News-pourri

There was more than soup and chili served up March 11 by the East Millstone Historic Society at its annual meeting. Music by an Irish music trio, Lesser Seamus – featuring village resident Michael Steinbrück – and talks by Delaware and Raritan Canal author Linda Barth and Bob Mettler, the township historian, were also on the menu.

“Making” was the theme March 10 as the township library hosted Franklin’s contribution to the statewide Makers Day event. Makers Day is a “statewide event that celebrates and promotes maker culture, as well as the values associated with making, tinkering and STEM-based learning,” according to the event’s schedule.

About 125 township teenagers attended the annual Teen Summit on March 10, learning strategies for coping with a variety of issues with which they may deal as they get older. The event, held at Sampson G. Smith School, featured a series of workshops ranging from bullying, to substance abuse prevention, to dealing with teen pregnancy and mental health issues.

If the March 5 hearing before the committee he chairs is any indication, state Assemblyman Joe Danielsen is going to have an interesting Spring. Danielsen (D-17), chairman of the Assembly’s Oversight, Reform and Federal Relations Committee, held the first of what are planned to be several public hearings on cannabis regulation.

By Daryl Kipnis. “The radical Left’s use of the Parkland student survivors to further its anti-gun agenda is disgusting and ghoulish,” New Jersey 12th District Republican congressional candidate Daryl Kipnis said Friday. “These traumatized children, after living through a horrific event that saw their friends, classmates and teachers killed, are now being used as political pawns by so-called ‘adults’ in …

BRIDGEWATER – A former township teacher and two township residents were among those honored March 3 at the Somerset County Democratic Committee’s Black Caucus’s 3rd annual Scholarship Luncheon. Niya Darby, a 2017 Franklin High School graduate and current freshman at North Carolina A&T, was one of two $500 scholarship winners.

The BP station at Hamilton Street and Shevchenko Avenue will get a spruce-up and a new neighbor, all due to a March 1 Zoning Board of Adjustment approval. The board approved a plan submitted by Gill Petroleum to add two more fuel pumping stations to the gas station, and build a 5,000-square-foot building on a currently adjoining vacant lot.

The township community is invited to attend a Community Safety Symposium set for 7 p.m. March 21 at Franklin Middle School, 415 Francis St. Coordinating the symposium, which will be held in the school’s cafeteria, are Board of Education president Nancy LaCorte and township Mayor Philip Kramer. Also participating will be representatives of the township Police Department, Township Council members …

Members of the Somerset County Democratic Black Caucus were encouraged Feb. 10 to “stomp like an elephant” to “change the world.” That was the exhortation given by Akil Kokayi Khalfani, the keynote speaker in the caucus’s Black History Month celebration at the Senior/Community Center on DeMott Lane.

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, (D-12), announced Feb. 10 that she’s running for a third term in the U.S. House of Representatives. After her kickoff announcement, Watson Coleman stopped by the Somerset County Democratic Black Caucus’s Black History Month celebration at the Senior/Community center, where the Franklin Reporter & Advocate caught up with her.