Shutdown!

I LIKE AMBROSE BIERCE for his sardonic humor and macabre stories, written before he vanished in Mexico in 1913 after joining Pancho Villa's revolution. Here is one from my $1 copy of The Moonlit Road and Other Ghost and Horror Stories from Dover Thrift, narrated by homeless Canadian Otis Jiry, to pass this ear-gnawing winter, pay freeze and unknown end to the government agency shutdown. Nonetheless, let's give no money for the wall, only the board for the window of the Congress House!

From The Skylands

HUMOR FOR THE HOLIDAYS as I mark my tenth year of service in the agency. And Sara's SAT score, out of a perfect 1600, on her first attempt a couple of weeks ago. Happy holidays to all!

Maspeth couch

Lost Then Found

GLAD TO REDISCOVER these lost sea marks from two of my endeavors. First, my gratitude to Linda Goin of La Grange, Kentucky for reuniting me with this issue of CARACOA IV: New Voices where some of my early poems saw publication in 1984, thanks to the Philippine Literary Arts Council, among kindred writers most of whom have passed on and are remembered today with respect, including one of the council's founding members Cirilo Bautista. (I lost my only copy after years of moving around in America.) Linda, also a writer, sells books and has acquired copies of the journal's back issues while on a business trip to Manila. The other is the five-year service certificate which the deputy chief misplaced and was presented to me only yesterday, almost five years later, with apologies. No matter, sir. The sea is still there, its shoals duly recorded. Here's to ten years in December!

A Heads Up

ONE OF THE VERY EARLY invitations Sara received last week.

1 Kynor Avenue

MY RAMSHACKLE CABIN in Stanhope/Hopatcong, NJ in summertime. Google Maps will show you that it is the saddest house in the neighborhood if you click full screen to enlarge and the arrows to move/rotate the view. But for me it is King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, A Number 1--my paid-off, half-acre, one-hour drive refuge from the city. I hope by posting this I will be inspired to get out of Maspeth and do some work there when it gets warm.

A Language Of Special Interest

I DID NOT KNOW when I started working for the Feds that speaking the wika would be a skill that pays. Tagalog is apparently considered by the agency as a "language of special interest" in the mission against terrorism. So around Thanksgiving each year (after the previous fiscal year ends in September), Uncle Sam pays me an easy Black Friday bonus just for employing it to process passengers and interact with cruise and container ships crewmen (90% Pinoy, they offer you food from the galley) when boarding vessels for inspections, Abu Sayyaf or ISIS operatives apprehended or not. The union says this is another program in danger with Trump; enjoy it while it lasts.

Canal Town

TEN MINUTES from the Hopatcong house is Waterloo Village, a restored 19th century settlement on the banks of the old Morris Canal, the waterway used to transport anthracite coal from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley to New York City during the American Industrial Revolution. For canal workers then, the village was an overnight rest stop on the two-day journey to the coast, and it had "all the accommodations necessary to service the needs of a canal operation, including an inn, a general store, a blacksmith shop to service the mules on the canal, and a watermill" (Wiki). But there were other travelers. The alewife herring, anadromous fish like salmon, also used the waterway as a conduit to travel up the Delaware River from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Hopatcong, the reservoir in the highlands that fed the canal. There they became landlocked with the building of the dam in the 1800s, but thrived so well in their new habitat that they are now the abundant basis of the lake's fish food chain.

The grist mill, Waterloo Village

Job Evaluations 2017

"HIGHEST CALIBER of service and excellence" versus "acceptable level of competence"? What the--? Don't worry Mom, together we'll still go far.

Cool Without The Coal

MAUCH CHUNK, PA was founded in the early 1800s during the heyday of anthracite coal mining, but when coal use declined in the 20th century, the town reinvented itself as a tourist destination by taking the corpse, and name, of Native American Olympian Jim Thorpe who died in 1953 but whose home state of Oklahoma would not bury with honors. Today, the "Switzerland of America" is a cool weekend getaway two hours from the city (one hour from Hopatcong), and was named by Rand McNally as among the ten Best Small Towns in America. From Wiki: "Geologically, the largest and most concentrated anthracite deposit in the world is found in northeastern Pennsylvania; the deposit contains 480 square miles of coal-bearing rock which originally held 22.8 billion short tons (20.68 billion tonnes) of anthracite." Thought you have eternal rest? Watch out, poor Jim Thorpe, Trump will get you rolling over in your grave.

St. Mark and St. John's Episcopal Church, Jim Thorpe, PA

Meanwhile, At The Port

NO LONG WEEKEND, got drafted again. Here's to the fallen and unsung soldats inconnus.

Cool With Work

The Death Of A Toad

NOT ABOUT climate change, but Richard Wilbur's poem is relevant this time of year nonetheless. Rockaway Mall (where we shop when in Hopatcong) sits on what used to be a wetland but was prime location for the taking of corporations before the New Jersey Freshwater Wetlands Protection Act was passed in 1988. Many other parking lots and lawns in the lakes region used to be some little guy's happy home.

A toad the power mower caught,

Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen and heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original heartsblood goes,
Spends in the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer. 

Happy New Year

THANKS TO BARACK for approving this pay raise before he leaves office. I'm not telling you where I am here, but I'll tell you this: I have a new resolution. I am upgrading from the diet COLA after years of salary freezes. 

Hoppie, The Hopatcong Monster

HERE'S ONE FOR Halloween, from the August 4, 1894 issue of the Lake Hopatcong Angler. Apparently, highland lakes attract water monsters. A nice distraction from the heebie-jeebies of the November elections.

Some Resources

Click to enlarge. A useful guide to finding where the boat rentals and biters are. Always keep out of private property. Download a Boating Safety Manual here. Map courtesy of  Mark Evans.

If you run into trouble: New Jersey State Police, Marine Services Bureau, Lake Hopatcong Station, 341 Espanong Road, Lake Hopatcong, NJ 07849, phone (973) 663-3400

Lake Hopatcong Summer

CHECK OUT the work of watercolorist Angelito L David (no period after the middle initial). This more venerable Jersey Pinoy lives in Elizabeth and goes to Lake Hopatcong to paint. Awesome.

Angelito L David, 209 Springfield Road, Elizabeth, NJ 07208 (908) 289-6829

"Lake Hopatcong Summer" 14.5 x 20.5" March 2010 Second Place, National Arts Program

Freebies In The Mail

GO AHEAD; make sinigang out of that muskie. Jersey is far from being just a polluted suburb. For the most versatile and durable rod and reel combo that won't break the bank, respected angler Owen James Burke (not the mystery novelist) recommends pairing the Shakespeare Ugly Stik GX2 6.5 ft Medium Heavy with the Penn Battle II 5000. As for my own, no-name gear, it came from a garage sale in Budd Lake.

Muskrat Love

"NOW HE'S TICKLIN' HER FANCY, rubbin' her toes,
muzzle to muzzle, now anything goes..."

Where To Find Pho In Morris County

WHEN I WAS NEW in Hopatcong and had a craving for pho, I used to drive forty miles to the only Vietnamese restaurant I knew this side of the Hudson: Pho Thanh Hoai in Jersey City.  But not anymore. As I became familiar with northwest Jersey and learned about its digs, I eventually discovered a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants right up my alley. Too bad the nearest one is vegetarian, but the next closest and best thing, TOPO, which stands for "the old post office," (what the building it occupies used to be) has a huge menu that is Pan Asian. And it is not even in Morris county. TOPO is in neighboring Warren county, in a little town called Hackettstown which is home to Centenary College and is the western terminus of the Montclair-Boonton and Morristown rail lines from Manhattan. This town has sure piqued my interest, and I am sure to explore it further in the days to come.

Loving Hut (Vegetarian)

538 State Route 10,

Ledgewood, NJ 07852

(862) 251-4611

TOPO (The Old Post Office)

218 Main Street

Hackettstown, NJ 07840

(908) 850-5888

Saigon Pho

744 U.S. 46

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 794-4632

Pho Thanh Huong

73 New Road

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 521-9900

Lemongrass

1729 Route 10 East
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 998-6303

Viet Ai
189 Ridgedale Avenue
Florham Park, NJ 07932
(973) 410-9400

Big Bamboo

TO GIVE A TROPICAL feel to my Hopatcong backyard, I bought a cold hardy bamboo, Phyllostachys atrovaginata, to plant on the hill outside my kitchen. Not only can it withstand temperatures 15 degrees below zero; it also grows up to 35 feet, has the fragrant smell of incense, and produces sweet shoots in the spring. I wonder how many years I have to wait before I hear lawiswis kawayan and eat guinataang labong.