NATURE VS. GLITTER: “Flowering, Froth and Flurries” is among Nancy Staub Laughlin’s works created with pastel on paper and mounted photographs. The artist has exhibited her work around the country.

By Anne Levin

Nancy Staub Laughlin’s artwork is a combination of elements. Photographs of landscapes in different seasons might be mixed with things that sparkle and glow. The Skillman-based artist has exhibited these assemblages at galleries and museums in New Jersey and beyond. Next spring, she is scheduled to have a show at New York City’s Carter Burden Gallery.

“I describe them as still lifes, almost, but more,” she said of her work. “I incorporate the landscape. I look at it almost like a mathematical equation. I love sparkle. I’m totally obsessed by it. I’m putting together two opposites that, together, become one. It’s how I see the world.”

Laughlin has known since seventh grade that art was her calling. One of six children, she grew up in Connecticut and came to Princeton to work in the atelier of Seward Johnson after graduating as a sculpture major from Philadelphia’s Moore College of Art.

“I think I was actually the first apprentice to theoretically graduate,” she said of Johnson’s program, then located at an old schoolhouse on Alexander Road (the Johnson Atelier is now in Hamilton). Working for Johnson during the day and waitressing at The Annex restaurant on Nassau Street at night, she was able to make a living. more

By Anne Levin

Gov. Phil Murphy’s November 4 legislation banning single-use plastic and paper bags in New Jersey, effective in May 2022, was welcome news to local environmentalists, who have been working toward such a measure for years.

The newly adopted Plastic Pollution Reduction Act also includes polystyrene food containers, plastic straws, and other materials that end up clogging waterways. It is considered to be one of the toughest plastics legislations in the country.

“Our community has been interested in this for a long time,” said Sophie Glovier, chairman of the Princeton Environmental Commission (PEC). “Litter and plastic are a big problem in town. And we see how many plastic bags are in our waterways.”

It is the fact that the legislation is statewide that makes it so significant. “We are really fortunate now that the state has acted,” Glovier said. “There were so many towns passing different bans themselves, trying to move the issue forward. The fact that it’s at the state level makes it easier for all of us.”

The PEC recommended to Princeton Council last year that it should endorse pending state legislation banning the single-use plastic bags, paper bags, and polystyrene and Styrofoam takeout food containers. New Jersey towns that have banned single-use plastic bags include Jersey City, Hoboken, Teaneck, Point Pleasant Beach, Paramus, Glen Rock, Belmar, and Lambertville. more

By Anne Levin

Princeton Council voted at its Monday meeting to introduce an ordinance creating a new affordable housing zone, for a project of townhouses and multifamily apartments that backs up to the Princeton Shopping Center and has frontage on Terhune Road.

The governing body also approved a resolution authorizing a settlement agreement with 375 Terhune LLC, owned by developer Roman Barsky. One house currently stands on the parcel. Both items were carried over from the Council’s meeting on October 26.

The ordinance provides a framework for the development of townhouses and multifamily apartments, 20 percent of which are designated affordable housing. There can be up to 24 townhouses and six multifamily apartments.

“This attempts to create this housing in a form that is sympathetic to the existing scale of residential development along Terhune by breaking up the apartments into two buildings, appropriately scaled and set back,” said Michael Sullivan, planning consultant. “The townhomes are a little higher and set behind them. Access would not be from Terhune, but from a new public roadway on the western side of the tract.”

The townhouses would face each other, with a courtyard or mews between them. Part of the ordinance also requires a buffer along the rear of the properties that front on Grover Avenue and Grover Park. There is also a requirement for a fence or wall, six to eight feet high. Plantings and stormwater management are also required, as is bicycle parking for the multifamily buildings. more

SWEET SIBLINGS: After a huge jump in adoptions during the first months of the pandemic, things are back to normal at SAVE animal shelter in Skillman. Sugar, right, was recently adopted, but her brother, Cayenne, is still waiting to find his “forever home.”

By Anne Levin

During the first wave of the pandemic, consumer demand for feline and canine companionship boomed to previously unseen levels. Americans stuck at home adopted from shelters in record numbers.

SAVE — A Friend to Homeless Animals was among them. The shelter in Skillman, normally filled to capacity with dogs and cats, was hard pressed to keep up with the demand.

“Between March and May, adoptions were honestly through the roof,” said Executive Director Heather Achenbach. “It was way above normal.”

But by August, the numbers had leveled. In October of 2019, SAVE handled 59 adoptions; in October 2020, there were 60. The organization’s current challenge is to raise needed funds in an environment that makes the usual methods impossible.

SAVE’s biggest moneymaker, the annual Holiday Boutique and Party, will not be held this year.

“We still need to raise money,” said Achenbach. “We have essentially asked people to please donate commensurate as if they are attending the event. And an anonymous patron will match gifts sent by November 21.”

In the meantime, smaller events are planned. A socially distanced shopping event held last month brought in $5,000 and drew 70 visitors over a four-hour period. Similar, small-scale fundraisers are being considered. more

By Anne Levin

Among the most significant challenges of navigating COVID-19 is maintaining mental health. The anxieties associated with the ongoing pandemic can be particularly acute for students whose education has been interrupted, with no definite end in sight.

It was this climate of uncertainty that inspired Preeti Chemiti, a sophomore at Princeton University currently attending remotely from her family’s home in Fargo, North Dakota, to write a mental health guidebook. Mind Matters is geared to college students, high school students, the BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] community, and teachers, among others.

As a freshman, Chemiti was among a group of first-year students awarded a Bogle Fellowship, a funded opportunity for participation in service or civic engagement projects during the summer before sophomore year. Fellows design their own summer internship or project in collaboration with a host partner, and support from the University’s Pace Center for Civic Engagement.

“I found out in February of freshman year that I had gotten the fellowship,” said Chemiti, who hopes to be back on campus next semester. “I wasn’t sure what the summer would entail — certainly not COVID. I soon realized that I had an opportunity, and had been given a platform. I decided I wanted to do something on my own, related to educating people about mental health during this pandemic.”
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