Posts Tagged ‘Mountain Man and City Girl’
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
The death of US Senator Ted Kennedy last August 29 marked the end of a long political career. The Massachusetts Democrat was first elected in 1962 and it was his first of nine consecutive election victories. He served in the US Senate for 46 years, giving him the fourth longest service in Senate history. It was the only elected position he ever held.
Once upon a time, after the assassinations of brothers John (1962) and Robert (1968), it seemed logical and highly possible that young Teddy would one day became President of the United States. But the Chappaquiddick incident in July, 1969 derailed any aspirations for being Commander in Chief. Who can ever forget photos of that car sitting in the water?
Tuesday is election day in Massachusetts, when voters will decide between Democrat Martha Coakley, the state’s attorney general, and Republican Scott Brown, a relatively unknown state senator. Coakley, who at one point held a 15% advantage in the polls, has seen her lead shrink to 4%. With a margin of error of 4%, it’s just about a toss up. Undecided Independents will no doubt decide this election.
President Barack Obama made a quick change in plans and will campaign for Coakley today in Massachusetts, a typically Democrat state. On Friday, former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Coakley in Massachusetts, while New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was stumping for Brown.
So why do all these heavy hitters care so much about Ted Kennedy’s old seat? Health care.
If Coakley wins, Obama will presumably still have the 60 Senate votes needed to approve a health care reform bill. If Brown wins, the opposition gets its decisive 40th vote to shoot down any health care bill put up to a Senate vote.
How does a Republican even have a chance in the staunchly Democratic Massachusetts? Obama.
When Obama was elected and took office last January, he was supposed to be an agent of change. But now many who supported his election are disappointed and disenchanted with his presidency. Independents, especially, are leaving his camp. There is an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment undercurrent amongst the masses. This could well work to Brown’s advantage in the Massachusetts election. But is it enough to derail Coakley?
Whoever wins, they certainly have a big pair of shoes to fill.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Jewell Real Estate Agency, Martha Coakley, Massachusetts Democrat, Massachusetts election 2010, Mountain Man and City Girl, opinion, political blog, Scott Brown, Ted Kennedy
Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
It’s the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Blue and the Gray, the Union and the Confederacy. Whatever label you attach, it is an all-out war in West Wildwood, pitting neighbors against neighbors, one political faction against the other.
The war has taken the form of employee suspensions, court ordered re-instatements, lawsuits, and even an upcoming mayoral recall election. It’s Peyton Place by-the-Bay.
There have been undercurrents of one side versus the other for a long time, but the war intensified in May, 2008 with the election of a new set of three city commissioners – Mayor Herb Frederick, Gerard McNamara, and Scott Golden. The power had been transferred from the Hatfields to the McCoys. The muskets and long rifles are loaded and ready.
The new mayor is a political rival of former mayor Chris Fox, who chose to retire from public life and not run in the election. Along with his personable brother Alan Fox, the longtime police chief, the two Fox’s were visible leaders of the little borough of 400-something yearround residents for over a decade.
Amongst the goings-on recently have been the firing of the city clerk – an ally of Fox – by Frederick. A judge ordered her back on the job. Frederick then suspended police lieutenant Jackie Ferentz, another Fox ally, in March, 2009. He accused her of a number of violations, amongst those performing duties only allowed by the chief. But documentation alleges that Chief Alan Fox, who has suffered with illness for over a decade, appointed Ferentz as acting police chief before he retired.
Ferentz countered by suing Frederick for interfering with her ability to do her duties as chief. She also joined with two other West Wildwood residents to successfully get enough petition signatures to force a recall election of Frederick. You guessed it. Frederick has filed a lawsuit to stop the February 23rd election.
And so life goes on in the sleepy little fishing town on the backbay. Stay tuned. We’ll have more stories of strife from the frontlines in the future.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, political blog, West Wildwood, West Wildwood blog, West Wildwood politics
Posted in Politics, Real Estate | No Comments »
Saturday, January 16th, 2010
I grew up in North Jersey in the 1950’s in one of those “Leave it to Beaver” families. Dad commuted to work each morning in suit and tie, while Mom stayed home and attended to running the household. She got us kids off to school each morning after feeding us a hearty breakfast and packing our brown bag lunch. We were each given a nickel for our milk container purchase at school, later raised to an outrageous dime.
When we got home from school, Mom was there with milk and cookies, or some other goodie. The house was spotless and absolutely nothing was out of place. The beds were always made to the point of perfection and the hamper was empty. Clothes were hanging on the clothes line in the backyard.
We kids hurried to change into play clothes, then rushed out the door as Mom said cheerfully, “Dinner is at 5:30. Don’t be late.” Needless to say, a nice, hot meal of meat, potatoes, and a vegetable were on the dinner table at 5:30. What a life!
We had one car, which Dad used each day. To get anywhere, our options were to ride our bikes or walk. Mom was not our chaufeur. We kids (mostly me because I was the oldest) were expected to mow the lawn, rake leaves, and shovel snow. No excuses were acceptable.
But that’s not today’s reality. In statistics recently released by the US Census Bureau, concerning families comprised of a married couple with kids under 18 years old, you can see that the American way of life has changed dramatically from the Ward and June Cleaver, Wally and Beaver (okay, Theodore) days.
Two thirds of these American families have both parents working. That’s 17 million families where the kids probably don’t have a June Cleaver to come home to every day. Called “latch-key kids”, they come home from school to an unsupervised house. No wonder they live on junk food, fast food, and watch too much TV and spend too much time playing video games.
Now only 28 percent (7.3 million families) of fathers are the sole breadwinners. That throws the Ward Cleaver model right out the window. Another telling statistic is that in 4% of families (just under a million), the wife is the sole supporter. Maybe that’s why beer sales are up? Just kidding. A lot of that can be attributed to this recession which has eliminated many construction and trades jobs. But does Dad take up the traditional homemaker role? Only in 16% of the families, they say.
In today’s world, a family does without any frills unless both parents are employed. It’s the way it is. But how many kids can never share the memories I have of coming home after school to Mom’s freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies and a loving hug.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Beaver Cleaver, Jewell Real Estate Agency, June Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver, lifestyle blog, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, real estate blog, Ward Cleaver
Posted in Lifestyle | No Comments »
Friday, January 15th, 2010
It looked like such a cute plant sitting there on forest floor near the back corner of our property here in Cape May County, New Jersey. It had pretty purple flowers and an intriguing stem that sprouted out a couple leaves every few inches. The perennial plant sat there all by itself, yearning to be saved. Always a sucker for flora and fauna, we transplanted it to a safe, sunny spot in our garden and forgot about it.
The next growing season it spread some via an underground root system. Again, the purple flowers were beautiful. By the next year, it was springing up nearly ten feet from where I planted the first one. Still, I figured it had just about used up the open area and it would not keep spreading.
Then one morning in July I opened up the morning newspaper and there was a story about an invasive plant that had been imported from Asia. The accompanying picture left me speechless – it was my little purple-flower plant. The more I read the story, the more I realized I had to dig this perennial plant right up and destroy it.
Now, two years later, I think I finally have seen the last of this bugger. It seems everytime I thought it was all dug up, another shoot would spring up elsewhere.
It is estimated that there are 50,000 alien species in the United States, and they do $138 billion damage to the US economy. The biggest problem is that many of these foreigners have no natural pests or diseases here to keep them in check. So they spread like wildfire, choking out native species. Since one plant species in an area supports about 10 animal species, a monoculture of one plant can substantially reduce animal habitat and diversity.
Some of the invasive plant species in New Jersey – many planted by well-meaning landscapers – are the Norway maple, Japanese barberry, Asian bittersweet, English ivy, mimosa, wisteria, Japanese honeysuckle, bamboo, and day lily. Geez, we have four of those right in our yard. Who knew? Even the multiflora rose (planted along highways) and crown vetch (to stabilize hillsides) are foreigners.
In Avalon, an upscale shore community here, they planted Japanese black pines back in the 1960’s to help stabilized the shifting sands of the dunes. Little did they realize how quickly they would grow, pushing out native species. And with pine needles eventually coating the ground underneath them, that area became barren.
Avalon is now cutting out the dead black pines and pruning all the lower branches of the live ones. They will be replaced by native species – Eastern red cedar, black cherry, wax myrtle, and Northern bayberry – which all can perform the same role of stabilizing the sand. It’s a win-win.
With spring just two months away, the ground will soon begin revealing a new crop of summer plants at our home. I better keep my shovel ready just in case any of those Asian purple-flower plants show up.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Avalon, Cape May County NJ, invasive plants, Jersey shore, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, nature blog, new jersey invasive plants, NJ
Posted in Nature | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
It’s time to abolish the American penny. Pass the petitions, please.
The American penny has outlived its usefulness. I think its demise can be directly tied to the end of penny candy. Nowadays, nothing costs under a nickel, does it?
At our house, we keep a coffee cup near the front door and every time we walk in the door we empty our pockets of those dadgum pennies. We do this ritual because Joyce says it’s a feng-shui thing. I don’t know, something about good karma. Pennies are so worthless that even the little grandkids don’t want the cupful of pennies by the door. “Aren’t there any dollars in there?”, they ask.
The American penny originated in 1793 and for the first 64 years of its life it was actually 100% copper. The next seven years it was 89% copper and 11% nickel. That didn’t last long, as the US mint changed to 95% copper and 5% a combination of tin and zinc. They made pennies that way until World War II. It went through another three transformations in the next 20 years.
In 1962, the penny became brass – that’s 95% copper and 5% zinc and titanium. The biggest change came in 1982, when the penny made its final reform. It became 97.5% zinc at the core with 2.5% copper plating. The mighty penny was no longer mostly copper, but instead a shadow of its former self. The current cost to make a penny is 1.67 cents. That’s right, it costs more to make this mostly-zinc penny than its face value.
I propose that we do away with the penny. If the cost of something ends in 1 cent or two cents, round it down to zero. If it ends in 3 or 4 cents, round it up to a nickel. The same for 6 or 7 cents down to a nickel and 8 or 9 cents up to a dime. It all evens out in the end. Isn’t that easy?
There is one driving force that is lobbying – successfully, so far – to keep the penny. No, it’s not retail merchants. It’s not the US Treasury or the US Mint. It’s not Congress or the Senate or the White House. Are you sitting down?
It’s the zinc industry. Aarrrgh!
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: American penny, copper pennies, copper penny, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, penny, zinc pennies, zinc penny
Posted in Humor | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
After a three year hiatus, the Ladies Professional Golf Association will once again be staging a golf tournament in southern New Jersey. The gals have been missed.
The LPGA began its 21-year run in the area in 1986 with the Atlantic City LPGA Classic, held at the Marriot Seaview CC. Two years later the venue was changed to Greate Bay CC in Somers Point, where it stayed through 1997. The tournament was moved back to the Seaview in 1998 and it played there through 2006. The event was called the ShopRite Classic beginning in 1992, when Wakefern Foods took over as the main sponsor.
The tournament was pulled after the 2006 event because of then LPGA commissioner Carolyn Bivens. The coveted date – in early to mid June – is the just prior to the LPGA championship, meaning most of the name players attend the event. ShopRite was pushed aside for a new upstart tournament, Annika Sorenstam’s Ginn Tribute, played in South Carolina. ShopRite was offered an unacceptable September date and the tournament folded.
The Ginn Tribute lasted just two years and Bivens controversial tenure as commissioner likewise was shot down in flames. The tour’s big name players, fed up with Bivens, forced her resignation in July, 2009. Michael Whan, a 45-year old businessman, has just taken over as the new commish.
Tail between legs, the LPGA came back to the South Jersey golf world in November and offered the 2010 date. It was gladly accepted. This year the Classic will be June 14-20, then the next four years are penciled in for the first week of June. The LPGA championship is the following week each year.
The LPGA needs the South Jersey tournament. The tour schedule has dropped from the norm of 30 tournaments a year to just 23 this year, of which 10 are being played outside the USA. The tight economy has made sponsors tough to find. The tour is on shaky footing.
The ShopRite Classic’s biggest contribution to the area has been the giving to charities. In 2006, $1.8 million went to local charities. Over the course of 21 years, about $13 million has gone to local hospitals and other youth, health, and community non-profits. Local businesses also see a gain in revenue the week all the lady pros and spectators are in South Jersey.
Welcome back, girls. Hope your stay is permanent.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCitygirl.com
Tags: Jewell Real Estate Agency, LPGA ShopRite Classic, LPGA Tour 2010, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, ShopRite Classic 2010, South Jersey blog, South Jersey golf
Posted in Lifestyle | No Comments »
Monday, January 11th, 2010
The Borough of Woodbine is located in the northwest corner of Cape May County, in southern New Jersey. Situated in the Pinelands National Reserve, Woodbine is physically located about 20 miles from the very affluent beachfront communities of Avalon and Stone Harbor and 30 miles from trendy, historic Cape May. But in perception, they are a million miles apart.
Woodbine shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s the hidden gem of the county. And continually preparing itself for future prosperity.
The rural, wooded town of 2,700 folks boasts an airport, a museum, the largest employer in the county, plenty of industry, an elementary school, recreation commission, volunteer fire department, and Belleplain State Park.
The 700-acre airport – one of only three in the county – is part of the 1,216-acre Woodbine Municipal Airport Economic Area. It employs 27 workers with an annual payroll of two-thirds of a million dollars. The 50-acre business park has a public sewer system in place in anticipation of future businesses locating there. An existing rail line opens more possibilities. A new golf course proposed by a private developer on the remaining land was scuttled when a glut of new golf courses in the county made it financially impractical.
Being one of only five towns in the 1.1 million acre Pinelands to receive the coveted Town designation, Woodbine is able to offer sewers for residences, plus commercial and industrial businesses. That makes it attractive to businesses throughout Cape May County looking to relocated to more spacious and less pricey properties. And the general purpose tax rate hasn’t increased in 19 years.
The little town is experiencing continual improvements. The Sam Azeez Museum of Woodbine Heritage recently completed a $2 million renovation and voters recently approved a $3.8 million project to upgrade the school, which includes solar panel installation. At the former landfill, Garden State Ethanol is in the permit process which will lead to building a 25-million gallon a year plant that will convert algae to ethanol.
The town owes much of its success and progress to Mayor William Pikolycky, who’s been in office for a couple decades. Last year alone he garnered $4.2 million in grants for Woodbine. In the past he has gotten bike trails and walking trails funded and built, and made many infrastructure improvements to the vibrant, multi-ethnic community.
So while many local communities march on as well-to-do seashore tourist locales, little Woodbine chugs along with an eye to the future. It truly is the Little Engine That Could.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Borough of Woodbine, Cape May County, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, New Jersey real estate blog, real estate blog, Woodbine
Posted in Real Estate | 2 Comments »
Sunday, January 10th, 2010
It’s an arctic jihad. And we’ve got proof!
The weather the last couple months has been, well, extreme. Just look at the facts. The resort town of Whistler, British Columbia received an incredible 18 feet of snow in November. That’s November, mind you. That’s 216 inches of the white powder and nearly four times the November average of 58″. In fact, it’s nearly 20% more snow than the snowiest month ever at Whistler.
In England, it was as low as 7 degrees Fahrenheit this week. There has been snow in Madrid, Spain and Paris, France. Temperatures in Alabama and Mississippi have been in the teens. In Florida, the orange, grapefruit and vegetable crops are threatened with huge die-offs due to temperatures in the 20’s. The poor iguana’s are freezing to death and dropping out of the trees.
Even here in southern New Jersey, where we’re surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay and the influence of their relatively warmer water temperatures, it was 9 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. Heck, some winters we don’t even have to wear a winter coat. For the past six weeks, my winter coat has been my best friend.
We were optimistic this autumn when meteorologists reported an El Nino was warming the Pacific Ocean. That means a warm winter, doesn’t it? But they are attributing this excessive cold and snow to an “Arctic Oscillation”. Yeah, right, whatever that is.
Anyway, we received an email this morning from my old friend Icky Kitikmeot, an Inuit eskimo living outside Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories of Canada. He shed a light on this entire weather thing.
It seems Icky was out muskox hunting last week about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle when he came across a valley lined with giant fans. He lost count there were so many. Stealthly sneaking up to a pre-fab quonset hut, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Inside were dozens of men of apparent Middle Eastern descent. Icky laid quietly for hours, listening to their conversation.
It seems that they were definitely Al-Qaeda or something, and their goal was to disrupt next month’s XXI Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and Whistler, and at the same time cause havoc in the empirial Western World. They laughed about the 14,000 fans they had positioned on Victoria Island that were blowing the dickens out of us infidels in North America and northern Europe.
Thanks to Icky, I’m about to alert our U.S. Department of Homeland Security about this situation. Think they’ll issue a “level white alert”?
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Arctic, BC, blog, cold weather 2010, humorous blog, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, Whistler, XXI Winter Olympic Games
Posted in Humor | No Comments »
Saturday, January 9th, 2010
As Easterners, many of the problems of public lands in the West go right over our heads. I guess it’s a NIMBY thing. You know, Not In My Back Yard. Since the issue isn’t in our backyard, we give it little thought. We should.
The federal government, especially the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), institutes policies that are decimating the herds of wild horses and burros in the West. Since 1971, the BLM has “removed” 270,000 wild horses and burros from federal lands and taken away 20 million acres of their range. That leaves just 37,000 animals remaining, but another 12,000 are slated to be “removed” in 2010. The preferred way of rounding up these majestic beasts is to chase them with helicopters – freaking them out in the process and separating mothers from offspring.
Bison are another victim of government interference, this time mainly the State of Montana is the culprit. There is a well-spread myth that the Yellowstone bison – if they wander out of the National Park – will spread brucellosis to cattle. The problem with that argument is that there has never been a documented case of that happening. Never. And the cattle in surrounding areas are all vaccinated against brucellosis anyway. That still hasn’t stopped State of Montana-hired riflemen from slaughtering 6,631 Yellowstone bison since the winter of 1985-’86, including 1,616 in ‘07-’08.
So what is really behind all this genocide of certain species? You guessed it – Western ranchers and the cattle industry.
There are 31,000 ranchers in the West who are utilizing 260 million acres of federal land (yes, you and I own it) to graze their cattle. And they pay a pittance for the opportunity. The cost is just $1.92 per Animal Unit Month (AUM). An AUM is defined as a cow and calf or 5 sheep or a horse. In other words, a cattleman pays $23.04 per year to graze a cow and her growing calf. No wonder it costs $52 million more per year in administrative costs than is collected in fees.
Cattle are not easy on the federal lands. They overgraze the land, leaving behind the undesirable weeds. They trample vegetation and compact the soil, causing erosion and soil loss. They foul streams and wetlands with fecal matter. With the BLM issuing 7.8 million AUM’s a year and the US Forest Service another 6 million AUM’s, you can imagine the impact of nearly 20 million non-native cattle on the environment.
There’s another cost. Each cow produces 600 liters per day of methane. That releases the yearly CO2 equivalent of burning 418 million gallons of gas or 19,263 railroad cars of coal. Yikes!
So what is the bottom line? Western cattlemen feel that it is their right to have nearly exclusive use of federal lands for their benefit. Wild horses and burros and bison be damned. And so the powerful cattlemen lobbyists pressure Western Senators and Congressmen and Governors to make sure that these animals don’t consume feed that they feel is for their cattle. The same mentality leads to the shooting of coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, etc. in the name of protecting their precious cattle.
Something is wrong here!
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Animal Unit Month, BLM, BLM cattle, BLM horse, blog, brucellosis, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, nature blog, political blog, US Forest Service cattle, Western cattlemen
Posted in Lifestyle | 1 Comment »
Friday, January 8th, 2010
I don’t usually write about sports. Well, that’s not exactly true. Let me rephrase that – I don’t usually write about sports on this blogsite. I am a retired sportswriter, having penned over 5,000 articles from 1991 through 1999. That’s about 1.4 articles a day, every day, for nine years and eight months. But, that’s in the past.
Anyway, allow me to make some observations about sports.
Sports on television are being started too late in the evening. Last night’s college football championship game between Alabama and Texas started at 9:38pm Eastern time on a Thursday night. None of my buddies stayed up that late, nor did I. Our bedtimes are around 9:00. The same goes for kids, which are the future of sports viewership.
Forget the West Coast. Put games on at 7:00 Eastern, and let the Left Coast folks watch it at 4:00 in the afternoon. That makes a lot more sense and would definitely multiply viewership amoungst the old guys and young kids. Plus, guys in California would have a great excuse to leave work early to catch a World Series baseball game, NBA final, and so on. When I lived in SoCal, I loved to get up on a Saturday morning in the fall and flip on a Penn State football game at 9am. That was great.
The pro sports seasons are waaaaay too long. Hockey starts in October and ends in May, the World Series ends in November, the NBA wraps it up in mid-June, and the Super Bowl is in February. Give me a break! By then, only the diehard fans give a hoot. The casual fan is on to other things.
And yes, you guys ARE role models. Stop the denials. Kids look up to you, and you teach that it is alrght to be moody, disrespectful, not a team player, and, sadly, even a felon. Growing up, my sports heroes were guys like Sandy Koufax, Johnny Unitas, and Jerry West. They were squeaky clean, the proto-typical All-American boys. They didn’t carry guns, get in brawls, and beat their wives, unlike many of today’s “idols”. And then there’s Tiger Woods, who let down an entire generation of kids.
As far as sports for kids on a participation level, that too is slipping. The reason? Parents. It seems like every parent knows more than the coach. And the umpires or referees. How often do you read of a parent assaulting a coach or ref? Too frequently. Other parents scream at them the entire game. What message does that send? It’s no wonder that so many kids start dropping out of sports as they progress through school.
Kids want to play sports for the love of the game. They love the crack of the bat, the smell of a baseball glove or pigskin, the swish of a basketball net, or crunch of hockey skates digging into the ice. The sounds and smells and comradie of sports make it what it is.
So, as we age, we continue with sports by living vicariously as a spectator, rather than an athlete. But who can afford to take the wife and two kids to a game and shell out $500 for tickets and food? So we resort to TV and these ridiciously long seasons and late night games and infinite commercials.
It’s discouraging. Joe DiMaggio, where have you gone?
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: blog, college sports, Jewell Real Estate Agency, lifestyle blog, Mountain Man and City Girl, pro athletes, pro sports, sports blog
Posted in Lifestyle | No Comments »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is nothing if not consistent. It seems that if they need to be vigilant, they’re not. And if they need to be lenient, again they’re not.
Case in point. Along the Delaware Bay in the Villas section of Lower Township, Cape May County, three homes and two utility poles are being threatened by beach erosion. A combination of last year’s uncommonly excessive rainfall – 62 inches compared to the normal 44 - and windy, stormy conditions during some of those rain events has caused the Delaware River to eat away nearly 20 feet of 6-foot high dunes.
The homeowners submitted an emergency application to the NJDEP to build a seawall at their own expense. That’s right, they’d pay for the thing themselves.
“No way”, was NJDEP’s reply. You see, NJDEP is still hung up on beach replenishment. So despite the fact that the murky, churning Delaware Bay is within five feet of the corner of one home, NJDEP wouldn’t budge. They want sand put back to rebuild the dune. Or else leave it alone and presumably some high tide will take out the homes.
Then a new problem arose. The beach is owned by Lower Township, not the property owners. Lower wasn’t about to foot the bill, so they turned to good old FEMA – the Federal Emergency Management Agency – to fund the beach replenishment. Who knows how long that bureaucracy of red tape will take? Plus, they fund beaches on the Atlantic Ocean side of the county, where tourists flock. The only flock on this beach are red knots, laughing gulls, sandpipers, and such.
But the issue, in reality, is that NJDEP dropped the ball in the beginning. Their mission – since they became the country’s third DEP back on the original Earth Day on April 22, 1970 – is to “manage natural resources and solve pollution problems”. What better way to manage this resource than to let the property owners install a bulkhead, then storms and natural sediment movement will put a beach back, gratis. Everybody gets what they want.
But that’s common sense, a term that usually can’t be used in the same sentence as NJDEP.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Delaware Bay, FEMA, Jersey shore, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Lower Township, Mountain Man and City Girl, NJDEP, real estate blog
Posted in Real Estate | No Comments »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s expected signature today on a bill to allow table games in addition to its existing slot machines is another bit of bad news for Atlantic City. The bill passed the state Senate 28-22 previously and the Assembly 103-89 yesterday. Rendell threatened to layoff 1,000 state workers if the bill wasn’t on his desk by tomorrow (Friday, Jan 8, 2010). That got legislators moving.
Pennsylvania will now permit up to 250 table games in larger casinos and up to 50 in smaller resort casinos. Table games are poker, baccarat, blackjack, roulette, craps, and similar games of chance. The cost of licensing is $16.5 million for the large casinos and $7.5 million for resort casinos, which is a drop in the bucket in the scope of the big picture. The 14 casinos in the state should add an additional $250 million per year to state coffers.
Atlantic City, the No.2 casino city in the United States after Las Vegas, has seen reduced revenues for over a year, putting an added strain on New Jersey’s already bloated budget deficit. The monopoly Atlantic City once enjoyed on gambling on the East Coast is ancient history.
Connecticut has three Indian casinos that allow slots and table games, making them the first to cut into Atlantic City’s lucrative market. West Virginia was next, first having slots at two dog tracks and two horse tracks, then adding table games in 2007. They recently granted a full gambling license to the infamous Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs.
Delaware has one poker venue in Wilmington, plus video poker and slots at the three “racinos”, as they call their race tracks with legal gambling. It won’t be long before table games are installed in each of the sites.
So what is Atlantic City to do? They will lose much of their Philadelphia area gamblers once the table games open next November or so. Delaware’s table games will debut around the same time. No doubt entrepreneurs will add restaurants and resort hotels near the casinos, further damaging Atlantic City’s bottom line.
Atlantic City will need to take advantage of what it’s already got for the dozen casinos, employing 36,000 workers, to be profitable. That means marketing non-gaming venues. Upscale, fashionable restaurants with trendy surroundings are already a big draw, as are the 200 retail, brand name, and outlet stores.
Atlantic City also has big name entertainers going for it. Not a night goes by that the city doesn’t feature a dozen acts targeting every age group. Glitzy, nouveau nightclubs, with a regular parade of celebrity sightings, is turning AC into a mecca for the 21-40 year old crowd. And they have bucks to spend.
AC also offers championship boxing matches, plus those new martial art/kick boxing/in-a-cage fights. There’s also college basketball, including the Atlantic 10 tournament each March.
Last but not least, there’s the beach. Geez, no other casino in neighboring states has the sparkling white sands and bikini babes. And the beach is a great place to watch an air show or fireworks or lifeguard competitions or throw a frisbee or ….
Well, maybe Atlantic City should be saying, “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Time will tell.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Atlantic City, atlantic city casinos, Atlantic City gambling, blog, Jersey shore, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, Pennsylvania casinos, real estate blog
Posted in Real Estate | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Isn’t the English language “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. That 34 letter word, sung so handsomely by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in the movie Mary Poppins, means wonderful. It is the longest non-medical, non-technical, non-foreign word in the English language. Did you get all that?
Well, that is unless you consider it not really a word, since it was made up by the two brothers who wrote the song for the Disney movie. In that case, the longest word is “antidisestablishmentarianism”, at 28 letters. Can’t you remember back in the 1950s or ’60s being so smug because as an eight year old you knew the longest word in the English language? That tongue twister originally meant, basically, opposition to the proposal to disestablish the Church of England. Yikes. Not to be outdone, some folks have added “pseudo” to the beginning of the word to stretch it to 34 letters.
In the category of English place names, there’s an 85 letter word for a certain hill in New Zealand. I won’t bother typing it. The two longest words in the entire English language are, well, a bit extreme. There’s a 189,819 letter word that is the chemical name for a protein. And the overall winner is the 280,000 word name for DNA, that molecular structure that embodies life. The word is so long that it reportedly has never been written. Duh.
We certainly have come a long way from the days when cavemen pointed and probably said, “Ugh”.
The evolution of our civilization is directly tied to the evolution of our sophisticated language. As communication became more effective, humans could interact better and progress was made. Of course, earth still had to endure millenia of slavery, savagery, and wars, but in the end things got better because we became better communicators. Ideas were able to be passed from one generation to the next, with each generation improving on the past. Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great, and so on. Later on, Leonardo da Vinci was followed by Copernicus, who was followed by Galileo. Continuing the procession of ideas and thought, Darwin was followed by Einstein, blah, blah, blah. You get the picture.
Without the continuing upgrading of language for the past 30,000 years, where would we be today? Schools wouldn’t exist, teachers wouldn’t teach, there would be no books, no pencils, no computers. We’d still be hunter-gatherers, living in small clans and wandering the land. Life would be eat or be eaten, stay warm or perish.
So as you read this, contemplate the 600 generations that improved communication. We exist as we do because the human spirit strived to be better.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: antidisestablishmentarianism, blog, Cape May County blog, communication, English language, Jewell Real Estate Agency, longest English words, Mountain Man and City Girl, real estate blog, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
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Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Just one day after school officials called rumors of Wildwood Catholic High School’s closing unfounded, the Diocese of Camden announced that the school will close at the end of the school year this June. It’s just the latest round in the demise of the Catholic church in Cape May County.
In 2007, St. Raymond’s elementary/junior high school in the Villas section of Lower Township was closed by the Diocese of Camden, which oversees the Catholic goings-on in southern New Jersey. Students, parents, and teachers were saddened, outraged, and in shock. Students were offered the chance to transfer to Star of the Sea in Cape May or St. Ann’s in Wildwood.
Then in 2008 the Diocese announced the closing of Star of the Sea elementary/junior high school, merging it with St. Ann’s elementary/junior high school. That didn’t sit well with Star of the Sea parents, who didn’t like the prospect of their kids be bussed to lowly Wildwood, a decidedly less affluent community. The parents are still fighting the closing, recently taking out ads on the radio to drum up support for keeping Star of the Sea open. Tuition at the school is around $3,500 for Catholic kids and a thousand dollars more for non-Catholics.
The diocese also previously announced the closing of the Assumption church in upscale Wildwood Crest, offering just summer services when tourists are in town. Parishioners picketed and instituted a letter writing campaign to keep their church, which is self-supporting and not losing money, from merging with St. Ann’s. The move by the Diocese was part of a plan to merge 14 Cape may County parishes into eight.
With all these closings happening, the biggest shock is the demise of Wildwood Catholic High School, an institution on the island since 1948. The North Wildwood school boasts state titles in soccer and basketball, and their rivalries with Wildwood High School and other county high schools are legendary. In the 1990’s, the school’s enrollment increased from 250 to 374 students. A $1.5 million addition was built onto the school to handle the increase.
But in these tough economic times, with tuition at the Catholic high school running about $6,000 per student, many parents balked at sending their kids there. And yes, religion is less common in families than in previous times. Enrollment is now down to 194 at Wildwood Catholic High. The school will lose a half million dollars this year, with expected red ink of $900,000 next year if they stayed open.
Catholic parents of high schoolers will now have several options of where to send their kids next year. To stay parochial, the options are Holy Spirit High School in Absecon (35 miles), St. Augustine in Richland (45 miles), or St. Joseph in Hammonton (52 miles). Locally, the students can attend their home public high schools which are Wildwood HS, Lower Cape May Regional HS, Middle Township HS, Ocean City HS, or Cape May Technical HS.
Unlike St. Raymond’s, which now sits unused and gathering dust, Wildwood Catholic will not be mothballed. The school will become the new home of the St. Ann and Star of the Sea merger and used for church activities, offices, and ministry. It presumably will be called Cape Trinity Catholic School.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Cape May County, Cape May County blog, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, North Wildwood, real estate blog, St. Ann's Wildwood, St. Raymond's Villas, Star of the Sea Cape May, Wildwood, Wildwood Catholic HS
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Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
New Jersey has the reputation of being one of the most business-unfriendly of the 50 United States. It’s well deserved. They did it the old-fashioned way – they earned it!
But solar power is the exception. New Jersey is mandated by the state’s Energy Master Plan to provide 20 percent of its energy through renewable sources by 2020. To reach that lofty goal just 10 years away, the state is offering monetary incentives to get it done. And alternative energy providers are lining up to cash in.
The state set up a system whereby solar systems – whether at a private residence or a commercial site – can earn Solar Renewable Energy Certificates. Each 1,000 kilowatt hours of energy produced earns the provider one credit. These credits are currently selling for just under $700 apiece.
The buyers of these energy credits are the utility companies, which are the ones under the gun to supply 20 percent renewable energy. If a utility doesn’t meet the 2020 goal, they will be penalized with a Solar Alternative Compliance Payment. So if they’re going to shell out the bucks anyway, why not go solar? It’s good public relations and reduces dependency on coal, oil, etc and their associated price fluctuations.
There are currently over 50 renewable energy projects on the drawing board in New Jersey. As more farmers and large landholders become aware of this new income source, more and more projects will be planned in the Garden State. The key is for the solar farm to be located near high transmission lines, which makes getting the electricity they produce easier and less costly to get on the grid. And besides getting paid via the credit system, the providers also get the current rate per kilowatt. It’s win-win.
There is one caution to anyone thinking about having solar panels installed at their property. Since this is a fairly new and lucrative business, a lot of inexperienced and unqualified companies are looking to install your solar system. Like anything, get quotes from at least three companies and ask for references and about projects they have already completed. Be careful and choose wisely. After all, this is New Jersey!
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: blog, Cape May County blog, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, New Jersey real estate blog, New Jersey solar power, real estate blog, solar power
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Saturday, January 2nd, 2010
Like all our fellow realtors, we know that there are all different calibers of realtors. But when you really think about it, what makes a certain percentage of realtors stand above the crowd is PASSION.
My wife Joyce and I opened our first office in 2000, then 10 months later opened a branch office. Later this month will mark the 10th anniversary of us working six days a week – we try to take Wednesdays off together but often spend half the day on our cell phones – and answering our phones 6am to 9pm every day of the year. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. We must be crazy to be accessible 15 hours a day, right?
But, you see, real estate is our life, our passion. Our kids are grown and gone and now we have the freedom of a 20-something childless couple, although our combined ages is 120. To avoid being kicked in the shins, I won’t say which one of us is older.
We are both early risers, so having our cell phones unplugged and turned on by 6:00 in the morning is no problem. We find that many of our clients, stuck in rush hour traffic around Philly or NYC, make use of this time to call us and discuss the transaction we’re working on together or the properties they want to tour on the weekend.
Nighttime phone calls don’t crimp our lifestyle either. Okay, we may be in the grocery store or a restaurant, but we’ve closed deals standing next to the broccoli and cauliflower display. Our norm, however, is that we’re sitting on the couch together watching a cable movie or nature program. Folks like to call us around that time after they’ve put their kids to bed and they finally have some quiet time.
In the warm weather months when the daylight hours last longer, we do have one other distraction in the evenings. We jump in my pickup truck, select a town, and cruise up and down neighborhood streets seeing “what’s new”. We notice new construction and homes newly put up for sale. We talk about it like two excited teenagers. And since the weather is warm, families are outside in their yards and we wave and our real estate signs on the truck doors get noticed. More than once someone has waved us down to talk about the current real estate market. That’s social networking in its purest form, I guess.
I know there are many, many other realtors across the country with passion for their trade. Obviously, any realtor who takes the time to read and contribute regularly to Active Rain has that passion. So do those who read the real estate trade magazines from cover to cover. And those continually participating in some sort of continuing education and earning additional designations.
To all of you, I tip my hat. Together, we’ve taken real estate sales from being a job to a profession we’re proud of. And love.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: blog, Cape May Court House real estate, Cape May real estate, Jewell Real Estate Agency, lifestyle blog, Mountain Man and City Girl, real estate blog, realtor, Wildwood real estate
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Thursday, December 31st, 2009
Maybe it’s me. But I’m really amazed at how the majority of the American public has no sense of correct spelling and grammar.
Since you are reading this blog instead of sitting home on the couch watching Jerry Springer or hanging out in an alley sipping some Boone’s Farm Apple Wine and puffing on a cigarette, you are also probably confounded by how the English language is being butchered.
As a realtor, I am actually getting used to the fact that so many people spell realty as R-E-A-L-I-T-Y. Duh! Isn’t reality one of those dumb shows where people eat maggots or get stranded together on an island?
And how about people who say, “I ain’t got none.” Gee, I didn’t learn not to use double negatives until I was in the fourth grade. Or was it sooner? (Did you notice my use of a double negative?)
I guess our educational systems are to blame. Teachers become babysitters to half the kids, while the other half actually learn and excel. I was always in the “accelerated” class growing up in progressive North Jersey, so I was separated from the dummies after kindergarten and apparently forgot they existed. Perhaps that’s why I’m perplexed by their lack of English fundamentals.
Yet, you would think that after 10 or 12 years of school people would have retained some elements of grammar and spelling. Some people come from the worst possible environment or home life, but somehow they work hard and get college degrees and end up with high-paying jobs. They show that anyone can excel.
So how come some people can’t even fill out a job application or handle a job interview? The answer may be that they concentrated on being “cool” when they were in school, instead of toeing the line. I guess that once again lays the blame on the schools.
I’m not sure what the solution is. More compassion from teachers, smaller classrooms, more individual attention? Maybe more direction from parents, but if they’re half-literate that’ll be tough.
Maybe we better just play taps for the English language and bury it with honors.
- Mountain Man and City Girl
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: blog, education blog, English language, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, opinion, real estate blog
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Thursday, December 31st, 2009
When I was a youngster, I thought everything always stayed the same. I thought the corner general store would always be there and always be called Percy’s. The same for Al’s Barber Shop, and the same for Green’s Luncheonette and Woolworths and the A&P. I was naive and too young to understand the evolution of change.
Then reality began to set in. First, the knifeman no longer drove up and down the neighborhood streets with a familiar bell ringing on the back of his truck. Mom would send me running to flag him down and she’d follow with a basket full of kitchen knives to be sharpened. A few years later there was a note in the milk box saying that Sicomac Dairy would no longer be delivering milk, eggs, sour cream, etc to our door. About the same time the local dry cleaner also stopped doing home deliveries. What was the world coming to?
Change continued through my teens and twenties. I used to peddle my bicycle delivering the Bergen Evening Record newspaper every afternoon after school. They became a morning newspaper, following an industry trend, and next thing you know newspaper home delivery was done by adults in cars at 5am. Yikes!
My next job was as a caddy at a golf course. We made $2.75 for carrying a golf bag 18 holes, and $5.50 if we were big enough to carry two bags for 18 holes. With tip, that came to $6 for about five hours work. I was on top of the world and “rich” compared to my fellow high schoolers. But you know where this story is going. Within a decade, caddies were as extinct as dinosaurs. Golf carts put us out of business. The end of an era.
With all these experiences in my rear view mirror, allow me to gaze into my crystal ball and look into the future. The biggest change I see is in the world of retail stores.
The internet is going to decrease the number of retail stores. We’re already seeing it in the demise of such venues as movie rentals – adios Blockbuster – and music stores. The internet allows you to download movies and music from the comfort of your home. And heck, just about every new movie is on cable within six months anyway, so why not wait?
Stores that sell appliances will be the next victim. Just ask Circuit City or Linens ’n Things. Circuit City had 576 big box stores and Linen ‘n Things had 571. All their stores are now shuddered and they sell, yes, on the internet only. Who’d a thunk it?
Just about any store that sells things that are also readily available on the internet is in trouble. The exception, of course, is things you need to touch or try on first. I’m not gonna buy shoes or pants from the internet. I need to try them on to make sure the fit is just right. And I want to physically see some items before purchasing to make sure they are of sufficient quality. A picture on the internet doesn’t relay the quality.
Stores that cater to “touch and try on” and large selection will survive, like WalMart and Target and Costco and such, because high volume of sales will carry them. But smaller stores, not to mention Mom & Pop’s, are in trouble. The cost of rent and utilities and inventory and employees makes them unprofitable, or at least not worth the bother.
Look around. I’m sure you’ve noticed how many empty storefronts are in your community. Nationally, the vacancy rate for retail stores is about 7% and malls is nearly 10%. It seems like more. Expect those numbers to increase.
But all’s not lost. Restaurants will survive and thrive. In fact, anything related to food will stay around. Who buys a hamburger or a cantelope on the internet? Doctors, dentists, lawyers, realtors, accountants and other similar occupations will continue to occupy a physical space in the community. So will hardware stores and lumber yards and florists and other “drop in and buy quick” businesses.
Thanks to internet sales, a good bet on the future would be to buy stock in FedEx, or UPS, and any other delivery company. Hey, wait. Haven’t we just gone full circle?
- Mountain Man
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: blog, future retail sales, internet impact, Jewell Real Estate Agency, lifestyle blog, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey blog, real estate blog
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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
As realtors, we often get hunches about our own individual local real estate market, whether it’s Monterrey, California or Baton Rouge, Louisiana or Bangor, Maine.
Here at Jewell Real Estate Agency, we have a feeling about 2010. A strong feeling. All the pieces seem to be falling into place that 2010 is going to be a great year. The best since 2005.
Our local real estate market is Cape May County, a small tourist-oriented county at the very southern tip of New Jersey. While we have just 96,000 yearround residents, the summer population swells to 750,000 or more on any given day. Our beautiful Atlantic Ocean beaches and back bays and famous boardwalks attract vacationers from Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania; New York City and the surrounding areas of northern New Jersey, southwestern Connecticut, and New York state; plus some fun-seekers from Maryland,Washington, DC and eastern Canada.
We almost exclusively sell vacation homes – including condos and townhomes - and multifamily homes, with an occasional commercial property. We sell a few primary homes each year, mostly off the islands on the mainland. There just isn’t a great demand. The seasonality of our location makes us unattractive to yearround living for a young family just getting started. There just isn’t enough yearround employment to suit their needs, so the younger generation tends to migrate toward the Philadelphia area and its jobs. The primary homes we do sell are mostly to retirees looking to enjoy the quiet shore life, plus the restaurants, fishing, and attractions of Cape May, the Wildwoods, and even Atlantic City 35 miles to the north.
So back to the countdown to 2010.
We are already showing properties every day, a phenomenon lacking over Christmas break the last two years. Joyce wrote two contracts yesterday – both accepted – and we’ve got plenty of showings today and tomorrow, right up to New Year’s Eve.
People seem eager to buy right now. There’s an enthusiasm amongst prospective buyers that has replaced the overall reluctance evident in 2007 through the first half of 2009. Maybe it’s the low interest rates or the bargain basement prices of real estate. Maybe it’s that folks are tired of sitting on the sidelines and putting off buying that American dream second home. Or perhaps it’s because many in the media have given the green light to purchasing real estate and abandoned their doom and gloom prophecies.
Whatever the reason, we have a bounce in our step and a twinkle in our eyes. The new year looks very promising. I think I’ll stick a bottle of champagne under the seat of my truck. After my last property showing tomorrow afternoon, I think I’ll break out the bubbly and toast the good times ahead. Wanna join me?
- Mountain Man
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Atlantic City, Cape May County, Cape May real estate, hitchhiking blog, Jewell Real Estate Agency, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey real estate blog, real estate blog, Wildwood, Wildwood real estate
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Monday, December 28th, 2009
I’m stubborn, I admit it. I have embraced modern technology, but only as far as needed to be the owner of a successful real estate agency.
I’ve had a cell phone for 10 years, and now 85% of Americans do too, according to statistics. Judging from my older friends, I think I personally know many of the 15% who don’t.
I bought my first computer in 1993, just months before launching my own weekly all-sports newspaper. I didn’t know how to do much, other than type articles into Microsoft Word that I would later cut and paste. By cut and paste, I mean scissors and wax onto camera-ready full newspaper-size sheets.
I got my first email address in 1999, just prior to opening the main office of Jewell Real Estate Agency. A year later we purchased three more computers for our new branch office, run by my broker wife Joyce. While my wife jumped into the computer age with vigor, I still hung around on the outskirts. She was busy inputting data on our website, local MLS, and many other websites used to sell real estate. I stuck to writing material and articles into Word, then letting her cut and paste them (yes, computer cut and paste this time) into our various advertising venues.
Now as the “ought decade” comes to a close, I write a blog regularly and I do my research on many topics on the Internet. Wikipedia is great, and I can read online the newspapers from the many places I’ve lived. I’ve even abandoned the Weather Channel on TV for Weather Underground on the Internet. And I can get instant sports scores. Yee-haa!
But that’s where I draw the line.
I don’t even know what a BlackBerry is, nor an iPod. I don’t own a DVD player or DVR, and in fact don’t know the difference, if there is one. I don’t Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or Wii. Heck, the last video game I played was Pacman on a Commodore 64, circa 1984.
And don’t even think of sending me a text message. I don’t know how to read one or write one. The only thing I can do is delete the one you sent me, unopened. If you have something important to tell me, pick up the phone. I do answer the phone.
I don’t have a GPS. I’m a guy. I use a map, or else I’ll Mapquest first and compare it to my real live map. Okay, I do have a radar detector in my vehicle. That baby has saved me a lot of bucks, not to mention points on my license.
While I’m ranting, I don’t have tattoos and I think they’re degrading (spelled S-T-U-P-I-D). Same with piercings. I don’t watch reality shows – never. My TV is never tuned to ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox. I watch nature shows, movies, and occasionally college sports. Don’t even think I’d watch the Simpsons or Beavis & Butthead. I don’t do Pay-Per-View and I don’t download movies or music.
Also, I’ve never been in a Starbucks. I don’t have (or need) a life coach. I think cougars are desperate. And what’s this thing all the “under 30s” are doing with holding up different fingers? Does that mean something?
One last thing. You’ll never see me going around with one of those Mr. Spock things in my ear. What’s with that? I own three businesses and I’m a successful author, yet I hardly think I’m so important as to walk around needing 24/7 instant access to my phone.
Okay, I’m done. I feel better now.
You can perhaps see why they call me the Mountain Man.
- Mountain Man
http://www.MountainManandCityGirl.com
Tags: Cape May Court House real estate, Cape May real estate, lifestyle blog, Mountain Man and City Girl, New Jersey real estate blog, North Wildwood, opinion, real estate blog, technology blog, West Wildwood, Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, Wildwood real estate
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