Not Shop Till Drop

Around Town, ,

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I am not a shop-till-you-drop shopper. I would rather try to find something on Nassau or Witherspoon Street, partly through laziness, partly through loyalty to the “buy local” efforts, which are being updated with a new “One Princeton” card and a new “repunch” card.

But last weekend I acquired a new respect for the entertainment that shopping can provide. In Maryland we hosted five college freshwomen (one my granddaughter) on fall break. They shopped for four days straight, having fun together. After two days, when we finally had some pretty weather, I thought for sure they’d do something outside. But no, gleefully, back to the malls. They didn’t actually buy that much but they sure had fun.

And I remember shopping sprees with visitors from overseas. Several years ago I helped a friend from Ghana load her suitcases with presents. Visitors from Africa and other countries are honor bound to bring back treasures from America. We made repeated trips to Dress for Less, Marshall’s, DSW, all the discount stores. Trip after trip after trip to Nassau Park and Mercer Mall.

It was a chance for us to get to know each other, a way better experience than 30 years ago, when I was helping two rather gruff male students from Russia buy bathing suits for their wives. Not an experience I would care to repeat.

But when I got a press release from long-time colleagues, Ken Ellens and Anne Sweeney, about the Outlet Collection at Jersey Gardens, I thought — now THIS is the place to take visitors from abroad. Everything cheap, and under one roof.

My granddaughter and her friends would love it.

Making Music and Money

Business, Dance and the other arts, , , ,

Just off Alexander Road, escaping most notice, is a prosperous commodities hedge fund, Caxton, founded in 1983. I thought of it when reading “Is Music the Key to Success” in the arts section of the New York Times, yet another tribute to how music lessons seem to promote intelligence. Caxton’s co-founder, Bruce Kovner, was quoted on the importance of music to developing mental acuity.

I’ve never interviewed Kovner, though I have followed the progress of Caxton with eagerness and amazement. Such hedge funds are like a forbidden mystery to me. How do they make so much money so quickly?

His name came up in the pages of U.S. 1 on March 8, 2006, when he donated his valuable music manuscript collection to Juilliard. It was a paparazzi-like opportunity to summarize his biography, excerpted from a book. He had been hired by Helmut Weymar to be a trader at Commodities Corporation but had moved to Manhattan after founding the firm. But U.S. 1 Newspaper doesn’t care where you live, only where the business is located.

The link to the U.S. 1 article is here but, since the story is way down on the page, here is the gist of the Kovner part.

excerpt from U.S. 1:

. . .As a collector of rare books and manuscripts, Kovner named his company after the English printer. It grew from incubator space at Commodities Corp. on Mount Lucas Road to its own quarters on Morgan Lane and Enterprise Drive before moving to Alexander Road.

As told by Jack Schwager in his “Market Wizards” book, Kovner was a harpsichord-playing taxi driver when he began trading commodities in 1977 by borrowing $3,000 on his credit card. He did have a blue collar background, but he also graduated cum laude from Harvard (Class of 1966), pursued a PhD at Harvard, managed political campaigns (thinking he might eventually be a candidate himself), hobnobbed with such celebrities as Henry Kissinger and Pat Moynihan, and served as consultant for various government agencies.

Kovner joined Commodities Corp. in 1977 and settled in Princeton with his wife, Sarah, a craftsperson who made violas; they have three children. He left in 1983 with $7.6 million to found his own company. According to the New York Times the family is living in New York on Fifth Avenue at 94th Street. Forbes magazine says Kovner is worth $2.5 billion, and with $10.8 billion under management last year, Caxton is the seventh largest hedge fund company.

Within three years the manuscripts will have their own climate-controlled room at Juilliard, which hopes to make some of them available on the Internet. Kovner is chairman of the board at Juilliard.

Note that these figures are from 2006. Kovner has relinquished the CEO’s job. I am still waiting for my excuse to interview Kovner.

In Princeton and DC: Old Girl Networks at Work

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

The WIBA Leadership Conference was a delightful success, and on an appropriate day, when Congressional women did an endrun around recalcitrant men to lead-broker a compromise.

From Time magazine:

It’s quite an irony that the U.S. Senate was once known for having the worst vestiges of a private men’s club: unspoken rules, hidden alliances, off-hours socializing and an ethic based at least as much on personal relationships as merit to get things done. That Senate—a fraternal paradise that worked despite all its obvious shortcomings—is long gone. And now the only place the old boys’ network seems to function anymore is among the four Republicans and 16 Democrats who happen to be women.

At the WIBA conference, woman after woman told of battling the old boy networks. “Women can’t direct theatre,” Emily Mann was told, yet McCarter hired her. She knew what she could do. Asked: “Did you ever think you would get a Tony? breathless pause expecting modest no”

Mann’s answer: YES.

I think the operative slogan is: “Never underestimate the power of … ”

From Rosetta to Rosemark: Chris Kuenne

Business, Technology & Innovation, , ,

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It’s a think tank, it’s an incubator, it’s a place where the guys hang out, bounce ideas off each other, and cook up innovation. We’re not talking about 20-somethings with a coffee cup in one hand and a beer in the other in a grungy basement. This 4,000-square-foot penthouse suite at 90 Nassau Street overlooks Princeton University’s FitzRandolph Gates and Nassau Hall, and its occupants lunch at tony restaurants like Agricola. They are successful middle-aged entrepreneurs who have made a good amount of money.

At the helm of this consortium, Rosemark Capital, is Chris Kuenne, who recently sold the company he founded, Rosetta. Kuenne is also involved in DisruptiveLA, founded by childhood buddy James C.E. Burke, son of the former CEO of J&J. They hope that Rosetta’s scientific marketing techniques (personality-based segmention)  can lift independent films from the morass of inefficient marketing.

Click here for the rest of this story,  published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on October 16, 2013.

Scratching the Itch

Memoir

If I were in business, instead of retired, I would eagerly pursue strategies for
“growing” my blog.  If someone wanted to ‘do it” i.e. market it for me and split the profits,  maybe I’d be willing to pay more attention to the blog. Could this work as a business model?

Right now Princeton Comment is just a public service, a way to capture a moment (a speaker, a thought) for posterity. And when something comes up that I have written about before, it is a way to scratch that itch. There needs to be a 12 step program for retired journalists.

Practice Your Way to a Nobel Prize

Dance and the other arts

As the new Nobel winners are being announced, here’s a testimony from a previous one about the value of studying an instrument — to develop concentration.

Another Juliet! Another Romeo!

Dance and the other arts

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I’ve seen four versions of the ballet Romeo and Juliet — the Kenneth MacMillan choreography for American Ballet Theatre, the Cranko version for the Stuttgart, also on the Joffrey Ballet, Rudolph Nureyev’s for the Paris Opera Ballet, and Septime Webre’s choreography, now at Washington Ballet but originally for American Repertory Ballet. Nureyev and Webre are tied for my favorites so far, but I’m eager to see number five. American Repertory Ballet premieres Douglas Martin’s Romeo and Juliet on Friday, October 11, with orchestra. Here’s my article in this week’s U.S. 1

Photo:  Karen Leslie Moscato as Juliet and Mattia Pallozzi as Romeo ; Photo Credit: George Jones

Mercer Makes — amazing technology

Business, Technology & Innovation

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I’m pleased with how this week’s cover story turned out. To preview the Mercer Makes seminar on Friday, I tried to relate the leading edge technologies of the 19th century with those of today. Had you heard of AT&T’s pole farm? . And the Sarnoff museum is now open.

Here’s how it all got put together.

Good Fun, Good Causes

Around Town, Faith and Social Justice

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Andrew and Jie Hayes, shown here, hosted their second annual harvest picnic at Washington Well Vineyard, raising funds for UFAR to combat riverblindness and for SAVE, the animal shelter. More than 200 people enjoyed the music, food, and fun — even grape stomping!

van dagens

At left, Laura Brinkerhoff, president of Brinkerhoff Environmental, the largest woman-owned environmental service company in New Jersey and Margaret Van Dagens, owner of J&M Marketing Communications, at the Jasna Polana for a lunch sponsored by the United Way to raise money to supply books to needy pre-schoolers along the Route 1 corridor. The September 26 lunch was the first event in a series of fund raisers to encourage reading readiness in pre-schoolers, organized by the Women’s Leadership Council of the United Way.

Jane’s J2 Visa: Princeton is your Oyster

Around Town

hedgehog fox

This is an open letter to a seminary student’s wife who is here, for one year, on a J2 visa. I’ll call her Jane. Her visa does not allow her to work, nor to enroll in credit courses as a student. I brainstormed with myself about what she could do here in Princeton for the next nine months. The “wisdom” would also apply to any stay-at-home spouses. Maybe you have some suggestions! if so, please comment. (If you can’t figure out how to comment, email me…)

My first question to her is, what do you want from this year? To learn something — a new language or a skill? To make new friends? To barter your services to eke out your budget? Your volunteer help is always welcome at our church, but rather than monopolize you we want you to spread your wings wide!
Here are some ideas.

Since English is the language of your home country’s schooling, teach English as a volunteer to accumulate credits and experience for later ESL employment. Try the YWCA and the Princeton Public Library, start as an assistant.

Volunteer in a nonprofit office with the specific goal of learning something: software programs for office or photos. Try the Princeton Senior Resource Center or Arts Council of Princeton. You could go off the seminary campus and try out the opportunities at the university, such as at the Carl A. Fields Center. The university’s International Center has a wide array of opportunities.

Volunteer at a school in exchange for free or reduced-price classes.

Volunteer at a library to learn the basics of a librarian’s job.

Network to find a professor who will let you sit in on his/her class.

Join a musical group that will let you in for free. The Handbell Choir requires no previous experience and you would learn lots.

Learn a new skill or just keep in shape, perhaps with a municipal recreation class.

Take advantage of the plethora of free concerts and afternoon lectures, perhaps focusing in a particular area. Drill down into the schedule of Westminster Choir College to find the student and faculty concerts, perhaps making friends with someone who will let you audit their course. You have to ask for the schedule of the free ones. Or attend lectures at department that schedules a lot of them, like the Center for African American Studies.

Another option, devote time to online study using the resources from the Princeton Public Library (Here is a good link of the library’s online resources for ANYone to follow.)

Learn about early childhood education — perhaps for your own future children — by apprenticing yourself to a nursery school teacher. No doubt you would pick up some bartering opportunities for babysitting jobs!

Hang out at the Princeton University Art Museum (perhaps even take the docent’s course?) to sponge up everything you can learn about art. Shown above, one of Princeton University’s outdoor sculptures, Richard Serra’s Hedgehog and the Fox. For this sculpture, you experience “a passage” as you walk through.”

Jane — as you “pass through” Princeton, I hope you will find that there are soooooooooo many wonderful opportunities to acquire a new skill or explore a new area of knowledge. Surely you will get the very most out of this year, and that you will be a blessing to those you meet!

Love, Barbara