Run

My dad was an active runner for less than 20 years, beginning in 1977 at the age of 46 and continuing until illness sidelined him at the age of 64.  He was an avid competitor, continually challenging himself in literally hundreds of road races, including 40 marathons.

Jersey Shore Marathon - 1980

Boston Marathon - 1990

New York City Marathon - 1991

I spent some time these last few days of the year scanning the many dozens of photos that my dad had kept from those days.  I combined them into one of those photo mosaic collages.

Click on this photo from the 1993 New York City Marathon to see the photos

Atheist Scientific Doctor Children's Research Hospital?

Last month, actress Marlo Thomas appeared on NBC's Today Show on behalf of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the Memphis research and treatment center dedicated to finding the cures for catastrophic diseases in children, founded by her father Danny Thomas in 1955.  The segment, which included a family who had been helped by the hospital, was wholly unremarkable save for one innocent remark by host Natalie Morales, followed by a brief retort by Ms. Thomas. Watch below.

“Colin’s story is just another example of the incredible work, the miracles that are performed at St. Jude…”

 “It’s not a miracle though, it’s science. This is what we do at St. Jude…”

The exchange is mild, honest, and relevant - doctors absolutely deserve credit for their amazing work and the dedication that provides them with the insights necessary to advance towards the goal of eliminating childhood disease.  And the spot was the typical kind you see during the fundraising season.

I didn't give this incident a second thought until I began to see the exchange pop up on Facebook and various blogs as a triumphant thumb to the eye of religion.  Are atheists really applauding this? Does the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital want talk of miracles banished from their bio?  That's weird.

Here's an excerpt from the Hospital's web site:

More than 70 years ago, Danny Thomas, then a struggling young entertainer with a baby on the way, visited a Detroit church and was so moved during the Mass, he placed his last $7 in the collection box. When he realized what he’d done, Danny prayed for a way to pay the looming hospital bills. The next day, he was offered a small part that would pay 10 times the amount he’d given to the church. Danny had experienced the power of prayer.

A couple of years later, doing better but still struggling, Danny Thomas prayed to St. Jude, one of the twelve apostles and the patron saint of hopeless causes, promising that if he found his way, he would one day build a shrine to St. Jude.  A decade later, after achieving international stardom, that shrine took the form of the famous research hospital named in honor of the martyred saint.

I would ask nonbelievers to take a break from their victory lap to compose a letter to Marlo Thomas, asking her to remove any mention of St. Jude from the hospital and charitable foundation that bears his name.  My suggestion would be to rename it Atheist Scientific Doctor Children's Research Hospital.

Just watch the donations pour in then.

Choose and Cut Your Memories - 2014 Update

Here's an update to a post I wrote in 2008 - and last updated in 2009 - about our annual visit to Shadow Hill Farm



One of the nice things about having the Christmas tree in the family room - in the corner between the fireplace and the T.V. - instead of the living room where we used to put it, is that we are able to enjoy it more. And not just during the commercials!

As I have been sitting here looking at the tree, it occurs to me that in the last several years, we've never had a bad one. I can't remember one scrawny, needle dropping, flimsy-limbed fir in at least the last ten years. [make that 15 years now!]

The reason must be that we always choose and cut our tree at Shadow Hill Farm on Grandview Road in Skillman. I can only think of maybe two years since the mid 90s when we purchased a tree elsewhere - and in at least one of those years I believe it was because the farm didn't open!

The setting - at the top a hill at the edge of the Sourlands - is gorgeous and serene, the proprietors are friendly and helpful, and the trees are top-notch!

But, of course, as I sit here and look at the tree - all trimmed out, and tricked out, with ornaments and lights - I don't really see the Christmas tree at all.

2014

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Amwell Road Bypass

Did you find the Sourland Mountain Tavern?

When I first saw the reverse of this postcard, I thought about all of the larger older homes located along Amwell Road in the vicinity of the village of Neshanic.  

It didn't take too long to realize that there was no place like this near Neshanic.  It then occurred to me that the tavern didn't need to be near Neshanic at all - that's just a postal address.  I live near the intersection of Beekman Lane and Triangle Road, yet for the first ten years we were here - before the Hillsborough 08844 post office was established, our postal address was Neshanic Station!  So forget Neshanic.

After this revelation, I remained stumped.  It was when I sought the assistance of a long-time resident that I realized where I had gone wrong:  I had forgotten the true, original route of the historic Amwell Road!  The road I had been searching is really the Amwell Road Bypass, constructed about 25 years ago between the intersection of East Mountain Road and Marshall Road, and shown on the map below.

To find the Sourland Mountain Tavern, we need to traverse the old Amwell Road, which today has been renamed to become extensions of both East Mountain Road and South Branch Road, and is shown on the map below.





Once I knew where to look, it was easy to find this private home near Foothill Acres on East Mountain Road.

For some reason, I think I could go for a spaghetti and chicken dinner right about now, how about you?

Sourland Mountain Tavern Postcard

Here's a postcard I picked up recently.  This house still stands in Hillsborough, but it is no longer a tavern/restaurant.  Have you seen it?  I have!  

Not many clues here.  I must admit, I needed to contact a lifelong Hillsborough resident to locate "The Ideal Resting Place" - by the way, that phrase itself is a clue!

One last hint: the postcard may be from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, or 80s, based on the address, but probably not any later.  Think you've got it?  Answer tomorrow.

19th Century MeetUp at Belle Mead

"My darling:  Just before I left the house this morning I received two letters from you, one postmarked July 3 at Philadelphia & the other July 4 at Belle Mead.  I was glad to hear that you are feeling better."  So begins the letter written by thirty-one-year-old patent attorney Edmond Brown to his wife Mary on the evening of Thursday, July 5, 1894.  Just two ordinary people engaging in typical 19th-century communication - no Facebook, no Twitter, no email, no texts;  an era before the ubiquity of the telephone when your arrival by train at your destination could easily precede the posted announcement of your travel plans!

Mr. Brown was writing from his New York City office to his wife who was staying with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. James. L. Brush, in Plainville - a small village in Montgomery Twp. which has since been subsumed by the Carrier Clinic's East Mountain Hospital.  Mary had recently been in Philadelphia but was feeling poorly.  It was hoped that a short stay "out in the country" would restore the twenty-nine-year-old city-girl to good health.  Could either husband or wife have known that Mary was as much as two months pregnant with their first child who would be born in February of the next year?

Plainville is just a short carriage ride from Belle Mead Station
 as depicted on this turn of the century Somerset County map.

After encouraging his wife to take her medicine, and describing how he eventually was able to get some relief from his hay fever by trying a new remedy ("I feel like another person today"), Edmond Brown continued the letter by laying out his travel plans.

Southbound passenger train at Belle Mead Station.
"If you hear the train, remember that your husband is passing by within a few miles of you."

The next day he would take the 11:30 from New York to Philadelphia, conduct some business, and return the same day on the 4:34, passing through Belle Mead at 6:46 pm.  If Mary had a message for him, she should write it out and have someone bring it to the station.

Northbound, approaching Belle Mead Station

"I will be out on the platform of the car as it stops, and on the lookout for a letter.....tell Harry to stand on the station platform, on the side of the track away from the station, and to look for me on the platforms of the cars"

Belle Mead Station, looking north

If Mary desired a brief visit, it might be possible for him to disembark at Belle Mead, and then catch the 8:10 pm train from Flagtown Station to continue to New York.  Considering the travel time by horse-drawn coach between the stations and Plainville, this would have to be a very brief visit, perhaps only a few minutes.  Between this paragraph and the concluding one, there is a two-sentence disclaimer, probably inserted just before sealing the envelope, advising Mary to not be bothered with any of this just to please him.  Perhaps on reading through his letter, Mr. Brown felt that his plans sounded too much like orders.

"If you want to see me, dearest, very bad, and can arrange with somebody
 to drive me to Flagtown to get the 8:10 p.m. train from there to N.Y.,
 send me word and I can stop off at Belle Mead & come up to the house for a little visit."

Finally, we are left with this last paragraph.  In my opinion, unmatched in the era of the emoji. Read and enjoy:

Dear little wife - I don't dare to make my letters too affectionate for fear you will think I am missing you so much you must hurry back - and yet I must tell you that I love you, darling, and long to have you with me again.  But I want you to stay there as long as it does you good, and then come home, to your own little house & to your husband that loves you so much, and let him try with all his heart to make you happy.  May God bless you, darling wife, I love you, dear, dear, little girl. - Goodbye - Your Husband

Benghazi - What Difference, at this Point, Does it Make?

The seventh - or eighth, who can keep track? - congressional investigation into the September 11, 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya released its report on Friday evening in typical weekend-news-dump style, designed to be buried, forgotten, and not transmitted to a wide audience - although the two mentions of the report on Fox News through Sunday morning still beat the zero mentions of Jonathan Gruber on NBC Nightly News these past two weeks.

The report swept away all of the conspiracies concerning possible failures of intelligence, inadequate security, stand-down orders, and the like.

Good.

These were all canards.  Foolish assertions that smacked of blaming-the-victim, and not conducive to finding answers to the questions that still trouble many Americans two years later.

So, in the words of Hillary Clinton, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"   Isn't it just all about politics now?

Well, yes.  But it's been about politics since the day after the attack. And the day after that.  And for weeks and months, and now years later.

This is what Hillary Clinton said when she testified before congress in January 2013, four-and-a-half months after the attack:

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?            

The difference it makes is that the attack was neither of those things.  It was not a violent protest in reaction to an anti-Muslim video.  It was not a random act by "guys out for a walk".  It was a premeditated, well planned terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9-11.

In the days after the attack, the State Department edited intelligence community talking points, deleting all references to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.  This allowed a new narrative to take shape - the narrative of the YouTube video, the spontaneous protest.

The reluctance of the Obama administration to call it what it was - from the day after the attack when the president broadly mentioned "act of terror", but blamed the video, to appearances on talk shows, where he blamed the video, to Susan Rice's Sunday show appearances, where she blamed the video, all the way up through Clinton's congressional testimony, the public was continually misdirected away from "terrorist attack" towards "YouTube video".  President Obama even went to the UN two weeks after the attack and once again blamed the video.

Why?  Politics.  In the weeks and months before the election, the Obama administration would not allow that a terrorist attack had taken place.  Not while Osama bin Laden was dead and Al Qaeda was "on the run".  It would have destroyed the narrative.

The entire sad episode is shameful.  But as long as we still value the idea that there can be virtuous people in government service, it still matters when we look around and don't see any.

Let's Remember How Hillsborough Won the War

Two noteworthy township events over the last several weeks  - the renaming of the municipal building driveway and the dedication of Mountain View Park - seem interestingly linked in the lead up to Veteran's Day.

On October 10, Mayor Doug Tomson was joined by Congressman Leonard Lance, Assemblywoman Donna Simon, local and county officials, and members of the Rotary Club of Hillsborough at a ceremony to rename the driveway of the Peter J. Biondi Building "Veterans Way" as a fitting tribute to all those who have served our country.

A couple of weeks later, Tomson, Simon, Freeholder Pat Walsh, members of the Somerset County Parks Commission, and others were photographed at the site of the Belle Mead GSA Depot for a ribbon-cutting to announce the beginning of the construction phase in the transformation of the depot into Somerset County's "Mountain View Park".

Belle Mead ASF Depot World War II era main gate

This second event was derided by some as being considerably less than newsworthy - nothing more than a pre-election photo op.  For me - and perhaps I missed an earlier announcement - the news was the name: "Mountain View Park".  I was unaware that a name had been chosen for the planned athletic complex.

Belle Mead ASF Depot Guards ready for inspection

The two ceremonies are linked because of their juxtaposition.  In the first case, a nondescript driveway is renamed in honor of our veterans.  In the second, the history of the nation's largest World War II era military supply depot is blotted out with one green billboard.

Belle Mead ASF Depot first anniversary, August 1943

As someone who would have liked to have seen Auten Road School named Veterans Memorial School when it was built 15 years ago, I can and do support the renaming of the municipal building drive.  And I have no particular objection to the name "Mountain View Park".

But as the citizens of the neighboring town of Raritan are justifiably proud and continually pay tribute to their greatest World War II hero, Sgt. John Basilone, with bridges and statues and parades, I would argue that Hillsborough's greatest World War II hero was the Belle Mead Army Service Forces Depot and, by association, all of the thousands of military and civilian personnel who were employed there during the war.

Gasoline drums ready for overseas shipment, May 1944

Let's be clear, the Belle Mead Depot wasn't just one of many dozens of supply depots scattered around the US in the 1940s.  Hillsborough's depot was the largest and greatest.  Its proximity to the New York and New Jersey ports made it THE vital classification way-point for overseas shipments.

Newark Evening News, June 1, 1944

It was no coincidence that reporters were allowed their very first access to the depot just one week before June 6, 1944.  The immense amount of war materiel  - not stored at the depot as much as continually moving through -  would have been enough to intimidate any opponent.  Much like the weigh-in before the championship bout, the sight of Belle Mead before D-Day was more than impressive.

Let's keep alive the memories of the thousands of military and civilian personnel, many from Somerset County, who fought and won the war right here in Hillsborough.  Let's make sure that one of the construction phases of "Mountain View Park" includes, at least, an interpretive display of the history of the Belle Mead Army Service Forces Depot and the part it played in defeating fascism and preserving freedom and liberty in America and around the world.

"A Man Called Van Aken", Part Four

An elevator ride to the fourth floor of a New York City office building doesn't take very long, even in 1897, but there was probably enough time for sixty-four-year-old former real estate developer William Van Aken to contemplate his next move.  Stepping quickly into the car, guided by a nameless, hardened accomplice recruited just that morning, he heard the elevator boy call out, "What floor, mister?"  Van Aken replied enthusiastically, "Fourth-floor office of J.R. McPherson - I will see him if I have to wait all day.  This thing has got to be settled!"

Illustration from the May 19, 1897 edition of the New York World

Listening to the inner and outer doors clap shut, Van Aken thought back to his last meeting with the millionaire senator from New Jersey.  In 1879 Van Aken proposed that McPherson purchase the approximately 800 acres of foreclosed property at Belle Mead, New Jersey, for the bargain price of $30,000, continue Van Aken's plan to create a small industrial city on the site, and split the profits 50-50.  

McPherson did indeed purchase the land, and although he did not fulfill Van Aken's original scheme - opting instead to embark on a project to create a world-class dairy operation and estimable farming enterprise - wasn't it true that Belle Mead Farm was an enormous success, and that Van Aken never saw a cent?  Didn't the senator sell out in 1891 during his third term when he was being talked up for a presidential run?  Weren't there profits aplenty?  In any case, wasn't McPherson the president of the Western Stockyards Company?  Surely he would like to settle the matter!

Illustration from the May 19, 1897 edition of the New York Herald

As the elevator boy announced, "Fourth Floor", Van Aken contemplated what his life had been like these past eighteen years.  At first, he was active in many other land and business interests all across the country.  But as the years passed, it seemed he couldn't catch a break.   Even his most promising investment in the Kansas City Terminal was tied up in litigation.  He was still wearing fine suits, but now they were noticeably ten years old.  In the final indignity, he was nearly totally blind due to a botched cataract operation. For a while, his son sent him money from Chicago, but for the past eighteen months, he had been living at the modest Adams House Hotel at the corner of Gansevoort Square as a guest of the proprietor, an old friend.

With his companion urging him forward, Van Aken departed the elevator and swept right past McPherson's personal secretary and into the inner office.  The startled former senator, frail even for a sixty-five-year-old, had no time to rise from his desk before Van Aken was put into a chair and pushed right up to McPherson, their knees almost touching.  "I guess you know who I am and why I am here", stated Van Aken.

19 May 1897 New York Tribune

"That matter is tied up in the courts", replied McPherson, referring to the suit Van Aken had brought six months earlier to recover part, if not all, of the $280,000 he spent developing the Belle Mead property. "I refuse to enter into any further discussion".

"I am tired and sick of lawyers and courts.  I'll have no more to do with courts".  And, raising his voice now in anger, Van Aken continued, "I want this case settled without the courts!"

With that, Van Aken's accomplice shoved his master's chair abruptly forward so that the combatants' knees banged together.  Leaning closer now to the feeble senator the blind man breathed intensely, "If you won't settle it, then by God I will settle it!"

Trial of William Van Aken
as illustrated in the June 22, 1897 edition of the New York Herald

Letting loose a rage that had been smoldering for years, Van Aken lunged across the desk and grabbed in his darkness for McPherson.  The frightened McPherson was just able to dodge Van Aken's grasp and start towards the door leading to the outer office.  Out of his chair now, reaching out in the barely distinguishable shadows, Van Aken sprang for his adversary.  At the same moment, the brutish thug gave McPherson a shove which landed him in Van Aken's arms.  

They struggled at the doorway, Van Aken's left hand squeezing so tightly to the former senator's right wrist that he cried out in pain.  "Now will you settle?", he questioned as he slid his right hand into his hip pocket and reached for a .44 caliber revolver,

By this time McPherson's private secretary Edward Low had arrived from the anteroom and assessed the situation.  The moment Van Aken's hand went into his pocket, Low's hand followed.  The fearless secretary, the husband of the former senator's niece, managed to get his finger in between the trigger and the guard of the weapon, preventing the revolver from being discharged.  The three struggled in the doorway while Van Aken's accomplice, realizing that the tide had turned, escaped out of the office and down the stairs.

Van Aken held fast to McPherson's wrist, as Low held fast to the revolver, the fighting lasting four or five minutes and spilling finally into the outer hallway.  Low exhorted the senator to call out.  "Help! Murder!", he shouted as the other fourth-floor tenants came out into the hallway.  Just then the elevator doors opened and the building janitor appeared, delivering a mighty blow to the chin of Van Aken, causing him to at last release the gun which was retrieved by Low.

Still holding McPherson's wrist, Van Aken began to curse, "You've ruined me, ruined me.  And treated me like a dog!"

Five weeks later at the trial for attempted murder, Van Aken's lawyer did a good job of showing there was no proof that his client went to McPherson's office that day to murder the former senator, or even to assault him - and in fact, did not even remove the revolver from his pocket.  When Mr. Low testified that Van Aken and his accomplice appeared to be unprincipled men, the defense attorney saw an opening.  "Did you ever know Mr. Van Aken to do anything so unprincipled as this, being a United States Senator, to speculate in stock certificates when their value would rise or fall according to his vote?", referring to the incident near the end of McPherson's third term when he was nearly laughed out of the Senate for explaining that a telegram authorizing stock transactions that he meant to throw away was accidentally left out and sent by one of his servants.

After this, the defense attorney asked for an immediate acquittal, which was granted - although Van Aken was still ordered to be held over for possession of an unlicensed firearm.

"A Man Called Van Aken", Part Three

When Jeremiah, "Uncle Jerry", Rusk stepped off the train for his first visit to Belle Mead Farm in the summer of 1889, the newly minted United States Secretary of Agriculture, long time Wisconsin congressman, and three-term governor probably wasn't expecting to see anything special.  Apart from his Civil War service, where he rose in the ranks from major to brevet brigadier general, he had spent most of his life in the Midwest where farms, even innovative ones, were plenty.

"Jeremiah McLain Rusk - Brady-Handy"
by Mathew Brady - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection.

He was greeted at the three-story, telegraph-equipped station by two gentlemen - the farm's proud proprietor, United States Senator John R, McPherson, and the farm manager, New Jersey Assemblyman Jacob Klotz.  That past winter Klotz had dutifully returned to the assembly to vote his boss to the Senate for a third consecutive term, now he was back at the farm ready to show it off.

Belle Mead station circa 1908

Boarding a carriage waiting behind the station, the three men started off on their tour.  McPherson explained that he had purchased the property several years previously in a foreclosure sale when real estate developer William B. Van Aken's cash-flow and marital problems forced him to abandon the industrial city he envisioned for the site.  It was now the millionaire senator who was the beneficiary of the railroad line secured by Van Aken, as well as the hundreds of thousands of dollars in land improvements instituted by the entrepreneur.

The rear of Belle Mead station, circa 1910

As the carriage drove out from the station and headed for the Somerset County countryside, Uncle Jerry got his first look at what he later described as "the finest cattle farm in the Eastern States."  But Belle Mead Farm comprised more than just a prize-winning dairy herd.  Spread out among the dozen farmhouses - including the senator's own "country home" - and the dozen enormous barns, were 10,000 peach trees, hundreds of other fruit trees, 100 acres of oat, 100 acres of wheat, a science-based chicken operation, and a game preserve.

1909 map of Belle Mead Farm.
West is at the top of the map, and the "macadam road" - Rt. 601 today -
should actually be to the north (right) of the station.

According to a contemporary story from the Reading Eagle, "Rabbits, ducks, partridges, guinea fowls, carrier pigeons, and domestic animals of every description abound in the woods." The secretary was astounded to see quail and plover "flying in all directions".

Heading west from Belle Mead station

For the wealthy senator who had made his fortune in the cattle business, and had even patented a design for an improved railroad cattle car, money was no object in assembling a herd for his new farm.  In the preceding four years, determined to have the best dairy operation in the country, McPherson purchased only the finest pedigreed Holsteins and Jerseys from across the United States and Europe.

Secretary of Agriculture Jeremiah Rusk (middle-ground left)
 and Senator John R. McPherson (middle-ground right)
 at the Belle Mead herd dispersal auction, 1891

Klotz was especially proud of DeBless, the "queen of Belle Mead", who produced forty quarts of milk a day, double the production of most good milkers - and there were plenty of other champions in the 300 strong herd.  Cows grazed on hundreds of acres of Kentucky Bluegrass - McPherson was the first to cultivate it in the North - and benefited from the enormous quantities of corn being raised for fodder, as the gentleman farmer was the first in the country to use the ensilage process.

Senator John R. McPherson's "farmhouse" at Belle Mead

As the men made their way back across the nearly 1300 acres to McPherson's finely-appointed farmhouse, the senator enthused about his upcoming trip to the far west where he hoped to pick up more cattle, and maybe even get into the racehorse breeding business.  Neither man knew that they would be together again less than two years later for the auction which would disperse the entire herd, or that William Van Aken would soon be seeking his revenge.

Read Part Four tomorrow!