The scene is Princeton, April 1982. I had just moved here from Pittsburgh and was learning my way around town. Anne Reeves had recently founded the Arts Council of Princeton, and her latest project was a town gown celebration called Communiversity. I remember meeting her at the festival and being charmed by her personality and by how Communiversity offered a birds-eye view of all the organizations in town.
Every year at Communiversity, there would be Anne Reeves. Last year I spotted her at a table, wearing a zany hat. We never took the time to forge close ties, but we enjoy each others company and share the same values.

Communiversity and the Arts Council have, of course, grown like the proverbial Topsy, and are being run by the next generation, but Anne is still very much a presenece on the Princeton scene, as I discovered this year at Communiversity. I was walking with youth and adults from Princeton United Methodist Church to reenact “riverblindness” to publicize fund raising events for PUMC’s mission trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. We were on Nassau Street headed toward the university gates when Reeves mike in hand, camera crew in tow, halted our sandwich board parade. Why are children leading adults she asked, and she proceeded to interview us for Connect (a link to that half-hour program on Communiversity here — we’re about five minutes into it).

Next thing I knew Daniel Shungu (founder of the United Front for Riverblindness), Rev. Tom Lank (assistant pastor of PUMC) and I (as a church member working on the fundraising) were ensconced in Princeton’s cable television studio on Valley Road, with Anne interviewing us for her weekly program, “Connect.” In an earlier life I’ve appeared on these kinds of shows at both public and commercial stations, and I was really impressed with how smoothly this one ran. George McCullough, the station manager, was behind the camera that day, and volunteer Susan Mott did the editing, with a quick turnaround so that the program could preview the fundraising events this month.

Anne Reeves’s Connect program may be viewed in Princeton Township on Channel 30 and in Princeton Borough on Channel 45 at these times: Monday at 7 p.m., Tuesday at 8 p.m., Thursday at 10:30 a.m., and Sunday at 11 a.m. Though it refers to the May 15 date of the solo handbell concert and the May 22 African Soiree, the program “has legs” and could be repeated later. Here is a link to the riverblindness program.

After 29 years, the wheel has come full circle, as they say. It was great to “Connect” with one of Princeton’s jewels, Anne Reeves