New Jersey Baby Boomer

With the 2010 elections over, and a powerful change sweeping Washington once again, I realized anew what a privilege it is to be able to vote. I am a female blogger, and it amazes me to think that there was a time when women were not allowed to vote…that in fact, once given the privilege, in some states that privilege was taken away for a time. This made me curious about the history of the Women’s Suffrage movement and how it affected our State of New Jersey. It should be noted that a woman’s right to vote and the suffrage movement was not limited to the United States…but this is a NJ blog, so here the focus will remain.

Here is a time-line, so to speak, of the movement here in New Jersey:

1776 – It was Abagail Adams that wrote to her husband, John Adams, asking that woman not be forgotten in the new laws of our new Nation. In the constitution, all “inhabitants” of the land, without distinction of sex or race were given the right to vote…but in New Jersey (and perhaps elsewhere) the voters were to be property owners. If a woman was married, her husband was the property owner, so if my history is correct, only woman who were single and widows were permitted to vote.

Another source states that woman who possessed $250 were permitted to vote.

1787 – Women in all states except New Jersey lost their right to vote when the US Constitutional Convention gave States the right to set their own qualifications.

1807 – New Jersey joined the other States by revoking the right of women to vote – as well as aliens, and persons of color (Negros). Only white males were permitted to vote, the claim being that it would simplify things and help to eliminate fraud.

It was in 1920 that women throughout the United States won the right to vote through an amendment to the Constitution…ratified in 1920. You can find complete Women’s Suffrage time-lines at the following links:

100 Years Toward Suffrage

Votes for Women State by State

Womens Suffrage Events Timeline

Women’s Rights Timeline

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Dual Electronics. All opinions are 100% mine.

When this Baby Boomer got her first car, it HAD to have a working radio…the tires could have been bald, the finish not quite perfect, but the radio had to be perfect. I got my first car as we entered the year 1970, there was only a front speaker on the dash for the radio. My second car had front and back speakers. Then there were the cumbersome 8-Track players, then cassette tape players, and finally CD players…that’s what I still listen to in my car, but not my husband…read on.

The advances over the past 40 years have been amazing to watch, and now Dual Electronics has multiplied the “amazing-ness” almost beyond my understanding…but not quite.

My husband has the best iPod money can buy right now, sleek and attractive looking. But he has also purchased this very odd looking gadget he uses so that he can listen to it through his car radio…I mean really strange looking…I can’t quite describe it. But he still has to reach down and do all the adjusting directly on the iPod…hopefully at a stop and not while driving.

His experience would be much nicer if he had one of the new and attractive units that Duel Electronics offers for car entertainment, like the the XDMA7650, providing a front panel with a USB connection giving you easy access to controls for your iPod® and/or your iPhone®. Though sound quality is important, the feature I think I like best as I think of him out on the road trying to tune the iPod, is the wireless remote control, which I would imagine would be safer than looking down at a contraption plugged into a cigarette lighter like my husband is using right now. And here’s some “techie” info that I don’t really understand, but may impress you, it has 3.5mm auxiliary input & 3-RCA preamp outputs.

This is not all that you’ll find at the site, there are many other car entertainment units available to suit a variety of needs. Take a moment to take a look.

The fall colors are really beginning to show all around us here in Northern New Jersey.  I have a feeling they will be at their peak next week, when I hope to bring my Mom for a visit and take her around to view the beauty around us.

I had fun putting together a page about fall foliage in New Jersey, and it has many links to places you can go to hike, drive or walk all over the State, as well as a few videos to enjoy.

Please click “Colorful Fall Foliage in New Jersey“, I hope you will find it to be a helpful resource if you are planning to travel in the New Jersey area to view the colors.

This is the next stop on my own little tour of pictures from our vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine.  If you’ve been following along, you know that we were away for a while visiting our favorite vacation location.  We left our home here in New Jersey, headed north for a couple of days in New Hampshire, then went from there to spend time in the Acadia National Park area of Maine.  Now that our children are grown, we like to travel after all the children are back in school, and notice that we aren’t alone.  There were many other Baby Boomers and Seniors traveling.  Another advantage is the fact that rates are going down a bit at some hotels after Labor Day.

Here is one taken of the ocean, a sea gull decided to pass by while the picture was being taken.  To see the picture before this one, visit this link at Memories & Nostalgia, to go to the next picture, visit this link at Weeds and Seeds Swap.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.

I am always interested in new phone services, because the more services there are, the more competition, and the more competition, the better prices can become between services. SO when the opportunity presented itself to write about Boost Mobile, I immediately went to the website, and then the coverage tab along the top to see if our area was covered. Being in a fairly rural area, there were some breaks in the coverage, but the more populated area of the state had good coverage, and may be a viable option for those looking for a change. In fact, there’s coverage throughout the United States.

Like many things these days, much of your business can be managed online. You can pay using your debit or credit card, or set up automatic payments for your service. If you prefer, for whatever reason, you can pay in person…you can even pay by phone.

My husband and I have not ventured into the world of the Blackberry or iPhone, or any of the more advanced phones yet, but it is tempting as we do enjoy being online, and social networking with friends and family, which you can do with the phones offered.

You can also help a friend with a bill, or give a gift of phone service to a friend for a period of time through the Re-Boost program.

Maybe it’s time to take a look and see if it’s worth making a change in service for you, if you’re time is up on your present service and you will not be penalized for making a change.

We have had many visit from black bears this summer of 2010, and so have many others in Northern New Jersey and other parts of the State.

This year, there will be a bear hunt. I always have such mixed feelings about the bear hunt. I love animals, all of them, and as you can see from the pictures below, the mom and cubs walking through our yard are so cute.

We also have a young mid-sized bear that frequents the property…in fact our Yorkie, tiny as she is, yapped and chased it off the property and lived to tell…this time.

Every time we take her out, or walk to our cars at night, or walk out the door for that matter, we have to look both ways, and carry her in our arms until we are sure there are no bears. We see them on our property approximately 1-2 times a week, sometimes more.

Usually it’s the mom and cubs. Then there’s the HUGE bear, a gnarly looking old bear, that is the most intimidating bear of all. Our property…right up against the house and past the front door…are part of it’s pathway through the neighborhood. He occasions our trash, but we have things rigged now so that it is so hard for them to get at the trash, they don’t try much anymore. (I may eat those words in a day or two). And the “medium-sized” bear I told you about that my dog chased. These are our “regulars”.

I haven’t felt comfortable walking this summer…not because of the heat, but because of the bears. I never walk out my door completely relaxed, always have to be conscious of whether a bear is going to come around the side of the house…and believe me it happens.

Have we been attacked? No, not yet, but I’ve seen a threatening snort or two, especially from the Mom of the cubs…a Mom protecting her cubs is probably the most dangerous if you get near the cubs, or between her and the cubs.  In fact she came at the end of last week and tore down our bird feeder in broad daylight and enjoyed the seeds with her cubs, destroying the feeder.  Used to be that I could put out a feeder during the day and bring it in at night, then out again the next day.  But that isn’t working this year, it’s the second daytime feeder destruction of the summer, so I think I’ll have to wait until winter to feed the birds….disappointing.

So, the bear hunt seems like it’s necessary…even though I hate the idea.

Mom….

…and the Kids (Cubs) walking through our front yard after coming around the side of the house. Taken from the front door.  See how cute they are and why I am so conflicted?

These photos are have copyright and licensing restrictions, click through the image for details.

Opinions vary on our relatively newly elected Governor, Chris Christie. He is making headlines and media appearances not just here in New Jersey, but on other news stations as well because of the open and bold stands that he is taking.

What he is doing in our State is so very different from what the President is doing in our Nation…he is making everyone share the challenge of cutting back, something I wish was happening in our Nation.

I guess in my simplistic way I see this as a kind of experiment….what will be the outcome of what our Governor is doing in our State as opposed to what our President and his administration is doing to our Nation.

I don’t know if the experiment will work, because of concern about how what is being done on the National level will affect what happens to each State.

Time will tell, but I’m pleased for the most part with what Governor Christie is doing, even if sometimes it hurts.

I rarely share political opinions on here, but I’m just sayin….

This coming weekend is the annual Quick Chek Festival of Balloons in Readington, New Jersey, and a couple weekends later in very early August is the Warren County Farmer’s Fair Balloon Festival.

I have been to the Quick Chek event, but have yet to go to the Warren County, New Jersey event.

For more information about both of these events, plus videos and a slide-show that I put together, please visit New Jersey Hot Air Balloon Festivals.