TT Digital Issue 3-19-25

Sourland Conservancy Urges the Public to Lobby State Planners

Princeton Named a “Healthy Town” for 2024

Exhibit Celebrates History of Schools That Became PDS 5

YWCA Princeton

Tribute to Women on March 27 7

NJ Bike & Walk Summit Welcomes Transportation, Policy Leaders . . . . . 8

After the Book Sale: Mapping Franz Kafka, Finding Weldon Kees 13

NJ Symphony Combines Music in Princeton Performance 14

Tiger Men’s Hoops Battles to Final Buzzer But Falls 59-57 to Yale in Ivy Madness Semis 24

After Being Sidelined by Injury to Begin the Winter, Knox Starred as PDS Girls’ Hockey Won State Title 26

When the New Jersey State Planning Commission came out with its preliminary draft to update the State Development and Redevelopment Plan this past December, the Sourland Mountain Region was not among the areas identified as an Area of Critical State Concern (ACSC).

This omission came as a disappointment to those at the Sourland Conservancy. The nonprofit exists to preserve and protect the 90-square-mile area, the largest contiguous forest in Central New Jersey. Between the recent ravages of the emerald ash borer insect, which has killed more than a million trees; the over-population in the area of white-tailed deer; and nearby development, the ecologically and culturally rich region could use the protection and support for conservation efforts that the designation would provide.

“This is a really unique and precious place, and we are at a crossroads,” said Laurie Cleveland, executive director of the Sourland Conservancy. “The next generation of trees isn’t here. When they die, there won’t be others to take their place. We have to act now to protect what is left for future generations.”

According to sourland.org, the Sourland Mountain Region provides critical drinking water to more than 800,000 residents of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It is one of the most important carbon sinks in New Jersey, helping to combat climate change. The Sourlands are one of 113 designated Continental Important Bird Areas (IBA), home to 57 threatened and endangered species.

“Keep in mind that even before the emerald ash borer, the region was already suffering from the over-population of white-tailed deer, invasive plants, and pathogens,” Cleveland said. “The forest was already in peril. There is a lack of understory. Biodiversity is suffering, and that’s important to all of us. We depend on a healthy ecosystem for our own health and well-being.”

The updating of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan is the first in two decades.

The release of the preliminary plan was the first step of the process. Through April 9, public hearings are being held in each New Jersey county (Mercer and Hunterdon have already taken place),

For the third year in a row Princeton has been named a Mayors Wellness Campaign “Healthy Town” winner by the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute. Local health officials are not resting on their laurels, however, with many health and federal program funding challenges on the horizon.

The “Healthy Town” designation highlighted 32 towns in New Jersey that “go above and beyond to improve health and wellness in their communities through innovative programs in areas such as exercise, healthy eating, and mental health education and awareness,” according to a press release from the Municipality.

Princeton Mayor Mark Freda emphasized the town’s “commitment to harm reduction” and its “ongoing efforts to prioritize public health and safety through compassionate, evidence-based approaches.”

He noted, “Over the past year, our

harm reduction campaign has included community-wide Narcan training sessions, equipping residents with the tools to prevent overdose deaths, as well as educational book talks that have fostered important conversations about substance use, stigma, and recovery.”

The press release goes on to state that Princeton, and other communities in the Mayors Wellness Campaign, complete a comprehensive Healthy Town application, reporting on the research they’ve done to identify their community health needs and explaining how they have organized their local Mayors Wellness Campaign committee. The application “highlights the actions the towns have taken to make their communities healthier places to live, work, age, and play.”

In a follow-up email, Princeton Deputy Administrator/Director of Health Jeff Grosser discussed some of the work that lies ahead for the Princeton Health

Department with the recent suspension of federal funding, as well as the threats of bird flu and measles, and the need to prepare for whatever emergency might next arise.

“The suspension of all federal grants is expected to have a significant impact on our department in the coming year,” said Grosser. “Currently we have two active grants that serve as a continuation of COVID-19 funding. Additionally, reductions in research funding at agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) may delay the dissemination of critical information that our office relies on to inform and support the community.”

He added, “The overall uncertainty surrounding federal program funding has prompted local officials to proactively explore alternative solutions to mitigate potential budget shortfalls.”

Grosser went on to point out that the

the

Aradhya also recited 140 digits of pi. The

events presented by the

“Gatsby at 100” Events Celebrate Anniversary Of Great American

Novel

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published by Scribner’s in April 1925, and the Princeton University Library will be celebrating its 100th anniversary throughout the coming month with readings, book talks, performances, and more. The University library, which received Fitzgerald’s papers in 1950 as a gift from his daughter, currently has 89 boxes plus 11 large cannisters of related materials in its collections, including the original manuscript of The Great Gatsby. It will be offering exhibitions and programming in collaboration with the Princeton Public Library (PPL), Lewis Center for the Arts, Cotsen Children’s Library, Friends of Princeton University Library, Princeton Garden Theatre, and the Arts Council of Princeton (ACP).

Though considered by many to be the Great American Novel, The Great Gatsby was not a commercial success at first, receiving mixed reviews from the critics and selling fewer than 20,000 copies in the first six months after publication. It was seemingly forgotten by the time of the author’s death in 1940, but during World War II, an Armed Services edition of the novel brought new readers, re-readers, and enthusiastic critics. It has been a bestseller ever since, inspiring multiple

CELEBRATING EINSTEIN’S BIRTHDAY: Seven-year-old Aradhya was the winner of

Einstein Look-Alike Contest held Saturday at the Princeton Public Library.

event was one of many Pi Day Princeton

Princeton Tour Company in honor of Albert Einstein’s

(Photo by Jeff Bross).

to 8:00

Regional Night Menu

Regional Night Menu

Lazio is a region in Central Italy that includes the small enclave of Vatican City, as well as the city of Rome, which was the capital of the vast Roman Empire and is now the capital of Italy. This region is the heart of Italian history and is home to many historical sites, such as the Colosseum, the Imperial Fora, and the Baths of Caracalla. The region overlooks the sea while also being mountainous, as it is

ANTIPASTI

BRUSCHETTE (vegan)

3 slices of Sourdough bread seasoned with Extra virgin Olive Oil, Garlic and Salt, Cherry tomatoes, EVO, and salt, Olive tapenade

SCAROLA ALLA ROMANA (vegan)

Saute’ escarole with garlic and black olives

PRIMI PIATTI ( PASTA)

BUCATINI ALL’AMATRICIANA

Bucatini pasta with Guanciale, white wine, chili pepper, and whole plum tomato sauce

GNOCCHI ALLA ROMANA (vegetarian)

Bake semolina and cheese gnocchi seasoned with pecorino cheese

SECONDO ( MEAT)

SALTIMBOCCA ALLA ROMANA

veal scaloppine (4 oz each) with Prosciutto di Parma and sage, cooked with butter and white wine

DOLCE (DESSERT)

ZEPPOLE DI SAN GIUSEPPE

2 Fried choux ring filled with pastry cream and cherry in syrup

SpringSquare the

TOWN TOPICS

Princeton’s Weekly Community Newspaper Since 1946

DONALD C. STUART, 1946-1981 DAN D. COYLE, 1946-1973 Founding Editors/Publishers DONALD C. STUART III, Editor/Publisher, 1981-2001

LAURIE PELLIChERO Editor BILL ALDEN,

NEW YORK OFFICE: JZA+D has opened a new office in midtown Manhattan. The Amalgamated Transit Union in Queens, transformed into a mixed-use property, is among the firm’s New York projects.

completed a gallery space in Tribeca, and is currently at work on an Upper West Side residence and a senior center in Queens. JZA+D is also providing ongoing design and consulting services to two synagogues in Brooklyn and Jersey City, through its DBA division Landau | Zinder Architecture, which focuses on design for Judaic spaces.

Previous work in New York includes multiple residential interiors, plus the transformation of a threestory mixed-use property in Queens into a meeting hall for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1056.

To lead the New York office Zinder and Sullivan have named principal Richard Perry. With over 30 years of experience on a variety of project types, Perry is a registered architect in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

STROLLING BUNNY

EVERY SATURDAY & SUNDAY APRIL 5 – 19, 1PM-3PM

PORCHFEST WITH THE ARTS COUNCIL OF PRINCETON (TOWN-WIDE EVENT) APRIL 26TH, 12PM-6PM STORY-TIME ON

EVERY SATURDAY MAY 3 - 31, 10AM-10:30AM

JZA+ Design Firm Opens NYC Office Princeton-based Joshua Zinder Architecture + Design (JZA+D) has announced the opening of a new office in Midtown Manhattan. The firm has secured licenses to operate and practice architecture in New York State. JZA+D was founded in 2006 by managing partner Joshua Zinder, and has since amassed a portfolio of works in architecture, interiors, product, furniture, and graphic design under the direction of Zinder and partner Mark A. Sullivan. At the same time, the firm has emerged as a leader in the building and real estate communities locally and globally.

“JZA+D works across as many sectors and typologies as possible, because we believe firmly in the importance of cross-pollination of ideas,” said Zinder, a past president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) New Jersey chapter. “The results are innovative, modern, and cost-effective solutions that are in demand widely. I started my career here in New York, and we have projects — completed, active or in planning — in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan as well as over the Hudson River in Jersey City, N.J. Expanding our practice to Manhattan just seemed like a natural next move for us.”

The firm has recently

“I live in New York City and have for quite some time,” says Perry. “As one of JZA+D’s leaders I’ve seen how clients and communities respond both to our built work and our involvement and advocacy, and I believe the New York Metro Region will benefit from our being more active here.”

TOWN TOPICS is printed entirely on recycled paper.

Topics In Brief A Community Bulletin

Leighton Listens: Councilman Leighton Newlin holds one-on-one conversations about issues impacting Princeton from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. on March 19 at Amazing Thai, 260 Nassau Street; and March 26 at Jammin’ Crepes, 20 Nassau Street.

Food Pantry: Arm in Arm’s mobile food pantry is at the Lawrence Headquarters Branch of Mercer County Library System, 2751 Brunswick Pike, on Monday afternoons from 2-4 p.m. Fresh produce, eggs, milk, frozen proteins, and quality baked goods as well as canned and boxed items and personal care items are available for those in need, and different social services agencies are on site. Mcl.org.

Sustainable Princeton “Lending Library” : Sustainable Princeton offers residents and nonprofits in Princeton the opportunity to borrow sustainable home items such as electric landscape equipment, induction cooktops, and repair tools, for free, for up to two weeks. Visit sustainableprinceton.org for more information.

Volunteer Land Stewards Wanted: On March 19, join Friends of Princeton Open Space to help with ecosystem restoration and invasive species removal at the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve. Morning and afternoon sessions are available. Register at fopos.org/events-programs.

Scholarship Opportunity : The Dr. Esther Wollin Memorial Scholarship Fund is available to Jewish female, full-time students who will be or are already attending Rutgers University and raised by their Jewish mother in a single-parent household in the Princeton Mercer Bucks community. Eligibility is based on financial need. Submission deadline is June 2. Visit jfcsonline.org or call Joyce at (609) 987-8100.

“ROOTS OF EXELLENCE”: An immersive exhibit celebrating 125 years of Miss Fine’s School and 100 years of Princeton Country Day School commemorates the rich histories that led to the formation of Princeton Day School (PDS). It opens on April 1, with a public reception on April 9 from 3 to 5 p.m.

Princeton Day School)

After its founding, Miss Fine’s School continued to grow: by 1907 the enrollment doubled and the school moved to 38 Stockton Street. Soon the addition of a first grade allowed students to begin school at an earlier age. By the end of a decade at 38 Stockton, plans were made to collect funds for a new building, and an endowment.

available, and investment banker Dean Mathey helped acquire land contiguous to the Colross property and adjacent to his own property: 20 acres each to each school. The Matheys bequeathed additional land later on.

One-Year Subscription: $20

Exhibit Celebrates History of Schools That Became Princeton Day School

Two-Year Subscription: $25

Subscription Information:

On October 2, 1899, 30-year-old May Margaret Fine opened Miss Fine’s Day School at 42 Mercer Street. She taught about 40 students of varying ages, for an annual tuition of $80 to

609.924.5400 ext. 30 or subscriptions@ witherspoonmediagroup.com princetonmagazine.com

In 1925, the Princeton Junior School for Boys was founded at 10 Bayard Lane, serving 28 boys in grades

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six through eight. By 1930, having expanded to grades five through nine, it moved to a new building on Broadmead, and was renamed Princeton Country Day School (PCDS). Students attended six days a week, with a half day on Wednesday and Saturdays.

The rich history of two of Princeton’s legendary schools — forerunners of the current Princeton Day School (PDS) — is the subject of an exhibit, “Roots of Excellence: 125 Years of Miss Fine’s School and 100 Years of Princeton Country Day School,” opening in PDS’ Anne Reid ’72 Gallery on April 1, with a public reception on April 9 from 3 to 5 p.m. All are welcome.

TOPICS

Of the Town

The exhibit goes beyond the history of the two schools, showing the Princeton students’ relationship to the community, and to the world. The artifacts and information connect to U.S. presidents (Miss Fine corresponded with alumna Jesse Woodrow Wilson, President Wilson’s daughter, who joins Grover Cleveland’s daughters as offspring of U.S. presidents who attended the school), and the timelinebased exhibit shows how the school curriculum reflected broader trends (community gardening for example), science research (a PCDS student’s question to Einstein), the effects of World War II, and more.

As part of the anniversary year, a special alumni weekend is planned for Friday, May 16, featuring a celebratory luncheon with Head of School Dr. Kelley Nicholson-Flynn, guided tours of the former sites of the two closed schools and downtown Princeton, and tours of the current PDS campus.

“Roots of Excellence” is based on a history timeline that ran in a special edition of the fall alumni Journal put together by Director of Publications Ashley Stenger, and visually organized by Gwen Shockey, PDS Upper School visual art faculty and director of the Anne Reid ’72 Gallery, working with Amy Gallo, Class of 2003, director of alumni engagement and strategy.

Artifacts in the exhibit —

such as student journals, photos, and letters — had been stored on campus. “We found so many incredible documents,” said Stenger. “It was a treasure hunt.”

Wanting to add dimension and become more interactive, they added objects like Miss Fine’s desk, which had been in storage; school jackets; glee club recordings; an old typewriter; a film of a maypole dance circa 1934; and other memorabilia that signified past decades.

While the main focus, said Shockey, “was to teach our student body the history of the school,” they found that connections were made in different ways, and that the history of the school was tied to the history of the country, and to Princeton in general.

In 1918 Miss Fine’s was able to move to a larger space, the original Princeton Inn, at the corner of Nassau Street and Bayard Lane. Girls enrolled from kindergarten to 12th grade, while boys were there until third grade. Despite lacking proper athletic facilities, the school mirrored the nation’s penchant for sports, and baseball, basketball, and field hockey were introduced. In 1931 PCDS went undefeated in its ice hockey season, starting a long tradition of excellence in the sport.

Miss Fine died in 1933 at age 64. The New York Times published a poem in her honor. The exhibit chronicles the subsequent headmistresses and headmasters of the two schools. By 1947 a teacher, Henry Ross, was appointed PCDS headmaster, and women were hired to teach there for the first time. After World War II, both schools embraced the American Field Service and a long-term commitment to global education.

By the mid-1950s, Princeton’s population was growing, and there were discussions about merging the two schools. An opportunity arose when the Georgian mansion Colross became

On June 14 1960, the two schools merged, originally two separate, parallel entities. On September 17, 1965, students were welcomed to 650 Great Road. In October Doug McClure became the first headmaster of both schools, now Princeton Day School.

Many of the deeds, letters, and photographs depicting the history are in the archives, which have grown organically, said Stenger, from attics and photo albums. The exhibit, adds Shockey, a 2006 alumna, also shows the importance of women’s education through Miss Fine’s legacy of excellence. The new school, PDS, said Stenger, kept a lot of the old traditions, as well as an emphasis on a “dynamic education and strength of character.”

For example, as part of a community service project, Miss Fine’s students made wreaths in the lobby, with sales donated to various charities. This tradition lasted until 1982, and today, lower schoolers spend a day sustainably wrapping gifts for underserved populations.

“We want students to see that while things may look or feel old, they have so much in common with their predecessors,” said Stenger. “People will be really surprised to see what they have

Road Closure Notice

Asection of College Road West between Springdale Road and Alexander Street in Princeton, New Jersey, is scheduled to be closed beginning Monday, March 17, and continuing for approximately six weeks. This closure is to allow for repairs to the Eisenhart Arch located near the intersection of Springdale Road and College Road West.

All vehicular and pedestrian traffic from College Road West will be directed to Mercer Street via either Springdale Road or Alexander Street. Detour signs will be posted to guide traffic around the road closure.

Please plan your travel accordingly and consider using alternate routes to avoid delays and inconvenience. Princeton University periodically closes its private roads for various reasons, including special events and routine maintenance. We understand that these closures may cause inconvenience and aim to minimize any impact or delays by providing advance notice.

Should you have any questions, please contact Robert Adams, Administrative Lieutenant, Department of Public Safety, Princeton University at 609-258-9701 or via email to radams@princeton.edu

imagery courtesy of

History of Schools

in common,” said Stenger.

Wrote Flynn, head of school, in an introduction, “It is because of the leaders, innovators, and creators of long ago that we stand here at present.”

Roots of Excellence runs through April 25, with gallery hours Monday through Friday, 8 a.m., to 4 p.m. or by appointment at annereid72gallery@pds.org. The campus is at 650 Great Road.

—Wendy Greenberg Rider Offers Veterans Free Summer Program Veterans, their spouses, and dependents are invited to apply to Rider University’s Veteran Entrepreneurship Training (VET) program, a free, six-week experience to help participants develop the skills needed to develop a business concept or expand an existing venture. Additional coursework is available for those interested in pursuing college credit for the program.

Offered through Rider’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the program is capped at 20 students to ensure participants receive personalized feedback as they develop a business concept and conduct a feasibility analysis.

“As the program enters its 12th year, I am continually impressed by the veterans,” said Ron Cook, professor of entrepreneurship and the instructor for the program. “They are eager to learn, and I’ve seen some successful businesses develop as a result of their efforts in their program. My goal is to provide them with a framework for the critical decisionmaking and analytical skills needed for starting or growing a business.”

The program is made possible through the support of the New Jersey Bankers Charitable Foundation, Inc., which was established in 2005 to honor fallen or permanently disabled military members in the post9/11 Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts by providing scholarships to their eligible dependents. In 2015, the purpose of the Foundation was expanded to include broader charitable causes in addition to veteran causes.

Applications are open through May 15 unless capacity is reached earlier. The program will run on Wednesday evenings at Rider from 6 to 9 p.m. from May 21 to June 25. For more information and to apply, visit rider.edu/vep.

A forum for the expression of opinions about local and national issues.

Question of the Week:

“What is your favorite thing about Albert Einstein and/or Pi Day?”

(Asked Saturday at Pi Day events held at the Princeton Public Library)

(Photos by Sarah Teo)

Maury: “I thought the kids that dressed up didn’t look like kids! And we’re going to make blueberry pie later.”

pancakes sometimes.”

Jamie: “We went to story time — one of the books was Einstein, Einstein, What Do You See? This is our first year taking our daughter to Princeton Pi Day. We’ve been coming on and off for 12 years now, so I’m excited to share this with my kids.”

—Cynthia and Jamie Sutton, Middlesex

“He

And

Dhaya: “Einstein didn’t know how to swim, but he loved to sail. And he loved his glasses so much that he just put a

Aid in the middle when they broke.”

maybe it’s

“The

Akshadha:

won the Noble Prize for the photoelectric effect.

he played the violin.”

Band-

Srinivasan:

house Einstein lived in was occupied by other scholars; two of them became Nobel laureates, so

the Einstein effect!”

—Sri Akshadha K., Dhaya A., Aradhya K., and Srinivasan K., Princeton

Jacob: “The only things I know about Einstein are that he invented relativity and E=mc2. And he didn’t like to wear socks.”

Jacob, Nathan, and Zach Tipermas, Greenwich, Conn.

YWCA Princeton Pays Tribute to Women At 41st Ceremony on March 27

Every year for 40 years, the YWCA Princeton has honored area women and showcased their achievements. This year, the 41st, the tradition continues, with the Y telling the stories of accomplished women — and a male ally — representing different fields, working toward the betterment of their communities.

Capping Women’s History Month in March, eight honorees will be feted at Cooper’s Riverview in Trenton on Thursday, March 27, at 8:30 a.m.

YWCA Princeton first adopted its Tribute to Women in Industry, a program from YWCA USA, in the 1980s, according to Brigitte JeanLouis, director of mission advancement. The event has evolved over the years and in 2002 was renamed Tribute to Women, to include more women in the education field and the arts. The combined YWCAs Princeton and Trenton have celebrated over 800 women and male allies, she said.

The program shows no sign of waning popularity.

“In our 41st iteration of this event, we are officially sold-out and look forward to celebrating this year’s honorees,” said Jean-Louis.

The honorees “embody our mission of eliminating racism, empowering women, and strengthening families,” said YWCA Princeton CEO Rose Wong. “The honorees’ dedication and resilience inspire us all to keep pushing for a more just and equitable world. By sharing their journeys, we hope to inspire others to take action and continue the fight for equity and justice.”

This year’s honorees are:

Councilwoman Teska T. Frisby, who serves as the representative for Trenton’s West Ward. In 2023 she served as council president, managing a $350 million budget and fostering connections between state and local leaders to meet the needs of residents. As a founding member of ROSA, she supports survivors of sexual trauma, and with Moms Demand Action, she’s worked for over eight years on gun safety and reform. She has also helped establish the National Coalition of 100 Black Women of Central Jersey. As an entrepreneur, she founded TesKonnects, to strengthen community engagement. Frisby is the author of Different, Just Like You! , a children’s book promoting inclusion inspired by her son’s experience with cerebral palsy.

Chantille Kennedy is a leader, educator, and advocate whose dedication to equity and empowerment has positively impacted many individuals and communities. At The Hun School, she serves as Middle School counselor and co-chair of the Cultural Competency Team, where she created The Hun Way, a week-long orientation program promoting identity exploration, cultural competency, and diversity dialogue, which has become a cornerstone of the school’s curriculum. Her leadership includes founding affinity groups like the Middle School Young Women’s Leadership Cohort and

HYPE, a mentorship program for young faculty. She has also organized monthly cultural celebrations and coauthored The Hun School’s 2020-2024 Strategic Plan for Cultural Competency. Kennedy is also the director of communications for the MDP Cancer Fund, supporting women impacted by cancer.

Tawanda R. McCrae is a dedicated Army veteran, charity founder, and advocate for both human and animal welfare. Her journey of service began in the military, and she has made a profound impact on her community, supporting charities like HomeFront, Younity (formerly WomanSpace), and Sistas for Change, and organizing events to provide meals, gift bags, and hope. McCrae founded two organizations: Earthways Plant-Based Living, promoting health through a vegan lifestyle, and Cats Amazing Rescue, focused on rescuing and rehoming cats. She also co-founded The Red Queen Foundation, which provides feminine hygiene products and empowerment resources to women and girls experiencing homelessness and poverty.

Jennifer Weisberg Millner is an, advocate, fundraiser, and breast cancer survivor who has played a key role in supporting the Breast Cancer Resource Center (BCRC). As a certified Matrimonial Attorney with the New Jersey Supreme Court, Millner has dedicated her career to family law, particularly advocating for marginalized communities. She serves on the Family Law Executive Committee of the New Jersey State Bar Association and contributes to the Family Law Institute of the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. Her work includes landmark cases such as K.A.F. v. D.L.M. and Sacklow v. Betts, which advanced the rights of nonbiological parents and transgender children. She is committed to equity through her involvement with Stark & Stark’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and her service on the board of Dress for Success Central Jersey, and co-chairs the Community Projects Committee of the Mercer County Bar Association.

Jack Morrison, this year’s Male Ally, owner of several local restaurants, has dedicated his career to more than food — he’s committed to fostering community and making a difference. For over 24 years, his restaurants, including Blue Point Grill, Witherspoon Grill, and Kristine’s, have shown a strong philanthropic spirit. Morrison’s journey of giving back began over two decades ago, inspired by a close neighbor’s breast cancer diagnosis. He partnered with the Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization for 14 years and now exclusively works with the Breast Cancer Resource Center (BCRC), organizing fundraisers like the annual Pink Pearl Night. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he launched the “Kick Breast Cancer to the Curb” campaign, donating 15 percent of proceeds to the BCRC. Additionally, Morrison has

Young Readers Book Fair

Saturday and Sunday

fought food insecurity for over 25 years. He’s also a leader in food waste reduction, inspiring others in the industry to adopt sustainable practices.

Cheryl Towns, BSN, RN, has been a dedicated nurse and advocate, working to dismantle racial inequities in health care and empower underserved communities. As chief community care officer at Trenton Health Team, she leads initiatives that expand healthcare access, including free cancer screenings and efforts to identify undiagnosed diabetes in diverse, low-income populations. Towns’ leadership has helped grow her team from three to 10 members, empowering women of color in health care. Beyond her role at Trenton Health Team, she has been a longtime director of nursing and consultant at the Rescue Mission of Trenton, where she often uses her personal resources to support those in need. In 2024, she helped establish Trenton’s first Medical Respite Center, providing care for individuals discharged from hospitals without a place to recover.

Atiya Weiss is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of children and families. As the inaugural executive director of The Burke Foundation, she has led transformative initiatives across New Jersey, investing over $20 million in programs like community doulas, CenteringPregnancy, and universal home visiting. A passionate advocate for systemic equity, Weiss has played a key role in the First 1000 Days Policy Coalition, an initiative focused on affordable, highquality child care. Weiss’s prior roles include executive director at JP Morgan’s Philanthropy Center and leadership at the Pfizer Foundation. Her dedication earned her recognition as a 2021 Ascend Fellow with the Aspen Institute. Motivated by her own experiences growing up with a rare blood disorder, Weiss is deeply committed to breaking down barriers to care and creating supportive environments for families. She is a trustee for the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers and the Princeton Area Community Foundation, advancing initiatives for systemic change.

Brenda Whitaker has been a tireless advocate for Mercer County individuals impacted by homelessness, poverty, single pregnant women, individuals living with HIV, and the recently incarcerated. As the director of HomeFront’s Solutions Center and a diversion specialist for the Department of Community Affairs, Whitaker approaches her work with a traumainformed mindset. Her leadership extends to her role as chair of the Mercer County Homeless Committee. She played a role in launching Huchet House, a program that provided housing and comprehensive support for first-time pregnant women experiencing homelessness, a program that helped hundreds of women and their babies.

—Wendy Greenberg

make room for the lucrative business of raising sheep.

Trevana’s topic is “Bottled in Kingston.”

Children are the focus of a book fair taking place Saturday and Sunday, March 22 and 23, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the ESG Bookstore, 195 Nassau Street. The store is located on the lower level of the building that houses Thomas Sweet Ice Cream.

On offer will be a curated section of 200 books for elementary school students on such topics as earth, climate change, energy, diversity, and more. The goals is to introduce young readers to help them develop sustainability habits early in life. Books are marked separate for different age groups: Baby to 3 years, 4-7 years old, and 8-14.

For more information, visit esgbestreads.com.

English Speaking Union Hears Talk on Highlands

Dr. Peter Smith will speak at a gathering of the Princeton branch of the English Speaking Union on Sunday, March 23 at 3 p.m. at the Center for Modern Aging, 101 Poor Farm Road.

“The years of 1750-1850 saw major economic and demographic changes to Scotland, following the disastrous Battle of Culloden, 1746, which resulted in the destruction of the ancient Clan system in the Highlands,” reads a press release on the event. “The Scottish nobility came to the fore and wanted resources to support a rich lifestyle. Traditional feudal farming, based on cattle and subsistence agriculture, was eliminated and many Highland villages were destroyed in order to

“Many poor folks moved to the coast or emigrated to the New World by ship.

The Lowlands of southern Scotland were also depopulated to supply the labor for the industrial revolution in, for example, Glasgow. This talk will discuss the impact of these changes on the people and the land, which still haunt Scotland.”

Smith is Scottish born and educated, although he has lived in the U.S. for over 40 years, working in the pharmaceutical industry as a project manager.

Founded in 1920, The English-Speaking Union is a nonprofit, non-political educational organization that employs English as a catalyst to foster global understanding and good will through educational and cultural exchange programs. The organization has 58 branches nationwide along with affiliates in the U.K. and 60 other countries. New members are welcome. Visit legacy.esuus.org/Princeton for more information.

Kingston Historical Society

Tea Time Talks on Sunday

The Kingston Historical Society will host three 15-minute talks at the Kingston United Methodist Church, 9 Church Street, Kingston, on Sunday, March 23 from 2:30 to 4 p.m.

“Mapleton Preserved” will be given by Karen Linder, president of Friends of Princeton Nursery Lands. Charlie Dieterich, secretary of the Kingston Historical Society will speak on “Everybody Wanted the King’s Town.” Alexandria

Following the talks, there will be time for tea and conversation with the presenters. Admission is free, but cash donations are welcome to help pay for use of the church. Visit khsnj.org/teatime for more information.

The Costs of Aging Are Topic of Panel

The Center for Modern Aging Princeton (CMAP) invites the community to a free hybrid panel discussion, Navigating Financial Costs of Growing Older and Planning for Unique Family Needs, on Wednesday, March 26, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The session will be held in person at CMAP’s Nancy S. Klath Center for Lifelong Learning (101 Poor Farm Road) and available via Zoom.

As medical costs rise and lifespans extend, financial planning is more critical than ever—especially for those caring for adult children with special needs or mental health challenges. This discussion will feature a panel of experts, including Brian Taylor and Maria Quinn of Bryn Mawr Trust; Chris Kellogg of NightingaleNJ; and Robert Morris of Stark & Stark Attorneys at Law.

Panelists will share practical strategies to protect assets, manage rising expenses, and ensure long-term financial security for individuals and families. Attendees will gain insights on how to plan for the future with confidence, balancing financial well-being with compassionate care. Registration is required for this free event. Visit engage. cmaprinceton.org/component/events/event/964.

NOFA NJ has supported and advocated for organic farming and local food systems since 1985. Their work is dynamic, community-focused, and has lasting impacts throughout the entire food system.

https://nofanj.org/

Bike & Walk Summit at PU March 29 Welcomes Transportation, Policy Leaders

More than 200 bicycle and pedestrian advocates, transportation and urban planners, and municipal leaders and elected officials from across the state will gather at Princeton University’s McDonnell Hall on March 29 for the 14th Annual New Jersey Bike & Walk Summit.

Keynote addresses by New Jersey Department of Transportation Commissioner Fran K. O’Connor and “Strong Town” Founder and President Charles L. Marohn Jr. will be followed by a panel of leading experts discussing “The Crossroads of Transportation Policy.”

A selection of 18 breakout sessions on such topics as “Trails: Catalyst for Change,” “Safety Plans,” “Choosing the Right Funding to Get Stuff Done,” “Building Better Trails,” “Driver Accountability,” “Walk Witherspoon Street” (hosted by Sustainable Princeton), and “A Walk Through Alleyways to Coffee” (hosted by Princeton Future) will take place throughout the morning and early afternoon.

“This year’s New Jersey Bike & Walk Summit promises to be an exciting gathering of ideas, innovations, and community connections, all aimed at promoting safer more sustainable transportation options across our region,” wrote Debra Kagan, executive director of N.J. Bike & Walk Coalition, which is organizing the event. “Along with esteemed keynote speakers and over 16 sessions, the summit will include guided walks that highlight the wonders of Princeton.”

She continued, “This summit comes at a critical time for us as we face national actions to defund and limit active transportation. It provides a place to build community and strategies to continue our work — to make our streets safer, especially for people walking, cycling, and rolling. We hope you will join us!”

Leading Sustainable Princeton’s guided walk down

Witherspoon Street, departing from the Brush Gallery entrance to McDonnell Building at 2:15 p.m., will be Sustainable Princeton Executive Director Christine Symington and Princeton Municipal Engineer/Deputy Administrator Deanna Stockton. They will be showing “how a previously two-way street became a partial one-way street with expanded sidewalks, increased bike parking, and traffic-calming measures like speed bumps and sidewalk ‘bump-outs,’” according to Sustainable Princeton Communications and Outreach Manager Elana Berk.

Berk added, “It can be a challenge to meet the needs of those who live in town and want safer walking/biking infrastructure with the needs of folks who drive into Princeton to work or spend their leisure time. The Witherspoon redesign project is an example of how accommodations for different uses of the same streets don’t always have to be at odds with each other.”

She went on, “We’re lucky to live in a town that has almost every service you could need within a fairly short bike trip. We hope to see more improvements to infrastructure to support safe cycling and walking in town, but we’re grateful for some of the changes that have already been made.”

The tour will also explain how Sustainable Princeton supports municipal projects and how nonprofits, advocacy groups, and municipal governments can work together to achieve common goals.

Architect and Princeton Future Board Member Marina Rubina commented on the “Walk to Coffee” that she will be leading for conference attendees and other Princeton residents as well.

“Princeton Future is excited to be part of the Bike & Walk Summit,” she said. ”Our goal is to encourage local residents to rethink what is walkable.

Instead of jumping in the car to get coffee, drive to a

restaurant, or head to work, we hope Princeton residents will consider walking, even if it’s a bit farther.”

The walk, also starting outside the McDonnell Building at the Brush Gallery entrance will begin at 2:15 p.m. and is designed to “help residents discover “’hidden treasures,’ such as alleys and mid-block passageways that often go unnoticed,” said Rubina.

She continued, “As more people explore these routes, they will help activate the backs of commercial buildings and make our downtown more vibrant and pedestrian-friendly. For summit attendees, we aim to discuss the benefits of community walks for building connections, creating housing with fewer parking spaces, improving health, and enhancing wellness.”

Following registration, breakfast, and networking, the summit plenary session will start at 9 a.m. with opening remarks by Mercer County Executive Dan Benson, NJ Bike & Walk Coalition Executive Director Debra Kagan, and Princeton University Services Associate Vice President Charlie Tennison.

The keynote panel from 9:25 a.m. to 10 a.m. will discuss the importance of good transportation policy that addresses the interests of safety, economic development, and sustainability. Panelists include Barbara McCann, former senior advisor to the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation; Caron Whitaker, deputy executive director of the League of American Bicyclists; Zoe Baldwin, vice president of state programs and New Jersey Director of the Regional Plan Association; and Cathleen Lewis, Mercer County commissioner and clean transportation programs manager of the N.J. Board of Utilities. Visit njbwc.org/summit-2025 for registration and more information.

—Donald Gilpin

Rider’s Summer Programs In Business, Arts, and More

This summer, Rider University will offer summer programs and courses for high schoolers and adults. More than 100 courses are offered in business, the humanities, the arts and more.

For those seeking college credit, Rider’s Summer Sessions are accelerated sixweek courses that can help students get ahead, explore their interests or get back into the classroom. Registration begins March 24. Learn more at rider.edu/summer.

For high school students looking to learn at the college level and qualify for a four-year, renewable $2,000 scholarship, they can explore a number of arts through Rider’s Pre-College Summer Programs: High School Solo Pianist Week (June 22 - 27), Vocal Institute (June 29–July 4), Organ Institute (July 6–11), Game Design Academy (July –11), High School Solo Vocal Artist (July 6–19), and Musical, Theatre, and Film Institute (July 20–Aug. 2).

The Adult Summer Arts Programs offer week-long classes that can be taken as a workshop or as academic credit. Adults can study along with prominent leaders in the fields of choral pedagogy, voice pedagogy, and conducting. They include Conducting Intensive (July 13–19), Choral Festival (July 20– 26), Voice Pedagogy Institute (July 21–25), and Special Topics in Choral Pedagogy (July 28–Aug. 1).

The CoOPERAtive Program, which runs from June 29 to July 5, helps young singers strengthen their voices and broaden their repertoire of music. Students will receive private voice lessons, as well as a personal assessment of their strengths along with many other techniques. This year, the program will feature a collaboration with composer Evan Mack and librettist Joshua McGuire on their new opera, A Nearer Mother. Participants may opt to receive undergraduate or graduate college credit.

Visit rider.edu/summerarts for more information.

SHOW

UP,

FORAGE, AND EAT:

On Saturday, April 12 at 10 a.m., join Friends of Princeton Open Space invites the public to join experts Matt and Shannon for a two-hour garlic mustard forage walk at the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve. During this stewardship session, participants will learn about the origins this invasive yet edible plant, how to identify it, and then get picking. After tasting garlic mustard pesto, participants will take home a recipe card with their plants. Register at fopos.org/events-programs.

Women’s Leadership Is Topic of Series

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Center for Modern Aging Princeton (CMAP), the Historical Society of Princeton, the Arts Council of Princeton, and the Municipality of Princeton have joined forces to present a special edition of EmpowerHer, a speaker series highlighting the resilience, leadership, and transformative power of women, on Wednesday, March 19, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at CMAP’s Nancy S. Klath Center for Lifelong Learning, 101 Poor Farm Road.

This free and public event will feature a panel of local women leaders from the fields of education, history, politics, and the arts: Joan Girgus, one of the first female senior deans at Princeton University, a trailblazer in psychology and education; Eve Mandel, director of education and outreach

at the Historical Society of Princeton, preserving and sharing the untold stories of women who shaped Princeton; Councilwoman Leticia Fraga, Princeton’s first Latinx elected official, police commissioner, and advocate for representation in leadership; and Dr. Ronah Harris, artist-in-residence at the Arts Council of Princeton, weaving community narratives through textiles and visual storytelling. Moderated by Iona Harding, global business and human resource consultant, this event will explore themes of resilience, leadership, gratitude, and the evolving role of women in shaping communities. Panelists will share their personal journeys, discuss historical and contemporary challenges, and offer insights into fostering change at local and global levels. Visit cmaprinceton.org for more information.

Open Houses at the Princeton Eating Clubs

Open Houses at the Princeton Eating Clubs

Princeton Prospect Foundation is pleased to announce free public access to Princeton University’s

iconic eating clubs where generations of students have taken meals and socialized in historic and architecturally significant clubhouses that date as far back as 1895. Upcoming open houses will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on the following dates (no reservations are required):

Princeton Prospect Foundation is pleased to announce free public access to Princeton University’s iconic eating clubs where generations of students have taken meals and socialized in historic and architecturally significant clubhouses that date as far back as 1895. Upcoming open houses will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on the following dates (no reservations are required):

Princeto rinceton University’s iconic eating clubs where generations of students have taken meals and socialized in historic and architecturally significant clubhouses that date as far back as 1895. Upcoming open houses will take place from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on the following dates (no reservations are required):

Sun., Oct. 6th: Cannon Club, Colonial Club, Cottage Club, Quadrangle Club, Terrace Club, Tower Club

Sun., Oct. 6th: Cannon Club, Colonial Club, Cottage Club, Quadrangle Club, Terrace Club, Tower Club

Sun., Mar. 30th: Cannon Club, Cap & Gown Club, Colonial Club, Ivy Club, Terrace Club, Tower Club

Sun., Oct. 20th: Cap & Gown Club, Charter Club, Cloister Inn, Ivy Club, Tiger Inn

Sun., Oct. 20th: Cap & Gown Club, Charter Club, Cloister Inn, Ivy Club, Tiger Inn

Sun., Apr. 6th: Charter Club, Cloister Inn, Cottage Club, Quadrangle Club, Tiger Inn

The fascinating origins and evolution of the clubs, along with many archival images and spectacular photos, are presented in The Princeton Eating Clubs, written by awardwinning author Clifford W. Zink in 2017. This beautiful book is available at Labyrinth Books and the Princeton University Store, and on Amazon.

The fascinating origins and evolution of the clubs, along with many archival images and spectacular photos, are presented in The Princeton Eating Clubs, written by awardwinning author Clifford W. Zink in 2017. This beautiful book is available at Labyrinth Books and the Princeton University Store, and on Amazon.

The fascinating origins and evolution of the clubs, along with many archival images and spectacular photos, are presented in The Princeton Eating Clubs, written by award-winning author Clifford W. Zink in 2017. This beautiful book is available at Labyrinth Books and the Princeton University Store, and on Amazon.

For more information, go to: http://princetonprospectfoundation.org

For more information, go to: http://princetonprospectfoundation.org

For more information, go to: http://princetonprospectfoundation.org

Speed Dating & Concert with Lutist Thomas Dunford Connect over

“Healthy Town”

continued from page one mayor and Princeton Council have “demonstrated a strong commitment to readiness” by investing in staffing and ensuring access to essential equipment.

He also noted that the Princeton Health Department continues to strengthen its emergency preparedness through strategic partnerships with local healthcare providers, ongoing public health initiatives, and continuous refinement of response protocols based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Grosser stated that there is “a continued emphasis on achieving strong immunization coverage across all vaccine-preventable diseases,” but he warned that “without consistent federal funding, expanding our current capabilities or executing another large-scale community vaccination campaign may become increasingly challenging.”

A measles outbreak recently occurred in Texas, and Grosser said that three confirmed cases have been reported in New Jersey (seven were reported in 2024), but at this time there is no community transmission of measles in New Jersey.

Of the 301 confirmed measles cases reported in the U.S. through March 13 of this year, 95 percent occurred among children and other individuals who were either unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status.

“Princeton maintains an exceptionally high MMR (measles-mumps-rubella)

vaccination rate, with over 98 percent of K-12 students vaccinated, one of the highest rates in Mercer County,” said Grosser. “This strong immunization coverage provides herd immunity, significantly reducing the risk of measles transmission and protecting individuals who cannot be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”

The Princeton Health Department continues to work with K-12 schools to assess immunization rates and to evaluate response strategies to ensure preparedness in the event of any transmission or exposure.

The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) has urged all those planning to travel to ensure that they are up to date on all routine vaccinations, particularly the MMR vaccine. Parents of infants aged 6 to 11 months who plan to travel internationally should consult their pediatrician about early MMR vaccination prior to departure.

NJDOH is also encouraging health care providers to assess immunization status and ensure that all patients are current on routine vaccinations, and health care administrators should also verify that their staff have documented immunity to measles.

Grosser pointed out that the MMR vaccine is widely available at local pharmacies, health care provider offices, and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC). Individuals without health insurance can access vaccinations through FQHCs such as Zufall Health, located at the Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center,

which provides health care services on a sliding scale.

“Ensuring high MMR vaccination coverage remains a critical public health priority to prevent measles outbreaks and protect our communities,” said Grosser.

As far as H5N1 bird flu is concerned, the NJDOH as of March 10 reported: no human cases in the state; confirmed detections among wild birds in a number of counties, including Mercer; presumptive positive detection in poultry in Hudson, Mercer, and Union counties; confirmed detection in two feral cats in Hunterdon County; and no cattle/livestock cases.

Nationwide, there have been 70 human cases reported, including one fatality. “Fortunately, we have not seen sustained personto-person transmission,” said Grosser. “However, the situation requires continuous monitoring and vigilant public health surveillance in case any changes indicate easier spread.”

Grosser considered upcoming health department priorities. “Moving forward, we will continue to monitor policy developments, advocate for sustained funding, and explore alternative financial resources to uphold critical public health initiatives,” he said. “Despite the uncertainties ahead, our commitment to protecting the health and well-being of our community remains unwavering.”

—Donald Gilpin

Tell them you saw their ad in

Sourland Conservancy continued from page one and comments are being solicited from stakeholders, planning partners, and other interested parties.

The Conservancy is urging people to contact their state representatives and the State Planning Commission to ask that the region be included as an ACSC in the final State Plan. At press time, a petition on Change. org had more than 700 signatures.

“The cross-acceptance process will compare the land use policies at the municipal and county levels with the State Development and Redevelopment Plan with the goal to create the highest level of consistency possible at all levels of government,” reads the website of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities.

A final draft plan will be published once the outreach efforts are completed, followed by six public hearings throughout the state.

“Only after these analyses and public outreach efforts occur with the Draft State Development and Redevelopment Plan be presented to the State Planning Commission for approval,” the website reads.

Among the region’s most important functions is as a haven for migrating birds.

“Birds that are migrating between South America and the Arctic, and everywhere in between, stop and rest and have a snack in the Sourlands,” said Cleveland. “That’s important, because they need a healthy environment to rest and not be starved or predated. The

entire migratory route is a chain, and the Sourlands is one important link. If that link breaks, the chain breaks.”

Climate resiliency is another key factor. “The area serves as a really important carbon sink,” said Cleveland. “New Jersey has aggressive climate goals, and the Sourlands could play a really critical role in achieving them.”

Cleveland is hoping people will write not only to legislators, but to the State Planning Commission as well. She also urges the sharing of the petition.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get this designation, which would provide real protection,” said Cleveland. “I know it’s hard to focus on one thing right now, but that’s part of the beauty of this initiative. We have a short time to get this done. It’s a challenge. We are literally acting locally to impact ecosystems globally.”

—Anne Levin

Celebrity Chef Justine Ma

To Teach Dumpling Class LiLLiPiES Bakery will host celebrity Chef Justine Ma on Sunday, April 27 from 3-4:30 p.m. in a hands-on, interactive demonstration on crafting handmade dumplings and scallion pancakes from scratch. This adult class is for ages 14 and up.

“We are thrilled to host Chef Justine, who is a good friend as well as a very talented and famed chef-teacher” said Jen Carson, owner and head baker of LiLLiPiES. “I myself am excited to learn something new at this class.”

Ma’s culinary journey includes the James Beard Foundation and serving as food editor for New York Yoga Life Magazine. She has worked with chefs Carla Hall, Elizabeth Falkner, Michel Nischan, Marcus Samuelsson, and Mario Batali.

Ma is the founder of Farm to Table Hawaii, a culinary sanctuary that offers farm stays, cooking classes, yoga, workshops, and gourmet meals. Her passion for sustainable cooking is evident in the cultivation of her own ingredients on her property, and sourcing locally from farmers markets, butchers, fishermen, and hunters.

Inspired by Chef Justine’s Chopped episode on the Food Network, this class at LiLLiPiES is an opportunity to learn directly from a chef with experience in professional kitchens, sustainable practices, and her own Farm to Table business.

LiLLiPiES is at Princeton Shopping Center, 301 North Harrison Street. Visit LiLLiPiES.com to reserve a spot.

“Gatsby at 100” continued from page one movies and theater productions, selling a total of almost 30 million copies, and being translated into 42 languages.

“Gatsby’s magic emanates not only from its powerhouse poetic style — in which ordinary American language becomes unearthly — but from the authority with which it nails who we want to be as Americans. Not who we are; who we want to be,” wrote Georgetown University Professor Maureen Corrigan in her 2014 book So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures, which she will be discussing at an April 27 gathering at the Nassau Club and an April 28 panel discussion at Labyrinth Books.

“The Greatness of Gatsby” will be the subject on March 31 at 6:30 p.m. in the Chancellor Green Rotunda on the Princeton University campus, as Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and former Princeton Holder Fellow Martyna Majok and American Repertory Theater Director and Princeton 2009 graduate Kelvin Dinkins Jr. discuss Majok’s book for the new musical Gatsby, An American Myth (2024). The discussion will be moderated by Princeton Theater Professor Stacy Wolf and will also include a performance by Tony Award-nominated writer and actress Sharon Washington.

On April 3 at 5 p.m. in the Drapkin Studio on the second level of the Wallace Dance Building at the Lewis Arts Complex, Literature to Life will present a performance of Kelvin Grullon’s theatrical adaptation of The Great Gatsby performed by Bryce Foley and directed by Grullon with music by A.J. Khaw.

The Princeton Public Library (PPL) near the first floor fireplace on April 7 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. will be the setting for The Great Gatsby Community Filibuster Read-Aloud, reading the entire novel to kick off National Library Week 2025 and take part in Right to Read Day. All are invited to come and listen or sign up on the PPL calendar to secure a time slot for reading.

On April 8 at 7 p.m. the PPL will host an author visit and book launch with Nghi Vo for Don’t Sleep With the Dead, Vo’s novella about Nick Carraway and his life after the end of The Great Gatsby. A March 20 session, already full, at Firestone Library will discuss Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful, a retelling of The Great Gatsby from the point of view of Jordan Baker.

Other events taking place in April include a viewing of the Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 The Great Gatsby film at the Princeton Garden Theatre on April 9, a Roaring 20s Headband “Crafternoon” at Princeton University Library on April 1, a Raconteur Radio performance of The Great Gatsby at PPL on April 22, The Great “Catsby” at the Cotsen Children’s Library at Firestone Library on April 26, Corrigan’s presentations at The Nassau Club on April 27 and at Labyrinth Books with Fitzgerald editor Anne Margaret Daniel on April 28, and on Friday, May 2 from 7 to 9 p.m. an “After-Hours Speakeasy” with 1920s-era music by the Glenn Crytzer Quartet.

The University Library opened an extensive online exhibition “Gatsby at 100: The Author and His Creation” last month, and in April will launch the “Living Forever: The Archive of the Great Gatsby” exhibition in the Tiger Tea Room of Firestone Library.

A Gatsby mural on Spring Street, sponsored by the Arts Council of Princeton and created by New Jerseybased artist Allison Wong, is in progress and scheduled for completion by the end of this week.

“When I was sketching out the concept for this mural on my iPad, I knew I wanted to bring key elements from The Great Gatsby to life,” Wong wrote in an email. “I focused on capturing the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties that represents the glamorous life the characters were trying to chase.”

Fitzgerald arrived at Princeton University in the fall of 1913 for his freshman year. He did not distinguish himself academically, failing several classes and withdrawing two years later. He did, however, find success in writing musicals for The Triangle Club and publishing his writing in the Princeton Tiger humor magazine and the Nassau Literary Magazine.

As a sophomore he became a member of the prestigious Cottage Club, but described himself in a letter as “a poor boy in a rich town; a poor boy in a rich boy’s school; a poor boy in a rich man’s club at Princeton.” Princeton University provided the inspiration for Fitzgerald’s first novel This Side of Paradise (1920), and at the time of his death from a heart attack in 1940 he was reportedly reading the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Most of “ The Great Gatsby at 100” programs are free and open to the public, but some require registration and/or tickets. See library.princeton. edu/ gatsby100 for more information and registration details.

—Donald Gilpin

Police Blotter

Pedestrian in Wiggins Street Motor Vehicle Crash Dies

A pedestrian who was involved in a March 11 motor vehicle accident on Wiggins Street has died, according to a Princeton Police Department press release. Hin Chin, 74, “succumbed to his injuries on Friday, March 14,” the report states.

On Tuesday, March 11, at approximately 3:44 p.m., Princeton Police Department received a 911 call reporting a motor vehicle crash involving a pedestrian on Wiggins Street near Sylvia Beach Way. Officers located the pedestrian, “who appeared to be seriously injured,” according to the report. The Princeton Fire Department, Emergency Medical Technicians from West Windsor, and paramedics from Capital Health arrived on the scene and determined that the victim required immediate transport via helicopter to Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton. The Princeton Fire Department and other agencies assisted with the creation of a landing zone at Princeton High School. The transport was completed without incident.

The preliminary on-scene investigation revealed that a 17-year-old juvenile driver, operating a 2012 gray Honda Odyssey, was traveling westbound on Wiggins Street while the pedestrian was walking eastbound on the southern sidewalk of Wiggins Street. As the driver made a left turn onto Sylvia Beach Way, the vehicle struck the pedestrian, causing him to suffer a head injury.

The Princeton Police Department’s Traffic Safety Bureau, in coordination with the Mercer County Prosecutor’s

Office, continues to investigate the crash. Anyone who witnessed the incident is urged to contact Patrol Officer Jonathan Myzie at (609) 921-2100 ext. 1875.

On March 16, at 11:14 a.m., an individual reported that, sometime between October 5, 2024 and March 10, 2025, two bicycles were stolen from a bicycle storage area located on Albert Way. There are no suspects at this time.

On March 14, at 3:27 p.m., an individual reported that, earlier in the day, two packages were stolen from her front porch on Park Place. The total monetary loss is estimated at $155.87. There are no suspects at this time.

On March 12, at 12:48 a.m., someone reported that an unknown person or persons stole her wallet from the inside of her purse while she visited an establishment on Nassau Street. The suspect or suspects then attempted to make several fraudulent charges using her credit cards.

On March 12, at 8:31 a.m., Princeton Police patrols were alerted to a vehicle on fire in the area of Nassau Street. Patrols responded to the area and located an active vehicle fire in the parking lot of a business in the 200 block of Nassau Street. Patrols attempted to extinguish the fire, however, it continued to grow in size and intensity. The Princeton Fire Department responded to the location and extinguished the blaze. During this time, Nassau Street between Linden Lane and Chestnut Street was closed to vehicle traffic. The vehicle involved, a 2010 Ford Ranger, was heavily damaged by the fire and towed from the scene. There were no injuries as a result of the incident.

On March 11, at 3:04 p.m., a Ewing Street resident reported that she received multiple text messages from an unknown phone number claiming that there were

fraudulent transactions on her bank account. She responded to the text messages and shortly after, received a phone call from an unknown individual purporting to be a bank representative, She was then instructed to wire money to three different account numbers, which she did, suffering a monetary loss of approximately $25,000.

FOPOS Plans Sessions

For Spring Volunteers

Friends of Princeton Open Space (FOPOS) has announced several opportunities for volunteering under the guidance of the organization’s stewardship staff this spring to assist with habitat restoration and invasive species removal, among other events, at the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve.

Volunteers are needed on March 29 from 1-3 p.m., April 2 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., April 9 from 1-3 p.m., April 19 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., and April 30 from 1-3 p.m. On April 5, expert birder Winnie Hughes Spar will lead a guided bird walk through the preserve to observe Princeton’s bird life and learn about their habits. Space is limited to 20 participants, and advance registration is required. This event is geared towards adults, and held weather permitting.

On April 12, FOPOS kicks off its spring foraging and stewardship series with a garlic mustard foraging and stewardship session from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., with a focus on the invasive garlic mustard plant. A second foraging day is April 27.

FOPOS celebrates Earth Day on April 26 with volunteer sessions from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1-3 p.m. Volunteers are invited to join a potluck picnic and native plant giveaway from 12-1 p.m. For details and registration links, visit fopos.org/eventsprograms.

Mailbox

The views of the letters do not necessarily reflect the views of Town Topics.

Offering A Few Tips for Avoiding Three Common Tree Care Mistakes

To the Editor:

As spring fast approaches, avoid these three common tree care mistakes; planting too deeply, over-mulching, and string trimmer laceration.

By far the most egregious of these three mistakes is planting too deeply. Care must be taken that the root collar, the bottom area of the trunk that flares outwards transitioning into roots, is above grade. A root collar below grade can lead to a host of problems such as constricted root respiration, stunted growth, trunk rot and splitting, increased susceptibility to disease, canopy dieback, and girdling roots. A tree that finds itself in this situation is like an animal with a tire around its neck, struggling to survive and unable to thrive. This mistake is pervasive, with more than half of the newly planted trees I come across having fallen victim. Making the effort to plant a tree at an optimal height will pay dividends for decades and in some cases centuries to come. Before planting a tree, inspect the root ball and “Find the flare.” With balled-and-burlapped trees there is often a few inches of soil covering the root collar and in potted trees a fibrous layer of roots. Once the root collar is located, measure from the bottom of the root ball to the height of the root collar — dig the planting hole a bit shallower than this height. With balled-and-burlapped trees, avoid unraveling all the burlap until the tree is placed in the hole, all that’s needed is a small opening to find the root collar. Unfortunately, the only way to rectify this situation is to excavate and raise the tree. Digging soil away will only create a depression for water to pool which can lead to root rot. For larger trees, heavy equipment will be needed. For smaller trees, two people can dig around the root ball, loosen it up, tip the tree to one side, throw soil under the raised side of the root ball, then tip the tree to the opposite side and throw soil under that raised side, and repeat this back and fourth rock-and-fill approach until the tree is at the desired height. There is a saying that goes something like, “Plant it too low, it’ll never grow. Plant it too high, it might dry. Plant it just right, watch it take flight.”

A second all too common mistake is over-mulching. No more than two to four inches of mulch is necessary to retain some moisture in the ground and provide nutrients while still allowing adequate root respiration and for rainwater to reach the ground. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) A300 Part 2 – 17.4.5 states “Mulch shall not be placed against tree trunks or cover root flares.” Say no to “mulch volcanoes.”

The third mistake to avoid is lacerating the trunk of the tree with a string trimmer, particularly young trees, as this can lead to shock and wounds susceptible to infection.

Please help spread the word, the trees are crying for help.

ANDREJ MIKIC Wheatsheaf Lane

Sharing Gratitude for Nature of Reporting on Michelle Mews Tragedy

To the Editor:

Last month’s article on the horrific event that took place in the Michelle Mews Apartments deserves affirmation [“Princeton Man Charged with Killing Brother in Apartment on Palmer Square,” February 26, page 1]. In the words of The New York Times, it’s paramount to publish “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” The majority of stories in other outlets included gruesome, salacious, and frankly unnecessary details about the tragic murder. The Town Topics understands how to properly execute this storied motto by using critical restraint and discretion.

As a Princeton resident of more than 60 years, and current Michelle Mews tenant, this thoughtful reporting centers the community impacted by such misfortune and our shared humanity.

DR. RONNIE DAVIDSON Michelle Mews

Urging Drivers, and Pedestrians, to Use Caution at Crossings, Intersections in Town

To the Editor:

When my kids were little and enjoyed the Disney classic Bambi, one of their favorites parts was in the spring when all the forest creatures became “twitterpated.” This was a euphemism for falling in love, but our family expanded the use to include any time when someone displayed irrational exuberance.

Guess what — spring is here, and Princeton drivers are twitterpated! I would estimate those passing my crossing are driving 5 mph faster on average than they were a month ago, and many always drive 5-10 mph faster than they should, so this is a problem. They are also engaging more frequently in other risky behaviors like darting across the intersection trying to beat oncoming traffic. Please slow down!

In the interest of fairness, let me engage in a little equal opportunity chastisement. Pedestrian: Take out your earbuds or take off your headphones. Hearing is a crucial way to apprehend what is going on around you — would you wear an immersive set of goggles to play video games while trying to walk around town? If you can’t hear me telling you when it is safe to cross, you also can’t hear the driver bearing down on you when you are at other intersections without a crossing guard.

Listen to the birds singing — you’ll be safer and probably happier, especially if you are currently listening to the news on those headsets.

DAVID E. COHEN Princeton Councilman Witherspoon Street

Letters to the Editor Policy

Town Topics welcomes letters to the Editor, preferably on subjects related to Princeton. Letters must have a valid street address (only the street name will be printed with the writer’s name). Priority will be given to letters that are received for publication no later than Monday noon for publication in that week’s Wednesday edition. Letters must be no longer than 500 words and have no more than four signatures.

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The Princeton University Chapel Choir and orchestra present W. A. Mozart’s beloved Requiem, paired with Robert A. Harris’s moving organ work “Elegy for the Time of Change.” With Nicole Aldrich, Director of Chapel Music, and Eric Plutz, University Organist.

Scholar Speaks on Memoir Of Warsaw Jewish Life

Author Samuel Kassow

will discuss the life and work of journalist and literary critic Rokhl Auerbach, and her memoir, Warsaw Testament, on Monday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m., at the Douglass Student Center, 100 George Street, New Brunswick. Free and open to the public, the Annual Abram Matlofsky Memorial lecture, funded by the Karma Foundation, is presented by the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University and cosponsored by the Yiddish Book Center. A dessert reception will follow the lecture.

Fintan O’Toole Delivers Fagles Memorial Lecture Fintan O’Toole, author, essayist, and former Visiting Leonard L. Milberg ‘53 Professor in Irish Letters at Princeton University, presents “Unmasking Conspiracy: Philip Graves and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This Fund for Irish Studies lecture is on Friday, March 21 at 4:30 p.m., in the James Stewart Film Theater, 185 Nassau

Journalist Chris Hedges Speaks at Labyrinth on “A Genocide Foretold”

A Genocide Foretold confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges issues a call to action urging us to bear witness and engage with the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Hedges speaks at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, on Wednesday, March 26, at 6 p.m. He wrote the first section of the book (Seven Stories Press, release date April 8) when he was in Ramallah in July 2024, and he draws from his experience doing extensive reporting from the Middle East, including Gaza, for The New York Times. The book includes chapters on what life is like in Gaza City and Ramallah in the midst of approaching bombs and gunfire; the history of the dispossession of Palestinians of their land in relation to the ideology of Zionism; a portrait of Amr, a 17-year-

old high school student who is forced to evacuate his village with his family; and a “Letter to the Children of Gaza.”

Hedges was a war correspondent for two decades in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, 15 of them with The New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 14 books, including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War and Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison

He writes a column every Monday for ScheerPost and has a show, The Chris Hedges Report, on The Real News. He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and The University of Toronto. He has taught students earning their college degree from Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system since 2010.

Until recently, few knew about the extraordinary life and work of memoirist Auerbach (1899–1976), who survived the Holocaust and dedicated her life to preserving the memories of its victims. Auerbach was a central member of Oyneg Shabes, a top-secret underground archival team in the Warsaw Ghetto that documented daily life at great personal risk. Her wartime writings, collected and translated for the first time into English in 2024 as Warsaw Testament by renowned scholar Kassow, paint a vivid portrait of Warsaw’s prewar Yiddish literary and artistic community and its destruction at the hands of the Nazis. These writings and those of the postwar period are a crucial source of information for historians of both prewar Jewish Warsaw and the Warsaw Ghetto.

Advance registration is required at BildnerCenter. Rutgers.edu. Free campus parking is available.

Kassow, the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, won a National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Memoir in January for his translation of Warsaw Testament (White Goat Press, 2024). Kassow is also the author of Who Will Write Our History ? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press, 2007), which was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, translated into eight languages, and adapted into an award-winning documentary that had its New Jersey premiere at the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival in 2018.

In the annual Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture, O’Toole contends that the most toxic forgery of all time is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which purports to be the record of secret meetings of Jewish leaders), used as the basis for the most violent antisemitic propaganda of the 20th century and exposed as a fake in 1921 by Irish journalist Philip Graves. In his lecture, O’Toole tells the story of how Graves revealed the truth and suggests that Graves’ historical work resonates with contemporary dilemmas. The program is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. They are available in advance through University Ticketing, tickets. princeton.edu/online, and at the door, pending availability.

C.K. Williams Reading Series Concludes With Sidik Fofana, Creative Writing Students

Fiction writer Sidik Fofana, author of Stories from the Tenants Downstairs , will read from his work at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25 at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street. Thia Bian, John Venegas Juarez, Daniel Viorica, Bracklinn Williams, Layla Williams, Andrew Zacks, and Audrey Zhang, seniors in Princeton’s Program in Creative Writing, will also read from their recent work during the event which concludes the 2024-2025 C.K. Williams Reading Series.

The series is named after the late Pulitzer Prize and National Book Awardwinning poet C.K. Williams, who served on Princeton’s faculty for 20 years. The series showcases seniors in the Program in Creative Writing alongside established writers as special guests. Cosponsored by Labyrinth Books, the event is free and open to the public with the author’s books available to purchase and have signed.

A graduate of New York University’s M.F.A. program, Fofana is a public school teacher in Brooklyn. His work

has appeared in the Sewanee Review and Granta. Fofana was named a fellow at the Center for Fiction in 2018. Stories from the Tenants Downstairs (Scribner, 2022) is his debut short story collection, recognized as a Notable Book by the American Library Association and given a Literary Award Honor from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Composed of eight interconnected narratives about residents of a fictional high-rise apartment building in Harlem, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs “brilliantly captures the joy and pain of the human experience,” according to the Library Journal. “These engrossing and gritty stories of tenuous living in a gentrifying America enchant,” notes Publishers Weekly in a starred review of the collection. Stories from the Tenants Downstairs was named among the best books of the year by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Chicago Review of Books, LitHub, and Electric Lit. The bookstore is an accessible venue.

The Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life connects Rutgers University with the community through public lectures, symposia, Jewish communal initiatives, cultural events, and teacher training in Holocaust education.

One of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, O’Toole is advising editor of The New York Review of Books and writes for The Irish Times, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. From 2012 to 2024, he was the Visiting Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters at Princeton University. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. O’Toole’s books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, which was named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2022; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain ; and Ship of Fools. He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, the Orwell Prize, the European Press Prize and the Robert Silvers Prize for Journalism. He has recently been appointed official biographer of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney. In 2023, O’Toole was named an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2024, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

The Fund for Irish Studies Series is co-chaired this year by Jane Cox, Director of Princeton’s Program in Theater & Music Theater, and Robert Spoo, Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters.

Samuel Kassow

Fintan O’Toole (Photo by Nick Bradshaw)

After the Book Sale: Mapping Franz Kafka, Finding Weldon Kees

Nobody has seen or heard from Weldon Kees since Monday, July 18, 1955

—Anthony Lane, in “The Disappearing Poet”

Iwas on my way out of the Bryn MawrWellesley Preview Sale with $10 worth of books when I noticed a devastated Cedok guide to Prague on a table of discards. Although the back cover was detached, the book was full of information and photos from a time when Franz Kafka and his family were living in the Czech capital. Attached to the ravaged back cover was a large colorful fold-out map of Prague in first-rate condition, which I’ve been using to locate entries from Kafka’s Diaries 1910-1923 (Schocken 1975).

On March 14, 1915/2025 I found Kafka “in Chotek Park. Most beautiful spot in Prague. Birds sang, the Castle with its arcade, the old trees hung with last year’s foliage, the dim light.” Even if you can’t “be there” in 2025 by tracing his movement on a map, you can at least feel closer to the living, breathing, feeling, thinking man who began the same entry: “A morning: In bed until half past eleven. Jumble of thoughts which slowly takes shape and hardens in incredible fashion.” In the evening he goes for a walk with “the defensible but untrustworthy ideas of the morning” in his head. Struck by the phrase “in incredible fashion,” I looked up his most notoriously “incredible” work and found that Verwandlung ( Metamorphoses ) was published six months later in a journal and in December 1915 as a book.

The Poet Who Disappeared When I wrote about the book sale some 20 years ago (“Billy Collins and the Homeless Poets of Bryn Mawr”), “homeless” was just another word for “lost” or “unknown.” At this year’s sale I found a poet who decided to disappear, a fate Kafka effectively chose when he told his friend and executor Max Brod to destroy all his unpublished writing, including the diaries that I’ve been quoting from. The working title of Kafka’s unfinished first novel, published by Brod in 1927 as Amerika , was The Man Who Disappeared

Imagine a little known American poet born in 1914 in Beatrice, Nebraska, who “disappeared” in Marin County, California, on July 18, 1955. Thanks to the survival of Kafka’s diaries, I’ve found the disappearing poet’s vision of life presaged in entries such as the one for March 13, 1915: “Occasionally I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity and of the existence of a goal to which one makes one’s way by undergoing every kind of unhappiness.” And on March 23: “My feeling of ease in my room today. Hollow as a clam shell on the beach, ready to be pulverized by the tread of a foot.”

“The Last Man”

Weldon Kees called his first poetry collection The Last Man (Colt Press 1943). With only 12 years of recorded life ahead of him, he begins “Subtitle,” the first poem, “We present for you this evening a movie of death.” For this film, “the ending is your own....Sit forward, let the screen reveal your heritage, the logic of your destiny.” The fifth poem, “The Inquiry,” asks if you “fear the keyhole’s splintered eye?”

The answer: “I fear the eye.”

Part Two of The Last Man, “June 1940,” is headed by a quote from Wilfred Owen (“All a poet can do today is warn”), and ends with a line borrowed by Bob Dylan 30 years later, “An idiot wind is blowing.” The next poem, “After the Trial,” would have sent me to Kafka’s Diaries if I hadn’t already been there because of Kees’s references to “long plateaus of guilt,”

“the machinery of law devised by parents,” and “the silent rooms where darknesss promises a final sentence.”

Kafka’s unfinished novel The Trial was first published in English in 1937. A few poems later there’s “The View of the Castle,” which is mortgaged now (“The princesses were whores”).

Abandoned by Kafka in 1922, The Castle first appeared in English in 1930.

New York Years

The Fall of the Magicians (Reynal & Hitchcock 1947) looks ahead to the busy New York years when Kees published poetry and criticism in Partisan Review; wrote reviews for the New Republic and Time; played jazz piano in clubs; reviewed art for the Nation; and began painting, with four one-man shows and work shown at the Whitney annual exhibition in 1950 and displayed “with Picasso, Mondrian and de Kooning at the Kootz Gallery,” according to Anthony Lane’s June 2005 New Yorker profile, “The Disappearing Poet.”

Golden Gate Bridge, and the only witness who could verify reported post-1955 sightings of Kees in New Orleans and Mexico. Intimations of Frankenstein Although Robinson first appears in The Fall of the Magicians (“the dog stops barking after Robinson has gone. His act is over”), he shows up three times in Poems 1947-1954 (San Francisco 1954), Kees’s last act. In view of what happened or didn’t happen at the Golden Gate Bridge, the most haunting lines relate to his first appearance: “All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson calling. It never rings when he is here.” He sounds like a dandified Prufrock in “Aspects of Robinson,” which ends with his “covert topcoat” and “clothes for the spring” covering “His sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.”

“Robinson At Home” wakes in sweat to “the terrible moonlight and what might be silence...And the long curtains blow into the room.” In “Relating to Robinson,” the poet is “walking in the twilight toward the docks” when “I thought I made out Robinson ahead of me...We were alone there he and I, inhabiting the empty street.” The meeting becomes a nightmare, as if Kees were channeling Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , the creator encounters his creature: “when his own head turned with mine and fixed me with dilated, terrifying eyes...I thought I saw the whirlpool opening.”

1915, I was pleasantly surprised by “The Hourglass,” the first poem in the collection, with its reference to “a state of watchfulness, or the act of watching.” Not sure yet where we are, San Francisco Bay, Beatrice, Venice (“High in the tower of St Marks ... spangled with golden stars and trimmed with lapis lazuli”), or it could be a church on East 10th in the Village near where Kees and his wife lived. The image of the abandoned car at the Golden Gate bridge haunts “My mind shaped routes for some immense retreat out of the world of men.” Kees and Kafka came together for me in the last stanza of the poem’s fifth and final section, “where ghosts take up their wanderings on routes the owls improvised” — “In Prague,” above “the City Hall, Death’s figure stands against the dial of a calendar, and sounds a bell before the hour strikes.” Eight lines later, the poem ends as “shale tumbles from a mountain to a road, a planet surges, plunging, and goes out.”

Kees and the Movies

Kees loved movies. There’s a cinematic aura about the image on the cover of The Collected Poems , edited by Donald Justice (Bison Books 1975). With a cigarette jutting from his mouth, he could be a character in a California noir, a doomed poet or a private eye. At the time of his disappearance, he was running a weekly radio broadcast on Berkeley’s KPFA and had hatched the idea of a new production studio called San Francisco Films that would deliver art-house foreign movies, and American noirs. A frequent guest on his show “Behind the Movie Camera” was his friend Pauline Kael, film reviewer Anthony Lane’s predecessor at the New Yorker. As Lane recounts, Kael was one of two women Kees called that last afternoon, saying “Things are pretty bad. I may go to Mexico. To stay.” He ended the phone call to Kael, “What keeps you going?”

Other BM-W Finds

MDuring his time in New York, Kees created a persona he calls Robinson, a variation on T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Sweeney, as well as the name Kafka used for one of the antagonists in The Man Who Disappeared. As Lane puts it, “Robinson” is the only one who knows why Kees abandoned his car on the Marin County side of the

The poet from Beatrice, Nebraska plays on his Dantesque roots in “La Vita Nuova,” which begins “in the blue heat” and “the burning air” and ends “Under a gray sky ripped apart by thunder and the changing wind.” When he visits Los Alamos in “Travels in North America,” he could be searching for his Virgil among the men keeping watch “on the University of California’s atom bomb.” Kees finds a “fitting portent” for “the Capital of the Atomic Age” in “the peaks of the surrounding mountains, Sangre de Christo, Blood of Christ.”

Prague in New York

With a map of Prague spread out on the desk, and Kafka’s Diaries open to March

y first purchase at the preview was a slim volume of poetry misplaced on the criticism table: X.J. Kennedy’s Emily Dickinson in Southern California (David R. Godine 1973), a title guaranteed to hook someone with a weakness for oddball combinations. For the same price, $4, I found a nicely illustrated paperback Coleridge and Wordsworth; The Crucible of Friendship (2002) by Tom Mayberry. This friendship, set to music by Van Morrison in his album Summertime in England , is associated with a British friend. We visited Coleridge’s cottage together in 2013 and were in touch day and night by email until he died in April 2022, a “disappearance” that becomes an “appearance” every time I access our correspondence.

—Stuart Mitchner

NJ Symphony Combines Impressionist, Contemporary, And Romantic Music in Princeton Performance

In a concert linking the crispness of winter to a hint of spring, New Jersey Symphony performed works of Claude Debussy, Nico Muhly, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, showing the depth of both player and conducting talent. The Symphony divided the conducting responsibilities in Friday night’s performance at Richardson Auditorium between Music Director Xian Zhang and the Symphony’s Colton Conducting Fellow Gregory D. McDaniel. A Houston native, McDaniel has conducted opera companies and orchestras nationwide, as well as in Canada.

McDaniel directed the first half of the program, leading off with André Caplet’s orchestral arrangement of Claude Debussy’s popular Clair de Lune for piano. Originally a movement in a piano suite, Clair de Lune became one of the composer’s most recognized pieces, leading to numerous arrangements, including at least six for orchestra.

McDaniel began Debussy’s familiar music languidly, with a dreamy flow from the strings topped off by delicate flute passages from Bart Feller and Kathleen Nester. McDaniel built the sound well, always knowing exactly where he was going. The overall effect was lush, sustained by a subtle pair of horns.

and keyboard as McDaniel maintained a graceful triple meter. Sounding changed moods frequently as the movements streamed one into another, with the piano lines in particular conveying a variety of characters. Flutist Feller and oboist Alexandra Knoll were often paired together, and the strings consistently expressed an open and very New England feeling. The original hymn texts were quite reverent, which Muhly captured with simple harmonies and chorale-like writing for the piano soloist. Especially in the closing “Sounding Joy” and coda, McDaniel brought out punctuating accents, effectively returning to a refined wind palette to close.

New Jersey Symphony Music Director Zhang took the podium for Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor. The success of Rachmaninoff’s Op. 18 piano concerto significantly boosted the composer’s confidence and made him a celebrity, with his reputation further cemented by the “orchestral masterpiece” of this Symphony. The first movement “Largo” was announced by cellos and double basses, as Andrew Adelson’s English horn melody of sadness rose from the texture. As played by New Jersey Symphony, this work was Russian Romantic music at its best. Zhang maintained a dramatic ebb and flow, with the richness of the violins contrasted by gentle wind playing. The cinematic second movement “Allegro” displayed a clean yet busy instrumental sound, with a martial flair added by a crisp trio of trumpets. Zhang and the ensemble handled rhythmic shifts well, with the closing notes of each movement accentuated.

RMcDaniel continued to command the podium for the New Jersey premiere of American composer Nico Muhly’s Sounding for Piano and Orchestra, a cocommission between the New Jersey and Vermont Symphonies. One of this country’s most high-regarded composers, Muhly turned to fellow Vermonter and pianist Adam Tendler to premiere this five-movement work incorporating late 18th-century American tunes from composer, horse breeder and politician Justin Morgan. The melodies embedded in Sounding were both Protestant hymns originally composed for a cappella chorus and “fuguing” tunes, in which all voices begin together and then break off into their own parts.

The opening “Amanda” was based on a melody honoring the memory of Justin Morgan’s wife. Pianist Tendler proved to be a very unassuming and compelling soloist, joining the orchestra in very decisive chords contrasted by a three-way conversation between solo bassoon, oboe,

achmaninoff’s great melodies often have found their way into popular and film music, and clarinetist Juan Esteban Martinez expressively brought out one of these classic lines in the third movement against a cinematic backdrop. Oboist Knoll played a second equally as lavish melody, as Zhang drew out the intensity and passion. The fourth movement’s carnival-like atmosphere closed the towering Symphony with verve, as smooth transitions led to a clean ending marked by dynamic contrasts within a 19th-century musical frenzy.

—Nancy Plum

New Jersey Symphony will present the final concert of its 2024-25 Princeton series on Friday, May 16 at 8 p.m. at Richardson Auditorium. Conducted by Music Director Xian Zhang, this performance will feature music of Mozart, Bach, and Michael Abels. Ticket information can be obtained by njsymphony.org.

Performing Arts

NOT-SENSIBLE SHOES: Cast members of the musical “Kinky Boots,” which tells the true story of a British factory owner who transformed his output of boring loafers to stilettos for drag queens, on stage at Kelsey Theatre March 21-30.

“Kinky Boots” Opens At Kelsey Theatre

A struggling maker of men’s shoes reverses his fortunes when he transforms his footwear from functional to fabulous with the help of an entertainer in need of some sturdy stilettos in the musical Kinky Boots, at the Kelsey Theatre, March 21-30, on Mercer County Community College’s West Windsor Campus.

Presented by Thank You 5 Productions, Kinky Boots is based on the true story of Charlie, who realizes the demand is dying down for his sensible men’s loafers. A chance meeting with Lola, a London entertainer

in need of a sturdier pair of heels, results in a partnership leading to the factory pivoting to make shoes for a new clientele: drag queens.

Based on a 2005 British film, Kinky Boots features a book by Harvey Fierstein, and a Grammy-winning score by pop star Cyndi Lauper. The production received 13 Tony Award nominations in 2013 and won six, including Best Musical and Best Score.

Shows are Friday, March 21 and March 28, and Saturday, March 22 and March 29 at 8 p.m.; and Sunday, March 23 and March 30 at 2 p.m. at the Kelsey Theatre on MCCC’s West

Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. Tickets are $26 for adults and $24 for children and students. Visit kelseytheatre.org.

Community Orchestra Presents Family Concert

The Westminster Community Orchestra (WCO), conducted by Ruth Ochs, will present “Song, Dance, and Fun: A Family Concert” on Sunday, March 30 at 3 p.m. in Hillman Hall, the Cullen Center, on the Westminster campus on Walnut Lane. No tickets are required. A suggested admission of $5 in cash will be collected at the door.

The 45-minute concert, recommended for families with children aged 4 and up, will feature Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty waltz, Faure’s Pavane, and the Scherzo from Dvorak’s Symphony Number 5 as well as music from How to Train Your Dragon and Frozen. Also planned is an interactive work by Andrew McPherson, “Concerto for Audience and Orchestra,” in which families will provide accompaniment to the orchestra. Emily Boksner, the third-place winner of the Westminster Conservatory Piano Concerto competition, will perform the second movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major.

“We would love for audiences of all ages to join us and experience these selections that have both beautiful melodies and lively, dance-inspired rhythms,” said Ochs. “The short, fastpaced program would be a wonderful opportunity to share music together as a family, in a low-stress environment. One of our pieces will even call upon our audiences to clap and create rhythms alongside our playing. We are featuring a talented young pianist, Emily Boksner, who will remind us that hard work and practice pays off.”

An 18-year-old high school senior from Manalapan, Emily began her musical training at the Westminster Conservatory at age four and currently studies with Rita Shklar. Among the multiple awards she has received are the gold prize at the 2023 International Music and Arts Society competition. Most recently, she won the Grand Prix Prize and will perform at Carnegie Hall.

The Westminster Community Orchestra, now in its 37th season, has profes sional and amateur mem bers from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For more in formation, visit rider.edu or call (609) 921-7104.

Princeton Pro Musica Presents “Carmina Burana”

On Sunday, March 30 at 4 p.m., Princeton Pro Musica and Roxey Ballet will join creative forces to perform Carl Orff›s Carmina Burana in the Kendall Main Stage Theater at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, under the direction of Princeton Pro Musica Artistic Director Ryan J. Brandau.

Carmina Burana is a set of poems and songs written by Bavarian monks in the 13th century, uncovered in the early 19th century, and set for large mixed chorus, treble chorus, and orchestra by Carl Orff in 1936. While written nearly 800 years ago, the poems are relevant.

Themes of time, fortune, springtime, passion, debauchery, and satirical critiques of those in power are in the text, eschewing religious piety, and embracing instead basic and primal human experiences.

After Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, few choral-orchestral works have made their way into popular culture more pervasively than Carmina Burana . A 2007 Gatorade commercial, the films Excalibur and Cheaper by the Dozen, Domino’s Pizza, and the show The X Factor are among the entities that have made use of the score.

Princeton Pro Musica exists to perform choral masterworks and other works of the choral literature. With a chorus of 100-plus voices, including primarily nonprofessionals and also selected professional singers, the chorus gives four performances a year. It also features orchestras with experienced professional musicians, drawn from New York City, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. The Met Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and New Jersey Symphony are among those that have collaborated.

Based in New Hope, Pa., Roxey Ballet was incorporated in 1995 as a New Jersey nonprofit organization.

Headed by Mark Roxey, the company has a mission to deliver artistic and cultural excellence through professional dance performances, residencies, educational programs, workshops, and master classes. Roxey Ballet takes pride in being a multicultural, all-inclusive organization that fosters a creative environment of growth for all.

Tickets range from $12 to $80.50. Visit princeton promusica.org.

Marie Irene Fornés is Subject of Symposium Events highlighting theater-maker María Irene Fornés including a reconstruction of Fornés’ last play, Dr. Kheal, and a live podcast recording, both open to the public, part of a major symposium on Fornés at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

The 2025 Latinx Theatre Commons María Irene Fornés Institute Symposium is a co-production of Latinx Theatre Commons and the Lewis Center for the Arts.

Born in Cuba in 1930, Fornes is a playwright,

director, designer, and teacher who became a guiding presence for emerging theater artists of the 1980s and ’90s, especially those invested in staging feminist, queer, and Latinx aesthetics and experiences. She died in 2018.

DrKheal 2 : One Big Thing offers a tandem encounter with Fornés’ 1968 play on March 21 at 5 p.m. in which a learned professor delivers a lecture about the meaning of all things.

Professor Brian Herrera and alum Kyle Berlin each perform the role of Dr. Kheal simultaneously in different time periods in different venues for half the audience. The audiences then switch venues and experience the other Dr. Kheal, followed by an interactive conversation about the futures of higher education. The event is in CoLab and the Wallace Theater in the Lewis Arts complex.

On the evening of March 22, the public is invited to join a live OnTAP theater and performance podcast recording of an episode on Fornés and her work. The symposium previews publication of the new book, María Irene Fornés in Context , in July. The event is at 7:30 p.m. in the Wallace Theater.

Admission to both is free and open to the public, available at tickets.princeton.edu.

Rock Group Night Ranger

Comes to New Brunswick State Theatre New Jersey presents the rock group Night Ranger on Thursday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets

range from $39-$214.

Having sold over 17 million albums worldwide, performed on over 4000 stages, and claimed a radio audience exceeding one billion, Night Ranger has transcended the arena rock sound and style well beyond that era. The group’s hits include “Sister Christian,” “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” “When You Close Your Eyes,” and “(You Can Still) Rock in America.”

Over the years, the band’s music has been featured in many different areas of global media and pop culture. Night Ranger was one of the first big “video” bands on MTV, with over 10 No.1 hit videos. Their songs can be heard in such television shows as The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, American Dad, Glee, Grey’s Anatomy, and Parks & Recreation. The band has also had music featured in video games, such as Rock Band, Guitar Hero, and Grand Theft Auto, plus hit Broadway musical Rock of Ages , the film Boogie Nights , and other films such as Friday the 13th, Teachers, Sixteen Candles , and The Secret of My Success . Most recently the band’s classic hit “Sister Christian” can be heard in a Dr. Pepper commercial.

The band members are Jack Blades (bass, vocals), Kelly Keagy (drums, vocals), Brad Gillis (lead & rhythm guitars), Eric Levy (keyboards), and Keri Kelli (lead & rhythm guitars). State Theatre New Jersey is at 15 Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick. Visit stnj. org for tickets.

Maria Irene Fornés (Photo by James M. Kent)

PRIZE-WINNER: Emily Boksner, Westminster Conservatory student, will perform with the Westminster Community Orchestra under the direction of Ruth Ochs on Sunday, March 30 at 3 p.m. in Hillman Hall on the Westminster campus.

ROCK LEGENDS: Night Ranger performs at State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick on April 3 at 7:30 p.m.

“NELSON STREET, BROOKLYN”: This work by Mark Oliver is part of “Imagine-Observe,” his joint exhibition with Larry Mitnick, on view April 10 through May 4 at Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville. An opening reception is on April 19 from 2 to 4 p.m.

“FOUNDATION”: This painting by Larry Mitnick is featured in “Imagine-Observe,” his joint exhibition with Mark Oliver, on view April 10 through May 4 at Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville.

“Imagine-Observe” Exhibit

Coming to Artists’ Gallery Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville will present “Imagine-Observe,” an exhibition showcasing the abstract work of architect/painter Larry Mitnick and observational work of architect/ painter Mark Oliver, April 10 through May 4 By using inventive techniques and form, these artists continue to push the definition of contemporary art. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, April 19 from 2 to 4 p.m.

Mitnick’s works are handpainted acrylic paintings on canvas. In each abstract piece the viewer discovers a unique set of spatial, formal, and color progressions, often inspired by nature. There are a variety of compositions exploring animated boundaries and voided centers. Contrasting hard-edged opaque and transparent forms with textured brushwork, Mitnick excites one’s eyes, mind and imagination.

Oliver’s works are both hand-painted watercolors on paper and acrylics on

will also be featuring musical accompaniment by guitarist Brian Dixon, with a classical and solo repertoire. Benevenia was a recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru research fellowship in 2019. His work uses a wide range of materials, including steel, fiberglass, wood, and found objects. His art pushes physical limits, addressing the duality of fragility and resilience. The exhibition includes articulated steel sculptures with painted panels that Benevenia refers to as “alter pieces,” as well as a group of boldly colored abstract paintings with raised textured gesso surfaces that were inspired by British painter Howard Hodgkin.

DeCarolis will be on hand to answer questions on her original vision that inspired this exhibit. “From early in life, the core of my being has watched and listened to nature, life, and humanity with an open and creative eye and ear. Listening for the magic, the picture, the story to all that surrounds me,” said DeCarolis. “When my land called out, I knew I had to listen and act.”

D&R Greenway’s mission is to preserve and care for land and inspire a conservation ethic. The gallery is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. RSVP for the closing reception at drgreenway. org or call (609) 924-4646.

Continued on Page 21

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experience and examine characteristic urban details. They are architects/painters with similar experiences and sensibilities. Both share their interest in architectural ideas and the geometry of spatial sequences. These contemporaries investigate spatial sequences through perspective, layered spaces, objects and their backgrounds. They explore the play of shadow and light, reflective, transparent, and opaque surfaces. Mitnick and Oliver rely on the viewer to complete the experience, to daydream and venture into a creative dialogue with their work.

See more of the artists’ work at www.larrymitnick. com and www.Lambertville Arts.com

Located at 18 Bridge Street, in the heart of Lambertville, Artists’ Gallery is open Thursday through Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information visit Lambertvillearts.com.

urday March 22 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Johnson Education Center, 1 Preservation Place.

“When the Land Calls” is a celebration of an inspiring story about preserving art, land, and community. The exhibit, co-curated by David Scott Lawson and Yvonne DeCarolis, opened in December to a packed house of over 200 guests. Artists Ellen Rebarber and Mike Benevenia engaged the crowd and described their emotional journey of being brought together by area resident Yvonne DeCarolis and her vision to bring art and music to her land.

Rebarber shows no signs of slowing down at the age of 93, actively making art and teaching in her Highland Park home studio. Her collection of sculpture and finely crafted objects in colored glass, stone, metal, ceramic, and paper will all be on sale with a 20 percent discount. D&R Greenway

Jan Kraybill In Concert

Friday, April 4, 2025 at 7:30pm Princeton University Chapel

GRAMMY-nominated organist Dr. Jan Kraybill will bring a thrilling program to the Chapel’s magnificent Skinner/Mander organ. All are welcome. Free concert. No tickets required.

EASTER & PASSOVER

“WHEEL II”: This work by Mike Benevenia is part of “When the Land Calls,” now on view in the Johnson Education Center at D&R Greenway Land Trust. A closing reception is on Saturday, March 22 from 2 to 4 p.m.

Photo credit: Roy Inman

ART PEOPLE PARTY: The Arts Council of Princeton’s signature spring fundraiser will be held on Friday, April 4 from 7 to 10 p.m. Shown are attendees at a previous event. Tickets are available now at artscouncilofprinceton.org.

Art

Continued from Page 16

Tickets Now on Sale for ACP’s Art People Party

Tickets are available for the Arts Council of Princeton’s (ACP) signature spring fundraiser, Art People Party, to be held on Friday, April 4 from 7-10 p.m. Known for transforming spaces with whimsy décor and artistic installations, the event will embody the theme of PROM, a kaleidoscope of youthful nostalgia and present day wisdom as imagined through a joyful, inclusive, and artistic lens.

Art People Party promises creative fashions, an open beer and wine bar, dinner, and DJ dance party, while the signature “Tombola” art experience sees that every ticket holder leaves with original artwork. Each Tombola ticket holder previews the available choices, all contributed by talented regional artists, and makes a quick decision when their number is drawn. Partygoers will enjoy creative photo opportunities, watch

live art-making unfold, and dance the night away with friends old and new.

This year, Art People Party will honor Kristin S. Appelget, assistant vice president for community and regional affairs at Princeton University. “Kristin’s transformative work in Princeton’s development and engagement with our organization (and countless others) has had an immeasurable impact on the town of Princeton and beyond,” said Adam Welch, ACP executive director.

“From her role at Princeton University to her time as president and CEO of the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce, Kristin has exemplified leadership, collaboration, and a dedication to civic responsibility. We can’t wait to celebrate her remarkable achievements and contributions at this special event.”

Supporting Art People Party as Honorary Event Chairs are Kathy Herring and Weezie Steffens. “This unforgettable night is more than just a celebration”, said Herring. “It’s a chance for

our community to come together, dance, and support the incredible young artists and artists-in-residence who make our programs so special. Whether you missed your prom, want a do-over, or just love a good party, this is your night to shine — all while giving back to the arts.”

All may preview the donated Tombola artwork, on view at 4 Hulfish Street on Palmer Square (previously Art on Hulfsh), from March 27 through April 2. An opening reception will be held Thursday, March 27 from 5 to 7 p.m., free and open to the public.

Proceeds from Art People Party benefit the Arts Council’s Anne Reeves Fund, which supports community arts initiatives and the ACP’s Artist-in-Residence Program, as well as outreach programs that serve underserved youth and teens, low-income seniors, neurodivergent adults, and more.

For tickets and more information, visit artscouncilofprinceton.org or call (609) 924-8777.

Call for Signature Image:

Phillips’ Mill Juried Art Show

Phillips’ Mill’s 96th Annual Juried Art Show committee invites artists to participate in its search for the signature image for this year’s show. The signature image, an artistic representation of the historic Mill, is used on marketing and advertising materials including posters, ads, invitations, postcards, social media, banners, and on the Phillips’ Mill website. Submissions are being accepted through April 15.

The artist will receive a $500 honorarium and the signature image will automatically be included in the juried art show. The artist may also submit additional entries to the show as outlined in the show’s prospectus.

Previous years’ images have included whimsical as well as traditional depictions of the Mill and its surroundings. Collages, watercolors, oils, and acrylics have all been selected, so artists should feel free to use their favorite medium, with the exception of photography, to express their vision of the Mill, inside or out. To see images from past shows visit the Past Exhibitions page on the Mill website at phillipsmill.org/art/artexhibition-archives.

Artists may submit one entry and must live within a 25-mile radius of the Mill. All work must be for sale. There is no submission fee. Visit phillipsmill.org for eligibility details, and instructions and guidelines on how to submit your work.

Phillips’ Mill Community Association is located

at 2619 River Road, New Hope, Pa. for more information, call (215) 882-0582 or visit phillipsmill.org.

Area Exhibits

Art@Bainbridge, 158 Nassau Street, has “Roberto Lugo: Orange and Black” through July 6. Artmuseum. princeton.edu.

Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street, Lambertville, has “Gallery Group Show” through April 6. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Lambertvillearts.com.

Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon Street, has “Faces, Places, Unexpected Stories” through March 29. Artscouncil ofprinceton.org.

Gallery 14 Fine Art Photography, 14 Mercer Street, Hopewell, has works by guest exhibitors Danielle Austen and Richard Armington, along with Gallery 14 members, through March 30. Gallery14.org.

Historical Society of Princeton, Updike Farmstead, 354 Quaker Road, has “Princeton Reflected: Stories from HSP’s Collection” and “Einstein Salon and Innovator’s Gallery.” Museum hours are Thursday through Sunday, 12 to 4 p.m. Princetonhistory.org

Mercer Museum, 84 South Pine Street, Doylestown, Pa., has “The Doan Gang: Outlaws of the Revolution” through December 31, 2026. Mercermuseum.org.

Alison McQueen

Michener Art Museum, 138 South Pine Street, Doylestown, Pa., has “Mark Sfirri: The Flower Show” through May 5 and “Yesterday’s Dreams Are Real” through July 27. Michener artmuseum.org

Milberg Gallery at Firestone Library, Princeton University, has “The Most Formidable Weapon Against Errors: The Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection & the Age of Reason” through June 8. Library.princeton.edu/ lapidus2025.

Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street, has “Historic Morven: A Window Into America’s Past.” (ongoing). Morven.org. The Nassau Club, 6 Mercer Street, has “Held Together” through June 5. Catherinejmartzloff.com.

Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, has watercolors by Andrani Choudhury through April 1. Works by Chuck Wood are at the 254 Nassau Street location through April 1. Smallworld coffee.com.

Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie, 299 Parkside Avenue, Trenton, has “Charles David Viera: Selected Works 2006-2025” through March 30. Ellarslie.org.

West Windsor Arts, 952 Alexander Road, West Windsor, has “GR8 Works Art Show” through April 5. Westwindsorarts.org.

well loved and well read since 1946

Alison McQueen is Associate Professor of Political Science and (by courtesy) History at Stanford University. Her research focuses on early modern political theory and the history of International Relations thought. She is the author of Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge University Press, 2018), along with a number of articles, book chapters, and public-facing pieces. McQueen is completing a second book, Absolving God, on Thomas Hobbes’s strategies of religious argument. She is also starting a third book on treason in the history of political thought.

Traitor?

Thursday, March 20, 2025

4:30 TO 6PM | FRIEND CENTER | LECTURE HALL 101 Free and Open to the Public

JAMES A. MOFFETT ’29 LECTURES IN ETHICS

“MARCH AFTERNOON”: This painting by Donna Ruane Rogers was selected as the 2024 signature image for Phillips’ Mill’s Annual Juried Art Show. Submissions for this year’s signature image must be received by April 15.

MARCH

Town Topics | Mark Your Calendar

Wednesday, March 19

11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Leighton Listens. Councilman Leighton Newlin is available to discuss issues impacting Princeton with members of the public at Amazing Thai, 260 Nassau Street.

12 p.m.: Trenton Walks hosts a 2.5-mile walk along the Delaware River starting at Old Trenton Wharf next to Coopers Riverview, 50 Riverview Plaza, Trenton. Optional lunch follows. Gmtma. org/trail-happenings.

6 p.m.: The Board of Trustees of Princeton Public Library meets at the library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Princetonlibrary.org.

7 p.m.: Screening of the documentary Sugarcane followed by a discussion with the filmmaker Emily Kassie at the Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau Street. Princetongardentheatre.org.

8-10:30 p.m.: Princeton Country Dancers hosts a Contra Dance at the Suzanne Patterson Center, 1 Monument Drive (intro to basics workshop at 7:30 p.m.). Princeton countrydancers.org.

Thursday, March 20

5 p.m.: Reading by Niall Williams at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street. Presented by Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies. Labyrinthbooks.com.

6 p.m.: All Access Book Discussion Group, a Great Gatsby at 100 event at Firestone Library, Princeton University campus. The book The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, a retelling of The Great Gatsby, is the topic. Details at Princetonlibrary.org.

7 p.m.: The Black Oak Ensemble is at Trinity Church, 33 Mercer Street. Presented by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Music Series. Music by J.S. Bach, Vittorio Monti, Gideon Klein, Jean Cras, and Henri Tomasi. $45 (50 percent discount for children 5-17 accompanied by adult). Princetonsymphony.org or (609) 497-0020.

10 a.m.: The 55-Plus Club of Princeton meets at The Jewish Center, 435 Nassau Street; also online at princetonol.com/ groups/55plus. Elizabeth Matto, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, speaks on “Reflecting Upon Democracy in a Moment of Transition: The Role of Higher Education in Fostering Citizenship.” Free or $5 suggested donation.

Friday, March 21

5 p.m.: “Dr. Kheal2: One Big Thing” by Maria Irene Fornés is presented by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts at CoLab and the Wallace theater in the Lewis Arts complex. Free. Tickets. princeton.edu.

7:30-9:30 p.m.: “Dancing in the Dark” dance party with a Bollywood spin at West Windsor Arts, 751 Alexander Road. $5. Westwindsorarts.org.

8 p.m.: Poor Man’s Gambit is presented by the Princeton Folk Music Society at Christ Congregation Church, 50 Walnut Lane. Philadelphia-based Irish music band. $25 at the door ($20 members). Princeton folk.org.

Saturday, March 22

10 a.m.: The Circus is screened at the Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau Street. $5 (free for members). Princetongardentheatre. org/family.

10 a.m.: Read and Explore: Getting Ready for Spring at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Story and educational segment, each child gets seeds to plant at home. $12. Terhuneorchards.com.

10 a.m.-4 p.m.: Sawmilling and Horse-Drawn Road Grading at Howell Farm, 70 Woodens Lane, Hopewell Township. Help roll logs to the mill with logging tools, cut firewood, make pegs, and more. Howellfarm.org.

10 a.m.-7 p.m.: Young Readers’ Book Fair at ESG Best Reads Bookstore, 195 Nassau Street, basement level. New books on environmental science, energy, diversity, governance, and more. Betterworldbooks.com.

12-5 p.m.: Winery Weekend Music Series at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Wine, light bites, hot cocoa kits, and music from 1-5 by Jeff P. Part of Wine and Chocolate Weekend, which pairs Terhune wines with chocolates form Pierre’s of New Hope, Pa. Terhuneorchards.com.

12-5 p.m.: Grilled Cheese Weekend at Unionville Vineyards, 9 Rocktown Road, Ringoes. Local vendor pairs the sandwiches with wine. Unionvillevineyards.com.

3 p.m.: Visible Mending . Crafter Marisa Simon show how to lengthen the lifespan of clothing. Part of New Jersey Makers Day, at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Princetonlibrary.org.

energy, diversity, governance, and more. Betterworldbooks.com.

12-5 p.m.: Winery Weekend Music Series at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Wine, light bites, hot cocoa kits, and music from 1-5 by Andrew Lobby. Part of Wine and Chocolate Weekend, which pairs Terhune wines with chocolates form Pierre’s of New Hope, Pa. Terhuneorchards.com.

12-5 p.m.: Grilled Cheese Weekend at Unionville Vineyards, 9 Rocktown Road, Ringoes. Local vendor pairs the sandwiches with wine. Unionvillevineyards.com.

1-5 p.m.: Courthouse Quilt Guild holds a free workshop to learn how to make a Sea Glass quilt at the Hunterdon County Complex, Route 12, Flemington. Courthousequilters.org.

3 and 6 p.m.: Lutist Thomas Dunford performs at Richardson Auditorium as part of Princeton University Concerts’ “Up Close” series; audience members sit on stage. Puc.princeton.edu.

Wednesday, March 26

11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Leighton Listens. Councilman Leighton Newlin is available to discuss issues impacting Princeton with members of the public at Jammin’ Crepes, 20 Nassau Street.

11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Panel discussion, “Navigating Financial Costs of Growing Older and Planning for Unique Family Needs,” at the Center for Modern Aging, 101 Poor Farm Road, and on Zoom. Free. Registration required. Cmaprinceton.org.

6 p.m. Journalist Chris Hedges discusses his book A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival in Occupied Palestine at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street. Labyrinthbooks.com.

6 p.m.: Workshop with poet and professor Patricia Smith , “The Stories Behind the Stanzas.” At Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Also on Zoom. Princetonlibrary.org.

8-10:30 p.m.: Princeton Country Dancers presents a Callers’ Open Mic with Bob Isaacs and Blue Jersey at the Suzanne Patterson Center, 1 Monument Drive. Princetoncountrydancers.org.

Thursday, March 27

7:30 p.m. La Fiocco period instrument ensemble performs “Handel’s London” at Christ Congregation, 50 Walnut Lane. $25 in advance; $30 at the door. Lafiocco.org.

7:30 p.m.: Live “OnTap” theater and performance podcast recording of an episode on Maria Irene Fornes, presented by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts at the Wallace theater in the Lewis Arts complex. Free. Tickets. princeton.edu.

Monday, March 24 Recycling

12:30 p.m.: Lutist Thomas Dunford participates in a Live Music Meditation in Princeton University Chapel. Free. Puc.princeton. edu.

6 p.m. Author Jack Lohmann discusses his book White Light: The Elemental Role of Phosphorus in Our Cells, in Our Food, and in Our World. At Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street. Princetonlibrary.org.

7:30-10:30 p.m.: Princeton County Dancers presents Michael and Robert with Caravan at the Suzanne Patterson Center, 1 Monument Drive. Princeton countrydancers.org.

6 p.m.: Sociologist

Time to Book Spring School Tours

Sunday, March 23

10 a.m.-7 p.m.: Young Readers’ Book Fair at ESG Best Reads Bookstore, 195 Nassau Street, basement level. New books on environmental science,

Musa al-Gharbi discusses his book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite with Shamus Kahn at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Princetonlibrary.org.

7:30 p.m.: Samuel D. Kassow speaks about the Rokhl Auerbach book Warsaw Testament at the Douglass Student Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Sponsored by the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life. BildnerCenter. Rutgers.edu.

Tuesday, March 25

2 p.m.: A League of Their Own is screened at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, as part of the “HerStory” movie series. Free. Princetonlibrary.org.

6 p.m.: The C.K. Williams Reading Series presents Sidik Fofana and student readers at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street. Labyrinthbooks.com.

7:30 p.m.: Violinist Julia Fischer and pianist Jan Lisiecki perform works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place. Mccarter.org.

6-7:30 p.m.: Abandoned Craft Corner at the Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon Street. Bring materials; join other creative-minded people. Free. Artscouncilof princeton.org.

6:30 p.m.: “Finding Women Ancestors in New Jersey” via Zoom. Strategies for locating New Jersey women in records collections from the Colonial era to the 20th century. Presented by Princeton Public Library. Register at princetonlibrary.org.

7:30 p.m.: The Mahler Chamber Orchestra and pianist Mitsuko Uchida perform at Richardson Auditorium. Works by Mozart and Janacek. Puc.princeton.edu.

Saturday, March 29

9 a.m.-3:30 p.m.: Young Adult Empowerment Summit at Princeton Theological Seminary, 64 Mercer Street. Presented by Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church. Workshops, speakers, and networking opportunities. Witherspoonchurch.org/events.

9 a.m.-3 p.m.: Blue Garage Sale at HomeFront’s Family Campus, 101 Celia Way, Ewing. Original artwork, printing equipment, sewing machines, and more. Homefrontnj.org.

S ports

Princeton Women’s Hoops Falls to Harvard in Ivy Semis But Gets Bid to NCAAs; to Face Iowa State in First Four

It is an oft-stated sports adage that it is hard to beat the same team three times in a single season.

Last Friday, the Princeton University women’s basketball team found out the hard way that there is some truth to that saying. After having defeated Harvard twice in regular season action, the third-seeded Tigers lost 7067 to the third-seeded Crimson in the semifinals of the Ivy Madness postseason tournament in Providence, R.I.

“Going into the game, we knew it was going to be a challenge, they put together a great 40 minutes,” said Princeton head coach Carla Berube, whose team was done in by a spectacular 44-point school record performance by Harvard star guard Harmoni Turner, the Ivy League Player of the Year. “Harmoni Turner was Harmoni Turner, an AllAmerican and one of the best players in the country.”

Weathering the outburst by Turner, Princeton battled to the end, narrowing the gap to 68-67 on a 3-pointer by Skye Belker with 1:54 left in regulation.

“All of the way until the final buzzer, I had a lot of faith in our team that we could make the plays and come out with a victory,” said Berube, who got 20 points from Belker in the loss with Ashley Chea chipping in 15. “Harvard made those plays to win, it is a very, very good team. Clearly they are exceptional but we have two wins against that team, that says a lot about our season and what we have put together. They were just better tonight.”

Despite the defeat, Berube was confident that Tigers had done enough this winter to merit an at-large bid to March Madness.

“I do believe we are an NCAA tournament team, I think we showed that tonight and throughout the course of the season,” maintained Berube. “We are looking forward to Selection Sunday. We will regroup and we know we are going to play some more basketball.”

Berube’s confidence proved to be well-founded as Princeton earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament

where they are seeded 11th and will play fellow 11-seed Iowa State in a First Four game on March 19 at Notre Dame. The victor will then face sixth-seeded Michigan in a first round contest on March 21.

The Tigers were on pins and needles over the weekend as they waited for the Selection Show, which started in 8 p.m. Sunday night.

“After the Friday night loss which was really, really tough. I said it is out of our hands now,” said Berube, whose team moved to 21-7 with the defeat to Harvard. “It is in the hands of the national committee and experts who are going to make that decision. I think they were just a little anxious and nervous.”

Berube, for her part, took a break from the suspense before plugging back into the media speculation on the bracket.

“I will say that I took Saturday off from just anything because I didn’t quite know what was going to happen,” said Berube. “I believed in Charlie Creme (the ESPN women’s hoops bracketologist). I started watching some Iowa State and some Washington because those were some possibilities so I had a little leg up.”

The Tigers were on the edge of their seats for the first 35 minutes of the Selection School before their name flashed on the screen, prompting the players to leap to their feet, screaming and hugging.

It marked the sixth straight NCAA appearance for the program and fifth under Berube who had guided the Tigers to four straight Ivy tournament championships. The selection also made history for the Ivy League as tournament champion Harvard and regular season champion Columbia also made the field, giving the league three teams in the national tournament for the first time ever.

“When our name was called, it was just a lot of joy, excitement,” said Berube. “They know what it is like to play in the NCAA tournament and how grateful we are. There are so many teams and student athletes who don’t get this opportunity. We understand it. We are absolutely

thrilled. I can’t say I have been in that position before so it was new. It was really exciting and we are thrilled for the challenge ahead.”

The Tigers face a big challenge in Iowa State, who went 22-11 overall and 12-6 in Big 12 play. The Cyclones are led by the potent one-two punch of center Audi Crooks (23.2 points a game) and guard/ forward Addy Brown (15.2 points).

“Iowa State is a very wellcoached team, Audi Crooks is a very talented, skilled player,” said Berube. “They are not all Audi Crooks either, they have a very talented team around her. We know the Big 12 a bit from playing West Virginia last year so we know how strong it is. That is a very good team. It is a very good 3-point shooting team. They share the ball very well.”

While overcoming the Cyclones will be tough, the Tigers are primed to take on somebody different.

“It is fun now to be out of the Ivy League against teams that know you so well,” said Berube. “It is a little more personal when you are playing against each other all of the time. Now you are playing a brand new team and it is just a different style. The Big 12 is very different from the Ivy League. Our players are really excited, this is brand new season. Everybody is 0-0.”

Berube believes the Tigers are in a good place as they head into March Madness.

“I think we have got a good rotation, players are stepping up still,” said Berube. “Our sophomores are becoming great leaders. We like where we are right now.”

The Tigers will need its trio of post players, Parker Hill, Tabby Amanze, and Katie Thiers, to step up as it deals with the imposing 6’3 Crooks.

in a losing

as

fell 70-67 to third-seeded Harvard in the semifinals of the Ivy Madness postseason tournament in Providence, R.I. The Tigers, who moved to 21-7 with the defeat, later earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament where they are seeded 11th and will play fellow 11-seed Iowa State in a First Four game on March 19 at Notre Dame. The victor will then face sixth-seeded Michigan in a first round contest on March 21.

“Parker was a little under the weather Friday so I think Tabby and Katie really stepped up and had some really great minutes,” said Berube. “They are both very capable of coming in and contributing. All three are different and complement each other. I expect all three of them to be out there Wednesday evening.”

Stifling Iowa State will require a group effort. “We need to figure out how to guard them and what is going to be important for Wednesday night,” said Berube. “We are working hard as a staff and figuring out all of those things and having a couple of different ways that we want to defend them. You can’t just go one way and expect to be successful. You need to

be ready to adapt to whatever happens challenge-wise. If it is fouls or if they are punishing us inside and scoring at will, you got to do something else. We will be ready and that is what we are working on right now.”

While Princeton starts a quartet of sophomores in Fadima Tall and Olivia Hutcherson along with Belker and Chea, Berube believes they will rise to the occasion under the pressure of March Madness despite their relative youth.

“You can never just simulate what it is like to play on this stage and under these lights and what kind of experience it will be for them,” said Berube. “We are taking this like any other NCAA tournament, whether we were

strong in the senior class or we have sophomores starting. They are ready and excited. Those sophomores and our team are upset about Friday night. To have that rebirth and to play in this tournament, I have never seen them that excited. They are going to go full steam ahead and take it head on. They will play for their seniors and not just think that we are sophomores and we will get this opportunity again. You just never know so you make the absolute most out of it.”

—Bill Alden

MARCHING ON: Princeton University women’s basketball player Ashley Chea, center, looks to get past two defenders in a game earlier this season. Last Friday, sophomore guard Chea scored 15 points

cause

the third-seeded Tigers

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Twisted Forest specializes in pendants and necklaces made with natural stone and inspired by the earth.

Tiger Men’s Hoops Battles to Final Buzzer

But Falls 59-57 to Yale in Ivy Madness Semis

Xaivian Lee took the lastsecond shot like he had so many times with success this winter for the Princeton University men’s basketball team.

But this 3-pointer caromed off the back of the rim at Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center in Providence, R.I., as fourth-seeded Princeton battled top-seeded Yale last Saturday in the semifinals of the Ivy Madness postseason tournament.

“I gotta make that shot,” said Tiger junior guard Lee as his voice trailed off. “I gotta make that.”

The potential game-winner bounced high and by the time Blake Peters corralled it the clock had run out on the Tigers as they ended their season with a 59-57 loss to the Bulldogs. Yale went on to defeat secondseeded Cornell 90-84 on Sunday in the championship to earn the Ivy League’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

“We’re glad to be able to play in a meaningful game,” said Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson after his squad finished 19-11 overall, 8-6 in the Ivies. “It was really good for our program and our guys. Yale’s a really good team and we weren’t competitive with them the first two games of the season. I thought this was as resilient as we’ve looked all season. We had chances there at the end. We felt really good about the looks we were getting.”

Both teams displayed a

balanced attack in a game that ended up quite balanced across the board. Lee and Peters tallied 14 points apiece to lead Princeton. Caden Pierce and Dalen Davis, the latter off the bench, scored 11 points each. Yale was led by John Poulakidas who scored 13 points, while they also had three other players in double figures — Bez Mbeng and Nick Townsend tallied 12 points each and Casey Simmons chipped in 11 points.

“I thought we competed really hard today,” said Lee. “I’m proud of the way my guys played. I thought we showed a lot of toughness, matched their physicality. It didn’t go our way today, but I thought we put ourselves in a position we wanted to be in to win that game. Sometimes things like that happen, but I’m really proud of how we played.”

Princeton trailed 12-0 to start the game, and the Tigers looked in danger of suffering the same fate as they had in two regular-season meetings with the Bulldogs.

A month ago, Yale beat Princeton, 84-57, and earlier at Jadwin Gym, the Tigers fell, 77-70, after trailing by 20 points with under eight minutes to go. The Tigers didn’t wait as long Saturday to begin whittling away. By halftime, they were behind just 31-25.

“We weren’t competitive against them in the first two games,” said Henderson. “Totally different game tonight.”

Given how the regularseason games went against the Bulldogs, Henderson would have signed up ahead of time for a one-possession game in the final minutes. Thanks to some stellar play over the second half, the Tigers put themselves in striking range to win it at the end.

CJ Happy’s 3-pointer from the corner off a feed from Davis gave Princeton its first lead, 54-53, with 3:29 left in regulation. It was Happy’s lone points in the contest. His next 3-point attempt that would have put the Tigers up four points spun out with 2:43 to go.

“We had great looks to put the game out of reach, I thought, or up four at least,” said Henderson. “I felt really good about what we were able to do there in the last two minutes of the game.”

After Princeton’s defense held, Lee hit Pierce for an open look at a 3 that he missed with less than 2 minutes left. Yale pushed the ball upcourt and Mbeng scored a 3-point play over Lee with a pull-up jumper in the lane to give Yale a 5654 lead.

Lee responded right back by crossing up Mbeng and burying a 3-pointer for a 5756 Princeton lead, its last of the game as Yale got two big plays by its top players.

“(Ivy) Player of the Year/ Defensive Player of the Year (Mbeng) gets fouled with 50 seconds left and we’re up two,” said Henderson. “He makes it, and then

Poulakidas made a really tough shot. We had a shot at the end of the game to win the game. I’m happy about that. We didn’t play great, but we’re right there.”

Poulakidas made an offbalance 3-pointer moving to the right wing with Peters draped on him. There was exactly 1:00 left.

“I was just trying to guard him,” said Peters. “He made a tough shot. I tried to influence him (to go to the) right, but he’s a great player. I know him well. That’ll eat at me forever, but things like that happen.”

Pierce and the Princeton bench all reacted as though he was fouled on his drive to the basket that would have tied it with 36 seconds left. The Tigers did not foul with the game clock winding down, and forced

a shot clock violation that gave them the ball with 6.5 seconds left and down two points.

“We were trying to foul early, and we got into a situation where we didn’t foul and it worked out,” said Henderson. “We got the shot clock violation and plenty of time with the ball back. It didn’t work out for us the two previous possessions, but they made huge plays.”

After throwing the ball to half-court to call another timeout, Princeton inbounded to Lee who crossed the ball in front and then back between his legs before taking a 3-pointer that Mbeng contested. The ball bounced off the back of the rim and Peters fought to grab it as time expired.

“We felt really good,” said

Henderson. “Had the right guy. Xaivian has won five games for us. I thought, ‘That’s going in.’ That’s just what he’s been doing.”

The Tigers’ loss means the end of the Princeton careers for their three seniors — Philip Byriel, Darius Gakwasi, and Peters. Peters was the only one of the three to play Saturday, and he was emotional after the narrow defeat that denied him and the Tigers a shot at another Ivy championship.

“We accomplished a lot in my four years,” said Peters, who helped Princeton win three Ivy regular season crowns and make a magical run to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2023. “I’m really proud to get to play with some Princeton legends on the court. These guys will be in my life for a while and so many memories we’ve made, it’s hard to put into words. This was my dream my whole life. And I got to live that out every day. I’m just thankful for that.”

The Tigers are hopeful to return Lee and Pierce among this year’s junior starters. Lee set a new program mark with his 165 th assist this year Saturday. He had six assists as the season ended against Yale.

“I’m really proud of this group, in particular Blake,” said Henderson. “It’s a real pleasure to coach somebody like him, be around him all the time. All he’s done is make Princeton basketball better. He personifies what we are. We talk a lot about the who, and Blake is the who and I’m really proud of the three championships in four years.”

—Justin Feil

PEP TALK: Princeton University men’s basketball head coach Mitch Henderson makes a point to Xaivian Lee, left, Jackson Hicke (obscured), and Blake Peters during Princeton’s 83-82 win over Rutgers on December 21. Last Saturday, the fourth-seeded Tigers fell 59-57 to top-seeded and eventual champion Yale in a semifinal contest at the Ivy Madness postseason tournament in Providence, R.I. The defeat left Princeton with a final record of 19-11. (Photo by Steven Wojtowicz)

PU Sports Roundup

Tiger Men’s Lax Falls at Cornell

Nate Kabiri tallied one goal and two assists in a losing cause as the secondranked Princeton University men’s lacrosse team fell 15-10 at No. 6 Cornell last Saturday in the Ivy League opener for both teams.

Princeton, now 4-2 overall and 0-1 Ivy and ranked sixth nationally, hosts No. 12 Harvard (5-1 overall, 1-0 Ivy) on March 22.

Princeton Baseball Goes 0-4 at Liberty

Scoring a total of 10 runs in four games, the Princeton University baseball team went 0-4 last weekend in a four-game set against Liberty in Lynchburg, Va.

On Friday, Princeton started the weekend by losing 6-4. Sean Episcope starred on the mound for the Tigers in a losing cause as he recorded five strikeouts, gave up one hit, and no earned runs in 5.0 innings of work.

Sophomore Episcope was later named the Ivy League Pitcher of the Week.

A day later, Princeton got swept in a doubleheader, falling 6-5 and 3-0. The Tigers ended the weekend by losing 19-1 on Saturday.

Princeton, now 3-14, will play at Villanova on March 19 and then start Ivy League action by hosting Dartmouth for a doubleheader on March 22 and a single game on March 23.

PU Track Athletes

Shine at NCAAs

Mena Scatchard and Harrison Witt provided highlights as Princeton University track athletes competed in the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Virginia Beach last weekend.

The Tiger DMR quartet excelled again in this year’s NCAA meet, taking 10th in a time of 9:27.25. The relay group included Collin Boler, Xavier Donaldson, Sam Rodman, and Connor McCormick.

Junior Greg Foster came up big as well, taking 10th in the long jump with a best leap of 24-5.5.” With his performance, Foster earned Second Team All-America Honors for the secondconsecutive year.

Tiger Men’s Swimming Primed for NCAA Meet

The Princeton University men’s swimming and diving team will be sending a number of standouts to the 2025 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships from March 26-29 in Federal Way, Wash.

Mitchell Schott will compete in five events for the Tigers: the 200-yard butterfly, 200 individual medley, and 400 IM plus the 400 and 800 freestyle relays. The junior captain earned 96 points at the Ivy Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships earlier this month to get named as the High Point Swimmer of the Meet.

The Tigers will have two relay teams in Washington as the 400 freestyle and 800 freestyle quartets both qualified. At the Ivy championship meet, Princeton’s 800 free relay posted an A-standard time. The quartet of Schott, Arthur Balva, Patrick Dinu, and Noah Sech finished first with a time of 6:13.75 which set a new Ivy record, pool record, and program record. The 400 freestyle relay squad

for the Tigers will be made up of Schott, Dinu, Sech, and Brett Feyerick.

Aidan Wang and George Callanan will compete in the diving events for the Tigers with Wang on the 1-meter, 3-meter and platform. Callanan punched his ticket on the final day of the Zone A Diving Championships and will compete on platform.

PU Men’s Volleyball Loses

To No. 1 Long Beach State

Concluding its California swing, the No. 19 Princeton University men’s volleyball team fell 3-0 to No. 1 Long Beach State last Saturday.

Nyherowo Omene led the Tigers with 15 kills while Henry Wedbush tallied a team-high 24 assists and seven digs but it wasn’t enough as the Beach prevailed 25-19, 25-22, 2519.

Princeton, now 6-9, hosts Daemen on March 22.

Tiger Women’s Water Polo Goes 2-2 in San Diego Event

Taking on three Top 20 opponents, the No. 11 Princeton University women’s water polo team went 2-2 at the San Diego State Invite last weekend.

In action last Friday, Princeton fell 15-9 to No. 2 USC before edging No. 20 San Diego State 11-10. A day later, the Tigers topped CSUN 18-7 before losing 1413 to No. 15 Indiana.

Princeton, now 12-5, hosts Iona on March 19.

Princeton Softball Goes 1-3 in Missouri Tourney Wrapping up its early season non-conference action, the Princeton University softball team went 1-3 last week at the Missouri Tournament in Columbia, Mo.

8-5

each hit a homer and had two RBIs. Princeton ended the weekend by falling 8-4 to Michigan.

A day later, the Tigers defeated Quinnipiac 9-2 as Allison Ha and Braeden Hale

The Tigers, now 5-12, are starting their Ivy League campaign this weekend by hosting Harvard for a doubleheader on March 22 and a single game on March 23. Princeton will be playing the first games in its new Cynthia Lynn Paul’94 Field in Princeton’s Meadows Neighborhood when it faces the Crimson.

Senior Scatchard placed second in the women’s mile in a time of 4:32.87. Sitting in 10th place heading into the final lap, Scatchard made her move and passed runner after runner. As the finish line drew near, she passed one final opponent and stretched past Northern Arizona’s Maggi Condon to beat her for second by .01 seconds. Oregon’s Wilma Nielson was first in 4:32.40.

Senior Witt finished 10th in the men’s mile, clocking a time of 3:59.71. Witt finished as a second-team All-American to secure his first individual All-American honor of his indoor career to go with first-team All-American honors in the DMR (distance medley relay) in 2022.

GREAT EIGHT: Princeton University women’s lacrosse player McKenzie Blake looks to unload the ball in a game earlier this season. Last Wednesday, senior star attacker Blake tallied a careerhigh eight goals along with one assist to help Princeton defeat Rutgers 20-8. Blake’s eight goals matched a program single-game record and she was later named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week. The No. 10 Tigers, now 6-1, play at Towson on March 21. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

After Being Sidelined by Injury to Begin the Winter, Knox Starred as PDS Girls’ Hockey Won State Title

Eibhleann Knox’s senior season for the Princeton Day School girls’ hockey team got off to a rough start this winter when she was sidelined by a broken collarbone.

As star forward Knox watched PDS pile up wins in December and January, she was frustrated by her inability to contribute.

“It was terrible; when I was closer to getting better, I started dressing and I was sitting on the bench in my gear,” recalled Knox, who got injured playing for her club team, the Junior Flyers. “I was oh my God, let me play. It was really bad.”

Knox finally returned to action on January 21 against Immaculate Heart Academy.

“I was so excited, I was so nervous,” said Knox. “It was just a mixture of everything.”

Getting up to speed, Knox tallied three goals as PDS defeated Oak Knoll 7-0 in the Librera Cup final in midFebruary.

“I have been waiting to play and I guess it just clicked for me,” said Knox. “I had been trying the exact same amount.”

Things kept clicking for Knox and the Panthers as they rolled to the program’s first-ever title in the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Girls’ Ice Hockey Tournament.

“I was saying before every game, it is ours,” said Knox. “We knew we were going t o win.”

In the quarterfinal round,

Knox contributed three assists as top-seeded PDS defeated eighth-seeded Summit 5-0 on February 28.

“I love other people scoring, assists are a big thing for me,” said Knox. “I would rather pass than take a shot because I don’t want to be selfish.”

Five days later, PDS rallied from deficits of 2-1 and 3-2 to edge fourth-seeded Morristown-Beard 4-3 in overtime in a dramatic semifinal contest.

“That was amazing for us, the whole game we were so nervous,” said Knox, who tallied three assists in the win.

“The toughest game is always Mo Beard. We wore the exact same clothes, sat in the same places, it was a whole day of superstitious things that we did. I am so happy we won. OT is so exciting.”

As PDS prepared to face second-seeded Immaculate Heart in the state final on March 10 at the Prudential Center in Newark, Knox and her teammates were not nervous. Having made it the Rock for the 2022 state final where they lost 7-0 to MoBeard, the Panthers were hungry to end their return trip with a win. Coming full circle, PDS rolled to a 7-0 win over the Blue Eagles.

“I think it was important for all of us but especially us seniors because we were there freshman year and we lost 7-0,” said Knox. “It was really embarrassing, it was terrible. We were back and we won.”

The Panthers brought some extra motivation into the title

contest as they had lost 4-3 to Immaculate Heart in the 2024 state semis, squandering a 3-1 third period lead.

“It feels good because with them, it is always a really physical game whenever we play them,” said Knox. “We have people in the box and there are mini-fights. It is really fun to play them, I like it, they are going to hit us and we are going to have to keep our heads.”

With both teams getting whistled for several penalties in the first period, PDS broke through with a goal by Brynn Dandy to forge ahead 1-0.

“I think it was really important that we scored first,” said Knox, “We are the type of team where once we get going, we get going.”

Knox helped PDS to keep going as she tallied a goal on a nice feed from Brynn Dandy.

“It was an amazing pass, I had a situation like that before in that shift and I missed it and I was like oh my god that was terrible,” said Knox. “Then I got another one and it was like this is going in the net, you are not stopping me.”

There was no stopping the Panthers as they tacked on another goal late in the second period and then tallied four unanswered goals over the last 15 minutes of regulation.

“We definitely played well, we were moving,” said Knox in assessing the third period onslaught. “Sammy [Dandy] had some really nice plays. Everyone was playing great,

nobody had a bad game that game.”

Knox had a great game in the final, ending up with two goals and three assists.

“It is great to get points in a game like that; to get five is like crazy, said Knox, who ended up with 8 goals and 11 assists in 10 games. “I think it is my career best.”

Getting the first Non-Public hockey state title for PDS was a great achievement.

“It is so awesome because we made history, we were the first one for boys or girls,” said Knox. “I think it just shows that we are important too.”

In reflecting on the team’s 15-2-1 campaign, Knox pointed to team camaraderie as a key factor in its success.

“I think we all really care,” said Knox. “We care about each other, we care about the game, and we care about the team. If someone is down, you pick them up. The whole team is basically a friend group. We spend all day, everyday together. We love each other so much and that is why we play so well.”

PDS co-head coach Jamie Davis believed that his team had it together heading into the state final.

“Personally, I was confident heading into Monday,” said Davis, who guided the squad along with Jade Meier. “My main thing was just take it all in, have fun, make an experience out of this. At the end of the day, win or lose, let’s make this fun.”

After a choppy start to the game, getting the 1-0 lead was critical.

“That was nice, it was great to get that first goal,” said Davis. “I wasn’t totally satisfied after the first period with all of the penalties. I told them that is the only way we are going to lose this game is if we keep getting into the box.”

Settling down in the second period, the Panthers got it going. “In the second period we came out and there were way less penalties and we really took it to them,” said Davis. “The second period was nice to regroup and just find our game.”

As PDS dominated the game in the third period, Davis urged his players to stick to basics.

“It was let’s just finish this thing, we are right here,” said Knox. “It was let’s run this down, get pucks deep and do nothing crazy. We are in control, let’s run this clock down and end this game.”

Davis enjoyed seeing Knox finishing her career in style.

“She is obviously one of our best players, she was injured early in the year and she wanted to prove herself,” said Davis of Knox. “When you miss time, you are really fired up and you want to keep pushing. After the first two or three games she played, she knocked off the rust and got right back to her level. She had a great season. I would have loved to have had her for the whole year.”

Junior transfer goalie Kelly Stevens took things to a higher level in the final, making 20 saves as she battled hard to keep Immaculate Heart from scoring.

“Kelly really pushed for that shutout and she made

some big saves,” said Davis. “There are some videos, she made this crazy stick save. She made some butt end saves and she made some high blocker saves.”

While PDS possessed skill through the lineup, it was an intense work ethic that made the difference in its title run.

“They definitely persevered, they worked really hard and that is what I push for,” said Davis. “That is the main thing that differentiates teams - effort and working hard. We had a lot of skill. We probably had more skill than any of the teams but that doesn’t mean that is what wins it. You really have to work for it and I think we worked really hard all year. I know what it is to give 100 percent so I like to push them. They don’t like to hear it, you have got to work hard out there.”

Pushing hard resulted in the Panthers making history.

“For the boys and the girls, they haven’t had this title so it is really great,” said Davis. “We had seven players at one game, eight skaters at another so they battled all year. I am happy for them. I am happy for myself but they are the ones out there earning it. It was exciting for sure, it is a big deal for them. They got the full experience. Last year, I thought we were destined for the championship. I thought we could have won that and we didn’t get it done. I wanted to put in the effort this year and finish it off.”

For Knox, finishing her PDS career celebrating a state title on the ice at the Rock triggered a flood of tears.

“It was so amazing, I started crying,” said Knox, who will be continuing her hockey career at the college level at St. John Fisher as that school launches its Division III women’s program. “I was like, ‘oh my gosh, no way we just won, no way this is my last game ever here.’ It finally hit me that I am a senior and we just won the most important thing we could have won.”

—Bill Alden

HARD KNOX: Princeton Day School girls’ hockey player Eibhleann Knox brings the puck up the ice in recent action. Last week, senior star forward Knox tallied two goals and three assists as top-seeded PDS defeated second-seeded Immaculate Heart Academy 7-0 in the final of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Girls’ Ice Hockey Tournament at the Prudential Center in Newark.

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Making Huge Strides Under New Coach Reddington,

PDS Girls’ Hoops Went 13-10, Improving by 10 Wins

Displaying the progress it made over the course of the winter, the Princeton Day School girls’ basketball team ended the regular season with a pair of impressive wins as it topped Stuart Country Day and Delran.

“Those were really good games because we had really, really strong fourth quarters in both of those games,” said PDS first year head coach Pat Reddington, whose team defeated Stuart 51-38 on February 18 and Delran 61-42 four days later. “We had two 26-point fourth quarters; we had games where we finished with 26 points. It was good, our press helped us. Our defense led to offense for us. It was very positive.”

The Panthers ended their season by scoring 26 in their finale as 14th-seeded PDS fell 72-26 to third-seeded Red Bank Catholic on February 28 in the first round of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) South Jersey Non-Public A tournament.

“It was nice to play against that level of player, our girls enjoyed it,” said Reddington. “We went in and our goal was just to compete as much as we can and not give up. I think we did a good job of doing that.”

With the Panthers ending this winter at 13-10 after having posted a 3-16 record in 2023-24, the program made huge strides on and off the court.

“What is the most exciting thing about the season is developing a culture for going forward,” said Reddington. “As far as the basketball side of things, it is being a hard-nosed team that is going to compete and defend, a team you don’t want to play against. On the school side of it, PDS girls’ basketball is going to be a competitive program going forward, showing that this is a basketball school.”

The squad’s two senior stars and co-captains,

Shelby Ruf (86 points and 89 rebounds in 2024-25) and Nandini Kolli (157 points, 157 rebounds), set a positive tone.

“I couldn’t have been in a better situation than having those two as seniors,” asserted Reddington. “They were the reason for everything this year in my opinion. They really, really bought in which made everybody else buy in. It makes it a lot easier for the younger ones when your leaders are fully invested.”

The Panthers boast a core of juniors who bought in as well in Nica Martin (186 points, 60 assists), Sophia Rae Barber (164 points, 20 rebounds), Ella McLaren (88 points, 52 rebounds), Julia Hartman (72 points, 49 rebounds), and Anya Gruteser (1 point, 10 rebounds).

“I think we return a great group, we have five juniors that are going to be seniors,” said Reddington. “I am very excited about having a more experienced group next year to add with some good young players coming in too.”

In the backcourt, Martin and Barber developed into a productive one-two punch.

“I thought Nica got more comfortable when we were able to get her off the ball a little bit and see her as a more off the ball threat,” said Reddington. “She got confident in her shooting. Sophia started out really hot with her shooting and then she had some tough games and fought out of it. What is important for me with those two girls because we know they can shoot is the ability to impact the game in other ways that they showed toward the end of the season.”

Soccer stars McLaren and Hartman made a major impact with their intensity and toughness.

“They are big-time athletes,” said Reddington. “Any time you add two girls that are extremely athletic, it changes your team. Those

two girls are game-changers. You notice them right away when they come on the floor.”

Reddington, who had previously been an assistant coach for the powerhouse Ewing High girls’ hoops team, enjoyed his first season at the helm of the PDS program.

“I really can’t put out any complaints,” said Reddington. “It was awesome, I got a lot of support from the administration and the faculty which is extremely important to me. It was definitely a different experience head coaching for high school. I learned a lot from this group. We are going to continue to grow going forward.”

The squad’s growth into a winner this season turned heads around PDS and the county.

“There was a lot of talk

throughout the school about the program and how they are doing and a lot of talk throughout the CVC (Colonial Valley Conference),” said Reddington. “I think we were a team that people might have had this year on their schedule thinking it was an automatic win. I don’t know that they will have those same feelings next year.”

Looking to build on this winter’s success, the PDS players are already preparing for next year.

“We are excited, we had an undefeated middle school team and we have eighth graders playing AAU for the first time,” said Reddington. “I am definitely excited about what we have coming next year. The girls are starting to work on some offseason training of their own.”

—Bill Alden

it

Hun Boys’ Hockey Struggled to Get Wins this Winter, But

Future Looks Bright with Solid Core of Returners

While the Hun School boys’ hockey team struggled to pile up wins this winter, Eric Szeker had no qualms with the effort he got from his players.

“It was a tough season record-wise — we were in a lot of games where it was competitive coming down to the end,” said Hun head coach Szeker, who team went 5-172 this winter. “A couple got away from us, just trying to get aggressive and trying to come back. No matter what our situation was, whether illness hit us or injuries, everybody that showed up competed every single day. We learned a lot for sure.”

Hun’s season-ending 4-1 loss to crosstown rival Princeton Day School on February 12 proved to be a microcosm of the winter.

“It was a great game, it is two local schools and everybody is excited to get out there,” said Szeker. “They are a skilled team. They play at a high pace and they can move the puck. We had our opportunities but one or two bad turnovers to them and they took advantage of it.”

Senior goalie Patrick Donoghue starred in a losing cause against the Panthers, making 54 saves, while Evan Koserowski scored a third period goal on a feed by James Stelmak.

“Patrick was outstanding all season for us, he played against some big time opponents and faced a lot of shots,” said Szeker. “He gave us a chance every single night. I give our guys a lot of credit the entire year, no matter what the score was our team went out to compete and work hard. It was a really nice goal too. Stelmak made a nice play to Koserowski and he tucked it right underneath the bar. It really lifts the bench to see two guys who don’t often get on the scoresheet have a nice play. To do something like that was awesome.”

The Raiders enjoyed an awesome night when they defeated Red Bank Catholic 4-0 in early February to earn their fifth win of the winter.

“It was a great day, it was our Senior Day,” said Szeker. “I think that always brings a nice energy to the rink. The students were there cheering us on. The guys really get excited for games like this and get up to be ready to play.”

Hun had eight guys on the score sheet in the victory and both goalies Donoghue and Elliott Wong both made 15 saves as they combined on the shutout.

“That is normally how we have to win games, we didn’t really have one person who lit up the score sheet,” said Szeker, who got goals from Jake Beck, Jimmy Dolan, Bailey Cook, and Anders Van Raalte in the win. “It was normally a group effort. Both of our goalies got to play. We wanted everyone to be able to play

on that day and it worked out for us.”

The squad’s senior group showed a great work ethic in their time with the program.

“They are great guys; Jake O’Connell, Luke Rassier, and Bailey Cook are guys who have been around for a long time,” said Szeker. “They showed up every day and worked hard. They were great leaders and great seniors. Patrick and Elliott in net were outstanding every night. It didn’t matter who we had in net from game to game, you were going to get a really good performance. We are going to miss them for sure.”

Looking ahead, Hun has a good foundation in place. “We have a large group returning which we are really excited about,” said Szeker, who had a trio of juniors, Nate Trawinski, Van Raalte, and Beck, spark the offense this winter.

“We will have a big senior class with a lot of the guys who have been through two tough years. I know we are ready to make that turn and start winning a lot of games here. Whether it is Nate, Anders, or Jake, we have a lot of guys coming back who have played a lot of varsity hockey. They are going to be taking over for everything and I am excited for it.”

Freshman Connor Mulligan made an exciting debut for the Raiders as he became more of a factor down the stretch.

“Connor was outstanding from day one when he showed up for tryouts,” said Szeker. “As the year got on, he just got more wise. He is playing against some older guys and he did well, especially as he got his feet underneath him.”

Most of the teams’ defense corps will be returning as well, led by junior Andrew Darst, freshman Devin Espana, junior Chase Preston, and junior Ezra Broomer.

“We flopped around some guys back there, a couple of different guys played there,” said Szeker. “For the majority of the year, we had four guys who were really solid every single day and they are all coming back. Darst has been a workhorse back there for a couple of years. Devin did extremely well. Chase Preston is a pretty solid guy for us back there. Broomer is a junior, he will be back.”

In Szeker’s view, the program is poised for a breakthrough campaign next winter.

“I am thrilled with where everything is at,” said Szeker. “We don’t have a lot of guys graduating, we have a really good core coming back. We competed in so many games this year. We are not far off, we are right there with everything. We are excited for what is coming up next season.”

—Bill Alden

ON THE RISE: Princeton Day School girls’ basketball player Shelby Ruf flies in for a layup in a game this winter. Senior forward and co-captain Ruf helped PDS enjoy a reversal of fortune this winter under first-year head coach Pat Reddington as

went 13-10 after going 3-16 in 2023-24. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Making History for Wilberforce School Swimming, Yanovsky Competed in NJSIAA Meet of Champions

Vasily Yanovsky was shooting for a specific target this winter as he came into his junior season for the Wilberforce School swimming team.

“For me, the main goal was trying to break a minute in the 100 breaststroke,” said Yanovsky, who swims for the Peddie Aquatic Association club program when he is not in season for Wilberforce.

“It is a goal that transcends club and high school swimming for me. It is just like a mental barrier mostly, that I have been trying to do.”

While Yanovsky just missed achieving that goal, he accomplished a lot this winter, culminating the campaign by becoming the first Wilberforce swimmer to compete in the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Meet of Champions as he qualified in the 100-yard breast.

“It was really amazing, just going there and knowing that a lot of my club friends are also going to be there to race against,” said Yanovsky. “It is the biggest meet I have ever been at in my whole life. It was a truly awesome experience.”

Yanovsky ended up placing 22nd in the meet held at the Gloucester Tech pool as he clocked a time of 1:00.09, a mere nine-hundredths from that elusive one-minute barrier. Yanovsky came into the meet seeded 35th in the event.

“I feel like it was really electrifying,” said Yanovsky, reflecting on the MOC experience. “I was swimming next to one of my teammates from

Peddie. I knew I had to beat him and he knew he had to beat me. It was awesome; also the fact that there were so many people there and some of my friends also came to support me.”

The support that Yanovsky gets on a daily basis from his Wilberforce teammates has helped him excel.

“We are really supportive of each other, doing dry land together and doing the workouts together,” said Yanovsky.

“We joke around and it is always really fun.”

It has been fun for Yanovsky to see how the Wolverine program has progressed over the last three years.

“When I first came to the team, there was maybe two club swimmers on the whole team,” said Yanovsky “It wasn’t really serious but with the incoming freshman class this year, we had some really strong swimmers coming in. They grew so much.”

Having started swimming competitively at age seven when he joined the now-defunct West Windsor Whalers that summer, Yanovsky has relished the camaraderie he has found on the deck during his time in the sport.

“I feel just in general, the competition in swimming is fun,” said Yanovsky, who competed for the X-Cel club before joining the Peddie Aquatics program. “I really enjoyed getting to know people in the swimming world, talking with swimmers my age and hanging out with them.”

Wilberforce co-head coach

Dave Madigan enjoyed watching Yanovsky make history this winter with his MOC appearance.

“That is the first person who has ever made it for us, that is a great accomplishment,” said Madigan, who guides the program along with Frank Fitzgerald. “That was my goal for him from day one. It just gives us name recognition, they are asking who is the Wilberforce School. It puts us on the map.”

Yanovsky has emerged as a leader for the Wolverines in and out of the pool.

“He is one of our four captains, he has been with the program all three years,” said Madigan, noting that Yanovsky holds the school records in the 200 freestyle, 200 individual medley, 100 breast, 100 backstroke, and 100 butterfly as well as being part of school-best 200 medley relay, 200 free relay, and 400 free relay quartets.

“He has been one of the best swimmers from when he came in. He has always been very good with our team.”

The Wilberforce team has added a number of swimmers over the last few years as the program has become more and more competitive.

“It is almost tripled, we have almost one third of the whole upper school swimming right now,” said Madigan, who brought several swimmers this winter to the Eastern Interscholastic Championship Meet at Franklin & Marshall. “We have 29 people and 14 of the 29 were freshmen.”

The program trains four days a week at the Windsor Athletic Club along with the school’s middle school squad.

The upper school swimmers start their practices with dry land workouts while the middle school team gets in its swimming practice. The upper school squad then has the pool for the last hour of the practice.

While the Wilberforce swimmers don’t get as much pool time as other high school teams, they have made the most out of those sessions.

“Each individual is different and you have different groups come through,” said Madigan, noting that the Wilberforce regular season meets are typically co-ed due to the

size of the team. “These kids are making tremendous progress and getting confidence in themselves to cope with other things. It comes from the spirit and the camaraderie.”

In reflecting on the progress made by the Wolverine swimmers, Madigan gives co-head coach Fitzgerald much of the credit for their improvement.

“Frank has been there since the beginning like nine years ago, he knows all the technical stuff, I can’t do this without him,” said Madigan, who was in his sixth season with the program this winter. “He is a wonderful, outstanding coach.”

Yanovsky, for his part, points to the coaching of Madigan and Fitzgerald as being

integral to his historic campaign.

“They were incredibly supportive of me the whole year, they were absolutely amazing,” said Yanovsky. “When you come out of the pool, coach Madigan has a prayer routine that he goes through. He is very motivational, he tells you to leave it all in the pool. Coach Fitzgerald swam at Princeton so he gives us a lot of technical advice. They make a real good combination.”

—Bill Alden

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MAKING A SPLASH: Wilberforce School swimmer Vasily Yanovsky displays his breaststroke form in a meet this winter. Junior star Yanovsky qualified for the 100-yard breast in the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Meet of Champions, becoming the first swimmer in program history to compete at the MOC. (Photo provided by the Wilberforce School)

Local Sports

Princeton Post 218 Baseball Holding Player Evaluations

The Princeton American Legion Post 218 baseball team is holding player evaluations/workouts on April 13 from 11a.m.-1 p.m. at Smoyer Field and on April 27 from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at Smoyer Park.

The program is open to all interested high school players from Princeton High, Princeton Day School, Hun School, WW/P-South High, WW/P-North High, and Notre Dame High, or any players who live in the towns of Princeton and Cranbury to attend these two sessions. In addition, college aged freshman born in 2006 are also be eligible to play.

The Mercer County American Legion League (MCALL) season runs from late May through mid-July and involves playing approximately 20 games with teams from around the Greater Mercer County Area. The competition level is high and all players will receive adequate playing time to develop their game.

The summer fee is $645. Scholarships are available. For more information on the program and to RSVP for the tryouts, contact Jon Durbin at jonwdurbin@gmail.com.

Bailey Basketball Academy

Offering Spring Programs

The Bailey Basketball Academy (BBA) has announced the schedule for its upcoming spring hoops programs.

Participants will have an opportunity for competitive travel play, individualized instruction, skills development, and fundamentals as well as league play. BBA is led by former Princeton Day School girls’ hoops coach and Philadelphia 76ers camp director and clinician, Kamau Bailey.

The BBA spring program will include boys’ travel teams (3rd-8th grades), weekly practices, and the Shot King Shooting Program and Player Development Skill Sessions for elementary and middle school players (boys and girls). BBA will also be offering a new program for kindergarten-2nd grade boys and girls, called “First Hoops FUNdamentals are Fun.”

BBA programs stress fundamentals and team play with emphasis on ball handling, shooting, passing, footwork, speed, agility, movement with and without the ball, one-on-one moves, defense, and other hoops skills.

The spring season skill development sessions for boys and girls will be held from on Mondays and Wednesdays, starting in the week of March 17 with grades 3-6 going from 6:15 to 7:30 p.m. and grades 7-8 going from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m.

The BBA boys’ travel team practices will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays starting in the week of March 17 with grades 3-6 going from 6:15 to 7:30 p.m. and grades 7-8 going from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m.

BBA teams will play league games on weekends at the Monroe Sports Complex.

The First Hoops program will be held on March 29, April 5, and 12 from 8:30 to

9:30 a.m. at the Littlebrook Elementary School.

The BBA travel team practices and player development skill sessions will be held at the Community Park School and/or the Princeton Middle School.

For more information and to register, contact Kamau Bailey at (917) 626-5785 or kamau.bailey@gmail.com.

Princeton 5K Race

Slated for March 22

The Princeton 5K race is returning on March 22 for its 16th year.

The event annually brings together athletes — young and old, big and small, fast and not so fast — to run or walk while supporting the Princeton High cross country and track programs.

The race starts in front of the Princeton Middle School at 217 Walnut Lane at 8:30 a.m. In addition to the 5K, there is a 300-meter kids dash for children under 10.

To register and get more information on the event, log onto runsignup.com/ Race/NJ/Princeton/PrincetonNJ5K. Registration is also available in person on race day.

The Princeton 5K is the largest annual fundraiser for the Princeton High Cross Country Track and Field Boosters (PHSCCTF) a 501(c)(3). All donations directly support the PHS boys’ and girls’ cross-country and track teams.

Princeton Athletic Club

Holding 6K Run on April 5

The Princeton Athletic Club (PAC) will be holding a 6,000-meter cross country run at the Institute Woods on April 5.

The 6,000-meter run starts at 10 a.m. from the Princeton Friends School and is limited to 200 participants. The event is chip timed. All abilities are invited, including those who prefer to walk the course.

Online registration and full event details are available at princetonac.org.

The PAC is a nonprofit running club for the community. The club, an allvolunteer organization, promotes running for the fun and health of it and stages several running events each year.

Stuart County Day School

Holding Flag Football Camp

Stuart Country Day

School is holding a flag football camp for girls in grades 3-8 on Fridays from March 28 to May 23 at the school’s Upper Fields on Great Road.

The flag football camp is designed to introduce beginners and those with some experience to the fundamentals of flag football in a fun and positive environment. Players will develop both their technical skills and their understanding of the game through a series of fun games and activities

and will also be encouraged to implement offensive and defensive plays.

Lower School parent Greg Barker will be running this program. The cost is $75 and the camp is open to the public.

For more information, log onto stuartschool.org/flagfootball.

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Obituaries

Breaking Barriers in Computer Science

At a time when computer science was an emerging field, Laney entered the workforce as a programmer at IBM, where she discovered her passion for computational problem-solving. She quickly made her mark, despite the rigid corporate culture that expected women to wear white gloves, stockings, and hats. “She not only smashed the glass ceiling, she shattered expectations,” said IBM Fellow Mark Wegman, who worked with Laney for decades. “At the time, few believed a woman could achieve what she did — but Laney did it with brilliance and determination — no one even thought someone like her could achieve what she achieved.”

mining and artificial intelligence. Laney also served as President of the Cray User Group, influencing the design of high-performance supercomputers.

Champion for Women in STEM

As a Smith College graduate, Laney was deeply influenced by trailblazers like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. She faced gender discrimination in the early years of her career but never let it deter her. Over time, she became a mentor and advocate for women in STEM, helping to open doors for future generations of female scientists. Her advice to young women was simple yet profound: “Keep your standards high.”

Alice Perry Strong

Alice Perry Strong, 79, of Plainsboro, died March 12 at Princeton Medical Center in Plainsboro.

“Ned” Strong, who lives in Mount Airy, N.C.; as well as many beloved nieces and nephews.

Arrangements are being handled by Kimble Funeral Home, 1 Hamilton Avenue, Princeton. Visitation will take place Saturday, March 22 at 1 p.m., with a service to follow at 2 p.m.

computer scientist, devoted mentor, and passionate advocate for the arts, she leaves behind a remarkable legacy of innovation, leadership, and perseverance.

Born in 1933, Laney earned her B.A. in Mathematics

Helene E. Kulsrud from Smith College in 1953 and later obtained an M.A. in Astrophysics from the University of Chicago in 1955. It was there that she met and married Russell Kulsrud, an esteemed astrophysicist and plasma physicist, now professor emeritus at Princeton University. She was a proud member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Laney went on to serve as Head Programmer at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) from 1956 to 1957, where she pioneered the use of digital computing in scoring the SAT (Scholastic Achievement Test). At RCA Laboratories (1958-1965), she played a key role in the development of high-speed digital computing techniques, earning awards for her groundbreaking work in mathematical modeling and electron gun design. Her career culminated in over 50 years at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), where she became the first female research staff member at the Center for Communications Research in Princeton. She led the development of programming languages and compilers that advanced parallel computing, paving the way for modern data

Laney was also a valued member of Investment Partners, a women’s investment club that met monthly at the Princeton Public Library. She brought to the group no only her deep understanding of mathematics and the stock market but also a keen curiosity about emerging industries. Her insightful presentations and warm friendship will be deeply missed.

Laney’s legacy as a mentor and role model continues to inspire generations of women pursuing careers in technology and science. In 1986, the YWCA of Princeton recognized Laney as one of its “300 Women” honorees, celebrating her impact as a leader in science and technology.

Dedication to the Arts and Community

Beyond her career in computing, Laney was a driving force behind the Princeton Festival, serving as its Founding Chairperson and later as Treasurer and Chair of Lectures and Special Events. She helped the festival grow from its early productions including Sweeney Todd to grand operatic performances at Princeton University’s Tony Awardwinning McCarter Theatre, such as Madama Butterfly, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Porgy & Bess, and Nixon in China. She remained deeply involved until the festival merged with the Princeton Symphony Orchestra in 2021.

She was also an Executive Committee Member of the Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study, supporting scholars and fostering connections between the IAS and the Princeton community.

A Life of Impact and Inspiration

Born in Princeton in 1945 to Paul Keely Perry and Ruth Grandison Perry, Alice graduated from Princeton High School.

Her memories of high school included cramming teenagers into a Volkswagen Bug so everyone could go to White Castle and sneaking into Princeton University eating clubs to dance to songs like the Contours’ “Do You Love Me.”

After high school, she attended Boston University, where she received a degree in early childhood education.

In addition to shorter stints at several other preschools, she taught for decades at University NOW Day Nursery in Princeton, which caters to the families of Princeton University faculty.

Alice delighted in working with two-year-olds, and was adamant about the importance of play and discovery in the development of young minds. Through the decades, she was a warm and supportive presence in hundreds of children’s lives.

Alice married Steven Brian Johnson in 1977. The two lived in Kingston until his death in 1982.

In 1985, she married Edward “Ned” Strong. They moved to Roseto, Pa., where she grew flowers like tiger lilies and geraniums and focused on raising the couple’s young son, Teddy. She loved to pick fruit and make jam, and to sing to her son as she worked.

After she and her husband divorced, Alice returned to Princeton, where she helped care for her father. In her spare time, she loved scouring antique stands, country auctions, flea markets, and yard sales for pieces to resell or to decorate her home.

Allen David Porter

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Laney is survived by her husband, Russell Kulsrud, her daughter, Pamela Corey, and her son-in-law, Troy Corey. She was predeceased by her beloved children, Suzanne Allison Gammon (34) in 2001 and Peter Clifford Kulsrud (51) in 2009.

After her father’s 2005 death, she moved to Plainsboro, where she lived in the Highlands at Cranbury Brook. There she made a number of close friends, grew still more flowers, watched and read many mysteries, and experimented with recipes, especially for soup. She also delighted in the companionship of a succession of pampered cats.

Allen David Porter, of Princeton, NJ, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loving family, on March 16, 2025, three days after his 84th birthday. Quiet by nature with a wry sense of humor, everyone who knew him found him genuine, thoughtful, modest, and unassuming. He was a skilled listener who made time to be there for others. His most cherished titles were husband of 57.5 years to Rhona, dad to Shara (Stephanie DeMeo) and Julie (Jason Jimenez), and Pop Pop to Charlie. He loved dancing with his wife, spending time with his family, playing tennis, taking photos, traveling, and cheering on his Princeton University basketball teams. Always needing to be active, he’d challenge his family to Ping-Pong games and rounds of HORSE on the backyard hoop. Not a foodie, but he had his favorites: potato chips, sour cream on anything, and coffee ice cream with pretzels. Allen was born in Rahway, NJ, to Fred and Tillie Porter, and was brother to Gerald Porter. His parents were a hard-working couple with a small business — the family lived upstairs. They didn’t attend college; his father didn’t even graduate from the 8th grade. Their major aspiration was to be able to provide their sons with a good education. Allen graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University (1963) and earned his law degree from the University of Virginia Law School (1966). After serving for one year as a judicial clerk in the Federal District Court in Trenton, Allen was hired by attorney William Miller. For the next 53 years, he practiced law with Miller, Porter and Muller as Senior Partner before becoming Of Counsel to the Van Dyck Law Group Firm. He represented the Princeton Planning Board for 40 years.

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Though it was March, her geraniums were in bloom when she died.

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A trailblazer, mentor, and dedicated advocate for women in science and the arts, Laney lived by the Smith College motto: “Smithies Get Things Done.” And get things done, she certainly did.

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A celebration of her life and achievements will be announced at a later date.

In addition to her first husband, Alice was predeceased by a sister, Ruthmarie Perry Thomas of West Windsor, and a brother, Paul Grandison Perry of New York.

Alice is survived by her son, Theodore Grandison Strong, who lives in Durham, N.C., with his wife, Alexandria; her brother, Mark Williams Perry, who lives in Charlottesville, Va., with his wife, Mary Lou; and her ex-husband, Edward

His community involvement included serving on the Boards of Friends of the Princeton Public Library, the Princeton Library Foundation, the Funeral Consumer Alliance of Princeton, and the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Mercer. Allen was Counsel to the Princeton Area Community Foundation, having served as a Board Member and Treasurer for many years. Last fall, he was honored for his 50 years of legal counsel to The Jewish Center.

In Allen’s memory, donations can be made to The Jewish Center: thejewishcenter. org or the Princeton First Aid & Rescue Squad: pfars.org.

Nannette Louise (Binford) Gibson

Nannette Louise (Binford) Gibson, born 10 November, 1930, of Princeton, New Jersey, passed away peacefully in her sleep on 11 March, 2025.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lived in Petersburg, VA, as a young girl, and later moved to Berea, Ohio, with her parents and brother, Henry. She graduated from Fisk University with a B.A. in English; trained at The Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, Detroit, Michigan; earned a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from the University of Michigan; and earned a Master’s degree in Child Psychology from Rutgers University. She chaired The Princeton Committee of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, NY, NY; and served as a Board Member of Crossroads Nursery School in Princeton. She worked for the State of New Jersey as a consultant in early childhood development, the Project Child program, and in the East Windsor school system as a learning consultant for students with special needs. She also served on the board of the Senior Resource Center in Princeton.

While at Fiske she was a member of The Jubilee Singers; she played classical piano, and especially enjoyed playing Chopin; she always made sure to bake the birthday cake of your choice on your birthday, her specialty being vanilla cake with chocolate fudge frosting. She had a fondness for letter writing, and delighted in sharing a joke. She had a lifelong love of music and other performing arts, and for many years she and her husband held season tickets to The Metropolitan Opera and Symphony at Lincoln Center. She enjoyed Broadway shows, as well as performances at McCarter Theatre.

Her husband of 59 years, Edward L. Gibson, Sr., predeceased her on 6 January, 2015. She is survived by her three children: J. Kathleen Gibson, Edward L. Gibson, Jr., Paula N. Lutz (Gibson); her brother, Henry C. Binford; three grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

A funeral is planned for 22 March, 2025 at 2 p.m. at Trinity Church, 33 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ, 08540. (609) 924.2277.

Burial will take place at Princeton Cemetery following the funeral.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to: Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., 40 Rector Street, 5th floor, New York, New York 10066, (212) 965.2200 or online at naacpldf.org/contact-us; as well as Crossroads Nursery and Infant Center, ECP building, 225 Olden Lane, Princeton, NJ 08540.

Funeral arrangements are under the direction of Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

Betty Bonham Lies

November 25, 1935–March 10, 2025

Betty Lies, 89, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend, poet, and teacher extraordinaire, died on March 10 after a short illness.

She will be remembered for her laughter, warm smile and wry wit, and a love of world travel that included Easter Island, Ireland, Japan, and more. She enjoyed good food, was deadly at Scrabble, had a passion for reading, and possessed an ability to provide an appropriate Shakespearean quotation to fit any daily situation. She once remarked upon a bowl of burnt potatoes: “What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire, that look not like inhabitants o’ th’ earth and yet are on’t?” (Banquo, Hamlet). She had a keen sense of social justice and fairness, working with the League of Women Voters and taking part in several mission trips in Appalachia. Born and raised in Minnesota, Betty attended Carleton College and the University of WisconsinMadison, earning a BA and Master’s in English Literature. She spent one of her undergraduate years at The

University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and during vacations, bicycled around Europe. This was fodder for stories like riding down out of the Alps with no brakes, or drinking champagne from the bottle because it was the “cheapest wine available” in the Champagne region. These adventures, the start of a life spent traveling the globe, sparked wanderlust in her children.

On her first day of graduate school, she met the love of her life, Thomas Lies. They married in 1959 and moved to a house they built in Princeton, New Jersey in 1961. Their daughter Elaine was born the day they moved into that home, followed a year and a half later by their son Brian. Betty remained there for 60 years, tending a vegetable and rose garden, and with her husband, a backyard vineyard.

But her great passion was teaching. She taught English at Stuart Country Day School for over two decades, and was Head of the English department for many years. She was known for her love of Shakespeare and the famed “Macbeth Project,” along with guiding student groups to StratfordUpon-Avon.

After retiring, she became a talented poet, taking part in the Cool Women poetry collective as well as many poetry festivals. Her poems appeared in chapbooks and numerous magazines, with at least one nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was a Poet in the Schools in New Jersey and taught adults at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton. Many of her students became close

friends. In addition, she was named a NJ Distinguished Teaching Artist in 2000 and 2003, received a Governor’s Award in Arts Education, and received several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

She is survived by her children, Elaine and Keiichi (Ozawa) of Japan; Brian and Laurel (Keith) of Duxbury,

MA; her granddaughter Madeline, of Brookline, MA; her sister and brother-in-law Mary Jo and Henry Boots of Redwood Falls, MN; nieces and nephews; and friends. She was predeceased by her husband. A celebration of her life will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the charity of your choice in her memory.

Princeton’s First Tradition Worship Service Sundays at 11am

Princeton University Chapel

All are welcome.

Preaching Sunday, March 23 is Rev. Andrew Connors, Senior Pastor at Brown Memorial Park Avenue Presbyterian Church.

University Chapel Choir with Nicole Aldrich, Director of Chapel Music and Chapel Choir, and with Eric Plutz, University Organist.

DIRECTORY OF RELIGIOUS SERVICES

8:00 am: Holy Communion Rite I 10:30 am: Holy Communion Rite II 5:00 pm: Choral Evensong or Choral Compline 33 Mercer St. Princeton • 609-924-2277 www.trinityprinceton.org

904 Cherry Hill Rd • Princeton, NJ 08525 (609) 466-3058

Vespers 5pm • Sunday Divine Liturgy Pescantified Liturgy Wednesdays during Lent 6pm 930am • www.mogoca.org

Sunday Service at 10:30

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The Rapid Shifts of Real Estate Markets

Real estate markets are highly sensitive to economic activity, often shifting dramatically based on key financial indicators. Interest rates, employment numbers, and inflation rates play crucial roles in determining housing demand and property values. When the economy is booming, job growth and higher wages fuel buyer confidence, leading to rising home prices and competitive markets. However, when economic uncertainty arises such as during a recession or financial downturn demand can plummet, causing property values to stagnate or decline. Mortgage rates also have an outsized impact. A sudden increase in interest rates can make borrowing more expensive, reducing affordability and slowing the market almost overnight. Likewise, housing supply and construction trends respond to economic shifts, with developers pulling back on projects when the outlook dims.

Because of these factors, real estate investors and homeowners must stay informed, as a seemingly stable market can change quickly based on economic trends and data.

impressive 5000 square foot expanded colonial (2010) emanates all the comforts and conveniences of upscale suburban lifestyle. A perfect floor plan for modern living and the multigenerational household. exceptional home boasts numerous updates, a first floor bedroom with full bath, home office, finished basement with an egress window, and a beautiful rear yard with an inviting in-ground pool.

MURRAY

ASP, SRS, CLHMS

Associate, REALTOR® Street | Princeton, NJ 08540 908.391.8396 | Off.: 609.924.1600 donna.murray@foxroach.com donnamurrayrealestate.com

VIRTUAL TOUR QR CODE A member of

Ultimate Suburban Lifestyle with Comfortable Living.

WELLINGTON COURT

6/16/23 10:40 AM

Nestled in the heart of Princeton’s sought-after Littlebrook section, 234 Dodds Lane is a beautifully designed home where comfort, style, and convenience come together. With four bedrooms, a large recreation room, and an in-ground heated saltwater pool, this home is as perfect for daily living as it is for entertaining, indoors and out. Step inside to find hardwood floors gracing the foyer, formal living room, and dining room. A large walk-in bay window in the living room welcomes in natural light, while a cozy fireplace adds warmth and charm. The adjoining dining room ensures effortless hosting, flowing seamlessly into the well-appointed kitchen. Here, stainless steel appliances, a center island with seating, and a butcher block top make meal prep and casual dining a pleasure. A double set of sliding glass doors off the breakfast area opens to the TimberTech composite deck, inviting you outside to enjoy the stone patio, saltwater pool, and lush tree-lined backyard. Upstairs, the primary suite is a true retreat, featuring a Juliette balcony overlooking the peaceful backyard — a perfect spot to sip morning coffee or unwind with an evening glass of wine. A vaulted ceiling adds to the sense of space, while the two walk-in closets with custom built-in organizers provide ample storage. Additional highlights include hardwood floors beneath the upstairs wool carpet and a floored pull-down attic for extra storage. There are three additional bedrooms each of generous size with hardwood floors and ample closet space. A large recreation room expands your living space with cork flooring and a pocket door for privacy. A basement laundry room is equipped with two washers and two dryers. A gas house generator, two-zone HVAC, and a 75-gallon water heater ensure year-round comfort and efficiency. Outside, the heated saltwater pool with an 8-foot depth and Jacuzzi/hot tub transforms the backyard into a private oasis. A variety of songbirds fill the air with music, while seasonal blooms add vibrant color throughout the year. A safety cover, a new pool heater, and a salt generator enhance ease of maintenance, making this the ideal setting for a staycation or lively gatherings. Beyond the home’s property line, Terhune Road runs along the back, a quiet townshipmaintained road flanked by protected wooded areas — a favorite for dog walkers, runners, and cyclists. A double gate in the fence and a widened path through the trees provide easy access for landscapers. The nearby paved pedestrian path connects to Smoyer Park, home to soccer fields, a baseball field, a community garden, and a playground, or walk to the Princeton Shopping Center (1.5 miles away). With a new driveway, new water line to the house, and recent updates throughout, this stunning Princeton home is ready to welcome its next chapter. A rare blend of charm, function, and location — come experience it for yourself! List Price $1,868,000

BD 5 | BA 5.5 | Price Upon Request

This impressive 5000 square foot expanded colonial (2010) emanates all the comforts and conveniences of today’s upscale suburban lifestyle. A perfect floor plan for modern living and the multigenerational household. This exceptional home boasts numerous updates, a first floor bedroom with full bath, home office, finished basement with an egress window, and a beautiful rear yard with an inviting in-ground

Set in one of Princeton's most prestigious neighborhoods, within a short walk to town, the University and other cultural venues, this classic Federalist home embodies the community's history of sophistication. A grand, inviting hallway with a fireplace opens to the spacious living and dining rooms suitable for the most elegant entertaining. Built in a period of skilled craftsmanship, these well-proportioned rooms have high ceilings, deep moldings and other sought after details. First floor rooms flow seamlessly into one another and onto a large porch, facilitating warm weather entertaining. This important home has a circular driveway and is located on almost an acre of land with a three car garage and is waiting for a new owner to make it their own.

Set in one of Princeton's most prestigious neighborhoods, within a short walk to town, the University and other cultural venues, this classic Federalist home embodies the community's history of sophistication. A grand, inviting hallway with a fireplace opens to the spacious living and dining rooms suitable for the most elegant entertaining. Built in a period of skilled craftsmanship, these well-proportioned rooms have high ceilings, deep moldings and other sought after details. First floor rooms flow seamlessly into one another and onto a large porch, facilitating warm weather entertaining. This important home has a circular driveway and is located on almost an acre of land with a three car garage and is waiting for a new owner to make it their own.

Offered at $2,450,000

Offered at $2,450,000

Set in one of Princeton's most prestigious neighborhoods, within a short walk to town, the University and other cultural venues, this classic Federalist home embodies the community's history of sophistication. A grand, inviting hallway with a fireplace opens to the spacious living and dining rooms suitable for the most elegant entertaining. Built in a period of skilled craftsmanship, these well-proportioned rooms have high ceilings, deep moldings and other sought after details. First floor rooms flow seamlessly into one another and onto a large porch, facilitating warm weather entertaining. This important home has a circular driveway and is located on almost an acre of land with a three car garage and is waiting for a new owner to make it their own.

Welcome to this stunning Victorian home in Hopewell Boro. Before you even enter this house you will be charmed by the open front porch, which hints at the outstanding interior you will soon encounter. Bright-eyed and beautiful, the entire house is updated and enhanced by owners who clearly understand its enchantment, as well as its historic significance. Enjoy entertaining and cooking in the updated eat-in kitchen with a Viking range, island with stools, plus large windows to enjoy the view of the deck and yard. Relax in front of the decorative fireplace in the living room, featuring built-in bookcases and original wide plank flooring. The family room, which could also be a dining room if you choose, has a decorative fireplace, built-ins, and beautiful wood floors. This level also has a completely redone full bathroom. On the second floor you will find 3 bedrooms, a walk-in closet and a new full bath. The specialty tiling in both bathrooms is perfect, and beautifully executed. The walk-up attic and full basement offer plenty of storage options. Not to be missed is the two-bay detached garage/barn with a second floor that can be used as is or finished to your liking. Come check out this fairyland of options. Wonderful location is close to the center of town, enabling you to enjoy dining at the plethora of popular Hopewell restaurants, as well as browsing in the antique shops and the Bear and the Books. $635,000

MARKETED BY

MARKETED BY:

Judith Stier Sales Associate

Judith Stier Sales

Robin Wallack

Associate

Direct Line: 609.240.1232

Direct Line: 609.240.1232 MARKETED BY

Broker Associate Cell: 609.462.2340 robin.wallack@foxroach.com

Offered at $2,450,000 253 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ 08540 foxroach.com