e-health package in NYT

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Anyone involved in an e-health business — and in Princeton, that includes Viocare Technologies (www.viocare.com), Zweena (www.zweenahealth.com), HealthAtoZ.com (www.healthatoz.com), e-Healthcare Solutions (www.e-healthcaresolutions.com), Intellisphere (www.mdnetguide.com), and Princeton Living Well (www.princetonlivingwell.com) — will glom on to today’s science section of the New York Times.

The Times’ array of savvy reporters — Gina Kolata, John Schwartz, Tara Parker-Pope, Jane Brody, Gardiner Harris, William J. Brod, Roni Caryn Rubin, plus some doctor contributors — have contributed to a quite wonderful seven-page no-ad section, complete with useful sidebars. Having it all assembled in the paper version may be superior to reading the online version in some ways, so I’m blogging this while it’s on the newstand. But if you missed it, the articles in the online version, an example below, provide useful hot links.

I’ll save my explanation for my intense interest in e-health matters for another post.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/health/30online.html?oref=login

BD Wong’s “Herringbone”

Dance and the other arts,

I saw “Herringbone” at McCarter on opening night, and it was one of those times when you’re glad you went before you read the reviews. Yes, part of it was very dark and horrifying, and in movies I’m such a wuss that I leave the theater for the scary parts, but with live theater I was indeed ready to suspend disbelief. If I had read the reviews, I might not have gone.

And as I reread LucyAnn Dunlap’s interview with Wong (U.S. 1, September 10) I realize that I never saw “M Butterfly,” the David Henry Hwang play and film in which Wong played a female Peking Opera singer.

My first encounter with men playing women on an Oriental stage was in the late 1970s, when the Grand Kabuki troupe played the Beacon Theater in New York. I was freelancing and living Philadelphia, and I managed to snag an interview with an eminent actor. I was starstruck.

I went back and brought two of my young children — they couldn’t have been older than six and nine — to a matinee. They were mesmerized.

I was amazed at how, even within the rigid form of Kabuki, the actor could embody the spirit of an elderly woman with pathos and humor at the same time. It’s this emotion-filled sleight of hand that drew me in, past the dark parts, to “Herringbone.” I can’t get back to McCarter (though the play continues through Oct 12) but maybe I can rent the movie.

BD Wong Makes His Entrance — 11 Times (U.S. !, September 10)

U.S. 1 ran the Simon Saltzman review on September 17.

Family Values

Memoir, Technology & Innovation, ,


My father, Frank H. J. Figge, was a cancer research scientist, and he used to tell me that “Nothing is ever completely true or completely false.” A useful mantra for a reporter. When he died, I was a 34-year-old stay-at-home mom with three children and an intense desire to tap his creative legacy. I learned by doing, as a stringer for a daily paper, and then specialized in dance.

After 10 years of freelancing as a dance writer, I got my dream job, working for Rich Rein at U.S. 1 Newspaper, Princeton’s business and entertainment journal, then a monthly, now weekly (www.princetoninfo.com). Covering business or technology, I discovered, was like covering dance. You present a personality, and you translate the technical terms into words that a layperson can understand. Whether writing about a choreographer, an entrepreneur, or a scientist — they are all “people” stories.

Two decades later I’m freelancing for U.S. 1, on a less stringent schedule. Freed from editing responsiblities, I am “out and about,” meeting business people and attending concerts. Virtually every day, someone I meet or something in the news reminds me of a person I’ve interviewed or an article I wrote, two or 20 years ago. I resisted blogging (what? put stuff up on the web that no one else has edited? do wordsmithing for free? make my reporter’s life public?) Why not just keep a journal?

Because journaling is private, and I’ve been putting words out for public consumption for so many years that it feels right to keep doing it. Perhaps my perspective will be useful — and provoke you to add yours. The comments page is open, and you don’t have to “join” or “sign up” though any identification you might provide would be most welcome. What did your father or mother tell you that affects how you do your work today?