Grab a sweater on Sunday and celebrate fall at the Morristown Festival on the Green

Where can you find a bridal tent, reptiles, precision jump-ropers and Raven the Roving Gypsy?

Where can you hear Baptist choirs and the Bishop of Jazz?

Where can you sample cuisine from 21 restaurants and watch a woman get sawed in half ?

Sunday’s Morristown Festival on the Green, of course!

“It’s another element that puts Morristown on the map,” says Jennifer Wehring, who has spent most of her waking hours since June putting together the 16th annual edition of the fall festival, which runs from noon until 5 pm on Oct. 3.

Some 50,000 visitors are anticipated for what’s being forecast as a crisp autumn day. They will find 150 businesses, nonprofits and sponsors arrayed in booths and tents around the historic Morristown Green. Most vendors are local. But one, Pure Via, an artificial sweetener company, is coming all the way from Wisconsin.

“They wanted access to the North Jersey market,” says Jennifer, marketing director for the Morristown Partnership, which promotes downtown business.

Nonstop entertainment will fill four stages. Acts include the exciting kid band Boys Nyte; more young talent from the Original Music School; the Bishop of Jazz, pianist Rio Clemente, with singer Mickey Freeman; the Celtic group Sonas; and a choir from Calvary Baptist Church.

The Wellness on the Green studio will show off Bollywood dancing, and the Lightning Bolts of the Red Oaks School will demonstrate the art of jumping rope.

Bridal businesses will strut their stuff, the Turtleback Zoo will supply reptiles, and that gypsy lady, Raven, will divine fortunes from doodles.

And yes, a gent named Simply Steven Magic will saw some poor woman in two.

Except for the food, it’s all free, even the parking.  The Morristown Parking Authority’s parking decks will be open and won’t charge a penny.

“It has some kind of magic. To get 50,000 people to come to Morristown is pretty amazing,” says Marty Epstein, owner of Marty’s Reliable Cycle and a Partnership board member. “It’s a great showcase for the business community. For us, it’s a meet-and-greet. It’s a very effective form of advertising.”

Jennifer says business participation in the festival has held steady despite the shaky economy. A few less tents were rented this year, she said, but the overall number of participants is about the same as last fall. Some nonprofits backed out–and were replaced by other nonprofits, she says.

The Partnership reduced vendor fees slightly to compensate for $50 inspection fees that the town is charging food establishments, said Jennifer, 26, who has organized the prior two fall festivals.

Sunday’s event, which costs about $110,000 to produce, will turn a profit, she adds. Proceeds will help fund the Partnership’s next extravaganza, the month-long Christmas Festival on the Green.

Jennifer and colleague France Delle Donne have been working on that one since June, too.

Hey, no sweat.

“I get Monday off,” Jennifer said.

MAP OF FESTIVAL ON THE GREEN

ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULE

THINGS TO SEE AND DO AT THE FESTIVAL

Greening your diet, tasty tips from a Morristown student

By Nayna Shah

Although it may be hard to believe, there are many ways to “go green” with your diet and eating habits.  Even wackier is the fact that many of these tips can help you eat healthier!  Maybe our country can finally shed its “obese” label and save the planet while we’re at it.

Here are some quick tips to get you started on a greener and healthier diet:

First, eat locally grown foods or buy food from a local farmer’s market.  All food comes with an emissions price tag– the amount of carbon dioxide used in transporting it.  It takes 17 percent of the fossil fuel consumed in the United States to produce the food we eat, and this still does not include the fuel used to get the food to the market.

Because food travels an average of 1,500 miles before it’s bought and eaten, it is imperative for you to make an effort to buy locally grown foods.  Even better, ditch the hunter-gatherer lifestyle Americans have today, and switch to farming! Grow some of your own vegetables and herbs in a garden to save energy and fuel.  Spend a little less money in a store and a little more time outside, admiring the environment you are trying to save.

Next, avoid heavily processed or packaged food. These products require more energy to make than fresh foods and will also cause more trash in landfills.  Also, consider reducing the amount of take-out or fast food you order.  These meals add a significant amount of garbage into the landfills as well, even if it’s just a meal for one person.

Should you order take out, bring your own containers to use instead of wasting more non-recyclable plastic, or simply reuse the containers from the restaurant.  This is not by any means suggesting you never go out to a restaurant or get take out, but instead limit your orders to about once or twice a month.  Even this small step will cause a profound reduction of garbage entering the landfills.

Additionally, limit the amount of meat you eat.  Meat contains essential nutrients like protein, but protein can be consumed from foods such as beans, eggs, and yogurt.  The average meat eater causes a ton and a half more carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere from food production than the average vegetarian.

If you want to eliminate just one type of meat from your diet, beef would be the best choice; beef requires the most energy for production.  To go along with your new semi-vegetarian diet, purchase organic foods. Organic food is produced without pesticides and other fertilizers and is the greener choice, overall.

Finally, make an effort to drink fresh water. Fresh water is probably one of the most undervalued resources on the planet.  Water is more precious than any gem or metal on earth because it is necessary for life, so take advantage of the gift.

Drink a glass of water before reaching for a can of soda.  It took much less energy to produce and package and is definitely the healthier choice.  After all, water is the only beverage your body actually needs.  If you’re in an extremely green mood, purchase an aluminum or stainless steel, BPA-free water bottle.  These bottles are durable, do not produce toxins, and can keep your water cold.

So before you grab the phone to order takeout or open the fridge to pull out a soda, think of the greener choices you could be making.  Remember that in this case greener means healthier, but most importantly, remember the planet that produces all the food you absentmindedly munch on everyday.  That in itself should be a good enough reason to turn over a new, and greener, leaf with your diet.

Nayna Shah is a sophomore at Morristown High School.

Greening your car, driving tips from a Morristown student

By Nayna Shah

You have already greened your summer and your diet, so what’s the next step to becoming an environmental guru? Greening your car.  The emissions from billions of the Model T’s descendants all over the world are a major contributor to the carbon dioxide clogging up the atmosphere.

During the 1900s, 90 percent of children who lived within three miles of their school walked or biked the way.  Today, that same percentage accounts for the population who drives to a destination only a half mile away!

In 2002, the total carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks exceeded 314 million metric tons, a figure that can be reduced with the help of a few simple tips.

The ideal green-mobile is a hybrid vehicle. Hybrids use both gasoline and an electric motor, powered by a rechargeable battery.  Hybrids are much quieter than a conventional car and can get up to three times the mileage per gallon.  Computer systems installed in these vehicles control which energy source to use at certain times to maximize efficiency and safety.  The batteries last for up to 10 years and hardly ever need recharging.  The partial use of gasoline makes for a decrease in emissions and an extremely eco-friendly ride.

Although if would be idyllic if every household owned a hybrid vehicle, it’s not easy for every person to ditch their own car and spend their entire savings on a new one.  It is easy, however, to follow a few tricks to lessen the carbon dioxide rushing out of your tailpipe.

Begin by driving smoothly, instead of jerky stops and starts.  Flooring it for only five seconds can produce the same amount of CO2 as 30 minutes of normal travel.  Next, turn off your engine if possible when standing still for one minute or more.  Contrary to most beliefs, restarting uses half the gas used when idling.

Keep your car tuned by continuously changing the air filters, tire pressure and oil.  Cover the bed of pick-up trucks with tonneau covers to improve the aerodynamics and increase the gas mileage.  Finally, be cognizant of the heat or air conditioning and do not open windows and doors when these systems are turned on.  Remember, any extra work a vehicle has to do will cause extra emissions.

The most straightforward methods to going green, ironically, are the least used among the American population:  Public transportation and walking/biking.  Carpooling with a friend or many friends is one less car on the road and 20.4 pounds less CO2 in the air.  Using buses or trains to reach a destination can stop hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere!

Unfortunately, when Henry Ford invented his first car, he brought happiness and laziness to the American people.  Today, thousands of people risk the life of their own planet for a comfortable ride to work.  What’s a bicycle or a walk anymore?  Americans are married to their cars and definitely do not have the upper hand in the relationship.  Leave the CO2-factory-on-wheels at home for a change, and take a bike ride, a walk, a bus, or a train to your destination.

When asked to give back to Mother Earth, don’t give her more carbon dioxide! Green your car, use other modes of transportation, and consider taking CO2 out of the air. It’s the best way to give back to the environment.

Nayna Shah is a sophomore at Morristown High School.

Architect, musician, painter: Brian Oschwald brings a lot to the mix in Morristown art show

Great musicians know that great performances often hinge on the notes they don’t play.

What’s left out informs what remains, in other words.

So how does a painter know when to put down the brush and frame the canvas?

“It’s done when it pushes back,” says artist Brian Oschwald. “It’s almost like air pressure between yourself and it.”

Brian’s paintings are on display through October at Morristown’s Gallery Egan. The show is appropriately titled The Inner Landscape; this guy has thought long and hard about abstraction.

His images refer to “the compost of memory, dream and pre-verbal experience from which ‘ideas’ emerge,” he writes in his show biography.

Most of Brian’s oil paintings begin at Deer Isle in Maine or on the Maryland coast, and are refined in his Mendham studio.

“It doesn’t take a lot to improve one. You can remove a color or balance something. Very small things can tip the balance to make a painting lively and engaging,” says Brian, 53.

What he’s striving for is “a balance of abstraction and realism, with landscape features,” he says. “It’s a personal point of view about landscape as a memory, as an interior experience as opposed to a literal record.”

Painting provides the counterpoint to a professional life steeped in literal records, as a design architect specializing in historic preservation. Brian’s projects have included restorations of the Presbyterian churches in Morristown and Madison and the Bamboo Brook mansion in Chester.

(His wife, forensic architect Elise Dann, also is a details person: When faulty design injures someone, she’s hired to ferret out the flaws.)

The son of an architect, Brian caught the history bug in 1971 while traveling through Europe. He helped restore an Italian village near Florence that had been bombed by the Nazis.

“The Italians take great care of old things,” he says. “They preserve the best of the old and do sensitive modern inserts.”

About 20 of Brian’s works, priced from $100 to about $9,000, will be exhibited at Gallery Egan; it’s his ninth solo show since taking up painting and found-object sculpture in 1988.

He cites abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi and contemporary Philadelphia artist Stuart Shils among his influences.

This reflective, introspective life seems far removed from the sub-zero ponds near Minneapolis where Brian played hockey as a youth. Or, for that matter, from his other passion, traditional music.

Brian’s instruments include mandolin, assorted flutes, digital bagpipes and the Celtic harp.

“It touches your collar bone, and turns your whole body into a tuning fork,” he says of the harp. “It’s very relaxing.”

And while he looks rather professorial with his bow tie, round tortoise-shell glasses and thick mustache, Brian once sported a “pony tail to my butt” and strummed a Gibson electric 12-string guitar as lead singer for  a band called “Post War Skyscraper” in Northfield, Minn.

Asked if he has any recordings from those junior high school days, he reflects for a nanosecond or two, and seems quite pleased to reply in the negative.

What’s left out informs what remains, in other words.

A reception for ‘The Inner Landscape’ is scheduled for 7 pm Friday at Gallery Egan on 12 Community Place.

Morristown council green-lights red light camera study

Red-light cameras got a green light tonight from the Morristown council, which voted 6-1 to authorize the town administration to start the process by soliciting bids for a vendor.

The vendor would study accident records and traffic patterns and recommend which intersections might benefit from the cameras.

Then, if town officials concur, the state Department of Transportation would be asked to include Morristown in a five-year pilot program approved by the state Legislature in 2008.

“I’m for any technology that makes the community safer, makes traffic better and allows us to utilize our police even better,” said Mayor Tim Dougherty.

Councilwoman Alison Deeb cast the lone dissenting vote, raising constitutional questions and presenting data that suggests red-light cameras may cause more rear-end accidents as motorists slam on brakes at intersections.

“It’s all about revenue, not safety,” said the councilwoman, the only Republican on the governing body. “If it was about safety, we would increase the yellow light” duration to give motorists more time to stop.

Monitoring systems combine cameras and vehicle sensors with traffic lights to capture images of vehicles running red lights.

So far, the state DOT has authorized 25 towns and 54 intersections to take part in the program. Cameras are operating in Newark, Brick, Deptford, Glassboro, Linden, New Brunswick, Woodbridge and Gloucester City.  Edison, Roselle Park, East Brunswick and Stratford Borough are proceeding with plans for camera systems, according to DOT spokesman Tim Greeley. Morris Township also was approved but cameras have not been installed.

New York City has had such a program in place since 1993, and 25 states deploy red light cameras, the New Jersey DOT says. At least 15 states have banned the cameras, according to research by Alison Deeb.

Morristown’s ordinance would impose $85 fines for red light violations identified by the cameras. The owner and driver of a vehicle would be jointly liable. Police could issue citations up to 40 days after an alleged incident. Images would be destroyed after 60 days.

The town engineer would inspect the system every six months. State law would require  yearly reports from the town on increases or decreases in violations and accidents at monitored intersections.

Town Attorney Vij Pawar said the town would not be required to enter a long-term contract with a camera vendor, so the program could be discontinued with relative ease.

Installation costs would be borne the vendor, not taxpayers, said Councilwoman Rebecca Feldman.

“The people who are opposed to this are the same people texting as they drive through town,” she said.

That drew an immediate rebuttal from Richard Ray, a resident who spoke against the ordinance at the meeting. “I never text,” he said.

A few years ago, Richard told the council, he timed yellow lights at intersections along busy South Street and was dismayed to find they were at least one second shorter than signals on side streets. He also discovered that the state does not regulate timing of traffic lights; it’s a local matter, he said.

Alison Deeb cited opposition to red light cameras by the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Automobile Association.  She suggested the town should study local traffic data and determine what other measures could be tried.

The councilwoman also contended the town only would get to keep about $200,000 of every $1 million generated by red light cameras. The rest, she said, would go to the state and the vendor.

In other business, the council:

• Amended two-hour parking rules across town to be in effect from 8 am to 4 pm, instead of 9 am to 5 pm.
• Authorized installation of parking meters on the southeast side of Court Street, for 245 feet from Ann Street toward Fort Nonsense.
• Endorsed a “Howl-o-ween Dog Parade” organized by bicycle artists Ryan Taylor and Ashley Cook; costumed dogs will strut from town hall to the Morristown Green on Oct. 24.
• Discussed becoming a “sister city” with Montenegro, Colombia; that city’s mayor will visit the town senior center at 9 am on Monday.
• Discussed removing a “sunset clause” from the town’s rent control ordinance; as it stands, tenants live in fear every three years that the law will be scrapped, said Rebecca Feldman.
• Briefly debated Alison Deeb’s suggestion to revamp zoning laws to allow bed and breakfast establishments, which she said could bring tourism revenue to town.

After the meeting, resident Linda Carrington of the Historic District said B&B’s would harm the fabric of her neighborhood.

“I have a house worth a lot of money,” said Linda, who tonight was appointed as an alternate member of the board of adjustment. “I don’t want a lot of transients. Let them move to the Township.”

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Morristown Environmental Commission urges tougher steps to protect Burnham Pond

Morristown’s environmental commission is urging the town to take legal action to force removal of a pipe that appears to run from a private backyard in Morris Township into Burnham Pond, which is owned by Morristown.

The commission also contends that the discharge of storm water into the pond is illegal, and recommends that the state Department of Environmental Protection be called in to enforce state laws.

Lastly, the advisory panel is asking the town to start a monitoring program to prevent anyone from removing vegetation planted around the pond to filter and protect it.

Swaths of this “riparian buffer zone,” painstakingly planted by volunteers since 2001, have vanished mysteriously.

“If the town does not have the authority to institute an enforcement action of this kind, we recommend that the administration introduce an ordinance to the Town Council that calls for the protection of the buffer zones, the delegation of enforcement activities to the appropriate Town department, and penalties for violations of the ordinance,” the commission states in a letter to Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty.

The Mayor reiterated what he told the town council earlier this month: Letters will go out soon to residents around the pond–in Morristown and Morris Township– warning them not to tamper with town property. And he said the town attorney continues researching the legal status of the pipes.

“We’re going to enforce our rights,” the Mayor said this week. “We’re doing due diligence to make sure no easements were granted.”

The matter is scheduled for more discussion at tonight’s town council meeting.

The Burnham Park Association has been pressing the town to act ever since former zoning board chairman John Codd noticed the absence of buffer vegetation while walking his dog a few months ago.

Burnham Park was deeded to Morristown for passive recreational uses by the Burnham family in 1911, and the association has served as steward for the property since 1948, said Joe Attamante, association vice president.

Although the commission’s letter refers to one pipe, a total of three pipes have been discovered by the association.

Two appear to run underground from backyards of Morris Township residents; a much larger 15-inch diameter storm water drainage pipe is owned by Morris County and has been there for “years and years,” said Morristown Town Engineer Jeff Hartke.

The commission’s letter states that the engineer detected ammonia being discharged into the pond.

Jeff Hartke could not confirm that today. He said testing over the summer found that pipes were discharging backyard runoff, but “no fecal matter” that would be associated with sewage. The county storm water pipe is of  “much more concern,” he said.

“There is no indication that anything is coming out of those pipes right now,” said town Administrator Michael Rogers.

“Now that the town is looking at this as ‘Let’s do our due diligence,’ the question is, are these pipes legally there? Was some easement granted?” said Art Clarke, chairman of the Morristown Environmental Commission. “The second issue is, what is the discharge?  Is it exempt from DEP regulations or does it comply?”

Over the last week or so, association members also have been upset to see that a resident has built a backyard path that appears to jut onto park property. They also are wondering who felled a large tree.

“These people feel they have a right to come on town property and do what they will, like it’s an extension of their property. Clearly, it’s not,” said the association’s Joe Attamante,  a retired teacher who lives in Morris Township.

In addition, algae is becoming more noticeable in the pond because three of four aerator fountains are not working. Jeff Hartke said he requested funds to upgrade the system, but the town cannot afford it.

As for the missing buffer plants, the Mayor said some environmental groups have suggested to him that the vegetation will grow back on its own.

“Maybe we can cap it at three or four feet so people can still see the pond,” he said.

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