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camwynI've had about as much of the news as I can take. Here. Have some unrelated content.
Ten Things I Want You To Know About New Jersey.
In No Particular Order.
1. We don't actually have that accent. In the big cities, yeah, it's common, but it's really difficult to tell people from most NJ counties apart from residents of, say, Pennsylvania or Ohio by accent alone.
2. We have whales. I know the state is regionally famous for the beaches of the Jersey Shore, but not that many people know there are whale watch tours out of the southern end of the state. (Unfortunately, some people found out about this because a Boy Scout troop on one of these tours lost a kid who was doing the 'king of the world' routine at a watch-boat's prow this past May.) I myself have seen finback whales in the waters off Cape May, and numerous bottlenose dolphins, including several babies born in the state's territorial waters.
3. The view of the state that you get from the Garden State Parkway is much nicer, and probably more representative of the state as a whole, than the view you get from the New Jersey Turnpike.
4. Unfortunately, we're big believers in highway revenue coming from toll booths. I'm really sorry about that. If you come to visit the state, bring a bunch of quarters and dollar bills with you, because we charge people to use the Turnpike and the Parkway, we charge people to leave at the major border crossings, and so on.
5. We are not actually part of New York. We're across the Hudson River from a lot (but not all) of the state of New York, definitely across the river from New York City, and while our economy is tightly tied up with theirs, we are not part of them.
6. It is possible to live in this state for twenty consecutive years and never once meet someone who is discernibly part of any kind of organized crime. No, seriously.
7. Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Morris County, NJ, is an amazingly beautiful place and would probably make entomologists who want to study things that prey on mosquitoes very happy indeed. Students of the order Odonata- dragonflies and damselflies- would be very happy there. The Swamp also has coyotes, fishers, and at least one American chestnut tree, though the tree is not producing nuts and may in fact be blighted. Nevertheless, it's a lovely place to visit.
8. We ratified the Bill of Rights first. We were also the third state to ratify the Constitution.
9. The original 'cure' for tuberculosis- before drug resistant strains started cropping up and stuff- was streptomycin. Streptomycin was first isolated from a soil fungus found in New Jersey. Say what you like about our creepy water supply but dammit, our soil fungi rock the house.
10. You can get a seriously kickin' gyro from the Acropolis lunch truck that periodically makes a circuit of downtown locations in Newark, NJ. I mean, those guys make the best damn gyro I've ever had outside of Astoria, NY- and Astoria has a Greek population to rival that of Athens.
Ten Things I Want You To Know About New Jersey.
In No Particular Order.
1. We don't actually have that accent. In the big cities, yeah, it's common, but it's really difficult to tell people from most NJ counties apart from residents of, say, Pennsylvania or Ohio by accent alone.
2. We have whales. I know the state is regionally famous for the beaches of the Jersey Shore, but not that many people know there are whale watch tours out of the southern end of the state. (Unfortunately, some people found out about this because a Boy Scout troop on one of these tours lost a kid who was doing the 'king of the world' routine at a watch-boat's prow this past May.) I myself have seen finback whales in the waters off Cape May, and numerous bottlenose dolphins, including several babies born in the state's territorial waters.
3. The view of the state that you get from the Garden State Parkway is much nicer, and probably more representative of the state as a whole, than the view you get from the New Jersey Turnpike.
4. Unfortunately, we're big believers in highway revenue coming from toll booths. I'm really sorry about that. If you come to visit the state, bring a bunch of quarters and dollar bills with you, because we charge people to use the Turnpike and the Parkway, we charge people to leave at the major border crossings, and so on.
5. We are not actually part of New York. We're across the Hudson River from a lot (but not all) of the state of New York, definitely across the river from New York City, and while our economy is tightly tied up with theirs, we are not part of them.
6. It is possible to live in this state for twenty consecutive years and never once meet someone who is discernibly part of any kind of organized crime. No, seriously.
7. Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Morris County, NJ, is an amazingly beautiful place and would probably make entomologists who want to study things that prey on mosquitoes very happy indeed. Students of the order Odonata- dragonflies and damselflies- would be very happy there. The Swamp also has coyotes, fishers, and at least one American chestnut tree, though the tree is not producing nuts and may in fact be blighted. Nevertheless, it's a lovely place to visit.
8. We ratified the Bill of Rights first. We were also the third state to ratify the Constitution.
9. The original 'cure' for tuberculosis- before drug resistant strains started cropping up and stuff- was streptomycin. Streptomycin was first isolated from a soil fungus found in New Jersey. Say what you like about our creepy water supply but dammit, our soil fungi rock the house.
10. You can get a seriously kickin' gyro from the Acropolis lunch truck that periodically makes a circuit of downtown locations in Newark, NJ. I mean, those guys make the best damn gyro I've ever had outside of Astoria, NY- and Astoria has a Greek population to rival that of Athens.
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Date: 2005-07-07 07:14 pm (UTC)Hey now -- the bits of Ohio that used to be Connecticut* have a fairly neutral accent, it's true, but once you're south of Akron, in the bits that used to be part of Virginia*, you'll get a more Appalachian-flavoured tone the closer you get to the Ohio ("Ah-high-ah") river.
-- Lorrie
* For those who aren't up on this oddment of history: English land grants, gotta love 'em. You got your paper from the King, it said "you get from here north to here south, to the Atlantic in the east, but otherwise it's Unto the Western Sea, baby." This was irrelevant when everything west of the Appalachians was fit for only furriers and Frenchmen, but after the American Revolution, Pennsylvania, Connecticut (extend the N and S borders and this makes sense), and Virginia (just across the Ohio River, West Virginia not having been invented yet) all wanted a piece of that action. Connecticut got a big chunk of what's now Northeast Ohio (the Western Reserve, which may be a familiar term to some of you), Virginia got much of the southern half of the state. The Ohio Territory meant that Connecticut and Virginia lost all their extra land, and Pennsylvania mostly kept theirs. This survives in town/ship planning (Western Reserve towns have New English town squares), the accent, and similar. Yes, this footnote is longer than the comment. 8-P