|
|
Vol. LXIII, No. 13
|
|
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
|
|
|
|
Vol. LXIII, No. 13
|
|
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
|
 (Photo by E.J. Greenblat)
ON BOARD FOR WONDERLAND: A giant chess board was one of the features at Saturday’s Alice in Wonderland event at Dillon Gymnasium. For this year’s version of Cotsen Childrens Library’s “Princyclopedia,” where a book is brought to life through various hands-on projects and activities, people of all ages took tea with the Mad Hatter, went on a snark hunt, hung out with the Cheshire Cat, and tested their skills on this giant chess board.
|
Borough Council and Township Committee accepted most administrative recommendations regarding joint agency operating budgets at a special meeting last Tuesday. Capital budget requests by joint agencies were not discussed.
Executive Director Jack Roberts might have been paraphrasing Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke last week (“what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”) as he described relations between the joint Recreation Department and the Princetons. Responding to the recent decision by the Finance Committees of both the Borough and the Township not to recommend Recreation Department capital requests of $7 million for pool improvements and $760,000 for synthetic turf additions to playing fields in this year’s budget, Mr. Roberts noted that there were “no conversations before the decisions were made.”
The Princeton Environmental Commission heard a report last Wednesday from spokespeople for the Westerly Road Church regarding the church’s proposed move from its present location to the Princeton Ridge area along Bunn Drive. Commission member Steve Hiltner also announced that the Environmental Resource Inventory is complete, and will be presented to the Planning Board on May 7.
Over 100 people turned out on Sunday afternoon for the Princeton Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA) forum, “Intro to Afghanistan,” held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton. The two-hour program included six speakers offering perspectives on the history, regional politics, geography, and culture of Afghanistan as a backdrop to President Obama’s proposed troop escalation in the area. Last Friday’s announcement by the president, indicating that would he send some 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, while leaving the door open to send more as the situation warrants, lent particular urgency to Sunday’s event.
Subject to an administrative hearing, Borough Policeman Garrett Brown is accused of serving alcohol to minors at a party in Keene, New York in October 2007. The hearing commenced last Wednesday, and is scheduled to continue on April 16 at 9 a.m. in Borough Hall.
Times may seem tough now, but Princeton scholar Uwe Reinhardt says that things are going to get a lot worse unless something is done about our health care system. Adroitly managing to speak with both the utmost seriousness while keeping his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy recently described the growing numbers of uninsured Americans as “dark clouds coming from the right” in a talk entitled “Health Care Sails Into a Perfect Storm: Can Obama Come to the Rescue?” at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Last Friday turned into a night for upsets in the NCAA Division I men’s hockey tournament.
Bill Tierney didn’t have a good feeling as he watched his Princeton University men’s lacrosse team go through its pregame routine last Saturday at Yale.
It won’t be the same on the sidelines for the Princeton High girls’ lacrosse team this spring without longtime head coach Joyce Jones running the show.
As a devoted customer of John Socia’s Old York Book Shop in New Brunswick ever since since its opening in 1968, I should have known about Princeton’s Bryn Mawr Book Sale long before I wandered into it for the first time on April 28, 1976. I must have heard about it from John himself, but then how is it that the most generous of book dealers neglected to inform me that one of the greatest used book events on the East Coast took place every year a mere 15 miles south of Easton Avenue?
“School was my passion! In our household, education was thought to be our salvation.”
Not only that, adds Cecelia Hodges, she was determined to be a teacher. “The first day I went to school, I knew I wanted to teach. I admired the way the teachers managed the class and managed the group. And I wanted to learn. Later, my teachers introduced me to formal debate, and I enjoyed that. It focuses your thinking.”