Category Archives: Around Town

Personal posts — some social justice (Not in Our Town), some faith-related (Princeton United Methodist Church), some I-can’t-keep-from-writing-this

Women – telling their stories on Friday

Around Town, Business, ,

njcw2015_finerman_large She runs a hedge fund, has two sets of twins and four nannies — read about the keynote speaker, Karen Finerman, for this Friday’s women’s conference in a revealing article in the Guardian. In 2007, when the article was written, the CNBC Fast Company commentator had $100 million dollars and rarely had time off. Has she taken a vacation since then — and how is her hedge fund doing now?

njcw2015_armstrong_largeI’m also eager to hear from video storyteller Nancy Armstrong, webproducer of MAKERS — womens’ stories that change the world, the largest collection of women’s stories ever.

The New Jersey Conference for Women is Friday, October 16, at the Westin, 7:30 a.m .to 2 p.m. Registration is $125 including breakfast and lunch and Finerman’s best selling book Finerman’s Rules: Secrets I’d Only Tell My Daughters about Business and Life. 

Curmudgeonly note: If only the use of the word “only” weren’t such a big secret To be grammatically correct the title should read  Secrets I’d Tell Only My Daughters …(i.e. not tell anybody else). As is she says she might reveal secrets in other ways, maybe — acting them out? singing a song about them? Sigh.

Still — I’m eager to hear these keynote speakers — helping people tell their stories is among my top priorities. Everybody has a story.

Cassidy-Angus-Deaton-690Writes Angus Deaton: I  see students who want to relieve suffering in the world. Should they go to Dhaka or Dakar? Focus on bed nets or worms? I tell them to go to Washington or London and to work to stop the harm that rich countries do…” (from an article in the Boston Review. 

Here is John Cassidy’s level-headed take on Princeton University’s latest Nobel Prize winner, economist Deaton, published in the current New Yorker. He quotes Deaton as questioning the widespread presumption that rising inequality is always a bad thing. In developing countries, he wrote, “inequality is often a consequence of progress.”

Three Techies for Thursday

Business, Healthcare, , , , ,

“How come you can go on Kayak and book a flight while you’re talking to me on the phone? But if you have a stomach ache you can’t make an appointment with a doctor on your iPhone. You should be able to put ‘stomach ache’ into your iPhone and immediately get a Jefferson physician.”So said  Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University & Jefferson Health System. His ideas are right up my alley and I hope others will like them too. Click here for the U.S. 1 article. 

Klasko speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber’s October Monthly Membership Luncheon at the Forrestal Marriott, 11:30 to 1:30, Topic:  What We Can Learn From Google, Facebook and Adidas: Reinventing Healthcare Is Not Impossible! .Click here for info or to register.

(I can’t go to this — if any readers can go and take notes I’d be happy to print them as a guest post on this blog).

In addition to the chamber’s unusual angle on technology on Thursday, Princeton University’s Entrepreneurs’ group has two more techie events on its Thursday calendar.

And you probably already knew about NJEN’s crowdfunding lunch on Wednesday, October 7. For the U.S. 1 article, click here. It’s OK to be a walk-in.

Here are the Princeton University listings:  THESE ARE MOSTLY FOR STUDENTS BUT THE COMMUNITY CAN ATTEND

Perspectives from a Young Alumni Founder, Patrick Wendell ’11
Where: The Hub, 34 Chambers Street
When: Thursday, October 8th, 5:30 PM
This talk will feature Patrick Wendell, class of 2011. Two years after graduating from Princeton in Computer Science, Patrick co-founded Databricks, a company commercializing the Apache Spark software platform for large scale data processing. Databricks helps companies extract value from large amounts of data. Over the last two and a half years, Databricks has raised more than $40 million in venture funding from lead investors Andreessen Horowitz and NEA Ventures. The company employs more than 70 people at its San Francisco headquarters.

Tech Talk by Nest Labs  
When: Thursday, October 8th at 5:00 PM
Where: Lewis Library, Room 121
Who: Peter Grabowski ’13 (Data Integration), Rosie Buchanan (Algo)
Nest reinvents unloved but important home products, like the thermostat and the smoke alarm. The company produces programmable, sensor-driven, Wifi-enabled home devices. Acquired by Google (now Alphabet) in 2014, Nest has rapidly grown into a company with over 1000 employees, and is one of the leading companies in the Internet of Things (IoT) space.
In this talk, they’ll be covering a few different aspects, such as what it takes to bring a product to market, how the company uses data to influence their feature development, and also the technical challenges that the company has run into in the past few years. Pizza and drinks will be provided!

Oh what a beautiful . . . duo: Allyson and Cardenas

Dance and the other arts, , , , , , , ,

 

KarinAllyson2015_Ingrid_Hertfelder_7I’ve never been a groupie but am learning to be one for Karrin Allyson, who sang and played a Steinway on September 20 at TCNJ. For those who had not seen her, it was an eye/ear popper.

Even for those of us who had been at last year’s benefit concert, Chansons pour le Congo, it was a revelation to have an additional voice on stage — Allyson’s plus the blues of Steve Cardenas’ bass guitar, cradling the tones between the notes in a heart-twanging response.

The brand new CD, Many a New Day, with Rodgers & Hammerstein tunes and Kenny Barron and John Pattitucci on bass, was similar to the concert but I’m sorry to say for those who weren’t there, the concert was way better. At least for me. Partly because you could see Allyson really ‘getting into it,’ standing slim and strong, sparkly bracelet on her wrist, shakin’ her shaker, red stiletto shoes tapping back and forth, crooning and belting in that Midwestern girl-next-door accent with the sexy under-breath. Or at the Steinway, inhabiting that piano, in control, red shoes planted wide, playing that piano like a cello, sole of one red shoe keeping the beat, into it.

For “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” on the CD, Allyson sets up the dawn version of a stride piano  — delicate octaves like bird calls — and lights into the tune that recalls a cowboy riding past corn ‘as high as an elephants eye.‘ But this is no cowboy song. Oh no. And at the concert it was even more intimate, a sleepy-eyed aubade, S. O’Hara waking up on a beautiful morning after a beautiful night. And then Cardenas took that tune, caught it, and caressed those descending half-tones on ‘mor…n…ing,‘ a lover’s response.

What makes me a groupie — I want to hear it again on stage, because — good as Kenny Barron is on the piano — that song on the CD doesn’t evoke the heat of the live performance with Allyson playing as well as singing. I want to hear Cardenas and Allyson sing it again, live. Put me on the list!

Allyson will intro her album at Birdland, October 6-10. Kenny Barron’s show tours to McCarter on October 23. Allyson will be back in NYC in April at the Greene Space and Birdland.

Disclosure: I wrote some pro bono press releases for this concert, to benefit Congolese charities UFAR and FEBA

Dance and Sculpture: October 1 and 3 Out

Dance and the other arts

06_passageA press release from Outlet Dance project that I am happy to distribute tells about dancers make site specific sculpture at Grounds for Sculpture on October 3. These sculptures will be featured, and I am hotlinking them here: Ex-halations by Linda Fleming, The Awakening by Seward Johnson, Force of Nature, 白 Shiro by Jae Ko, Passage (at left) by Kevin Lyles, The Couple by John Martini, The Oligarchs by Michelle Post, Bull 4 & Bull 5 by Peter Woytuk, and Allentown Council by Glenn Zweygardt. Advance congratulations to the choreographers and the sculptors.

The Outlet Dance Project is pleased to announce its upcoming 2-day festival at Grounds For Sculpture, now in its 11th year. Thursday, October 1st at 7:00pm is the Dance on Film portion, featuring films created by women choreographers and dance filmmakers from across the globe. Saturday, October 3rd at 2pm is the annual Day of Dance. This afternoon of live performance is a dynamic, family-friendly journey through Grounds For Sculpture. Come to experience dance and sculpture in a whole new way! Rain or Shine.

The Dance on Film Festival filmmakers include Marta Arjona with Anna Borràs, Maggie Bailey, Ilana Goldman, Sima Gonsai, Jasmine Hearn and Paul Kruse, Juliette Machado, Kyle Georgina Marsh and Ann Lupo, Chris Rogy, Jen Roit and Terence Nance, Amy Seiwert, Zornitsa Stoyanova, Wobbly Dance, and Jana G. Younes. These films come from locations as close as New Jersey to as far away as Spain, the U.K, Cambodia and Lebanon.   

This year’s live performances are choreographed by Belle Alvarez, Zakiya Atkinson, Heidi Cruz-Austin, Melissa Chisena, Taylor Donofrio, Caitlin Dutton, Monica Gonzalez, Heather Harrington, Emma Kimball, Cleo Mack, Boroka Nagy, Hilary Pierce, Donna Salgado, Svea Schneider, Meredith Stapleton, and Ayana Wildgoose. Four of the selected choreographers have been commissioned by Grounds For Sculpture and The Outlet Dance Project, which has been funded in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts to create new work in dialogue with this season’s one-of-a-kind installation, Force of Nature, 白 Shiro, by Jae Ko.

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.”

The North Star: heroism, romance, and treachery

Faith and Social Justice, , , , , ,
"The North Star": Jeremiah Trotter stars as Benjamin 'Big Ben' Jones, carrying John Wooten, playing Lewis Stone.
“The North Star”: Jeremiah Trotter stars as Benjamin ‘Big Ben’ Jones, carrying John Wooten, playing Lewis Stone.

One of my tablemates, at the Princeton chamber breakfast featuring Jacque Howard on Wednesday, was Robert Church of the Doughmain Education Fund based in Research Park. He told about a golf tournament on October 19 to raise funds for innovative financial literacy tools for students. He was also excited about a historical film re the slave trade and the Underground Railroad.

Church went to the Kimmel Center premiere of the new North Star film (the old one, made in 1943, was about the Nazi invasion) starring former Philadelphia Eagle Jeremiah Trotter as Benjamin “Big Ben” Jones.

Says Church:

From my point of view, The North Star was a remarkable re-telling of a truly American story that demonstrated what is great about the American spirit.

I found the cinematography was very different from anything that I have ever seen in a film on this particular subject matter. It put the characters front and center with the viewer, making for a very personal experience. Also, Jeremiah Trotter, the former Eagle linebacker had a leading role and gave a warm and impressive performance. I had all to do to keep myself from giving him a big hug when I saw him following the film. 

The North Star will be screened in Newtown, Pennsylvania with tickets available now through September 24th.

In this true story, Big Ben and Moses Hopkins, according to the plot summary, were slaves who escaped from a Virginia plantation and made their way to freedom in Buckingham (Bucks County) Pennsylvania in 1849. They experienced heroism, romance, and treachery. “Big Ben’s 6 foot 10 inch size and a record bounty for his safe return make him the focus of every slave hunter on the east coast. Their journey exposes them to danger and cruelty; however it also exposes them to the unexpected kindness of the people involved in the Underground Railroad. These experiences will change Ben and Moses forever. Upon reaching the relative safety of Mt. Gilead Church on Buckingham Mountain, Ben and Moses get to experience life as free men and cross paths with historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Joshua Fell.”  Big Ben worked for Fell in Mechanicsville, PA.

When, how, can we see this film in New Jersey?

Cultural historian and Princeton prof Carl E. Schorske died at age 100. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on intellectual and cultural influences in Vienna. He lived at Meadow Lakes.

Dissident Al Wei Wei, sculptor of the unusual zodiac bestiary in front of Robertson Hall, has been allowed to leave China and live in London, as this New York Times article explains.

Jacque Howard: Building community in Trenton

Around Town, Business, , , , ,

Jacque+HowardJacque Howard grew up in Ewing in a large family — 12 uncles and aunts and six siblings. He learned what “community” was. Now he aims to help Trenton by helping create community with his nonprofit Trenton 365, as profiled here in U.S. 1 Newspaper.He was quoted like this: Trenton was a major industrial port once. Once. Ago. So let it go. Stop trying to turn the city back into something it used to be. Start focusing on what it could and should be.”  

I listened to Howard’s story at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast today, and I’m buying into it. He recorded his talk and posted it at his website, here.

My comment to Howard at the chamber meeting, at about minute 38 on the tape, “With your personality and your media access, you can do what really needs to be done, which is to put people together. Racism and prejudice are part of the Trenton problem. and when you get people together so that  they are friends, and they have a friend in that city that they can trust — that’s going to help.”

His response: “If I can get three or four of you guys to agree –it’s going to change this community. I can connect you with somebody, Whatever you want to do — do a quick project, get lots of media attention, at very low cost —  that’s what Trenton 365 is about.”

The Trenton 365 website has lots of fascinating programs, including this interview with Bart Jackson of Bart’s Books done at Panera Bread. The sound is a little rough at the beginning, but it evens out and Jackson is always worth listening to.

Trenton 365 is broadcast on WIMG AM 1300 and streamed live at wimg1300.com Tuesdays from 8 to 9 p.m., and on WWFM 89.1 HD2 and streamed live at jazzon2.org Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 7 p.m. But you can always get it on the website.