A few posts back, I was sharing with you about a job change my husband was experiencing during these economically turbulent times, about our trip to Delaware on an interview, and so on….click the “tag” under the title of this post that says “Boomer Life Changes” to find those posts.
Bottom line, hubby has found a job here in NJ, we don’t have to move, and are so thankful for this. He finished his present job yesterday and starts the new, and hopefully more stable one, on Monday.
Also, in order to keep this blog focused more on my Boomer & New Jersey life, I’ve started a more personal blog, something I’ve wanted to do for a while, that can be just about anything in my life, my heart, my thoughts. You’ll by clicking Claudia’s Chronicles.
As a young girl, living in the Nixon - Edison area of New Jersey off Route 1 until I was 14, I remember passing the Edison Memorial when we were on our way to visit my Aunt, and on many other occasions. This was a teaching moment for my Dad, an Electrical Engineer, an opportunity to tell me about the great man, Thomas Edison, that invented the light bulb and many other things that we still depend on today.
Today commemorates the introduction of the first Stock Market Ticker in New York City in 1867. When you look at pictures of the activity and technology involved with the Stock Market today…literally tracking and investing from our laptop if you use a laptop computer… it’s hard to imagine a day when the latest upswings or downturns had to travel by mail or messager.
While Edison didn’t invent the ticker, that credit goes to an Edward Calahan, Edison is noted for improving on the ticker, and patenting his model. Edison made enough money through the use and sale of this invention to be able to construct his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, very close to where I grew up, and it was there that many of the inventions he was noted for were developed, including the light bulb.
Mechanical tickers of one sort or another were used into the 1960’s, and in our baby boomer lifetimes, were replaced by what we have become accustomed to seeing today.
The Edison ticker image above is taken from SparkMuseum website, an interesting site.
Today New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen sang at another Obama event, and while I’m not promoting Obama, not one bit, it gives me an excuse to talk about another NJ celebrity who has been around for as long as I’ve been listening to rock ‘n roll.
Bruce Springsteen was born in Freehold, NJ, south of where I am in NJ, in fact, almost everywhere in NJ is south of us, since we’re at the top of the State. I found a great website that provides some trivia about him, and will give you a taste, but out of fairness to copyright guidelines and all that fun stuff, the link to the full page follows.
Here’s some Springsteen trivia:
* Children, with Scialfa, Evan James, Jessica Rae and Sam Ryan.
* Says his favorite film as a kid was _Searchers, The (1956)_
* One of Springsteen’s most famous songs, “Thunder Road”, took inspiration from the Robert Mitchum movie of the same name.
* Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, where Bono of U2 gave the induction speech. When U2 was inducted in 2005, Springsteen gave their induction speech, returning the favor.
* Awarded the Polar Music Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music Award, in 1997.
* Bruce Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek magazine simultaneously. At that time this had only happened to world leaders. [27 October 1975]
* Brother of Pamela Springsteen
* Considered becoming a baseball player prior to devoting himself to music.
* Many of his earlier songs make reference to the New Jersey shore, where he spent his youth.
* Paul Schrader asked Springsteen to write a title song for a movie he had written called “Born in the USA”. After Springsteen wrote it, he liked the song so much, he used for his multi-platinum album of the same name instead. As a replacement, Springsteen wrote another song and that song title became the film’s new title, Light of Day (1987). That is why Springsteen thanks Schrader in the liner notes of the album.
* Father, Douglas “Dutch” Springsteen, died in 1998.
* Has two sisters, Virginia and Pamela.
* Mother’s name is Adele.
* Frequently works with director John Sayles, a fellow Jerseyite who shares a similar social conscience.
Okay, that’s enough…there’s more and a bio at this link, but promise you’ll come back after you visit.
And what better way to close a post on a Jersey blog than with Bruce singing “Jersey Girl”:
