A massive dump of pasta in New Jersey
This is a repost blog.
Original news stories appeared on NPR
5 May 2023: A massive dump of pasta in New Jersey sets off a fury of interest, and also a fury
By Bill Chappell
Sadly, it’s not unusual for things to be dumped in New Jersey. But a recent case brought a new twist: hundreds of pounds of pasta left along a local brook and a mystery about who did it and why.
Workers in Old Bridge Township found 15 wheel-barrow loads of “illegal dumped pasta along a creek in a residential neighborhood,” Old Bridge Business Administrator Himanshu Shah told NPR.
The pasta came in a variety of shapes, from spaghetti to macaroni — mounds of it sitting along a wooded bank of Iresick Brook. Photos from the scene set off a range of reactions, from pasta puns to bafflement over who would do such a thing — and why?
But for residents like Nina Jochnowitz, the noodles’ unexplained appearance was the last straw.
“At this point, I do know who did it,” she told NPR. “But this story is not about that.”
A local activist blames a missing town service
For her, it’s not who dumped the pasta, but why. While people fixate on the “pasta-gate” aspect of the story, Jochnowitz said, “The story really is about the fact that in Old Bridge, we do not have bulk garbage pickup. It has been a point of contention for the entire time I’ve lived in this town — 23 years.”
When Jochnowitz, an environmental activist and former township council candidate, posted images of the dumped pasta on Facebook a week ago, it set off an uproar of interest and questions. She estimated the pasta to weigh 300 or 400 pounds.
“My initial reaction is exactly what yours was,” Jochnowitz told NPR. “It was funny and humorous and mortifying. It’s funny because it’s pasta and not garbage; it’s humorous because you could make a lot of jokes. … and then I’m horrified because of course it is a potential contamination” for the nearby stream and river.
Was it cooked or raw?
There have been conflicting reports about whether the pasta was cooked and then dumped, or if it merely grew soft and limp from rainfall. Shah says the city believes “several hundred pounds of uncooked pasta” was taken out of its packaging and dumped on the ground.
“It looks like it was only there for a short time but moisture did start to soften some of the pasta,” he said.
Two workers from the city’s public works department were able to clean up the area in less than an hour, Shah said.
Jochnowitz thanked the city’s public works agency for the rapid response to what was dubbed “Mission Impastable,” saying that when the crew removed the pasta, they also cleaned out all the garbage tossed in the basin.
But she also urged the township’s leaders to start offering public trash services. The government’s website says residents can contract with private trash companies, noting that “Old Bridge does not provide sanitation services for household solid waste or bulk items.”
Those private firms often charge hundreds of dollars to remove large items like couches and mattresses, Jochnowitz said, and the township doesn’t have a dump.
“Some people take to throwing their trash in remote parts of the town,” she said. “My neighborhood happens to be a pretty remote neighborhood, so it’s a common place for dumping.”
As for the other part of the mystery — the who — local media outlets cite neighbors who believe the pasta came from a house that was recently cleared out ahead of being put on the market. A man’s mother had died, the reports state, leaving her son to clear out pasta from her pantry.
The city says the police department is looking into who is responsible for the pasta dump. [Copyright 2023 NPR]
8 May 2023: Solved: The mystery of the pasta in the New Jersey woods (click through for audio version)
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Finally, the answer to a mystery that captured the attention of a small town in New Jersey and the internet.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KEITH ROST: I look down, seen alphabets, noodles, spaghetti - probably about 200 pounds.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
That is Old Bridge Township resident Keith Rost, talking to NBC 4 New York. Rost was walking through the woods last week when he stumbled on piles and piles of pasta of unknown origin.
PFEIFFER: The Department of Public Works eventually hauled it away. They had to carbo-load it into 15 wheelbarrow trips to clear it all out. They called the job Mission Impastable (ph).
KELLY: Of course they did. As for who dumped the noodles, neighbors now seem to have an idea. Rost, who spoke to NBC 4 New York, said he believes it was a man cleaning out a pantry.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ROST: I mean, I really feel like he was just trying to clean out his parents’ house, and they were probably just stocked up from COVID. They were - it’s probably the generation - like, my grandparents always had a cupboard full of cans and pasta and - you know, just to be safe.
PFEIFFER: Another neighbor told NPR that who did it wasn’t the point. The township lacks bulk garbage pickup, which could have kept all that pasta out of the woods in the first place. It also could have been donated to a food bank.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KELLY: You’re listening to ALL PASTA CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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Feeling slighted and unmoored in a friendship and looking for ways to connect.
This is a repost blog.
Original posts by Letter Writer #791 at Captain Awkward. Only the letter writer’s content is reproduced here; to read Captain Awkward’s advice, click through to original links.
12 Nov 2015: #791: Feeling slighted and unmoored in a friendship and looking for ways to connect.
Hi Captain Awkward,
You are a great resource, and I’ve referred a lot of friends to your blog.
My problem is something I think I should totally not be having, but I am. I have a friend who I’ve known for years who will be getting married soon. Suzanne and I used to live together, and were quite close when I lived in a different city. Since I moved away a few years ago, we’ve still been in touch, but have been in less touch the past couple of years. Because of our past friendship, and how much I value her, she was a bridesmaid in my wedding when I got married a year ago.
Suzanne is now getting married. She’s asked a few people to be a bridesmaid, but when I flew in to attend some pre-wedding festivities a few weeks ago, I realized that she wouldn’t be asking me. I’m not planning to talk to Suzanne about this. I know that it’s OK for people to choose whoever they want to be in their bridal party. But it still really hurts. I find myself comparing myself against some of the other people she’s asked. I also find myself questioning our friendship, and feeling like I may have misinterpreted how close we are, or have been in the past. I also then start to go down the road of thinking of other people with whom I’d like to be closer, but who don’t seem to return the feelings of strong friendship.
The logical part of me realizes that people move on, and recognizes that it’s natural that we’ve grown apart, since I’ve lived a way for a few years, and we now no longer talk on the phone regularly. The illogical part of me is upset and hurt that she didn’t pick me, and wonders if I should just let this friendship die completely.
Do you have any advice for moving on, and being mature about this? I’d like to reach out after the wedding to rekindle our phone call check-ins, but I don’t want to impose if she really has moved on.
Former Friend
5 January 2017: UPDATE on an Open Thread
Hiya! I’m LW #791: “Feeling slighted and unmoored in a friendship and looking for ways to connect.”
I attended the wedding I wrote about. I felt awkward at times because I wasn’t a bridesmaid (like one point when a bridesmaid told me she had thought I’d be one, and another where I saw the bridal party getting on a shuttle from our hotel when I was slinking away to get an uber), but I enjoyed seeing friends and introducing my husband to the city where I used to live.
I think the Cap hit the nail in the head– my letter was very much about general loneliness and a hungry feeling. 2016 was a hell of a year personally (miscarriage, family deaths, election, etc), but friendship-wise it was actually good. I started letting go of friends who don’t reciprocate the level of friendship I put in (due to distance, time, interest, general flakiness, whatever), and that was very freeing. I did nice friend-things like attend baby showers for them, but didn’t become deflated when the “oh we should really hang out” messages didn’t translate to actual hangouts.
I also started mentally giving more space to friends who were originally, bluntly, second tier– they weren’t the friends I had imagined myself as always being close with, but when I took a step back, I realized they’re really great people who have stuck by me and have made efforts to reach out or keep up the friendship. Hubby and I did a 10 hour drive to see one friend who I hadn’t seen in a few years and helped her and her hubby wrangle a large cow– a really fun roadtrip, with good memories. I also have made a point to get lunch every month or so with another friend who lives about an hour away. And I’ve also spent lots of time with a local friend and her young kids, have taken them meals, and gone on semi-regular lunchtime walks. And another friend asked if I wanted to start a knitting circle with her. The knitting itself was short lived, but she’s become a really positive person in my life.
So, the Cap’s advice was apt. My “ideal” friendships have mostly faded with time, and I’m left with a group of really awesome actual friends who are on team me. It was key to realize it was time to let go of the idea of people, and start appreciating and focusing on spending time with people who actually show interest. I was hungry, but I put out good things, and feel more fed now.
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Can you open this mysterious safe?
This is a repost blog.
This story is compiled from articles written by Julie Scharper in The Baltimore Banner
6 Aug 2023: Can you open this mysterious safe? Red Emma’s bookstore seeks safecrackers by Julie Scharper in The Baltimore Banner
Duck into the arched stone doorway of Red Emma’s bookstore in Waverly, climb the wooden steps to the second floor and behold a mystery.
Sandwiched between biographies and philosophy books stands an immense metal safe — just the right size to hide a magician, a body or a small fortune. No one knows what’s inside. The safe is locked and appears to have remained so for years, if not decades.
“It is extremely, extremely heavy — so heavy we’re honestly not sure how they got it into the building and up to the second floor,” said John Duda, part of the cooperative that owns and works at Red Emma’s. “There’s no way we’re ever getting it out of here. And we also don’t have the combination.”
So the Red Emma’s crew this week extended an invitation to Baltimore on Twitter: Come take a crack at the safe.
There are a few caveats: No drilling. Nothing destructive. Only old-fashioned lock-picking, please. And just during business hours.
If the contents are enticing, the lucky picker gets to keep half. And, if they’re “gross or cursed,” they wrote, you gotta keep it all.
It’s unclear just how old the safe is. It’s nearly 6 feet tall and about 3 feet wide. There are two metal handles, each stamped with numerals, and a metal dial etched with the numbers from 10 to 70. In gold letters toward the bottom is a logo for the York Safe & Lock Co. in York, Pennsylvania.
A website devoted to York Safe & Lock says that the company made safes from the 1800s until the 1940s and had an outpost in Baltimore.
Also unknown is when the safe arrived in the stone building at 32nd Street and Greenmount Avenue, just east of the Johns Hopkins University campus. The structure was built in 1920, according to state property records. In the 1940s, it operated as Hooper’s lunchroom and it was the site of desegregation protests in the 1960s, Duda said. Later, it housed an antique shop, Early Attic, and then sat vacant for many years before the Red Emma’s collective purchased the property last year and began renovating it.
This is the fourth and largest location for the radical bookstore, which started in a small storefront on St. Paul Street in Mount Vernon in 2004. From the start, the bookstore, which carries works about civil rights, queer theory and social justice, among other topics, has been owned by its employees. The current location sits across from the 32nd Street Farmers Market and next to Pete’s Grille. In addition to two floors of books, an adjoining property — which used to be a gay bar called Office Disco, according to Duda — is a coffee shop serving vegan food.
A few people have stopped by to give the lock a whirl, but none have had success, said Meg Berkobien, a worker-owner, on Thursday afternoon.
Earlier in the day, Ken “Analysis” Brown, another worker-owner, opined that it likely held money. “I’d bet there’s cash inside,” he said. “Maybe not a lot.”
But if his dreams were to come true, Brown said, the safe would contain original writings of Emma Goldman, the anarchist and writer for whom the bookstore is named, or essays by Steve Biko, a South African anti-apartheid activist who died in 1977.
Berkobien had a grislier vision of the content. “In my head, if I’m being honest, it’s a body,” she said. “But I’m also the resident horror person.”
She doubted that anyone would be able to crack the code. And that’s fine with her.
“I love a good mystery,” she said. “I’m happy with it never being opened.”
12 Aug. 2022 The mysterious safe at Red Emma’s has at last been opened by Julie Scharper at The Baltimore Banner
A twist to the left. Two turns to the right. A bang, a thump, a click.
For weeks, people have been jimmying an antique safe at Red Emma’s bookstore in Waverly, trying to coax the massive metal box to reveal its secrets. On Friday, the doors of the safe swung open at last.
The safecracker ― or yeggman, in the parlance of the profession — was Rick Ammazzini of Winnipeg, Canada. The 46-year-old had seen Red Emma’s staff issue a challenge online for safecrackers in early July.
The safe was in the stone building at the corner of Greenmount Avenue and 32nd Street when the Red Emma’s collective purchased the space last year. The building dates to at least the 1920s and has housed a lunch counter and antiques shop, among other businesses. The age of the safe was unclear, but it must be at least 75 years old, since its manufacturer went out of business in the late 1940s.
Ammazzini, a bus driver who taught himself to crack safes a dozen years ago, raised $1,300 online to fund his trip to Baltimore. He arrived Wednesday and got to work inspecting the dial of the safe on the second floor of the radical leftist bookshop.
“I had to touch this dial for about 10 hours,” said Ammazzini.
Ammazzini said that between each pair of numbers on a dial lock there are four subtle notches only an experienced yeggman can feel. Ammazzini spent hours exploring the gaps between each of the digits on the lock until he arrived at the three-digit combination.
The lock was partially broken, which slowed the process of deciphering the combination, Ammazzini said. If it had been functioning normally, he could have opened it in about an hour, he said.
Ammazzini opened the safe late Thursday evening, but the collective of Red Emma’s worker-owners decided to wait to inspect the contents until Friday morning. Several staff members, visitors and members of the media arrived for the big reveal.
As the crowd waited breathlessly, Ken “Analysis” Brown, one of Red Emma’s worker-owners, removed a layer of blue tape and swung open the doors.
Inside the safe was … nothing. Well, not entirely. Brown bent closer to the dusty shelves inside and slid open four small wooden drawers.
Upon closer inspection, the safe contained four paper clips, a rubber band, a torn label for a bottle from the Cresta Blanca Winery and a paystub for a Helen Davidson, an employee of “University Dining, Inc.,” perhaps a contractor for nearby Johns Hopkins University.
There was no year on the yellowed paystub, but it showed that Davidson took home $5.69 for 20 hours of work for a week in late February.
But wait. As so often happens in life, solving one mystery revealed another. Among the wooden drawers was a metal compartment emblazoned with a star-like design. It was locked.
As Ammazzini prepared to pick that lock, a TV camerawoman discovered a tiny metal key in one of the drawers. Brown slipped it into the lock and turned.
The inner compartment opened to reveal … another wooden drawer. Also empty.
Although there was no pile of gold or trove of secret documents inside the safe, the mood in the bookstore was joyful. Brown said the collective members would meet to decide what to do with the safe. Perhaps stock it with books or a special display or just let visitors inspect it.
From her perch at the front desk, Red Emma’s collective member Meg Berkobien said she preferred the safe as an unsolved mystery. Yet, she said, the safe brought joy to the bookstore this summer.
“It’s been exciting to see everyone coming in,” she said. “At the end of the day, we’re a community space and this is the perfect way to bring in the community.”
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September 9, 2023 safe mystery mysteries baltimore safes safe-cracking
I’m moving in with my girlfriend and now my homophobic parents want to disown me
This is a repost blog.
Trigger warning: homophobia
Original posts by Letter Writer #1194 at Captain Awkward.
16 April 2019: #1194: “I’m moving in with my girlfriend and now my homophobic parents want to disown me.
Hi Captain Awkward!
I came out to my parents about 3 years ago, when I was still living with them before moving abroad to start my PhD. They were horrible — and it made the next 6 months of my stay a traumatizing experience, to say the least. I think you could describe my parents as controlling, and when I came out there was a lot of ‘we HATE all the career choices you’ve made, but we had the goodness to tolerate them, and now this!’ Anyway. Moved out, moved countries, got a fuckload of therapy, and started the process of healing.
I told my mother (via a text) that I was moving in with my girlfriend and she freaked out. She is “devastated”, and my father, with whom I have not had an actual conversation since my coming out (made summer visits home real fun, if you can believe it), is “furious, and wants to disown you”. I… am not sure how to cope with this? The worst part is that I have a ticket home to visit them for nearly a month, in three weeks. Captain, I’m not sure I want to visit them (for three whole weeks!) after this terrific display of parenting. At the same time, I’m pretty sure that not visiting them will be taken as this huge display of disrespect and an indication that I *want* to be estranged from them. So the options are to either stay away for my own peace of mind and be a bad daughter, possibly irrevocably so, or to grit my teeth and spend 3 weeks at home enduring silent disapproval at best and emotionally abusive confrontations at worst.
Like I said, I don’t have a relationship with my father. My mother is the one I speak to on the phone and text with. I told her “I’m sad and disappointed that you feel this way about my moving in with my girlfriend. I don’t feel safe coming back to visit you, and I don’t think you’d feel comfortable either.” She replied and the preview contains another allusion to my disappointing career (for the record, worked at a non-profit, doing a PhD now, only a failure insofar as “not earning hundreds of thousands as a corporate lawyer” is a failure) and… I haven’t seen the rest of it because I get avoidant when I’m anxious. Do you have any scripts for like… how to respond and how to navigate what may potentially be a long, torturous process of becoming (formally) (even more) estranged from my parents?
Best,
Bad Kid
P.S. My pronouns are she/her!
P.S. Just wanted to give a heads-up that you’re almost definitely going to recommend therapy, which I know is a big part of the answer! The most recent therapist I had didn’t really work for me, and since I’m moving in 2 weeks, I might not have a huge amount of time / resources to devote to finding a new therapist.
Editor’s Note: To read Captain Awkward’s advice, click through to the original post.
May 18, 2020: Update (second update at the link)
Hi Captain!
Your recent posts made me think + feel better about where I am with my life and career, so thanks for that. It also made me think about how kind and helpful your advice was when I wrote in to last year, so I thought I’d write in to update you:
-
I did not end up visiting my parents last summer, and in fact we stopped speaking for a couple of months. I felt bad and guilty and ashamed, but also… very relieved. It gave me the mental and emotional space I needed to settle into my new apartment and adjust to living with my partner.
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My mum and I started speaking again after a couple of months, and our relationship is pretty much the way it always was, which is: mostly fine, with a good dash of avoidance of Difficult Topics and mutual incomprehension.
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I did speak to my father a couple of months ago when I called home for a major holiday. It was very stilted, but we stuck to light topics, and overall I’m happy with how it went.
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I have now graduated with a PhD and have a job that allows me to stay in the United States without worrying about visa or financial issues.
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I am very happy with my partner (even during these stay-at-home times), and in addition to the cat that we had when we moved in, we’ve now started fostering a dog!
Captain, above all you reminded me that my parents’ skewed perspective is neither my fault nor my responsibility. This was something that I knew rationally but, as someone who grew up both loving and fearing my parents, has been an ongoing process emotionally. In addition to my girlfriend and the friends who closed ranks around me, it was really fucking valuable to have you (and the whole community of CA commenters!) stand in the corner of someone they’ve never even met with that amount of love and kindness and protectiveness. I was and continue to be profoundly moved by that. So: thank you very much ❤ ❤ ❤
Best wishes,
LW 1194
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Got my first non-recovery gold find yesterday! 10k class ring from a Trinity College there are several with the initials “AB” and a class year of 1927
This is a repost blog.
Original posts by woodrodius on subreddit r/metaldetecting on Reddit
(Click through for images of ring)
From the comments:
So bit of an update. I took it down the antique store, they confirmed it was 10 karat gold, and that it was a Trinity University 1927 class ring. The AB is likely the reverse of BA, indicating the degree, apparently it was switched back then. The JFG (or possibly JPG) was the initials of the student.
I was able to find a 1926 Trinity yearbook online, and there was a Junior named Joseph Glotzer. I did an ancestry search, he was born 1904, died 1971 in New York, which would make him 23 when he graduated, so that totally lines up. I found some Glotzer’s in the Bay Area that originated from New York, in the process of contacting them to see if they can confirm details about what might be their Great or Great-Great grandfather.
If it all checks out, I’ll be giving the ring back to them as a family heirloom, I’ll post another thread if that happens!
[deleted]: Sorry to ask a stupid question but what does non-recovery mean?
woodrodius:I’m part of the ringfinders organization, so I help recover lost jewelry for people. So I’ve found gold wedding rings and the like for people that requested help, but this is the first gold ring I’ve found detecting recreationally. :)
[deleted]:Nice. Thanks. I’ve thought about joining that organization. Would you recommend it? (another stupid question) 😉
woodrodius: Totally, it’s a lot of fun to find stuff for people, and you tend to make a bit of reward money if you’re interested in that.
Fogmoose:May I ask where you found it? Thats a LOT of wear on that sucker. Looks like it rubbed on something for a loooong time.
woodrodius: 6 points 3 years ago
California, north of San Francisco
(Text from images transcribed below.)
Back in June I was metal detecting a local park when I found a 10k gold class ring, class of 1927. It was extremely worn, but ‘Trinity’ was visible, and on the inside of the band were the initials ‘JFG’
I initially thought it was Trinity college in Connecticut and hunted down a lead I found regarding a student with JG initials, but a family member got back tome and said that the middle name didn’t match, and he didn’t think the ring was from Trinity college.
So, with my new digital microscope, I decided to have a closer look, and I found ‘University’ on the bottom portion of the ring face. This led me to discovering a Trinity University in Texas from that era (which has since relocated) and luckily they kept a digitzed library of yearbooks running all the way back to the 1800’s.
I found the 1927 yearbook and started going through the seniors and sure enough, there was a Jay F. Gamel who graduated that year. Now we were getting somewhere!
I googled the name and found that he had passed away in 1969 (He was also both a WW2 and Korean War veteran). I was able to find an image of his gravestone in San Antonio. I then began browsing Facebook for that last name, and I found someone who lived 25 miles from me. I checked out his page, and wouldn’t you know it, he had a memorial post for his father with the same gravestone pictured. We’d found our man!
I finally was able to get in touch with him and it turns out some burglars had robbed his house about ten years ago, and the class ring was among one of the objects stolen. How it made it into the park is anyone’s guess. He was obviously shocked and super happy, he was not expecting to see it again. After making arrangements, the 93 year old ring was back with it’s rightful owner after being missing for over a decade.
(Click through for images of text, ring, yearbook page, and protagonists.)
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September 7, 2023 ring jewelry metal detecting good deed lost and found
10k class ring from 1979. I’ve already called the high school and they will be back in touch with me with some information on Oscar. Hopefully I can get this one returned! I will be sure to update y’all!
This is a repost blog.
Original posts by ImTheGlue on subreddit r/metaldetecting on Reddit
(Click through for image of ring)
11 May 2022: Update to my post from yesterday. I got a hold of Oscar and will be mailing his ring to him tomorrow!
(Click through for anonymized screenshot)
OP comments:
– Oscar told me that he had lost it the first year he had it!
– He lives about 3 hours away now and he does remember losing it! Said he hasn’t been back here in a long time
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September 6, 2023 ring jewelry metal detecting good deed lost and found