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Category Archives: Jersey Moments

A Visit to Sandy Hook National Park

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by Phoebe in Home, Jersey Moments

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Tags

jersey, summer, travel

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My birthday wish this year included visiting Sandy Hook, a barrier spit and Jersey Shore National Park that my family frequented in our younger years. I remembered the long, flat, pale landscape sandwiched between the Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Smell of salt and pines and sand. Charming tide pools and holly trees.

But I’d forgotten the abundance of prickly pear cactus. The visage of old armaments.

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Remembered horseshoe crabs. Forgot fiddler crabs.

Remembered how the ocean pushes. Forgot how it pulls. Remembered seeming stability of sea-earth beneath a swimmer’s toes which can just . . . disappear.

Then, driving past blond, brick buildings, most now dilapidated beyond use, I remembered the smell of thick, shiny floor varnish, the sound of a wide, wooden door squeaking shut for the evening, warm light in a kitchen, and camp counselor taking time to be silly with just-me. I remembered the fierce bloom of affection for that person, those moments among preteen GirlScouts I met once then never again. The swoop of a windsurfing board catching wind to take my ten or eleven-year old body, long-limbed, nervous yet ecstatic, tacking across the water beneath a sky that stretched, pure blue, over everything.

There was the special treat of the holiday weekend: a Sandy Hook I’d misplaced, regained.

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New Jersey = Mothership

27 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by Phoebe in Home, Jersey Moments

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Tags

jersey, spring

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Somewhere along the wandering lines of my life, I started thinking of New Jersey as the Mothership. Born and raised in the Township of Neptune, this description seems appropriate.

beach-weeds

Though the sand and soil on which my baby toes trod has no true name beyond what we humans (temporarily) bestow, I too am named. Jersey girl. Tristate resident, East Coast style. Yankee. American.

I leave, yet I do not. The smells, the sights, the feel are stamped upon my brain. Every new place I visit I impulsively, helplessly compare. Haven’t lived on that crabgrass patch, that blond stretch of overheated beach, that collection of crab shacks and kitsch, that mass of shopping malls, for twenty years, but nor can I abandon it. Follows me -to the Ring of Kerry, to Paris, to Boston, everywhere. The Garden State can’t stop, won’t stop, refuses to let me go. And I find I don’t want it to.

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Hey, Mama Jersey –beam me up!

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{This Moment} Through the Nautical Mirror

10 Thursday Mar 2016

Tags

family, filters, laurence-harbor, photography, this-moment

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Inspired by SouleMama.

Posted by Phoebe | Filed under Jersey Moments

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Quiet Holiday

09 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Phoebe in Jersey Moments

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

family, giving, jersey, winter

Following a brief, surprise illness and non-shocking snowstorm of tiny, icy flakes, we finally trekked down to Jersey to visit my partner’s family and mine to celebrate the winter holidays.

plant against the blinds

ornament

Some years the holidays are boisterous and busy. There doesn’t seem enough time to fit everyone in.

view into the kitchen

walking in from the kitchen

Other years, quiet. Dinner is skillfully and thoughtfully prepared. A life-long holiday with many traditions is distilled to the heart of its elements. People are missed. Presents cheerfully opened. Tea served.

tea cups on the table

A Job For Digi Clover San

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by Phoebe in Home, Jersey Moments

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

jamaica-plain, jersey, photography

Like most well-trained kids-of-consumer-culture, I spent a fair amount of time wishing for items I don’t own. And many more moments attempting to correct, or redirect, this behavior. Recently, my obsession has centered around digital cameras, and my lack of a good pocket-size model.

Enter Digi Clover San.

No, it’s not a “good” camera. Better description: toy. And, yet, there are many occasions for which Mr. Clover is up to the task.

Neon Buddah sign

Sun toy

Around JP and Jersey this weekend, I declared: This Looks Like A Job For Digi Clover San!

In progress

Weezie

What Happened to June . . . or Oh, Hello, July!

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by Phoebe in Boston Moments, Jersey Moments

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Tags

family, jersey, travel

June: the busiest month.

I don’t often hear strong opinions about June. July steals the show, surely, and then August breaks hearts as it drags unwilling captives back to school, work, and that breakneck sprint to winter.

May, at least, is the month of graduations and a holiday that celebrates both fallen service members and the start of Grill Season. But June . . . June. Wait. Where’d it go?

Clear Deigns at the Milky Way Lounge

Listening to my partner’s band, the Clear Deigns, at the Milky Way Lounge (that’s him with the guitar!)

Great Brook Farm State Park pond

Chicken makes a break for it

Cow looks for a nose-rub

Exploring Great Brook Farm State Park

Summer book sale

Browsing a library book sale

Leaving the restaurant

Birthday cake with striped candle

Pre-birthday celebration with my family

Down on Longstreet Farm

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by Phoebe in Jersey Moments

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Tags

jersey

Growing up in Central New Jersey, I’ve spent many hours wandering around Homdel Park.  Family picnics, chickens clucking up in the trees, learning about early American farm-life through Longstreet Farm, barn cats, geese on the lawn, even -one might say- an important first-ish date-ish-thing with a VIP.

Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it surprises me that I’m still spending time down on the farm at Longstreet.  This past weekend, my partner, his sister, and I lazed around the grounds -watching the traditionally clad workers toil in the sun, cutting wheat.  It was a good reminder of what life was like for some, and yet another reason to feel thankful for the modern inventions that spoil us wildly today (such as the digital camera with which I captured these photos.)

Farmers harvesting wheat

The wheat machine

Farm peacock

Chicken stretches

Living in the City, Reading about the Country

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Phoebe in Boston Moments, Green Life, Jersey Moments

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

arnold-arboretum, jersey, maine

It does not escape me that, living in one of this country’s oldest cities, I spend a lot of time considering the country.

The vine twists

Upon finishing the second issue of Taproot magazine, steeped in the values of living simply, slowly, heart-full, back-to-the-earth, I thought: this is me, this is not me.

I believe in sitting out on the porch, shucking corn. I believe in long walks through green places. In white flashes of deer tails, rabbit tails, and rusty, shaggy foxtail.

Mutant mini corn

I also, believe in escaping the bumper-to-bumper to hit up the ice cream counter. Barely comprehending my luck that this planet holds things cold and milky, vanilla with peanut butter swirls.

I’m a child of the suburbs. Beachtown creaky, my younger years held splinters from Jersey Shore boardwalks, screams from the top of the crickety, wooden ‘coaster. Paper tickets from ski-ball and wack-a-mole games that I traded for spider rings whose cheap plastic pinched my fingers.

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The city has me, the country attracts me.  In between, I both rue and appreciate the Christmas-light palaces of the ‘burbs.

It’s my lot, I think, to refuse claiming -or being claimed- by one, the other, or the third.  I’d rather find value in them all.

{This Moment} Make a Wish

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by Phoebe in Green Life, Jersey Moments, With Friends

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

family, trees

{this moment} – A Friday ritual (joining Soulemama,) capturing a moment from the week.

Fluff dandelion

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{This Moment} Birthday Brunch Celebration . . .

10 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by Phoebe in Jersey Moments

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

family, giving, jersey, this-moment

{this moment} – A Friday ritual (joining Soulemama.)

Birthday brunch for Mom

Wherever You Are, Be There

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The Kids: The Children of LGBTQA Parents in the USA

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--Beautiful and compelling. I've been wondering about these kids.

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

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--NEEDED.

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--Very cool. Very depressing.

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