Stone Pony saved from wrecker

Asbury Park, N.J. Thousands of e-mails, petitions and telephone calls apparently have convinced the city and the firm working on its redevelopment plan that the Stone Pony shouldn’t be moved as part of the remaking of Asbury Park’s beachfront area.

The club made famous by Bruce Springsteen and other New Jersey rockers is a shrine to its devotees, and they mobilized to save it.

The City Council is scheduled to vote in April on an ambitious plan that calls for some 3,000 housing units to be built or refurbished. The new buildings are to be erected around the Pony, instead of in its place.

“I would be very surprised if the (redevelopment) plan was approved without the Pony staying where it’s at,” city manager Terry Weldon told The New York Times.

Dave Matthews, preservationist

Charlottesville, Va. Dave Matthews has completed a $5.3 million deal to buy 1,261 of the 7,379 acres that billionaire John W. Kluge donated to the University of Virginia Foundation.

The musician’s manager, Coran Capshaw, said Monday that Matthews plans to preserve agriculture and forest lands on the five farms he purchased and to emphasize organic farming.

The lead singer of the Dave Matthews Band also has started the process of placing an open-space easement on the farms, Capshaw said. The easements preserve some degree of open space and limit a property’s development rights.

Blue collar man

Los Angeles Denzel Washington says his role in the movie “John Q” made him aware of how many people don’t have adequate health insurance.

Washington plays John Q. Archibald, a factory worker who takes hostages in a hospital emergency room when his insurance won’t pay for his son’s heart transplant.

“I was amazed at how many people fall into that slot,” the 47-year-old actor told reporters.

The actor said he had no trouble playing a blue-collar worker.

“I worked in a factory before. And I was a garbage man. And worked in the post office before, so I remember, it’s not so long ago. I’ve still got my unemployment book.”

‘Iron Lady’ assesses threats

Milwaukee Eliminating terrorism could still take years, but America has made great strides in its fight and Britain will always back the United States, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said.

Thatcher, 76, spoke Monday as part of a lecture series called “Unique Lives and Experiences.”

She said she’s confident America “has both the will and the means to strike back at its enemies.” But she said more should have been done before Sept. 11, since “Osama bin Laden’s terrorists have been carrying out their outrages for years and somehow our intelligence didn’t find out.

“In short, the world has never ceased to be dangerous. But the West had ceased to be vigilant. Surely that is the most important lesson of this tragedy.”