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Washington Park in Newark will now be known as Harriet Tubman Square.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka celebrated the Juneteenth holiday by presiding over a ceremony Monday at the triangular downtown park and officially renaming after Tubman (1822-1913), who escaped enslavement, helped others do the same via the Underground Railroad, and became a noted abolitionist and voting rights advocate.

The park, which is bounded by Washington and Broad streets and Washington Place, had been named after George Washington (1732-1799), who led the Continental Army to victory in the American Revolution, became the United States’ first president, and has often been referred to as the father of the nation. Washington also enslaved hundreds of Black people on his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon.

“The renaming of the park as Harriet Tubman Square marks a pivotal moment acknowledging underrepresented histories that all Americans and Newark residents should value,” Baraka said in a statement.

There is a Harriet Tubman Museum in Cape May, and Newark’s role in the liberation of enslaved people was officially recognized this spring by the National Park Service, which added the former Presbyterian Plane Street Colored Church to the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy said in a statement that, “as New Jerseyans, can feel pride in our state’s role in the Underground Railroad. At the same time, however, we cannot forget that New Jersey was the last of all northern states to abolish slavery.”

In addition to renaming the park, Baraka used the occasion to announced plans for what will be the Newark Arts and Education District, intended to highlight downtown venues, cultural institutions, galleries, parks, public art, and restaurants.

“The key is to ensure that the District serves Newark residents first, both as a center of fun and economic opportunity,” Baraka stated.

A year ago, Baraka announced the selection of a design for a Harriet Tubman monument that will be erected in place of a Christopher Columbus statue removed from Washington Park in 2020.

The Tubman monument, designed by Nina Cooke John, is called “Shadow of a Face.” Baraka said it would be installed in the park this fall.

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With the price of gas being what it is, people are looking for fun stuff to do this summer closer to home. Day trips are going to be popular as people scale back on spending and traveling due to inflation and gas prices.

And what’s more perfect for a day trip in New Jersey than a day at Mountain Creek resort? Mountain Creek is opening for the summer on Saturday, June 25, and will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Now, you may be thinking, “There are so many water parks in New Jersey? Why Mountain Creek Resort?”

Well, this is no ordinary waterpark. Besides all the classic rides such as the Colorado River Rapids, Zero G, High Tide Wavepool, and Canyon Cliff Jump, and tons of activities for younger kids, Mountain Creek also offers Zip Tours, which are mountaintop zip lines with views the likes of which you rarely see in this state.

If you’ve never zip-lined before this is the place to do it. And if you have, this adventure is special with a series of zip lines ranging from 200 feet to 1500 feet in length suspended high above the very top of Mountain Creek. There are also guided tours that showcase the entire mountain. This is a perfect activity for you and a loved one or you and your whole family.

And to top it all off, there is no more picturesque area of New Jersey. If you’ve never been to Vernon you don’t even know how breathtaking the New Jersey Mountain landscape can be.

And by the way, Adventures at Mountain Creek Resort are just a few steps away and include Mountain Creek Bike Park, Mountain Creek Waterpark, and Mountain Creek Zip Tours, if you decide you want more than just a day trip, there is lodging at the Appalachian hotel.

He will be amazed by everything that Mount Creek resort has to offer. I’m already planning my trip there with my kids.

For more information, visit MountainCreek.com.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco only.

You can now listen to Dennis & Judi — On Demand! Hear New Jersey’s favorite best friends anytime, anywhere and any day of the week. Download the Dennis & Judi show wherever you get podcasts, on our free app, or listen right now.

As part of Trenton’s Liberty Weekend (July 8-10, 2022), the Trent House Association presents a talk by Dr. Iris de Rode on research by the Marquis de Chastellux as the Continental and French armies prepared for their march through New Jersey to the battle of Yorktown in 1781. This free program will be held on Saturday, July 9^th, 2022, at 2 p.m. in-person at the William Trent House, 15 Market Street (across from the Hughes Justice Center) in Trenton and via Zoom at https://tinyurl.com/THTalkJuly9. A pay-as-you-wish donation can be made by PayPal at https://williamtrenthouse.org/donation.html.

During the last phase of the American Revolution, the French expeditionary army of the Count de Rochambeau came to the aid of George Washington’s forces in 1780. To conduct war in these new, unknown lands, a group of French officers went on a mission to do extensive studies of the American lands, its geography, topography and infrastructure, but also of the former battlefields of the American Revolution. François-Jean de Chastellux (1734-1788), the Major General of Rochambeau’s army, studied these former battlefields extensively, with the approach of a true historian. He wrote a very detailed account of the Battle of Trenton, based on his own thorough research based on accounts of eyewitnesses, in person interviews with the participants, observations he made in Trenton, and maps from both the British and the Americans. He can be considered the first historian of the Battle of Trenton, and during this lecture, Dr. Iris de Rode will take a close look at his analysis and conclusions about this important battle, based both on his published travel diary but also on unpublished sources from his family castle in Burgundy, France.

Dr. Iris de Rode specialized in the French role in the American Revolution. She earned her PhD in 2019 from the University of Paris, and just published François-Jean de Chastellux un soldat philosophe dans le monde atlantique à l’époque des Lumières (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2022), a biography of the Marquis de Chastellux, based on his unpublished private papers that she discovered in the Château de Chastellux. She is now working on her book in English, as well as a travel app for the Washington Rochambeau Revolutionary Trail and a documentary film on her research, and is a research fellow at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

The William Trent House Museum is a National Historic Landmark in the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area and on the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route National Historic Trail. The Museum is dedicated to sharing the authentic history of the house, property, and people with our communities, connecting the past with today and tomorrow. Owned by the City of Trenton, it is operated by the Trent House Association, which is supported by the generosity of its members and donors; by grants from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the New Jersey Cultural Trust, the New Jersey Historic Trust, and the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission with funding from the New Jersey Historical Commission; and by contributions from NJM Insurance Group and Orion General Contractors. For more information, visit https://williamtrenthouse.org.

A Vernon man next week will face a state Superior Court judge who, at the request of the state's acting attorney general, ordered his arrest for his "contumacious flouting" of court mandates to remediate what has been called an illegal seven-story mountain of waste on his property.

Judge Maritza Berdote Byrne directed authorities on March 11 to take Joseph Wallace into custody following a written request by acting Attorney General Matthew Platkin who believed it was the only method that would "effectively compel Mr. Wallace to comply with the numerous orders of this court," according to court records.

Records show Wallace was taken into custody on March 17 and appeared before Morris County Judge Frank DeAngelis, who ordered his release pending a hearing before Berdote Byrne on March 31. Wallace, by phone on Monday, said he appeared before the judge and was released "in about an hour." Christopher Klein, the warden for the Morris County jail where Sussex inmates are taken, said Wallace never spent time in the jail.

Wallace, who had several attorneys over the years, was representing himself after his last attorney, Jeff Patti, was relieved as counsel in November 2020. Patti said at the time Wallace had not paid in full legal and retainer fees. DeAngelis assigned Wallace a pro bono attorney on Friday.

Wallace's continued defiance against authority has been at the forefront of many court hearings since February 2019, when the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection filed a lawsuit against him. The state said tests of runoff from his Silver Spruce Drive property showed elevated levels of cancer-causing volatile organic compounds, PCBs, which are highly toxic industrial compounds, and pesticides.

Wallace said Monday the DEP was aware of his work project — he's averse to the words "landfill" and "dump" — for 10 years and he had never once failed an inspection until 2019, when standards changed. Agents, he said, didn't even test the soil but instead had tested man-made recycled crush aggregates, such as crushed brick and ground up concrete, that are permitted as base material and fill.

Wallace did not specify what he meant by "work project," but it is believed he gets paid each time a trucker dumps their load on his property. In one court filing, it shows Wallace received over $29,000 a month that included eight checks from an excavation and trucking company for multiple loads.

"It's a 75-foot mountain all the way to New York state. Yes, I did add material to it, landscaped it, but I took a piece of property and made it a nice working area for myself," Wallace said, adding, "It is not a dump or a landfill."

The sprawling pile of dirt and debris sits atop an aquifer in the Highlands Preservation Area just upstream from the Wallkill River National Wildlife Refuge. Wallace's neighbors, many part of the 2,000-person-strong Facebook group Sussex County Residents Affected By The “Landfill,” use wells for their drinking water that has caused them uncertainty about what could be leaching into the surrounding groundwater from the two-acre-wide pile.

After several months allegedly defying court orders — Wallace said he has always done what the court has told him to — to turn over documentation related to the pile, Berdote Byrne in 2019 made the rare move of empowering a court-appointed receiver. The plan called for retired State Superior Court Judge James Rothschild Jr., the appointed receiver, to marshal Wallace's assets and assess him for testing and cleanup costs.

Berdote Byrne called for Wallace's incarceration in June 2020 via a contempt order after his continued non-compliance, but she deferred issuing an arrest warrant due to the pandemic, a move that also gave Wallace several weeks to comply with remediation orders.

But he didn't, she said. Since that time, federal prosecutors say Wallace has ignored nine court orders and has hidden funds in his daughter Mackenna's name. Rothschild, in his own letter to the court, says he has found Wallace "far from impecunious," and points to a job Wallace failed to disclose and a new BMW gifted to a girlfriend.

On March 11, the judge, who called Wallace's continued disregard of court orders "egregious," also ordered his employer, Advanced Pavement Technologies, garnish his wages in the amount set forth by state law.

A deposition, a job and a BMW

Wallace is on the hook to pay for the sampling and analysis of the dirt on his property, despite prior, and failed, efforts to push the costs on the DEP.

Rothschild secured a professional to conduct the sampling, but Wallace was unable to pay the $35,000 fee, Rothschild said in a letter to the court in November.

Wallace, on Monday, said he believes the cost is a "waste of money" since the soil was tested in 2018 and was not considered solid waste. In 2019, when residential direct contact soil remediation standards were updated, the new testing of the soil "barely" failed. He feels that since he has operated for around 10 years, he should be "grandfathered" into the older standards.

Rothschild took a comprehensive look at Wallace's assets and bank accounts in search of the $35,000, but it proved difficult.

Instead, he noticed large sums of money were coming into Wallace's bank accounts, but they were quick to come out, leaving not much money behind, he said.

It caused him to focus on Wallace's daughter, who he found was receiving "healthy six figures of payments from her father and those who did business with her father."

A judge granted a third party complaint against Mackenna Wallace, and in December, she was placed on the stand to testify.

Mackenna Wallace said she was aware her father was using her bank account for several years, but he had told her he was doing so to pay bills since he could not have a bank account due to a "lien against him," according to a transcript of the deposition. She admitted that her father had forged her signature on checks made out in her name by trucking companies. The bank account, she said, was opened by her father while she was present, but she was "not allowed" to close the account and had no access to it.

When she asked him to close it down, he threatened her: "He threatened to take away my car, which I couldn't afford," she said.

He "laughs," she added, when she talks to him about the consequences he faces.

Rothschild said he also looked for other ways to collect funds, but found Wallace was not exactly forthcoming.

In spring 2021, Wallace held an auction and sold items including guns and motor vehicles, and in return, made $9,000, court records show. But Wallace later claimed everything bought at the auction was not owned by him and instead other family members and friends. The judge asked him to provide documentation as to true ownership, but he has failed to do so.

Rothschild said in October, Wallace "vehemently denied" that he had a job, but officials in Vernon discovered Wallace was working for a company landscaping the old Playboy Club golf course in Vernon. Rothschild said he also found a Facebook post by Wallace "bragging about the new BMW he acquired 'for my love.'"

Rothschild has asked the court to transfer ownership of the BMW to him as the receiver. Court records do not show any movement on that motion.

With the testing of the soil still in limbo, Rothschild has cited concerns with the possibility the landfill could be a danger to the public, since a full analysis of the pile has yet to be done.

He suggested the DEP volunteer to pay to sample and analyze the fill, with a guarantee that when Wallace sells his home in the future, the state would be returned their funds.

Howard Burrell, Vernon's mayor, said he recently addressed the Wallace property during a council meeting and told the township he has vowed to not forget about the "environmental scar Joe Wallace has created on the face of our town in the form of his awful illegal landfill."

Burrell said he and several federal and state officials, including DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, met at the end of 2021 to discuss possible grants to fund the testing and remediation of the pile. The town is continuing to pursue various avenues.

Wallace said after years "fighting" against the state, he has been crippled financially. But he isn't going to give up, and with the help of his new attorney, plans to subpoena a half-dozen DEP agents who have visited his property to prove the pile is not a dump, but rather, his livelihood.

"The only thing that is dirty on my project are the dirty politicians that are behind it," Wallace added.

Lori Comstock can be reached on Twitter: @LoriComstockNJH, on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/LoriComstockNJH or by phone: 973-383-1194.

(NEWARK, NJ) -- Newark Get Ready!!! The funkmaster himself, George Clinton returns home to New Jersey to celebrate his 80th birthday on Friday, March 18, 2022 at 8:00pm. See George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic perform their timeless classics often sampled in countless hip hop songs. George Clinton will be joined with special guests Vernon Reid and Nona Hendryx.

Join the celebration with George Clinton, the “Godfather of Funk” behind Parliament and Funkadelic. One of the foremost innovators of ‘70s funk, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by Prince himself!) in 1997, and received a much-deserved GRAMMY® Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Join us at NJPAC as we hail the living legend who gave the world P-Funk, “Atomic Dog,” One Nation Under a Groove and Mothership Connection. With a career spanning five decades, three dozen albums and sweeping musical influence, George Clinton is a fearless creative mastermind who keeps on rocking.

Tickets range from $39-$89 and are available for purchase online, by calling 888.GO.NJPAC (888.466.5722) or by visiting the NJPAC Box Office at 1 Center Street, Newark, New Jersey.

Recording both as Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton revolutionized R&B during the ’70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-’60s acid heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. The Parliament/Funkadelic machine ruled black music during the ’70s, capturing over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and recording three platinum albums. Clinton became interested in Doo-wop while living in New Jersey during the early ’50s. Basing his group on Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers, Clinton formed The Parliaments in 1955, rehearsing in the back room of a Plainfield barbershop where he straightened hair. The Parliaments released only two singles during the next ten years, but frequent trips to Detroit during the mid-’60s – where Clinton began working as a songwriter and producer – eventually paid off their investment.

Vernon Reid is the founder and primary songwriter of the rock band Living Colour. Reid was named No. 66 on Rolling Stone’s magazine's 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In addition to his work with Living Colour, Reid has a number of solo projects. He released Mistaken Identity, his first solo album, in 1996, and has collaborated with the choreographers Bill T. Jones on Still/Here and Donald Byrd on Jazztrain. He performed "Party 'Til The End of Time" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) with The Roots, an end of the 2000 millennium tribute featuring the music of Prince's album 1999. He also composed and performed "Bring Your Beats" a children's program for BAM.

Nona Hendryx is a vocalist, record producer, songwriter, musician and author with a career that spans over six decades. She was one of the founding members of Patti Labelle & the Bluebelles, a group that would eventually become Labelle. In addition to being an Ambassador of Artistry in Music for Berklee College of Music, Hendryx is currently the recipient of the Vanguard Residency from Joe’s Pub at the Pubic in NYC. The residency is an award and yearlong residency that celebrates the career of a singular artist who has contributed significantly to American life and pop culture. As part of her residency, Hendryx will curate and perform in a monthly series of shows over the course of the next year.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), located at One Center Street in downtown Newark, N.J., is America’s most diverse performing arts center, and the artistic, cultural, educational and civic center of New Jersey – where great performances and events enhance and transform lives every day. NJPAC brings diverse communities together, providing access to all and showcasing the state’s and the world’s best artists while acting as a leading catalyst in the revitalization of its home city. Through its extensive Arts Education programs, which have reached almost 2 million children, NJPAC is shaping the next generation of artists and arts enthusiasts. NJPAC has attracted more than 10 million visitors since opening its doors in 1997, and nurtures meaningful and lasting relationships with each of its constituents.

Advertise with New Jersey Stage for $50-$100 per month, click here for info

Wednesday, June 22, 2022 @ 8:00pmState Theatre New Jersey15 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901category: musicClick here for full description Thursday, June 23, 2022 @ 7:30pmShakespeare Theatre Of NJ - F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre36 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940category: theatreClick here for full description Thursday, June 23, 2022 @ 7:30pmSouth Orange Performing Arts Center (SOPAC)One Sopac Way, South Orange, NJ 07079category: musicClick here for full description Thursday, June 23, 2022 @ 7:30pmMayo Performing Arts Center (MPAC)100 South Street, Morristown, NJ 07960category: musicClick here for full description Friday, June 24, 2022 @ 8:00pmShakespeare Theatre Of NJ - F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre36 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ 07940category: theatreClick here for full description Friday, June 24, 2022 @ 8:00pmRoy's Hall30 Main Street, Blairstown, NJ 07825category: musicClick here for full description Friday, June 24, 2022 @ 8:00pmMcCarter Theatre Center (Berlind Theater)91 University Place, Princeton, NJ 08540category: musicClick here for full description