Imagine, the electric company sends you a check every month for the power you generate.

While most of us are staring at soaring fuel and electric bills, Monica Merel of Maplewood is helping homeowners fight back. Her company, MGM Properties, is busy installing solar panels on the roofs of homes and businesses in northern New Jersey.

MGM just completed the rooftop solar panels on the new Meadowlands Science Center in Lyndhurst, at De Korte State Park. The Meadowlands Commission calls it a state of the art “green” school, with science and environmental education programs available to some 40,000 visitors each year.

Merel, one of a handful of licensed female electricians, takes the sun seriously. A gauge on her own front lawn calculates the exact amount of sunlight available, while a field of solar panels on her roof absorbs light and feeds her meter, sending the dial spinning backwards.

“It means that you are generating power when that goes backwards,” Merel says smiling. “We celebrate when that goes backwards.”

The field of solar panels and all the assorted hardware costs about $30,000 to install on a home. But roughly half the cost can be recovered through state rebates and tax credits. And since the excess solar energy collected is sold back to the utility company, your electric bills will shrink to next to nothing. Monica’s averages $3-$5 per month for her spacious center hall colonial.

This venture is not for those who prefer their home to blend into the character of the neighborhood; the cluster of solar panels re-defines your roofline. Your house will truly stand out. And everyone will know you are saving a bundle by going solar — helping to solve the energy crisis, each time that meter clicks backwards.

Do you know who Leighton, Cuttino, Rihanna, Jensen, Dane or Feist are?

No? Neither do we. Not a single one.

But shush. Don’t admit it. That’s the advice in Entry # 63 of the dead-on, always funny, sometimes laugh-outloud  How Not To Act Old blog by Montclair writer Pamela Redmond Satran.

Satran, who will go no more calendarically specific than to hint she is “old enough to have written 14 books” and “in my fifties” says that when she started the blog two months ago she aimed it at “people of my age and generation, but to my surprise I think it's hitting hardest with the 40ish people, who probably still have some hope that they might actually be considered young and with it.”

Much of the humor comes from the self-proclaimed Boomer belief that 50 is the new 40, and 40 is the new 30 (now that we haven’t been Thirtysomething for a while, we really don’t care how old people actually in their 30s think they are). 

Of course, even our parents generation wanted to feel young, but back then 50 was still 50. And maybe it still is, Satran says. “We suffered through the ‘generation gap’ with our parents and swore we were never going to be like that, we  were always going to be somehow cutting edge or at least appreciate what was new and cool and interesting.  And we don't, and that shocks and horrifies us.”

But shock and horror are no part of Satran’s blog. Just responsible, professional advice about how not to act old:  Don’t Count Out Exact Change, Learn To Type With Your Thumbs, only use “groovy” with irony.

Well, maybe there is a little shock and horror, like in entry #28, Don’t Listen To Springsteen. Yikes! We at NJ My Way went to last week’s Springsteen concert in a Giants Stadium, despite the advice of teenagers we know who say Bruce is for old people. 

But then again, if you are 50 these days it’s like being 40, no? And if 40s is the new 30s, then that makes us…ah, never mind. Maybe Pam can figure it out.

Now, where’d we put our reading glasses?

Across New Jersey this week, the music of rock, punk, and pop helped us roll back the clock while our teenage sons and daughters celebrated their coming of age.

We graying boomers, paunchy and battling wrinkles, sang, stomped and fist-pumped for the Boss at Giants Stadium. Our kids, girls in tanks tops and tiny shorts, guys bold and shirtless, moshed and crowd-surfed as Warped Tour stopped in Camden and Englishtown.

At the Meadowlands Monday night, the Springsteen clan on stage and drummer Max Weinberg’s son made the huge venue an intimate family affair. The whole crowd even sang “Happy Birthday” to first lady Patty Scialfa.

At Warped Tour, hugely popular bands like All Time Low and Gym Class Heroes led a day/night bacchanal marathon as tattooed teens pushed and shoved in the circular fantasy fight, the mosh pit, that sometimes drew real blood. With multiple stages and dozens of vendors this endless street fight/festival is a promoter’s dream.

No mosh pits at Bruce, though. The differences in these events are deep. But the common thread, the tie that binds, is rock; Springsteen’s near-mythic portraits of archetypal Jersey, a gallery of rogues, roads, and roadsters — the longing for the bar stool romance that helps keep back the demons. At Warped Tour, the boy bands use bad words to keep the hormonal crowd happily evil with thoughts and songs that seed explicit dreams.

They desperately want to be older, We, just as desperately, want to roll back the clock. The music makes both possible, even if only in our minds eye for only a few hours…when sweet summer nights turn into summer dreams, like Bruce sang a long time ago.

You know the secret. If you subscribe to NJ My Way, you are already on top of the latest trends, the hottest people, and the coolest stuff in the Garden State.

Check out what’s happened to some of the people and stuff we’ve been the first to tell you about.

Walk into any big bookstore today, and you’ll see Maryann McFadden’s The Richest Season front and center. We first told you about this Hackettstown realtor and young grandmother more than a year ago.

Maryann was so determined to become an author, she self-published her book and sold it to book clubs all over the country.  It took several years, but now Ms. McFadden is an accomplished author of a best-seller… and a second book is in the works.

Here’s another of our folks on her way to stardom; Mary Repke, the self-proclaimed Bag Lady is creator of the Coakley Tote, a practical yet stylish carryall. Check out the website for the growing list of retailers who are selling Mary’s bags. We picked this winner out after meeting Mary at business networking events.

The amazing artwork by the disabled students at the Matheny Center in Peapack continues to make the rounds. You can see the traveling exhibit this summer at the Summit Medical Center  in Berkeley Heights. We first gave you a look at the these talented individuals in October. You can see Water Bowl by artist Juanita Warren to the right.

Some are moving on; World Pottery in Montclair is closing its retail operation to the sadness of shoppers who loved the store’s colorful, affordable gardenware.

NJ My Way writer Sandra Kenoff, who wrote these great rhyming tributes for special occasions is re-joining the workforce as Director of Marketing and Special Events for the JCC of Central Jersey.  Congratulations to her — she’ll have less time for rhyme, but plenty of  people will benefit from her unique talents.  

by Miriam Ascarelli

So what’s really lurking in those majestic buildings of historic Asbury Park?

Some say spirits, and that’s one reason why Kathy A. Kelly has chosen Asbury Park as the site of her newly opened store, Paranormal Books and Curiosities. The shop, on happening Cookman Avenue, looks like a Victorian parlor, complete with a working fireplace, mahogany bookshelves filled with an eclectic collection of titles and unusual objects like a plaster cast made of the face of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

“I want this to be everything that a Victorian parlor was meant to be: a meeting place, a place to exchange ideas, a place to read,’’ says Kelly, who in her previous professional incarnation produced sports programming for a satellite television company.

If you’re looking for a kook, Kelly does not fit the bill. Warm, funny and a self-described skeptic, Kelly says she has been interested in ghosts and the paranormal since childhood, but became more focused on it after her father died eleven years ago.

She takes her ghost hunting seriously. She has her own group which regularly investigates the paranormal armed with all the latest equipment: an EMF detector to measure fluctuations in magnetic fields (the phenomena is said to be an indication that a spirit is trying to use an object as a bridge to manifest itself); a thermometer to detect cold spots (believers say spirits use the heat in the room when they try to communicate, thus creating cold spots); infrared night-vision cameras; audio recording equipment; and, of course, a flashlight, so that anyone who is scared can find the way out.

“I am open to whatever the evidence dictates,’’ Kelly says.

Thus far, she admits, she is still waiting her big “wow moment,’’ but, she adds:  “We’ve gone to some places where I definitely feel there’s something there.’’ One of those instances was during a trip to Gettysburg when she felt what she believes was a spirit putting a “supportive hand” on her back.

Starting this summer, Kelley is planning regular ghost tours of Asbury Park that will include stops at the Asbury Lanes bowling alley, purported to be haunted by a former worker and two former customers, and the Paramount Theatre, said to be haunted by the victims of the S.S. Morro Castle, a cruise ship that caught fire off the coast of Asbury Park on Sept. 8, 1934, causing the death of 137 people. “It’s one of those great old buildings that if it isn’t haunted, it should be.’’

There are other plans, too: weekly ghost investigations, a Web cam booth — she  calls it ‘’the confessional” — for  people to record their own experiences with the paranormal, and eventually a publishing company specializing in the paranormal.

Whatever happens, Kelly seems to have struck a nerve. People love to come in and share their experiences. “You just meet people from every walk of life. Every single person has a story.’’

NJ My Way contributor Miriam Ascarelli lives in Glen Ridge. She's never seen a ghost.