Debra Galant Explains the Universe

Yes, Jo, the East Coast Does Exist

OK, the answer is Chincoteague Island, Va. and its sister island Assateague. (We had two winners at the Where in the World is Barista Sandiego Contest at Barista. ) Picture of the ponies taken at great personal cost: the only thing closer were the mosquitos, the other species native to the islands.

Where in the world....?

I'm running a contest over at Barista : the first reader who can figure out where I am, based on photos I send home from vacation, wins a Barista mug.

Dreaming of Recess

It's his last day of elementary school tomorrow. After that, it's 7th grade.

"You know," he said. "It's going to be my last recess ever."

No more recess. Next thing you know, the boy will have a wife and a mortgage. Sad.

Mom's Worst Nightmare

Here's proof that just because you're looking through a camera doesn't mean you're actually seeing what's going on.

Now, let's set the scene. It's the last game of the baseball season, the Barista's got a fancy new digital camera and her son has gotten a walk. The next batter comes up, hits a whopper out to right-center and the Barista son starts running. Barista's got the video on. She follows him to second. Hey, this is cool! She tracks him going to third. Whoops. She loses him after he rounds third. What the h---? Then she finds him just in time for the climactic crossing of home. And..... well just click on the picture and watch the film.

Oh, by the way, he's fine.

(The same post is over at my new site, Barista of Bloomfield Ave. Go over, pick up a coffee, sit down and see what's cooking in my neighborhood.)

Still explaining the universe, just a smaller one

It is interesting how the engine of an established weblog just chugs along, even when nobody's there manning (or woman-ing) the wheel. Today, my sitemeter passed 10,000 visits -- and I barely noticed. Before anybody goes looking for me in the hospital (which is where I was the last time I disappeared from cyberspace for three days), it's time to announce --

No, I'll let the Proprietor do it for me:

Not to get all Jeff Jarvis on you, but here is a -- wait for it -- hyperlocal blog looking to make a go of it and actually make some money! Debra Galant, formerly the NJ columnist for the NY Times and currently blogging on Debra Galant Explains The Universe is now Chief Wordsmith at Barista of Bloomfield Avenue. "Now Serving Montclair, Glen Ridge And Bloomfield" (None of your Upper Montclair, Nutley or Clifton people around here!)

So, if you really want to know the latest scoop-worthy news for a small section of northern Essex County, here is your spot. And when I say "small", I of course mean "small but incredibly important and interesting". Best of luck.

Here, by the way, is what our Barista looks like:

Of course I'm not doing this alone. The brilliant design is by our art director Janice Yamanaka. My partner in this venture is also my computer guru, Carl Bergmanson, who is the Chief Executive Barista to my Barista-in-Chief. Coding all our ideas into advanced TypePad templates is the extraordinarily able Julie of Blogmoxie. Tom Biro has given us sage advice from the beginning. And my neighbor Roberta Baldwin has also been a supporter from the get-go.

The idea for Barista was, as the Prop guessed, partly inspired by Jeff Jarvis. But Carl had a vision something like this for months before I'd met Jeff or even heard of blogging.

I hope that some of my old readers will follow me over to Barista. (I'll still post here, too, though not as often.) After all, as Tom pointed out tonight, some of the things I write about could, and do, happen everywhere. Like this:

Congratulations, You Son of a Gas-Guzzler It's that season: time for all the end-of-year banquets and awards ceremonies. Tonight, over at the Valley Regency in Clifton, the best and the brightest of Glen Ridge High School -- grade-wise, anyway -- were feted by the Rotarians at the 46th Annual Recognition Dinner for High Honor Students of Glen Ridge High School.

For reasons we don't quite understand, parents are invited to these events but then not allowed to sit with their kids. For the Barista, walking into that great big banquet hall acid flashbacks painful memories of standing in the school lunchroom, holding a tray and looking desperately around for somewhere to sit. We mastered the challenge with acceptable alacrity, and even managed to have a pleasant evening of it.

The Barista wasn't going to write about this event at all, but then the dinner speaker, Dr. Tom Benedictsson, who teaches something or other humanities-related at Montclair State, lobbed some great big softballs at us. Since we weren't taking notes, we have to paraphrase, but our dinner companions helped us reconstruct Dr. Benedictsson's remarks.

In our materialistic society, he said, honor may be measured by what you purchase. And it's more honorable to buy a car that gets 40 miles to the gallon than one that gets only 17 miles to the gallon -- even if you can afford the extra $25 to fill up your tank. Just to make sure everybody got the point, he added that honor is also picking the college you really fit into, rather than one whose decal would look good on your SUV as you cruise down Ridgewood Ave. polluting the air and contributing to global warming.

We half-expected Dr. Benedictsson to complain that the dinner was held a whopping 7.65 miles away from the center of town, and chide us for not all carpooling.

Eyebrows were raised. Then the students were called up one by one to thunderous applause, Atkins-busting apple-tart-a-la-mode was served, everybody offered congratulations to everybody else for having such bright children and vehicles both honorable and less so made a left onto Valley and returned home.

Help for Iraq

Jeff Jarvis says this is a good cause -- help for the people of Iraq -- and that both pro- and anti-war folk are on board. Go check it out.