Each week Patch highlights the featured pets of the week. Click through the photo gallery to learn more about each one. The Bergen County Animal Shelter is located at 100 United Lane in Teterboro. Call the shelter at 201-229-4600 or visit them on the web. Hours for adoption are 1 to 5 p.m. seven days a week.  The shelter is open Thursdays from 1 to 7:30 p.m. 

A couple of years ago on Mother's Day my daughter presented me with a trophy that triumphantly bestowed this title upon its recipient: "WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER!" Gladly I accepted. Who doesn't want to believe that your child (even if it's just on Mother's Day) thinks you are the best mother around? Following our family celebration the trophy took its place in the kitchen, my least favorite room. (I'm not nearly as big on cooking as I am on writing). Frozen in a permanent posture of bravado, my featureless statuette sits silently on a shelf which tends to accumulate things like gummy vitamins …

This past Sunday two groups of Chinese Americans gathered in Van Saun Park to celebrate their connection. The annual event this year was hosted by the New York Chapter of the OCA (Organization of Chinese Americans). According to their website: "The New York Chapter of OCA is one of 80-plus chapters...A non-profit organization, its goals are to advocate for social justice, equal opportunity, and fair treatment; to promote civic participation, education and leadership....and to foster cultural heritage. The mission statement of Families With Children From China (FCC) is to "Celebrate, Educate …

By the age of 10, I knew I belonged in Manhattan. I was a babysitter after school to make money for a subscription to New York Magazine, which I read cover to cover. I memorized the names and numbers of the streets by studying a map of the NYC subway system. I watched every movie and TV show that directly (or even indirectly) involved Manhattan, always hoping to see more. And when I was 17 years old, I moved into a crumbling, 6-floor walkup in the East Village inhabited by a crew of other art students. The nonstop machinations of the city outside my apartment window were sweeter to me than …

"It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world..." So goes Carson McCuller's classic novel of summer and transformation, The Member of The Wedding. Frankie, the young heroine of McCuller's almost unbearably intimate and touchingly human tale is alternately bored, bedazzled and irrevocably changed by summer's end. So many American writers have utilized the brief, often blazing summer season as dramatic background, perhaps because of …

Recently I had a health concern and made an appointment with a doctor I had visited previously. Other appointments with this practitioner yielded a knowledgeable physician with a pleasant manner, but the wait time on each occasion was extraordinarily long. So when I made this appointment I told the receptionist I would call ahead several times on the day of my visit, to find out if the doctor was “running on time.” Mid-morning of my visit I did my first check-in. A bit later in the day, I called again and was told “he is right on schedule.” Twenty minutes before the appointment, I made one …

"To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were... We live outside the touch of time." ~ Clara Ortega As an "only child" I grew up deeply enthralled with my own mind. I drew, read, listened to music, read some more. I never longed for a sibling. Instead I feared the idea of having my privacy compromised. I grew up to be highly independent, leaving home entirely under my own steam at age 17 to live in Manhattan and attend art school... and work (I had to pay for everything myself). As a result of this solitary trajectory, when I was …

Patti Lewis began her career as an artist. After studying at the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art in Manhattan, she emerged as (and still is) a remarkable painter.  While dance always took a back seat to art, movement and bodywork were still definitely very much along for the ride. Although her larger endeavors were consistently in the visual arts, dance still remained a constant in her life, as she taught jazz/aerobics classes for seven years at studios in Emerson and Ramsey. In addition Lewis worked for a decade in a hospital setting as an art therapist, helping to heal children who …

So quickly it seems we have arrived at summer's midpoint. Some have already taken a vacation and now need to figure out what exactly, to do with the rest of the season. Others will vacate at the end of the season and are trying to fill up time until departure with some form of amusement. And of course, in our exasperating economy, a great many cannot afford to go anywhere at all. There is of course, camp for the kiddies (both sleep away and full time ) but if you are reading this you probably don't want to part with the disturbing load o' dough required. Yes, there are the local pools, if you…

Adoption Rocks. Just ask local residents Noreen, Russell and adorable preschooler Chayse Van Wetering, who all proudly sport this sentiment on their backs. The three wear T-shirts from Gladney, the agency that facilitated Chayse's adoption. The fronts of their shirts offer this mantra: Peace. Love. Adoption. There is nothing hidden or hesitant about their feelings, or their smiles. They look exactly like what they are: an extraordinarily loving family. A mother and father just like other parents who are madly, permanently, joyfully in love with their child and consider her the greatest gift …

The prolific writer George Elliot is credited with this thought: “What greater thing is there for human souls than…. to be with each other in silent, unspeakable memories?” When the word memory is used in conjunction with family, it is most commonly a prompt for the larger, shared pastiche of activities which have taken place around a holiday, birth, graduation, wedding or death. In reality, memories are created simply by living; by habitual repetitions which are unplanned and barely ever spoken of. Whenever I visit my friends Margaret and Robert, they offer a brunch worthy of a gourmet bed …

Next year Ellie Florio, 17, will be a senior. Then there will be just a matter of furiously busy months between the life she has always known in RiverDell, and the brave new world of college. Having attended the RiverDell public schools since kindergarten, one might describe her as is very much the multifaceted local gem. When asked about what interests she might pursue going forward, she is focused, informed and specific. "I'm going to study food science," Florio says. But not with the usual reality-show intent of becoming a world-famous sous chef or opening her own cute little hipster …

Summer belongs to children. It is the season for them to feel unburdened from the ceaseless-seeming repetition of school's early wake-up call and dreary afternoons of homework. A time for the very young to feel free in their skins and to offer themselves up to fun, sun and to the kind of organically personal education only summer brings. Like so many suns themselves, children are radiant; every one bright, and burning with a singular and unique energy. We adults are so very fortunate to be part of the great constellation of grown-ups orbiting around their light. An excerpt from a poem called…

Last weekend our friend's son Matthew prepared a remarkable dinner that tasted and smelled like it just came out of the kitchen of a five-star restaurant. He shopped for all the ingredients himself then spent a good part of the afternoon prepping. Matthew loves cooking and hopes to eventually open his own chain of gourmet vegan restaurants in Manhattan. Although now he is most definitely a young man with a plan, Matthew was an active RiverDell 12-year old when some of the kids began calling him, "The Twitch." Along with the nickname, they mimicked him by hopping on one foot, assuming strange …

My father was angry. My father told lies. My father had six heart attacks over a period of years before dying in an overcrowded "poor man's" hospital, where he had been taken because he did not have health insurance. I was the last and only visitor he had. I always thought of him whenever I heard that line from the old Sly and The Family Stones song; Papa Was A Rolling Stone: "....and when he died, all he left me was alone....." Actually, my father did leave me the following: a chaotic and insurmountable mountain of debt, a mother who was a quadrapeligic confined to a wheelchair, and last, (…

Recently a friend confided to me that often when she comes home from work, she discovers her unemployed husband "asleep on the sofa with the TV on, curled in the fetal position." Their relationship has begun to suffer under the strain, and my friend is concerned that she and the rest of the family will not able to provide the kind of ongoing support and encouragement her husband needs. It's this type of situation that Neighbors Helping Neighbors (NHN) is intended for. NHN is a peer/volunteer group for those who are "actively looking for work and/or would like to re-invigorate their job search…

Recently at at a child-related sporting event I ran into a woman I haven't seen in awhile. Our kids had attended preschool together. We greeted each other and marveled, as adults do, how quickly the last couple of years have passed. I mentioned someone we knew from that time in our lives, which in all reality, was not very long ago. When I asked if they had remained friends the woman sighed, "I wish I had stayed in touch with her....but I can hardly stay in touch with myself." The event ended. I collected my kid, she collected hers and we waved goodbye, both of us quickly reabsorbed back into…

Three months ago I interviewed RiverDell Resident Linda Chagachbanian for an article titled, "Can One Conversation Change Your life?" At the time she had just launched her own nutritional/holistic consultation business called "MY HEALTHY HAPPINESS." Amazingly, in the brief span of time since we last spoke, this incredibly astute cancer survivor, educator and mother, has found her way into the lives of people who have already begun to benefit from her wisdom. "I love that I've already been able to help people accomplish things they didn't think they could ever do, with just some small, …

If he ever chooses to be one, my friend Tom  would make an outstanding parent. Nurturing and creative, his nature is to make things better than they are. Whenever I see him, Tom is making something beautiful; artfully embroidered pillowcases suitable for the boudoir of royalty, stacks of swirled multicolor cupcakes whose delectable frosting would make Martha Stewart weep with envy. In addition, Tom happens to be no slouch in those departments considered by more traditionally conventional standards as "manly." Previously employed by Lowe's Hardware, he knows his way blindfolded around the tool…

In the RiverDell area, as in the rest of the country, there is one minority who maintains a tolerant silence: couples who are child-free by choice. Everyone knows suburbia is designed particularly well for those with kids. There are parks and playgrounds, schools and kid-centric activities, restaurants and shops, and there are countless other couples with children. But RiverDell, like many other suburbs, is also home to those who are child-free and like it that way just fine, thank you. Maria and Thomas (who prefer not to use their last names) are area homeowners. They sought out suburbia …