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Vol. LXI, No. 25
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007
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Vol. LXI, No. 25
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007
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 (Photo by Matthew Hersh)
RETIRING OLD GLORY: Borough residents Ray Wadsworth, left, and Mark Freda decommission the first of an estimated 1,000 flags last Thursday at Princeton Township Hall at the Spirit of Princeton's annual Flag Day ceremony, where aged and worn flags are burned and formally retired. Also in attendance at the event were members of Princeton Township Committee, the Princeton Fire Department, and the Princeton First Aid & Rescue Squad. Spirit of Princeton, a community group that heads up the annual Memorial Day Parade and the Veterans Day ceremony, will next sponsor the Independence Day fireworks on Monday, July 2, on the playing fields adjacent to the Princeton Stadium. |
The state Senate's Budget and Appropriations Committee Monday gave a unanimous nod to a bill that could spell a major victory for Princeton Borough, which has navigated legislative waters in an effort to keep a privately owned Princeton University eating club on the tax rolls, by amending the rules for state historic site designation.
Hillier Architecture, the 41-year-old architectural design firm begun in Princeton and now headquartered in West Windsor, announced Tuesday that it has merged with the U.K.-based RMJM, resulting in what is now positioned to be the third largest design firm in the world.
Princeton Public Library's community room lived up to its name Saturday as a community-based group got together to discuss all things related to development — from pie-in-the-sky projects, to massive developmental undertakings currently in motion, to projects so modest they could only upset a next-door neighbor. Nonetheless, dozens showed, and everyone had something to say.
Band director Joe Downey introduced Princeton High School's award-winning Studio Band to a full house in the Trego-Biancosino Auditorium last Saturday, June 16.
Princeton Regional Board of Education held a special meeting on Tuesday, June 12, in the John Witherspoon Middle School.
Princeton Borough Council last week got its first taste of a rezoning effort that will result in the likely redevelopment of nearly 30 acres of fertile land that abuts not only the Borough's commercial district, but also two neighborhoods that are in close proximity, but different both culturally and economically.
Establishing himself as one of the top schoolboy baseball players on Staten Island, Sal Iacono naturally harbored dreams of someday becoming a pro player.
A thunderstorm bombed the Bronx last Saturday afternoon, interrupting the proceedings as the Yankees hosted the Mets in the latest installment of their annual Subway Series.
Scott Goldsmith had high hopes coming into this spring in his debut season as the head coach of the Princeton High baseball team.
Reading Walter Isaacson’s biography, Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Schuster $32), I couldn’t help imagining a Monty Python parody of the worldwide sensation caused by the Relativity Theory. It would be the ultimate Shaggy Dog story, the apotheosis of all Red Herrings, with an Einstein-type protagonist as a Wizard of Oz creating a smokescreen of inscrutable mathematical evidence (opportunely supplemented by the light-bending effects of an eclipse of the sun) around a planet-altering postulate that no one understands except for a handful of seemingly infallible authorities, who, having been effectively mesmerized by the Wizard (and maybe coached by his agent), proclaim the not-since-Newton greatness of the discovery. Let the media and human nature take care the rest, and shortly thereafter the Wizard is riding down Fifth Avenue in a tickertape parade.
The language of love and the language of magic and witchcraft have always overlapped. Humankind in its eternal struggle to comprehend the irrational, inexplicable workings of the human heart has always resorted to references to the supernatural, the occult. The ancient Greeks and Romans, in their attempt to account for the power of love, created a god, Eros or Cupid, with his arrows shooting into unsuspecting hearts. Oberon and Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream wreak havoc with their magic spells and flowery love potions, helping the Bard to illustrate that “the course of true love never did run smooth” and that “reason and love keep little company together nowadays.” And without even thinking that we are speaking figuratively and comparing our desires and attractions to magical phenomena, we speak of being “bewitched” or “enchanted” or “spellbound” by the “charms” of another.
String players love to play chamber music. Two violinists, a violist and a cellist will get together informally and play the great quartets of the Classical and Romantic composers for hours on end; with enough camaraderie, the players do not even have to talk or look at one another as they work their way through the works of the great masters. Such was the case with the Johannes String Quartet, comprised of two up-and-coming violinists paired with the principal violist and cellist of two well-established orchestras.