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Vol. LXII, No. 14
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Wednesday, April 2, 2008
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Vol. LXII, No. 14
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Wednesday, April 2, 2008
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 (Photo by George Vogel)
AROUND THE WORLD: The Princeton International Festival, one of the largest student-organized events on campus, was launched last Friday in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall. The month-long festival will feature -performances, conferences, and other events under the theme of “A Tour Around the World.” The opening ceremony highlighted a variety of performance styles from around the globe, including dragon and lion dances, as well as a procession of students bearing the flags of their native countries.
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The Princeton Regional School district’s proposed $57 million tax levy for the 2008-2009 academic year fell under the municipal magnifying glass Monday night as the Princeton Borough and Princeton Township governing bodies examined the schools’ budget that proposes a 3.32 percent increase, slated for an April 15 vote.
Robert F. Goheen, the Princeton University president who ushered the University through coeducation, encouraged an increase in minority faculty members, and worked to increase community ties by spending several years of his retirement examining town-gown transformation on and off campus, died Monday at the University Medical Center at Princeton. He was 88.
Kevin Wilkes, the Maclean Street resident whose last shot at Borough Council was curtailed because he did not meet the Borough’s one-year residency requirements for holding office, appears to be headed for the dais at Borough Hall, having received a nod from Borough Democrats.
If you listened carefully to the wants of roughly 100 Princeton residents who showed up on a Saturday morning at the Princeton Public Library, here’s what you might have found: they want one Princeton, not two; they want a downtown that is small-business-friendly; they want growth, but not too much, or none at all; they want/don’t want Princeton University; they want a place in town to buy their underwear.
The Mercer County business community was offered a sobering assessment of the county- and state-wide business climate last week: all forecasts are calling for recession, job growth is weak, home prices are tumbling, and there’s a sense of fear on the street.
Between 200 and 250 Princeton High School students were expected to participate in a teach-in and march to the Princeton Regional School Board meeting on Monday to protest the two-day detentions they received as a result of the walkout they staged on March 19 to rally against the war in Iraq. In the end, only three PHS students, accompanied by two students from Rutgers, made an appearance.
Guy Gadowsky acknowledges that his Princeton University men’s hockey team was a bit overwhelmed at first by the atmosphere at the ECAC Hockey championships two weekends ago at the Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y.
Lizzy Drumm reached a comfort level with her teammates on the Princeton University women’s lacrosse team long before she made her debut on the field this spring.
In recent years, the Princeton High boys’ lacrosse team has featured high-powered offensive stars like Bennett Murphy and Tyler Moni.
My rationale for this week’s potpourri is that the subject is the ultimate potpourri, Manhattan, where you can go from John Milton to Sonny Rollins without missing a beat.
Robert Fagles
Right now, though, I’m thinking about longtime Princeton resident Robert Fagles, who died last Wednesday. All the obituaries, including the one in Town Topics, will of course mention his acclaimed translations of Homer and Virgil, but with this column at my disposal, and with Milton among its subjects, I’d rather quote his colleague and fellow translator, Robert Hollander, who, according to an October 2006 New York Times piece by Charles McGrath, once compared him to “a young John Milton, schooling himself, learning his craft, before making his assault on Parnassus.” …
More than 400 years after Shakespeare’s tragic “pillowman” Othello first took Desdemona’s life in their bedroom by smothering her with a pillow, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh created The Pillowman (2003), a contemporary horror story with more than one pillow-murder of its own.
The Trenton War Memorial has been renovated significantly in recent years, to the point that the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra now considers the hall one of its usual stops throughout the state during the course of the year.