Category Archives: Memoir

Orcas and Egoists

Around Town, Dance and the other arts, Memoir, , , , ,

Who knew Scott McVay was an Orca expert? I thought of him only as a grant-giver with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. His work as a marine expert was one of several surprises in the fall issue of Genesis, now online on the site of  U.S. 1 Newspaper, which excerpted part of McVay’s memoir, Surprise Encounters.  The launch party will be Wednesday, October 14, at 6 p.m. at Labyrinth Bookstore, click here for background. 

Another surprise — the so-healthy ego of mathematician John Conway, described as “archly roguish with a gawky, geeky magnetism” by Siobhan Roberts in the  biography Genius at Play,  excerpted here in U.S. 1’s Genesis. She quotes Conway:
“As I often say, modesty is my only vice. If I weren’t so modest, I’d be perfect.*
Everyone who knows him knows it. Most everyone loves him nonetheless. Conway’s is a jocund and playful egomania, sweetened by self-deprecating charm. Based at Princeton University, though having made his name and found fame at Cambridge, he claims never to have worked a day in his life. 

Both excerpts left me wanting more.

Here is how to write an op ed piece, a la the Financial Times. The only Princeton connection was, I found it on the website of the Princeton University Press. It’s good for memoir writing or just plain writing.

“If any like-minded person could have written your piece then assume someone has.”

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.

Listen, Then Prescribe.

Healthcare, Memoir, Technology & Innovation, , , , ,

Barile at hospital

Dr. David Barile’s aim is sky high — to effect a culture change in medical decision making. He speaks on Wednesday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Nassau Club, for the Princeton Regional Chamber. Barile, a foremost expert in palliative care, has a mobile platform, Goals of Care, to help align what patients need with what doctors prescribe. The platform is powered by a Princeton start-up, V  Read about it here. Sign up for the breakfast here — or just come. Networking at 7:30, breakfast at 8.

Towers, teapots — and boathouses

Around Town, Business, Dance and the other arts, Memoir, , , , , , , , , ,

Michael Graves in his studio DSC_0043 ret, 13 inches wide, credit Jon Naar, 2011 (1)

You probably read the New York Times  “designer of towers and teapots” obituary on Michael Graves, who died yesterday (3-12-15) at 80.

You probably did not see this excellent video of Grounds for Sculpture’s Tom Moran reminiscing about Graves, taken yesterday by Times of Trenton’s Michael Mancuso. Grounds for Sculpture has a 50-year Graves retrospective running through April 5.  Everybody is talking about their Michael Graves memory.

Early in my tenure at U.S. 1, Rich Rein assigned me to write a cover story on Graves. In the early days, U.S. 1 was a monthly, then biweekly, and cover stories ran at least 5,000 words.

The only way Graves could fit me into his schedule was for me to accompany him on a 6 a.m. Amtrak train to Washington, D.C., so Rein agreed to buy my business class ticket.

Bleary eyed, notebook equipped, I met the courtly Graves on the Princeton Junction platform. Two of the things he said stay with me today. He was telling about his upbringing. “I guess your mom was proud of your drawings and put them on the refrigerator?” I asked. His answer was . . . pause, “No.”

I thought that was a poignant comment and made a mental note to visibly appreciate my own children’s talents more.  At that point in his career, though the Humana building was up, and the Disney hotels were in the works,  no significant buildings carried the Graves signature in Princeton. Just a couple of house designs. It took a long time before a major Graves postmodern design, for the Arts Council of Princeton, would make it to the streets of his home town.

In any case, it was a heady moment for me. Until I joined the staff of U.S. 1 in 1987,  I had been a dance writer. I had interviewed famous dancers, but never an architect, let alone a famous architect.

Then, as  the train pulled into Philadelphia, Graves called my attention to the boathouses along the Schuylkill River. “Each is a different style, each a gem,” said Graves, of the 19th-century designs, noting that he assigned boathouse design to his Princeton classes.

Baltimore is my home town. I  got off in Baltimore and taxied to see my mother.  I made that train trip monthly for more than  a decade. Remembering that morning, I always craned my neck to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Schuylkill boathouses.

Photo by Jon Naar, U.S. 1, January 26, 2011.
That story “Called the Architect for the ’90s, but his work is invisible here,” was published on November 29, 1989, soon after U.S. 1 Newspaper had gone from a monthly to a biweekly. The paper has published many stories on Graves since that time, searchable in the archives.

 

 

 

 

 

This is an important article, if I do say so myself.  Read about David Barile to discover what you may need to know — what you will need to know — in the future, about palliative care.

11-12 Cover & Front (1-7).indd

2014 nov Susannah newIn a post on Medium,  Susannah Fox explains how an airplane emergency reinforced her belief in the power of peer leadership.  Tap into the ‘just-in-time/someone-like-me network, she says. And2014 nov tuck-ponder be ready to help the next person.
I’ve watched this happen on Michele Tuck-Ponder’s Facebook posts. She crowd sources everything from summer camps to bulk food purchases. And it works — people love to help.

Michelle is a former mayor of Princeton Township, mother of two, now manager of the Princeton University Center for African American Studies and a member of my church. Susannah, mother of two, is the former director of the health and technology portfolio at the Pew Research Internet Project,  now entrepreneur in residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — and yes, she is my daughter.

 

 

“Distracted from distraction by distraction”

Dance and the other arts, Memoir, Technology & Innovation, , , ,

That line of T.S. Eliot was a favorite of mine in my more desperate times as a college senior. So when I am feeling desperate more than 50 years later, I know it did not come as a consequence of old age. The distractions are different, but my readiness to put up with them is probably in my DNA.

alex-pang-poster-300x0-c-defaultI am putting November 6 at 2:30 p.m. on my calendar,  to hear an expert on calming technical distractions (Alex Pang) speak to a Princeton University Atelier lass on “Contemplative Computing: Reclaiming Attention in the Age of Distraction.

Pang wrote The Distraction Addiction, with one of the subtitles “Taming the Monkey Mind.”

I just wonder if, after so many years, my distractable simian mind even wants to be tamed.

‘What have you done for the world today?’

Business, Memoir, Technology & Innovation,

They had a party for Len Newton on Friday. There was a prayer. There was a military presentation of the American flag to Ruby, his widow. There were pictures, and speeches, and food, and memories of Len, who died at the age of 88 on July 19.

Most of all there was respect. Jim Floyd told of how Len helped to create Princeton’s first integrated neighborhood. Len marched in Washington for the “I Have a Dream” speech and again for its 50th anniversary.

Len was a stickler for accuracy and challenged lazy assumptions. In the ’80s and ’90s when U.S. 1 Newspaper staged forums, Len was first at the mike, asking the most challenging question. To an article about Opinion Research (the founder of Response Analysis, Len had pioneered at Opinion Research) he wrote an exquisitely measured letter, partly in praise, partly in correction.

Old age didn’t stop him from his passion for identifying a problem and trying mightily to correct it. When the recession hit, he enlisted the resources of the MIT Club (he had been the president) to create jobs in New Jersey. He talked and urged and bent ears to get people to join him in this effort. He enlisted competent people who helped stage an innovative job fair.

Len’s decline was swift — two months. As late as last year, he wrote urging me to note the passing of a pillar of his church, Witherspoon Presbyterian, the first church in Princeton to have significant racial diversity. As late as February of this year, Len was writing notes to Rich Rein at U.S. 1 Newspaper

An example of how he was amazingly active, even to the end: He astounded me and everyone else by showing up for a breakfast at Jasna Polana, where I was one of the keynote speakers. He didn’t tell me he was coming. He just hopped on a bus and got out at the corner of the vast golf course. Never mind that the entrance was a mile down another road. Somehow he made his way through the back entrance of the estate and found his way to the clubhouse for the gala occasion. In the pouring rain.

When Len Newton wanted to accomplish something, he didn’t take negative answers. His granddaughter summed his philosophy in a poignant speech at the wake, saying — whenever she saw him, he would always ask, “What have you done for the world today?”