Columns
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•October 29, 2025
Gen. Gage’s Recruitment Effort Foiled
In October 1775, a drama played out at the Jersey Shore that helped to show the peculiar situation that existed before the colonies declared their independence.
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•October 29, 2025
End of an Era Ushers in New Threat to Indie Music
“Artificial Intelligence uses significant and growing amounts of energy, with individual queries using fractions of watt-hour (0.24 Wh for a median text response from Google’s Gemini) and large-scale…
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•October 27, 2025
The Leaves Are Coiling Up: Timber Rattler Is Out-of-Season Surprise
Somewhat surprisingly, Island beaches have bounced back admirably well after nor’easter waves ran roughshod over them.
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•October 23, 2025
Ray of Hope Follows Nor’easter’s Lousy Legacy; Are Wave Pools the Answer?
Does anyone feel like wave pools are starting to replace the experience of ocean surfing? For a while there, it was a novelty, but now it’s becoming a legitimate option when the waves don’t line up.…
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•October 22, 2025
British General Goes After Recruits
There are many legends of the Jersey Shore that are difficult to prove, and one has always been that a ship load of British Redcoats wrecked on the coast early in the American Revolution alarming the…
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•October 16, 2025
Heavy-Winded Nor’easter Closes Boulevard, Eats Beaches to the Bone
On the 1-10 severity scale, I give the so-named “October Nor’easter” a respectable 6 in the end. That’s up from an initial 5 rating I gave early Monday, before the more-serious street flooding set in.
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•October 15, 2025
The No-Good Nor’Easter; Breaking Down a Tough Storm With No Clean Surf
So… this is it? This is the best time of the year for the Jersey Shore?
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•October 15, 2025
Thomas Paine Stirs the Pot
Today in the age of the internet they are called influencers, trying to sway the public on everything from buying clothes and cosmetics to supporting political candidates. In the 1770s there was a…
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•October 9, 2025
The Spooky Time of Year When Things Jump Out
It’s the time of year when wildlife can get a little too near … and deer.
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•October 9, 2025
Barrier Island Folk Watch in Dismay as North Carolina Loses Ground to the Ocean
Coming from New Jersey, the Outer Banks holds a particular draw for any surfer or beach person. Not only are the waves more powerful and consistent, but the Carolina coast is considered “humid…
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•October 8, 2025
King George Rejects Olive Branch
In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, consolidated the local New England militia besieging Boston into the Continental Army and appointed George Washington to…
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•October 1, 2025
It’s Pompano and Circumstance as Prized Seafood Is Still Here; Compost Into the Great Beyond
I think we oversold “It’s better in September,” to the point the month has become a mere add-on to summerness, based on crowds, traffic signals and temperatures. I’ll now venture – and believe – that…
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•October 1, 2025
New Jersey’s Loyalty a Family Affair
Two hundred fifty years ago, the summer of 1775 saw a period of calm as men began to choose sides following the bloodshed at Lexington, Concord and Bunker’s Hill. In Philadelphia, the illegal Second…
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•September 25, 2025
Widow Fights the US Navy
The crash of the airship USS Shenandoah in September 1925 rocked Ocean County, its home base. It was reported it had made 40 children orphans.
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•September 24, 2025
Revisiting a Classic Children’s Tale and Hoping for Better Winds to Wind Down September
This column is always a good opportunity to tell a good story. This is not the usual story like Beach Haven locals paddling to an outer shoal during Hurricane Belle in 1976 or the story of when the…
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•September 24, 2025
All In a Night’s Sharking
There’s weird … then there’s just plain freakified, the latter being the case with a mind-bending fish tale related to nighttime anglers taking on a terror of a fish. The hookup took place on the…
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•September 18, 2025
Best Season for Free Finds, Surf Stays Consistent and Tropics May Kick On
It was a precarious moment, as we were sitting at a light on Saturday morning. A car making a left turn southbound on the Boulevard caused a commotion when the coffee tumbler inadvertently left on…
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•September 17, 2025
A New Farming System Targets Our Ocean-Top
For fall aficionados, the skies have been highly accommodating. Where summer is dominated by big, hot Bermuda highs, we’ve lately been hosting cool northern high-pressure systems, a huge one…
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•September 17, 2025
Looters Swarm ‘Shenandoah’ Crash Site
On Sept. 2, 1925, the airship USS Shenandoah lifted off from its base at Lakehurst, N.J. on a publicity flight designed to win over public support for the lighter-than-air program. The next day, the…
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•September 15, 2025
Migrating to the Deep South (Speaking of the Holgate End)
I’ve successfully made my fall migration to the south, having temporarily flown with the plovers, pelicans and monarch butterflies, at least as far as Holgate, where I broke away.
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•September 11, 2025
Quiet Summer Afterglow With Waves and a Strange Absence of Tropical Activity
Boy, that got quiet. Tumbleweed Tuesday had come and gone, and one week after Labor Day Saturday – with temps still in the 80s, the ocean as warm as it gets, with abundant sunshine – the beaches and…
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•September 10, 2025
‘Shenandoah’ Flight Ends in Disaster
As the summer of 1925 began, the Navy Department decided to keep the American-built airship USS Shenandoah on the East Coast because of the fear of Midwest thunderstorms. But as the summer ended…
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•September 8, 2025
Late-Summer Chills Could Prevent Shot at Hottest-Ever Record
The flourish of cooler air that closed out an otherwise sizzling meteorological summer (June 1 to Aug. 31) might keep us out of the hottest-ever record books.
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•September 4, 2025
Sliding Joyfully Into the Best Time of Year
And as if someone yelled “last call,” the summertime revelers have packed up their e-bikes and weighted g-vests to head westward into the sunset. But anyone with any kind of ties to LBI can tell you…
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•September 3, 2025
‘Shenandoah’ Sent on Perilous Mission
During the early part of the summer of 1925, it was announced that the USS Shenandoah would not attempt any flights to the Midwest because of the dangers created by violent thunderstorms. Because of…
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•August 28, 2025
Hurricane Erin Was a Wild Ride on All Fronts
Wait. What? Labor Day? It seems like just yesterday we were dealing with a new traffic pattern at the Ship Bottom Circle. And now, here we are facing down 40-foot Home Depot skeleton season.
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•August 27, 2025
Pros, Cons of Streaming; Labor Day Love Letters for Local Artists
Every year summer seems to slip by faster than the last and, alas, here we are again, bidding farewell with the last big bang of Labor Day. Year-rounders will revel in a few weeks of Locals Summer…
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•August 27, 2025
Tropical Close Call Comes at Good Time for Coastal Readiness
For LBI, Erin was no Karen. She played decently nice, after factoring in what might have been.
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•August 27, 2025
Spectacular Death of the ‘Corvallis’
In June 1925, a movie company purchased the 277-foot war surplus freighter Corvallis for the purpose of blowing it up. The movie plot called for the ship to be re-named the Mandalay and to explode at…
