Focus: Falling for the Rumson-Fair Haven Riverfront

Few words are needed, if any, when taking in the view of the river from the banks of the Navesink in Rumson and Fair Haven.

Soaked in the sun of a warm fall day, the scene just doesn’t get any more comforting. It seems to smile back and embrace. And it never gets old.

Get a glimpse. Take it in.

— Elaine Van Develde

Black Squirrel Makes Fair Haven Debut

Uncommon sighting of a black squirrel in Fair Haven Photo/Elaine Van Develde
Uncommon sighting of a black squirrel in Fair Haven
Photo/Elaine Van Develde

It’s not downright nuts, but it’s also not common to sight a black squirrel in the Rumson-Fair Haven area.

Yet, scampering around William Street in Fair Haven, there one was — bolting across the street, darting up a tree and copping a squat to snack on his harvested nut.

They’re not indigenous to the area like the preppie. In fact, the black squirrel is as uncommon here as high hair.

No one seems squirrelly about their rather rare sightings lately. And where the handsome(ish) rodents are known to settle — like Washington, D.C. and the campus of Princeton University, among other places — residents tend to take pride in the fact that they’ve nested in their hometowns.

Evolving from the same species of squirrel as their Eastern gray descendants, black squirrels originally hailed from Canada and can comprise as much as 25 percent of the total usual grey squirrel population, or one in 10,000.

Check out this Washington Post column about them by John Kelly.

Have you seen this guy or any others in the area? Where?

— Elaine Van Develde

RFH Students ‘Bag a Lunch and Help a Bunch’

RFH team captains displaying a flyer created for the Bag a Lunch fundraising initiative are Victoria Hempstead and Willis Manelski. Photo/RFH
RFH team captains displaying a flyer created for the Bag a Lunch fundraising initiative are Victoria Hempstead and Willis Manelski.
Photo/RFH

Bag it.

That’s what members of the  Chinese, French and Spanish National Honor societies at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School (RFH) recently asked students to do — to “bag a lunch and help a bunch,” as the slogan for the Table to Table charitable initiative goes.

Table to Table provides meals to New Jersey families in need. RFH put $430 in its coffers when students on Oct. 14 brought home brown paper lunch bags and returned them to Bag a Lunch team captains at school filled with the amount of cash they would typically spend on a single lunch.

“I am very pleased with the participation of the RFH students, and the work of our team captains,” RFH French Teacher Christine Berg said. “And I am happy that the money raised will be used to help our fellow New Jersey residents.”

— Edited press release from Rumson-Fair Haven Regional School District