Validating ladies who lunch: this article in the Princeton Echo about The Present Day Club, depicted by E.E. Whiting, telling how for 120 years it has “consistently met the needs of an ever changing society.”
Are we ladies who lunch? Damn straight we are. We are also women who think, innovate, challenge, participate, and achieve. And we do this all together in that stately home on Stockton Street.
“A young man on Wall Street became interested in the work of a mathematician who had developed a system for beating blackjack and was using that system to pick stocks that would outperform the market average. . . . Princeton Newport Partners became the first quantitative hedge fund.”
“Google his name (James S. ‘Jay’ Regan) and the first two words that might come up are ‘racketeering charges.’”
At the office on the corner of Witherspoon and Spring Street, “armed marshalls presented a search warrant to the startled receptionist. Regan first thought it was some college buddies playing a joke.”
“Even in the darkest days Regan maintained his sense of humor, even if it had a certain gallows cast to it.”
“the sentence was later overturned…. prosecutorial over-reach. The prosecutor, incidentally, was Rudolph Giuliani, even then political ambitious.”
“For all that he and his family went through, Regan remains a bright and cheerful soul, and as enthusiastic about his work as he must have been when he first got involved on Wall Street.”
My personal note to parents of liberal arts majors: Regan was a philosophy major.
The Echo comes to the mailboxes of Princeton residents once a month and is available in newsboxes throughout town. On the cover: a story on card shark/mathematician Bradley Snider.
Photo of Jay Regan by Suzette Lucas.
I concur with the founder of Cross Fit who characterized the average gym as “predicated on a low to minimum wage, skill-less staff supervising hapless members. “ He concluded that “clients enjoyed a better workout environment, and he made more money, by training them in groups small enough that each athlete could get plenty of individual attention — rather than one-on-one. The shared suffering and shared satisfaction of completing a workout together transcends individual levels of fitness and forms the basis of the so-called CrossFit community.”
I’ll stick to Pilates at the Anthony Rabara studio where I’ve been lucky enough to take lessons for more than two decades. Despite arthritis I’m sure not to get injured. When I walk into the studio I can say “my knee is tender today” or “my shoulder is out today” and the trainers adapt the equipment and the workout. Though I athletes and dancers train here, some clients are even more decrepit than I.
Ninety-two-year-old Moshe Budmor, for instance, worked out at the studio until just before he died.
I also value my “take it slow and easy” anti-aging yoga class taught by the amazing Germaine Tartacoff . at Forrestal Village Fitness. (Tartacoff has her own studio and also teaches a “rank beginner” class at Princeton Adult School. Anyone leary of joining a class with folks who already know the difference between Downward Dog and Tree — this is the class for you.)
But at my age I cast a jaundiced eye at any training that has even a whiff of competitiveness. If I try to keep up I’m likely to injure myself. But — never say never. Maybe when I turn 80.
PS: Hastings suggests examples of CrossFitters who are more my speed — here and here
Princeton Comment 