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Vol. LXIII, No. 30
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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Vol. LXIII, No. 30
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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 (Photo by Emily Reeves)
THREE ON THE WATER: Saturday saw some serious kayak activity on the portion of the Delaware & Raritan Canal off Alexander Road.
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“We’re looking for as much cooperation and help from the community as possible,” said Health Officer David Henry as he described the Regional Health Commission’s preparations for addressing swine flu in Princeton.
The Princeton Environmental Commission (PEC) considered its mission and the role it plays in issues of sustainability last Wednesday. Following the discussion, commission member Anne Neumann tendered her resignation from the group.
Complete with eye-opening statistics, multimedia artwork, and interactive elements, the latest exhibition at the Historical Society of Princeton (HSP) is focused on the issue of hunger.
All the media attention given to the recent anniversary of the moon landing has special resonance on the John Witherspoon Middle School football field, where the whoosh of rockets taking off is an everyday occurrence for students in Michael Rodos’s Princeton Regional Schools Summer Enrichment Program course, “The Art and Science of Model Rocketry.”
After a stellar rowing career at Trinity College and a stint coaching the school’s lightweights in the mid-1970s, Curtis Jordan headed into the world of banking.
When Brad Gemberling came to Princeton University in 2005, it wasn’t a sure thing that he would make it to graduation.
Like many newly-minted college graduates, Dan DeGeorge struggled to find suitable employment this summer as he headed into the real world.
Ben Stentz is used to giving out awards in his role as the commissioner of the Princeton Recreation Department Summer Men’s Basketball League.
It took Jon Hamm seven auditions to convince the producers of AMC’s hit series Mad Men that he was right for the key role of Don Draper. If you haven’t seen the program, you may think, “No wonder. Who’s Jon Hamm? What an unfortunate name for an actor.” If you have seen the show, you’ll be asking yourself how there could ever have been any doubt. Imagine James Gandolfini needing seven auditions to convince the producers of The Sopranos that he was right for Tony Soprano. Mad Men is as brilliantly cast as it is brilliantly designed and produced, shot, scored, and directed, but Hamm’s Don Draper, like Gandolfini’s Tony, towers above everyone and everything else, absolute and indispensable, hero and anti-hero, a movie unto himself. Resemblances between Mad Men and the HBO phenomenon are strictly uncoincidental since the creator, Matthew Weiner, and one of the principal directors, Alan Taylor, are Soprano alumni.
John Weidman, librettist for Assassins, the 1991 Off-Broadway musical about nine angry misfits who wanted to assassinate American Presidents, described his characters as “peculiarly American …. We live in a country whose most cherished national myths encourage us to believe that in America our dreams not only can come true but should come true, and that if they don’t someone or something is to blame.”
The key to survival among arts organizations in this economy seems to be partnership, and New Jersey Symphony (NJSO) and Opera New Jersey (ONJ) joined together to present a “Midsummer Celebration” this past weekend. Each of these organizations has stood well on its own this past season, but together they were able to produce a work which has not been done in Princeton in a while, but which is always a crowd pleaser. Under the leadership of conductor Mark Laycock, NJSO and ONJ performed Ludwig van Beethoven’s towering Symphony No. 9 to a sold-out house in Richardson Auditorium, not an easy feat in summer weeks when most of New Jersey seems to be at the beach. Thursday night’s concert took a while to get off the ground, but by the second movement Scherzo, the symphony was rolling along with tempi that kept players, singers, and soloists very busy.
Born and raised a Quaker, Susan Hoskins’s outlook on life is informed by the “SPICES”: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. Certified in gerontology, she’s a natural as the leader of the Princeton Senior Resource Center, a private, non-profit 501C-3 organization, and one of two such centers in New Jersey. Besides “connecting,” another of Ms. Hoskins’s favorite words is “empower,” as in empowering people to make their own decisions. Not being a municipal department is a plus, she says, because it enables the Center to serve a wider community. Along with a phone call from Parsippany, recent calls from London and Madrid testify to the strength of the Center’s website (www.princetonol.com/groups/senior), and the facility’s reputation for best practices.
Oh, my aching back! How often have you or someone you know voiced this complaint?
Space — there’s never enough! This is especially true of closets. Who among us would feel perfectly comfortable opening a closet door — without advance notice — and let anyone take a look? Who knows what could be lurking within? Piles of stuff, old sneakers, worn-out board games, a forgotten bag of clothes for Good Will, a box filled with miscellany from the 1960s — and that’s just one closet!