Unexpected Beauty, Small yet Substantial

Cradled among the pines. 

While Pris and I were outdoors during the last week of October in the backyard, cleaning up before the arrival of cold weather (where did it go?), I came across a solitary leaf that had drifted from a nearby maple tree and gently settled within the blue needles of a dwarf spruce growing at the base of our rain garden.

Whenever I’m outdoors, everything about nature compels my eyes to observe and to ponder – however momentarily – the smallest of things such as, in this case, a leaf.  This one though, as also happens within the human family, stood out from all the others.

Had it been just one of those dried-up, crinkled foliage remnants of early fall, I might have simply brushed it off from the spruce and gone about my chores.

A Thanksgiving Message for all of Humanity

Annalee Dolls from Priscille's collection welcome our guests.

America is not such a bad place after all.  If it were, would there be such a tsunami of immigrants washing across this country seeking a better life?

The uncontrolled flow of immigrants into the United States would be even larger, were it not for two oceans separating us from the hundreds of thousands of Middle East refugees: 

They have no place to go, except to risk their lives to reach Europe and, once there, to seek solace and a good life in the heart of its great cities.

Moreover, if there were a geographic land bridge connecting the Middle East to America, Syrian refugees would be pouring across it to reach the U.S.

A visualization of the tired minds and bodies of undocumented Latin American immigrants streaming across our southern border, together with those of Syrian refugees desperately seeking asylum in Europe paints a self-evident picture:

Bridgewater-Raritan School Board Discloses Details of Teachers Union Salary Negotiations

For the first time in memory, the Board of Education for Bridgewater-Raritan Schools (the Board) has disclosed details of its ongoing salary and benefit negotiations with the teachers’ union, the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association (BREA).

Since February, both parties have been locked in secret negotiations, according to a release on the Board’s web site, the highlights of which follow:

The BREA seeks a three-year contract under which the Board has offered salary increases of 3.25%, 2.9%, and 2.9%, for years one, two and three respectively, for a cumulative three-year increase of 9.05%.

However, since multi-year salary increases are compounded over time, the Board’s actual three-year salary proposal to the BREA is 9.33%.

Bridgewater Township Governance – Hayes, Moench, and Henderson-Rose for Stability, Transparency and Robust Leadership

Updated, November 5, 2015, 2:36 PM

On Tuesday, November 3^rd, you get to vote in the Bridgewater Township Mayoral and Council elections.  For those of us who make Bridgewater our home, this may turn out to be the most influential among the other three contests on the ballot; namely, those of the schools, county, and state elections.

This is one of the few times in Bridgewater history that there has been a well-organized, concentrated push on behalf of new faces to oust all three incumbents.  This one is not a sleeper.

Competition in elections is good but, onto itself, an opposing field of candidates does not necessarily provide a compelling basis to replace an ongoing, effective leadership such as that which exists in Bridgewater.

The candidates striving to push out incumbents Mayor Dan Hayes and Council Members Matthew Moench and Christine Henderson-Rose simply have not come up with the beef, despite a bevy of claims, most of which don’t hold water.

RECOMMENDATION:  Although change is at times desirable, this is not the moment for it in Bridgewater.  It will not improve conditions here, will not change your real estate taxes for the better, and will disrupt a well-managed team running this township, one that is doing much better than most Bridgewaterites may suspect.

Fall in Somerset County, Late but Gorgeous

Color along Washington Valley Road. (Bergeron Image)

Last week has been one for refreshing my skills with photography.  I have two cameras, a Nikon D7000 series DSLR, and a Nikon Coolpix P600.  Both have quality sensors, the heart of any good digital camera.

 

The Coolpix is a light, smaller “bridge camera,” the designation used to describe the difference in size and heft between the larger, heavier DSLRs and the much smaller slide-in-your-pocket cameras that are now becoming endowed with much more power and quality.

Maybe, someday, a genius entrepreneur will combine all the photo-taking qualities of those three camera types into a single smartphone.  Several decades ago, who would have dreamed that pixels generated by a chip would consign celluloid film to the museums of photography?