Street Talk

Revival: Answers on a Presidential Subject

Patch staff popped into a few hot spots in town and got some impromptu responses to the question of the month

Originally published on Feb. 24, this was Middletown Patch's first Street Talk video. We figured, in light of Presidents' Day and our anniversary, that we'd bring it back for all to see. Interesting how things have changed since then ... Middletown-NJ Patch's Street Talk hit the streets of the township on Presidents' Day weekend and posed a provocative presidential question: Ronald Reagan was a movie star before he became president. Is there any celebrity you would like to see as president? The question was called everything from "pithy" to "loaded." And from the VFW in Port Monmouth to the main branch of the Middletown Township Public Library, and points in between, people had some interesting candidates in mind and a lot to say about …

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Beyond Babedom

8:13 pm on Monday, February 21, 2011

Donald Trump? Ted Nugent? They couldn't come up with anyone better than that? How about Oprah? People trust her, she says what she thinks, she's obviously very smart and she wouldn't need to take money from any lobbyists - she has enough of her own.   more ›

The Trouble With Normal: Memories of the Moment Reagan Was Shot

A step back in time to that day from a Middletown child's perspective

Normal: the series of ball-bearings on which we cushion our lives. When things go wrong, we have a way of justifying them by gauging their relative normality — radiators blow, roofs leak, lungs become congested. They are all unwelcome harbingers. But, in a certain respect, are all normal. It takes a lot to shake out the bearings to lurch one from certain stability to a thoroughly unstable one ... It was an ordinary early '80s, late March day — March 30, 1981, to be exact. My mother had picked me up from school at River Plaza Elementary and made her way to my grandmother’s on Thompson Avenue in what is now North Middletown. Back then, the area was considered a part of Port Monmouth and, by some, Keansburg, or East Keansburg. This identity …

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