Atlantic Highlands Councilman Jack Archibald Will Not Seek Reelection

By Muriel J. Smith and Art Gallagher

Jack Archibald

Atlantic Highlands Councilman Jack Archibald has withdrawn his candidacy for reelection.

Archibald submitted a letter to the County Committee which was read at a meeting of the borough’s Republican county committee on Monday. In his letter, the councilman stressed he is completing his term which runs out Jan. 1, 2018,  and will continue serving the borough.  However, citing personal reasons and commitments, he said he will not seek another term.

The councilman has been on the governing body for the past 25 years, serving on every committee at some time during his tenure. He has received commendations for work he has done and projects he has instituted or pursued while serving on Harbor, Police, Finance, Public Works , Recreation and  Water and Sewer.

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Freehold Borough’s 9-11 Memorial

By Muriel J. Smith

photo via facebook

FREEHOLD – Small town America showed how big and magnificent it really is as the borough of Freehold’s Human Relations Committee conducted its Sept. 11 Remembrance ceremony at borough hall Sunday evening.

More than 500 participants and spectators filled the chairs and spilled out into Main Street, which the Mayor and Council had closed to vehicular traffic for the event to hear and see people of all ages participate in the program honoring the 147 residents of Monmouth County who lost their lives in the attacks 15 years ago.

Jane Fields chaired the event for the Committee, assisted by cochairman Gianna Dell’Omo.

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9-11 Memorial at Mt.Mitchill

By Muriel J. Smith

ATL. HIGHLANDS – “We are still a nation of promise and possibilities and I am confident this will always be true,” concluded Freeholder Lillian Burry as she opened the commemorative ceremonies recalling the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 300 persons were at Mount Mitchill at 8 a.m. Sunday morning to honor the memory of those who lost their lives and the heroes who saved so many more lives when two planes ripped into the World Trade Center and collapsed both buildings, while another plane crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth was averted from further terrorism because of quick action by heroes aboard the flight.

As in past years, Burry, welcomed the crowd and gave initial remarks before introducing Freeholder Director Tom Arnone who spoke on the tragedies as a part of history and urged all Americans to “Remember…Never Forget.”

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Cancer free six months later

By Muriel J. Smith              

For all of you who followed my five part series on breast cancer, cryoablation, and the trial that may well reduce surgeries for some women, it has been six months since I had the simple procedure which consisted of a radiologist inserting a frozen needle into my breast and killing the cancer that was sitting there.

Although the oncologist, the radiologist, and most of all me, all knew the cancer was long gone, it’s part of the trial procedure to have a mammography six months after to be scientifically sure.  Also as part of the trial, I would meet with the oncologist who had given me the option of having her perform surgery or the radiologist eliminating cancer with the needle.

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Beck, constituents excluded from “non-political” meeting in Freehold with Sweeney

Senior citizen accosted by Democratic legislators’ staffers

Downey, Sweeny and Houghtaling. photo via facebook from a previous meeting

Senate President Steve Sweeney held a meeting with public officials and education stakeholders at the Freehold legislative office of Assembly Members Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey this morning to discuss the school funding bill the three legislators are sponsoring.

Houghtaling told MMM about the meeting this morning during a phone call regarding former Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini’s call for him and Downey to join Sweeney in demanding that the U.S. Attorney and NJ Attorney General investigate the NJEA’s alleged extortion of Sweeney. Houghtaling repeatedly said that the Freehold meeting is “non-poltical.”

So why was Senator Jennifer Beck, a Republican excluded? Members of the Freehold Borough Council were invited.  The state senator representing Freehold was not invited?  That sounds like a political meeting with only Democrats invited.   Beck’s spokesman Mike Hughes told MMM that the senator was not invited to the meeting in Freehold.

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A senior day care Center in Havana

By Muriel J. Smith

Visiting a senior day care center in the heart of old Havana was an unforgettable experience. As the oldest in our group of six spending five days in Cuba, and being short of four score in years myself by a couple of months, I was particularly eager to see the health, care, and welfare of senior Cuban citizens.

In spite of the best efforts of caring people, and the inherent happiness of people who have known far better times, it was pathetic.

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Cuba: art and music, race and Joann Chesimard, income inequality

By Muriel J. Smith

Photos by Tricia Curtin and Nancy Zockoll

Part Three of a series 

They’re a musical group, the Cuban people. They love to dance, are proud of the salsa, automatically start to move rhythmically whenever they hear music, and can dance at outdoor restaurants on cobblestoned streets with abandon and joy.  There are plenty of discotheques and nightclubs in and around Old Havana, and it seems that 90 pesos, about $10 American, is the going fee for entry. The one evening our group of six Americans and eight Cubans decided to go, the club had had a fire earlier in the evening, so the club part was closed. The restaurant, however, was open, but we opted to move on.

There is no doubt there are two different and distinct styles of living in Cuba.

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Cuba: It’s more than cars!

By Muriel J. Smith 

(photos Tricia Curtin and Nancy Zockoll)

Indeed, they really are all there, those classic American-made cars of the 1950s. They’re all over the well paved and not so well paved roads of Cuba, and most of them are taxis.

There are thousands of them, all brightly painted, the sun bouncing off shiny chrome; all with their windows down…pre-air conditioning days, remember…their interiors either plush or vinyl cleverly patched or taped to look good, and who knows what under the hoods to keep them purring, or growling gently as they navigate the streets.  The cars presumably date back to the 1950s when they were new, Cuba and the USA were friends, and Cubans enjoyed a middle class status that enabled them to purchase foreign cars.  For good reason, most chose American rather than Russian vehicles, though some of them were also available during ‘the special period,’ the time in the 1960s when Russia was the alleged friend of Cuba. The vehicles have been handed down from father to son, and with an embargo prohibiting the import of car parts, have been kept in running condition through ingenuity and a strange conglomeration of makeshift and re-made parts.  Cuba is on good terms with Venezuela, so fuel for the vehicles is no problem. Nor do they spend a lot of time or effort on repairing windows that no longer rise or close, given those 90 degree sun-filled days.

But there’s so much more to Havana than cars.

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Five days in Cuba

By Muriel J. Smith

Perhaps the best solution to the problems between Cuba and the United States is to leave it up to the teenagers. Especially if they are teens like Catherine Curtin of Atlantic Highlands and Ava Zockoll of Bay Head.   Because while negotiations are going on at high levels between the bureaucrats of both nations, and compromise and trade-offs are slowly making it easier for Americans to travel there, 16-year old Catherine, a junior at Red Bank Catholic High School designed a week long stay in Cuba’s capital to interact with Cuban teens on the volleyball court. Eager to join her on the expedition were RBC’s girls’ volleyball team captain Zockoll, Ava’s mother, Nancy, and Catherine’s parents, Dan and Tricia Curtin. And me. The Curtins asked me to accompany them on the trip so I could report it for newspapers and magazines.

Life is certainly good.

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Meeting the Ice-Cure family in Israel

By Muriel J. Smith

Editor’s note: In this fifth and final article in her series about her breakthrough treatment for breast cancer, Muriel Smith shares her visit to the Israeli company, Ice-Cure Medical that invented the procedure.  Paint the Town Pink

Israeli Ice-Cure Medial staff with Muriel Smith at the cyroablation console, with one of the gifts Muriel brought for the staff to remind them where Centra State Medical Center is. Standing left to right: Maya Yurista- QA Manager, Odelya Eliyahu- Office Manager, Ravit Attali- Clinical Manager, Muriel, Gabriel Cohen- VP R&D Manager, Iris Firer- Accountant, Shahaf Yehuda -Production

My trip to Israel went off without a hitch. Traveling with friends from Our Lady of Perpetual Help/St. Agnes parish, on a tour with a travel company which had previously taken me to Greece, Turkey, Ireland, and Italy, the trip could only be made more exciting for me now that I knew I would be meeting with the people who had invented the procedure and equipment to perform cryoablation…freezing to death the breast cancer that had been discovered only 47 days before it was ablated.

Sue Jebsen, the nurse who traveled the United States with the equipment used in this trial procedure, and Will Irby, Ice-Cure Medical’s key person in the USA, had made all the necessary contacts and explained to me that while the staff in Israel had seen and spoken with physicians who had done the procedure, they had never had the opportunity to meet with a woman who had undergone it. Sue was in the room when Dr. Kenneth Tomkovich had performed the approximate 45-minute procedure which killed the small tumor in my right breast. It was she who first called that evening to see if I would meet with the staff in Israel while on my trip.

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