Trolley Tour

Event: 1 p.m. Sunday, October 21, 2012

TROLLEY TOUR of CAMDEN COUNTY'S HISTORICAL HOT SPOTS Historic Tavern, Mansions and Unique Graveyard CAMDEN, NJ -- All Aboard! It's time for the Camden County Historical Society's third annual trolley tour Sunday, October 21, Do something different on a beautiful fall day: Take a trolley tour of some surprising local historical sites. Google Map: - Historical Society Story & Photos - Previous Trolley Tour Buy Your Ticket Now from 1 PM to 4 PM. So grab the family, round up some friends, and hit the road with CCHS. The tour begins and ends at the Society. Four 20-minute stops along the way promise lots to see and ample time to explore. Once aboard the antique-style trolleys, sit back and relax as CCHS guides narrate the entire tour route, tell you what to look for at each stop, and throw in plenty of fun, factual tidbits about Camden County history along the way. The Sites At our first stop, nostalgia and Mother Nature vie for your attention at the Burrough-Dover house, with its museum in the basement and a peaceful nature trail outside. Next, you'll walk through the room in Haddonfield's Indian King Tavern where a rebel legislature legally changed New Jersey from a colony to a free state. A surprise awaits in West Collingswood, where you can explore the oldest and most important burying ground in present-day Camden County. And light refreshments will be served at an 18th-century Quaker mansion worked by enslaved Africans and indentured servants when the tour wraps up at Pomona Hall in Camden. Purchase tickets Bring a bottle of water and maybe a comfy cushion for the classic wooden seats that are part and parcel of an antique-style trolley. And because a good bit of walking is involved at each stop, comfortable shoes are recommended. Last year's tour quickly sold out, so advance registration is required. The price is $35 for CCHS members and $40 for nonmembers, payable by cash, personal check or credit card. Be sure to reserve your seat by calling the Society at 856-964-3333 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting FREE 856-964-3333 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or purchase your ticket from this web page through Pay Pal. The Camden County Historical Society is located across Rte. 130 from Collingswood at 1900 Park Blvd., behind Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center. There is ample parking in the fenced lot at the corner of Vesper and Park Blvds. Directions to the Society available at www.CCHSnj.com or call 856-964-3333 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting FREE 856-964-3333 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

© 2011, Camden County Historical Society | All Rights Reserved

Who are those people?

When you first got married you started taking pictures to record your new life together. You wanted to make sure you would remember where you had gone and whom you had seen.

Then when the kids came you took stills and movies (later videos) to record their every move. You wanted them to know, when they got bigger, what they were doing and what relatives and friends had visited them and played with them.

That was the plan.

Recently my wife and I unpacked the thousands (yes, thousands!) of pictures we had taken of our kids with the purpose of chronicling the historic aspects of the mementoes so we could turn them over to our offspring to share with their own families.

But something was definitely amiss….

We couldn’t remember most of the people in these pictures! We couldn’t ID where they were taken! Sure, there were the usual celebrations (there are cakes and Christmas trees in many of the photos) and shots of beaches (where was that?) and we did recognize the most obvious relatives: grandparents, aunts and uncles, close cousins.

But who was that old gent with the bald head who hogged a few of the photos? And that fat lady wearing the big dress with flowers on them? And those precocious kids who were pretending to beat up our kids?

My wife and I couldn’t remember. We couldn’t even remember when some of the pictures were taken. If a few of the birthday cakes didn’t have ages and names on them, then we’d really be at a loss.

The problem could’ve been solved by simply dating the photos and putting names on the back of them. But we didn’t. Who did? Very few people did. In the past few years, though, the film labs started putting the dates on the back of the prints they developed. And new cameras now record the date right on the shot. Thank you. That’s helping a lot.

But most of the old pictures – 20 years and beyond – are lingering in limbo without dates, without locations, without identification of any kind.

And besides that, where are the negatives for these photos? Of course, in our collection there are negatives piled high but are they the ones for the pictures in the shoebox? (Of course they’re in a shoebox. Doesn’t everybody put their photos in a shoebox?)

What about empty photo envelopes with CVS and Walgreen’s names on them? The negatives are missing. We couldn’t reproduce the photos we wanted unless we painstakingly looked at every negative in a bright light, a daunting task in anybody’s language.

But thanks to computers and new technology you don’t need negatives to make copies anymore. You can simply scan your photos and, voila! you have a copy. You scan them at your nearest photo shop (usually inside a drug store or supermarket these days) or on your own computer.

But I still don’t know the name of that guy with the bald head or that fat lady in the flowered dress. Are they relatives? Cousins? A long-lost uncle or aunt? Or just party crashes? We’ll never know for sure but at least we can continue to scan their pictures to make them immortal.

Can we do anything less than that?

Don't be ashamed of your heritage

I’m second-generation Italian-American (my mother was born in Jersey City, my father in Italy) and I’m proud of my heritage and all that Italians have done for the world, especially for America. We are also the sixth largest ethnic group in the country but contribute an inordinate amount of culture and music and culinary diversions…among other wonderful things.

So I find it disheartening when I hear names of Italian-Americans being mispronounced and bastardized by the people who belong to the names. Some are second-generation like me and others are third or fourth. Everything having to do with the correctness of the Italian language is brutalized.

Why are these people ashamed of their heritage? I say “ashamed” because that’s the only word I can use to explain why they destroy their fine Italian names. And when I point out to some that their name is being mispronounced I’ll be told everything from “that’s the way we pronounce it” to “well, we’re Americans” to “mind your own business.”

Well, it is my business and I will continue to point out the error of their ways.

When you listen to an Hispanic pronounce his or her name, it is done precisely in correct grammatical terms.  When you hear them mouth a Spanish word, it is done according to Spanish grammar. They could be speaking the precise King’s English but when they switch to a Spanish word or phrase, all of a sudden, they sound like they just landed on a boat from Latin America. Why is this? They have respect for their heritage. Apparently, many Italian-Americans do not or they want to divorce themselves from negative publicity associated with some Italians. So, they “Americanize” their names.

I know people who have spelled their Italian names to mock English spelling and pronunciation. For instance, in Italian, the letters “ch” sound like “k.” I know of people who changed the spelling of their last names by replacing the “ch” with “k” so people wouldn’t be confused on how to pronounce the names. Wonderful. But by so doing you lose the essence of your heritage…your name.

Minor points, you might ask? I don’t think so. Keeping your heritage and your language alive are important for everyone, not just Italians. Let’s take a lesson from our Hispanic cousins: Keep your language alive, at least in your own heart.

For the past several years October has been Italian-American Heritage Month. But who knows about this and who gives a damn about it? Apparently not Italian-Americans. On the rare occasion when the mainstream press points out that October is set aside for Italian-Americans, it's usually at the end of the month, when it's just about over.

By the way, do you know the original Latini were and are Italians? The Italian peninsula spoke Latin as the official language and was the language of the Roman Empire. How Hispanics were able to usurp Latino as referring only to those of Hispanic origin is a mystery to me. But I know better. As an Italian I am a Latino, precisely because my ancestors spoke Latin. They didn’t come from a country called Latin, which the phrases “Latin community” and “Latin America” imply.

But I’ll leave that for another time.

Ann Coulter Letter

Wildly out of touch media complain Romney not regular guy

By: Ann Coulter
9/19/2012 06:17 PM

Only our totally unbiased watchdog media could turn the burning of U.S. embassies in countries where Barack Obama had recently supported mob revolts into Mitt Romney’s blunder. Journalists couldn’t risk having Obama’s campaign slogan “Osama is dead” being amended with “and so is our ambassador.”After our ambassador to Libya was murdered in a preplanned, coordinated attack on our embassy last week, preceded by an attack on our embassy in Egypt (and followed by attacks on our embassies in Yemen, Indonesia, Tunisia and Lebanon), Romney criticized the Obama administration for “sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt.”

He was referring to a statement put out by our Cairo embassy before the ambassador’s murder, criticizing an American filmmaker whose YouTube trailer was the alleged provocation for the attacks. Attacks that happened to occur on the anniversary of 9/11.

The NFM (Non-Fox Media) uniformly denounced Romney’s criticism and pronounced his campaign finished.

The Obama administration insisted that Romney had his “facts” wrong: Obama had absolutely nothing to do with the statement — the embassy staff was freelancing — and, even if the White House had approved it, it was a good statement because the riots were caused by the movie trailer, and furthermore, the embassy statement was issued before the riots even began.

This is known as an argument in the alternative: “I didn’t break into that house, and if I did, I didn’t steal the silver, and if I did, I only got twenty bucks for it.”

If the statement were issued before our embassy in Cairo was attacked, then what was the administration responding to? Does the White House make it a practice to put out statements condemning random, barely viewed YouTube videos? The White House officially endorses that cute video of Kooky82′s cat attempting to meow the national anthem.

The embassy’s statement was obviously responding to something, and if anyone in the administration — even that rogue embassy official! — knew the Internet video was upsetting our dear Muslim friends, why on earth weren’t our embassies protected?

Next, the Obama administration detained the American filmmaker and asked Google to block the allegedly offending video. (Take the week off, First Amendment.)

This behavior made it difficult for even the most obsequious journalist to keep railing against Romney for suggesting that Obama was acquiescing to angry Muslims. So the NFM’s harangue against Romney was deposited in the same filing cabinet where the paperwork to close Gitmo is currently stored.

Now, a week later, Romney has said something, again. (Damn him!) This provoked another round of hysterical denunciations from the media.

At a private gathering, Romney told donors that Obama had a lock on the 47 percent of voters “who pay no income tax” and “believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.” This was deeply offensive to people who pay no income tax and believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.
But no matter how much the media belch out the usual cliches — out of touch, insensitive, racist, not one of us, Thurston Howell, etc. etc. — all most people heard was: FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF AMERICANS PAY NO INCOME TAX?

A friend of mine who spent time in Russia during the ’70s told me that whenever a Russian would bring up the extensive coverage of Watergate, he’d sigh, thinking he’d have to explain that the American political system was not as corrupt as the commissars would have it. But all they ever wanted to ask him was: “Do all Americans have such nice shoes?”

The lesson is: You can’t always control what the audience notices.

Thanks to the myopia of our one-party media, most journalists are firmly convinced that voters will be appalled by Romney’s description of 47 percent of Americans as supporting Obama because they pay no income tax. (Yes, head-up-their-butts journalists in the charming little burg of Manhattan are complaining that Romney isn’t connecting with ordinary people.)

But the only people shocked by Romney’s statement of fact are those who would never vote Republican under any circumstances. Everyone else is saying, “Is it really as high as 47 percent?” — as the media impotently shouts, “No, you idiot! That’s not the point!”

There’s going to come a time, in the not-distant future, when it’s 51 percent paying no income tax. And when that happens, the party of big government will never lose another election. America will become indistinguishable from Western European nanny states — except there will be no America to protect us.
The media happen to love the party of big government with all their heart, so from now until the election, no matter what Romney says, they plan to be scandalized.

Mitt Romney Is Right

By DICK MORRISPublished on DickMorris.com on September 18, 2012 There is no sin greater in a presidential race than telling the truth. Romney is being excoriated for accurately describing the situation in America today. Here are the stats: *  49% of all Americans pay no federal income tax. *  47% receive a check from the government of which more than half are means tested welfare checks (Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, etc.). *  36% of all Americans of working age are either not working or looking for work. We must remember, however, that a great many of those who receive checks from the government have earned them. Some by their taxes over the years to Social Security and Medicare and others by paying a deeper price by service to their country. The benefits Romney was talking about are means tested benefits, distributed based on income. All together 100 million Americans receive such benefits (out of a total population of 308 million), these benefits include welfare, food stamps, Section 8 housing, Medicaid and other such programs. Generalities are always unjust. And painting with broad strokes will do many individuals an injustice. But the fact remains that our electorate is basically bifurcated into those who pay taxes and those who receive benefits. The danger comes not with the benefit but with the sense of entitlement. Why do so many people feel Romney will be better at improving the economy and yet still plan to vote for Obama? The answer is that they care more about preserving their entitlements than about improving the economy. They have come to rely on political action more than economic growth as the key to their solvency. Did Romney err in telling it like it is? It would have been better if he had made a forthright, factual statement on the issue. It looks bad for these unpleasant facts to come out in a "gotcha" moment at a videotaped private event. But the fact remains that an Obama reelection would turn the tide psychologically in America from the land of upward mobility through hard work and initiative and toward a country akin to Greece: dependent on government aid in the form of a subsidy and government handouts. By stating this fundamental truth, albeit off the record, Romney has done a service for which he should be praised not excoriated. It all boils down to what John Kennedy said: There are those who ask what their country can do for you, and those who ask what you can do for your country.

Nothing to do with a movie

This is from Red State Morning Briefing for Sept. 18. Very interesting; something most of us have been stating all along.

 

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

What A Tangled Web We Weave. The Administration’s Benghazi Story Unravels.

By: streiff (Diary)  |  September 17th, 2012 at 01:16 PM  |  31

As the Administration struggles to pin the foreseeable outcome of our bonkers Middle East policy, the sacking of two diplomatic missions and the slaughter of at least four diplomatic personnel, on a YouTube video, the truth begins to trickle out.
The first substantial fissure appears today.
An intelligence source backs up the claim of a wounded Libyan security guard that there was no demonstration prior to the sacking of the Benghazi consulate.

An intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News that there was no demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi prior to last week’s attack — challenging the Obama administration’s claims that the assault grew out of a “spontaneous” protest against an anti-Islam film.
“There was no protest and the attacks were not spontaneous,” the source said, adding the attack “was planned and had nothing to do with the movie.”
The source said the assault came with no warning at about 9:35 p.m. local time, and included fire from more than two locations. The assault included RPG’s and mortar fire, the source said, and consisted of two waves.
The account that the attack started suddenly backs up claims by a purported Libyan security guard who told McClatchy Newspapers late last week that the area was quiet before the attack.
“There wasn’t a single ant outside,” the unnamed guard, who was being treated in a hospital, said in the interview.

This is a much more coherent view of the facts. A coordinated attack by al Qaeda on multiple US diplomatic missions, on 9/11, in the aftermath of the grotesque chest thumping by the hollow-chested “men” of the Obama Administration over the killing of bin Laden makes imminent sense. Multiple riots spontaneous appearing on 9.11 in response to an internet “film” is ludicrous on its face.

As the word of this works its way out the story will become even more damning. The only question is whether the administration can keep this under wraps until after election day.

Walking with Ben

Philadelphia, PA - September 7, 2012 - Beginning tonight, "A Walk with Ben," a new walking tour with the young and witty Ben Franklin along with the best tour guides in Philadelphia, debuts in the historic Old City Philadelphia district and continues every Saturday this fall. 

Tickets are available now online at http://www.AWalkWithBen.com, by telephone at 877-558-9671, or on site each Saturday evening in front of "Benjamin's Best" in Old City Philadelphia, at 401 Chestnut Street.  "A Walk with Ben" costs $19.95 for adults and $7.95 for children over seven years old.  Tickets for children under seven years old are free.

 

The tour, which lasts approximately 90 minutes, is every Saturday night beginning at 6 p.m. in front of "Benjamin's Best" in Old City Philadelphia at 401 Chestnut Street. 

It's the only tour in Philadelphia where you can be accompanied by Ben Franklin himself --- the young and witty Ben Franklin, as portrayed by actor Rob DeVitis.  Those on the tour can take a walk through colonial and revolutionary Philadelphia with the man who knows the city just as well today as he knew it 250 years ago.  Tours will visit the places where Ben Franklin made a name for himself as a printer, inventor, and statesman, and hear about it firsthand with all the wit for which Ben Franklin is famous.

On the tour, visitors will join Ben Franklin seeing the sights of historic Philadelphia, including the Liberty Bell, colonial Christ Church, and Independence Hall, walking in the footsteps of history and of Ben Franklin himself in the city where he gained his greatest renown.

 

"A Walk with Ben" is sponsored by Free & Friendly Tours and JRW Franklin Entertainment.

In addition to "A Walk with  Ben," the young and witty Ben Franklin can be found online, at http://www.BenFranklinToday.com, where he can be invited (for a modest fee) to attend your special events, either in the City of Philadelphia, or in areas surrounding William Penn's Green Country Towne.  He is a gifted raconteur who can speak to any and all groups on topics including American history, Philadelphia history, and the life that earned him the title "The First American."

For additional information about the young and witty Ben Franklin visit http://www.BenFranklinToday.com or find him on Facebook at  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ben-Franklin-Today.