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Vol. LXIII, No. 4
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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Vol. LXIII, No. 4
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
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 (Photo by E.J. Greenblat)
HANDICRAFT: Kids were treated to a demonstration of the art of Chinese puppetry with master puppeteer Hua Hua Zhang Saturday at Cotsen Children’s Library.
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Despite the economic downturn, Princeton University has received a record number of applications for undergraduate admission, approved increasing the amount of funds available for financial aid grants, and increased fees for undergraduates by 2.9 percent, which is the lowest percentage fee increase since 1966.
The Princeton Public Library Board of Trustees heard an audit report for 2007, circulated 2008 usage statistics, and approved a temporary budget for 2009 at its monthly meeting last week.
The January 3 drowning death of 61-year old Plainsboro resident Janet Howard has heightened local concern about safety practices in icy conditions. Ms. Howard fell through the ice on Plainsboro Pond when she went after her grandson’s dog, which had wandered out some 25 feet from the shore.
Representative Rush Holt (D-12) went to school last week — Princeton Day School, that is. Speaking to students in teacher George Sanderson’s early morning Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics class, he talked about attending the recent Presidential Inauguration, his obligations as a Representative (his preferred title to “Congressman”), and his belief that cynicism about government is beginning to recede.
To commemorate the 500th anniversary of theologian John Calvin’s birth, the Princeton Theological Seminary hosted a three-day colloquium last week. Friday’s lecture by James Moorhead, the Mary McIntosh Bridge Professor of American Church History, detailed the political and religious climate out of which the Seminary emerged. Following the talk, Reference Archivist Ken Henke led participants on a tour of the rare books from the seminary library’s special collections.
The question that was asked everywhere was: “Where are you from?” Standing amid the crush of people straining to get into the Capitol grounds on Inauguration Day, I struck up a conversation with the young white woman from Hawaii to my left and the older African-American couple from Birmingham, Alabama on my right. On Monday outside the Smithsonian, two elderly ladies from Georgia and I joked about George Washington’s teeth. During my bus ride down from Princeton to the nation’s capital that Sunday, a Geography graduate student from California and I spoke about how we wished we had been in Grant Park on the night of November 4, especially since both of us had lived in Chicago for a time.
Last Sunday, Princeton University celebrated the 40th birthday of Jadwin Gym which opened for business on January 25, 1969 when the Tiger men’s basketball team beat Penn.
Matt Cook’s grandfather, father, and uncle all played hockey for Princeton University so it’s no surprise that he hit the ice early in life.
As a grade-schooler, Sarah Herr spent an afternoon at Princeton University’s Baker Rink that changed the course of her life.
Born this day, January 28, Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was among the rare directors whose names were used to sell their movies. Just as the Hitchcock brand meant suspense and DeMille signified spectacle, The Lubitsch Touch stood for sophisticated comedy. Evidence of the commercial impact of those three words can be seen in the preview for Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938) advising moviegoers in big racy letters, “In case you missed the finer points of The Lubitsch Touch, We Repeat the Lesson.”
William Scheide celebrated his 95th birthday as he always has lived — listening to great music and giving back to the community. More than 850 of his closest friends joined the musical scholar and philanthropist on Friday night to hear the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart play an all-Bach program, led by guest conductor Mark Laycock and featuring a number of vocal and instrumental soloists. In true Scheide fashion, the concert was not exclusively self-congratulatory; the musical festschrift served as a benefit for Centurion Ministries, a Princeton-based organization dedicated to exonerating wrongly-convicted individuals (a number of whom were invited to the concert). Judging from the nearly full house at Richardson Auditorium and its reaction to the full length concert, the evening was a rousing success all the way around.