contribution, Mapp continued.

City Council candidates Cory Storch, running for re-election to the Ward 2 seat, and 'Dee' Dameron, first-time candidate for the Wards 1/4 at-large seat will be on hand, as well as the organization's 55 candidates for the Democratic City Committee.
 

Candidates for City Council and Democratic City Committee.

Councilor Rebecca Williams, who is managing Storch's campaign and former Board of Ed member Dr. Inez Durham, who is managing Dameron's campaign said they are looking forward to the event which will energize supporters in the final two-week runup to the Primary election on June 7.

Mapp said an important endorsement of the candidates will be made at the event.

New Dem campaign signs will be a familiar sight over the next few weeks.

---

New Democrats for Plainfield
FRIENDRAISER EVENT

Thursday · May 19 · 6 - 9 PM

New Democrats Headquarters
508 Watchung Avenue
(Across from City Hall, between Blackberry's and City Hall Annex)

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

BREAKING: Historic Muhlenberg buildings named among NJ's most endangered

Front view of Tracy and Swartwout's 1903 complex.
(Postcard, collection of Nancy Piwowar.)

Another postcard view. (Collection of Nancy Piwowar.)

The original 1903 Tracy & Swartwout buildings are outlined in red.

Supporters of Plainfield's Muhlenberg Hospital were overjoyed this morning when Preservation New Jersey announced that the original 1903 complex on the Randolph Road campus has been put on the organization's list of 'Ten Most Endangered Historic Places in New Jersey' for 2011.

Fourteen local supporters, active in the 'Restore Muhlenberg' group attended the ceremonies in Trenton, according to Nancy Piwowar and Deborah Dowe, two who have worked hard on the nomination.

The case for Muhlenberg's listing was outlined in a Plainfield Today guest post this past December by Nancy Piwowar (see here). Preservation New Jersey already has its list up (here) along with the complete Muhlenberg citation (see here).

Though the designation does not guarantee the buildings are preserved from future harm, it brings considerable public pressure on any consideration of demolition.

A happy day for Plainfield, but I'll bet there is no joy on James Street today.

---

• Plainfield Today:  "Guest Post: Muhlenberg's Operating Pavilion"
• Preservation New Jersey:  "2011's Ten Most Endangered" | "Muhlenberg Citation"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

All invited to New Democrats' 'Friendraiser' Thursday evening

New Democrats headquarters is at 508 Watchung Avenue.

 

New Democrats for Plainfield will host a 'friendraiser' at its Watchung Avenue headquarters Thursday evening, to which all are invited, according to chairperson Adrian Mapp.

The event provides an opportunity to mix and mingle with the slate's candidates for City Council and the Democratic City Committee as well as to make a campaign contribution, Mapp continued.

City Council candidates Cory Storch, running for re-election to the Ward 2 seat, and 'Dee' Dameron, first-time candidate for the Wards 1/4 at-large seat will be on hand, as well as the organization's 55 candidates for the Democratic City Committee.

Candidates for City Council and Democratic City Committee.

Councilor Rebecca Williams, who is managing Storch's campaign and former Board of Ed member Dr. Inez Durham, who is managing Dameron's campaign said they are looking forward to the event which will energize supporters in the final two-week runup to the Primary election on June 7.

Mapp said an important endorsement of the candidates will be made at the event.

New Dem campaign signs will be a familiar sight over the next few weeks.

---

New Democrats for Plainfield
FRIENDRAISER EVENT

Thursday · May 19 · 6 - 9 PM

New Democrats Headquarters
508 Watchung Avenue
(Across from City Hall, between Blackberry's and City Hall Annex)

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

School District's Spelling Bee tonight

Spelling Bees helped market Noah Webster's spelling books.

Plainfielders have an opportunity to participate this evening in the local expression of the country's original 'American Idol' event: the Plainfield school district's Spelling Bee.

Spelling Bees were a great attraction in small-town and rural America beginning in the 19th century. In the days before mass entertainment, they would draw audiences from the surrounding area to lively evenings centered on the elimination of challengers by increasing the difficulty of words to be spelt, arriving finally at a single winner.

These Spelling Bees were made popular in conjunction with the spelling book of Noah Webster, a staple in American schoolrooms throughout the 19th century. Webster is considered the father of American English, having set himself the lofty goal of distinguishing English spoken in the United States from that of England.

We have Webster to thank for many of our peculiarly American spellings -- color instead of colour, theater instead of theatre, and many more.

Webster is the subject of a new and fascinating book by Joshua Kendall, The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture (see here)

If you want to get a glimpse of America's original 'Idol" culture, come on out this evening.

PS: I still have the Merriam-Webster dictionary I won in a Western New York Spelling Bee in the early 1950s.

---

Plainfield Public Schools
SPELLING BEE
Today | 7 PM Sharp

Board of Ed Building
1200 Myrtle Avenue

All are welcome!

---

• Joshua Kendall:  "The Forgotten Founding Father"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Downtown West's Sears project gets under way

Work recently began on the renovation of the old Sears building.

 

Front Street Realty LLC has begun work on the old Plainfield Sears store at the corner of West Front Street and Central Avenue which will transform it into mixed use retail, apartments and professional offices.

Sear's retail store was located on this corner from the 1930s until it was relocated to the current Route 22 location in Watchung -- responding to the car-driven culture of the postwar era. (Is online shopping now turning these monster stores into real estate albatrosses?) The Sears store itself was built on land previously occupied by the First Baptist Church, which merged with the Park Avenue Baptist Church after a fire destroyed the Front Street building, to form First-Park Baptist Church, located at the corner of West 7th Street and Central Avenue.

The site was originally occupied by the First Baptist Church.

Parking is a complicated issue.

The plans approved by the Zoning Board this past December included a new addition on the currently vacant lot next to the building. The complex will house three retail spaces facing West Front Street, four professional office spaces facing Grove Street and a total of eight spacious apartments on the upper floors of the two buildings.

It is exciting to see this more modestly-scaled project get under way since the developer is not looking to the state for large loans or the city for tax abatements (as is the case with the Cretella projects -- which is not a knock against them, but just means they take longer to get started...and finished).

As you will see from my earlier post (here), the project does come with its rough edges -- primarily parking, in my opinion. Let's hope those are worked out positively as the process moves along.

Who knows, perhaps the city will even do something about the execrable condition of Lot 9.

A 'ghost' sign indicating 'Sears, Roebuck and Co., Retail Store'
can still be seen on the western exterior of the old Sears building.

---

• Plainfield Today"  "Plainfield Sears project will bring new life to Downtown West"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Letter carriers thank PT readers for food donations

Mike Breslin, president of Letter Carriers Local #396, whose members work in the Plainfield postal area, extends a 'thank you' to Plainfield Today readers for their generosity in food donation that were picked up Monday, after the story about the Saturday event was published.

According to Breslin, yet another large postal van filled with canned goods and other nonperishable items was delivered to the StarFish pantry at Covenant United Methodist Church on East Front Street Monday.

Thank you, readers, for your support!

Stamp Out Hunger coordinator Nancy Piwowar
holds note put in food donation bag by postal patron.

The StarFish crew. Front row (left to right), Lynda Stanbach, Edna Shanok, Kelly Cianciola;
Rear (left to right), Harry Mayer, Steven Danyo, Hugh Woodruff.
The program has been serving Plainfield residents for three decades.

---

• Website:  "Stamp Out Hunger"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Renata bludgeons bloggers, press over PHS production

A Victorian-era truncheon.

Never one to use a scalpel when a truncheon will do, fellow Plainfield blogger and Board of Ed president Renata Hernandez chose on Saturday to lambaste the rest of the blogging community and the press (see here) for failing to attend the 'final run' (I assume she means final performance) of the PHS production of 'Doubt' --

PLAINFIELD we are SOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo Failing our YOUTH with our lack of support! There was neither any of our infamous bloggers nor reporters in sight. In total, there MIGHT have been 15 people! What an absolute miss for this community!

Take that, bloggers! Take that, reporter!

I don't know about the rest of the bloggers, but I felt mugged. (Maybe they don't read Renata regularly; I read each of the blogs every day.)

First of all, who knew?

I am sure Mark Spivey would have put up a story as he has for recent school events such as the Youth Summit and tonight's 'Plainfield on Stage'. I'm guessing no one ever passed the word to him (nor to the rest of us).

If the intent was to support the production, why wouldn't folks have been invited to the dress rehearsal (the next best thing to the actual performance) to write it up BEFORE all the performances in order to give the blog audience a chance to get organized to go see the production?

Plan ahead?

Renata herself has a mixed record on that score. While she beat the drums for weeks for the recent Youth Summit (to good result it seems), she only noticed the fundraiser PAAAS carwash last Saturday on the day of -- and not only that, since I checked the blog shortly before 10 AM and the post was not up, her post appears to have gone up as the carwash was getting under way.

Is that any way to give readers a chance to support a worthwhile activity?

And if 'support' is measured by turnout of parents and community members, what is one to make of the fact that I appear to be the only community person who turned out for the administration's presentation to the Board on restructuring Hubbard and Maxson (see here)?

Meanwhile, today I learned by reading Dr. E=MC² (see here), that after lengthy preparations the Robotics Team showed up the day of the competition to find there was NO BUS TO TRANSPORT THEM.

What kind of support of our kids does that show?

The kids got their bus, but only after it appears (read the blog carefully!) the Interim Superintendent had to intervene to overrule her own administrators.

The Board made nice by inviting the Robotics Team to the April 19 session where the Cardinals boys basketball team and the Cheerleaders were honored. I was there, and I thought it was great the team was recognized (see my post here). Little did I realize it was a sop for their being previously mistreated.

Renata is right about the need for the community to show more support.

But the first responsibility is for the District to show its own support.

Should the Robotics Team have been better treated? What guarantee is there it won't happen again?

Would the student production of 'Doubt' have benefited from more and better ADVANCE promotion? And what guarantee is there future productions will get that promotional help to build support?

But accountability needs to start where it should: with the District administration and with the Board of Ed which is responsible for overseeing it.

I am reminded of the old joke about the man who complained bitterly to God each week the lottery winners were drawn and he did not win. Each week he offered to give a larger share of his winnings as the Lord would direct, if only he would win. Finally, when he got up to offering God a 75% share, a loud voice came from heaven: 'You have to buy a ticket first, dummy!'

Support for the kids begins by taking responsibility for the duty of building that support and then doing it. And don't bludgeon the people who might be helpful in the process.

PS: If you check the District's website out, you will see two news items on Middle School restructuring: Tuesday's Board meeting and Thursday's community meeting.

---

• Standing in the Gap --
• 'Doubt':  "Ali, Graves, Nicasio | Remember these names"
• Carwash:  "What's good??!!!"
• Dr. E=MC²:  "This should be our focus" -- Revealing the Robotics Team mistreatment.
• Plainfield Today --
• Restructuring:  "BOE 'restructuring' presentation mystifies"
• Robotics:  "PHS Robotics Team recognized"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Hidden Plainfield: May 15 property ID

Photo was taken from the end of DeKalb toward the southeast.

Yesterday's Hidden Plainfield is the tranquil suburban neighborhood at the Green Brook end of DeKalb Avenue.

Where shall we go next week?

---

• Hidden Plainfield:  "A tranquil suburban neighborhood" -- Includes all the comments on location.

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

7th murder of 2011 over weekend

Plainfield's 7th homicide of 2011 reported at 1348 West Front on Sunday.

 

A Plainfield Today reader advised around noon on Sunday that there was a fatality at 1348 West Front Street. Was later told the body of a male was discovered inside the building and that it was confirmed as a homicide.

I drove by mid-afternoon and saw the Union County Sheriff's crime scene unit at the multi-story apartment building near the corner of West Front and Johannis Place, across from the old Mack plant.

As of late afternoon I was unable to get more information except to be told that the original suggestion the victim had been shot would need to await the outcome of an autopsy slated for Monday.

Will post more as information becomes available.

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Monday last day for food donations via postal workers

Stamp Out Hunger coordinator Nancy Piwowar
holds note put in food donation bag by postal patron.

For nearly twenty years, Plainfield's letter carriers have teamed up with Campbell's Soup to 'help stamp out hunger', collecting donations of food and delivering them to StarFish, Plainfield's local food pantry.

The event always happens on the second Saturday of May, but this year Plainfield postal workers are making another roundup of donated items on Monday (tomorrow), after many residents called Nancy Piwowar, one of the organizers of the Plainfield effort, to say they had further donations.

StarFish is looking for donations of canned goods of all kinds as well as nonperishable foods such pasta, cereal, etc.

Put your items out near your mailbox in a plastic bag and your letter carrier will make a last pickup tomorrow. Maybe you better do it now, while you're thinking about.

The good folks at StarFish thank you!

City Council candidate Dee Dameron pitches in to help StarFish crew.

...as does Councilor Cory Storch.

The StarFish crew. Front row (left to right), Lynda Stanbach, Edna Shanok, Kelly Cianciola;
Rear (left to right), Harry Mayer, Steven Danyo, Hugh Woodruff.
The program has been serving Plainfield residents for three decades.

---

• Website:  "Stamp Out Hunger"

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Hidden Plainfield: A tranquil suburban neighborhood

One of Plainfield's many suburban neighborhoods.

'Twas a tranquil Plainfield morning, dew glistening on the lawns, birds chirping in the trees, the sun just beginning to reveal the warmth that would make this day a real scorcher.

One of Plainfield's many tranquil suburban neighborhoods. But where?

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Are Sharon and Vera the Lucy and Ethel of Plainfield politics?

What?! We're in the wrong neighborhood?

 

Are Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs and Councilor Vera Greaves the Lucy and Ethel of Plainfield politics?

Greaves is Dem City Committee chair Jerry Green's handpicked candidate for the Wards 1&4 at-large seat.

She and Mayor Robinson-Briggs were spotted knocking on doors and distributing campaign literature on Friday -- in Ward 3, where Greaves IS NOT A CANDIDATE.

Channeling the late, great comedy couple?

Could be.

---

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Why Plainfield's blogs were down for two days

Logo for one of Blogger's service blogs.

 

From late Wednesday morning through early Friday afternoon, most Plainfield blogs -- along with millions of others hosted by Google's free Blogger service -- were out of service.

Those affected were my Plainfield Today and CLIPS blogs, as well as Bernice's Plaintalker II, Olddoc's Potpourri, Maria's Blog, all of the Council members, Renata, Milani, Vashon, ke'stans, Ken Schuman, Dee Dameron, Tony Rucker and Jackie Schnoop.

Bloggers were unable to post, or found their posts had disappeared (as with mine on the fraud at the school district) and comments were not able to be made by readers or posted by the bloggers.

Eventually, Blogger rolled back to an earlier archived version, removing all Wednesday and Thursday posts.

Ironically, Blogger personnel were able to communicate little about the difficulties or the solution they were trying to implement as all Blogger's service blogs are hosted on their own service. (Known as putting all your eggs in one basket, this is never a good strategy.)

Information Week, an IT magazine, offered an overview on its website Friday (see here), noting that Microsoft has also had outages with some of its web-hosted (or 'cloud') services this week.

Annoying as it is for bloggers and their readers, the outage may give pause to businesses contemplating shifting their information processing 'to the cloud'. In fact, ZDNet's Ed Bott blogs today (see here) that businesses would be wise not to adopt a cloud-only strategy. (ZDNet is the online presence of Ziff-Davis magazines, a stable of technology and business magazines.)

Small fry like Plainfield's blogging community have few options, though Plainfield Sports News and Dr. E=MC² and Piv for Plainfield are hosted on other blogging platforms.

Blogger offered an explanation in an email that I received at 4:33 PM Friday, which reads --

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored.  Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation.  We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain.

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish.  We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

Again, we are very sorry for the impact to our authors and readers.  We try hard to ensure Blogger is always available for you to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger

Meanwhile, bear with us as we make sure everything has been restored (I noticed one of my posts has disappeared completely), and if you tried and were unable to post comments on any of the blogs, give it another shot.

And now, we return you to our regularly scheduled program.

---

• Information Week:  "Cloud outages plague Google, Microsoft"
• ZDNet:  "Google's Blogger outage makes the case against a cloud-only strategy"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.

Blogger is swell, except when it ain't...

The folks at Blogger, who screwed things up royally somehow over the last two days have at least got the posting part back up. I am posting today's CLIPS.

I will reserve the other posts until Blogger has reconstructed the posts that were taken down for Wednesday and Thursday, just so we can se where we are.

Apologies to readers for the inconvenience, which has also affected almost all of Plainfield's blogs.

As the Romans used to say, 'ad astra'!

Unnamed Plainfield schools official involved in sports equipment fraud against District

An unnamed Plainfield school official allegedly took part in fraud against District.

 
Plainfield's school district was among a number in New Jersey allegedly defrauded by a sports equipment distributor, according to reports in today's Courier (see here), Lehigh Valley Live (see here), the New York Times (see here), and Forbes (see here).

An extended version of the story in the Courier's PRINT EDITION ONLY, lists the gift of golf clubs and a PalmPilot device (correction, only golf clubs were involved -- see 'NJ School #12' on page 19 of the indictment) to an unnamed Plainfield High School official as among the many items in the indictment (see here, PDF) against two of the firm's executives.

The firm would routinely engage in double-billing the victimized school districts -- apparently with the collusion of school athletic officials -- and would recoup the cost of such gifts as those given in the Plainfield case by submitting inflated bills.

In the same way, the firm would recover amounts donated to school fundraisers such as golf outings.

The investigation has been going on for about four years.

While many school officials are unnamed, it would not be unusual for the feds to pressure those who accepted gifts or participated in the fraud into testifying against those indicted in exchange for lesser charges against themselves.

So far, there has been nary a word from the Plainfield school district about who the official involved is (or was), when the alleged incidents happened, or what action has been taken.

Look for the Plainfield angle on this story to expand as the case unfolds.

---

• Courier:  "Two indicted in fraud against NJ schools"
• Lehigh Valley Live:  "Executives accused of double-billing schools almost $1M"
  
• New York Times:  "Circle Systems Group accused of defrauding many schools"
• Forbes:  "2 sports gear firm execs charged in NJ fraud"
  
• Federal District Court, NJ:  "Indictment: Kurlander and Abeshaus (PDF)"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

View today's CLIPS here. Not getting your own CLIPS email daily? Click here to subscribe.