A day (and a few holes) with the crew bringing cleaner water to South Orange By Adrianna Donat The lead service line replacement that took place in Maplewood last year has started in South Orange. We’ve probably all experienced the same moment of neighborhood déjà vu: you turn the corner and (surprise!) there’s a line of orange cones, a truck with flashing lights and a fresh street is auditioning for Holes: The Musical. Beyond the driving hazard, it can make you wonder what e

On roots, restlessness and the price of belonging By Ken Gagne A few months ago, I stood in a banquet room in Chicopee, Mass., attending my high school class’s 40-year reunion. Forty years? It felt like a clerical error, the kind I assumed someone would correct once I pointed it out. The faces were familiar in the way old furniture is familiar; you recognize the shape even after it’s been reupholstered. We hugged. We laughed. We squinted at name tags. Knee pain was discussed.

By Kristen di Gennaro Readers who grew up in the 1980s might be familiar with the classic R&B song A House is not a Home , made famous by the late singer Luther Vandross. The song was initially recorded almost two decades earlier by East Orange native and Grammy award-winning singer Dionne Warwick, who is a South Orange resident. As the song’s title illustrates, the words “house” and “home,” though often used interchangeably, are not completely synonymous, as we aim to “turn

The snow extended our trip and allowed us to see what he had become By Ellen Donker We enjoyed a visit with our son Timmy at the Charleston Tea Garden. Whenever someone hears that my son Timmy lives in Charleston, S.C., they talk about what a beautiful city it is and assume I must go there all the time to visit. Although Timmy has been there for almost eight years, most of it spent in college and grad school, I have been there just a handful of times. I have sometimes felt li

Major renovation of a ’30s classic makes Maplewood feel like home Written by Rose Bennett Gilbert; Photography by Mike Van Tassell This Tudor underwent a renovation that restored its charm with attention to details such as oak beams, iron-framed casement windows and bespoke brick work. They were still barely married when Greg Lembrich first pitched the idea of moving to New Jersey to his wife, Alexandra Carter, an avowed “forever New Yorker who hated New Jersey from afar.” Yo

Your mental health will thank you By Alex Koenig A group of adults recently sat hunched around the cafe tables in the General Store Shops & Cafe in Maplewood, their ideal 2026. There were glue sticks, scissors, tiny rolls of decorative tape, stickers and magazine clippings with words one placed a gold star next to “more joy” like it was legally binding. Things got emotional. Not “I’m sad because I glued on a photo of a superyacht I will never own” emotional. More like, “Oh wo