Glen Ridge library director Jennifer Breuer, wearing a very un-librarian-like one-shoulder red frock, thanked library patrons who ponied up $100 apiece to attend the Glen Ridge Gala at the Glen Ridge Country Club last night. Carol Harpster, president of Friends of the Library, estimated that this year’s gala — an annual event with a different beneficiary each year — raised about $50,000 for the library.  In addition, Friends of the Library, presented a $20,000 check from member contributions. The library, which turns 100 this year, is planning to use the money to digitize its historic assets.

10 replies on “Glen Ridge Gala Raises About $50K”

  1. That sounds like an awful lot of money for a 100 dollar a plate fundraiser at such a swank place, but what do I know? More power to them and to the librarian in red.

    It’s kind of refreshing that they didn’t do one of those tiered-privilege arrangements, where 100 bucks gets you mashed potatoes and meatloaf and a chance to gawk at the people who can afford 500 bucks to air kiss Stephen Colbert.

  2. When the Montclair library funding problems were dominating the threads, the best solution people had was to hold their breath and stamp their feet. I recall suggesting that there be a fundraiser and solicit donations, but in this town people play at affluence until it comes time to write the check. The reflexive solution is to stick it to the taxpayers, but when the even the most strident complainers actually have to fork over the dough, they go on radio silence. The contrast to the loudmouths in Montclair that throw nickels around like manhole covers, and think that the town should pay for everything, is quite striking. If you want something that is important to you and your community, get together with like minded people in a positive fashion and make it happen. Bravo Glen Ridge.

  3. The self preservation mode that is inverse to expenditure is symptomatic of a party encumbered with their intrinsic attachment to money and materiality. People who know how to create wealth without attaching emotion to what is often a mental procedure for them are often projected into the forefront of what is known as the wealth effect. It is because of a skill that is transferable into a future value of payments that frees these individuals to a certain degree within their mind, and on their account. A historical trend is for certain innovations to become obsolete and the future value of the skilled workers payout to be compared with a steady stream of emotionally charged payments future value. Both parties cognizant of their respective wealth distribution provides for an outlier party, the individual either independently or cooperatively assessing the benefit made from more efficient monetary distributions and maximizing the inflection point of payments for distribution. This function has ultimately made the outlier party more liquid and truly capable of realizing the wealth effect without psychological attachment due to an innate ability to perform better than other outliers and the average party who may realize an occasional wealth effect. There are even instances where the articulation of the wealth effect is paired with the ability to be the outlier, the outliers skill is often not vocalized by the emotional investor unwilling to validate or perceive a long term outlier solution. Outlier solutions are tangible but not all outliers perform better than all outliers. It is only when the outlier does not share a distribution with other outliers within a percentage group does the outlier begin to appreciate it fiscal authority. The premise of authority has been countered to an almost irreparable degree where the difference has placed many outliers within or near the average, and with a sooner inflection point.

  6. To be fair, Montclair Library Foundation has fundraisers too — well supported by people in Montclair.

  7. I happen to kind of agree with you, deadeye, but you say it with such a sneer I find it difficult to admit as much. You seem to think that everybody (except yourself, of course) belongs in the unflattering group who “play at affluence until it comes time to write the check.” That probably accounts for some big whiners, no doubt. But I know many people who are not wealthy at all, who are busy with family and career, but who somehow manage to “write checks” and donate their time (which is often a scarcer commodity) for causes and projects that enhance civic life in this town.

  8. Point taken, Roo. It’s the whiners that I find irritating, certainly not the well intentioned but financially overburdened. One would think that there is a critical mass of people who claim to be passionate about issues such as library funding or the community pre-k, that have the resources, yet can’t be counted on to pull it together enough to make a difference. We’ve got no shortage of those that talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk.

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