Tonight, Thursday June 30, at 6:30 p.m., the Princeton Public Library will screen Inside Job , the Oscar winning documentary about the financial crisis.

It will feature two men, real people playing themselves, with connections to Princeton. One — you might guess — is Ben Bernanke , formerly of Rocky Hill.

A more tenuous connection is (drum roll), my son-in-law, Eric Halperin, then the director of litigation at the Center for Responsible Lending, now working at the U.S. Department of Justice as Special Council for Fair Lending. As pictured. Bask in the light when you can, is my motto.

Today I wore a locket that has a columbine in it, my Colorado-born father’s favorite flower. That’s about the extent of today’s celebrations about my father, who died 40 years ago. I’ve never felt I could write about him, though here’s a photo taken when I was eight, courtesy of my sister who is curating the family album.

But here are two rememberings that I like. This morning on NPR Jennifer Grant talked about what was like to have Cary Grant as a father. She has just published her memoir, “Good Stuff.”

And in this week’s U.S. 1, my ex-boss wrote about his father, whose memorial service was just a couple of weeks ago. It was quintessential Richard K. Rein, clear-headed, self deprecating, heart-warming, memorable. When you read it here, you’ll see the reason for my headline.

Both Rich Rein and Jennifer Grant came to the same conclusion: take time to just play games with your parents. The movie star and his daughter played backgammon and Trivial Pursuit. The publisher played pool with his dad eight days before he died. You don’t need to get all sentimental about a parent, their message is. Just spend time.

Nan Keohane, former president of Wellesley and Duke, is one of the nicest people you might hope to meet, so to compare her with Machiavelli seems odd. But she and that Renaissance power broker share an accomplishment: They are among the few practicing leaders who wrote books about leadership. Her latest book, Thinking About Leadership, was recently published by Princeton University Press. As an academic political theorist with practical experience in leadership, she has some startling insights, such as on gender-based leadership qualities.

Keohane (pronounced “Ko-han”) will speak at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast on Wednesday, June 15, at 7:30 a.m. at the Nassau Club on “How Can We Produce Leaders?” And as the U.S. 1 reporter who interviewed her says, “When Nan Keohane speaks about leadership, people tend to listen.” Reserve ahead, or the club can usually accommodate last-minute walk-ins. (Disclosure: As a Duke alumna and parent I am an unabashed fan of Nan Keohane.)

Among her paradigm-changes at Duke were to close East Campus to upperclassmen so that the entire freshman class could be housed there. (East Campus, built in 1925, formerly housed the Women’s College. With its Georgian architecture (below) it offers quiet, calming ambiance, compared to the main West Campus, built in collegiate Gothic style, like Princeton.)

She wanted the freshman to be able to form cohort living groups and move with their groups to the “favored” West Campus. So that there would be enough space for them, she uprooted the fraternities from their hallowed spots on West. I wasn’t following the student newspaper, the Duke Chronicle, at that time, but I can just imagine the ruckus it caused. Keohane achieved her purpose — to significantly improve the social ambiance for non-Greeks.

Another notable accomplishment: the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Initiative, in which Duke reached out successfully to the neighborhood associations around the campus and considerably improved both town-gown relations and the conditions of schools, clinics and community centers in the surrounding area. In April, at a reunion, I took a tour that showed these fabulous improvements. Durham of my day was a town you avoided, and but today it has been named as one of the 10 best places to live.

After 11 years at Duke, leaving it in much better shape than she found it, Keohane and her political scientist husband were recruited in 2005 to Princeton University, where she is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs. A graduate of Wellesley with a PhD from Yale, she has served on such corporate boards as IBM, State Street Boston, and Harvard.

Though Keohane’s book covers a broad spectrum of past and present leaders, she — like Machiavelli — focuses most of her attention on just a few: Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Queen Elizabeth I, and Franklin Roosevelt. How can we in Princeton grow leaders like these? I’ll be eager to hear.

It was always a surprise to see Jackie Gleason dance, with his unlikely body, so light on his feet. With apologies to the fine Mercer Dance Ensemble women, with their years of training, Maleek Colvin was the one to watch on June 4. He’s not a dancer yet, but his movement added ballast to six of the 10 dances on the Kelsey Theater program that continues Sunday, June 5, at 2 p.m.

In choreography by MDE director Janell Byrne, he found his way through the lyrical rise and fall of a Humphrey-Weidman based “Not So Baroque,” and an upbeat “Shenandoah” with its accented gestures. He came into his own in “With a Blue Note” with its combo of relaxed but not limp swings and weight. How to explain weightedness? In ballet and some styles of modern, dancers try to keep their energy moving upward. In Graham, the dancer sends energy into the earth and draws energy from the earth. This piece is halfway up, halfway down, and a turn has some heft to it. Colvin’s got heft.

Jennifer Gladney choreographed a memorable “The Road Narrows” for four trained dancers (Ian Conley, Han Koon Ooi, and Kaitlyn Seitz, and Brianne Scott). I like how she starts with a three-against-one pattern, and moves back between different configurations.

Ooi was successful with “Seven Drums” to a Thai vocal narrative-like score. Alicia Ackerman, Rebecca Brodowski, Conley Colvin, Gladney, Maria Laurenti, Stephanie Maher, and Scott – they created a cohesive community. Tifani Maldonado,

Also on the program were a confection for five women dancers by Emily Byrne, a solo by Seitz, and Byrne’s “Jig and Reel Stew,” (for Gladney, Leondi, Scott, Seitz, and Trisha Wolf), Brigadoon gone quirky.

“Conversation about the relationships among diversity, privilege and power” is the topic for the “Continuing Conversations on Race”, cosponsored by Not in Our Town, to be held at the Princeton Public Library on Monday, June 6, 7:30 to 9 p.m. This topic was inspired by the talk that Melissa Harris Perry gave about Bayard Rustin at the Public Library in November 2010.

Ann Yasuhara and LeRhonda Greats will lead the discussion based on a couple of posts in the Nation by Harris Perry, including the one entitled Cornel West v. Barack Obama.

To continue, read the Not in Our Town blog post.

Not in Our Town is an interracial, interfaith social action group in Princeton committed to speak truth about ‘everyday racism’ and other forms of prejudice and discrimination, with the hope that Princeton will become a town in which the ideals of friendship, community and pride in diversity will prevail.

All are welcome to this forum, which provides a safe and friendly atmosphere to talk about issues of relevance to our community and nation.