Jersey Celebrities

Ellis Island Muse

February 1, 2008

Tewksbury poet Sondra Gash, whose collection Silk Elegy (CavanKerry Press, 2002) honors her immigrant relatives and their connection to Paterson’s silk industry, will lead a creative writing workshop on the 13th for 30 middle- and high-school language arts teachers during the second annual Ellis Island Institute Summer Teachers’ Seminar. ...
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For Matthew Bogdanos, returning to Don Bosco Preparatory High School in Ramsey was something of a homecoming. ...
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For one Irvington family, the real beauty of a home is found in the community that surrounds it....
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More than 40 years after playing his last Major League game, Yogi Berra, the pride of Montclair, remains fixed in the American imagination. Who’d-a thunk it?...
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In this era of Reality TV, let’s give credit to those New Jerseyans committed to the quaint pursuit of getting into the Guinness Book of World Records....
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Funny Pages

January 31, 2008

Everyone knows New Jersey is funny. Outside of those not-so-hilarious “What exit?” jokes, we seem to breed some of America’s most famous comedians. So it makes sense that comedy’s latest rising star is one of us....
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He’s a Renaissance man in swim trunks, a lifeguard whose cartoons have been featured in The New Yorker for nearly 20 years. But John O’Brien has guarded the 22nd Street Beach in North Wildwood even longer, having joined the city’s beach patrol 36 years ago. Now 52, the Delran resident travels with a notepad, jotting down cartoon ideas often based on life’s everyday absurdities....
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For Peter Cocoziello of Oldwick, chairman of the New Jersey Italian American Heritage Foundation....
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There’s nothing odd about a college kid with a part-time job, but what about one who owns his own clothing company with four of his friends?...
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A Tell of Terror at Home

January 30, 2008

Here’s a catch-22 for the modern age: How do you get inside the head of a suicide bomber? If you’re John Updike, you set your 22nd novel in Paterson, where six 9/11 hijackers, including Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon, lived in the spring of 2001....
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It took him a lifetime to get it, but artist Paul Jennis finally landed his dream job. ...
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Jim McGreevey’s tell-all (okay, more likely “tell-some”) memoir is due out next month. In the interest of public service, we provide a handy guide for Trenton insiders....
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At age four, Chery Lin fell in love with handbags. Decades later, she fell in love with vintage handbags that revealed to her a kind of beauty she’d never seen. “Even something as simple as a handbag, if beautifully designed and crafted, can give you pleasure every day,” she says....
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Thomas Edison is one of the Garden State’s adopted sons and on the 75th anniversary of his death, there is still plenty of light to shine on his life....
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Charlene Napoleon was only a teenager when her obsession with cream puffs began. The Trenton native learned to make the creamy, dreamy treats from a friend’s dad—a professional baker—then spent the next couple of decades perfecting the art while working as a hairdresser and a trainer for Redken Laboratories....
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Pie Eyed

January 29, 2008

If an apple must fall, at least let it fall into a pie. A really good apple should be treated with respect, says Carole Walter, renowned cookbook author, serious baker, and unabashed fan of American apple pie....
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As a musical group, the Original Hobo Band is known as much for its colorfully mismatched uniforms as for its lively performances....
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Plenty of New Jerseyans have influenced the world, and now there’s a place to honor them, at least virtually. ...
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More than once, Evelyn Axelrod says, “I’ve said too much.” But the words come easily, perhaps because the wife of Herbert Axelrod—the pet-care magnate, philanthropist, and patron of the arts—is breaking her long silence about his controversial sale of 30 rare stringed instruments to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra....
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Dr. Jeff Levine gained national attention last year when he shed almost 200 pounds—nearly half his weight—all in the name of reality TV....
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