The worst of it, said 17-year-old Ziad Ahmed, ” is waking up in America after crying yourself to sleep, and not feeling safe. (If you don’t feel that way, you don’t get to belittle how millions of us are feeling.)
Tomorrow is another day, says Ahmed. “But tomorrow, I will continue to rise as a proud American-Muslim teenager, and I will not let anyone take that away from me no matter what tomorrow holds. Tomorrow, we rebuild. We have to.”
High Level Networking: Tommy Hilfiger (in pinstripes) greets Princeton Regional Chamber CEO and board chairman Richard Coyne (Alice Barfield looking on) at the Hyatt ‘s VIP reception downstairs before he was interviewed upstairs by Richard K. Rein for 400 eager fans about his book “American Dreamer.”
Election morning — how did I do this? – I am scheduled to speak at 7 a.m. at the Capital Networking Group at my own church, Princeton United Methodist, at Nassau & Vandeventer.
Upstairs, the church is a polling place for District 10. Downstairs, in Fellowship Hall, I guarantee no politics. Only stories.
For the entrepreneurs in this group, which meets every Tuesday morning for breakfast (good bagels!)
The items below popped up in my news feed this week and may find their way into the stories I’ll tell.
The first seven words matter. In person, you may make your first impression in a millisecond, the blink of an eye, according to Princeton psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov (Association for Psychological Science) July, 2006.
“If you can’t be funny, be interesting.” Harold Ross, founder of The New Yorker magazine, from The Writer’s Almanac.
“If it’s familiar but has a certain something that sets it apart, you’ve got a hit,’ Tommy Hilfiger, American Dreamer, p.131
“The pay phone measured time in quarters, the Internet in taps and clicks.” In There’s Nobody Here by That Name, by Steve Bryant via Medium Daily Digest.
SO, you might ask, why did I use my photo of Tommy Hilfiger for this post?
BECAUSE I COULD! Any good PR person knows never to miss a chance to tag along on celebrity coat tails, however slim the connection.
Of course — all the media attention to a certain celebrity is what got us to this point in the election cycle.
Surely Michele Alperin’s superb October 19 cover story in U.S. 1 Newspaper on Ruha Benjamin helped to enhance awareness of the value of Racial Literacy. Benjamin’s first lecture drew an enthusiastic standing-room-only crowd at the Princeton Public Library, and on Tuesday, October 25, at 6:30 p.m. she will facilitate the discussion at the Garden Theatre’s screening of the three-part documentary “Race, the Power of an Illusion.”
This first segment, “The Differences Between Us,” examines the science -including genetics – that challenges the assumption that human beings can be bundled into three or four fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.
Racial literacy is a much-needed, often neglected skill that — in the 21st century — we all need in order to live and work successfully in a diversifying society. But conversations on race are not easy to have. But as Benjamin said in her lecture, “Racism doesn’t belong to few bad apples; it is coded in our psyches and institutions. Pretending we don’t see it is not a cure.”
The five-part Racial Literacy series is cosponsored by Not in Our Town Princeton, Princeton Public Library, and the Garden Theatre. It continues with Benjamin’s second lecture at the library on Tuesday, November 1 and film screenings on Monday, November 7 and Tuesday, November 15, all starting at 6:30 p.m. In the coming months, Not in Our Town Princeton will continue its monthly “Continuing Conversations on Race and White Privilege” on first Mondays at 7 p.m. at the library. For details go to niotprinceton.org.For social media, use #Racial Lit and tag partner organizations, @PrincetonPL, #niotprinceton, and @PrincetonGarden
As quoted in Alperin’s article, Benjamin aims to help people put on a new pair of spectacles and see that “what I’ve learned about this is actually wrong.” Who among us does not need new lenses?
Experience the excitement of music created live! The Momentary Quartet plays Saturday, October 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 50 Cherry Hill Road, in Princeton. Tickets at the door, $15. Experience the excitement of music created live! JaneButtars, piano, Harold McKinney, trombone, Patrick Whitehead, trumpet, and Lin Foulk, horn, improvise in styles from classical to blues to world music. With Daniel Harris, poet, and Aurelle Sprout, dancer.
To continue in this vein, Buttars offers a workshop on Sunday, October 30, 1-3pm. Enjoy inventing music with others in a fun, supportive atmosphere. Beginners to professionals welcome. $10 donation suggested.
“We were there first,” says Bennett Baryln. “Bridgegate has been fascinating because it lifts the veil of what we saw in Hunterdon, the taking over of agencies to serve only political ends.”
Barlyn finally got his just due — a $1.5 million payment from New Jersey settling the case against, as the U.S. 1 article states, a “Bridgegate-like web — that includes small town shenanigans connecting to statehouse leaders, respected legal professionals getting fired, and a lone lawyer’s quest to find the truth.”
Dan Aubrey wrote the investigative article in this week’s U.S. 1 here. Aubrey’s first person similar investigation from 2014 is here. If you are a fan of Governor Chris Christie, either article will make you very uncomfortable. How could this happen? Bridgegate may have the answer.
Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo choose to make a difference in overcoming racism. With their cohorts at Princeton CHOOSE, they collected stories, from all over New Jersey, with the goal of inspiring harmony, and compiled them in a classroom guide. I am eager to hear the founders of Princeton CHOOSE present the Classroom Index at the Princeton Public Library on Thursday, October 6, 7 to 8 p.m.
The pair, seniors at Princeton High School, founded Princeton CHOOSE as a student-led organization aiming to overcome racism and inspire harmony through exposure, education, and empowerment. They are fellow board members with me at Not in Our Town Princeton and I am continually amazed at their energy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Deservedly, they have won prestigious awards, including NIOTPrinceton’s Unity Award and the Princeton Prize in Race Relations.
At the library Vulchi and Guo will talk about their mission and explain how others can participate and engage with their program, including a full introduction to their Classroom Index a guide that includes statistics, research, and personal anecdotes from people all across New Jersey.
“There are few sectors as resistant to change as government and health care,” says Susannah Fox, CTO of the Department of Health and Human Services. Her interview with Laura Landro is in the Wall Street Journal today. “We count on their stability. But I have seen those two millstones grind a great idea down to powder. I’ve also seen initiatives flourish and grow, nurtured on the strong platform that this agency provides.”
My take: In this election season, the image of government-as-inexorably-slow-millstone actually offers a modicum of comfort.
Disclosure: She is my daughter.
Above: Millstones from Evans Pharmaceutical Laboratories, Fleet Street, Liverpool. Used for grinding drugs from c.1846-1948. Catalyst Science Discovery Centre.
“Those who have had a serious illness know that illness is the biggest gift we could ever have. It pushes you back into your soul, where you must find your deep gladness, and it is your deep gladness that will bring you back to life.” Frederick Buechner.
Surely Michele Alperin’s superb 
Experience the excitement of music created live! 
Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo choose to make a difference in overcoming racism. With their cohorts at 
