Hidden Talents: At Auction Tonight

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One of the joys of doing volunteer work is discovering the hidden talents of others. For instance, I didn’t know that Rhinold Ponder — who makes his living as an attorney — is an artist at heart, and a talented one.  After majoring in commercial art in high school, he turned to a career in law, revisiting his childhood passion later. His signature work, Gotta Believe, reflects his philosophy “regarding the role of love, faith, and hope in our lives. I “discovered” Ponder’s paintings when he donated Perfect Harmony to tonight’s UFAR auction. Proceeds from its sale could save 350 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo from getting riverblindness — a disease that takes two lives, the affected adult and the child who leaves school to care for the adult. gaged my childhood passion as an adult, but it is most reflective of my life philosophy regarding the role of love, faith and hope in our lives
PERFECT HARMONY, a framed 16” x 22” acrylic painting by Rhinold Lamar Ponder (www.ponderart.com).  Rhinold is an artist – he majored in commercial art in high school — who happens to practice consumer and bankruptcy law.  “In both pursuits, I am passionate about making the world a better place. The styles and techniques in my art vary, but I am best known for explosively colorful and energetic pieces that are designed to either beautify, uplift, or provoke critical thinking” he says. “Hopefully, Perfect Harmony is one of those that accomplishes all three missions.”
 Market value: $500. 

I did know that my friend Sally Ross was a quilter, but I didn’t realize what a talented fabric artist she was until I saw the wall hanging that will be auctioned tonight. (My snapshot doesn’t do it justice). 

IT TAKES A VILLAGE . . . TO ERADICATE RIVERBLINDNESS, quilted wall hanging by Sally Ross of Princeton United Methodist Church. Against the background of the dark night sky, gold stars twinkle over 24 huts of an African village. “The title refers to the ‘villages’ both in the DRC and around the globe working to eradicate this disease,” says Sally. Adapted from a pattern by Kitambaa Designs; some of the fabrics came from Africa, and all the materials are 100 percent cotton.
 Market value: $250.

Two more discoveries — Aruna Arya’s Miss Simoni store and art photographer Jeffrey Yuan — are on tonight’s auction list, as below. 

UNIQUE MISS SIMONI SCARF designed by Aruna Arya to compliment the FEBA Inc. dress. “The scarf is designed and constructed to be beautiful as you wear it and also keep you close to a cause,” says Aruna. Made of maroon silk fabric, combined with gold printed cotton and black cotton detailing, it is covered with embroidery and accented with beadwork. Aruna owns the fashion house, Miss Simoni, at 14 Nassau Street, Princeton. 609-252-0088. E-mail: hello@misssimoni.com. Market value: $200. 

HENRY’S VIEW, a 16″ x 12″ pigmented ink image printed on 100% cotton rag archival paper matted in a 26″ x 22″ frame by Jeffrey Yuan (www.jeffreyyuan.com).  This image is from his “Motion Blur” landscape series, where Jeff explores the idea of imposing movement to a landscape, thereby erasing the details of the land in attempt to define its “backbone.”  Jeff uses photography as a medium to explore man’s relation to the world around him. As in his other landscape work, Henry’s View is a private secret world that he has invited the viewer to share.  In this case, it is a world that would only exist as a flicker in the mind’s eye.  Market value: $400.

The auction also includes the African Sunset quilt pictured here and an African-made dress. You may be able to get tickets to the evening (5:30 to 8) by emailing UFAR@princetonumc.org but — if not — (shh!) you could just show up at 7 p.m. to bid in the auction. It’s on the main floor of the Mackay Campus Center at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Use the parking lot across from Springdale Golf Club. See you there!  

Project Runway Fashionista POSTPONED to 3/12

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Women at the Princeton Regional Chamber are looking forward to this luncheon. Why did it take so long, we wonder, for a fashion entrepreneur to get to the podium? 

Gretchen Jones, Project Runway Season 8 Winner, was supposed to address the Princeton Regional Chamber on Thursday, March 7, at 11:30 a.m . at the Forrestal Marriott. DUE TO WEATHER IT IS POSTPONED TO TUESDAY, March 12, same time and place. Her topic: Building a Brand; How an untraditional path creates an award winning brand.

The Gretchen Jones collection of fashions and jewelry is sold in six U.S. stores plus one in Saudi Arabia, and online. It’s described as “sophisticated and modern women’s contemporary ready-to-wear” and 
“an early folk reinterpretation of classic bohemian femininity.”

Bohemian feminity? That might have been me decades ago, but at my advanced age, I’ll leave those fashions to today’s 20-somethings and look forward to what she has to say.

Men — you are welcome to attend, but ‘this one’s for the girls.’    





Quilt Auction at UFAR’s African Soiree

Faith and Social Justice
Isn’t that a gorgeous quilt? Titled African Sunset, it will be auctioned at the African Soiree, this Saturday March 9, 5 to 8 p.m., to benefit the United Front Against Riverblindness (UFAR). Plus everyone who also comes for the whole program (authentic African dancing and drumming, fashion show and sale, international buffet) will take home one of the adorable dolls, shown below. 

 

The fourth annual community-wide Soiree will be at the Mackay Campus Center, Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street, Princeton. For $60 tickets ($30 for students) email ufar@princetonumc.org or go to www.riverblindness.org. Free offstreet parking is available. The auction also includes other items, including another beautiful quilt. For questions or to bid on the quilts in absentia, call 609-688-9979.
 

Riverblindness starts with an excruciatingly itchy rash, and when it leads to blindness, children must leave school to be full-time caregivers for family members. About 21 million of the 60 million people there are at risk of getting this socially disruptive disease. There is a drug for riverblindness, provided free by Merck & Co., but it is a challenge to get the drug to remote villages and ensure that every person takes the drug once a year for at least 10 years.

I’ll be there, supporting UFAR founder Daniel Shungu. James Floyd, a former Princeton mayor who will celebrate his 91st birthday that evening, will be the guest of honor.

Photo by Robin Birkel: Susan Lidstone (right) shows Dana Hughes the dolls that she and volunteers from the Lebanon Quilting Guild fashioned as favors for the Fourth Annual UFAR African Soiree.on Saturday, March 9, 5 to 8 p.m., at Princeton Theological Seminary. Also shown, a brightly colored African Sunset quilt, made by Shirley Rudd, which will be auctioned at the Soiree.
 

Nice Guys Can Finish First

Technology & Innovation

Though I won’t be at the Alumni Day lunch on Saturday, February 23, I’ll be cheering “off site” for a church friend who is one of four to get the prestigious Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship. It’s the university’s top honor for graduate students, and my applause will be for George Young, who is finishing up his doctoral degree in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. He studies group dynamics in nature (such as the flying patterns of birds) to develop algorithms that can automate biologically inspired robots. 

George shares an office at the E-Quad with his wife, Elizabeth, who also had some recent good news. She has been offered a tenure track faculty position at Rhodes College in Tennessee. The Youngs were married at Princeton United Methodist Church and are both in the Handbell Choir. .

Elizabeth also contributes her talents as an oboe player to ensembles in PUMC worship services and to the Princeton University Orchestra. A National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow who works in the High Contrast Imaging Laboratory,  she studies advanced instrumentation and imaging analysis for the detection of earthlike planets in nearby solar systems.
Congratulations to them both, and to all four of the graduate fellowship winners. Interesting, isn’t it, that none of the four did their undergraduate degree in the United States. George, who grew up in Kalangadoo, Australia, went to the University of Adelaide. The other winners  went to college in Dublin, Paris, and Trieste.  
The awards luncheon ceremony will be streamed live  from Jadwin Gymnasium. 
 
 
 
 

Troubling Issue: Female Circumcision

Faith and Social Justice

Female circumcision can be eliminated without destroying African culture and tradition, says Daniel Naylor, who will lead the Troubling Issues forum series at Princeton United Methodist Church on Sunday, February 10, at 4:30 p.m. In his talk “Addressing Female Circumcision from a Theological Perspective,” he will present the four primary motivators for the initiation rituals that continue in many communities, particularly in East Africa. “The meanings behind traditional Christian practices, in many ways, mirror the rituals – and can meet the needs of African communities while honoring their culture,” says Naylor.

Rev. Don Brash will moderate the discussion.
Naylor plans a trip to Africa this summer with Come Unity, a non-profit organization that partners partnering with developing communities in east Africato provide opportunities for self-sufficient life.  A graduate of Palmer Theological Seminary, he is on the board at Come Unity and volunteers at Storehouse Churchin Plymouth Meeting, PA, where he helped to establish the leadership team.
 
The Troubling Issues topic for March, on March 10, will be on an aspect of The New Jim Crow as it relates to the war on drugs and legalizing marijuana.
Located at Nassau and Vandeventer, the church is wheelchair accessible;  call 609-924-2613 or www.princetonumc.org

Social Justice vs Current Criminal Justice

Faith and Social Justice

People are talking about “The New Jim Crow,” the term proposed by Michelle Alexander in her book with that title. According to a documentary about this, the “discrimination that was legal in the Jim Crow era is today illegal when applied to black people but perfectly legal when applied to ‘criminals.’ Since the rise of the drug war and the explosion of the prison population, and because discretion within the sys­tem allows for arrest and prosecution of people of color at alarmingly higher rates than whites, pris­ons and criminal penal­ties have become a new ver­sion of Jim Crow.”

In a column in today’s Times of Trenton, meet Barbara Flythe, who is on the New Jim Crow task force. She leads the discussion at Witherspoon Presbyterian Church on first Sundays, i.e. Sunday, February 4, 11:45 a.m.   

On Wednesday, February 6, at 7 p.m., at the Princeton Public Library, see the documentary mentioned above, Matthew Pillischer’s “Broken on All Sides.” Pillischer will be there for the discussion. 

POSTPONED due to storm On Friday, February 8, at 6:45 p.m., at the Lutheran Church of the Messiah, 406 Nassau Street, Mark Taylor, a professor at the seminary, will lecture on “I Was in Prison: Remembering Jesus in the U.S. Lockdown. Taylor, the author of “The Executed God,” has been active on issues involving incarceration for many years and is a compelling speaker. 

February is of course a time when many organizations try to focus on issues experienced by people of color. This year, the criminal justice system is the focus for many of these events. Here is a partial calendar from the Not in Our Town Princeton website.

Not in Our Town  invites anyone/everyone to Continuing Conversations on Race on first Mondays at 7:30 p.m. at the Princeton Public Library. 




Scan – Then Enjoy – Your Photos

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 A flooded basement spurred me into action. After almost losing 50 years of precious photos, like the adorable one at left of me with my sister and cousins, I got them organized and scanned with the help of Stephanie Black, Photographer and Photo Organizer.

Stephanie offers scanning, retouching, archiving, and photo sharing services. She comes to your house with her deluxe extra-speedy scanner. You get a DVD with all your photos on it, organized into files. Her mantra is — make copies of everything, then keep only the good ones, the ones you really want to see in scrapbooks, to flip through them over and over again. The rest you can see on a screen.
She puts your photos through her factory-fast scanner. You get a DVD with ALL your photos on it, organized by folders, i.e. “1972” or “Alice wedding” or “picture of Grandma” or whatever.
A competitive photo scanning by mail service exists, but you don’t get the same personal service. For instance, Black does minor retouches as she scans. Plus you don’t have to worry about the photos getting lost in the mail.  
Because she is a professional photographer, she can take proper photos of your larger prints, rather than your having to send them to an expensive scanning service.
Once the scans are done, she can help you make a book or online gallery for sharing purposes.

Black is based in New York but comes to Princeton frequently and will be here through Wednesday, February 6. Email  stephblackphoto@me.com to find out more or make an appointment.

So did you guess which is me? Standing with my tall sister, I’m the second from left, age eight. 

Locked Up, Locked Out, Broken on All Sides

Faith and Social Justice
People in Princeton are talking, finally, about the unfairness of the prison system. A task force plans events around Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow. Here are two places to find out useful information. . 

“Locked Up, Locked Out, Locked Away” will be the theme for the NJ Council of Churches annual Issues and Action event, set for Saturday, January 26, 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.at Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton. Mark Taylor, of the Princeton Theological Seminary and author of The Executed God, will be one of the guest speakers.

On Wednesday, February 6, at 7 p.m., at Princeton Public Library, see Matthew Pillischer’s film Broken on All Sides, about the intersection of race and poverty within the criminal justice system — and the belief that mass incarceration of blacks has become today’s version of Jim Crow segregation. Pillischer will lead a discussion. (The graphic above is provided by the film.)

150 Years Later: Race is Still an Issue

Faith and Social Justice

The fundamental devaluation of dark skin — 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation — is surprisingly resilient, says Charles M. Blow in an op-ed in the New York Times.  

Anti-black sentiment has risen around the country, according to the polls.

Blow quotes Herman Cain to illustrate how using slavery as an analogy may have become “subversively chic.” Cain, running as a Republican presidential candidate, built an entire campaign around this not-so-coded language, saying that he had left “the Democrat plantation,” calling blacks “brainwashed” and arguing, “I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way.”   
  
Issues like these are on the table every month at the  Not in Our Town sessions, held on first Mondays at the Princeton Public Library. The next Continuing Conversations on Race, is set for Monday, January 7, at 7:30 p.m.

For this month, the focus is on the values honored by those in higher education. Some believe that everyone has equal opportunity at, for instance, Princeton University. Others may differ. Roberto Schiraldi and Fern Spruill will lead the discussion, focusing on such topics as minority employment, education, and the retail experience. All are welcome to share their views in an open, friendly, and confidential session. 

Nationally, more people are expressing anti-black sentiments. This discussion, as with all of Not in Our Town Princeton’s activities, focuses only on Princeton.  

TASK’s Dennis Micai: Good Report Card

Faith and Social Justice

The Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) gets four stars on the report card provided by  Charity Navigator; it earns 69.13 points out of 70. So Dennis Micai, executive director of TASK, will be able to share that good news at a breakfast at Princeton United Methodist Church (PUMC), Nassau and Vandeventer, on Sunday, January 13 at 8 a.m.

PUMC volunteers have been serving at TASK in Trenton for two decades, but last June the church and TASK began a new partnership to serve meals in Princeton to more than 50 people every Wednesday. Some come for the food, some for the fellowship, and dozens of volunteers from both the church and the community are helping. TASK cooks most of the meals but outside organizations (the restaurant Zorba’s Brother cooked a turkey dinner last month) have also contributed. TASK has a similar partnership in Hightstown.


TASK offers lots of ways to contribute. So although hunger is a growing problem, Micai will have some good news stories to tell. The breakfast is catered by the United Methodist Men, and all are invited. (Reserve at 609-924-2613 or UMM@princetonumc.org). It will be good to hear some good news for 2013.