Endless highway

August 12, 2011 Leave a comment


I drive down the road frequently now, on my way to the bank or to the Asian supermarket (which sells delicious frozen dumplings and at least a dozen varieties of bok choy — who knew?).

But the first time I made my way down Route 27, traveling the few miles from Highland Park, N.J., to Edison, N.J. (yes, Edison as in Thomas Edison, as in Wizard of Menlo Park, which is a section of Edison where the inventor had his famous lab), what I noticed at was first was the many businesses with Chinese lettering on their outdoor signs, everything from beauty parlors to auto-repair garages catering to the area’s thriving Asian population.

I was on my way, I confess, to the locally legendary Tastee Sub Shop, where President Obama actually made a stop back in July 2010 to promote a proposed small-business tax break.

Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J.

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I figured a sub that was good enough for the president was good enough for me. For the record, the tuna sub with onions, tomato and lettuce was really good.

As I left Tastee Sub Shop, I noticed signs designating Route 27 -- which is actually the Main street of the town where I now live -- as the Lincoln Highway. The famous Lincoln Highway! Decades older than Route 66! The first real cross-country road!

A winter scene in downtown Highland Park, N.J. The main street, visible at right, is part of the old cross-country incoln Highway

It was the brainchild of a man named Carl G. Fisher. It began in Times Square and ended in San Francisco, passing through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. Later, the route was changed to bypass Colorado and include a sliver of West Virginia. It was dedicated in 1913.

Opening of the road led to economic prosperity for the hundreds of cities and towns along the route. In fact, the Lincoln Highway was dubbed the “Main Street of America.” Today, after many roads were assigned numbers in the 1950s, most of the route is designated as Route 30, with sections of it designated as Route 1 in the East and routes 40 and 50 in the West. Much of its runs roughly parallel to Interstate 80. When I traveled through Pennsylvania and Ohio a few months ago, I drove on a long stretch of I-80 and a section of the Lincoln Highway ran through the town I was visiting, Richmond, Indiana. And, of course, with tha advent of the Eisenhower era national system of interstate highways, which transformed this nation, many of those same Lincoln Highway towns encountered economic hard times as time — and hurrying motorists — passed them by.

So it’s a wistful but wonderful thing to watch cars roll through town on the old Lincoln Highway and to imagine that I could get into my car, take my sweet time, and drive on that one road straight across the country, from the New York island to the redwood forest, driving through the here and now right into America’s faded past.

Filed under New Jersey, Travels Tagged with , , , , , ,

Doe, a deer, a very rare deer…

July 26, 2011 Leave a comment

Our air-conditioned car rolled through the sultry heat as we drove down a cool and tree-lined road running parallel to the beautiful old Delaware and Raritan Canal, just a few miles from Princeton, New Jersey.

We slowed down to witness a remarkable sight: a so-called piebald deer, white with a few brown patches, a condition apparently caused by a recessive gene and found in about one out of every one thousand white-tailed deer!

It walked slowly across the road and into the woods, then stopped and turned around and stared at us. And we stared back at the piebald deer.

Here’s what it looked like:

I was reminded of James Thurber’s lovely fable “The White Deer,” which includes this comment by the Princess:
“Love me truly, fail me never, woman will I be forever; but if love should fail me thrice, I shall vanish in a trice.”

Was this a princess in disguise? Were these magicial woods? Was she seeking love or fleeing it? Was she fading to white? Or was her color returning?

Filed under Nature, New Jersey Tagged with ,

Black Angel’s initial flight

July 13, 2011 Leave a comment

That's novelist Steven Hart (rear) during an event held at his Highland Park, N.J., store, Nighthawk Books, where a book-publication party will be held Thursday, July 14, marking the release of the first three books issued by Steve's Black Angel imprint.

Find your way to Highland Park, New Jersey, on Thursday, July 14, and you’ll find me at the publication party celebrating the publication of friend and colleague Steve Hart’s first novel, “We All Fall Down.”

Steve’s new small-press imprint is based at his used-book and films emproium Nighthawk Books on Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, where the publication party will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. – with the added attraction (as if you needed more reason to attend than the opportunity to buy a signed copy of Steve’s novel) of music by the talented Matt DeBlass.

The new literary enterprise, called Black Angel Press (www.blackangelpress.com) is making its debut with three books: Steve’s novel “We All Fall Down” (which just got a thumb’s up in the book-review column of the New York Post); “Blips,” a collection of well-wrought poetry by John Marron; and “19th Nervous Breakdown: Making Human Connections in the Landscape of Commerce,” a provocative and entertaining book by Joseph Zitt, a work based on his experiences working for the Borders bookstore chain.

Take time to welcome this new literary enterprise — which, if all goes according to plan, will soon be publishing one (and maybe two )novellas by Nicholas DiGiovanni. It’s true! There’s even a very talented artist already working on ideas for the covers of planned editions of the novellas “Rip,” a modern-day tongue-in–cheek retelling of the Rip van Winkle story, and “The Dogs of Arroyo,” a spooky parable set in Puerto Rico complete with santeria gods who hold sway in the rain forest at night and are not happy that the island has become an economic colony of that big country to the north.

But that will be then and let’s get back to now: Thursday, July 14, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at Nighthawk Books in Highland Park, N.J. a party celebrating the release of the first three books by Black Angel Press. I’ll be there and I hope you’ll all try to be there too.

Filed under Book talk, books, Fiction, New Jersey, Non-fiction, Poetry, writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Journey through the past

July 8, 2011 1 Comment

The two of us were driving through the streets of Trenton, New Jersey, traveling back in time. In the state capital’s once-thriving shopping district, what were once busy and popular department stores were now cut-rate dollar stores catering to the city’s poor population. Many of the stores were closed or even boarded-up. Many of the buildings were in disrepair but some retained the fading aura of past glories, which my companion recalled vividly and fondly. The afternoon sun glinted off the state Capitol’s golden dome and reflected on the scene below.

Where you came from is just as important as where you are and where you’re going — maybe more important.

The year I was born, my young father was serving in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at Maguire AFB adjacent to Fort Dix. I was born at the base hospital. My father and mother brought me home to their first apartment together, on the third floor of a house on what was then a nice street in a nice neighborhood, West State Street.

I’d never seen the house. My mother still remembered the address. Here’s the house on West State Street:

My first home on West State Street, Trenton, N.J.

When I telephoned my mother that day she recalled taking a bus from this house to a downtown department store to buy her young husband a Christmas gift — a rod and reel! She even remembered that the reel was green — for what’s truly important can always be seen, clear as clear can be, even through the foggy ruins of time.

After a few months of hearing my “I’m hungry!” crying and “”Change me!” wailing, the homeowners asked my young parents to find other accomodations. So they moved to the second floor of a four-apartment building on Greenwood Avenue just over the Trenton border in Hamilton:

My second home on Greenwood Avenue near Trenton

My mother remembered that two women of questionable morals lived in a downstairs apartment. It was and still is a busy avenue in a not-very glamorous neighborhood. There was a gas station across the street; now there’s a laundromat. But there is where my young mother and father celebrated their first Thanksgiving and first Christmas.

Both places are now in crumbling or already crumbled neighborhoods. The streets are dangerous at night. The people who live there are poor. But I hope and believe that in those homes love and dreams still abide.

Where you came from can determine where you’re going. It’s important to go back there once in a while.

Filed under DiGiovanni, New Jersey, Travels Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Down a lazy river

June 13, 2011 2 Comments

Wading River winds its way quietly through New Jersey's Pine Barrens.

We’re paddling an aluminum canoe down the Wading River, which — at least at this time of year — is more accurately a glorified stream, hardly worthy of its designation as a river but certainly ideal for wading — moving slowly, meandering through the cool, dark Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, hardly moving in spots and barely deep enough to float a canoe without scraping along the sandy bottom.
The river’s water is the color of rust — I assume from something residing in the pine bark or the rich damp soil.

Most of all my paddling companion and I savor what is often a pure and total silence, broken only by the splash of our paddles and the occasional whispered “Isn’t this beautiful?”

But just as we round a bend in the Wading River, the world turns topsy-turvy. We get hung up on a barely submerged log which lurks in the tea-colored water, just beneath the surface. The canoe gets turned sideways. One of us tries pushing off the log. The other tries using a paddles to push off the riverbank. Suddenly I am submerged, feet seeking the bottom, mind asking whither the light and whence the air.

The answer comes within seconds as I push up out of the water and back into the bright and breathing world. I seek and find my canoeing cohort, then lunge for my “Mick’s Canoe Rentals” baseball cap,” then join forces to tip over the water-filled canoe, then praise the gods of nature and the consumer economy when I discover with wonder that my brand-new iPhone has survived its river plunge thanks to that amazing technological innovation known as the ziploc bag — although there’s a flipside to this wonder…my companion’s phone, also ziplocked, does not survive — we actually hear it sizzle as its circuits and chips first fry then die.

Canoe dry and pointed in the right direction once again, we continue, warning the occasional inner-tuber to get out of our way if they value their lives and limbs…watching the riverbanks hopefully for signs of alligators…daydreaming about Bogart and Hepburn aboard the African Queen…sun burning our arms, legs and faces…blue sky through the pine trees looking like it never ends…finally completing our voyage from Hawkin Bridge to Evans Bridge, somehow making the three-hour journey in about two-and-a-half, and so we sit on the sandy beach and sip from a water bottle and eat cheddar-cheese Combos as we wait for a rickety old school bus to come and take us away from nirvana’s luminous shore.

Filed under Nature, New Jersey

Watching the river flow

May 24, 2011 Leave a comment

I warmed up for the celebration of Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday by attending a great show — Blondes on “Blonde on Blonde” — presented last Saturday as part of the Concerts at the Crossing series held in Titusville, N.J., near Washington Crossing, where, yes indeed, Washington crossed the Delaware and invaded Trenton.

I know…we should have let the British keep Trenton. But I lived there with my parents right after I was born. My young father was serving in the Air Force, stationed at Fort Dix. So if Washington hadn’t crossed the Delaware and routed the Hessians, I’d be speaking with a British accent and…

I know.,.I’m drifting too far from the shore…Here’s a video of one of the “Blondes on Blonde on Blonde performers,” Sloan Wainwright, singing “Meet Me in the Morning” from “Blood on the Tracks” –

On the actual Bobday — Tuesday, May 24 — I sat by the banks of the Raritan River in New Jersey, reading a poem by Allen Ginsberg of Paterson, N.J., .listening to “Things Have Changed” by His Bobness…and watching and listening as an Orthodox Jew with a cantor’s voice stood alone at the riverside, first with his hands on his hips and then with his arms opened wide to the sky. The man chanted and sang a tune I did not recognize and words I did not understand, and he looked out over the holy river, and it was a confluence of Jewish poems and prayers, a meeting of the orthodox and the avant-garde, as the cantor and I sat and watched the river flow on Robert Zimmerman/Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday,

Here’s the song I was listening to, sung by the birthday boy himself:

And here’s Joe Cocker and Eric Clapton watching the river flow…

Filed under Bob Dylan, Music, New Jersey Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

The naked and the read

May 9, 2011 Leave a comment

Wear a tuxedo. Wear jeans. Wear a formal gown. Wear a house dress. In other words, come as you are. Maybe even arrive, um, unclothed.

There’s no way there will be a dress code on Saturday, May 14, at my friend Steven Hart’s Nighthawk Books in Highland Park, New Jersey, when another friend — novelist Bathsheba Monk — reads from her newly published novel, Nude Walker.

Bathsheba Monk

Steve promises live musical entertainment, starting at about 2 p.m., followed by Bathsheba’s reading at 3 p.m. Copies of the novel will be available for purchase, as well as copies of B. Monk’s first book, Now You See It: Tales from Cokesville, a wonderful collection of linked short stories set in Pennsylvania coal country. After the reading, Bathsheba will gladly sign copies of her books.

Bathsheba’s a wonderful stylist and a witty storyteller. The characters in Nude Walker are colorful and engaging. And the novel’s theme, plot and setting are gratifyingly ambitious, with a story that ranges from an U.S. military base in Afghanistan to a left-for-dead Pennsylvania coal country town where foreign-born entrepreneurs and economic outcasts are the new “locals.”

It’s a really good book (which will someday also make a really good movie). Bathsheba Monk’s a really good writer and a really good reader. And you’ll have a really good time – so, on May 14, walk or run, dressed or not, to Nighthawk Books in Highland Park, N.J.

Filed under Book talk, books, Fiction, New Jersey Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

A (poetry) festive(al) event

September 22, 2010 Leave a comment

Philip Schultz will be the featured poet at this year's Delaware Valley Poetry Festival


New Jersey’s got a great poetry tradition, both in terms of individuals and institutions.
If you’re talking great poets, let’s talk New Jersey poets Walt Whitman and Williams Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, for starters, and let’s add such current luminaries as Robert Pinsky (born, raised and educated in N.J.), Paul Muldoon and C.K. Williams and Yusef Komunyakaa (all three teach at Princeton), National Book Award winner Gerald Stern of Lambertville, and other outstanding Jersey-based poets including B.J. Ward, Maria Gillan and the great Joe Weil (sprung fully formed from the loins of Elizabeth, N.J.)

If you’re talking about poetry, how about the spectacular Geraldine R. Dodge Festival – and a much smaller event called the Delaware Valley Festival, held yearly in two small towns, Frenchtown and Stockton, along the Delaware River.

I started the festival back in 1998 when then-U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky agreed to be the featured poet, joined by New Jersey poets (including Weil and my friend, the poet Charles H. Johnson) associated with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The festival’s debut was a huge success — and we were off and running, as subsequent festival featured the likes of Louise Gluck (who became our nation’s poet laureate herself a few years later), Pulitzer winner Muldoon, Stern, Diane Wakoski, Gillan, Thomas Lux, Stephen Dobyns, Pinsky again (for the 10th anniversary) and, last year, former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer winner the great Rita Dove.

As my life has taken a new direction I’ve decided to end my involvement with the Delaware Valley Poetry Festival, handing over the reins to the capable hands of Frenchtown-based poet Skye van Saun, who will continue to work on with my talented friends and colleagues Keith Strunk and Laura Swanson of River Union Stage.

One of my last acts as coordinator of the event was to recruit this year’s featured poet, Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Schultz.

On the bill with Schultz are New Jersey poets Cat Doty and Linda Radice. Admission is free but donations are welcome. Seating is limited and first-come, first-served. For more information, call 908-996-3685 or visit riverunionstage.org.

Why am I writing about this now? Because the 13th annual Delaware Valley Poetry Festival will take place Friday, Sept. 24, at 8 p.m., at Prallsville Mills in Stockon, N.J. If you’re anywhere near New Jersey, it’s practically a can’t-miss event if you’re a lover of poetry and literature.

And, yes, I know I misspelled “festival” as “festive(al)” in the title of this post. That’s what’s known as poetic license!

Filed under Book talk, books, Delaware Valley Poetry Festival, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Poetry, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Freeways, cars and trucks…

May 12, 2010 Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been doing lots of driving. Actually “lots” is an understatement. You wouldn’t believe how much driving I’ve been doing. Let’s just say that if I leased a car I might go over the mileage allotment in a week.

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I’m not exaggerating when I describe the two guys I saw driving this morning on Interstate 287 in northern New Jersey. One guy was reading a newspaper as he cruised along in the middle lane at about 60 miles per hour. He had the paper propped up in front of him on the steering wheel. The other guy actually had what appeared to be a financial ledger book opened in front of him, also propped against the steering wheel while he was speeding along at about 70 mph.

I was going to include with this post a video of Jan and Dean singing their 1964 classic “Dead Man’s Curve.” But that would be too creepy.
I’m hitting the road again in about an hour. I don’t need any bad karma. But I do need a car song. . “Little Red Corvette” by Prince? “Drive My Car” by The Beatles? “Drive” by the Cars? “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman? Early Beach Boys?

No, how about something that fits this rainy night? How about Tom Waits singing his song “Ol’ ’55?” It has nothing to do with dangerous drivers. But at least it’s about a car, right? Right? Or is it…could it be…about love…about driving in your car…and you’re not reading a newspaper or a financial ledger book…and you’ve just been with the woman you truly love and you’re wishing you could have stayed longer…yes, I think that’s what Tom Waits is singing about…and I think I’ll think about that as I drive up the highway one more time tonight with melancholy love songs playing in my head as the wipers keep the rhythm as I drive through the darkest darkness in what seems like never-ending rain.

Filed under love, Music, New Jersey, Tom Waits, Travels Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Sarah Palin’s visit is one for the books

February 23, 2010 1 Comment

Note: Traffic on this site soars whenever I mention Sarah Palin. So I’ve decided to write something about her at least once a week. Here’s this week’s Sarah Palin report:

Faithful readers of “World of Wonders” know that I posted several entries in recent weeks about the Feb. 20 grand opening of friend Steven Hart’s bookstore, Nighthawk Books, in Highland Park, N.J.  Well, the event went as well as I hoped it would — and then some!

Hundreds of people visited Steve’s store during the course of the day-long celebration.

AND….Sarah Palin made a surprise appearance!

What else can I say? Two weeks ago I reported seeing Sarah out of the New Jersey Turnpike, probably on her way to some high-paying speaking engagement, but instead saying “Well, the heck with that! I’m going to forget about that high-paying speaking engagement and help people dig their cars out of the snow!” One week ago I reported on Sarah’s amazing ice-skating performance at the Olympics up there in Canada (which is the country next to Alaska).

And now here was Sarah Palin — a highly educated woman who I believe actually attended something like six colleges but probably isn’t much of a reader because she’s so busy trying to probably become president – stopping at my friend’s bookstore to show her support for what she described in her impromptu speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony as her “support of Mom-and-Pop type businesses and also this amazing bookstore run by Steve Hart that is filled with so many books that it makes you realize that there’s lots and lots of books you probably will never find the time to read, gosh darn it, but it’s good to know they’re there in case you feel like reading a book…”

Thanks, Sarah, for supporting my friend’s new independent bookstore — and for so graciously signing my second-hand copy of “Call of the Wild” by Jack London.

P.S. Yes, I’ll tell you what Sarah wrote: “To Nicholas DiGiovanni — Stop by and visit us next time if you’re ever up there in Alaska. Signed, Sarah Palin” And no, in case any of you were thinking about it, the book is not for sale!

Filed under Book talk, books, Humor, New Jersey, Politics, Sarah Palin, writing Tagged with , , , , , ,

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