Category: Public Info

Union County, NJ – When the Lenape Park Nighthawks take to the fields this Saturday, there will be no cheering — You wouldn’t want to scare the birds away, would you?

This Saturday, May 9, is the 32nd annual World Series of Birding, where teams compete to identify birds across New Jersey.  There are also fun categories, such as the one the Nighthawks opted for, and they will compete more against themselves, looking to up their score from last year when they saw or heard 93 different species of birds.

“We wish the Lenape Nighthawks the best of luck,” said Union County Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh.

“Whether or not they beat their top score of two years ago, to date they have used the World Series to raise more than $7,000 for the New Jersey Audubon Society, and that is truly commendable,” he said. 

The Nighthawks will focus their search in Lenape Park, in the center of the County.

“We’ll start at 5:00 a.m. and go through ‘til six,” said team captain Frank Budney, stressing that “six” was 6:00 p.m.

Some state teams will start at midnight in High Point, at the northern tip of  the state, and make their way down to Cape May by the end of the day, Budney said, noting that those teams will often count more than 200 species of birds by the time they are done.

New Jersey is along the Atlantic Flyway, the path birds take when migrating between the northern and southern hemispheres. Many birds seen and heard in this area are just passing through to northern nesting areas. Others will be settling in for the summer.

“A lot of people think Union County parks are softball fields and baseball fields, but there are all these wildlife areas,” said Budney, who can be found bird-watching in Lenape at least once a week.

He is also one of several volunteers who lead bird hikes in the park, which the public is welcome to join.  Anyone interested in participating should send an email to birding@ucnj.org

Their morning expeditions utilize a number of trails through the park, including the East Coast Greenway, which passes through several of the 36 parks in the Union County Parks System.

While Lenape may pale in size to the County’s 2,200-acre Watchung Reservation, it can have its fair share of surprises, Budney said.

 A green heron continues to make the park its home, while last year, a pair of red-shouldered hawks — not to be confused with the more common red-tailed hawks –came to the park.

Although they have not been seen recently, that does not mean they have not returned to nest.

“They’re very secretive,” he said.

For information on the dramatic rescue of Lenape Park’s green heron last month, visit ucnj.org/press-releases.

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ELIZABETH, NJ – The Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders is pleased to present an exhibit of paintings by Valerie Moreno in the gallery space at the Union County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, located in the historic St. John’s Parsonage at 633 Pearl Street in Elizabeth. A selection of her work entitled “Visual Vibrations” is on display at the Pearl Street Gallery through June 12. The public is invited to enjoy the exhibit during regular gallery hours, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays.

Valerie Moreno is a professional artist whose education includes a fine arts/education degree from the College of New Rochelle and graduate work in fine arts at Brooklyn College, the Arts Student League and Montclair State University. She taught fine arts for 30 years with the New York City Board of Education and was an Art Therapist for 20 years with NYU Medical Center.

Moreno has exhibited her paintings extensively throughout New York and New Jersey, including a one-woman exhibit at Johnson & Johnson Corporate World Headquarters, New Brunswick. She held the inaugural one-person exhibit at the Summit Medical Group, Berkeley Heights; a two-woman exhibit at Educational Testing Service, Princeton; group exhibits at Nabisco Gallery, East Hanover; Sotheby’s, New York; and an exhibit at Bloomingdale’s, Short Hills, of originally designed shopping bags by her students. Her commissioned paintings are in national and international private collections. Moreno also holds lectures, multimedia presentations and workshops on the work of Van Gogh, the Art of Painting on China and topics including art and travel.

Ms. Moreno is a Charter Member of the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; and a member of the Visual Art Center of New Jersey in Summit; the New York State Art Teachers Association; the Millburn-Short Hills Art Center; and the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs.

“Color pervades my artwork as I fill each canvas with its own complexion of hues,” Valerie said. “As light falls on a shape, the tonal colors of the shape change and this creates a visual image which is always in a state of flux. With my brush, I try to capture a moment of this miracle of nature, as the playfulness of light shifts on the form creating visual vibrations of varied color.”

Union County artists (whose works can be hung on a wall) interested in exhibiting in the gallery space are welcome to apply. For more information about the Pearl Street Gallery or other programs, please contact the Union County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, 633 Pearl Street, Elizabeth NJ 07202. Free on-site parking is available. Telephone 908-558-2550. NJ Relay users can dial 711. Send E-mail to: culturalinfo@ucnj.org.

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Lifeguards are needed at the two Union County outdoor swimming pools for the summer from mid-June through Labor Day.  Current lifeguard certification required and weekends are mandatory.

If you are interested, please call 908-298-7849 Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm.

Welcome to a whole new way of  learning about nature—or at least  the trees all around you.

And maybe, just maybe, since it involves smart phones, it will appeal to the younger generation.

In many parks and botanical gardens it is not unusual to see signs identifying trees, giving their name in English and Latin.

Union County Parks is now offering that and much more. In cooperation with The Smithsonian, Columbia University and the University of Maryland, Parks has designed a new signage system that connects to a virtual field guide so that it is possible to learn just about anything one would want to know about a tree, from how it propagates to the region it inhabits, with a click of the phone.

“The photography used in this virtual field guide is absolutely gorgeous,” said Freeholder Bette Jane Kowalski, as she watched a group of volunteer Master Tree Stewards install new tree signage in Echo Lake Park.

The first of these new generation signs was installed two years ago in Lenape Park. In addition to Echo Lake, the tree stewards recently finished Nomahegan Park and plan to install a third trail this year at Briant Park.

“It really is amazing how this blends technology and nature in such a harmonious way,” said Freeholder Vice Chairman Bruce Bergen.

“There was a time when you had to bring a field guide with you if you wanted to learn more about this kind of thing. Now you can just go for a walk, and when you see one of these signs, you can scan the QR code and immediately be viewing the information and illustrations about the tree,” Bergen said.

While the signs are beyond reach to thwart vandalism, because the QR boxes are so large, any phone with a free QR phone reader app can easily scan the code.

“It’s no secret that the volunteer tree stewards have a particular fondness for trees,” said Dean Talcott, who coordinates the effort to identify the trees and install the signage.

“We would just like to be able to share this knowledge with the public and enable them to learn more about what is all around them,” he said.

Several years ago, The Smithsonian and the two universities joined forces to create an online tree guide called Leafsnap. While the app was written for iphones, the project had insufficient funds to create the app necessary to work with android and other phones.

“The one thing we didn’t want is a system that only worked with one brand of phones and tablets,” said Freeholder Chairman Mohamed Jalloh. “Parks solved that problem by a incorporating QR codes into the signs. Now they work with all phones, regardless of the operating system.”

 Many of the signs in Nomahegan Park in Cranford are on a trail that is part of  the East Coast Greenway http://www.greenway.org/, a 2,950-mile lowland Appalachian Trail from Maine to Florida that weaves through nearly every major city along the East Coast.

 The signs in Echo Lake Park in Mountainside are located on a trail that connects Echo Lake to the Route 22 pedestrian overpass and the New Providence Road greenway that leads to the southern edge of the Watchung Reservation.

The tree sign identification is an offshoot of the Master Tree Stewards’ ongoing educational program. Volunteers visit youngsters in fourth grade classrooms to teach them about trees and to appreciate the importance of trees to the environment.

Anyone interested in joining the tree steward program should contact the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Union County, (https://njaes.rutgers.edu/county/quickinfo.asp?Union).

14^th Annual Union County Employee Art Show during the opening reception at the Elizabethtown Gas Company’s Liberty Hall Center in Union. The contest, co-sponsored by the Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders and The National Arts Program Foundation, was open to Union County employees and their relatives. The exhibit will be open to the public weekdays until May 26, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Elizabethtown Gas Company, located at Liberty Hall Center, 1085 Morris Avenue in Union Township

(From left) Union County Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh and Freeholders Bette Jane Kowalski and Bruce H. Bergen congratulate Ryan Frees (2^nd R) of Clark on winning first place in the amateur category

(From left) Union County Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh and Freeholders Bette Jane Kowalski and Bruce H. Bergen congratulate Susan Anderson (2^nd R) of Clark on winning first place in the professional category

Union County, NJ – The annual 4-H Public Presentation Night is always full of surprises, and this year the rich imagination of Union County youth was on full display. The topics, all hand-picked by 4-H members in first grade through high school, ran the gamut from fish tanks and manga to optical illusions, dog rescue, penguins, and the Founding Fathers.

“4-H is a wonderful American tradition and Union County is very proud to support our 4-H members,” said Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh. “Congratulations to all of this year’s presenters for a job well done.”

Presentation Night is the culmination of an intensive project for the 4-H club members. They each pick a topic of their choice, research it, create a public speech, and rehearse it for their families and 4-H clubs before taking the stage and presenting to a live audience.

This year, Presentation Night included 72 4-H’ers and a panel of 20 judges, who awarded colored ribbons for Excellent (blue), Very Good (red) and Good (yellow).

Freeholder Bette Jane Kowalski, a former 4-H’er, was on hand to enjoy the presentations.

“The 4-H clubs encourage young people to explore their interests while building communication, leadership and civic skills,” said Freeholder Kowalski. “On behalf of the Freeholder Board, I would like to thank all of the 4-H presenters for making this extra effort to share their knowledge and their interests with the Union County community.”

4-H is a youth development program with roots in the rural public education programs of the 19^th century. It was formally launched as a national initiative by Congress in 1914, through the same act that established the Cooperative Extension research system under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In its present form, 4-H covers a wide range of contemporary topics while helping students develop important community and life skills represented by the four H’s — Head, Heart, Hands and Health.

Union County 4-H is run by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Union County, supported in part by the Freeholder Board. Union County 4-H clubs are open to students in grades 1-12 and cover many popular subjects including archery, Lego robotics, pet care, and more.

For more information contact 4-H Agent James Nichnadowicz at 908-654-9854 or Nichnadowicz@njaes.rutgers.edu, or visit online at ucnj.org/rce.

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RAHWAY, NJ – Most teenagers daydream about singing or dancing on a stage before a live audience. That dream becomes reality for some Union County middle and high school students at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 12^th when they perform in the Teen Arts Showcase at the Union County Performing Arts Center, 1601 Irving Street, in Rahway’s downtown arts district.

The Teen Arts Showcase is sponsored by the Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders and the Union County Performing Arts Center. Teachers, fellow students, friends and family members of participating students are invited to attend the Showcase along with the general public. Admission is free.

“The annual Union County Teen Arts Festival is a wonderful opportunity for students to interact with professional artists while sharing their own talents with students from other schools,” said Freeholder Chairman Mohamed S. Jalloh. “Students appearing in the Teen Arts Showcase represent many of the performing arts disciplines and the municipalities that participated in the 2015 Teen Arts Festival.”      

Instrumental groups, vocal groups, pianists, dancers, theater performances and visual artists were selected from the 3,500 students who participated at the 2015 Teen Arts Festival at Union County College in Cranford on March 19^th and 20^th.  The annual Festival is sponsored by the Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders and coordinated by the Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs in the Department of Parks and Recreation.

The Teen Arts Festival is a two-day celebration of the arts where students and a staff of fifty professional artists participate in performances, critiquing seminars, master classes and workshops in every discipline – visual arts, music, creative writing, theater, media arts and dance.  The Festival’s focus is not on competition but an opportunity for students to develop perceptual, intellectual and technical skills; gain cultural awareness and understanding; develop personal, aesthetic values; and learn self-discipline, critical thinking and problem solving through analyzing, interpreting and making judgments.  

For more information, contact the Union County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, 633 Pearl Street, Elizabeth, NJ 07202. Telephone: 908-558-2550. NJ Relay Users dial 711. Or E-mail: Culturalinfo@ucnj.org.