Rally for Holmdel Open Space Planned Thursday

A rally to show support for preserving Holmdel's open space is planned for Thursday at 6:30, outside Town Hall, preceding the Township Committee meeting

There will be a speakers, a petition and flyers distributed. High school friends will perform an original song inspired by the serene beauty of Cross Farm, located near Willow Brook Road.

"It's an informal event to increase awareness and to get young people interested in what's going on in the town," said Michael Rauchwerk. The event will end in time for the 7 p.m. start of the public meeting. Ordinances authorizing the sale of public land at Cross Farm and Plum Lane will be discussed. (See our story.)

Expected to speak is a Rob Moss, a Green Acres coordinator with the Sierra Club, Kim Weigand Casola of the Holmdel Casola farming family, Tony Cooper of the Holmdel-based Citizens for Informed Land Use, and others, according to Rauchwerk.

Mayor Patrick Impreveduto and the rest of the Committee members will likely not hear them, as their private executive session begins at the same time. But the mayor said he was aware of the gathering. "It's a free country. But it's not going to change the predicament we're in," he said, referring to a $3 million structural budget deficit that requires an immediate fix.

Rauchwerk announced the event on a Facebook Page "liked" by 70 people called Save Cross Farm.

"I love this town. That farm is probably the reason we bought our house," he said. "To see it sold for a temporary fix to the budget gap is upsetting to me."

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Beauty Lasts Forever – A Song for Cross Farm (click on video link)

Written by Daniel Rauchwerk

Performed by the Lords of Liechtenstein (Dan and Noah Rauchwerk)

Maybe we won’t mourn it when its gone

The best part of our lives just blend right in.

But we will feel something missing, the loss that has no name

Like a blank spot on a painting, or a teardrop on your skin

Perhaps it doesn’t matter what we do

Progress marches on without consent

But when our children ask us what we did to change the world

What example will we give when our excuses are all spent?

Chorus:

Beauty lasts forever, money just a day

Be careful what you wish for it’ll steal your heart away

For town, for state, for country, for our souls

We use these words to justify desire

But who will justify a child’s right to witness new life grow

Or to chase the soaring red-tail ever higher.

Chorus:

Beauty lasts forever, money just a day

Be careful what you wish for, it’ll steal your heart away

Maybe we won’t mourn it when its gone

The best part of our lives just blend right in.

But we will feel something missing, the loss that has no name

Like a blank spot on a painting, or a teardrop on your skin