What You May Have Missed

If you're not following the Gillette on Hillsborough Facebook page here, you may have missed some photos and stories that don't appear as posts on this blog - like my recent post about Miss Cora Wyckoff, the Lehigh Valley Railroad station agent at Flagtown in the 1890s.

You may also have missed all of the "extra" photos I took at Duke Farms this year while researching the Then and Now series.


Follow Gillette on Hillsborough by "liking" the Facebook page here - you'll never miss a post.

Welcome Readers, Welcome, Welcome!

"Welcome to the new Hillsborough Blog." I wrote those words June 7, 2007.

Eight years, nearly 800 posts, and about a quarter of a million page-views later, I am still welcoming new readers to "Gillette on Hillsborough".

Courier News, June 13, 2007

The Courier News began excerpting blog posts on their editorial page beginning with the one above about "Locks of Love" - my third post.

If you know anyone who would enjoy reading about Hillsborough, Somerset County, or Central New Jersey please invite them to follow the Gillette on Hillsborough Facebook Page by clicking on the link below.

Gillette on Hillsborough Facebook Page

Blidget Widget

Do you have a web page or blog about Hillsborough or Central Jersey? Consider adding the Gillette on Hillsborough widget to your page! You can find the Gillette on Hillsborough widget down a bit in the right column of the blog. Click on "Get Widget" to bring up the embedding options.

New Looks

Blogger has recently introduced five new, fun ways to view the blog.

Start here with "Mosaic", http://www.cnhillsborough.blogspot.com/view/mosaic#!/ , then check out the rest.

"Snapshot" is pretty cool - displaying every single image that has ever appeared in "Gillette on Hillsborough".  If you see something that looks interesting, just click on the pic to bring up the related blog post.

"Flipcard" has the ability to show thumbnails all of the nearly 700 posts on one page.

Have fun.

All the Old News That Didn't Fit

The end of the year is almost here - and I still have so much more to write.

Here are some of the stories I just couldn't find time for in 2010.

• The murder of eleven-year-old Josephine Krysowaty
• Forty years of Hillsborough Twp. High School Football
• Somerset County's "Amazing Race"
• The history of Woods Tavern
• Hillsborough's most famous, and outspoken, freed slave
• Elmer Clawson, boy murderer
• The tragic murder of Bell executive Andrew J. Morton
• The railroad that put "Hillsboro" on the map

As is usually the case, the only thing separating a job well done from a piece of garbage, is having the time to do the job right.

The beginning of a new year offers nothing if not time.

GoHillsborough (dot blogspot dot com)

Today's post marks the third anniversary of Gillette on Hillsborough.

Over the past three years the blog has received about 25,000 visits, and almost 40,000 page views.  Not bad for a blog that has never mentioned Miley Cyrus, Gossip Girl, or any of the Kardashians!

The vast majority of readers still arrive at the blog through a search engine, which is just fine.

Many find their way here through links on other sites, or have this blog bookmarked on their computers.

I am contemplating changing the web address of the blog from cnhillsborough.blogspot.com - a reference to the Courier News - to gohillsborough.blogspot.com - which can stand for Gillette on Hillsborough, or just "Go Hillsborough!".  There really is no good reason to keep the vestigial reference to the Courier News affixed firmly to the front of the web site.

I only hope readers will still be able to find the blog after the switch, as Blogger offers no good way to automatically redirect to the correct site.

Anyway, stay tuned for a switch around July 1, 2010.

Blockhead Pens 600th Post

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” - Samuel Johnson, April 1776

James Boswell noted Dr. Johnson's remark during a conversation in which Johnson was explaining why he would not be writing about his upcoming trip to Italy.  Why go to all that trouble if you are not getting paid for it?

I have often asked that question of myself in the course of writing the previous 599 entries of this blog.  I confess there are many days I am in complete agreement with Johnson. 

When I began writing "Gillette on Hillsborough" for the Courier News in 2007, I thought of this enterprise as a bit of an adventure.  A chance to try something new.  The newspaper showed me how to get started on Blogger - on a page with no ads that would be linked to from the newspaper's website.  This seemed reasonable enough to me.  I wasn't getting paid - and neither were they.  The blog was purely a public service with no cost to the newspaper.

Over the course of the first two years, the blog also appeared 175 times on the Courier News editorial page.  This pleased me as it allowed many more readers to come into contact with the blog than would ever look for it on the computer.  During the second year, the Courier News switched from Blogger to a proprietary blog format - on a page filled with ads.  In the third year they switched again - to a proprietary blog format based on WordPress, also filled with ads that I did not control.  Then editorial page changes at the Courier News and Home News Tribune eliminated the revolving "Local Voices" section from the page.

During these past two years then, I have kept up BOTH versions - "Gillette on Hillsborough" at the original Blogger site, and "The View From Hillsborough", as it is now called, at MyCentralJersey.com.  I even experimented with putting ads on the Blogger site - but there just isn't enough traffic to generate any income of note. (I have yet to reach the $100 threshold where they will actually send you a check!)  Since the original Blogger site has about four times as many visits each week as the MyCentralJersey.com site, I would assume that the newspaper isn't making any money from me either.

So here I am back at Johnson's question - why go through all the trouble?  I get little enjoyment from it, and it takes a fair amount of time.  Still, I derive satisfaction from having written these posts.  I can look back on the 600, and state that the vast majority of them are unique to this blog.  In other words - no one else is writing about Hillsborough's past and present the way I am.

The Courier News surely no longer recognizes my work on this blog as having any sort of value - indeed they have valued it at $0.00.  No matter.  When I quit or move the blog to another newspaper all they will be losing is one blockhead, they've still got a boatload.

Simpler Math

Here's the scoop. I've been dealing with a $109 million math problem for months now, and it just got a lot worse - $5.16 million worse.

If you want an idea of how crazy it's been, you need look no further than the Hillsborough Blog itself.

All through the last two school budget seasons - roughly November through March for the finance committee, I was perfectly able to keep up my blog posts here with no problem.

This year is a completely different story, as you can see by adding up the meager number of posts I have made since November of 2009.

November 2009 - 5
December 2009 - 15
January 2009 - 10
February 2009 - 10
March 2009 - 6

Total 46


Now that's the kind of math I had almost forgotten existed!

Something's Missing

Just a few weeks after MyCentralJersey.com editors took note of my blog post about the search for a missing Hillsborough boy in 1970, the web site has launched a Missing Persons Gallery where readers can view pictures and brief stories of New Jersey missing persons cases going as far back as 1973.

There have already been over 200,000 visits to the web site, and a handful of the missing have been located.

Thank You...and, you're welcome!

....everybody has one

What is truth? There is little in the world that is universally self-evident. Almost everything is open to debate. Even two groups looking at the same set of established facts can come to different conclusions about what those facts represent. That's why we have nine members of the Supreme Court - and, more to the point, why at the end of a case they "render an opinion".

I would hope that everyone who reads this blog understands that, while I present many facts, the commentary I write along with them is only my opinion. When I make a factual mistake, I am glad to correct it. I invite readers to point out mistakes, and to tell me that I'm crazy to have a certain opinion.

I also invite readers to give me their opinions, understanding full well that our views may differ. You will never be bludgeoned on this blog for letting my readers know how you feel.

Seek and Ye Shall Find

I recently added a new search box to the blog. You can find it over there on the right of the page. For some reason it appears to give better results than the search function in the top left corner. Results appear in a box at the top of the page in a typical Google format. You can also expand your search to results contained elsewhere in cyberspace.

Another way to find things on this blog is by using the categories on the right side of the page. I have been very stingy in my use of "tags" or "labels" with my posts. This has allowed me to develop an index of Hillsborough topics. It's easy to browse an area that is of interest to you.

Happy searching!

Gillette On Hillsborough 2.0

"Thirty days hath September, All the rest I can't remember..."

That comic alternative to the useful monthly mnemonic seems oddly apropos for a blog where every month has the same number of posts except September - which once again this year had zero.

Not writing the blog for a full month has given me some time to consider whether I still want to continue. I can't deny that I have lately lost some enthusiasm. For one thing, I am extremely disappointed that a change in the way the Courier News handles the layout of their Editorial Page has meant that the local blog excerpts have been banished. Gillette on Hillsborough appeared in that space 175 times over a two year period - and the opportunity to be on the Editorial page was a major selling point when I first got roped into this.

Also, the lack of reader comments in recent months has been discouraging. Not only on this blog, but also at The View From Hillsborough - the sister blog at MyCentralJersey.com. In fact, The View From Hillsborough has not received one single comment since the newspaper switched to the new blog format several months ago!

Still, the pages here have been visited 20,000 times since June 7, 2007, and I still enjoy seeing what everyone is searching for, and which pages are the most popular. From the beginning, part of the allure of doing the blog has been wanting to find out who would read this stuff. And the other part would be to see how I would feel about myself and the town for having tried this.

Twenty-eight months ago I wrote, "I need to do this because I am excited about Hillsborough - its people, its past,what it is, and what it can be." That is still true.

And so -this will be the blog 2.0.

To be continued...

Share This

Observant readers will notice something new about the Blogger web page today. Up there, at the top of the page, "SEARCH BLOG", "FLAG BLOG", "FOLLOW BLOG", and now, "SHARE".

"Share" is a convenient way to let other people know about something you have read in the blog. By clicking "Share" the url for Gillette On Hillsborough can be posted to Facebook, Google Reader, or Twitter.

Even better, if you are looking at an individual blog post - by clicking on the title of the post, for instance - "Share" will allow you to easily email that post to a friend.

Please use this new feature to pass along anything of interest.

What's Coming Up?

I've spent much of the past week reading and organizing my notes. Some of the things I will be writing about in the upcoming weeks include:

• More on Anna Case
• The 206 bypass - again!
• Something about Tony Camillo
• Gleanings from the 1850 Somerset County map
• That OTHER Depot
• And lots more Weird, Wild and Wicked - including Hillsborough's ORIGINAL health care debate!

New Day, New Blog Format

[I have a new blog format over at MyCentralJersey.com, and a new name for the blog - The View From Hillsborough. Here is the first post.]

Welcome to the third iteration of the “Hillsborough Blog” in thirteen months, aptly titled The View From Hillsborough.

To those readers who have made the journey from the old Blogger site past the MyCentralJersey site and finally here, THANK YOU!

It’s been quite a trip already, but there’s still more to see. What’s ahead for Hillsborough? How did we get here? I’ll give you my take on what’s happening - and I want to hear from you, too.

Come share the View.

The Traditional Second Anniversary Blog

If you are reading this in the print edition of the Courier News, congratulations! To you, dear reader, and the newspaper. Since I started writing "On Hillsborough" in June 2007, dozens of newspapers nationwide have shut down their presses - 120 just since January 2008.

Ad revenue for America's newspapers was 23% lower in 2008 than in 2007, mostly due to dwindling circulation. And I don't have to tell you who the culprit is. If you are NOT reading this in the newspaper, you already know.

What happens when newspapers fold? Big cities that were once home to two or more competing papers are now down to one. And some one-paper-towns, like San Francisco, may soon have no daily newspaper at all.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Gannett - the parent company of the Courier and the Home News Tribune - and its major competitor McClatchy will likely survive, but it has already been painful. Many local newspaper employees have been terminated or furloughed - while revenues continue to plummet.

So, is the newspaper dead? I don't think so. As people continue to turn to the internet to get their information, there is no reason newspapers can't incorporate what makes the 'net work into their print editions. The Courier News and Home News Tribune have already begun to do that by cross-promoting their special and general interest blogs, and there is so much more that can be done.

I am excited to begin my third year writing "Gillette on Hillsborough". As the traditional second anniversary gift is cotton, I think I may go out tomorrow and pick up some cotton paper, the archival stuff that lasts 200 years, and print out a couple of my blog posts for posterity. Because when it comes right down to it, it's the "ones and zeros" that are most ephemeral. It's the paper that lasts.

Let's hope that goes for newspaper too.

Are You Reading?

I'd like to get a sense of how many readers are reading the version of this blog at MyCentralJersey.com. They don't show me the stats over there, so it is hard for me to determine how many people are seeing the blog excerpt in the newspaper, and then going to their computer to read the rest of it on the web.

If you have read Gillette on Hillsborough over there, would you be so kind as to go back using this link www.mycentraljersey.com/ggillette and hit the "recommend" button?

Let's see if we can get it up to a respectable number!

25,000

This week, Gillette on Hillsborough reached 25,000 page views - according to Google Analytics. Thanks, readers!

I began keeping track of visits to the blog in July 2007, about a month after I began writing. In May of 2008, the Courier News switched to a proprietary blog format - one where I am not able to track visits and page views. Nevertheless, I have continued keeping stats on THIS version of the blog, and although I assume most people now read the MyCentralJersey.com version promoted in the newspaper, there are still plenty of readers here!

Enough to eke out 25,000 look-sees anyway!

400 Reasons to Clean Up Your Act

Inspired by Hillsborough's upcoming Annual Spring Clean-Up Program and the promise of a big neighborhood garage sale at the end of next month, I decided this week to clean up and clean out the study.

Over the last several months - make that years! - my once spacious retreat has turned into the island of misfit toys. The kids unwanted and unloved playthings competing for space with all kinds of computer peripherals in various states of repair, piles of old bills and tax stuff in need of filing (or shredding), and a seven-foot tower of school board agendas and attachments teetering ominously in the corner.

It got so cluttered I could barely get to my desk to type these blog entries.

But of course the real reason I finally got out the shovel is I will do almost anything to avoid writing when I have nothing to say. And, I guess, even after 399 entries of Gillette on Hillsborough, I still care enough about it to at least TRY to have some real content in every piece.

With the exception of the 400th, apparently!

Thinking Time

Believe it or not - and looking back on some of my recent posts I realize you'll have to take my word on this - but writing this blog takes a lot of time.

Not writing time. Thinking time.

I haven't had much time to think about the blog these past few weeks. I have been thinking about the school budget.

Intuition is useful, first impressions are often right on the money, and doing "something" is arguably better than doing "nothing". But for real problem-solving, I don't believe there is any more useful tool than the human brain.

The more time you can devote to a problem, the better the solution will be.

At the very least, you can say you tried!