All posts by bfiggefox

Stories told, stories to tell

Around Town, Memoir, , ,

sharon rein b & WThe guy who hired me to work at U.S. 1 Newspaper in 1987, Richard K. Rein, has just published a column, a mini memoir, recalling his 50 years in journalism, starting with a summer job as a high school intern.

My BFF, Sharon Schlegel, said goodbye to her column today in the Trenton Times because she is moving to St. Augustine. I won’t reveal her age but I’m betting she can count at least to 50 years in the business if she starts with her own newspaper, as a kid, and counts her stint as the first woman reporter on the U of Penn newspaper.

Both talk about what journalists call their “voice.” Rein says he turned down a theoretically more prestigious job in order to “find a writing style of my own.” Schlegel says that developing a voice of her own was “an evolving process, an opportunity to explore myself as well as my subjects.”

My style is not as distinctive as hers, but I’m trying to preserve what I do have by continuing with this blog. Use it or lose it applies to wordsmithing as well as to exercising.

I also resonate with a point that Rein makes. He says, “If I see a story (and somehow I see stories in the strangest places) I need to tell that story. I can’t help it. If I edit a story, I want to make it better. Can’t help it.”

Me too. I can’t help it. Hence this blog.

Schlegel’s readers will miss her voice. I’ll miss it in newsprint, but I’ll get to hear it on email — and in person. We plan to Skype a lot, and Florida is just a plane flight away. Perhaps I can persuade her to be a “guest columnist” for Princeton Comment from time to time, or maybe she will write for a Florida paper. I’m betting she’ll have stories to tell.

Smart Driving Cars: Kornhauser’s the One

Technology & Innovation, , ,

If you ever need the best expert on the future of transportation, let’s say, re smart driving cars — Princeton has him. Alain Kornhauser, head of the transportation department at Princeton University and founder of a  company, ALK. Here he holds forth on how John and Alicia Nash could have been saved, not by seatbelts, but technology.

The fundamental problem was that the taxi was not equipped with available automated stability control, lane keeping and collision avoidance systems.  This was not an accident, it was a failed public safety policy that refuses to move beyond crash mitigation and its challenged “V2x” initiatives to embrace forthright automated crash avoidance. 
Moreover, there is a failed Taxi regulatory structure that doesn’t even hint that taxis should have electronic stability control, automated lane keeping and collision avoidance.  What is the purpose of taxi regulation, to keep “Ubers” out of business? 

The Daily Princetonian headline on his profile reads “Like a V8 engine on a roller skate.”

SCOTUS on fair housing

Faith and Social Justice,

Affordable (fair) housing is in the news all around the state, and especially in Princeton. Here are guidelines, set out by the Supreme Court

bfiggefox's avatarNot In Our Town Princeton

The four things we need to know about this week’s Supreme Court decision, a blog post by Eric Halperin and Deidre Swesnik of the Open Society Foundation

1. The court recognized that unconscious or implicit bias is a form of intentional discrimination.

2. The FHA should be used to break down structural barriers to racial integration, not merely to prevent current discrimination

3. Where you live impacts the education you receive, how you are treated by the police, and your access to economic opportunity

4. The Court’s decision extends beyond segregation to our financial markets

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Mr. Ahmed Goes to Washington

Faith and Social Justice, , , , , ,

Ziad Ahmed, whom I know as a youth member of the board of Not in Our Town Princeton, was invited to the White House for dinner with the president. Reason: he had been inaccurately targeted, as a child, for the “do not fly” list. He responded to that experience by founding an anti-bias organization.

Ahmed, now a rising junior at Princeton Day School, established ziad photo ReDefy to “boldly defy stereotypes, embrace acceptance and tolerance, redefine our perspectives positively, and create an active community.”  He has also made many valuable contributions to the NIOTPrinceton organization as well. He is doing important work. Here is the link to Nicole Mulvaney’s coverage in the Times of Trenton.

Princeton Vigil for Those Slain in Charleston, S.C. on Wednesday night, June 24, 2015; Donation informationn

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lindaoppenheim's avatarNot In Our Town Princeton

Organized by Mt. Pisgah AME Church in Princeton NJ, in collaboration with the Princeton Clergy Association and theCoalition for Peace Action,  join with people of good will across our nation heart-broken and grieving for the nine people recently massacred at the historic AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

On Wednesday, June 24, 2015


7:00 PM Gather in front of Mt. Pisgah AME Church 170 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ 08542. We will then peacefully March about 1/4 mile to Tiger Park at Palmer Square.

7:30-8:45 PM Interfaith Prayer Vigil

At Tiger Park in the front of Palmer Square, Nassau St. in Princeton, we will have an Interfaith Prayer Vigil. For those who are unable to walk, please come directly to Palmer Square at 7:30 PM. Faith leaders will offer remarks.

Donations for the church and for the families of the victims can be given to the Mother Emanuel Hope…

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Environmental David vs Real Estate Goliath?

Business, Technology & Innovation, , , , , ,

farewell

Do I have this straight? After decades of trying to develop the former Western Electric site on Carter Road, environmentalists and preservationists in Hopewell (known for their combativeness when it comes to defending rural turf) managed to fend off Berwind Property Group from building high-density housing.

The property, as described by MercerMe.com, is
“the first corporate park ever created in the United States. Built during the Cold War by Western Electric, the 360-acre site included an underground nuclear bunker for the use of the President of the United States and a runway for the President’s plane in the event of a nuclear attack.” Part of this campus has already been developed as Technology Center of Princeton, with Sensors Unlimited its most recent occupant of the largest building, with Worldwater and Lexicon also on the campus. 

Jim Waltman, executive director of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, had a hand in the deal, which went down in April. Waltman speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast on Wednesday, June 17, at 8 am (networking at 7:30) and that’s TOMORROW if you are reading this Tuesday night. Yes, I know, late notice. But you don’t pay extra to be a walk-in — $25 for chamber members and it’s a good breakfast. . 

Waltman will surely introduce the new Platinum-Leed-certified environmental center, shown above and designed by Farewell Architects (though not so credited on the Stony Brook website.) But also ask Waltman about how they managed to “do the Carter Road deal.”  His more well-known battle was with Westerly Road Church (now Stone Hill Church) on its development of the Princeton Ridge. I’m guessing he’d answer questions about that too.

Writing as Sacrament: Frederick Buechner

Faith and Social Justice, , , ,

Surely I am the only writer at this week’s Frederick Buechner writers’ workshop who had never heard of Frederick Buechner until nBuechnerow. More than 200 other writers are attending the four-day workshop at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Even without the event, Buechner had enough Princeton connections for me to write about him here. He graduated from Lawrenceville School  in 1943 and, after a hiatus for military service, from Princeton University in 1948.

Virtually all the other attendees, mostly clergy or retired clergy, are avid fans of Buechner, who influenced several generations of seminarians. One attendee described him as an American C.S. Lewis. Buechner did not achieve Lewis’s phenomenal popularity, yet somebody found the money to establish a Frederick Buechner Institute, based in Tennessee at Kings College.

Belatedly curious, I wondered how the attention to Buechner is being funded. As a business reporter, I feel impelled to answer that question. The puzzle became clearer when I discovered that Frederick Buechner’s father-in-law was the son of the founder of the American branch of the pharma company, Merck. The source was my favorite trove of personal information about business executives who omit personal info from their biographies: a wedding announcement in the New York Times. 

Perhaps the institute and the workshop are funded solely from royalties and not from a Merck legacy. Doesn’t matter. Either way, I am profoundly grateful for the insight that, in Buechner’s words, spiritual autobiography is a form of prayer. 

Craig Barnes: The Writer and the Whirlwind

Faith and Social Justice, ,

seminary photoDespair is always at hand and it is the demon most difficult to exorcise.

Words haunt you from the basement of your soul. Angels or demons make their way into the souls of your readers, carried by your words.

In the encounter with Job, God took Job’s preoccupation with Why and replaced it with WHO.

God refuses to be accountable to us. God is determined NOT to give us hope. Hope comes from the turn in the plot, because we have dropped the question Why — because our hearts are so full of WHO.

So said Craig Barnes, president of Princeton Theological Seminary at the opening worship for the Frederick Buechner writing workshop at Princeton Theological Seminary. He used two texts (Job 38: 1-7 and Psalm 119: 105-112) for his sermon entitled “The Writer and the Whirlwind.” Several at this workshop asked for my notes, so here they are, as much of what Barnes said as I could write down. (Corrections welcome). Barnes’ audience was 250 plus writers (some clergy, some lay people) from around the country. 

CRAIG BARNES: . 

Job has two chapters of narrative followed by 35 chapters of lament. When it is your life that is interrupted, the chapters are long. Grief, hurt, anger returns.

Words were used by the . . . .

Messenger: disaster

Friends: judgment

Elijah: anger at bad theology

Job: wanting to prove his integrity, Job asks “why?”, complains he does not deserve this fate, he is devoted to a capricious God who makes no sense.

When YOU write, yours are not the first words people encounter.

People are hurt by words, people are inspired by words.

Angels or demons make their way into the souls of your readers, carried on the backs of your words.

As children, we learned that “Sticks and stones don’t break my bones.” What a crock.

Words haunt you from the basement of your soul.

Writers know the power of words.

Ps: 119: words have power to lead us to hope and to salvation.

Your word is a lamp for my feet,  a light on my path.

But even God’s words have a modest intention: lamp to feet, light to path — he gives us just enough to take the next step. Mary at the Annunciation — it was Grace that she did not know the future. Job did not have much light.

Job lost everything, including his former vision of God. But he is not in despair — he refuses to curse God and live (despite the encouragement of his wife!)

Despair is always at hand and it is the demon most difficult to exorcise.

 There is a “designer despair” shown by Tarantino, Manson, Jerry Springer, and the models for J Crew who seem to show “all the cool people are sad.” Versus the old-time Sears catalog with a model that smiled, selling jeans.

Message to teens: “there is no such thing as a bad idea” is one of the worst ideas. Despair is a bad idea.

Someone who knows how to write needs to interject words of hope and light that can take on despair!

In the desert, the Hebrews could not go back. They had to move forward to the Promised Land, but they needed a new vision of God.

Where is your own Promised Land? Do you have wrong numbers, wrong expectations, walls crumbling or at least leaking? What God most wants to give you — and your reader — is God!

God talks. God does not answer “why.” God says ‘remember who you are, remember who I am.”

In the encounter with Job, God took Job’s preoccupation with Why and replaced it with WHO.

So much of what people need in 35 chapters of WHY is, they need a better question. Job drops the Why. Explanations, justifications of integrity, don’t matter. Salvation — especially from despair — requires a new vision of God.

But the human side of it is that you have to struggle through it to be authentic. The story curve, is down, then up. After two chapters of telling how Job got there, the rest of the book is the recovery plan, a reoriented life and  anew vision of God is the turning point.

God refuses to be accountable to us. God is determined NOT to give us hope. Hope comes from the turn in the plot, because we have dropped the question Why — because our hearts are so full of WHO.

Solo Handbells — A Musician’s Dance

Dance and the other arts, Faith and Social Justice,

2014 Duo Grazioso 2(1)
Fewer than a dozen solo handbell artists using four octave handbells concertize in the Eastern United States. To watch a soloist is to watch a musician dance.

This rare kind of concert will be held on Sunday, June 7, at 4 p.m., at Princeton United Methodist Church, located at Nassau and Vandeventer (609-924-2613). PUMC’s music director, Hyosang Park performs. Hyosang (left) and pianist Akiko Hosaki comprise Duo Grazioso, and they attract wide renown.

Hyosang directs the PUMC handbell choir, which plays for worship on second Sundays. Four ringers from that choir == Anna Gillette, Alex Farkas, Robert Scheffler, and Bill Gardner — will contribute to the June 7th program.

So come and bring your friends and those who love handbells! This concert is free, and the freewill offering will benefit the Ministry Fund.

P

Peter Crowley and the Kidney Walk

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“I realize how very lucky I am, I have a brother who is willing to donate to me. There are people who are on the transplant list who wait for years to receive a new kidney. Organ donation is truly a gift of life, and I am very grateful to family, friends, and co-workers who screened to be a donor. If you are able, please learn about and consider live organ donation as well as resister as an organ donor on your driver’s license.

So wrote Peter Crowley, CEO of the Princeton Regional Chamber, when he had a kidney transplant last year. Now he chairs the New Jersey Kidney Walk this Sunday, January 7. It’s a worthy cause. Consider joining him!