Let’s be honest, Princeton can be an intimidating town, and I mean greater Princeton, not just the two square miles or the zip code. I called myself a writer when I lived in Pittsburgh but when I moved here 30 years ago I was so intimidated by Famous Writers (think John McPhee)  that I relinquished that claim and lost my ‘writing voice’ for a good long while.

Recently I talked to a former Princeton resident who had just moved back from a stint overseas, and I wasn’t surprised to hear her say that she felt like an outsider, because, in another country, English speakers band together to support one another. If you are used to that camaraderie, you feel rebuked by soccer moms who watch the game in clumps and ignore a stranger’s attempt to say hello. If you come here from another part of the country as a traveling spouse, it takes “a good long while” to get the kids settled — and when it’s time to look for a job you start at square one. You don’t know the turf.

Northerners, I must admit, can be particularly unfriendly. Whatever you might think about the south, Southerners cultivate at least an appearance of friendliness. Because I went to a school in North Carolina, I experienced this first hand, so now when I meet a woman who has just moved to Princeton from the south, I’ll say “how does it feel to be in Cold Unfriendly Yankeeland” and inevitably she’ll burst out with “How-did-you-know-how-lonely-I’ve-been-feeling.)

(I realize I’m stepping on everybody’s toes here — north, south, what’s left? Of course these stereotypes don’t apply to everyone, but I’m trying to make a point.)

Ladies — when you encounter a woman who has recently moved to Princeton, particularly one who is not in the workforce (they’re the lonesomest kind) reach out to her. Realtors —  you are doing this all the time. It’s part of your job to get the wives settled in a new community. You often  refer them to the Newcomers Club at the YWCA, but may I suggest another resource?

A new friend of mine, Cheryl Mart, offers a weekly study “Moving On after Moving In” for women who are new to the community or just plain in transition. It’s a non-denominational Christian study, based on a Susan Miller book and video, that will be given at Princeton United Methodist Church on Tuesdays, starting September 20, at 7 p.m. Cheryl just moved here from Texas and knows whereof she speaks. For more information click here. or email movingon@princetonumc.org, or call 609-921-0730.  Women do not need to attend church to come to the free study.  (Disclosure — I’m a member at PUMC).

Perhaps the “Moving On after Moving In” study is “right” for the newcomer you know. Or maybe another resource is the best one. The Women in Business subset of the Princeton chamber comes to mind. In any case, the very best resource is probably YOU. Make time. Reach out. Have coffee.

PS. If you are a Christian and don’t go to church because Sunday mornings are for the reading New York Times, I hear you. PUMC (the church on the corner of Nassau & Vandeventer) now has a Saturday Evening Worship Gathering at 5 p.m. (609-924-6213, http://www.princetonumc.org). Realtors — if you have to show houses on Sundays, or Soccer Moms and Dads, maybe this is for you.

Yesterday, speakers at 9/11 commemoration services observed about how collective goodness can triumph over evil. Tonight (Monday, September 12) we can see another example of this, how an extreme case of bullying and its terrible result caused an entire town to rise up and create change.


Tonight at 7 p.m., Not in Our Town (Princeton) — in partnership with the Princeton Public Library and the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund — will screen a preview of the national NIOT’s documentary film ‘Light in the Darkness.’ It is the first session in what NIOT hopes will be a year-long change-campaign against bullying, and it will be followed by a discussion.


To start everyone thinking, those attending will be given a card and this opportunity: 
On one side describe your “Experience of Bullying” as either a victim/perpetrator/ 
or bystander, consider:

1) Write briefly how you or someone else you remember was bullied


2) How did it make you feel?


3) Did anyone help you then, or later? How?

On the other side write your “Responses to Bullying,” consider: 
1) Did you ever offer help to a victim of bullying or to the bully?


2) How do you think a family or friends can help?


3) What are some positive things that a community can do?

If you have had no direct experience with bullying please share any thoughts you might have on what steps individuals and communities can take to prevent and heal these behaviors. 


We would like to collect the cards after the program.


You may be thinking — Princeton is such a ‘good’ liberal town, we don’t have a problem with racism or bullying of any kind. Not so. You will learn about that tonight. And we’re working on it. 



You are warmly encouraged to contribute your ideas. If not tonight, perhaps by email (niotprinceton@gmail.com) or by comment on the NIOT (Princeton) blog .

And if you can’t come tonight, “Light in the Darkness” will premiere on PBS stations on Wednesday, September 21, at 10 p.m. It is suitable for adults and older teens.   


Full disclosure: As a representative of an NIOT member congregation, Princeton United Methodist Church, I serve on the steering committee of Not in Our Town (Princeton). 

Not in Our Town (Princeton) is an interracial, interfaith social action group in Princeton committed to speak truth about ‘everyday racism’ and other forms of prejudice and discrimination. We seek reconciliation, mutual respect and open and honest truth telling among our diverse communities. We support and promote social justice, economic justice and educational equity for all. Our hope is that Princeton will become a town in which the ideals of friendship, community and pride in diversity will prevail.

Faithful readers: I apologize for this format. I am flummoxed by Blogspot’s new version. Anybody who wants to help me out, tell me how to keep the paragraphs in!

I knew Mimi O (Mimi Omiecinski) would be a good speaker at the chamber, but she was way better than even I thought. Everybody loved her trademark enthusiasm and informality but she also exhibited the smarts of the “smarty pants” whose IQ she likes to tweak. Her topic was, loosely, what’s good about Princeton as a tourist destination and as a place to relocate your business. “I have been all over the planet, and there is no place like Princeton,” she says. Her premise was that, before the Revolutionary War, Princeton was the number one “layover town” in the country, the town where you stopped to rest your horses between New York and Philadelphia. So her “call to action” was “Let’s make Princeton the number one day trip destination in the country.”

 She’s doing it. Princeton Tour is the top tour in the country, according to one of the travel social media networks, and she sure had the sold-out chamber crowd in the palm of her ever-so-Nashville hand. You can read about her elsewhere, but here are the amazing statistics she trotted out. The NJ tourism GDP is larger than the entire GDP of 97 countries.  In 2010, NJ hosted 68 million visitors spending over $13 billion dollars, and 1 out of every 10 workers owes their livelihood to tourism — and for every 180 visitors a new job is created. Over 300 million people live within a 4 hour drive of the Princeton area. Meanwhile, she said, Princeton University has more Pritzker prize buildings than any other two square miles. “Tiger Moms – they cart their children to look at Princeton AND they spend their money.”

Mimi O knows her celebrities so well she could have been an editor at People magazine. She knows them and she ogles them – Charlie Gibson, Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, Andrew Shue, Bebe Neuwirth, Ethan Hawke, Paul Krugman, George Schulz – she ticks them off, telling where she spotted them. “I landed in the Hollywood of academe, yet I was the only paparazzi.” She knew she had to start a business that would tap this “strangely possessed” spirit or “I was going to get arrested for stalking.”

 Three merchants – Kopp’s, Hamilton Jewelers, and Landau’s – gave up their borough right to have a sign on the street so that Princeton Tour could station photo cutouts (put your face through it and have your photo taken as Einstein, the President’s wife, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, all drawn btw by Joy Chen) of Joy Cards. That was just one of the examples of inter-business cooperation that she cited.

She cited the famous Robert F. Kennedy quote, from 1968 in Kansas, about exactly why we are proud to be Americans. It reads, frankly, like the Beatitudes – nice to think about yet impossible to achieve – but she says Princeton has it all. And that’s how she made her second “call to action.” We need to convey to business owners how great a community greater Princeton is.

 “People won’t uproot unless the new community is perceived to have smart, successful, and happy people,” she said. Happy, said Mimi O, is everywhere here because Princeton folks have such a passion for what they do that they might even work for free. They work all the time, yet she called them, not workaholics, but a great new word “work a frolics” who value experience over acquisition and believe that their products and services will improve lives.

 Her examples: Greg Olsen, an entrepreneur into space who aims to inspire minorities and women to study science. He paid to have his space capsule carted into MarketFair to this end. And Jessica Dhurrie of Small World Coffee, Ruth Chris of the national steak house chain, and Seward Johnson. Happy people want to feel connected and they want to feel they can collaborate.

 Among the biggest and best, incidentally, New Jersey has the number one golf course, the largest Buddha, among the most green space, and the largest rowing facility – inhabited by the Olympic rowing champions who helped found and later sued Facebook.

“Happy people want to stay curious,” said Mimi O., “and if you can’t stay curious in this town it is probably your own fault. Happy people want to give, and we have vibrant nonprofits with great ideas, backed up by the government and business community.” I’m happy I went. If you missed it — well, sign up for a tour with Princeton Tour! Second best, get on the list for Mimi’s blog called Princeton Wannabe. That and the Black Squirrel will give you the flavor.

Last Wednesday I was chumming and grubbing at McCarter’s block party (the great photos by Don Addison, addison1028@gmail.com). This Wednesday I am lugging wet paper up the basement stairs, thanks to Ms. Irene.

Ah well, the Philadelphia Jazz Orchestra was fun to listen to (as did this crowd)

and I did like the pulled pork by Blue Diamond Que (below) and the “world tour of cheese” by Olsson’s Fine Foods.

And it’s a beautiful day today.

If you think this post is an excuse to post Don’s terrific picture, you’re right. At my age and stage, how many great candids can a 71-year-old person expect to have taken (:

I’m also very pleased that three Princeton Regional Chamber members told me, that day, that my last-minute blog post told them about it and got them there. Now that’s what I call ‘reader response.’

This notice just came from my church, located at the corner of Nassau and Vandeventer, and I pass it on. Our household was lucky enough to get power — but perhaps you are among those searching for a place to charge your cell phone and access the Internet. The Princeton Public Library is also open.

Princeton United Methodist Church will open the doors of the Sanford Davis Room today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. — welcoming anyone to drop in — to charge your devices, use WiFi internet, or join in a conversation.

Bring your laptop to Princeton Public Library, open to 11 pm It might be a slow but they are trying to get more capacity..

This really sounds like fun — a community-wide Block Party on the Front Lawn on Wednesday, August 24 from 5 to 9 p.m., with live music — featuring two of my favorite musicians (one pictured) in the Philadelphia Jazz Orchestra, directed by Joe Bongiovi, and one of my favorite catering companies, Blue Diamond Que.

To quote the press release:

This free, fun night of entertainment and community bonding will include dancing under the stars with members of Fred Astaire Dance Studio to live music of the Philadelphia Jazz Orchestra, featuring the finest high school and college jazz musicians in the Greater Philadelphia and New Jersey regions; and opportunities to win fabulous prizes and tickets to McCarter’s 2011-2012 season. Bring the kids for spin art, face painting and activities with JaZams, Princeton’s locally owned and operated independent toy store.

There will also be vendor food items for purchase from Bitter Bob’s BBQ, Blue Diamond Que, Carter & Cavero Old World Olive Oil, Chambers Walk, Chez Alice Catering, Dish Catering, elements, Emily’s Café & Catering, Jen’s Cakes & Pastries, Jimmy Duffy’s Catering, Mediterra, Olsson’s Fine Foods, and Uncle LouisG’s Italian Ices. There will also be a cash bar offering beer, wine and other refreshing beverages.

When I post about an event, I don’t always get to go to it. This one, I’m determined to attend!

I meant only to glimpse today’s New York Times front page soft feature on the way to showering off the dirt of digging in the garden. Then I read this description of a maitre d’ in a Hollywood restaurant.

Dmitri Dmitrov, a 60-year-old Macedonian immigrant with Rudolph Valentino hair, a Chiclet smile, an Eastern European accent theatrical enough to seem invented and a manner so ostentatiously courteous it conjures up a Slavic geisha scripted by Mel Brooks.

Momentary thought: Gee, I wish I could write like that.

Then again, If I wrote so picturesquely about someone in Princeton, they might never speak to me again.

It becomes clear when I look up the byline, Guy Trebay, a fashion reporter known for being on the edge. If I were the “major studio executive who dines on successive nights with his daughter, wife and mistress” who is “guided to cozy spots at Tables 21, 22 and 12,” I would sue.

The rest of the article, of course, redeems the obnoxious copy in what the newspaper business calls “above the fold” or, in this case, “on the turn” to the second page. It always does. Fair and balanced, right? Try convincing the owner of the ox you gored on Page One.

When I was younger, I had more of an edge. But along the way I talked to a lot of owners of oxen. Now my mantra is the familiar “Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary”. I admit that, for a journalist, especially one like Trebay, it’s indeed “necessary” to keep one’s edge.

But in general, I am often too quick with the quip and am working on holding my tongue. Among the dozen or so Biblical instructions on holding one’s tongue is Ephesians 4:29: Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Still. If I were the wife of the Hollywood executive, I would sue. Or at least demand not to sit at Table 22.

Catch the review of McCarter’s first show, Ten Cents a Dance, in today’s New York Times. Ben Brantley gets to review it ahead of time? Yes, it opened at Williamsport and comes to McCarter September 9 to October 9. My goodness, Brantley makes me want to be sure to see it.

The show is part of a year-long collaboration in Princeton, Memory and the Work of Art, that reflects on the 10th anniversary of September 11. How do the arts shape our collective memory of the past? How does art decipher loss and inform our experience of global events? ask the collaborators.

With a dozen partner organizations, half from town, half from gown, the collaboration includes lectures, performances, and exhibits. For instance, The Life and Death of Buildings has just opened at the Princeton University Art Museum and been reviewed in U.S. 1 Newspaper by Ilene Dube, image below.

Two events to celebrate “Memory and the Work of Art” are set for Saturday, September 10. At 4:30 p.m. at the Arts Council’s Solley Theater there will be a reading of Adopt a Sailor and Ten by Charles Evered, followed by discussion. The first was written soon after the 9/11 attacks and the second explores where we are now. At 5 p.m. there will be at 5 p.m. a lecture at the museum by the curators of an exhibition, Cartographies of Time. Entitled “Mapping History, Marking Time,” the lecture will be followed by a reception.

Also at the Arts Council, two exhibits on the theme of Memory and Remembering open on Saturday, September 10 with a 3 to 5 p.m. reception. The main gallery will feature a members’ show of works on Memory; one flight up will be Jay Plett’s exhibit, “Moment: Memory,” a series of street photographs taken in Manhattan during the fall of 2001 (top and below, left).

This collaboration shows how the leadership of a great university, namely the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Princeton Council on the Humanities, can help organize an ambitious schedule. Yet in some cases the connection to “memory” is not so obvious and I wonder if it’s a little artificial. For instance, on October 6 for Princeton University Concerts the Emerson String Quartet plays this program:

Beethoven Quartet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 127

Barber Adagio from String Quartet Op. 11

Shostakovich Quartet for Strings No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 92.

I’m not musically smart enough to guess just how this program fits into “memory.” Can anyone fill me in? Perhaps if I attend the pre-concert lecture I’ll find out.

One performance that might fit right in with this theme is Susan Tenney’s “je me souviens . . I remember” as described in earlier posts.

Though it’s slated to be danced in New York, not Princeton, Tenney is a Princeton-based choreographer, and she does answer the question, How do the arts shape our memory of the past….and decipher loss?

Brantley titled his review “Music, Memories, and Regret” and opens with “A piano is a dangerous thing in Ten Cents a Dance, John Doyle’s beautiful, brooding collage on the songs of Rodgers and Hart. a piano, you see, makes music. And music makes memories. And memories, well, as often as not they make regrets. So a piano can hurt a guy bad, especially in a place like the deserted gin palace where “Ten Cents a Dance” takes place.”

I’m looking forward to seeing Donna McKechnie, the original Cassie in Chorus Line, in the six-person cast.

Photos, from top: Jay Plett, T. Charles Erickson, Richard Misrach, Jay Plett, Elliott Gordon.