Tag Archives: U.S. 1 Newspaper

Kate Newell: NJ Film Festival

Dance and the other arts, , , ,

Randy Now, a Cranbury mailman by day and a musician/DJ by night,
“seems to have brilliantly blundered into his role as promoter, persuading emerging bands to stop in Trenton en route between New York and Philadelphia.”

2015 1 29 riot on the dance floorKate Newell retells the story in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper when she reports on the New Jersey Film Festival, which opens Saturday, January 31. In the film, “Riot on the Dance Floor: The Story of Randy Now and City Gardens,” she recounts, “director Steve Tozzi reopens the doors of the legendary City Gardens in Trenton, letting out all the grit and glory trucked in by the remarkable club promoter Randy Now.”  Click here for her story. Also here’s an interview with former City Gardens bartender Jon Stewart

Randy Now now presents musicians at his new venue, the Man Cave in Bordentown.

From Little Rock — to the Moral Monday Rally

Dance and the other arts, Faith and Social Justice, , , , ,

little rock

Passage Theatre in Trenton is doing a play on Little Rock, the famous school segregation case that cracked the Jim Crow rules. The play has been extended through November 2, with performances Thursday through Sunday.  Originally it closed the day before the Moral Monday Rally, sponsored by The Campaign to End the New Jim Crow – Trenton and Princeton. The campaign aims to reform mass incarceration practices that now mimic the old Jim Crow laws.

The play was  previewed by Ted Otten in the Times of Trenton and reviewed by Simon Saltzman in U.S. 1 Newspaper, quoting him:

An integrated cast of nine gifted performers not only portray the students but many both black and white characters as the play progresses over the tumultuous period from September, 1957, to graduation day in May of 1958…

Touching personal narratives segue into searing and scalding confrontations. What is remarkable is how little use there is for dramatic contrivance. There is no need considering the horrific realities that these students confronted and have been recorded.

It runs through November 2 at Passage Theatre’s Mill Hill Playhouse and I’m really hoping to get down there. SAFE is the word for parking across the street from the jewelbox theater, no worries on that score. Saltzman warns that it’s nearly three hours long, maybe the 3 p.m. matinees on 10/25 or 10/26 will work best.

As for the rally, it is Monday, October 27, noon to 2 p.m. on the steps of the New Jersey State House in Trenton. Parking is available at the state house or the Trenton Wyndham Hotel (follow the signs from Route 1 to the hotel). Say the organizers (and I)

END the criminalization of our youth
REMOVE barriers to re-entry
REDUCE the prison population, END torture and abuse
INVEST in the social safety net (schools, housing, jobs)

Rally_End_Mass_Incarceration_102714

 

Giving Away $5 Million Per Year

Business, Technology & Innovation, , , ,

rita allen christopherson

Money is always fun to talk about, to hear about. Big money is even more fun to hear about — especially when it is dispensed locally and you know a nonprofit that is getting some.

And I’m always fascinated by the person giving away the money. In this case, speaking at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast on  Wednesday, September 17, it’s Elizabeth Christopherson, CEO of the Rita Allen Foundation and former head of New Jersey Network.

I interviewed Christopherson two years ago for U.S. 1, asking her what it was like to go from a nonprofit that needed foundation money, to leading the foundation that actually gave the money. She had just moved into her office on Nassau Street, over Hamilton Jewelers.  At that time she revealed that “— despite her genteel women’s club demeanor, she is going hell-bent-for-leather on effecting transformative change.” (My words, not hers.)

She heads one of the larger foundations in New Jersey. The monies for it came from Rita Allen’s first husband, Charles Allen, known as ‘the Shy Midas of Wall Street,’ founder of Allen & Company, the prominent boutique firm that is famously averse to publicity.  That’s a story in itself.

Now the  $140 million foundation grants more than $5 million per year. Previous grantees have been Isles Inc. and Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association.

Looking at the current web page for the foundation, it seems to me that Christopherson has realigned its focus. And she has planted it firmly in the 21st century. For instance, the website offers a social media guide for nonprofits, a downloadable PDF.

I’m eager to hear how Christopherson has settled into the job. Two years ago she admitted that what sounds easy — giving away money — is not easy. “There are not enough funds, and we try to be as strategic as we can be,” she said.  “It is very difficult to say no when you care — and we do care.” 

From Nikki Stern’s Vantage Point

Around Town, , ,

Nikki Stern’s quote opened the 9/11/2014 article in the New York Times on the Family Room, “which served for a dozen years as a most private sanctuary from a most public horror.”

“What tower? What floor? That was the way other people saw our loved ones,” said Nikki Stern, whose husband, James E. Potorti, was among those killed on Sept. 11, 2001. “It was adamantly not how we wanted to define our loved ones. The Family Room was the beginning of the storytelling that was controlled by the families.”

I saw Stern at the U.S. 1 writer’s party in August. The author of two books and an in-demand speaker (she  belongs to the speakers bureau of the Center For Inquiry) , she wrote a review of the new 9/11 memorial for U.S. 1 Newspaper. She served on the advisory committee for the museum, and notes,

One thing was clear: while other memorial space designers had the advantage of perspective, we had to supply it. Three years out isn’t much of a vantage point.

I am grateful for the chance to read about the museum from Stern’s vantage point.

 

 

What will Flint Lane do next?

Business, Technology & Innovation, , , , ,

Flint Lane is one of those guys who “looks over the mountain.” He invented an electronic bill presenting service that helped to found Paytrust, and changed the habits of the bill paying population. It sold, and then he then he started Billtrust. He kept popping up in articles at U.S. 1.  most recently with moving 110 employees to American Metro Center. Now he owns (however did he get here?) a ping pong facility.

He got there by  loving ping pong. Ping pong champion David Zhuang, as quoted in an engaging story by Nicole Mulvaney in the Times of Trenton, had been longing for a Central Jersey based backer to build a facility here. “Give me a guy who loves ping pong!” said Zhuang.

I got the “over the mountain” analogy from Universal Display’s Julie Brown. When she spoke at the Princeton Chamber last week, she said that was one of the secret’s of entrepreneurial success.

It certainly applies to Lane. And now  Princeton has a new amenity.

 

A Big OOPS. I got the date wrong on the demo for the Keller Lab, as below. I said it was Wednesday in Princeton, but it was Monday. I missed it too. The New York version starts today (Tuesday, August 12) at 5 p.m., details here.

It is fun to read about the different companies and their technologies.

Original post below, edited to take out the wrong date.

Universal Display was the brain child of a Princeton University faculty member (see story on Julie Brown). This summer the Keller Lab at the university is also hatching tech startups from students at what is known as the ‘e-Lab.” U.S. 1 has a story about one of the startups, Solstice Intitiative. Another is Space Touch (video demo here).  Here was the program.

Hospitals assume that patients will follow directions when they leave the hospital. VOX Telehealth assumes most will not.

Here is my story about VOX Telehealth, part of the cover story in the June 25 health and fitness issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper.

It’s good news for those advocating e-Patient rights.

Jargon is power.

When I was a dance critic, in the ’70s and ’80s, my job was to translate jargon so that non-dancers would understand.

When I was a freelance reporter, during the same time period, I had to use jargon to convince big city editors to believe I knew what I was doing.

When I was a business writer, 1986 to 2006 plus, my job was to translate all kinds of business topics so that non-MBAs would understand.

It’s all about keeping it simple, says John Lanchester in an article in the current New Yorker, entitled Money Talks: Learning the language of finance.

Lessons:

Adopt the jargon of the field you want to enter. Like a patois, you are believable when — to an editor — the first thing you ask is “are you on deadline?”

Don’t accept the jargon of the field you don’t know about. If you see it, the author is lazy.

Full disclosure: Many an editor has blue penciled my own less-than-clear copy.

Robert Taub, a pianist, used to be artist in residence (1994-2001) at the Institute for Advanced Study. Now, as told in U.S. 1, he is helping to launch Hook’d, a music app that aims to be the musical equivalent of the photo sharing app Instagram. This new company, MuseAmi, is at 20 Nassau Street.

Taub decries “private music,” listening to tunes on your headphones. “What Hook’d does is make you sound good with pitch correction, reverb, and echo, and allow you to interact with a song that you know and love in less than 30 seconds,” he says.

The current artist in residence is Sebastian Currier.

“Just like that, Mr. Aubrey fell into reputation’s ditch, and the Christie administration piled dirt atop him. Except — and this is not incidental to our story — Mr. Aubrey did nothing wrong.”

This is an excerpt from Michael Powell’s January 28 column in the New York Times entitled “A Lieutenant Governor, An Artist, and the Portrait of a Smear.”

It was written in response to the January 15 U.S. 1 cover story, Bully Pulpit, written by my colleague, Dan Aubrey. As editor Rich Rein says in his column today, Aubrey wasn’t eager to revisit an unjust lawsuit. “Then Aubrey and I both realized that his story might not connect the dots between Christie and Guadagno, but it would provide another dot that might help paint the full picture of this administration.”

Following that cover story in U.S. 1, economic guru Paul Krugman, a Princeton resident, wrote about it in his blog post ,  pointing out that though print media struggles, print media reporters are important, and that a mere transportation reporter broke the “Bridgegate” story.

Powell credits the Star Ledger with investigating and clearing Aubrey of any evidence of wrong doing. Powell looked further and found — Lo! — Guadagno’s attacks on the New Jersey State Council on the Arts were attacks on herself. “The lieutenant governor and Department of State, it turns out, had control of the Arts Council’s spending all along. Her divisions signed off on every payment.”