Reply #12: I lived in northern Hudson County, NJ, for seven years. [View All]

I lived less than a block from the Palisades and enjoyed the view of Manhattan and the Hudson River on my way to work every day. And I had a great and cheap apartment. Those were the days.

I had very good friends who lived in the Morristown and Parsippany areas. This was back in the '80s and those places were still lovely.

The Delaware River north of Camden is also great. I have not been to the NJ shore, preferring to fly to Lake Michigan in the summer, but it has many fans including my former and terrific cleaner, Ritchie.

BTW, the county including Holland, Ottawa, is the reddest in the state. It makes Grand Rapids, the Salt Lake City of the Midwest, look positively blue. I'm sure the natives were very friendly, but you wouldn't like their voting patterns.

Both our states could use some good press these days.

How are the engineering programs at Rutgers? I root for the public institutions and have heard that Rutgers is on upswing.

There's a good regional engineering school at Houghton in the U.P.--Michgan Tech. Their environmental science program is particularly good. I think that they still do metallurgy up there. I recall reading that they've been working on refinging processes for iron ores that have until now resisted efficient refining.