JULY 2019 FREE
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Pollinator partners
Hello, goodbye
Habitats for feeding pollinators are being set up in two Ewing locations By MicHele alPeRin Ewing Township and Mercer County have teamed up on a pilot project, the Partners of Pollinators initiative, to creating habitats to feed pollinators on municipal lands. “The idea is that the county would partner or work with organizations that own and manage public space but not [space] owned by the county,” says Jennifer Rogers, Mercer County naturalist since 2008. The work raises an important
question. Why are pollinators vital? According to the U.S. Forest Service website, about 90 percent of all flowering plants need the help of animals and insects to move pollen from flower to flower for the production of fruits and seeds. “Of the estimated 1,330 crop plants grown worldwide for food, beverages, fibers, condiments, spices, and medicines approximately 75 percent are pollinated by animals,” states the website. Pollinators are mostly insects like bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, flies and beetles, but they also include as many as 1,500 species of vertebrates, such as birds and mammals. A number of important polli-
nators are facing extinction, in part due to a reduction in habitats where they feed. In an effort to help combat this, the Ewing Green Team and the Environmental Commission created a pollinator garden last year in the central courtyard of the Ewing Senior and Community Center. Meanwhile, Mercer County has been creating acres of pollinator habitats as it restores its parks—in response to the “alarming rate” at which populations of pollinators have been decreasing, said Mercer County executive Brian Hughes in a press release announcing the POP initiative. Rogers says that the county wanted to expand the program See POLLINATOR, Page 8
Have clarinet, will travel Retirement has given Ewing’s Jerry Rife more time to play his music By MicHele alPeRin For some, retirement offers a chance to pursue new experiences and move back-burner projects to front and center. But Ewing resident Jerry Rife left his position as professor of music and nine-year chair of the fine arts department at Rider University because, he says, “it was time; you just know.” Since his retirement, Rife has not had to look much beyond his continuing involvement in
music as a clarinetist and conductor. But the extra time does enable him a daily regimen that includes walking, followed by breakfast, then practicing clarinet. “If you do that,” he says, “you keep improving, and I’m getting better and better.” Both heredity and environment propelled Rife into music. His maternal grandfather was a trumpeter, but it was his mother who insisted that each of her three children not only take piano lessons, but also that choose a band instrument. Rife wanted to play his grandfather’s trumpet, but that became impossible when he got braces. So in second grade in Millington, he asked his band director,
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Chloe Peterson hold up her mortar board, which she decorated with a Beatles-inspired theme. She and the other members of the EHS class of 2019 graduated on June 18 at Cure Insurance Arena in Trenton. For more photos, turn to Page 12. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)
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Irv Fenner, what instrument he should play and was handed a clarinet. Rife’s parents met when his father, Harold, worked as a cowboy on his future father-inlaw’s farm, where his mother’s job was to bring water to the cowhands on her pony. Rife was born in Manhattan, Kansas, where his father was studying entomology at Kansas State University. Rife moved to Scotch Plains when he was 18 months old after his father got a job in Cranford with Black Flag Insecticides. After graduating from Watchung Hills Regional High School in 1967, Rife returned See RIFE, Page 6
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