February 13, 2013

Obituaries 2/13/13

2-13-13 Wightman ObitArthur Wightman

Renowned mathematical physicist and Princeton University Thomas D. Jones Professor Emeritus Arthur Wightman died of Alzheimer’s disease January 13 at Veterans Nursing Home in Edison. He was 90. He was best known for his pioneering and far-reaching research on the mathematical foundations of quantum field theory.

Wightman grew up in Rochester, N.Y. He attended Yale University, and had Henry Margenau and Leigh Page as advisers. As a doctoral student at Princeton, Wightman studied under John Wheeler before earning his PhD in physics in 1949. Wightman joined the University’s faculty in 1949 and was granted emeritus status in 1992. He was widely known as an excellent teacher and mentor, generous with his time and ideas. He advised more than 20 graduate students.

Wightman is one of the founders of modern mathematical physics. He provided for the first time a mathematically elegant and axiomatic approach to quantum field theory in which all-important physical results such as the parity-charge-time (PCT) symmetry and the connection between spin and statistics became theorems. The Wightman theorems on the reconstruction of a quantum field theory from the Wightman functions and the Bargmann-Hall-Wightman theorem on the structure of their analytic continuation are unfading foundation stones of modern physics. Together with Rudolf Haag in Germany, Wightman brought quantum field theory to a fully axiomatic description, fulfilling at least in part the dream expressed by David Hilbert in his sixth problem of 1900.

For his work, he received the 1969 Dannie Heinemann Prize for Mathematical Physics from the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics, and the inaugural Henri Poincaré Prize from the International Associate of Mathematical Physics in 1997. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, Fellow of the American Academy of Art and Sciences, a Doctor of Science of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (1968), and Doctor Honoris Causa of Göttingen University (1987).

Like much of Wightman’s work, the axioms stemmed from his pursuit of a deeper understanding of how physics worked, said Arthur Jaffe, a Harvard University professor of mathematics and theoretical science. Jaffe earned his doctorate in physics from Princeton in 1966 with Wightman as his adviser (Jaffe also earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University in 1959). Wightman enjoyed delving into existing physics ideas to illuminate those elements that were actually not understood, Jaffe said.

“There is an enormous difference between what you think you know and what you really know, and it was the latter that Arthur strove to uncover,” Jaffe said. “His work set the standard for a high road to understanding the deeper meaning of physics.”

Jaffe described Wightman as a rigorous researcher who always acknowledged past scientific ideas, yet relentlessly pushed himself and his students toward the next steps in their work. Though he studied under Wightman for four years, the two had frequent contact for decades about their work. Jaffe is well known for his work in constructive quantum field theory, which focuses on showing that Wightman’s axioms could be realized with concrete examples.

“I can say I’ve been a student ever since,” Jaffe said. “Arthur set me on the path of what I spent most of my life doing. I think of Arthur as the spiritual leader of mathematical physics and his death really marks the end of an era. It’s hard to think of who will step into Arthur’s shoes with the same wonderful breadth of interests, insights, understanding of people, and ability to inspire the best from others. In the meantime, I mourn his loss.”

Despite his work in the dense and esoteric field of mathematical physics, Wightman’s wife Ludmilla said her husband was sociable and well read on many subjects. Ludmilla, a fellow physicist who specialized in high-energy physics, said the couple “never stopped talking from the moment we woke up to the moment we fell asleep.” His reputation and rapport with scientists around the world kept them in touch with a string of colleagues and students.

Princeton Professor of Mathematics Edward Nelson often sought Wightman’s input on his recognized work in mathematical quantum field theory. Approachable and helpful to his colleagues, Wightman would turn a seemingly simple answer into a fascinating and sprawling exploration of the topic at hand, said Nelson, who joined Princeton’s faculty in 1959.

“He was a tremendous source of information to his students and colleagues,” Nelson said. “I frequently went to him with questions and got a very full and comprehensive answer. Many people had that experience with him: Ask a simple question and get a very complicated answer. I often got much more than I asked for, but it was worth it.”

Princeton Professor of Physics Chiara Nappi recalled that conversations with him on any subject were delightful. “There is nothing such as a quick answer by Arthur to any question,” she said.

“He knows so much, he has so much to say, so many details to reveal, so many connections to make. You sit there listening to all these facts that he remembers in exquisite detail, totally fascinated. You have forgotten where you started from and have no idea of where he is going. It takes you by surprise when finally he closes his multiple loops and sub-loops in his discourse, and gets back exactly where he started from. Hours later, you finally have the answer to the question you asked long ago, and in the process you have learned an awful lot about a lot of things you did not even know existed, and enjoyed every moment of it.”

In addition to his wife, Wightman is survived by his stepson Todor Todorov. A memorial service will be planned. The Princeton department of physics is collecting remembrances of Wightman for a memorial web page.

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2-13-13 Lovitt ObitGeorge H. Lovitt

George Lovitt of Princeton, formerly of Baldwin, N.Y., passed away peacefully in his sleep on February 6, 2013. Loving husband of the late Nancy Lovitt (nee Posner) and more recently, Judith Bronston of Princeton, he was also the beloved father of four children and their spouses, Alison and Ken Reinfeld, Chip Lovitt and Lori Gale, and Robert and Michele Lovitt, and Patricia Barrier.

Born in Bridgeport, Conn., on June 7, 1922, George grew up in Freeport, N.Y., where he was a student leader and standout scholar. He attended Hamilton College and New York University. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant in the United States Army, and was awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded in combat in Germany.

He began his book publishing career in 1946 in the publicity department of Prentice Hall Publishers, then was named advertising and sales director at John Wiley & Sons in 1948. In 1952, he joined the pioneering book-advertising agency Franklin Spier as account executive, and rose to the rank of president and chairman of the company. Throughout his career, George Lovitt was a respected and popular figure in the book and advertising industry, working with publishing houses such as Little, Brown, Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, New American Library, and Harcourt, and a variety of illustrious authors including Norman Vincent Peale, Adlai Stevenson, Kurt Vonnegut, Herman Wouk, Robert Kennedy, John LeCarre, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Thor Heyerdahl, and many others.

After he retired, he was active in a variety of groups in the Princeton area such as Community Without Walls, and he helped organize and honcho the local 55+ organization. He loved music, especially jazz (and was an accomplished pianist), enjoyed interests such as art, literature, woodworking, and travel, and was known to all as a witty and delightful conversationalist.

Besides his children, he is survived by his wife Judith, his adoring stepdaughters and their spouses, Baila and Dovid Grinker, Jan and Arik Gorban, Deb and Michael Bronston-Culp, Sue and Jim Griffis, and Ruth Bronston and Charlie Bose; nine grandchildren, Erika, Greg and Tim Reinfeld, Keith and Liane Lovitt, Keren and Ben Gorban, Chaya Mushka Grinker, Marda Barrier, and one great-grandchild Margot Reinfeld.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that donations be made in George’s memory to the Anti-Defamation League, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Doctors without Borders.

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2-13-13 Plaks ObitLivia Plaks

With great sadness in our hearts, the family of Livia Plaks would like to announce her death on February 2, 2013, of a sudden heart attack at her home in Princeton.

Mrs. Plaks, known professionally as Livia, but to family and friends as Lilly, was born in Baia Mare, Romania in the shadow of the Holocaust in April, 1947. Her parents, Coloman (Kalman) and Cecilia (Tsili) Basch, both suffered tremendous losses due to Nazi persecution. Kalman lost his first family — his wife Lily Freund, and their children Estuka and Öcsi; while Tsili lost her parents and several siblings in the hell of deportation and concentration camps. Tsili survived Auschwitz, and Kalman survived by escaping from a forced labor camp. After returning to Romania and learning that his entire family — wife and children — had been killed, Kalman was in deep despair, but was eventually persuaded to try a second start at life by marrying Tsili, the sister of his first wife, Lily, in 1946. Kalman and Tsili had two children, Lily (born 1947) and Vera (born 1949).

Despite the traumas of war and persecution, Kalman, Tsili, Lilly, and Vera Basch lived a normal family life in Baia Mare, where they spoke Hungarian and Yiddish at home, but Romanian in school and other public places. But with the intensification of anti-Semitism in Romania, the family began the process of attempting to leave, finally succeeding in 1964 with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). After spending six-months in a refugee transit center in Rome, the Basch family arrived in the United States, settling in Highland Park, New Jersey. Lilly attended her senior year of high school in a strange country while learning a new language.

The following year, she enrolled in Douglas College (Rutgers University). During her freshman year, 1965, she met Andrew Plaks, a Princeton undergraduate, who would become her husband in 1968. The Plakses spent most of the subsequent 45 years of their marriage in Princeton, where Andrew continued his studies as a graduate student and later joined the faculty, serving as professor for many years. Mrs. Plaks earned a Masters Degree in Russian Literature from New York University, but began her own professional career only some years after the birth of her two sons, Jason (born 1971) and Eric (born 1974). It was not until 1984 that she began working full-time, first in interpretation and translation services, then in the field of academic exchanges with Communist countries through the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) as assistant to the executive director. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, a rare opportunity presented itself to make a difference in conflict resolution between ethnic groups in the new and chaotic world of former Soviet bloc countries, and Mrs. Plaks joined founder Allen Kassof in creating the Princeton-based Project on Ethnic Relations (PER), serving as executive director. When Dr. Kassof stepped down as president in 2005, Mrs. Plaks succeeded him and led PER until the organization closed its doors in 2012. During her years with PER, she was a key player in mediating ethnic disputes in her native Romania, as well as in several other countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. She was awarded the Order of Merit by the president of Romania in recognition of her work.

Her passing is felt with the profoundest sorrow by communities in Princeton, Eastern Europe, Israel, and beyond, but most deeply by her husband, Andrew, professor emeritus of Chinese literature at Princeton University and currently a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, her sister Vera Moreen, a scholar in Persian studies based in the Philadelphia area, her son, Jason, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto and her son Eric, a music teacher in the New York City public schools. She also leaves three grandchildren.

Although Mrs. Plaks’ sudden passing leaves a void in a place where there was so much hope and excitement for the years to come, her life story — rising literally from the ashes of the Holocaust, through the trials of the American immigrant experience, and culminating in professional and personal fulfillment and a career of service — has served as an inspiration for everyone who knew her. Known for her radiant smile and contagious charm, Mrs. Plaks will be deeply and sorely missed.

Memorial contributions may be sent to the Alliance for Peacebuilding at https://afpb.site-ym.com/donations/fund.asp?id=6854, or by check to AfP Plaks Fund, 1320 19th Street, NW, Suite 410, Washington, D.C. 20036.

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Exhibitions Opening This Month Explore African Presence, Legacy in Art, Science

SMITHSONIAN IN NEWARK: This headrest from the Luba peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dating to the mid- to late-19th century, is from a show organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art that will be included in “African Cosmos: Stellar Arts,” opening at the Newark Museum on Wednesday, February 27. For more information, call 973-596-6550 or visit: www.NewarkMuseum.org. (Courtesy of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Photograph by Franko Khoury)

SMITHSONIAN IN NEWARK: This headrest from the Luba peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dating to the mid- to late-19th century, is from a show organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art that will be included in “African Cosmos: Stellar Arts,” opening at the Newark Museum on Wednesday, February 27. For more information, call 973-596-6550 or visit: www.NewarkMuseum.org.
(Courtesy of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Photograph by Franko Khoury)

Two exhibitions opening in Princeton and Newark this month take a close look at art for discoveries of African cultural and scientific influence. Inspired by collections in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., respectively, each exhibition is designed to prompt discussion by visitors, students, and scholars alike.

In Princeton, “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” which opens this Saturday, February 16, at the Princeton University Art Museum, examines paintings, sculptures, prints, manuscripts, and printed books from the Renaissance period to reveal the roles that Africans and their descendants played in that society.

In Newark, “African Cosmos: Stellar Arts,” opening on Wednesday, February 27, focuses on the legacy of African astronomy as it is revealed in African art, both traditional and contemporary.

The Princeton show is described as providing a narrative for an often forgotten social group in Europe from the late 1400s to the early 1600s. One goal of the exhibition is to create an avenue for understanding the social issues of color, class, and stereotypes of the day. Africans living in or visiting Europe during this period were artists, aristocrats, diplomats, slaves, servants, and saints: witness St. Benedict, the Moor, who was not only widely revered in his lifetime, but is also one of the African-Europeans of the 1500s with an impact to this day. According to scholars, they came partly because of the European drive for new markets and diplomatic and trade initiatives by African monarchs. In exploring their hitherto little known presence and that of their descendants, the exhibition creates a new perspective on European art.

Originally organized by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the exhibition features some 75 works from the Walters collection as well as items from museums in the United States and Europe, and from private collections. It includes pieces by Rubens, Pontormo, Dürer, Veronese, and Bronzino depicting diverse views from street scenes to portraits created from life.

“We hope this exhibition will be a vehicle for conversations about cultural identity,” says Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum. “Through great art, visitors will be able to make personal connections with Africans who lived in Europe 500 years ago.”

Among the exhibition highlights are scenes from daily life such as the Netherlandish painting, Chafariz d’el Rey in the Alfama District, circa 1570-80, showing a square in the city of Lisbon. At this period, people of African descent made up nearly 10 percent of Lisbon’s population, more than anywhere else in Europe and the diversity of their social positions is represented by a slave in chains and a knight on horseback.

Also featured is the painting that is considered to be the first formal portrait of a child of African ancestry in European art: Portrait of Maria Salviate de’ Medici and Giulia de’ Medici, by Jacopo de Pontormo. Painted around 1537, Pontormo’s image shows the little girl Giulia de’ Medici enjoying an aristocratic lifestyle. Her image contrasts with Portrait of an African Slave Woman, attributed to Annibale Carracci in 1580, which shows a serving maid from a fragment of a larger picture. Although unnamed, the woman is a remarkable presence; her facial expression is ambiguous.

“Recognizing the African presence within Renaissance society opens a new window into a time when the role of the individual was becoming recognized — a perspective that remains fundamental today,” says Joaneath Spicer, the Walters’ curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art. “We are just beginning to understand the contributions of people of African ancestry in that society, so this exhibition raises as many questions as it answers.”

Such questions will no doubt be raised when Ms. Spicer joins several others for a panel discussion, moderated by Anthony Grafton, Princeton University’s Henry Putnam University Professor of History, on Thursday, April 25, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in McCormick 101. The other panelists will be Anthony Appiah, the Ghanaian born British-American philosopher and novelist and Princeton University’s Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy, and Adam Beaver, assistant professor of history.

The exhibition will run through June 9.

Science Influencing Art

“African Cosmos: Stellar Arts,” opening at the Newark Museum, is described as the first major exhibition of its kind. The show originated with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art where it ran for six months before coming to Newark, its only appearance in New Jersey.

With more than 70 works from all corners of the continent, the exhibition captures Africa’s early engagement with celestial observations and their connections to the visual arts from the earliest of days. It moves chronologically from a selection of ancient Egyptian pieces by African artists Romuald Hazoumè, Gavin Jantjes, William Kentridge, Marcus Neustetter, and Karel Nel.

Highlights include Dogon sculptures and masks from Mali; chiefly regalia and other Akan arts from Ghana; Tabwa and Luba works from the Democratic Republic of Congo; and models of the cosmos created by Nigerian Yoruba artists.

“African Cosmos highlights the historical contributions of Africans to our knowledge of the heavens,” said Christa Clarke, the Newark Museum’s curator of African art and senior curator, Arts of Africa and the Americas. “The spectacular works on view demonstrate how this knowledge has informed and inspired the creation of art on the African continent for millennia, from ancient Egypt to present-day South Africa.”

As artist-in-residence, Mr, Hazoumé will be installing, Rainbow Serpent, a 12-foot construct of recycled containers used to transport gasoline, on February 21, 22, and 25. He is also scheduled to lead a master class for Newark school children on February 27. Mr. Hazoumé will lead a tour of the exhibit with a special focus on the artist’s large sculpture, followed by a discussion.

“African Cosmos: Stellar Arts” will run through August 11 at the Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street in the Downtown/Arts District of Newark. Hours are: Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Suggested admission: $10 (adults); $6 (children, seniors, students with valid I.D.). For more information, call (973) 596-6550 or visit: www.NewarkMuseum.org.

Struggling Couples, Silly Love Songs, and a Valentine’s Day Conception

DVD REV

By Stuart Mitchner

Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs ….

—Paul McCartney from “Silly Love Songs”

By all rights, George Stevens’s 1941 film Penny Serenade should be to Valentine’s Day what Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is to Christmas. The season of silly love songs, candy, flowers, and date movies could do with a film about a couple struggling to honor the marriage vow, “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”

Not that I’ve got anything against Valentine’s Day. If it didn’t exist, neither would I.

My mother was stone cold sober when she mentioned the occasion of my conception, a date later confirmed by my father. The revelation came when she was telling me the facts of life and my stunned response (“You and Dad did that?”) had less to do with pre-adolescent naivete than with my acute awareness of the lack of physical affection between my parents. Possibly the only reason I’m here in Princeton at this moment is because my father was living up to his part of a nationally accredited romantic situation. Otherwise, the most productive phase of the relationship took place when they were writing plays together the year before they got married. Two of their one-act farces, And Silently Steal Away and Mr. and Mrs. Uh-h, were published by Samuel French, and at the time of their divorce 37 years later they were still receiving small royalty checks. The plan was to move from Hutchinson, Kansas to New York City and write Broadway plays. To make ends meet, she would be a stenographer and he would play piano in a night club. On the way to the Bright Lights they ended up in Bloomington, Indiana, where my father became a Medieval scholar and my mother a legal secretary working for a Court of Appeals judge who put the make on her and later became the subject of a story in the Kenyon Review.

“It’s Love, It’s Love”

In the 1950s my father, of all people, filled the world with some pretty silly love songs of his own that I inherited in manuscript. Several of these ditties are so tuneful that I sometimes find myself whistling or humming the melodies. It’s hard to keep from smiling when I think of my reserved, undemonstrative father writing Tin Pan Alley lyrics like “It’s love, it’s love, it’s love, it’s love, it’s love, it’s love, I’m zoomin’/She caught my eye, I’m not so shy, we’ll multiply, we’re human!”

The period when my father was composing “It’s Love,” “The Magic of Love,” “It Can Happen,” and the others must have been like a reprise of the courtship year when they were collaborating on plays. My mother was actually sitting next to him at the piano singing along one night when some friends were over, an event I witnessed, amazed, from the top of the stairs. The most musically sophisticated and lyrically overwrought of my father’s compositions, “The Magic of Love,” begins, “If I wish, I could swim like a silvery fish,” and ends with four lines that my needy mother almost surely contributed: “Hold me tight! Keep me earthbound and still tonight./Lift your spell — let me breathe the air of the ordinary room we share./The enchantment is with you there/That’s the magic of love!”

Tucked in with the song manuscripts is a royalty statement for $229 showing that And Silently Steal Away was performed in 22 different towns in Minnesota between January and May of 1950 (with multiple performances in Olivia, Windom, and Thief River Falls).

Though this story doesn’t have a happy ending (what real-life story does?), my parents remained close after the divorce and were always there for each other, “till death did them part” fifteen years later.

Another Couple

In Penny Serenade, Roger and Julie, newlyweds played by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, struggle financially in a desperate attempt to adopt a child when the bureaucratic odds are stacked against them.

The flashbacks that tell the story of Penny Serenade are structured around songs associated with the relationship, each in the form of a record that Julie is playing on the victrola, beginning with “You Were Meant for Me.” The theme is set from the first meeting in a record store where she’s a sales clerk and he buys a big stack of records (78s in those days), which gives him an excuse to spend time in her company. He walks her home, and after admitting he owns no phonograph, invites himself into her apartment to listen to some silly love songs. The next scene, which begins with the playing of another record, shows them shyly talking around embarrassingly relevant fortune cookies (marriage, a baby); then comes a big, rollicking, brilliantly directed New Year’s Eve party where Roger proposes to Julie just before midnight. A newspaperman on his way to a two-year assignment in Japan, he wants her to join him three months after he gets settled. They have only hours before he has to catch a 3 a.m. train. With Hollywood serendipity on their side, they manage to get married that same snowy night and make the train in time. As they’re sharing a passionate goodbye embrace in his compartment (in the picture shown below), the train’s about to leave, she has to get off — but she doesn’t. Next shot shows the train pulling into a station, the camera lingering suggestively on the compartment’s frosted-up, snow-edged window. In case we don’t get the point, a sign says “To New York 115 Miles.” The nudge isn’t necessary; their goodbye kiss makes clear what’s taken place, and the next time Roger sees her, in Japan, she has big news to tell him.

Although Penny Serenade shifts abruptly from romantic comedy to the dramatic mode typed as a “tear jerker” when it gets to the struggle at the heart of the story, it’s one of George Stevens’s finest films, with memorable supporting performances by Beulah Bondi as a sympathetic worker in an adoption agency and Edgar Buchanan as a tried and true friend. Grant and Dunne are even better together than they were in The Awful Truth (1937) and My Favorite Wife (1940). In both those comedies, one of Dunne’s many charms is her knowing laugh, but the half-laugh, half sigh that emerges when she perceives what Grant is up to that first day with the records is so right that it makes you laugh, too. Grant is no less subtle, speaking soft and low when he proposes and then kissing her with words of love we can barely hear.

Roger is the confident carefree Cary Grant that film fans know and love until an earthquake brings the couple’s world down on top of them, destroying the unborn child and Julie’s ability to ever carry a baby to term. After she recovers, they move back to the States and a small town north of San Francisco where Roger uses all of a small inheritance to buy a weekly newspaper that doesn’t make enough money to satisfy the adoption agency’s regulations. Eventually, thanks to the caring employee sensitively played by Bondi, they are allowed a one-year trial adoption of a baby, a little girl “like no other child.” Anyone who’s ever gone through the first days and nights home from the hospital with a baby will be touched and amused by the scenes depicting the panic-stricken inepitude of the new parents. The crisis comes a year later when Roger, still struggling to keep the paper going, appears before an unsympathetic judge and is told that because they’re financially incapable of supporting the child they will have to return her to the orphanage. Grant’s passionate, choked-up, ultimately successful plea is painful to behold. As the New Republic’s Otis Ferguson observes in his wise, eloquent review, the scene is “one of the rightly moving things in the picture.”

Falling Star

The most beautiful moment in Penny Serenade, however, occurs when Roger and Julie’s little girl, Trina, now 6, plays the “Silent Night” echo in her school’s Christmas play. As Hollywood children go, Eva Lee Kuney is about as good as you could hope for in her brief, touching, ill-fated part. Her role in the pageant becomes a piece of cinematic poetry involving a cloud on a string and a falling star. As Julie sadly puts the last record on the phonograph, a letter to the woman at the adoption agency reveals that the child has died after a sudden illness. Rather than inflict a death scene on us, Stevens and screenwriter Morris Ryskind simply show the impact on the parents. There’s no fight left in this couple; the marriage is over. Or so it seems until their guardian angel at the adoption agency gives them a call.

As far as I know, the framing device of a character playing records to accompany the flashbacks composing the picture is unique to Penny Serenade. It’s also one of the most conspicuous examples of product placement I’ve ever seen. All the records have the RCA label and are played on an RCA victrola.

Though it’s in the public domain, Penny Serenade is not easy to find on DVD. You can see it in its entirety on YouTube.

Now if only there were a film of my father playing his silly love songs with my mother sitting beside him singing along.

Boheme Opera NJ Presents Production Of Gaetano Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”

In mid-19th-century Italy, when attending opera was as popular as going to the movies today, Gaetano Donizetti turned out operas at a remarkable rate. In his fifty-year lifetime, he composed more than sixty-five operatic works, with the comic Don Pasquale one of his most popular. Boheme Opera NJ, celebrating its 24th season, presented this comic classic at the Mayo Concert Hall of the College of New Jersey Center for the Arts this past weekend. Sunday afternoon’s performance (the opera was also performed Saturday night) offered the audience an unassuming yet crisp production, which while maybe a bit low-tech, showed all-around solid singing with one clear break-out star.

The stage in Mayo Hall is indeed a concert hall, with no pit for the orchestra or apparatus from which to fly backdrops. Boheme Opera set the stage in a chamber-like atmosphere, with the orchestra onstage behind the singers, and minimalistic furniture dividing the stage into two “scenes.” The effect was that of seeing an opera in someone’s living room, with a chamber instrumental ensemble augmented by piano. Conductor Joseph Pucciatti led the small ensemble in a clean overture with an especially elegant cello solo from Katrina Kormanski.

With only four principal characters, Don Pasquale is a substantial opera to be carried by a few people. Bass-baritone Edward Bogusz had no trouble reacting to the small stage (and did not seem a bit surprised to find an orchestra in his character’s living room) and sang the title role with great animation and a very solid voice, especially in the lower register. Although there were times when the full orchestral sound overpowered the singers a bit, Mr. Bogusz sang the quick recitative sections well, projecting the English text to the back of the hall, and clearly seemed to enjoy himself.

The inherent trouble-maker onstage was Dr. Malatesta, sung cleanly by baritone Kevin Grace. Mr. Grace was also solid with diction, forming a good vocal combination with David Gagnon, singing the romantic lead role of Ernesto. Mr. Gagnon presented some of the most expressive music of the opera, including a lyrical first act aria and the refined and graceful Act III aria to his beloved. Mr. Gagnon commanded audience appeal with sensitive and thoughtful singing, causing members of the audience to comment after his arias on the beauty of his voice.

A continual pleasure to see onstage was soprano Sungji Kim, who found a strong depth of character in Norina, Ernesto’s intended who was always contriving to get her way. Ms. Kim played the role as a smart cookie who pulled out all the stops when necessary. With a voice that spun off high coloratura with ease, Ms. Kim was especially impressive with her ease with fast-moving passages, breath control, and dramatic vocal tone. Currently a doctoral candidate at Rutgers University, Ms. Kim clearly has a future in 19th-century lead soprano roles.

Boheme Opera’s production of Don Pasquale was a model of elegant simplicity, and making the most use of the stage available. Mayo Hall’s wood paneling and solid color painted walls created a 19th-century backdrop, and unadorned furniture at the front of the stage made the audience quickly forget that there was an orchestra right behind. Costuming placed the plot in an unambiguous modern time (especially with Pasquale’s checking the time on his wristwatch), and the focus for the production was clearly on entertainment and good singing. Given that entertainment and singing were likely also the goals of Donizetti’s original productions, it seems that Boheme Opera’s Don Pasquale was a success.

Area Exhibits 2/13/13

Art Times Two Gallery, Princeton Brain and Spine Care, 731 Alexander Road, presents “Energy in Mind: Picturing Consciousness,” works by Jennifer Cadoff, Debra Weier and Andrew Werth, through April. View by appointment. Call (609) 203-4622.

Arts Council of Princeton, Paul Robeson Center, 102 Witherspoon Street, has outdoor sculpture by Mike Gyampo on view through March 30 on the Michael Graves Terrace. “Structure and Flow: An Exploration of Contrasts in Abstraction” runs through March 9. Works by Al Aronson, Benjamin Colbert, Nancy Cohen, John Franklin, and Alyce Gottesman are included. Mr. Colbert gives a free talk February 15, 12-1 p.m. Mr. Gyampo gives a free workshop February 16, 1:30-4:30 p.m. Visit www.artscouncilofprinceton.org.

Artsbridge at Prallsville Mill, Route 29, Stockton, presents the 19th Annual Members’ Show through February 24. Visit www.artsbridgeonline.com.

Artworks, 19 Everett Alley in Trenton, has “World Sampler,” a group exhibit curated by Frances Heinrich, through February 23. Visit artworkstrenton.org.

Bank of Princeton Community Art Gallery, 10 Bridge Street, Lambertville, has “Scenes from Cuba” by Maurice Harmon through February 15. Visit www.the
bankofprinceton.com.

Bernstein Gallery at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, has works by political artist Marcia Annenberg through February 14. “The Fourth Grade Project,” portraits by Judy Gelles, runs February 21-April 4. An opening reception is February 22, 4 p.m.

Brodsky Gallery, Chauncey Conference Center, ETS, Rosedale Road, has an exhibit by Janis Blayne Paul titled “Karmic Stone: Inspiration Carved in Stone” through March 31. Meet the artist February 21, 4-7 p.m. (609) 921-3600.

College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Pennington Road, Ewing, presents “Fear and Folly: The Visionary Prints of Francisco Goya and Federico Castellon” through March 7.

D&R Greenway, 1 Preservation Place, has “Urban Landscapes” on view through February 15. Works by Louis Russomanno, Susan Marie Brundage, Jean Childs Buzgo, Wills Kinsley, Leon Rainbow, Thom Lynch, and others are included, along with art by the A-Team Artists from Trenton. Also on view is a photo documentary on dance by Edward Greenblatt. Call (609) 924-4646 before visiting.

Douglass Library, Rutgers, 8 Chapel Drive, New Brunswick, has “Trans Technology: Circuits of Culture, Self Belonging” through June 3. The show is part of the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series. On March 5 from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., a symposium on the show will be held. Visit womenart@rci.rutgers.edu.

Drumthwacket, 354 Stockton Street, shows photos from Wendel White’s portfolios “Small Towns, Black Lives” through March 5. Call (609) 683-0057 or visit www.drumthwacket.org.

Ellarslie, Trenton City Museum in Cadwalader Park, Parkside Avenue, Trenton, has through February 24, “In My View: Stephen Smith, Florence Moonan, William Hogan.” Through May 25, “Trenton’s Educational Legacy: The New Lincoln School” is on view. From March 2-April 19, “More Than a Rug: Tapestries, Paintings & Sculpture” brings items from the David Bosted Collection. A gallery talk is March 24, 2 p.m., by Mr. Bosted, on African Textiles. Call (609) 989-3632 or visit www.ellarslie.org.

Firestone Library at Princeton University, has “Your True Friend and Enemy: Princeton and the Civil War” in the Mudd Manuscript Library through July 31. “Into the Woods: A Bicentennial Celebration of the Brothers Grimm” is on view at Cotsen Children’s Library through February 28.

Gallery at Chapin, 4101 Princeton Pike, has “Images: Reflections of Adventure” through February 28, featuring artists Connie and Ken McIndoe. Call (609) 924-7206.

Gallery 14, 14 Mercer Street, Hopewell, has “Exposed,” a member exhibit, through March 10. Visit photogallery14.com.

Grounds for Sculpture, Fairgrounds Road in Hamilton, presents Ming Fay’s “Canutopia” installed in the new East Gallery through February 15. Visit www.groundsforsculpture.org.

Historical Society of Princeton, Bainbridge House, 158 Nassau Street, has photographs from its collection in the Princeton Pride Gallery. On February 14 from 12-4 p.m., admission is free and a preview of the exhibit “We Love Princeton: Stories from the Street” is offered. That show opens with a reception March 7 from 5-8 p.m. For more information visit www.princetonhistory.org.

The James A. Michener Art Museum at 138 South Pine Street in Doylestown, Pa., has “Suspended Harmonies: Fiber Art by Ted Hallman” through March 3. “The Mind’s Eye: 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann” runs through April 28. Visit www.michener
artmuseum.org.

The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street, on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, has “Lynd Ward Draws Stories: Inspired by Mexico’s History, Mark Twain, and Adventures in the Woods” through June 23. “In the Company of Women: Prints by Mary Cassatt” runs through March 3. “Le Mur’ at the Cabaret des Quat’z Arts is on view through February 24. Works by Russian artist Leonid Sokov are displayed through July 14.

Lawrence Library, 2751 Brunswick Pike, has works by portrait artist Negin Mohseni during February. A reception is February 17, 2-4 p.m. Call (609) 989-6920.

Lawrenceville School Gruss Center for Visual Arts, Route 206, Lawrenceville, presents Priscilla Snow Algava’s “Life Dance: A Retrospective” through February 28. Visit www.lawrenceville.org.

Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street, presents “The Pine Barrens: A Legacy of Preservation. Photographs by Richard Speedy” through April 14. Museum hours are Wednesdays-Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. on. Group tours of 10 or more can be arranged any day by advance reservation. Visit www.morven.org.

New Jersey State Museum, 205 West State Street, Trenton, displays “Jon Naar: Signature Photography” through May 4. Visit www.nj.gov/state/museum.

Princeton Day School Anne Reid ‘72 Art Gallery has “Wabi-Sabi” featuring works of PDS art department faculty members Stephanie Stuefer and Chris Maher, through March 7. A luncheon reception with the artists is February 22, 12:30 p.m. A cocktail reception is that evening, 6:30-8 p.m. Visit www.pds.org.

The Princeton University Art Museum has “Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom” on exhibit through February 17. “Two Views” Atget & Friedlander” is on display through March 10. “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe” runs February 16-June 9. Museum hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. Call (609) 258-3788.

Rider University Art Gallery, Bart Luedeke Center, Rider University, Route 206, Lawrenceville, presents “Geoffrey Dorfman: Eye and Mind” through March 3. Gallery director Harry Naar leads a talk with the artist February 14, 7 p.m. Visit www.rider.edu/artgallery.

Robert Beck Gallery, 204 North Union Street, Lambertville, hosts the 32nd Annual Juried Art Exhibit, “Lambertville and the Surrounding Area,” by the Lambertville Historical Society, through March 28. Call (609) 397-0951 for details.

Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, presents “The Love Show” through March 5. Works by more than 40 artists on the topic of love will be displayed.

Small World Coffee, 254 Nassau Street branch, has a show, “The James McPhillips Museum and Gift Shop,” through March 5. Visit jaymcphillips@earth
link.net.

Straube Center, 1 Straube Center Boulevard, Pennington, shows “Center for Creative Works” through March 15. Visit www.straubecenter.com.

West Windsor Arts Center, 952 Alexander Road, Princeton Junction, presents “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” with work by 18 artists from the local area, through February 24. Call (609) 716-1931.

Amour: Undying Love Explored in Haneke’s Poignant Film

AN IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION: Anne (Emmanuelle Riva, facing the camera) has placed her husband Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in an impossible situation when she made him promise that he would not return her to a hospital or place her in a nursing home, regardless of how ill she became. However, Georges found that he was not physically able to provide her the care that she needed at home. To find out how he resolved his dilemma, see the movie.

AN IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION: Anne (Emmanuelle Riva, facing the camera) has placed her husband Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in an impossible situation when she made him promise that he would not return her to a hospital or place her in a nursing home, regardless of how ill she became. However, Georges found that he was not physically able to provide her the care that she needed at home. To find out how he resolved his dilemma, see the movie.

Retired music teachers Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) have been married for over 60 years. But the frail octogenarians’ love for each other remains as strong as it was the day they met.

The elderly couple lives in a Paris apartment surrounded by music and art and other indicia of an appreciation of culture. With Anne’s health in sharp decline, their days are now mostly spent attending to her host of medical issues.

Unfortunately, Anne’s been bedridden since a stroke left her right side paralyzed. Her biggest fear is not death but the prospect of returning to the hospital or being moved to a nursing home.

It’s clear that Georges would prefer to abide by his wife’s wishes. However, he’s no youngster either, and she’s gradually becoming more than he can handle as her health deteriorates. They do have a daughter, but Eva (Isabelle Huppert) is a travelling musician who can only visit occasionally because of her hectic touring schedule.

When it becomes obvious that Anne has passed the point of no return, Georges finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. Does he abide by his life-mate’s last request and let her live out her days in the familiar confines of their home, or does he accept that he can no longer provide the quality care she needs to survive?

That is the critical question explored in Amour, a bittersweet drama which tugs on the heartstrings. Written and directed by Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher), the flashback film has deservedly been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture, foreign film, director, actress, and original script.

A poignant tale of undying love.

Excellent (****). Rated PG-13 for mature themes and brief profanity. Running time: 127 minutes. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Small World Coffee Brightens February With Month-Long Celebration of Love

LOVE AT SMALL WORLD: Local photographer Christine Ferrara captured the warm glow of Small World Coffee on Witherspoon Street last Friday at the start of the opening reception for “The Love Show.” Ms. Ferrara was among more than 40 local artists featured in the show/art sale which runs through March 5 and benefits HiTOPS.(Photo by Christine Ferrara)

LOVE AT SMALL WORLD: Local photographer Christine Ferrara captured the warm glow of Small World Coffee on Witherspoon Street last Friday at the start of the opening reception for “The Love Show.” Ms. Ferrara was among more than 40 local artists featured in the show/art sale which runs through March 5 and benefits HiTOPS. (Photo by Christine Ferrara)

With unexpected snow storms and freezing downpours interspersed with teasing signs of spring, February can be one bleak month.

For the past four years Small World Coffee on Witherspoon Street has brightened the February gloom with a month-long community art show. Aptly titled “The Love Show,” the event raises funds for a local community non-profit. This year, the proceeds go to HiTOPS, the teen and young adult health center on Wiggins Street.

Some 100 people turned out last Friday night for the show’s opening reception. The coffee shop was transformed into a gallery and party space devoted to art in visual, musical, and culinary forms: with DJs spinning and baristas passing around treats donated by Olives and The Bent Spoon.

Many of the artists brought friends and family along to mingle with the store’s loyal customers, members of the community, and small world employees.

Four years ago, when Ms. Durrie and her team formulated the plan to curate a community art show, the month of February was chosen as a time when such festivity would be most welcome and the love theme was a natural. “We decided to make it a fundraising event as well as an art event accessible to all,” said Ms. Durrie. “We liked the concept of an opening party that would be so full of energy celebrating art and artists, with hors d’oeuvres and live music, so much fun that it would warrant asking for a suggested donation of $20,” she said.

Participating artists are asked to create pieces in response to the word ‘love,’ in broad or specific terms. “We are always inspired by the range of talent and creativity and thank all of the artists,” said Ms. Durrie. “We are so thankful for all of the wonderful entries, but alas, we only have so much space on our walls.”

In addition to the sale of the artwork, the coffee shop also sells love show t-shirts ($24.95) and stickers ($1), from which all of the proceeds benefit the selected not-for-profit. “While each of these fundraising efforts may be small in cash value, I am a big believer in the power of many small good gestures,” said Ms. Durrie. “That is one of the sub-themes of the show.”

Past beneficiaries have been the Arts Council of Princeton (2010), the D&R Greenway Land Trust (2011), and the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey (2012). In order to “spread the love around,” says Ms. Durrie, Small World Coffee decided to select a different not-for-profit each year so that different organizations would have an opportunity to get their message out to a potentially new audience. “What I did not realize when we decided to do this was how great it would be to get to know all of the different not-for-profits. I’ve truly enjoyed learning more about each of them and expanding my knowledge of our community.”

To date the coffee shop has raised some $1200 all told. This year, more is hoped for. “The bad weather on opening night may or may not allow us to exceed our goals, but it is not too late for people to come in and buy our stylish love show t-shirts or purchase a piece of original art work.”

Friday’s weather presented some challenges. While snow arrived, the scheduled performers, Motorfunker DJs from WPRB did not, necessitating a last minute change of plans. “But the strength of our Small World community came through,” said Ms. Durrie, who called local musicians Chris Harford and Matt Trowbridge to save the day by bringing in their sound system and turntables and DJing the dance party at the end of he evening.

More than 40 local artists: painters and photographers participated. Many donated the proceeds from the sale of their work, or a part thereof, to HiTOPS, which promotes adolescent health and well-being and is the only free-standing health center focusing exclusively on youth in New Jersey. Founded by nurse practitioners and health educators, it has been providing risk reduction education and health promotion to youth for the past 25 years.

“The event wrapped up at 11 p.m.,” said Ms. Durrie. “It was a good night.”

The Love Show continues through March 5 at Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, Monday through Thursday 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

For more information on HiTOPS, call (609) 683 5155 or visit: www.hitops.org.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Still Excites Controversy After 150 Years

One hundred and fifty years ago, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1.

A series of events marking the 150th anniversary of this historic event will take place this month at the Princeton Public Library and Princeton High School Performing Arts Center.

The documentary film, Looking for Lincoln, written by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., screens tonight, February 13, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Library’s Community Room. The two-hour film reconstructs Lincoln’s complex life with insights gained from re-enactors, relic hunters, past presidents, Lincoln scholars, and historians.

On screen, Mr. Gates tackles the controversies that Lincoln’s life story provokes; issues of race, equality, religion, politics, and depression. Besides numerous Lincoln scholars, among those offering comment in the film are Pulitzer Prize winners Doris Kearns Goodwin and Tony Kushner; and presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Former Ebony editor Lerone Bennett challenges Lincoln’s record on race. Writer Joshua Shenk talks about the president’s depression.

A second documentary, based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, will be shown next Friday, February 22, from 7 to 8:30 p.m., also in the Library’s Community Room. The film challenges the belief that slavery in America ended with the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Slavery by Another Name is an indictment of America’s failure to preserve the great moral victory of the Civil War and the mythologies we adopted to hide that failure,” says Mr. Blackmon. “No one group gets the blame. No one group gets to take credit.” Mr. Blackmon argues that both parties failed African-Americans over the span of many decades. To make his case, he evokes events following the Proclamation signing: Lincoln’s successor, Democrat Andrew Johnson, encouraged the return of white supremacist control of the South; Republican Teddy Roosevelt, initially a friend to African-American citizenship, turned against them; Democrat Woodrow Wilson extended Jim Crow segregation throughout the federal government. According to Mr. Blackmon, it was not until the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the first serious and sustained effort to defend the actual freedom and civil rights of blacks began. Even so, those efforts were deeply flawed, he states.

Until joining the Washington Post in 2011, Mr. Blackmon was chief of The Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta bureau and the paper’s senior national correspondent. He has written about or directed coverage of some of the most pivotal stories in American life, including the election of President Barack Obama, the rise of the Tea Party movement and the BP oil spill. He has also written extensively about race in America, from the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, to the Civil Rights movement and the dilemma of how contemporary society should grapple with a troubled past.

Slavery by Another Name grew out of a Wall Street Journal article revealing the use of forced labor by dozens of U.S. corporations and commercial interests in coal mines, timber camps, factories, and farms in cities and states across the South, beginning after the Civil War and continuing until the beginning of World War II. It was a New York Times bestseller, and received numerous awards including a 2009 American Book Award.

After the film first aired on PBS, Mr. Blackmon coined the term “historical contortionism” to describe some of the responses to his work that would use history as contemporary propaganda: the impulse to “value history only to the degree that bits and pieces can be used as ammunition in some contemporary fight — usually in ways that are irrelevant and ultimately false.”

“Unfortunately, there are also still many people who are desperate to contort every fragment of history that they find into a foundation for a particular political agenda,” says Mr. Blackmon. Democrats wish to “forget their ardent opposition to civil rights for African Americans a century ago” and Republicans wish to “claim credit for passage of the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, even though the moderate wing of the party that cooperated with Lyndon Johnson in those votes has since been essentially obliterated.”

On Thursday, February 28, from 7 to 9 p.m., Mr. Blackmon will join Princeton historian James M. McPherson and students from Princeton High School in a Community Commemoration of the Emancipation Proclamation at the Princeton High School Performing Arts Center, 151 Moore Street.

Mr. Blackmon and Mr. McPherson will speak and sign copies of their books. The event will also feature readings and songs by PHS students.

McPherson is professor emeritus of United States history at Princeton University and an authority on the Civil War. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 book Battle Cry of Freedom. His Abraham Lincoln will be the subject of discussion at the Library on Tuesday, February 19, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Library’s Quiet Room.

In addition, a student-led Black History Month celebration: An Evening of Cultural Celebration at Princeton High School will take place on Wednesday, February 27. The event, which is free and open to the public, will features food, dance, music and poetry.

Rejection of AvalonBay Plan Made Official

At its meeting on February 7, Princeton’s Planning Board officially memorialized its December 19, 2012 rejection of developer AvalonBay’s proposal for an apartment building at the former location of the University Medical Center at Princeton. That clears the way for the developer to determine whether it will appeal the decision, something that has yet to be announced. AvalonBay has until March 24 to announce its intention.

In the meantime, the task force assigned last month to evaluate the site’s mixed use zoning has been meeting regularly. Discussions among members of the task force have focused on the possibility of increasing open space requirements, allowing separate structures instead of one large building, and decreasing the allowed housing density.

AvalonBay’s attorney Anne Studholme has attended the task force’s meetings, taking notes but rarely offering comment. She aired her opinions in a letter to the Planning Board’s attorney Gerald Muller dated February 7, complaining that the resolution describing the Board’s decision to deny AvalonBay’s plan, because it failed to meet Princeton’s design standards, “incorporates none of the record purposefully created by the board members and set forth with clarity and detail as the basis for each member’s vote on December 19, 2012.”

Ms. Studholme said that the Board “cherry-picks a few of the design standards and asserts that the application fails to ‘meet’ them. Given the repeated acknowledgment by yourself, and by Lee Solow, Princeton’s Director of Planning, that the design standards are inherently self-contradictory, and that they also contradict the zoning standards, we cannot tell, from studying the proposed resolution, let alone the transcript of the record, how it was the board came to find certain design standards requisite to be met, and not others.”

The Board said in its decision that AvalonBay’s proposal for 280 apartments, in a building ranging from three to five stories, did not allow for sufficient connections to the surrounding neighborhood. Rather, it calls for a “fortress-like” development with only one archway, “providing public access through a 60-foot-long passage to a dead end court. It excludes the public and turns its back to the broader neighborhood.”

Ms. Studholme said that the resolution quotes members of the public who object to the plan while not quoting remarks by Board members. “We are disappointed that the proposed resolution strays so far from the established record — in fact, that it ignores the established record,” the letter reads.

Meetings of the hospital site task force are open to the public. For the dates of upcoming meetings, visit Princeton’s website: www.princetonnj.gov.

Alexander Street Houses Headed for Wrecking Ball Unless a Buyer Steps Up

Princeton has a history of moving buildings from one location to another. Since the mid-19th century, as the town and its institutions have grown, stately houses, modest workers’ cottages, estate outbuildings, boarding houses, and numerous other dwellings and public buildings have been hauled from one corner of town to another.

Preservation-minded citizens have been hopeful that a group of houses along Alexander Street will continue that tradition. But it doesn’t look good. The houses, owned by Princeton University, are sitting in the path of its recently approved $300 million Arts & Transit development. The University plans to start clearing the site this spring, and the houses С some of which are considered historically significant and date from the 19th century С are headed for demolition.

The University has offered to give the houses to anyone who is willing to undertake the complicated and costly process of moving them, but there are no takers. “We have entertained an offer from one couple who were interested,” says Kristin Appelget, the University’s director of community and regional affairs. “But it didn’t work out. So as of right now, they will be taken down. If someone came forward who could have the buildings removed within the time frame, we would be willing to have that conversation with them. But they would need to have the structure, or structures, removed before April.”

A member of Princeton’s Historic Preservation Commission says there is still hope that a buyer can be found. Not representing the Commission but speaking for himself, Elric Endersby has been quietly talking to a candidate who may opt to take on at least one of the houses. “There is still somebody who is potentially interested in moving the houses, and we are attempting to explore the possibilities,” he says. “I still believe that if it is possible for someone to save even one or two houses, it’s a win-win-win situation. It would allow the University to demonstrate that they have been open to this kind of idea, which they have. And it would demonstrate that the town would do what it could to facilitate the transfer of these buildings.”

The string of houses along Alexander Street represents an important part of the history not just of Princeton, but of the state as a whole. “The transportation  advancements of 19th century New Jersey, including canals and railroads between Philadelphia and New York City, were key elements to the development of Alexander Street,” reads a 1994 survey by Hintz Associates, Inc. “The road was developed in 1830 as ‘Canal Street,’ when the canal and railroad intersection at Princeton Basin created the combined need for a direct link to Princeton Borough.” The report continues, “The street has played a key role in the development of Princeton and is currently among the main roads leading to town, serving as a corridor from Route 1 to Princeton Borough.”

According to Mr. Endersby, the houses threatened with demolition are worth saving because of their “good bones.”

“There are a couple of three-bay houses, and two of those are really in the same league as several of those on Alexander Street between Mercer Street and College Road,” he says. “I don’t know anything about the interior detail work, but even if the details are missing, the frames and the configuration of rooms would allow them to be replicated and renovated if not entirely restored. The houses are not huge, which is a plus. They are of a human scale. We’re not talking about major [Charles] Steadman buildings. These were of a more moderate scale. But that scale commends them rather than condemns them.”

Owned by the University for several years, the houses between 106 and 152 Alexander Street have served most recently as offices and apartments. They are currently empty. Princeton University is preparing the buildings for demolition by having asbestos and lead paint removed and gutting the interiors. Once that is completed and the proper approvals are obtained, the University can apply for a demolition permit. The houses are marked by either a large “X” or a slash by their front doors. According to Ms. Appleget, the markings indicate building conditions for first responders like the fire department.

At a meeting this week of the Historic Preservation Commission, Princeton resident Kip Cherry voiced her concerns about the plans to demolish the houses. “We would like to see the University make their mortgage subsidy program available to a potential buyer, or maybe a house could be moved and used for a University department,” she said. “I think this is certainly a matter for the Commission to consider.”

Julie Capozzoli, the HPC chair, told Ms. Cherry that since the houses are not located in a historic district, the Commission has the authority to advise but not to officially review them. HPC member Cecelia Taazelar commented that the asbestos removal and other pre-demolition work make the houses less appealing to a potential buyer. “They’ve jinxed the opportunity for anyone to move the houses,” she said. “When you start taking away all the exterior details, then what’s the value in moving them? They shouldn’t be doing it.”

Moving a building is an expensive and complicated proposition. “It’s quite extensive,” says John Pettenati, Princeton’s building inspector. “You have to shut down the road, do it in the middle of the night, and disconnect all the power lines. It’s legitimate and it can be done, and anyone is welcome to come in with the permits for it. The University did move a huge house a long time ago, but just across the street. Another one on Cherry Valley Road was moved too, but again, across the street.”

Mr. Endersby’s New Jersey Barn Company specializes in the dismantling and rebuilding of historic structures, but he would not be able to consider disassembling the houses. “We have one that has been in storage since 1983,” he said. “Our business is moving buildings, but not by surface.”

Drawing on the knowledge of a group of historic buildings in East Hampton, Long Island that were moved and converted into a municipal complex, Mr. Endersby wondered at one point whether the Alexander Street houses could be moved en masse to the Basin. That suggestion was rejected due to environmental issues.

Talks with the University about the fate of the houses have not been adversarial. “They demonstrated their willingness, back in September, to talk,” Mr. Endersby says. “I’ve never sensed that the University was hostile to these efforts, but just that they thought it was probably futile.”

Neighborhood resident Anne Neumann says suggestions that the University move the houses for use by departments within the school were rejected by their attorney. “We’re not aware that an invitation ever went out to any of the departments asking them if they’d be interested,” she said. “But Princeton University has a long history of respecting historic preservation. They’ve moved many houses in the past. There is a long legacy of that, and it could be continued.”

Chamber’s Revamping of Kiosk Design Receives Mixed Reception From Council

A proposal to revamp the information kiosks located on Nassau Street at Witherspoon and Vandeventer streets got a lukewarm reaction from members of Princeton Council on Monday night. But the Council agreed to hold off voting on the plan, which was presented by Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce President Peter Crowley, until after the Traffic and Transit committee takes a look at it.

“I feel like this is appropriate for a mall,” said Council member Jenny Crumiller, citing the portions of the kiosks that would display advertisements from local businesses. “Advertising is an assault. I’d rather not see it. Let’s not have it on our street corner. You have definitely improved the design, but advertising is what I object to.”

The Chamber has spent nearly a year developing a plan to upgrade the kiosks, which have been a fixture in town since the 1980’s. Used by the public to post notices of apartment rentals, meetings, cultural events, and other information, they are cluttered by multiple postings often layered on top of each other. “The kiosks have so much information on them that nobody gets the information,” Mr. Crowley said.

In addition to advertising, the proposed improvements include free tourism information, maps, and at least two cork panels for the public postings at the kiosk outside the Garden Theatre at Vandeventer Street. The other kiosk at Witherspoon Street would display the maps and municipal information along with advertisements, but not the public postings.

Each of the kiosks would cost about $20,000 to refurbish. The Chamber would maintain the kiosks, leasing them from the town. They would be designed with low-energy LED lighting. As much of the existing structures as possible would be maintained. Information posted on the kiosks would be limited to a certain size, for a specified length of time.

Mr. Crowley said he didn’t know yet how much businesses would be charged to advertise in the kiosks, but said that those prices would be tiered among Princeton businesses and Chamber members. Council member Jo Butler asked if Route 1 businesses would be included, and Mr. Crowley said that local organizations are preferred. Council member Lance Liverman questioned whether non-profits would be allowed to advertise. Noting that the Chamber has more than 100 non-profits as members, Mr. Crowley said their notices would be posted on a rotating basis, in a locked glass case.

Some Council members said that limiting the number of public notices could impinge upon the kiosk tradition of free speech. Mr. Crowley said the new design, while allowing less room than is currently available for such postings, is not intended to discourage putting up public information. When Ms. Butler expressed concern that the advertisements on the kiosks not face Nassau Street, where they could cause a distraction for drivers, Mr. Crowley replied that the ads would not face the road.

In a press release from the Chamber, Traffic and Transportation committee chair Anton Lahnston expressed support for the initiative. “The kiosks are a mess, they contribute to sign pollution in general. Anything you can do to help with that would be great.”

Princeton resident Chip Crider commented that the proposal has advantages and disadvantages. “It’s important that we don’t make our town too sterile,” he said, referring to the loss of some of the public posting space.

In other actions, the Council voted to approve an ordinance introduced last month to charge $107.60 an hour to pay police officers for extra duty at school events, parties, and other functions. They also voted to introduce an ordinance establishing fees for dog licenses at $12 for neutered pets, and $15 for un-neutered. A public hearing for that will be held at the February 25 meeting of Council.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

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Or will we have another Currier and Ives image like this one before winter takes its last bow? The setting for this winter scene is the Springdale Golf Course. (Photo by Emily Reeves)

January 30, 2013

Letters on Bill Scheide’s 99th Birthday Cite Concert to Benefit New CP Pool

To the Editor:

Bill and Judy Scheide are indeed “Forever Young” and the overflow crowd at the January 18 concert to celebrate Bill’s 99th birthday, and support the Community Park Pool, demonstrated by cheers and applause the esteem with which this much loved couple is held, as well as appreciation for the superb musicianship of the concert performers.

The English Chamber Orchestra, under the vibrant direction of Maestro Mark Laycock, began the program with Sir Arnold Bax’s Dance in the Sunlight, a lively, romantic and complex score. It was followed by Antonio Vivaldi’s Winter, brilliantly played by violinist Stephanie Gonley.

Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, eloquently and humorously narrated by Malcolm Gets, prompted an acquaintance sitting next to me to remark that her eight-year-old granddaughter, who plays the piano, would have learned a great deal and enjoyed this piece.

It was a pleasure to welcome pianist Andrew Sun back to Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. His nimble “Variations on Happy Birthday to Bill Scheide” were made up of musical birthday greetings assembled by Samuel Barber for Mary Curtis Book Zimbalist’s 75th birthday. The piece was a recent acquisition by the Scheide Library and performed for the first time.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67, completed the inspiring program. Through his mastery of the composition, Maestro Laycock, fluidly, energetically and skillfully inspired the English Chamber Orchestra to perform at their highest level. I know I speak for the community in expressing my sincere thanks to Bill and Judy for this memorable evening!

Linda Sipprelle

Nassau Street

To the Editor:

On behalf of the Princeton Recreation Department and the Princeton Parks & Recreation Fund, we want to thank the community for its incredible support of the Community Park Pool, which was the beneficiary of last Friday night’s birthday concert for Mr. William H. Scheide. Our community was once again blessed with the opportunity to listen to wonderful music, support a good cause, and revel in the good will that always accompanies a Bill and Judy Scheide Concert.

The concert was a smashing success and all of the money received from sponsors and ticket sales will go toward continuing the Recreation Department’s mandate to keep user fees as low as possible in order to continue to provide access to all members of the Princeton community. The pool has become the town’s summer backyard, and the support shown last Friday night is compelling evidence of how important that is to the community.

The Recreation Department is grateful beyond words for this wonderful support.

Ben Stentz

Executive Director of Recreation

Peter O’Neill

Chairman of Princeton Parks & Recreation Fund

Suggesting “Life Alert” Device as Possible Solution to the Problem of Guns in Schools

To the Editor:

The idea of guns in our schools is disconcerting at best, and untenable, at least. In addition to making school a pretty scary place for children to be, carrying a gun most likely will deter many fine teachers from practicing their profession. I am wondering if some type of a “Life Alert” device might be worn by adults in the school? While not a perfect solution, and perhaps, simplistic, it may be an effective one.

Robin L. Wallack,

Former President

Princeton Regional Board of Education,

Mercer County Board of Vocational Technology

Observations on Density and the Hospital Site: Design for Merwick/Stanworth Could Be Model

To the Editor,

There is an ongoing discussion about the appropriate density for the former hospital site. Current zoning for the MRRO zone, created specifically for the site of the hospital buildings, is for 280 units or 50 units per acre, a number arrived at by estimating the number of apartments that could fit into the hospital towers. Many remember the community discussions over rezoning the site for residential use in 2004-06 — it was said that the density would be lower if the hospital buildings came down.

What is a reasonable density if the hospital buildings do come down? I would argue that we should look at the gross density currently permitted in zoning. In the former Township, density ranges from 1.8 to 12 units/acre. In Mixed Use zones in the former Borough, like the MRRO zone, the maximum density is 14 units/acre. Density in the hospital neighborhood is lower than this. Our zoning allows densities higher than 14 units/acre only if there is 100 percent income restricted or age-restricted housing. In the highly-acclaimed design for the Merwick and Stanworth sites, the numerous two to three-story buildings will be built at 14 and 12 units/acre. The university designed open space and playground areas for everyone’s use and pedestrian and bike path connections between the sites and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Much of the discussion has centered on the supposed benefits of smart growth — concentrating development in the center of towns. This does not mean, however, that the higher the density the better. Architects and planners advocate designing buildings in context with their neighborhoods. The minimum smart-growth density in Massachusetts is 8 units/acre for single-family units, 12 units/acre for two- and three-family units and 20 units/acre for multi-family apartments. The 20 unit/acre density — or 112 units on the former hospital site — is already more than double the density in the surrounding neighborhood.

The Task Force is moving in the right direction by considering 39 units/acre or 220 units for the site. Unfortunately, with densities over 35 units/acre you lose a sense of having individual buildings — you get massive bulk and long-runs of frontage like the plans that AvalonBay presented.

Personally, I believe that the density of the Merwick/Stanworth sites is appropriate for the former hospital site. The John-Witherspoon neighborhood, with Merwick/Stanworth on one side and the MRRO zone on the other, averages 14 units/acre. Let’s do the same for the MRRO zone: 14 units/acre or 78 units for the former hospital site. This density will allow for a development in keeping with the scale and character of the neighborhood, as required by Borough Code and the town’s Master Plan. It will allow for green open space and throughways for people to walk and bike through the block (like at Merwick/Stanworth). Green space, walkers, and bikers make town living highly sustainable. Higher densities will bring more traffic, the possible busing of elementary schoolchildren, lower property values and higher taxes for Princeton residents.

Ken Gumpert

Leigh Avenue

Former Mayors With Spouses at PU See No Conflict of Interest for Lempert

To the Editor:

As former mayors with spouses who worked at Princeton University, and as a Princeton professor who was married to a former mayor, we were surprised to see that two Council members had questioned whether Mayor Liz Lempert has a conflict of interest in meeting with University representatives to discuss the terms of the University’s 2013 contribution to the municipality.

Princeton has a long history of mayors with connections to the University. All of us in recent memory — Barbara Sigmund, Cate Litvack, Dick Woodbridge, and Marvin Reed — spoke frequently with University representatives and negotiated with them. It is part of the mayor’s job.

Paul Sigmund, Cate Litvack,

Dick Woodbridge, Marvin Reed

Prevent New AvalonBay Application By Contacting Planning Board Now

To the Editor:

Princeton citizens who want to help ensure that AvalonBay doesn’t submit a new application to build “AvalonPrinceton” (!) should contact Planning Board members right away.

On February 7, the Planning Board will adopt a resolution that “memorializes” their 7-3 vote against AvalonBay (Board attorney Gerald Muller is drafting the resolution). Current Board members who voted against AvalonBay (Jenny Crumiller, Wanda Gunning, Bernie Miller, Marvin Reed, and Gail Ullman) have full legal rights to modify any and all language in the resolution so that it accurately reflects their positions.

Voting members should take care that the final resolution banishes AvalonBay from Princeton — not simply that Princeton doesn’t like AvalonBay’s specific site plan, but more: that Princeton doesn’t want any mark of AvalonBay here at all.

AvalonBay has shown they won’t partner with our community, no matter what the design. As Jenny Crumiller lamented about their refusal to negotiate reasonably with the Borough’s ad hoc committee, “The overriding theme was, ‘AvalonBay is a brand and that’s what you get’” (PB hearing, 12/19/12).

Here are other reasons why Planning Board members should make sure the resolution closes the door on any attempt by AvalonBay to reapply.

AvalonBay refused to consider local retail stores, desired by many (“We don’t do retail in midrise developments”), and refused to participate in Princeton’s recycling and composting program (“We’re not in the composting
business”). Avalon lags its competitors in sustainable building practices and rejected a push by 48.6 percent of their shareholders to commit resources to significant green measures; any building they did would be already “obsolete,” as Heidi Fichtenbaum noted (PB hearing, 12/19/12).

AvalonBay cannot be trusted. They tried to cover up difficulties with hospital site remediation — matters of public health. Their urban planner plagiarized work from their architect (who also misrepresented the size of the sliver of park by cropping the illustration). The AvalonBay team cheated in representing their open space, claiming as “theirs” portions of land they would not even own! Their architect deliberately misunderstood Borough Code so that he could falsely compare AvalonBay’s “superior” megablock to the existing hospital towers — and chose not to show the monolith in relation to neighborhood buildings so that no one could really grasp its gargantuan scale. Their “plan” for solid waste involved using both the garage and the Franklin Avenue service drive in ways not legally permitted by Borough Code.

AvalonBay’s legal representation was “barely legal.” Ron Ladell played both attorney and witness (an “inappropriate” straddling of roles). He tried to halt cross-questioning of their urban planner by the environmental attorney for Princeton Citizens (an unprofessional and almost malfeasant intervention). Attorney Studholme whispered advice to the urban planner while he was being cross-questioned by PCSN’s land-use attorney — virtually a forbidden practice.

With behavior like this, for over a year, who needs AvalonBay at all? They have squandered trust and credibility. Other developers will serve our community better. The Planning Board must insist that their resolution fully reflects their outright opposition, and the community’s, to AvalonBay’s presence.

Jane Buttars

Dodds Lane

New Developer for Hospital Site Must Keep the Neighborhood Needs in Mind

To The Editor:

I’d like to say to the new Princeton Planning Board that when dealing with a new developer for the hospital site, the developer must keep the neighborhood in mind: the height of the apartment buildings, the green space, and that there be no private pool because the tenants could enjoy and support our new Community Park pool that’s right down the street. Not having a private pool could allow more space for low, low income rental units within the affordable units. Remember, “affordable” is not affordable for all Princeton citizens. There should be some more low, low income units with rents below $1,000 per month. There’s a long list of people waiting for low income housing in Princeton, which still shows the need for it.

After sitting through many long planning board meetings listening to the AvalonBay presentation, I hope AvalonBay will completely disappear from the hospital site developers’ list because I don’t trust them. The arrogant, bullying attitude of the AvalonBay developer was unbelievable and we don’t need that kind of unneighborly attitude in Princeton.

Minnie Craig

Witherspoon Street

Special Thanks to Three Trustees Retiring From Public Library Board

To the Editor:

I enjoyed reading in last week’s paper about the new appointees to the Princeton Public Library’s Board of Trustees (“Ringing in the New, Library Board Welcomes Six New Members,” Town Topics, Jan. 23). As we welcome them to their new positions and wish them all luck, I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank the trustees whom they replaced (in addition to the former mayors): Alison Lahnston, Ira Fuchs, and Richard Levine. During their years of dedicated service, Alison, Ira, and Dick brought impressive skills, careful and creative thinking, and sound judgment to the job of governance, working always to nurture the library’s innovative spirit while helping to ensure its financial stability.

I would also like to thank Director Leslie Burger for her gifted leadership, her unparalleled fund-raising vision and abilities, and her inspiring commitment to the highest levels of excellence for the library and all its programs and services. It was a privilege and an honor to work with Leslie, and with all the trustees, over the last ten years, and I thank them for both enriching my time there, and for their longstanding service to the community.

Katherine McGavern

Past President, Princeton Public Library

Obituaries 1/30/13

1-30-13 Olgyay ObitIlona Olgyay

Ilona Olgyay passed away peacefully at the Princeton Medical Center on Saturday December 29, 2012. Ilona moved to Princeton in 1953, and with her husband Victor (died 1970) raised her children here.

Born Ilona Csuvik on November 27, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, Ilona was very active in sports, especially swimming. She also had a younger brother Oscar (died 2011), who became an Olympic water polo coach.

In her teens, during a time when Hungary won more Olympic medals per capita than any other country, Ilona was awarded the national award for being the top all-round women athlete in the country and was subsequently nominated to the Hungarian Olympic swimming team.

It was in Hungary where Ilona met and married Sandor Tarics, and in 1945 gave birth to daughter Eszike Tarics (died 1996). Ilona and Sandor were living in New York when Hungary was invaded by Germany in World War II, they both immediately returned to Hungary and fought in the resistance, saving the lives of many.

After the war Ilona and Sandor returned to the U.S.A., and eventually divorced. Ilona married Victor Olgyay in 1951; they lived in Indiana and Massachusetts before settling in Princeton, where Victor became an assistant professor of architecture at Princeton University.

Ilona had three more children, Nora Ava (born 1952), Cora Lynda (born 1953), and Victor Wayne (born 1958). In addition to raising her children, Ilona assisted her husband Victor performing interior designs for many of his houses. From 1970 to 1990 Ilona worked at the Institute for Advanced Study as a cataloguer in the Historical Studies Library. She greatly enjoyed this work, it used her broad multilingual skills, and she developed a wonderful network of friends there.

After retiring Ilona continued her passion for tennis and played several times a week. She also worked with several local volunteer organizations, notably “meals on wheels.” She generously gave back to the Princeton community that she loved. We love you and miss you, our dear cica pofa.

Ilona is survived by her daughters Nora and Cora, her son Victor, and grandchildren Niels, Ingrid, Kaya, and Maille, nieces Sally, Tabitha, and Joy, and great grandson Raoul.

A private memorial service will be held at a later date. Contributions in Ilona’s memory can be made to the Princeton Public Library at 65 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, N.J. 08542, (609) 924-8822 x251, or online at bit.ly/PPLdonate.

___

1-30-13 Noel ObitNelson E. Noel

Nelson E. Noel, of Princeton, died peacefully on December 2, 2012 after a long battle with heart disease. Born in North Adams, Mass. on July 14, 1938 to Alice Rowley and Edgar Noel, Nelson settled in Belle Meade, with his wife, Altina, in 1969. They later moved with their three children to Princeton, where he lived for the last 29 years.

Nelson was a loving husband and proud father of three children. Passionate about international travel (especially family trips to his wife’s native country, Brazil), history, and math, he also loved opera, and crossword puzzles. He was a great fan of international soccer, his beloved Boston Red Sox, and Alabama’s Crimson Tide. Nelson’s generosity and compassion were evidenced by his contributions to country and community. He was honorably discharged from the United States Army in 1963 after serving a tour in Germany, was a treasurer for the Montgomery United Methodist Church, served as an usher at Princeton Presbyterian Church, and volunteered his time on the Princeton Elections committee, and with The United Way.

Following studies at the University of Alabama and graduation from Rider College in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, Nelson began his career as a securities analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York City and earned a master’s degree in business administration from New York University. During his 34 year career he travelled the world extensively in analyst roles for various firms on Wall Street and earned repeated recognition as an all-star fixed income analyst by Institutional Investor and the Wall Street Journal. He retired from Moody’s Investor Services as a vice president in 2000.

Nelson is survived by his wife of 45 years Altina; his sister Janice Hamilton of Chicago; his three children and their spouses, Marilene Noel Bysshe and Robert Thomas Bysshe, Seattle, Wash., Linda Noel and Scott McGoldrick, Princeton, and David Rowley Noel and Kristen Armstrong Noel, Seattle, Wash.; and his four grandchildren, Cameron Bysshe, Olivia McGoldrick, Julia McGoldrick, and Jackson Noel.

In lieu of flowers, contributions in his name can be made to the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro, 3626 US Highway 1, Princeton, N.J. 08540 (609) 497-4190.

A private burial will be held at Princeton Cemetery. A memorial service celebrating his life will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, February 8, 2013 at Trinity Church at 33 Mercer Street in Princeton with a reception immediately to follow at Springdale Golf Club at 1895 Clubhouse Drive in Princeton.

___

Betty V. de Sherbinin

Ms. Betty V. de Sherbinin of Princeton died on Sunday, January 27, 2013, at the age of 95.

Ms. de Sherbinin was born in British Columbia, and had lived in Princeton since 1956. She was most proud of her five published books: Wind on the Pampas, Bindweed, By Bread Alone, The Challenged Land and The River Plate Republics.

She is survived by her nephew Matthew de Sherbinin with whom she lived, a niece, Paula Hawk of Ridgefield, Connecticut and a grand nephew and niece.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to SAVE Princeton Small Animal Rescue League, 900 Herrontown Road, Princeton, N.J. 08540.

Arrangements are under the direction of The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

___

Angeline Dorothy Esposito

Angeline Dorothy Esposito, 96, passed away Friday, January 25, 2013. Born February 4, 1916, she was the eldest daughter of Siggismondo and Pasqualina Ranieri and sister of Filomena Skowronski, Adelina Provenzano, and Pasqualina Pease, all deceased. Angeline was a lifelong resident of the Princeton-Lawrenceville area. She married Joseph A. Esposito (deceased 2006) in 1934. Surviving are eight devoted children: Robert, Patricia Sohn, Marilyn Dinicola, Joseph, Catherine Dress, Diane Jacobs, David, and Thomas, 14 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.

Angeline attended Nassau Street Elementary School in Princeton and worked as a seamstress for several years before turning full time to raising her children with her loving husband, Joseph, who operated a service station in Princeton with his brother Vincent J. (Jim) Esposito for over 50 years. She was most proud of the fact that, despite having only an elementary school education, she was able to see all her children graduate from college, enjoy successful careers, and raise families of their own.

She enjoyed cooking and entertaining, sewing, and spending time with her children and their families. She was also an accomplished gardener, and was proud of the numerous flowerbeds, shrubbery, and plantings that surrounded her home in Lawrenceville. Her gardens were featured in an article in the Lawrence Ledger in the early 1980’s.

For the past 9 years, Angeline resided in Longmeadow, Mass. Her daughter Catherine lived nearby and oversaw her mother’s care. For the past 2½ years, she was a resident of the Julian J. Leavitt Family Jewish Nursing Home in Longmeadow, Mass, where she received excellent care from the staff and was known as “the sweetheart of the unit”. The family is most appreciative of the kindness shown toward their mother by them.

The family will receive visitors at the Kimble Funeral Home, 1 Hamilton Avenue, Princeton, N.J. 08542 on Saturday, February 2 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., with a funeral mass to follow at 11 a.m. at St. Paul’s Catholic Church, 214 Nassau Street, Princeton, N.J. 08542. Burial will be at St. Paul’s Church Cemetery.

Extend condolences at TheKimbleFuneralHome.com

___

Michael Edward Curtin

Michael Edward Curtin, 73, of Naples, Florida and formerly of Princeton, died on January 10, 2013 in Naples, Florida. His life was marked by unwavering devotion and love to his wife and children, steadfast loyalty to his friends, true conviction to his ideals, and untiring commitment to his work.

Michael was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and graduated from Cascia Hall before attending the University of Notre Dame. He graduated from Notre Dame in 1961 with a BA in Business Administration and was co-captain of the fencing team. He received an MBA from Chicago Business School in 1965.

His career was concentrated in International Finance for several companies. Notably he was executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. from 1981-1988. Throughout his life, he sustained an interest in developing markets, particularly in the role that business could play in bettering national economies and individual lives.

Michael was an early Peace Corps volunteer and part of the first group sent to Chile in 1961-63. In his later years, he became a Knight of Malta and his charitable activities were concentrated on this association. He remained a loyal alumnus of Notre Dame and regularly traveled back to the University for class reunions, football games, Peace Corps reunions and other events.

Michael is survived by his wife, Anne O’Grady Curtin; his children, Victoria and her husband Henry, Theodore and his wife Pamela, Christianne and her husband Daniel, and Susan and her husband Michael; his brother John D. Curtin and sister Margaret Curtin Hutchinson and their families; as well as his lively and lovely grandchildren: George, Elinor, Michael C., Daniel, Charles, Virginia, Michael J., Theodore, and Theodora. He was pre-deceased by his parents Agnes Marie Curtin and John Dorian Curtin, his brother George M. Curtin, and his granddaughter Marie-Claire Curtin.

He was a good man. He led a good life. He will be terribly missed by those who knew him.

Condolences may be mailed to 3951 Gulf Shores Blvd North, #201, Naples, Florida 34103.

A Birthday Schubertiad Featuring Janowitz and Gage, Goethe’s Mignon, and Nora the Cat

record rev

By Stuart Mitchner

Wilhelm followed every movement of the dear little creature, and felt surprised to see how finely her character unfolded itself as she proceeded in the dance …. At this moment he experienced at once all the emotions he had ever felt for Mignon.

—from Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship

Franz Schubert (1791-1828), whose birthday is this Thursday, January 31, found musical ideas in some unlikely places, including the old coffeemill he called his “most precious possession,” grinding away while telling a friend, “Melodies and themes just come flying in …. One sometimes searches for days for an idea which the little machine finds in a second.”

Though the anecdote comes from “a not absolutely reliable source,” according to Joseph Wechsberg’s Schubert, it sounds too good, too Schubertian, not to be true, and if he could find music in a coffee grinder, what’s to keep him from finding it in a cat? I’d like to think that at some point in his life Schubert had a feline at his feet as he was composing and that whenever he felt in need of some company he could reach down and stroke it while the creature gazed up at him the way cats do, as if he and the world were one. While I’m at it, let’s make the cat the 19th-century Viennese equivalent of our Nora, a ten-year-old tuxedo female with a white patch on her brow and white paws.

Our brother and sister tuxedos were named for that effervescent couple from the Thin Man movies, Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy). Although the Dickensian puddle of lovable catness we call Nick has never been remotely effervescent, his sister Nora has been a screwball comedy, a Disney cartoon, a creature feature, and a silent musical all in one. Most kittens meet the challenge of climbing and descending the stairs in their own sweet way, some more playfully and lovably than others. Nora slid down the bannister. Nor did she simply trip kittenishly up the stairs: she took them in three effortless bounds. She did not romp: she flew. And she danced. The gavottes we witnessed had to be seen to be believed. When confronted by a suspect obstacle or a toy mouse she would jump straight up, halfway to the ceiling.

Nora and Mignoncat

Lately I’ve been listening with special attention to the Mignon songs in Schubert Lieder (Deutsche Grammophone), with soprano Gundula Janowitz and pianist Irwin Gage, while reading selectively (the emphasis on Mignon) in Thomas Carlyle’s translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795-96). The more I read, the more I recognize qualities in the gentle, loving, otherworldly Mignon that remind me of our antic Nora.

“In her whole system of proceedings,” Goethe says of Mignon, “there was something very singular. She never walked up or down the stairs, but jumped. She would spring along by the railing, and before you were aware would be sitting quietly above upon the landing.” When Wilhelm asks her how old she is, she says, “No one has counted.” When asked who was her father, she says “The Great Devil is dead.” Later on, when Wilhelm is feeling low, “she laid her head upon his knees, and remained quite still. He played with her hair, patted her, and spoke kindly to her” (he also pats her after she performs her flawless blindfolded dance among the eggs). Mignon, like our small but mighty Nora, “was frolicsome beyond all wont.” Responding to a Punch and Judy show, she “grew frantic with gayety: the company, much as they had laughed at her at first, were in fine obliged to curb her. But persuasion was of small avail; for she now sprang up, and … capered round the table. With her hair flying out behind her, with her head thrown back, and her limbs, as it were, cast into the air, she seemed like one of those antique Mænads, whose wild and all but impossible positions … often strike us with amazement.”

Like I said, two of a kind — though, to be honest, our Mignon has mellowed into middle age and is now sweet, sensible (most of the time), and companionable.

Mignon Lives On

When it comes to singing, however, the resemblance between early Nora and Goethe’s Mignon becomes decidedly less credible. A review of a lieder recital at Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall in New York in last Friday’s New York Times (“Of Goethe’s Land, Romantic and Full-Throated”) shows that Mignon is alive and well through German soprano Dorothea Röschmann’s performance of Schubert’s setting of “Heiss Mich Nicht Reden/Bid Me Not Speak.” In Wilhelm Meister, Goethe indicates what that song means for Mignon: “Often for the whole day she was mute. At times she answered various questions more freely, yet always strangely: so that you could not determine whether it was caused by shrewd sense, or ignorance of the language; for she spoke in broken German interlaced with French and Italian.”

A Potent Silence

A thoroughly mute and radiantly feline Mignon is 13-year-old Nastassja Kinski in Wrong Move/Falsche Bewegung (1974), the inventively free adaptation of Wilhelm Meister directed by Wim Wenders and written by Peter Handke. Having embarked on his adventures, Wilhelm (Rudiger Volger) is seated on a train bound for Bonn when he becomes aware of a presence, the full force of which is so magnificently impending you can feel him being literally turned in his seat by the penetrating gaze of the creature across the aisle. It’s an appearance in the most enigmatic sense of the word, revealed in a sequence of gradually more intimate camera movements until her face fills the screen, magnified to a mysterious glory by cinematic chemistry and the natural beauty of Kinski in her screen debut. Ten years later she’s the missing mother in Wenders’s Paris, Texas, one of the great films of the 1980s. Given the animal intensity with which she compel’s Wilhelm’s attention on the train, it’s no surprise that the same actress ends up starring in Paul Schrader’s Cat People (1982).

A Notorious Tour

The notes to Schubert Lieder, which was recorded in Berlin in 1976 and 1977, refer to how Gage encouraged Janowitz to “sing as her own nature dictated.” I chose this recording not only because it includes performances of the Mignon songs but because Irwin Gage introduced me to great music when he and I were on the same student tour of Europe long long ago. The tour earned a certain notoriety when the bipolar leader had a nervous breakdown ten days into the itinerary. Among the numerous delusions consuming the man was one right out of Wilhelm Meister; he wanted us to become a traveling company of performers called the Golden Bear (after the Berkeley-based tour company). He even wrote nonsensical songs for us to sing (“Vi are di Europins uf di Golden Bear/Ve have stars und straw dust in are hair”). By the time we got to Oslo, our guide was totally out of control and had to be taken away by the police.

As the tour was shepherded through Europe for the next two months by a relay team of leaders, Irwin accompanied me to a stirring outdoor concert of Respighi’s Pines of Rome in Venice, a performance of Turandot at the Baths of Caracalla, and a Mozart program in Salzburg, presumably part of the same festival where 18 years later he and Janowitz would present a program (“The Fortunes of Women in Schubert’s Lieder”) around the time they made this record.

Mignon’s Songs

The extraordinary rapport between singer and accompanist (they had been playing together since 1970) is worth a column in itself, but in deference to my theme I’ll stick to Mignon’s songs, “Kennst du das land/Know thou the land,” in particular. It always struck me as odd that pieces meant to be sung by a haunted 13-year-old waif should be performed by ample, well-endowed middle aged women. As if anticipating the potential incongruity, Goethe describes Mignon’s singing in Wilhelm Meister in terms suited for adult performers looking for direction: “She began every verse in a stately and solemn manner, as if she wished to draw attention towards something wonderful, as if she had something weighty to communicate. In the third line, her tones became deeper and gloomier; the words, ‘Dost know?’ were uttered with a show of mystery and eager circumspectness; in ‘’Tis there! ’tis there!’ lay an irresistible longing; and her ‘Let us go!’ she modified at each repetition, so that now it appeared to entreat and implore, now to impel and persuade.”

Composed when Schubert was 18, and performed by Janowitz and Gage in just under five brilliant minutes, the song has everything: grandeur, passion, longing, and mystery: it’s wanderlust set to music. No doubt that’s why Thomas Wolfe used the poem as an epigraph for Of Time and the River, and why Wim Wenders, whose production company is called Road Movies, gave us the train scenes and Kinski’s Mignon in his version of Wilhelm Meister. And it’s why I see a tuxedo cat named Nora sliding down the bannister every time the piano breaks free and flies at the “Let us go!” moment of maximum longing.

Balancing Sanity, Family, and the Mysterious Terrors of Life — McCarter Revives Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” With All-Star Cast

PRECARIOUS BALANCING: Tobias (John Glover) struggles with a difficult marriage, an angry daughter, unexpected house guests and the existential terrors of existence, in Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” (1966) at McCarter’s Berlind Theatre through February 17. (Photo by Richard Termine)

PRECARIOUS BALANCING: Tobias (John Glover) struggles with a difficult marriage, an angry daughter, unexpected house guests and the existential terrors of existence, in Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” (1966) at McCarter’s Berlind Theatre through February 17. (Photo by Richard Termine)

Towards the end of the first act of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (1966), currently playing in a stunning revival at McCarter’s Berlind Theatre, Tobias (John Glover) late middle-aged, upper- middle-class suburbanite, reminisces about a pet cat he had owned and loved for many years. One day he realized that “she didn’t like me any more. It was that simple …. I resented having a … being judged. Being betrayed.” So he took her to the veterinarian to be put to sleep.

Some forty years later Tobias lives in a precariously balanced marriage with his wife Agnes (Kathleen Chalfant). Agnes’ alcoholic sister Claire (Penny Fuller) has taken up permanent residence, and, before long, best friends Harry (James A. Stephens) and Edna (Roberta Maxwell) move in, followed soon afterwards by Tobias and Agnes’ 36-year-old daughter Julia (Francesca Faridany), returning home from the break-up of her fourth marriage. Tobias’ cat story may be a metaphor for the human relationships in this play, but there is no vet available to provide a simple way out for any of these tortured characters. They must live with the losses inflicted by time and the existential terrors of human life.

A Delicate Balance, the first of three Albee plays — also Seascape (1974) and Three Tall Women (1991) — to win the Pulitzer Prize, resonates with a striking immediacy and timelessness in this brilliant, thoroughly engaging production. Emily Mann, McCarter artistic director and a longtime friend and collaborator of Mr. Albee, has directed here with authority and wisdom, bringing out the full horror and the full tenderness of these thoroughly mundane yet bizarre proceedings. Ms. Mann has assembled an ideal cast, and together they deliver richly deep, complex individual characterizations and an array of relationships that are utterly credible, intriguing, and three-dimensional.

Despite the familiar surfaces in this drama, with an opulent, deceptively conventional upper-class suburban living room setting, beautifully and realistically designed by Daniel Ostling, this is a difficult play for audiences and actors. There are frequent moments of humor, but the themes here are dark, the loquacious dialogue requires close attention, and the play — at least by contemporary standards — is long, about three hours. And nothing happens, or at least not much seems to change from beginning to end for these despairing characters.

A Delicate Balance might be just as mean and deadly as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1961), considered by many to be Albee’s greatest play, but A Delicate Balance is more subdued, more civilized. In the world of Agnes and Tobias, who were to some degree modeled after Mr. Albee’s adoptive parents, the proprieties of upper class WASP society, that “balance” that Agnes has dedicated her life to preserving, are mostly, except for one or two major outbursts, maintained. “There is a balance to be maintained, after all,” Agnes declares, ” though the rest of you teeter, unconcerned, or uncaring…”

All three acts of A Delicate Balance take place in Agnes and Tobias’ living room. Mr. Ostling’s set is rich in detail, from Oriental rugs to high white molding, beautifully upholstered furniture, sconces, chandeliers, archway leading to front hallway, stairs, and dining room on stage left, adjoining room and backstairs on stage right. At first glance you might want to move right in. After watching the events that transpire during the course of the drama, you will change your mind. A well-supplied liquor table sits at center stage, and alcohol — brandy, cognac, anisette, gin, martinis — serves as a frequent topic of conversation and a motif throughout the play. Claire’s alcoholism is a constant issue and alcohol is a means to help all to escape unpleasant truths and memories and to maintain the “delicate balance” in their lives.

The difficult relationship between Agnes and Tobias quickly becomes apparent in the first act. The intrusions on their shaky domestic scene rapidly ensue. First Claire, who may have had an affair with Tobias in the past but in any case poses a constant threat to her sister’s need for order and control, enters the scene from upstairs. Then Harry and Edna suddenly appear at the front door, with no explanation except that “WE WERE FRIGHTENED … AND THERE WAS NOTHING.” They insist on taking refuge with Agnes and Tobias. They act as if they belong there. By the start of the second act, the angry, self-centered Julia, furious that her childhood room is occupied by Harry and Edna, has joined the volatile mix.

The odd presence of Harry and Edna, and the terror they bring with them threaten to upset the status quo, the social equilibrium of the household. The terror is never specified, never explained, but it is completely credible. Is it the existential fear of loss, the terrible compromises of life, the doubts brought on by contemplation of old age and death? A Delicate Balance is certainly about the needs and requirements of friendship, but it is also about the despair of the human condition and, as Mr. Albee is quoted in his biography by Mel Gussow, ”the isolation of people who have turned their backs on fully participating in their own lives and therefore cannot participate fully in anyone else’s life.”

Ms. Chalfant’s Agnes is elegantly controlled, stern, judgmental, and eloquent in her defense of her way of life. Much celebrated star in Angels in America on Broadway and Wit Off-Broadway, Ms. Chalfant’s Agnes sees herself as the fulcrum of the balance in the family, and is determined to “keep this family in shape. I shall maintain it; hold it.”

Mr. Glover (Tony Award winner in Love! Valour! Compassion! along with numerous other Broadway, Off-Broadway and film credits) provides a worthy counterpart and foil to Ms. Chalfant’s Agnes. He is often passive, attempting to be conciliatory with his wife, sister-in-law, daughter, and friends, trying to do the right thing with his intrusive friends, and suffering visibly and sympathetically in “the dark sadness” he inhabits throughout the play.

As Agnes’ alcoholic sister Ms. Fuller injects energy and a needed breath of candor, humor, and fresh air to the household and the events of the play. Ms. Faridany is utterly believable in her characterization of Julia, and even easy to identify with in her anger and resentment at the loss of her childhood and her inability to reclaim her old room.

Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Stephens, as embodiments of the inexplicable fear that pervades the proceedings, are suitably restrained yet dynamic, ominous yet worthy of sympathy, kindness, and pity, from us and from Tobias and Agnes. These character portrayals are other-worldly yet entirely down-to-earth and realistic.

The six-member ensemble, meticulously, seamlessly directed by Ms. Mann, is intensely focused, in character and convincing. The relationships here are endlessly fascinating and thought-provoking, as this extraordinary cast artfully delivers both the dazzlingly eloquent surface and the terrifying depths of Mr. Albee’s play.

Mr. Albee, who was in the audience for last Friday night’s opening, explained, at the time of the last major revival of the play, in 1996, that A Delicate Balance “concerns — as it always has, in spite of early-on critical misunderstanding — the rigidity and ultimate paralysis which afflicts those who settle in too easily, waking up one day to discover that all the choices they have avoided no longer give them any freedom of choice, and that what choices they do have left are beside the point.” That message and the enduring power of this disturbing play and its troubled characters continue to resonate richly seventeen years later in Ms. Mann’s memorable production.

Love and Opera Are in the Air in Delightful Romantic Comedy

IS IT TOO LATE TO MAKE A GO OF IT?: Reggie (Tom Courtenay, left) and Jean (Maggie Smith) find themselves together again as residents in Beecham House, a retirement home for classical musicians. The pair was briefly married in the past and Reggie has not yet gotten over the breakup. Also, their reconciliation is crucial to the success of the annual fundraising concert for the home because they form half of the famous quartet whose appearance will guarantee the concert’s success, thereby keeping Beecham House solvent.

IS IT TOO LATE TO MAKE A GO OF IT?: Reggie (Tom Courtenay, left) and Jean (Maggie Smith) find themselves together again as residents in Beecham House, a retirement home for classical musicians. The pair was briefly married in the past and Reggie has not yet gotten over the breakup. Also, their reconciliation is crucial to the success of the annual fundraising concert for the home because they form half of the famous quartet whose appearance will guarantee the concert’s success, thereby keeping Beecham House solvent.

Sometimes a gem of a movie falls through the cracks that really has no business getting lost. Such is the case with Quartet, a delightful film directed by Dustin Hoffman and starring Maggie Smith.

The film was released in late December by the Weinstein Company, and one would naturally expect it to generate a lot of Academy Award buzz. But it was overlooked entirely, which means moviegoers might now be tempted to pass over the picture in favor of Oscar contenders. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss Quartet just because it lacks the Academy’s stamp of approval.

The story is set at Beecham House, a sprawling estate in England which is a retirement home for accomplished classical musicians. At the point of departure, we are introduced to three of its residents; Wilfred (Billy Connolly), Cecily (Pauline Collins), and Reginald (Tom Courtenay), opera singers who once shared the limelight as members of a famous quartet.

Melancholy Reggie is rather reserved in contrast to the comic relief from slightly senile Cissy and ladies man Wilf, a frisky codger who flirts with anyone in a skirt. In the meantime, Beecham House is busy preparing to put on an annual concert that is staged each year on Verdi’s birthday.

The plot thickens when Jean Horton (Smith), a very demanding retired diva, moves in unannounced. Not only was she responsible for the breakup of the above mentioned quartet, but she was also to blame for the failure of her brief marriage to Reggie.

However, Jean is so narcissistic that she’s initially oblivious to the effect that her arrival is having on Reggie, who apparently never fully recovered from their divorce. Instead, she spends her time complaining about having to adjust to the relatively modest accomodations at Beecham House.

Will the two reconcile, let alone be able to even share the same space? And can the quartet be reunited to perform as headliners at the recital, a fundraiser that is critical to Beecham’s remaining solvent? These are the concerns that will keep you entertained and engaged every step of the way to the glorious resolution.

A charming romantic romp.

Excellent (****). Rated PG-13 for suggestive humor and brief profanity. Running time: 98 minutes. Distributor: The Weinstein Company.

Area Exhibits 1/30/13

Arts Council of Princeton, Paul Robeson Center, 102 Witherspoon Street, has outdoor sculpture by Mike Gyampo on view through March 30 on the Michael Graves Terrace. “Structure and Flow: An Exploration of Contrasts in Abstraction” runs through March 9. Works by Al Aronson, Benjamin Colbert, Nancy Cohen, John Franklin, and Alyce Gottesman are included. Visit www.artscouncilof
princeton.org.

Artworks, 19 Everett Alley in Trenton, has “World Sampler,” a group exhibit curated by Frances Heinrich, through February 23. Visit artworkstrenton.org.

Bernstein Gallery at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, has works by political artist Marcia Annenberg through February 14. A reception and artist talk is February 3, 3-5 p.m.

D&R Greenway, 1 Preservation Place, has “Urban Landscapes” on view through February 15. Works by Louis Russomanno, Susan Marie Brundage, Jean Childs Buzgo, Wills Kinsley, Leon Rainbow, Thom Lynch, and others are included, along with art by the A-Team Artists from Trenton. Also on view is a photo documentary on dance by Edward Greenblatt. Call (609) 924-4646 before visiting.

Drumthwacket, 354 Stockton Street, shows photos from Wendel White’s portfolios “Small Towns, Black Lives” through March 5. Call (609) 683-0057 or visit www.drumthwacket.org.

Ellarslie, Trenton City Museum in Cadwalader Park, Parkside Avenue, Trenton, has through February 24, “In My View: Stephen Smith, Florence Moonan, William Hogan.” An artists’ talk is February 10, 2 p.m. From February 9-May 25, “Trenton’s Educational Legacy: The New Lincoln School” is on view. The opening reception is February 9, 2-4 p.m. Call (609) 989-3632 or visit www.el
larslie.org.

Firestone Library at Princeton University, has “First X, Then Y, Now Z: Thematic Maps” through February 10 in the main exhibition gallery. “Your True Friend and Enemy: Princeton and the Civil War” shows in the Mudd Manuscript Library through July 31. “Into the Woods: A Bicentennial Celebration of the Brothers Grimm” is on view at Cotsen Children’s Library through February 28.

Gallery 14, 14 Mercer Street, Hopewell, has “Abstractions: Zen Versions, Iris Dancers and Other Images” by Charles T. Miller and “Cannas in Black and White” by Martha Weintraub through February 3. Visit photogallery14.com.

Historical Society of Princeton, Bainbridge House, 158 Nassau Street, has photographs from its collection in the Princeton Pride Gallery. For more information visit www.prince
tonhistory.org.

The James A. Michener Art Museum at 138 South Pine Street in Doylestown, Pa., has “Suspended Harmonies: Fiber Art by Ted Hallman” through March 3. “The Mind’s Eye: 50 Years of Photography by Jerry Uelsmann” runs through April 28. Visit www.michener
artmuseum.org.

Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street, presents “The Pine Barrens: A Legacy of Preservation. Photographs by Richard Speedy” through April 14. Museum hours are Wednesdays-Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. on. Group tours of 10 or more can be arranged any day by advance reservation. Visit www.morven.org.

New Hope Arts Center, 2 Stockton Avenue, New Hope, Pa., has “New Hope New Media” through February 10. Artists include Andrew Wilkinson, John Goodyear, Lisa Nanni, Frances Heinrich, Susan Hogan, Elizabeth McCue, Marc Reed, Simone Spicer, and Carol Wisker. Visit www.newhopearts.org.

New Jersey State Museum, 205 West State Street, Trenton, displays “Jon Naar: Signature Photography” through May 4. Visit www.nj.gov/state/museum.

The Princeton University Art Museum has“Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom” on exhibit through February 17. “Two Views” Atget & Friedlander” is on display through March 10. “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe” runs February 16-June 9. Museum hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. Call (609) 258-3788.

Rider University Art Gallery, Bart Luedeke Center, Rider University, Route 206, Lawrenceville, presents “Geoffrey Dorfman: Eye and Mind” February 7-March 3. The opening reception is February 3, 5-7 p.m. Gallery director Harry Naar leads a talk with the artist February 14, 7 p.m. Visit www.rider.edu/artgallery.

Robert Beck Gallery, 204 North Union Street, Lambertville, hosts the 32nd Annual Juried Art Exhibit, “Lambertville and the Surrounding Area,” by the Lambertville Historical Society, February 10-March 28. A reception is February 10, 3-6 p.m. Artists are invited to submit one original painting in all media; subject must be of Lambertville and environs. Call (609) 397-0951 for details.

Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, presents “The Love Show” February 6-March 5. Works by more than 40 artists on the topic of love will be displayed. The opening party is February 8, 8-11 p.m. with music and dancing. $20 donation suggested for the party.

West Windsor Arts Center, 952 Alexander Road, Princeton Junction, presents “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” with work by 18 artists from the local area, through February 24. Photographers of all skill levels interested in participating in “Energy and Motion” show have until February 11 to submit entries. Call (609) 716-1931.

NASA Scientist Jim Green Discusses The Revolution in Planetary Science

NASA EXPERT SPEAKS ON PLANETARY SCIENCE: Jim Green, of the Planetary Systems Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in front of a replica of the Mars Curiosity Rover during the assembly of the NASA float that took part in the inaugural day parade in honor of President Barack Obama last Saturday. Mr. Green will speak at a meeting of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton on Monday, February 4.(Photo by NASA/Paul E. Alers)

NASA EXPERT SPEAKS ON PLANETARY SCIENCE: Jim Green, of the Planetary Systems Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in front of a replica of the Mars Curiosity Rover during the assembly of the NASA float that took part in the inaugural day parade in honor of President Barack Obama last Saturday. Mr. Green will speak at a meeting of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton on Monday, February 4. (Photo by NASA/Paul E. Alers)

While visiting Princeton next week, Dr. James L. Green, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Planetary Science Division, will give an overview of planetary science exploration during the last five decades in a talk titled “The Revolution in Planetary Science” at the regular monthly meeting of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) on Monday, February 4, at 8 p.m. in Peyton Hall on the Princeton University Campus.

Stargazers and armchair investigators who share a common love of the sky will be treated to a glimpse inside the world of NASA since it launched its first successful planetary spacecraft some 50 years ago. “Virtually everything we knew about the solar system, up to that time, came from ground-based telescope observations or the analysis of meteorites,” said Mr. Green. “NASA has literally invented planetary science that has allowed us to reveal many of the wonders of the solar system.”

The Planetary Science Division that Mr. Green leads is responsible for missions from Mercury to Pluto. The planet Mars has been the subject of particular attention in the last several years leading up to the landing of the Curiosity rover.

Speaking for the AAAP Secretary, Michael Wright said that he was delighted that Mr. Green was able to speak to the association. As director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division since 2006, Mr. Green is eminently qualified to discuss the latest solar system discoveries. Since he received his PhD in space physics from the University of Iowa in 1979, he has headed several data centers responsible for providing scientists with rapid access to data, other scientists, and NASA computers, and information.

Mr. Green began his professional career working in the Magnetospheric Physics Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in 1980. At Marshall, he developed and managed the Space Physics Analysis Network that provided scientists all over the world with rapid access to data, to other scientists, and to specific NASA computer and information resources. In addition, Dr. Green was a safety diver in the Neutral Buoyancy tank making over 150 dives until left MSFC in 1985.

From 1985 to 1992, he led NASA’s largest space science data archive, the National Space Science Data Center at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC).

While at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Mr. Green was a co-investigator and deputy project scientist on the Imager for the Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) mission.

At NASA, he is responsible for solar system exploration at a time when recent planetary science missions have been successfully ventured or completed, including the launch of Juno and Jupiter, and the landing of the Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover on Mars.

The author of over 100 scientific articles about the Earth’s and Jupiter’s magnetospheres and over 50 technical articles on data systems and networks, he has received numerous awards including the 1988 Arthur S. Flemming award for outstanding individual performance in the federal government and Japan’s 1996 Kotani Prize in recognition of his international science data management activities. You may have seen him in the PBS NOVA special Finding Life Beyond Earth. Last June, the American Astronomical Society presented him with the distinguished 2012 Popular Writing Award for his contribution to the article “The Perfect Solar Superstorm,” published in the February 2011 issue of Sky & Telescope. 

Not only is Mr. Green an accomplished scientist and communicator, he is a student of the American Civil War with a special interest in ballooning. It seems that during the war, balloons played an important role in map-making, artillery-spotting, and the observation and reporting of troop movement.

Founded in 1962, the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton currently has over 80 members with interests in all aspects of astronomy and space science. The organization promotes a wide range of astronomy-related activities including: solar, planetary, and deep-sky observing, astro-photography, star parties, lectures, and education. It owns and operates two observatories in New Jersey, one at Washington Crossing State Park and one at Jenny Jump State Park.

The AAAP, which hosts public observing at its observatory in Washington-Crossing State Park, Titusville, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. (weather permitting) on Fridays from April to October, holds public lectures on the second Tuesday of each month in Princeton. The speaker to be featured on March 12, will be author Michael Lemonick. Admission to the lectures is free and the public is welcome. Free parking is available across the street from Peyton Hall. For more information, including directions, visit: www.princetonastronomy.org.