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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 Ellen Gilbert)
A LESSON IN GOVERNMENT: Princeton Day School teacher George Sanderson (left) looks on as Representative Rush Holt (D-12) speaks with juniors and seniors in Mr. Sanderson’s AP Government and Politics class. |
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.