posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 11:26 am
It never mattered if I was in a bad mood. All I had to do was walk Gregory to school, crossing the street, then walk back, crossing the street again. Without fail, as long as Bob was our crossing guard that day, I came home smiling.
It’s the Bob Effect.
Even last year, when Gregory went to a school on the other side of town, Bob was always smiling and waving as I drove by in my car.
I don’t know what it is about Bob that makes him such a smiley guy.
I mean, standing in the busy road holding up a stop sign and praying the cars will actually stop doesn’t seem like the sort of job that would guarantee unconditional smiling. Rain, freezing cold, thunderstorms, unbearable heat, it never seems to bother Bob. His beautiful smile has a light to it that seems to shine, soul to soul, and it stays with you for quite some time.
I’m not the only one affected by Bob’s happy demeanor. On the last day of school, I saw many parents walking by, giving Bob gifts and hugs and thanking him for being there for us.
In fact there are only two times I’ve ever seen Bob not smiling. There will, for example, be a stern look and possibly a shout whenever a car is not slowing down quickly enough at the sight of his stop sign. And once or twice, when a child was not particularly listening to his instructions to wait until the traffic was clearly stopped, Bob would assume the holding position, hand extended in a “don’t step into the crosswalk until I give the ok” stance, saying sternly, yet lovingly, “Wait. WAIT!”
Bob takes his job very seriously.
I think the reason Bob is so smiley is because he knows that he can have an impact on all the people, young and old, who cross his path, insuring their safety and brightening their day.
As for me, when I walk by people on the street now, I smile a big bright smile (most of the time — I’m trying really hard, Bob!) and I say “have a great day!” and whether or not I get a response, I feel like a lighter person deep to my core. It’s an inner smile that lifts me and can easily turn a disastrous morning — you know, a whacky-hair, cat-ate-my-homework, can’t-find-my-shoes, socks-don’t-match kind of day — into a contagiously happy morning.
That’s the Bob Effect.
I see Bob. He smiles. I smile back. I see you. I smile at you. You smile back.
So Bob, if you happen to be reading this, I want you to know how you’ve changed my life. Your outward smile, so beautiful by the way, has without question, made me a happier person. Thank you for being my crossing guard. May God bless you and bring you all the happiness that you give to others with your gorgeous smile.
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 1:31 pm
Here are a few of my faves from Justin’s headshot session…
I like the one above the best because he’s wearing that now-famous “Have a Metuchen day!” shirt and his smile is perfectly natural.
Justin is running for Borough Council (obviously) and needed new pictures.
I was having a really hard time picking a favorite. But honestly, my TRUE fave is the one I posted as a preview — the “Justin is always working” shot. You can see that one here.
Huge gray/brown rock walls make great backdrops, especially when completely covered by the Metuchen train bridge, thus offering overall shade and light coming from opposing directions.
This one is slightly more traditional, yet still conveys a sense of Justin’s Metuchen home in the downtown backdrop.
Good luck, Justin!
Look for more pictures of Justin’s campaign as the summer progresses. I’m his official “campaign photographer!”
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 3:22 pm
Click the picture, or click here, for a bittersweet slide show from some of the pictures I’ve been taking this week.
The picture above is from the First Grade Author’s Tea. This annual event is usually held on the lawn but just as the children were filing out to meet their audience, rain began to fall and the reading was moved into the gym.
This is my G-rex, the Destroyer, (regular blog readers know him as Gregory) and his best friend, Hurricane Shane. This was Hurricane’s last week in our close-knit little community. Just hours after the last day of school yesterday, he and his family moved to another state. We will miss you, Hurricane! I chose the music — “As If We Never Said Goodbye” — because I really can’t stand that they’re leaving so I’m just going to go into intentional denial about that fact.
(Check back tomorrow for pictures from our last-day lunch.)
I also included a few pictures in the slide show of kindergarten graduation. I still remember Bradley’s graduation from kindergarten. He got sunscreen in his eyes and was up on the stage BAWLING until I finally went up there and took him off the stage. It was awful! But Gregory’s graduation last year was absolutely wonderful. I still love that slide show more than just about any one I’ve ever made. It still makes me cry. If you want to see it, send me a message or post a comment and I’ll send you the link in e-mail.
Ooooh! And check back next year in late June for a massive slide show project of eighth grade graduation. I’ve got BIG PLANS! Bradley’s class better be ready to be seeing a lot of me next year!
COMING SOON: A TRIBUTE TO BOB, the best crossing guard in the universe! Keep your eye on the blog!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 10:23 am
Imagine if you didn’t eat anything from noon today until dinnertime tomorrow — that’s a long time — 30 hours without food. According to World Vision, 30 hours is about the length of time many people in struggling countries have to last between meals. And even then, it’s not as if the meal those people have is particularly satisfying.
This past weekend, members of the youth group at my church held a 30-Hour Famine, fasting for 30 hours to get a sense of what it might feel like to not eat for that long.
If you’re a member of the church, or a youth who attended the event, and you didn’t see the slide show yet, please e-mail me and I’ll provide the link and password.
At the start of the event, each teen was assigned an identity within a tribe. Most people in the tribes had some sort of disability they had to deal with for most of the weekend. The few who had no disability had to pick up the slack for everybody else, carrying things for people, and taking care of those who had a hard time moving around.
For example, she was blind.
Blindness can be caused by a vitamin A deficiency, just one of the hunger-related problems the youth learned about.
Throughout the weekend, we were only allowed juice and water, but, as in many areas where starvation is a problem, the juice and water was not necessarily distributed fairly. (Even so, our young people had plenty to drink.)
To learn about the difficulties faced by communities that don’t have enough water, the water was turned off in the church building. Each tribe had to fetch their water from three long blocks away. And they had to be careful about how much water they used, conserving their precious commodity, and protecting it from other tribes.
The water they carried over in jugs was used for everything from brushing teeth and washing faces to flushing the toilets. That was challenging, and it was a good lesson for all of us to think about how much water we use every day.
The water outside was turned back on Saturday morning for a car wash. On empty stomachs, the youth worked from 9 until noon scrubbing cars and raising money for a Habitat for Humanity mission trip later this summer.
They even made their own t-shirts, decorating them using stencils and fabric paint. The one above says, “I starved so others wouldn’t.”
From home, each person brought ingredients to make stone soup. They worked in the kitchen in shifts all afternoon preparing the meal from scratch that they would eat later that night. It was torture to smell the food cooking. Sampling was not allowed.
To get a sense of the sheer number of people who die from hunger and hunger-related illnesses, the teens placed 1,200 crosses, each one representing one person who had died of hunger in the last hour, in the church pews. The kids had to keep going back to re-space the crosses in the pews, making them closer and closer together, because the boxes of crosses kept coming. Eventually, the walkways outside were also lined with crosses since they wouldn’t all fit inside.
By Saturday afternoon, energy levels were at a major low.
Once we blessed our food — and what a blessing it truly was — most of the food was gone in minutes! That was the best stone soup I’ve ever tasted!
People who came to church on Sunday morning had to move the crosses in order to sit down, and Pastor Curtis Lane Paul II, the organizer of the Famine event, used the experience to tell the congregation about the weekend.
The visual of each person holding up a cross representing someone who had died of hunger in the previous hour was very powerful.
If you meant to donate, but missed your opportunity to sponsor one of the teens, you can still send a donation to the church.
The best news is that all donations are being matched FOUR TIMES by the U.S. government, so if you were to send in a donation of $20, a total of $80 would go to help feed people in struggling nations. Make your check out to “World Vision” and mark “30-Hour Famine” in the memo field.
Please send your donation to
First Presbyterian Church
270 Woodbridge Ave.
Metuchen, NJ 08840
Special thanks to all the youth for making the commitment to work towards ending hunger. What a truly admirable thing to do. I am so proud of you all!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 2:07 pm
Memorial Day in Metuchen
is dedicated to the honor and support
of United States service personnel,
past and present,
especially those in harm’s way.
Click the picture above, or click here, for a slide show from the 2008 Metuchen Memorial Day parade and ceremony. Turn up the sound! When the show is finished, it will jump back here where you can leave a comment showing support for the troops, and thanking the parade committee. They did an excellent job!
I challenged myself this year to think of ways to capture the full spirit of Memorial Day in small-town America. Above, the names of New Jersey residents who died in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, are displayed at Freedom Plaza. According to memorials here, a Revolutionary War battle was fought in the area as well.
In my attempt to capture that Memorial Day spirit, I got out really early and walked around town, ending up in the old Colonial Cemetery where new flags had been placed by the tombstones of Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers. I also noticed the addition of a beautiful new memorial marking the cornerstones where the first Metuchen Meetinghouse was constructed in 1717.
Children young and old were decorating bikes all over town.
That’s Justin Manley, above. Justin is running for Borough Council and was helping children with their bikes. I used those shots, plus pre-parade shots of scouts, as the slide show introduction. So many children are involved in the Memorial Day events here, that I thought it was a realistic segue into the images of troops and veterans. It is my hope that we teach our children to appreciate the sacrifices that have been made for our freedom, including the freedom of a democratic process of elections.
I love this shot of the Metuchen High School band.
It was a beautiful day, yet difficult for shooting because of the full sun. I sought a few shady spots to get lots of variety in my pictures.
I love this one!
A float in the parade listed the names of troops who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. That can’t have been an easy float to make.
Cdr. John A. Rizzuto, left, watched last year’s Memorial Day slide show while on duty in Afghanistan with the U.S. Naval Reserve. I still have the email he sent telling me how meaningful it was for the troops to witness small-town-America from afar. Welcome home, John. We’re all glad you are safe!
Capt. Frederic Primich, of the U.S. Naval Reserve, was the Reviewing Officer and speaker at the ceremony.
Girl scouts were putting flowers on all the memorials at Memorial Park. As a mom, I can hear my mom-voice freaking out thinking, “Don’t get in front of the procession!” But my photographer-voice was jumping for joy. Photographers LIVE for photographs that tell a story. This one is a story of juxtaposition, and a moment that wouldn’t happen on any other day.
The flag-folding ceremony always makes me cry.
Youth in the Lincoln High School JROTC have participated in the Metuchen parade for years. Their dedication to their organization is obvious and I applaud them for setting a high standard for leadership and commitment.
The Metuchen Memorial Day slide show would not be the same without this face.
There were a lot of dogs in this year’s parade, escorted by members of the Metuchen Environmental Commission. This particular puppy was hanging out at the American Legion Hall after the ceremony. When I was taking the picture, the owner was saying, “It’s ok, he won’t eat your camera; he just ate 5 hot dogs.” Thus, I was not afraid!
Vietnam veterans salute their fallen comrades with the playing of Taps, following by the sacrificial pouring out of their beer.
There are a few pictures included in this year’s slide show that I took in the evening at Cloverleaf Memorial Cemetery in Woodbridge. It was an interesting way to end my Memorial Day — all alone in a cemetery. The wind was blowing thousands of little American flags by the gravestones, giving the grounds an eery sense of life, and the reality of the thousands of lives lost. I went there on the advice of one of the veterans at the parade. Thanks for sending me there. It really was beautiful.
I love how those Cloverleaf pictures add a sense of drama to the end of the slide show.
Memorial Day is a highlight of living in Metuchen. Presented by the Metuchen Area Chamber of Commerce, the parade and ceremony requires many volunteers and many hours of work in preparation.
If you have a moment, please leave a comment below thanking veterans and their families for all they have sacrificed for our country. And be sure to thank the Memorial Day Parade Committee for all their hard work!
May God grant us peace and protect our troops,
~julie
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 5:30 pm
Click the picture, or click here, for a fun slide show of MY family! I’ve been really busy lately, and missing my boys so much, that I took lots of pictures of our day.I have to admit, I was following my family around like serious paparazzi, using the flash like lightening on continuous burst shooting. The picture above is THE MOST PERFECT “MAMARAZZI” PICTURE EVER! I love it!
I was trying to prove to a photographer-friend that sometimes a little fill-flash is just right. In the slide show, almost every single picture I took outside used fill-flash. Not all of them are perfect, but keep in mind, every picture shown is straight out of the camera with no tweaking in photoshop.
Take this picture, for example. The flash is set so low it barely makes a difference. It looks perfectly natural, and yet, there’s just a bit of sparkle on the plum. (That plum came off our purple leaf plum — the one that some people swear is a fruitless variety. Uh huh.)Tree fans — also note that there’s a new picture in the slide show of a zelkova at Borough Hall. We lost one last year, but the remaining 13 are looking great this year!
Here’s another great example of a picture that benefited from fill. It was about 3 in the afternoon and the sun was very bright. Without a subtle flash, the shadows on Bradley’s and Gabe’s faces would have been much darker. The fill lightens them up just a tad without making the picture look like it was taken with an on-camera flash.
Speaking of Bradley, he won the Memorial Day poster contest for the 7th grade! Yay Bradley!All of the winning posters are displayed in the window of the Metuchen Savings Bank downtown. Bradley’s is a detailed split screen drawing, war on one side, Arlington Cemetery on the other.It says, “From war… to memory. But something never fades.” (His poster is hard to see in the window because it doesn’t quite fit the window opening.)I’m so proud of him!
Bradley’s friend, Gabriel Francobandiero, won the contest for the 6th grade. Gabe’s was chosen as the overall winner! Congratulations, Gabe! His design will be used on the cover of the Memorial Day Ceremony program.If you’d like to come to Metuchen on Monday for the parade, here’s some details:The parade starts at 10 a.m., rain or shine, at the Pearl Street parking lot. It travels north to Middlesex Ave, then turns right on Main Street, right on High Street, and right on Lake Avenue. The parade ends at Memorial Park, and will be followed by a brief ceremony.By the way, I fully recommend Memorial Day events in Metuchen. It is a highlight on our calendar, and puts us on the worldwide map as a small town that won’t forget the sacrifices that give us so many freedoms.
We love downtown Metuchen! There are so many fun things to do. What’s the Scoop is our favorite place for ice cream.
Variety Village is our favorite place for just about everything else! In case you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a new owner soon.I was in the store today and Tommy (the owner, always smiling, above) was telling me about the expected changes. Tommy, I know for a fact that my kids will never forget the joy of walking downtown to go to Variety Village. It’s so sad that you’re leaving, but I wish you well on your new adventures, whatever they may be.
Back at the Shaver yard, here’s another “mamarazzi” picture. I love it, fill-flash and all!
Speaking of fill-flash, this picture simply would not have worked without it. When you’re working with children, you have to be prepared for anything! And believe me, they don’t give you very many second chances if you miss the shot the first time. (Well, at least my kids don’t.)
Gregory took this picture! Didn’t he do a great job? This one is a prime example of a picture taken at the worst time of day — high noon in full sun with half the subject’s face in shadow. Yuck! But, thanks to Gregory’s subtle flash, the picture isn’t a total loss. I get precious few with me in them, and even fewer with Bradley actually smiling! Thanks, Gregory!
See ya’ll at the parade on Monday!
Peace,
~jules
P.S. The fun day you see in my family Memorial Day weekend slide show was created entirely on foot. I did not spend a dime on gas or get inside a car except to look for my missing flash.
I LOVE LIVING IN METUCHEN!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 12:01 am
This is Boggy, the frog that lives in the courtyard at Bradley’s school. The kids in the Environmental Club begged me to take his picture. Here you go!
The courtyard sundial: “Time began in a garden.”
As I was walking through the school on the way to Edgar field to watch the Metuchen Shade Tree Commission’s planting of new trees, this artwork in the hallway struck me as appropriate for an Arbor Day greeting.
What’s it like to be a root system? Only one way to find out.
Even the Mayor of Metuchen, Thomas Valhalla, left, came to watch the Shade Tree Commission and the planting of the trees! We are very proud of our town’s distinction as a Tree City USA.
Every tree was carefully documented and measured, even going so far as to plot its precise position using a GPS locator. If these trees aren’t batted too many times with baseballs, they will be the focal point of many a science lesson over the next several decades. The plan is that the children will take the trees’ pictures every year, and document their growth.
I love this stuff! Click here for the red sunset red maple in my yard.
Lots of children from the Edgar School Environmental Club (that’s Bradley in the blue striped shirt!) and the YMCA were available to help with the digging…
…there are SIX shovels in this picture!
That’s the tree that was planted next to the bleachers — a red sunset red maple.
It will grow to around 50 feet tall and 40 feet wide! (I have faith.)
I did not lift a finger except my shutter finger, but these guys were working! Bradley loves Environmental Club! I am so proud of all the kids. They worked really hard! And they listened carefully to the adults’ directions and lessons on planting trees.
Once planted, every tree was given a quick watering. It’s supposed to rain this weekend. Perfect!
This shot is WAY over-tilted but I still like it because I love seeing all those kids working so hard to plant trees.
Now THAT’S a nice action shot!
I guess I’m not the only person drawn to baby leaves.
I don’t know all the details, but I overheard that a total of eight trees were planted: red maples in the field, and some other varieties in the parking lot circle.
Will the leaves grow much bigger this year? We’ll have to come back in a month or two to find out.
That’s a dogwood in the parking lot circle. (”Oooooh! Not a redwood!”) Other trees planted here include magnolia, redbud and maple.
The trees were photographed with a person in the shot for scale.
Time out for a reality check: I need to get on my soapbox a minute. These little trees are planted in the pathway of children running to get on the bus after school. If the trees are going to survive, they need a barricade to keep kids from trampling them! (Pardon my ignorance if a barricade is already in the plan.)
May you live a long, happy life, little dogwood!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 7:14 am
LOOOOOONG-time fans of the City of Nouns might just remember Grill Hobstein. Yesterday, just after I’d returned from walking Gregory to school, he called my cell. “Mommy,” he said with remorse in his voice, “I forgot my lunch.” So, off I went, lunchbag in hand and camera around my neck. The picture above shows downtown Metuchen in the distance. You can tell where “downtown” is by the puff of white trees. That puff of white trees is better-known in MY house as “Grill Hobstein.”
You see, way back in ancient times when Gregory was 3, he would mumble things, and one time he mumbled “Grill Hobstein” over and over and over until we finally figured out that he was trying to tell us that something smelled yucky.
What was it that smelled so bad it needed its own name?
A-HA! Blossoming pear trees! Ew! Grill Hobstein, dude!
Been to downtown Metuchen this week? The pear trees are beautiful, no? At the same time, you might be wondering, “What is that smell? Did somebody leave rotten fish out somewhere?”
No rotten fish. It’s just Grill Hobstein. Bradford pears, aristocrat pears, ornamental flowering pears in blossom smell yucky. Yet another reason to plant anything else.
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 11:36 am
This is Wally’s senior year, and his last year performing with his younger sister, Sammie, in the high school productions. I’ve known Wally and Sammie for many years, watched them grow up, so seeing both of them performing with such skill, grace and maturity was a bit shocking, and quite endearing too. The whole cast did an excellent job!
As a gift to Sammie and Wally, here’s a little one minute slide show. The final photograph in the show, taken as the lights were dimming for the last time, is my absolute favorite.
Turn up the sound, click here, and enjoy the show!
posted by Julie Walton Shaver at 1:06 pm
