Pine Barrens: Tree Frogs and Water from Mike H on Vimeo

More on this little endangered critter can be found here.

Sally recorded her last “Suppertime Jamboree” in her Atco home after deciding to retire at age 88. The program was aired on Cruisin’ 92.1 WVLT April 2nd 2011.

Thanks for the memories Sally!!

Story found here at delewareonline.com

Happy and Healthy 2010.

Here’s how they did it in Times Square this year

The monument is dedicated to the memory of Captain Emilio Carranza, a Mexican aviator who crashed at this site on July 12, 1928 while flying from New York to Mexico. He was trying to complete a good will flight to the United States and back.

A 12 feet high monument stands near the headwaters of Tulpehocken Creek. On one side is an Aztec falling eagle in relief. In Spanish is the dedication to “Captain Aviator Emilio Carranza, tragically killed July 13, 1928.” (He actually was listed deceased on July 12th and recovered on July 13th. Post 11 holds the Memorial on the Saturday closest to July 12th at the same time Mexico holds a similar ceremony.)

Carranza, who was a great-nephew of President Venustiano Carranza of Mexico, was only 23 years old. He crashed his plane when he was 18 while helping to put down the de la Huerta rebellion in Sonora, and his face had to be put back in place with platinum screws. He was chosen to make a goodwill flight to Washington in response to a goodwill flight by Charles Lindbergh the previous December. He was honored by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker. Returning to Mexico from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, Carranza ran into a thunderstorm over the Pine Barrens and crashed. (McPhee 1968:99-103)

Every year, on the Saturday nearest July 13, a ceremony is conducted at the site by members of the Mt. Holly Post, American Legion. Every year Mount Holly Post 11 of the American Legion holds a Memorial Service at the Monument to honor the fallen aviator. The Memorial Service is held on the Second Saturday of July at 1:00 p.m.

After the tragedy in 1928, the members of Post 11 made a promise to keep the memory of Emilio Carranza and his mission of Good Will and Peace alive. Every year since 1928, the members of American Legion Post 11 have kept that promise that their preceding comrades had made without fail.

More info and where to find it: http://www.post11.org/carranza/carranza8e.html

It is not true that Valentine’s day is a holiday invented by greedy greeting card companies eager to sell more stock or by candy companies to sell more chocolate, or general retailers to create more business once Christmas is over. It is easy to imagine that Valentine’s Day was created by them because as soon as the stores put away their Christmas merchandise, out comes the Valentine’s Day items – even though Valentine’s is still more than six weeks away.

In a blink Rudolph and Santa are replaced with red ribbon and pink hearts and mass produced Valentine’s Day cards in thousands of designs and sizes – large, small, serious, silly, inexpensive, expensive, musical (my least favourite because they sound so tinny) and traditional ones. Valentine’s Day is the biggest single twenty hour period for florists, a huge event for greeting card companies and a boon for candy makers.

Valentine’s Day began more than 1,500 years ago. According to legend, Valentine was a priest who performed marriages in continued defiance of the orders of the Roman emperor Claudius. The emperor had realized that no young men wanted to join his army and then leave their wives and sweethearts. When it was discovered that Valentine was still performing marriages in secret, he was cruelly sentenced to death.

Valentine allegedly cured the jailer’s daughter of blindness and on the night before his execution, he sent a note to her signed “from your Valentine”. Reportedly he died on February. 14, 269 A.D.

More than 200 years later in 496 A.D., February 14 was named by Pope Gelasius to honor St. Valentine. Today more than 1,700 years have passed since the real Valentine died, and people are still celebrating Valentine’s Day in a big way. A staggering 180 million Valentine’s cards were sold last year.

It may never have occurred to you that Valentine’s Day is a major crisis day for anyone who is having an affair. After all, Valentine’s Day is the one holiday when everyone is expected to do something romantic for their spouse or lover — and if someone has both, it’s a serious problem and a logistic nightmare.

Not surprisingly then one of the most busiest groups of professionals on Valentine’s Day is the private detective when their workload can quadruple. Most people figure if anything suspicious is going on it will show itself around Valentine’s Day. Apparently it is a huge mistake for a cheating husband to book a business trip over Valentine’s Day. It rates really highly on the scale of suspicious activity.

The competition element of what your spouse did for you on Valentine’s Day is another highly disconcerting fact. Some people believe the main event is the day after when some women get together and the comparisons begin.

The competition factor can be particularly acute on the night as well if you go out for a meal on Valentine’s Day – what you basically have is a collection of couples spending the whole night discretely observing each other in a restaurant, trying to reassure themselves that their relationship is less dysfunctional than the others.

Last year at a flash restaurant in London on Valentine’s Day night a couple started arguing and the wife stood up, slapped the husband across the face and then stormed off in a huff. The husband composed himself, took a few more sips of his red wine and then proceeded to loudly call his mistress on his mobile. Within 15 minutes the immaculately dressed younger mistress turned up at the restaurant and sat down delighted that her lover had arranged the restaurant meal especially on Valentine’s Day.

The first course arrived and then you would not believe it but guess who should walk back into the restaurant but the wife. Heated words flew, culminating in the wife pouring the rest of the bottle of red wine all over the husband’s head and then the wife and mistress leaving together joined arm in arm in their thorough disgust with the sod of a man in their lives.

All this occurred whilst the other diners where sitting there quietly totally bewildered but secretly impressed with how fabulously functional their own relationship was.

The interesting twist that all came out in the newspapers the week after is that the colourful threesome were actors hired by the restaurant specifically to entertain the diners and make them feel grateful about the state of their own relationships.

This year you can avoid the actors and private detectives by stealing away somewhere quiet with your special someone. Do not whatever you do go away on a business trip over Valentine’s Day, or for that matter go on a conference on the preceding or following weekend since Valentine’s Day falls on a Wednesday this year.

Source: http://www.articlecircle.com/ – Free Articles Directory

About the Author
Corina Clemence runs Chateau du Guerinet, near Blois an exclusive luxury chateau for up to 15 people perfect for an intimate romantic Valentine’s Day getaway. Rent a castle in France http://www.loirechateau.com Rent a french chateau

The earliest written documents about the forest date back to 1624 during the exploration of coastal inlets and bays by Henry Hudson. Of course, Indian tribes such as the Lenni-Lenape were already here, providing commerce in the fur trade, but area settlement did not really begin for another fifty years while a transportation network of roads were being cleared. What we now know as Route 9 began as Shore Road during this period in time.

Initially shipbuilding, whaling and timber-based trades thrived during the early 1700′s, yet abundant resources of iron, sand, trees and water also brought the charcoal, iron and glass industries. In 1766, Charles Reed founded Batsto Iron Works. With bog ore mined from the banks of rivers, it produced household goods. During the Revolutionary War, Batsto also manufactured parts for the Continental Army. Though the British Army had plans to raze Batsto, after winning the Battle of Chestnut Neck in 1778, several of their ships foundered in shallow waters and their troops instead returned to New York.

The Batsto sawmill was restored to its original state in 1995.
Visitors can also view working demonstrations

Around the turn of the century, whalers and trappers migrated north, and the shipbuilders followed. Still, iron production and sawmills flourished. Along with the timber, it was almost all you needed to build homes. Stage Coach Road led directly to Philadelphia, which probably received most of the wood.

The region’s farming also began to grow and in 1840 John Webb established the first cranberry bog in what is now Ocean County. Later in 1864 the Renault Winery was founded. Some farmers begin blueberry cultivation, though it will take several decades of research to produce a substantial harvest.

Conservation Begins

By this time steel production in Pennsylvania was strong and the demand for pig iron decreased dramatically. Batsto turned to making glass for a couple of years but soon fell into receivership. Because of the building boom in Philadelphia and New York, entrepreneur Joseph Wharton knew all those people would need fresh water. He also knew the sandy Pinelands soil allowed water to pass through easily and cleanly to a huge aquifer below. In 1876 he purchased Batsto and much of the land atop the aquifer, intending to distribute the water through conduits to those cities. Initially the New Jersey Legislature liked the idea, but when it came time for a vote, they declared “New Jersey is not a state that can be tapped at both ends.” and the plan was scrapped.

Because of Wharton’s dream and the aquifer itself, New Jersey eventually enacted the State Forest Service in 1905 to protect its land and water resources. They began with the acquisition of Bass River State Forest. In 1926 the first forest tree nursery was established in Jackson Township.

Each owner has added their own improvements to Batsto,
though Joseph Wharton infused the 32-room mansion’s
Italianate architecture.

Although he passed away in 1909, Joseph Wharton’s Batsto farm remained in trust until 1954, when it was purchased by the State of New Jersey. In 1963 a series of wildfires burned 183,000 acres surrounding the farm, thankfully the mansion and all historical buildings were saved. As you travel this region, take note of large tracts of forest that seem sparse, then you’ll understand that nature takes a long, long time to recover.

An awkwardly historical moment occurred here in 1928 when Emilio Carranza, inspired by Charles Lindbergh, was on his return during a non-stop flight from Mexico City to New York City. His plane crashed during a thunderstorm; he did not survive. A monument was built on that site and each year since then, local people continue to hold a memorial.

John McPhee’s 1967 bestseller The Pine Barrens about its history, people and biology spurs public opinion to demand more protection for natural and cultural resources. In 1971 the Pinelands Environmental Council is created. During the next decade several more agencies are also created to regulate and research the Pinelands, continuing to its addition as a National Reserve in 1978.

Legends and Folklore of the Pinebarrens

People in South Jersey have grown up with stories of The Jersey Devil. The most famous account starts in 1735 around Leeds Point. An impoverished woman with twelve children, Mother Leeds gave birth to a deformed child with an elongated body, winged shoulders, a large horse-like head, cloven feet and a thick tail. She confined it to the cellar until it eventually escaped up the chimney.

The creature has been blamed for boiling streams dry, cows that won’t produce milk, even failed crops. Some say just seeing it foretold of hard times or wars. During the early 1800′s, an artillery officer is said to have fired a cannonball at it without having any effect. A reward had been offered for its capture, but never claimed. Surprisingly, in all that has been written, everyone who has seen the Devil was not harmed, only frightened.

Other folklore has been passed between generations as well. Fables like Witch of the Pines tell a story about revenge. The Barnegat Pirates would lure ships to the shallow shore and then pillage their bounty. From The Serpent of Long Beach Island to The Haunted Tavern, the list goes on.

There are many more legends without such dire consequences. A poem called Quail Hill is about a place in Smithville where a young Indian squaw turns into a bird to escape her captors. You can learn How the Cricket Got its Tune or discover The Legend of the Church Bells . We call it Pineylore.

New nests were found back in 1991 and they were the first to be found in Gloucester County since the widespread use of the pesticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, or DDT, which decimated New Jersey’s bald eagle population.

We went from having no nests to having five or six nests here in Gloucester County and probably more that we don’t know about. Last January, DEP staff and volunteers counted a record high of 264 bald eagles, 221 of them in South Jersey. Camden County included

NJ gained five bald eagle pairs and seven new nests were found in 2008, according to a report released in December. Fifty of the 69 nests in New Jersey produced a total of 85 eaglets. Most nests are located around the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, but with the population on the rise, more bald eagles are settling further north, in the tri-county area.

All known nest sites are monitored from January through July, when bald eagles begin building nests and laying eggs. Using binoculars and spotting scopes, volunteer observers keep an eye on the nests from a distance of 1,000 feet. Everything is logged — the number of birds, courtship and nesting behaviors, incubation and feeding. At select nests, biologists band the eaglets and collect blood samples for contaminant analysis when they are five to eight weeks old.

Typically, nests are used over generations of birds. Nests can be hard to find as they tend to be in hard to find places. There are a couple of nests that can be observed only by airplane.

Its an amazing feat that these birds have come back after we nearly destroyed them. Keep your eyes open and look around, you may just catch a glimse of this majestic bird in your own backyard.