Columns
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•April 26, 2012
The Wicked Wisteria and the Wicked Tuna All Wrapped
I’m groggy as I write this column (Tuesday a.m.). I had a seriously punctuated sleep session last night. Wild west winds were partying like a buncha drunken spring breakers; kicking stuff around my…
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•April 25, 2012
Maritime Disaster on Delaware River
When you think about great New Jersey maritime disasters, your mind usually pictures a deserted beach in a raging nor’easter. But one of the worst on record took place not off the east coast of the…
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•April 19, 2012
‘Starving Artist’ Lived Disciplined Life
As the nation was embroiled in World War II, Hugh Campbell was living in a 15-by-15-foot tarpaper shack, with no running water, on Sunset Drive near the Rancocas Creek in Mount Holly. N.J. He had…
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•April 19, 2012
Irene ‘Retired’ and ALO Puts a New Twist on ‘Sea Sweepers’
It was a Friday last August and the Island should have been jumping. It seems like a lifetime ago; so surreal.
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•April 16, 2012
English Transfer Ware Value Is Century-Long Mainstay
For thousands of years, artisans were making adornments for human decoration. Most of the items were made for royalty and the wealthy. They were mostly made of precious metals and gems. The fruits of…
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•April 16, 2012
Times Are a-Changing: Young Disregard ‘Old Treasures’
Three years ago, I wrote four columns that were intended to bring my readers up-to-date regarding the status of various antiques and collectibles that had entered a stage of change with regard to…
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•April 12, 2012
The Thoreau of Rancocas Creek
When you hear the expression “starving artist,” perhaps your mind turns to Greenwich Village or someone wearing a beret on the left bank of the River Seine, not to someone trudging the dirt roads of…
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•April 5, 2012
Ephraim P. Emson
Sometimes a series about cranberries and the environment can lead to politics, education and sexual harassment. Ephraim P. Emson was born in Toms River on Oct. 28, 1829. His family moved to Ohio but…
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•April 4, 2012
Teacher Tackles Accuser Head On
During the spring of 1886, the Victorian-era gossips of Ocean County were having a field day. Louise Blackman, a young Quaker schoolteacher from Tuckerton, had entered a school trustees meeting where…
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•April 2, 2012
Stafford Leader April School Column
This year’s inductees to the Southern Regional Alumni Association Wall of Fame are Stacey Martin-Adams (Class of 1987), Catherine Buggeln (Class of 1979), Melanie Moore-Magaziner (Class of 1989)…
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•March 28, 2012
Schoolteacher Fights Back
Excitement was at a fever pitch in March 1886 in the village of Colliers Mills, in western Ocean County. The richest man in the village, Ephraim P. Emson, a former senator and a freeholder who had…
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•March 21, 2012
200 Plus: The Senator vs. the Schoolteacher
Sex scandals were nothing new to American politics, whether it was Thomas Jefferson keeping a slave as his mistress or Sen. Dan Sickles of New York shooting his wife’s lover in cold blood across the…
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•March 6, 2012
LBI Becomes Home for ‘Nature Freaks’
Sometimes the introduction of a species into a new location is intentional and sometimes it isn’t. The first mention of a strange species on Long Beach Island came in the February 1878 issue of…
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•March 5, 2012
‘The Dirt’ on Showers, Gardens, Dredges … and Waves, Too
For a brief moment I thought about it. Last weekend, I actually considered shimmying into the crawl space and turning on the valve for the outside shower.
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•March 5, 2012
Please Check My Box; Night Driving Avoidance
As frequenters of this column know, I’m perpetually in search of some magical, spontaneousish income source, one that would finally offer me such luxurious fiscal freedom that I could wander into the…
