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

Many a New Day Will Shine — to benefit Congolese charities: Karrin Allyson

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

KarinAllyson2015_Ingrid_Hertfelder_7Now is the perfect time, says jazz artist Karrin Allyson, to revisit the Rodgers & Hammerstein songbook. Listen to her new album, Many A New Day, click her for a preview video.

See Allyson in person at a benefit concert “Chansons pour le Congo III” at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ),  . The concert, which benefits two Congo-based charities, will be Sunday, September 20, at 3 p.m. at the Mildred & Ernest E. Mayo Concert Hall, 2000 Pennington Road, Ewing.

“These songs are innocent yet wise, hopeful yet nobody’s fool, calling us ever forward to be decent human beings,” says Allyson, who features Kenny Barron and John Patitucci on “Many a New Day” on the Motema label. “Sadly, the song ‘You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught,’  from ‘South Pacific’  (a musical that was written with the intention to fight racism) still resonates all too well today.”

The event is presented by the College of New Jersey, Women and Gender Studies Program, Women in Learning and Leadership and Office of the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences.  Allyson will be accompanied by bass guitarist Ed Howard. A reception to meet the artists will follow the performance.

Tickets (available online here) are $70 for adults, $50 for seniors, and $30 for students, with a discount for TCNJ students.  Sponsorships range from Patron  at $240, including three tickets. to Karrin’s Circle for $1,000 with six tickets. For information  call 609-688-9979.

This will be the third concert that Allyson, a four-time Grammy nominee, has given to benefit the two charities. Founded  by an ecumenical group of Congolese women, Woman, Cradle of Abundance (FEBA) supports a sewing school for girls, medical care for women and children living with HIV/AIDS, counseling for survivors of rape and forced prostitution, and school fees for orphans .

UFAR, founded by PUMC member Dr. Daniel Shungu, is an African-inspired, Lawrenceville-based nonprofit charitable organization that aims, in partnership with other organizations, to eradicate onchocerciasis, a major public health problem in the Kasongo region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Women of the Congo have amazing strength,” says Allyson, “and I only want to help with their goals of a safe and healthy society, freed from diseases like AIDS and riverblindness, and to help the world see that they are FIRST class citizens.”

‘Baby Doll’ awakens

Dance and the other arts, , ,

Susannah-HoffmanSusannah Hoffman unfolds before your eyes from child to woman, onstage at McCarter in Baby Doll, by Tennessee Williams in the Emily Mann version. At the dress rehearsal the mesmerizing happened ‘between the lines.’

In this article, you can see the trailer to the original film, starring Carroll Baker and Eli Wallach.

As Bruce Chadwick’s blog review describes, There is a scene in the play when baby doll, barefoot and in her slip, walks up the stairs, back to the audience very slowly, body shifting to the right, the left, the right, the left, her bottom slowly undulating. I was amazed that the Princeton fire department was not called to put out the blaze from the heat Hoffman generated as she slithered up those stairs.  

Writers who see the dress rehearsal aren’t supposed to review a play, but Chadwick’s review — comparing Hoffman to Carroll Baker — did it for me, in more ways than one

On buttons: 12 Pretty Ladies — and the Princeton tiger

Around Town, Dance and the other arts, , ,

sarah bernGetting ready for the New Jersey State Button Society show on Saturday, I’m putting together a tray of “a dozen pretty ladies,” and one of them is a button with the head of Sarah Bernhardt (pictured), another of St. Cecelia. Another category that’s fun is “buttons representing New Jersey — sports, famous people,  harness racing, and the shore etc, The only famous person from my collection that I could put on that tray is — Lafayette. I did find one showing harness racing, and one with a Princeton tiger.

The show is Saturday, September 12, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Union Fire Company in Titusville, New Jersey. The Union Fire Company, is at  1396 River Road (at the intersection of Route 29 and Park Lake Avenue in Titusville), opposite the Delaware River and D&R Canal State Park (with easy access to the canal park), a half mile north of Washington Crossing State Park in Hopewell Township, and some five miles south of Lambertville and New Hope, PA. There is plenty of free parking. Admission is $2 for adults, free for juniors to age 17. For questions about the show or the club, email me or see http://newjerseystatebuttonsociety.org.

Visitors may vote for their favorite entries in each of the competitions, including the Pretty Ladies category that asks for 12 buttons with pictures of women. Buttons showing various aspects of  New Jersey — sports, famous people,  harness racing, and the shore — will also be on display.

fall show second photo - Young button collector Elena Ibanez

Dealers from all over the East Coast sell vintage, antique, and modern buttons, and the activities also include educational displays and a button raffle. At 1:30 p.m. on September 12, Annie Frazier, former president of the National Button Society, will give a competition and judging workshop. .

Sometimes competitions are strictly judged, but for this show it’s “popular vote.” Every attendee gets to vote. It will be fun! Look for me in the kitchen serving coffee….

Ordinary Experts Needed

Faith and Social Justice, , , , ,
sidebar stories heartAre you passionate about a cause — neighborhood safety, addiction recovery, affordable education, housing and healthcare, racial equality and relations, veteran issues, incarceration and re-entry, gender issues, economic opportunity, parenting, mental health, gun control, the environment …. And do you have first hand experience with it?

A new nonprofit, Sidebar Stories, invites anyone to a free workshop this Saturday at PUMC. If you sign up, you will be called an “ordinary expert.” You will learn how to own and tell your story in a way that makes sure it will be felt by those who need to know where you’ve been and what you’ve seen.

Founded by a hospice chaplain in Bucks County, Ron King, Sidebar Stories helps people connect real life experience, storytelling and visual art. “We offer a full day workshop for people we call ordinary experts to share a personal story related to a significant social issue that has impacted their life (living on minimum wage, urban violence, disability, race relations, veteran’s issues, affordable housing, etc).” says Ron.

At the end of the workshop, you will have made a 3 frame storyboard that can be published or posted to help advocates for your cause determine policies and provide services. Sign up here for the Sidebar Stories pARTy — it’s free, and lunch is included.

A Native American saying: “It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.”

Rita Gunther McGrath: Jet lag results from travel privilege

Around Town, Business, , , ,

rita

Reporters often quote Rita Gunther McGrath on business topics, but her picture is in the New York Times today, in a front business page article, on the topic of jet lag.

Joan Raymond reports: “Jet lag has always been an issue for me,” says Ms. McGrath, who has been a business traveler for more than two decades and has dealt with itineraries that take her from New York to New Zealand to Helsinki to Hong Kong all within a matter of days. Raymond describes some of the supposed remedies.

The Princeton Regional Chamber hosted McGrath twice, most recently in 2010 on the topic of safe company growth, headlined in U.S. 1 Newspaper as “Avoiding Fabulous Flops and Epic Embarrassments.”

Shown above in Bryan Anselm’s photo, unpacking from a trip in her Princeton Junction home, McGrath has the last word in the NYT story:

“What we all need to remember is that we are incredibly privileged to be able to cross time zones so rapidly,” she said. “Plus, when I get home from a business trip and say something stupid, I just blame the jet lag. That’s good for about three days.”

Tiger on Top: General Mark Milley

Around Town, , , , ,

Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army, poses for a command portrait in the Army portrait studio at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., August 12, 2015. (U.S. Army photo by Monica King/Released)

The new chief of staff of the United States Army, General Mark Milley, graduated from Princeton University in 1980. Nicknamed “Milldog” as an ice hockey player, he majored in political science and did ROTC, The four-star general’s father, a Marine, fought at Iwo Jima, according to the Daily Princetonian.

Milley credits Princeton with teaching critical thinking: “a way to frame problems, be skeptical in an intellectual sense of answers and issues and problems you’re facing. It’s almost a worldview or mindset more than a specific instance. You’d be surprised how many people don’t do it.”

“If I needed help with anything … he would stop what he’s doing, assist and help out,” said a friend quoted for the Daily Princetonian article. “He’s just a great friend. He’s the guy you want in the foxhole with you,”

Milley will serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, soon to be headed by a general from the Marine Corps, Joseph Dunford, a Georgetown University alumnus. Dunford has been nominated by Ash Carter to replace General Martin Dempsey, a West Point graduate who finishes his three-year term.

After 20 years Milley could have begun collecting his pension, but as he told the Daily Princetonian reporter, “After 9/11, I decided that I wasn’t going to get out until I was told to get out, You know you were participating in a historic time. As a professional soldier, there’s no way you’re going to turn your back and retire.”

Whites see “incidents” of bias

Faith and Social Justice, , , , ,

Optimists about race are more likely to be white, writes Howard Ross, a diversity consultant. Here is a link to my post at the Not in Our Town Princeton blog, quoting Ross,  who reviews Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me.

This hit home to me. As someone who works against racial bias at Not in Our Town Princeton, I encounter some white people who deny racism exists here. Others insist on recounting their own progress toward wiping out bias and cast an optimistic light on the nation’s progress.

Ross does not call for whites to feel shame or guilt. He just asks whites to admit that they cannot possibly understand the black experience and that we are all part of a system “that is bigger than any of us.”

Writes Ross: “When even those who “make it” suffer indignities that no one else has had to suffer before, as when a President of the United States is the subject of active attempts at humiliation, or the greatest tennis player of her time is called “too aggressive,” or when hundreds of studies show that we still subtly exhibit bias in every area of life. It is natural for those in the dominant group to see incidents. Those who are impacted see an entire system that is designed to undermine them in every way.”

He tries to remain optimistic believing that, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

“But I can afford that hope,” says Ross. “I am white.” Here is the link to Ross’s complete text.

To gain a deeper understanding, here is last year’s Bill Moyers’ interview with Coates.

You can trust a human being with grief

Faith and Social Justice,

Thanks to my daughter I found this monologue from a chaplain, Kate Braestrup, on dealing with grief. We all are trying to help others with loss, or help ourselves with loss, so this might be helpful… 

And here’s another one, entitled “When I’m Gone.”  Don’t worry, it won’t make you cry.

Privilege: Giving back

Business, Faith and Social Justice, , , ,
-Sy-Stokes
The Black Bruins video

Robert Carr

“Those with less opportunity are fighting for position, trying to find their place, but those with privilege are hitting triples, when they were already on third base.” 

This succinct description of white privilege came from the video The Black Bruins, by Sy Stokes, which went viral in 2013. An article by Eric Hoover in the Chronicle of Higher Education, tells how the video challenged and changed UCLA:

At right, Robert Carr is an example of using privilege to help others find their place. He was not born rich, but as founder of Heartland Payment Systems, he made millions, and is donating $20 million through the Give Something Back Foundation to help low-income students get through college.

(A version of this post is at NIOT Princeton).

Button Collectors — Never too young, never too old

Around Town,

Ariana Brandes with 4-year-old Elena Ibanez at the NJSBS show

It’s never too early to begin collecting buttons. Shown here, at a New Jersey State Button Society show, four-year-old Elena Ibanez and Ariana Brandes, admire a card of collectible sewing buttons. Elena (who lives in London) and her aunt (of Tulsa, Oklahoma) were visiting Elena’s grandparents, John and Lucy Boyd, in Pennington. The next NJSBS show is Saturday, September 12, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Union Fire Company, 1396 River Road in Titusville.