unbillable hours

Atlantic Highlands

Twin Lights Lighthouse, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey
July 2004.
Holga, ISO 100.

This isthmus runs 127 miles south from here, just a few miles south of Battery Park, New York City. This is the northern point of what may be the most defining element of New Jersey geography: the Jersey Shore. From here, beginning with Earle Naval Weapons Station, which is where the Navy does heavy weapons rearmament (some say with the heaviest weapons of all: nuclear missiles) and the Department of Homeland Security's defense and Coast Guard station on Sandy Hook to the gaming tables and depressed streets of Atlantic City and the remote cottages and interstate ferries of Cape May.

seventieslicious

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

This constitutes the first and only time I've used my six-cross filter on my camera. It turns everything into a damn Seventies era tourism poster. "And the lovely Seine is sure to set a mood...."

I can't use this filter. If I keep using this filter, I'm going to have to hang "Hang in There" kitty posters on my walls.

Feeling Crockett and Tubbs

The Borgata Casino and Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey (July 2004).

After Allaire's early 19th Century sentimentality, I thought it might be nice to return to the 21st Century. I went down to the Borgata a few weeks back, as a sort of whim (after all, I only went down to have dinner). The outside of the Borgata is done up in neon (man!); it has a sort of eighties-South Beach-pastel slippers-and-Armani sportcoats feel. Fun stuff.

As for the dinner, I'm happy to report that the all-night eatery at the Borgata, the name of which eludes me, has a decent filet mignon, a wide selection of oysters, but a mediocre wine list and really, really bad service.

This is a sepulchral peace, though, and that time is not yours.
***

All photos taken at Allaire State Park. Special thanks to the wonderful members - and former colleagues - of the State Division of Parks and Forestry and the Division of Community Affairs, Arthur Brisbane Juvenile Rehabilitation Facility for allowing me to tramp through the park during two consecutive weekends in June. The second weekend, incidentally, was so rainy that I nearly developed pneumonia.

Information about Allaire State Park:

The Historic Village of Allaire, Inc., is the non-profit organization that does the historical reenactments of early 19th Century life at Allaire State Park.

The Pine Creek Railroad division of the New Jersey Museum of Transportation runs early steam engines at Allaire Park. I believe they will be developing an expanded early rail history museum. They reenact Edison's The Great Train Robbery each year.

The Division of Environmental Protection, Department of Parks and Forestry runs Allaire State Park, although there are many hands, obviously, that go into making it beautiful. Camping is allowed. They have yurts here now, which just amuses the dickens out of me.

Other New Jersey Historic Villages:

Batsto Village (1760s-1860s) (closed due to flooding right now).

Jockey Hollow (1777-1779)

Waterloo Village (1760s-1880s)

In the simple act of devotion,

in the mysteries of faith that now elude you, there was certainty.

In the buying and selling of things, there was progress.

The mundane, necessary tasks of harvest and slaughter were personal affairs.

In small places full of order, men rested and waited for their day.

You walk the empty paths men took with horse and carraige just forty years after the birth of the nation.

A trade was plied here, the sweaty, dirty task of iron smelting.