taylorsmith | Town Topics

October 17, 2012

Cardinals, Cats, and Rally Squirrels: Learning to Like La Russa

Game 4 of the 2011 National League Division Series was do or die for St. Louis Cardinal manager Tony La Russa. None of his players knew it, but La Russa had made up his mind to retire at the end of the 2011 season. All the Phillies needed was a win and they would take the series 3 games to 1 and La Russa’s Hall-of-Fame-worthy career would be over. The facts say that the Cardinals won that game because of timely hitting and strong relief pitching: “our bullpen came through for us,” as La Russa makes clear in his new book One Last Strike: Fifty Years in Baseball, Ten and a Half Games Back, and One Final Championship Season (Morrow $27.99). The Cards went on to beat the Phils in the NLDS, the Brewers in the National League Championship Series, and the Texas Rangers in the World Series, after turning it around with a crushing three-time come-from-behind win in Game 6.

Facts are facts and myths are myths, however, and the mythic version says the Cardinals’ fortunes changed in that key game 4 when a squirrel romped across home plate, so distracting pitcher Roy Oswalt that the Phils manager Charlie Manuel protested to the umpire. When questioned about the incident after the game, La Russa suggested an amorous relationship between the Rally Squirrel, as it was by then already known to Cardinal fans, and Torty, slugger Alan Craig’s pet tortoise (whenever Craig came up to hit, his teammates would shout, “Do it for Torty!”). After Phillie fans threw a stuffed squirrel into the Cardinals’ bull pen, the relief corps made a good luck mascot of it, and were all but unhittable as the Cards proceeded to take the NLCS against the Brewers. During the celebration, the stuffed squirrel was sprayed with beer and champagne.

To say that the Rally Squirrel impacted the Cardinals’ 2011 championship run might sound a bit fanciful, but in the realm of the Net, strange things were happening. A Twitter account was started for the Rally Squirrel on the day it raced across home plate and within two days it had 11,000 followers. By late October the number had more than doubled. Soon the squirrel had its own theme song, its own Topps baseball card, and t-shirts were being sold in the thousands. Three days after the Cardinals won the World Series, St. Louis kids were trick or treating in Rally Squirrel costumes. And if you look closely you can see the Rally Squirrel in mid-romp engraved onto the Cardinals’ World Championship rings.

Can squirrels romp? Google Rally Squirrel on YouTube and see for yourself. This squirrel is an athlete, romping, jumping, as close to flying as grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) can get.

There’s no mention of the Rally Squirrel in La Russa’s book, but don’t let that fool you. What other baseball luminary would attract such a creature but the one who started the Animal Rescue Foundation with his wife, Elaine, in 1991 after a stray cat wandered onto the field. “The cat was threatened with being put down,” La Russa says in One Last Strike, so “Elaine and I found a home for her.”

La Russa is also seriously into music. Among his friends are Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Hornsby, jazz bassist Christian McBride, and Carlos Santana, who gave the Cardinal skipper a medallion necklace he’d worn during a September 2011 concert La Russa attended. “It had two dragons etched into the surface,” La Russa writes, “and Carlos told me that it would give me good spirit. I wore that thing every day from that point on, through the end of the World Series.”

So here’s this guy, he’s won two World Series titles in five years, he’s conversant with rock and roll, and loves animals (he travels, he admits, with a menagerie), he’s a voracious reader, has a law degree, and manages to keep all those player egos in a fine balance through unthinkably high-pressure situations — why is he so hard to like? Why does he radiate uptightness? Why do his expressions perennially hover somewhere between dour and dire?

It took me, a lifelong Cardinal fan, 15 years to begin to warm to Tony La Russa, and it wasn’t until reading One Last Strike that I really began liking him.

In Hemingway’s Time

In Ernest Hemingway’s story, “The Three Day Blow,” Nick Adams and his pal Bill are drinking Scotch and talking of books, baseball, and thwarted love. When Nick wonders if the Cards will ever win a pennant,” Bill says, “Not in our lifetime,” and Nick says, “Gee, they’d go crazy.”

In 1926, two years after the story appeared in the small press edition of In Our Time, the Cards won not only their first National League pennant but the first of eleven World Championships. You know St. Louis went crazy in 1926, but in 1985 for baseball fans everywhere and especially St. Louis Cardinals fans, Nick’s words were echoed by Cardinal-play-by-play announcer Jack Buck’s cry of “Go crazy, folks! Go crazy!” when the most unlikely of sluggers, Ozzie Smith, hit the walk-off home run that deflated the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1985 playoffs.

Stunning Washington

Though the title, One Last Strike, refers to last year’s dramatics, it works as well for what happened in the elimination game of the 2012 NLDS around 12:30 a.m. October 12, when the Cardinals were down to their last strike twice. The Washington fans were on their feet, ready to explode in a perfect storm of joy; ready to, yes, go crazy. The stadium was roaring, their team a mere strike or pop up or ground out or fly ball away from surviving to play in the League Championship Series.

Cardinal fans meanwhile are about to experience what Nick Adams and Jack Buck were talking about; but they don’t know it yet; they’re waiting for the axe to fall, hopes dashed, elimination looming. If you want to truly experience going crazy, it helps if your team is down to the last strike, your heart’s in the basement, one level above the abyss. As high as the home crowd is, you’re way low, way way down, hanging on to a feather-faint thread of faith. At the same time, the memory of last October’s miracle has you feeling an irrepressible surge of it-could-happen-again-ness.

And then it does. Happen. Again!

In the top of the ninth, two runs behind, post-season miracle worker Carlos Beltran leads off with a double, and here it comes: two quick outs, two masterfully drawn walks, a pair of two-run singles, and it’s all over, and so suddenly that your joy more than overwhelms you, it runs past you, you can’t keep up with it, all you have breath to say is “I don’t believe it!” Because the very thing you’ve been wishing for, urging, willing, aching for with everything you have, has been given to you and to thousands of friends you’ll never know, those multitudes of Cardinal fans in and out of St. Louis you’ve bonded with in this moment, all sharing the same ecstasy, just as you did last October 27 and 28.

La Russa Smiles

I doubt that even Hemingway could have done justice to the sixth game of the 2011 Series, already being touted as one of the most, if not the most, exciting ever played. How then does the manager deal with what’s happening on the field in the late innings of an historic game? Aware of what he’s up against, La Russa titles the chapter, “You Had to See It for Yourself” and prefaces it by describing how he dealt with the disaster-divided World Series of 1989 when he was manager of the Oakland Athletics. In fact he’s making the Loma Prieta earthquake the opening act for David Freese’s two big moments, the first a game saver, the second a game and Series winner, given its impact on the opposition’s morale.

So, welcome to brink of elimination, “potentially the last hope for Cardinals Nation,” Texas having just taken a two-run lead, it’s the existential moment: “One strike left in the season.” At this point, with the game on the line, La Russa inserts a prosaic managerial observation: “I hoped that David would get his front foot set sooner. On the swinging strike he hadn’t.” If you could see his face as he thinks this thought, you would witness Grimness and Glowering writ large, which is why fans familiar with La Russa’s perennially thorny demeanor will appreciate the way he prefaces Freese’s game-saving hit: “David Freese then did what many people don’t think is possible. He made me smile.”

Freese made La Russa smile! Whee! Be still, my heart! The man has just saved the season by lining a triple off the wall. For that he gets a smile? How about a Thomas Wolfian goat cry? Walt Whitman’s barbaric yawp? How about “an outburst of profane joy” like Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man? How about going crazy?

But La Russa maintains his managerial cool. “When Freese extended his hands and stepped slightly toward the outside corner, setting that front foot,” he continues, letting us know that Freese has done exactly what his manager hoped he would, “he hits a fastball,” the “sound of the contact … so pure” that La Russa first thinks it might be a walk-off home run instead of a game-tying triple.

Finally, after the Cards come unbelieavably back from another two-run deficit, it’s the 11th inning, with Freese leading off. La Russa writes: “I sensed in the ninth inning when we’d tied it that people were going to talk about this game for a long time. When we did it again in the tenth, I knew that people were going to talk about this game forever.” Now comes the coup de grace. As La Russa describes it, Freese “hit a fastball on the inner half and crushed it to straightaway center field onto the grass of the hitters’ backdrop. In situations like that, it’s almost as if the ball has some gravitational pull on you. As it climbs, it lifts you up, body and spirit. The guys at the rail rose up on their feet, craned their necks, and raised their arms above their heads.”

What we see, what we feel, is pure baseball euphoria. Like La Russa and everyone in the dugout, we jump to our feet when Freese connects, knowing it’s gone, it’s over, once again joy outruns us, flying, soaring beyond us, we can’t keep up with it, but when the small white object hits the brilliant greensward of the “hitter’s backdrop” above the center field wall and four or five kids or grown-up kids come tumbling out of the stands after it, we’re out there rolling around with them, kids again, like David, the big kid who grew up in St. Louis, rounding the bases and then charging, dancing a modified horn pipe down the third base line, flinging his cap at his feet as he runs the happy gauntlet of his teammates.

La Russa admits wanting to join the mob jumping and dancing. Instead he hugs Dave Duncan, his longtime pitching coach and confidant, “marveling at the wonder of it all.” And then he smiles. A big smile, a smile to remember.

———

One Last Strike features an introduction by third-generation Cardinal fan John Grisham, whose first baseball novel, Calico Joe, has just been published. You can see Hemingway in his Nick Adams up-in-Michigan days in “Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time,” which is on the second floor of the Princeton Public Library through October 31.

Curtis Symphony Orchestra’s Princeton Premiere A Great Success in Richardson Auditorium

Music aficionados in this area tend to think of New York City when venturing out of home range for high-quality performances, however, equally high level (and often less expensive) ensembles can be found an hour south in Philadelphia. One of the most venerable of these organizations decided that if Princeton would not come to them, they would come to Princeton. The Curtis Institute of Music presented its symphony orchestra in Richardson Auditorium last Friday night in a concert which filled the downstairs of the hall but could easily fill the entire space once the community realizes how extraordinary this orchestra is.

Most colleges and universities have orchestral ensembles to provide training and performing opportunities to their students, some of whom go on to careers in music, and then there is Curtis. It is understood at Curtis that every student in the orchestra will go on to play professionally (many as first chairs nationally and internationally) and the collective discipline, dedication, and commitment to music was clear from the stage, through to the last chairs of the more than thirty violins who played Friday night. Friday night was the Curtis Symphony Orchestra’s first foray into the Princeton area, made stronger by the choice of guest conductor — Carlos Miguel Prieto, who graduated in the class of ’87 and was clearly pleased to share his feelings about being back on the Richardson stage.

Curtis’s first mission is to train “extraordinary gifted young musicians,” and the symphony orchestra wasted no time introducing a young conducting student to the musical community. Kensho Watanabe holds two degrees from Yale and has already several premiere performances under his belt as a conductor. It was clear even from the “Star-Spangled Banner” arrangement which opened the program that Mr. Watanabe is a thoughtful and meticulous conductor, leading the orchestra with easy flowing strokes. It was also clear from the outset that the Curtis Orchestra has a young fresh sound, especially from the brass.

This concert was a collaborative effort with the Curtis Opera Theatre, and Mr. Watanabe led the orchestra in a Tchaikovsky duet based on his orchestral fantasy Romeo and Juliet featuring soprano Sarah Shafer and tenor Christopher Tiesi. Ms. Shafer possessed a lovely presence onstage, conveying a certain frailty as she bid her lover farewell. She communicated well with Mr. Tiesi, who showed intense command of his role and moved through the vocal registers well. The two singers blended particularly well, especially in the unison passages toward the close of the piece, with vibratos that were well matched. Mr. Watanabe varied conducting styles with the different moods of the music, building intensity slowly and bringing out the lighter side of Tchaikovsky when appropriate.

This concert appeared to reflect three of the best assets of Curtis: its singers, instrumentalists, and musical education. Singing was well represented by Ms. Shafer and Mr. Tiesi, the instrumental playing by the orchestra musicians themselves, and music education by the orchestra’s presentation of one of the great pedagogical pieces of the 20th century. Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto joined the orchestra for a spirited performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, narrated by Philadelphia actor John de Lancie. The son of a former Curtis director, Mr. de Lancie has strong ties to Philadelphia music organizations to go with his impressive acting credits, and provided a lively narration to a piece which might be geared toward children but still must be played accurately.

Mr. Prieto led the orchestra in a quick and decisive presentation of the Henry Purcell theme on which the works is based, and each family of instruments stepped up to demonstrate clarity and precision. The winds played with direction and transparency to the melodic line, with the clarinet theme particularly clean and saucy. A solo bassoon played a sultry melody, followed by a rich viola solo. With the number of strings onstage, it was easy for the orchestra to present the final theme with power, setting up the compelling Richard Strauss work which closed the program.

Strauss’s tone poem Ein Heldenleben was in part the composer’s answer to Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, and was designed for lush orchestral playing. Under Mr. Prieto’s direction, the piece started off with rich celli and double bass sound, joined by clean brass. Mr. Prieto kept the music churning with a full and lavish sound, contrasted by elegant solos from a number of players, including solo clarinet and English horn. Concertmaster Nigel Armstrong played several solos throughout the piece, providing intense double stops and taperings to phrases often ending at the height of the melodic line. Key to Mr. Armstrong’s solo success in this piece was his duet playing with a solo French horn, superbly played by Levi Varga. A clean offstage trio of trumpets added to the flow of a battlefield scene, punctuated by snare drums effectively placed in the corners of the back of the stage.

The Curtis Symphony Orchestra may have been new to the Princeton audience, but they are certainly well-known in the orchestral field. Hopefully, the ensemble will be back again soon, to continue introducing the Princeton community to some of the future in great orchestral playing.

Area Exhibits 10/17/12

Alfa Art Gallery at George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, presents “The Message,” a solo exhibition by Vesselin Kourtev, through November 20. Visit www.Alfa
Art.org.

Art Times Two Gallery, Princeton Brain and Spine Care, 731 Alexander Road, presents “Energy in Mind: Picturing Consciousness,” works by Jennifer Cadoff, Debra Weier, and Andrew Werth, November-April. The opening reception is November 8, 5-7 p.m. After that date, view by appointment. Call (609) 203-4622.

Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street, Lambertville, presents “Patterns & Meaning: Alan J. Klawans and Andrew Werth,” November 9-December 2. Both artists use the computer as a tool in creating their work. The opening reception is November 10, 3-6 p.m. Visit www.lambertvillearts.com.

Arts Council of Princeton, Paul Robeson Center, 102 Witherspoon Street is showing works by Shiva Ahmadi, Monira Al Quadari, Nezaket Ekici, Hayv Kahraman, and Efret Kedem as part of “The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society” series, through November 21. Visit www.artscouncilofprinceton.org.

Ellarslie, Trenton City Museum in Cadwalader Park, Parkside Avenue, Trenton, is showing “Naturally, Man-Made, in Full View: The Art of le Corbeau” through November 4. Showing through January 13 is “James Rhodes, Trenton Stoneware Potter, 1773-1784” and “Contemporary Art from the TMS Collection.” Call (609) 989-3632 or visit www.ellarslie.org.

Firestone Library at Princeton University, has in its Milberg Gallery “Woodrow Wilson’s Journey to the White House,” through December 28. “First X, Then Y, Now Z: Thematic Maps” runs through February 10 in the main exhibition gallery. “Your True Friend and Enemy: Princeton and the Civil War” shows in the Mudd Manuscript Library Cotsen Children’s Library through July 31. “Into the Woods: A Bicentennial Celebration of the Brothers Grimm” is on view through February 28.

Gallery and Academy of Robert Beck, 204 North Union Street, Lambertville, shows paintings by Mr. Beck and hand-wrought clocks by Raymond Mathis October 20-November 18. Public receptions are October 20, 5-8 p.m., and October 21, 1-4 p.m. Visit www.robert
beck.net.

Gallery at Chapin, 4101 Princeton Pike, has drawings and paintings by Dot Bunn through October 26. From November 1-December 14, “Abstract Drawings and Paintings” by Pat Martin will be shown. The opening reception is November 7, 5-7 p.m. Call (609) 924-7206.

Gallery 14, 14 Mercer Street, Hopewell, shows “Nantucket” by India Blake, “Cityscapes” by Charles Miller and Richard Trenner, and “Recent Work” by Kenneth Kaplowitz through November 11. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. or by appointment.

Garden State Watercolor Society presents its 43rd Annual Juried Exhibition through October 28 at Prallsville Mills in Stockton. For times and details on special events, visit www.garden
statewatercolorsociety.net.

Gelavino Gelato Shop at Princeton Shopping Center, North Harrison Street, is showing 12 prints by Princeton High School junior Jane Robertson through October 31.

Gourgaud Gallery, Cranbury Town Hall, 23-A Main Street, Cranbury, hosts Colleen Cahill, who will show her pastels, watercolors and mixed media pieces in a show called “Transitions” through October 28. Visit www.cranbury.org.

Historical Society of Princeton, Bainbridge House, 158 Nassau Street, is showing “Einstein at Home” and “From Princeton to the White House,” which celebrates the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson, through January 13. At the Updike Farmhouse on Quaker Road, “Call to Action: How a President Used Art to Sway a Nation,” World War I posters from the collection, and “A Morning at Updike Farmstead: Photographs by the Princeton Photography Club” are open October 20, November 17 and December 15, 12-4 p.m. For more information visit www.princeton
history.org.

The James A. Michener Art Museum at 138 South Pine Street in Doylestown, Pa., has “To Stir, Inform, and Inflame: The Art of Tony Auth” through October 21. “Creative Hand, Discerning Heart: Story, Symbol, Self,” runs through December 30. On October 23 at 1 p.m. Rachel Bliss, Syd Carpenter, Celia Reisman, Peter Rose, Robert Winokur and Kate Javens, whose works are in the “Creative Hand” exhibit, will discuss their art. Visit www.michenerartmuseum.org.

The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street, on the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick, has “Lynd Ward Draws Stories: Inspired by Mexico’s History, Mark Twain, and Adventures in the Woods” through June 23, 2013. Through January 6, “Art=Text=Art: Works by Contemporary Artists” will be on view, from the collection of drawing collectors Wynn and Sally Kramarsky. “In the Company of Women: Prints by Mary Cassatt” runs through March 3. “Le Mur’ at the Cabaret des Quat’z Arts is on view through February 24.

Lawrenceville School’s Marguerite & James Hutchins Gallery, Gruss Center of Visual Arts, Lawrenceville, has a Faculty Exhibition 2012 through October 27. Visit www.law
renceville.org.

Lewis Center for the Arts’ Lucas Gallery, 185 Nassau Street, opens its season with a drawing show by more than 40 students, through October 26. The gallery is newly renovated and will feature work by ceramics students November 13-21, and by those studying sculpture, graphic design, and photography December 4-14. Free public lectures by faculty members continue with sculptor Pam Lins October 24, painter Josephine Halverson on November 7, and filmmaker Su Friedrich on December 5. Visit www.princeton.edu/arts.

Mariboe Gallery at Peddie School, Swig Arts Center, Hightstown, presents “Nuits Blanches,” recent paintings by Frank Rivera, through November 12. Visit www.ped
die.org/mariboegallery.

MCCC Gallery, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road, West Windsor, presents “MCCC Faculty Exhibit 2012” through November 8. Call (609) 570-3589 or visit www.mccc.edu/gallery.

Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street, presents “Portrait of Place: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761-1898” through January 13. Museum hours are Wednesdays-Fridays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. on. Group tours of 10 or more can be arranged any day by advance reservation. There is free on site parking.

Outsider Art Gallery, 10 Bridge Street, Suite 4, Frenchtown, has a show of work by artists from the Canary Islands and England through November 1. Additional venues are the first floor of New Hope Arts, next door, and The Raven, New Hope Lodge, 400 West Bridge Street. Call (215) 862-4586.

Plainsboro Library Gallery, 9 Van Doren Street, Plainsboro, presents portraits by artist/architect Pablo Riestra, through October 31. A reception is October 21 from 2-4 p.m. Call (609) 275-2897 for more information.

Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, is showing photography by Mary Cross (“Egyptland”) and painter Ifat Shatzky through December 31 as part of “The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society” series taking place in nine area venues. (609) 924-9529 or www.prince
tonlibrary.org.

The Princeton University Art Museum presents “Root and Branch,” which explores the form of a tree in art and includes several art forms, through November 25. Works by Parastou Forouhar, Mona Hatoum, Sigalit Landau, Shirin Neshat, and Laila Shawa are on view through January 13 as part of “The Fertile Crescent” project. “Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom” is on exhibit through February 17. “City of Gold: Tomb and Temple in Ancient Cyprus” is on view October 20-January 20. Museum hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. Call (609) 258-3788.

Rider University Art Gallery, Bart Luedeke Center, Rider campus, Lawrenceville, presents “Alterations: A Retrospective,” sculptures by Joan B. Needham, October 25-December 2. The opening reception is October 25 5-7 p.m. Visit www.rider.edu/arts.

Espionage Thriller Recounts Diplomats’ Daring Escape From Iran

HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY: CIA agent Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) strides into the CIA building for a meeting with the director to receive his next assignment. He is charged with the task of getting six American diplomats, who are hiding in the Canadian Ambassador’s home, after they escaped from the takeover of the American embassy in Teheran by the Iranians. Mendez devises an elaborate scheme in which the diplomats become members of a film crew that is supposedly shooting a movie in Teheran.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States embassy in Teheran, taking 52 Americans hostage with the intent to exchange them for the recently deposed Shah. What ensued was a 444-day ordeal which would last long after the despised despot died in exile without standing trial.

While that standoff occupied the world’s attention as front-page news, almost no one knew that a half-dozen Americans had managed to escape unnoticed during the assault and take refuge in the home of the Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). Of course the discovery of their whereabouts by the rabidly anti-Western Khomeini regime would have undoubtedly triggered another international incident.

So, they surreptitiously contacted the CIA which assigned their rescue to Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), a specialist with a perfect record of freeing captives from similar perilous predicaments.

Agent Mendez proceeded to hatch an attention grabbing scheme that was the antithesis of the sort of clandestine operation one might expect from the CIA.

His plan involved creating a cover for the stranded diplomats by making a movie that was actually a CIA front. First, he enlisted the assistance of a veteran Hollywood executive (Alan Arkin) and an Oscar-winner (John Goodman) and swore them to secrecy. They lent an air of authenticity to the ruse by posing as the picture’s producer and makeup artist, respectively.

Figuring that “If you want to spread a lie, get the press to sell it for you,“ they launched the project at an elaborate press conference that had actors who appeared in gaudy costumes. The media fell for it hook, line, and sinker, and soon Hollywood was abuzz about Argo, an upcoming science fiction movie set to be shot on location in Iran.

In truth, Mendez would be the only person venturing on the dangerous mission to Teheran and when he arrived there the film’s tone shifted from flip and lighthearted to stone cold sober. Upon arriving at the Canadian ambassador’s house, he hands the six Americans newly-prepared passports that identitify them as members of a Canadian film crew.

The tension rapidly ratchets-up as the Iranian authorities close in just as the diplomats are making their escape to the airport, where the slightest slip during an interrogation could mean the difference between life and death. An edge-of-your-seat thriller not to be forgotten at Oscar time!

Excellent (****). Rated R for profanity and violent images. Running time: 120 minutes. Distributor: Warner Brothers.

Pennsylvania Ballet Returns to McCarter With Balanchine, Robbins, and Martins

BALLET AND BARBER: Artists of the Pennsylvania Ballet in Peter Martins’s “Barber Violin Concerto,” part of the program at McCarter Theatre on October 23. (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev)

In the unofficial hierarchy of American ballet companies, a group of troupes from around the country rank just under the two biggest organizations, American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet. Right up there at the top of the regional list is the Pennsylvania Ballet. The Philadelphia-based company was started in 1963 by Barbara Weisberger, who was trained by choreographer George Balanchine and used several of his ballets to build the early repertory.

The Balanchine aesthetic remains a central focus of the 21st century Pennsylvania Ballet. His Square Dance is on the company’s Tuesday, October 23 program at McCarter Theatre, along with Jerome Robbins’s NY Export: Opus Jazz and Peter Martins’s Barber Violin Concerto. Pennsylvania Ballet is returning to McCarter for the first time in almost a decade.

To Roy Kaiser, the troupe’s artistic director, the program is as much about music as it is choreography. “Dance accompanying great music — it’s a kind of a theme on this program,” he said during a telephone interview. “Even though we’ll be dancing to taped music, which is unusual for us, each of these ballets has a great score.”

Balanchine set Square Dance to the music of Corelli and Vivaldi. The devilishly fast choreography is classical, yet it follows the forms of a traditional square dance. Originally, a square dance caller accompanied the performances, but Balanchine dispensed with the caller when he revived the work for his New York City Ballet in 1976. “Like so many Balanchine works where there is really no narrative, you just see the music so clearly,” Mr. Kaiser said. “You see every nuance in the music. The fact that it was inspired by traditional square dancing, and the patterns he employs, make it just brilliant.”

The principal ballerina role is “a tour de force,” he continued. “She has to have razor-sharp technique. There is no way you can do this ballet halfway. And for the lead male, the solo he created is extraordinary in its simplicity. It’s an unusual male variation, but it works beautifully. It’s a break. It takes the ballet in a whole different direction.”

Perhaps unwittingly, the Balanchine/Robbins/
Martins program pays tribute to New York City Ballet. It was Balanchine who co-founded the company with arts patron Lincoln Kirstein in 1948. Robbins, a dancer in the company, was soon hired as assistant artistic director, dividing his creative energies between ballet and Broadway. He died in 1998. Before Balanchine died in 1983, he named Martins as his successor in leading the company.

Robbins choreographed NY Export: Opus Jazz in 1958 for a touring company he founded, known as Ballets U.S.A., to music of the same title by Robert Prince. With Pennsylvania Ballet currently made up of very young dancers, this period piece focused on youth is especially appropriate, Mr. Kaiser says.

“I love this ballet. Robbins created it shortly after he did West Side Story, so it’s got that kind of urban tension of that time in the fifties,” he said. “It’s a ballet in sneakers. I like bringing works like this into our repertory, because it’s a great experience for the dancers. Doing a piece like this and working with that vocabulary really informs their classical work and makes them better dancers. You never know what you’re going to discover when you’re working in different types of dance, and it improves them. Plus, it’s fun. And the girls get to take off their pointe shoes.”

Peter Martins created Barber Violin Concerto for two couples – one classical, the other contemporary, in 1988. At the first performance, David Parsons and Kate Johnson of the Paul Taylor Dance Company took the roles of the modern dancers. Each pair first dances alone, and then the couples meet, ultimately exchanging partners and integrating styles. A 2010 New York Times review by Roslyn Sulcas said of the ballet, “The heart of the work is the pas de deux by the ballerina and the modern dance man, in which his faunlike primitivism is tamed by, but also incorporated into, her fluid expansiveness.”

Since its last visit to Princeton, the Pennsylvania Ballet has acquired a new home on Philadelphia’s North Broad Street, currently under construction and preparing for an opening early next year. The company comes to McCarter in the midst of its opening run, at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music, of the Romantic-era classic, Giselle.

“We love McCarter because it’s an easy trip, and there is a wonderful audience,” said Mr. Kaiser. “Last time we were there, we felt like we were dancing in front of an audience that sees a lot of dance and was very appreciative. What more can you ask for?”

The Pennsylvania Ballet Company’s performance is on Tuesday October, 23. Tickets to the McCarter Theatre program, which starts at 7:30 p.m. are $20-$62. For information visit www.mccarter.org or call (609) 258-2787.

Five Year Strategic Plan Outlined At Sexuality Education Fundraiser

When it comes to talking to children about sex, waiting until they reach puberty is waiting too long. The chats need to begin in elementary school, according to Elizabeth Schroeder, the executive director of Answer, the national organization dedicated to providing sexuality education for young people.

This approach is a principal element of Answer’s five-year strategic plan, Ms. Schroeder said in a talk last week at the organization’s annual fall fundraising breakfast. Representative Rush Holt and Senators Shirley Turner and Barbara Buono were among those attending the event at Jasna Polana. Also on hand was Princeton resident Susie Wilson, who served 23 years on the Network for Family Life, Answer’s predecessor, and is now its advisor. Answer is based in New Brunswick.

“As you’ve heard me and others doing this work say, starting sexuality education in the teen years is far too little, too late,” Ms. Schroeder said. “… early childhood sexuality education, like early childhood education, establishes the invaluable foundation on which we adults can all continue to build so that the more explicit sex education that is provided in the teen years and beyond doesn’t feel like it is coming out of left field.”

Ms. Schroeder’s talk followed a presentation by nine members of Answer’s “teen staff” about how withholding information about sex can negatively affect their lives. “I asked my parents what ‘gay’ meant, and they told me it was a sin,” said one. “We need you, the people we trust the most, to be open and honest with us,” said another.

A serious challenge faces Answer this year, according to Ms. Schroeder. “It’s about a formerly stealth, and now quite open, campaign against sexuality education in this country,” she said. “It’s about the calculated, non-stop attacks on the work we do, attacks that are right there with the attacks on women’s health and rights, that have grown stronger and more vociferous in nature over the past few years in particular. It’s about a focused, determined effort to keep young people in the dark, to justify misleading and lying to teens as keeping them ‘innocent’ about the more adult issues people face in today’s world with regard to sexuality.”

Citing the “abstinence until marriage” approach being implemented in some New Jersey public schools, Ms. Schroeder praised a local organization. “Why don’t adults in these school districts care that their children are being lied to?” she asked. “Why are we letting misinformation be provided, when we have wonderful organizations right here in New Jersey — HiTOPS being one of them — that work with schools to provide high quality sexuality education?”

Sexuality education is about more than preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Young girls in particular are made to feel worthless for having sexual feelings in the first place, Ms. Schroeder said. “What is the impact of that? Research shows that the worse a person feels about her or himself, the poorer the decisions they tend to make about sexuality.”

Answer wants to shift the way parents and others throughout the country see sexuality education. “People are ignorant about sexuality education. Ignorance breeds fear; fear knows no bounds,” Ms. Schroeder said. Advocating young people’s need for age-appropriate sexuality information in schools and at home is the focus of the organization’s nationwide campaign to get across the message that sexuality is as important as any other social issue. “Does a young person stop going through puberty just because he is homeless? Does a parent living below the poverty line not need to talk with her children about sexuality?” she asked.

Answer has made progress over the past few decades, but there is much work left to be done, according to Susie Wilson, whose pioneering work at Rutgers University formed the foundation for what Answer is today. “There have been real advances. Certainly New Jersey, since we were the second state in the nation to do this, got a head start on everybody,” she said after the program. “But we still don’t treat this as a subject equal with all the other subjects in school. It’s still on the periphery, because it’s not tested. Health and sexuality education don’t ever get tested. That’s very important. I don’t think we can get parity on this until we test on it.”

Resistance to educating young children about sexuality centers around the belief that it will encourage them to have sex, Ms. Wilson believes. “But look at Penn State,” she said, referring to the recent conviction of the University’s retired football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15-year period. “What happened there is that these kids didn’t know [how to recognize] what was going on, because they weren’t taught it earlier.”

Life-long Princeton Resident April McElroy Is Princeton Senior Resource Center Mainstay

REACHING OUT: “I like talking with people, spending time with them, listening to their stories, and I like to help them. I especially enjoy being with senior citizens. They have a history.” April McElroy, a mainstay at the Princeton Senior Resource Center, plans to retire at the end of October.

“It is hard to imagine the Senior Resource Center without April’s smiling face. She always has that smile, and in addition, a little air of mischief. She’s our cheerleader!”

Princeton Senior Resource Center volunteer and former president of the Board of Trustees Barbara Purnell is not alone in her assessment of April McElroy’s contribution to this important organization. Those who have known and worked with April McElroy at the Princeton Senior Resource Center (PRSC) all emphasize how much she will be missed when she retires at the end of October.

After 31 years as office assistant — although that title does not begin to describe or encompass her myriad responsibilities and contributions — Ms. McElroy has decided to explore new possibilities and opportunities.

“The time is right,” she explains. “I’m at a point now when I can pursue other avenues, and there are enough people to run the center very well. There are many opportunities out there. I have a lot of interests. I love to travel; I love antiques. I’m looking forward to discovering all kinds of new adventures.”

Customary Post

No consolation, though, for all those who will miss her at her customary post at PSRC.

The desire to be of service and help others was instilled in April from her earliest years. Born in Princeton in 1944, she was the second child of Willie and Barbara Hill. Older brother Billy, twin sisters Michael and Johnnie, and youngest sister Denise completed the family.

April attended Princeton Nursery School, Nassau Street Elementary School, John Witherspoon Junior High School (now the site of the Waxwood apartments on Quarry Street), and Princeton High School. She enjoyed playing with friends in the neighborhood. “We played outside, rode bikes, jumped rope, and played sports,” she remembers. “At that time, we could play in the recreation area, a big field, where the Community Park School is now located. We played there all the time. We also liked to ice skate on Lake Carnegie and Baker Rink at the University — that is until I fell and hit my head. Then, it wasn’t as much fun!”

Ms. McElroy’s friend of more than 50 years, Penney Edwards-Carter, former Borough Council Clerk, recalls those childhood days in the John Witherspoon neighborhood and the sense of community that existed. “I grew up with April’s twin sisters, Michael and Johnnie, and we were in and out of April’s house all the time. Their mother and my mother were friends too. Everyone knew each other then, and we had good times.”

Arts and Crafts

Music was also important to the Hill family. April went to Sunday School at the First Baptist Church, and later sang in the church choir. “I preferred to sing in a chorus than alone,” she says, “but in first grade I did sing a duet with a classmate. We all sang in the family. My brother Billy went on to establish the Billy Hill Band, and he still sings professionally. Michael and Johnnie are accomplished singers as well as champion athletes.”

Family was very important to April, and it was a blow when her father died when she was seven. “My mother then worked as a domestic, and my grandmother Wilma helped raise us. I enjoyed being with the family. I liked it on rainy days, when my mother would spread newspapers on the table, and my sisters and I would paint and do arts and crafts. Sometimes, too, we went on family vacations to see relatives in South Carolina.

“I really admired my grandmother. She was a stately woman; she always dressed nicely. I liked it when she did my hair, and we would name the Books of the Bible.”

Although Nassau Street School was integrated, there were still difficulties for African-American children in the 1950s. When April’s fourth grade class planned a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, April had reason to expect to be chosen for a leading role because of her excellent singing voice. “I tried out for the lead, and many in the class thought I would get it. But I didn’t. The teacher told me I couldn’t be the lead because I was ‘colored.’”

April faced other challenges in school as well. “I had a reading problem. Because I didn’t read correctly, it was always hard for me, and I also didn’t test well. I’d always have anxiety because I knew there would be reading. I didn’t realize I was dyslexic until years later, when I was at PSRC.”

She did have a favorite teacher, however. “I really liked and admired Miss Stecchini, my high school English teacher. She was a good teacher, and I liked her a lot. Many years later, she was in Merwick and bed-ridden, and I went to see her. It was a good visit, and she remembered me.”

“Imperial Debs”

Visually adept, April was very good in art and drawing, and enjoyed that opportunity in school. She also played field hockey and basketball, and sang in the choir. Often, after school and on weekends, she had jobs baby-sitting.

When April was in high school, she and her sisters, Michael and Johnnie established and performed in “The Imperial Debs”, a precision drill team. “This was fun, and they appointed me captain,” says Ms. McElroy. “We performed in a lot of parades and entered competitions in Princeton and elsewhere. We even went to Boston to compete, and we beat the Cavaliers, the long-time champions.”

After graduating from high school in 1963, April made an effort to audit a variety of courses in college in the area. “I was interested in continuing to learn,” she explains, “and also, it didn’t involve taking a test, which relieved my anxiety.”

She also worked for the Acme Market in the Princeton Shopping Center, and as she reports, “I was the first black cashier at Acme.”

In addition, while at Acme, she found an opportunity to take computer classes, which was to make a difference in her life. “When I had the computer instruction, I found a niche I was comfortable with. It gave me a lot of confidence. It made me see that I was smarter than I realized.”

This computer experience later led to a position with the Mathematica Company on Alexander Road. “I worked with computers in the research department and did surveys. It was an excellent experience.”

Two Daughters

Another opportunity she was happy to accept was a position at Jet Magazine in New York City. “I worked with Mrs. John H. Johnson (who also published Ebony). “I commuted to New York, and this was an exciting time.”

Previously, in 1964, April was married to Lawson McElroy, who was from Pennington, and also had been director of the Imperial Debs. Eventually, they had two daughters, DeLaine and Dellice. In fact, prior to her marriage, April had briefly considered another career. “I really thought of becoming a race car driver! I loved to drive, and I used to race on the back roads with my cousins.”

The arrival of DeLaine, however, nipped that career in the bud, and as Ms. McElroy says, jokingly, “My daughter kept me from having a career as a race car driver!”

As it turned out, Ms. McElroy wore many hats over a series of years: working at Acme, Jet, Mathematica, also a stint at the Princeton Consignment Shop (“I love vintage clothes. I really enjoyed that experience”), Princeton Furs By Marvin on Witherspoon Street, Landau, modeling for the Soroptomist Club for 15 years and a member for three years. And she balanced much of this as a single mother after a divorce in the 1970s.

In 1981, she turned to what always had seemed her calling: helping others and making a difference in their lives.

“My mother always wanted to help people, and she set this example for us,” points out Ms. McElroy.

The Senior Resource Center’s first location was at Spruce Circle, she notes. “It had been founded by Jocelyn Helm and Karin Slaby, and in the beginning, there were just three of us: Jocelyn, Sue Tillett, and myself, and a few volunteers. For 15 years, I ran the Senior Resource Rummage Sale at Spruce Circle, and it was wonderful.

Special Events

“I was also in charge of special events and coordinated a lot of programs, including the Landau Picnic, the Salvation Army camp, the Princeton Nursery School Christmas program, and the Housing Authority of the Borough of Princeton’s government food distribution program in the community. I also had discussions with former Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed about the PSRC.

“I don’t have a college degree,” she continues. “My PhD is people. l have always spent a lot of time with people, and later, in my work at PSRC, I have found that in talking with people when they come in, spending time with them, they feel welcome and comfortable. You know, you don’t have to know someone to say hello.”

In 1994, Ms. McElroy moved to PSRC’s new location in the Suzanne Patterson Building adjacent to Borough Hall. Her responsibilities grew as the program grew, and she was involved in a series of new initiatives.

“I worked with Jan Marmor, who was the second director of PSRC, and I continued a monthly senior theme newsletter and a monthly calender that had been established. For 25 years, I have maintained the data base mailing list for 3300 recipients in the community and beyond.

“In my earlier years, I was a guide, a group leader for senior trips to Colonial Williamsburg and to upstate New York, among other places. Now, we are doing day trips to the Philadelphia Flower Show, to the theater, etc. These are very popular.”

At one point during her tenure at PSRC, Ms. McElroy also served as office assistant at Elm Court, part of the Princeton Community Affordable Housing program for seniors. “I worked with Libby Ranney, the office manager, and met a lot of people there,” she recalls. “I had an open door policy and said, ‘Come on in and talk’. I tried to let people know how important it is to talk with one another, no matter who they are. A woman I got to know there had had a bout with cancer, and we talked a lot. She got better, and then unfortunately it came back later, and she was on hospice. I went to see her, and it was a moving experience for me.”

Inviting Presence

Making a difference has been a big part of Ms. McElroy’s work. Princeton resident Rhona Porter, formerly the social worker at Elm Court, comments on Ms. McElroy’s unique ability to draw people out and make them comfortable.

“April was a delight to work with, and the residents all loved her extroverted personality. She was the first person people saw when they came into the office. She was always a warm, inviting presence.”

Current PSRC executive director Susan Hoskins LCSW echoes that view of Ms. McElroy’s contribution and character. “April’s title is office assistant, but her true gift is connecting with people of all kinds. She has welcomed so many people to PRSC, and they tell us that is why they come in. She is the personality that greets people when they come into the Suzanne Patterson Building that makes us the friendly, welcoming place to be in Princeton. She will approach anyone and start a conversation, quickly finding some interesting fact that she zooms in on, making a connection for why they must start coming to PSRC.

“April has an uncanny ability to know who is hurting, and she’ll come stand by my desk and say ‘You must come talk to this person NOW.’ I’ve learned to put down what I am doing because she is always right. I’ve learned to stop being surprised when a person says they are volunteering or coming in to a class because April told them they had to (she doesn’t accept a no answer). April believes deeply in what PSRC is all about, and she will be the first to tell others how we change lives. Over the 10 years I have known her, we have become good friends, and I expect that to continue going forward. I think she is very special.”

Anything and Everything

Adds Penney Edwards-Carter: “I believe April has done anything and everything she possibly can to help make life better for senior citizens.”

Ms. McElroy’s efforts to help those in the community have also extended to acting as chair of the Borough’s Affordable Housing program, and for the the past 25 years, serving on the Board of Elections.

Outreach has clearly been a major part of her modus operandi. “I have done a lot of outreach, including going to people’s homes to see if they need assistance. People often need help in our community. Also, I am always pulling someone into PSRC. This is important. I see situations all the time where seniors may be lonely and are not aware of all the opportunities we have here, or they are hesitant to come in and participate. They might be immigrants and not know what we offer. I see them become happier when they are involved.

“PSRC is helpful in so many ways,” she continues. “It provides opportunities for physical and mental activities and stimulation, including a lot of special seminars and classes. The number of programs has really grown over time. We also provide a lot of informational and referral material.”

Ms. McElroy has also become a photographer of note, carefully recording events and activities at PSRC on film or digitally. As one PSRC member notes: “April is a wonderful photographer. She captures the spirit of the occasion of all the events and parties, and then shares the photos with all of us.”

New Direction

Now that she is on the verge of a new direction in her life, Ms. McElroy looks forward both to changes and also to continuity. While enjoying many of the opportunities that living in Princeton brings to residents, she notes a certain loss of communal mindfulness that existed in the Princeton of her past.

“I observe what is going on around me. I think it is important to be aware of this. One of the biggest changes is in housing, all the big houses being built. And the traffic congestion. Some people can’t afford to live here anymore. There are also so many changes with the stores and the turnovers. We’ve lost a sense of continuity and community.”

On the other hand, Princeton offers so much. It is intriguing to Ms. McElroy that one may encounter any number of engaging individuals at any time. “In Princeton, you never know who you will be talking to. I like talking to interesting people, people who I may not even know, or listening to a debate. I’m getting information from that person or that event. I like what I get from this, and it is something I can incorporate into my own person.”

Ms. McElroy seems able to look back and ahead at the same time, remembering past moments, and looking forward to future opportunities, “My proudest achievement is being able to help people and sharing information, and this includes with young people as well as seniors. To be successful in life, you must have kindness and understanding.

“There have been challenges, of course,” she acknowledges. “Accepting constructive criticism has been a big part of my moving forward. And I’ve had guardian angels along the way. I like to be able to give back to others. No matter what I do in the future, whatever adventures I encounter, I want to continue to be a person who reaches out to connect with people and to help them.”

Admitting Problems, DOT Ends “Experiment”

Two weeks short of the projected finish date, New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) officials responded to the growing chorus of complaints from motorists stuck on ancillary roads, and from area residents who feared for their children’s safety as more cars used their driveways to make U-turns to correct routes interrupted by jughandle closings.

NJDOT Commissioner James Simpson announced the end of the Route 1 “pilot project” in an early Saturday afternoon appearance on Washington Road (CR 571), where West Windsor residents had gathered to demonstrate their opposition to the program.

“I am announcing that NJDOT will end the trial program and restore all previous traffic movements within a week,” Mr. Simpson said. “We told local officials, residents, and other stakeholders in the Princetons, West Windsor, and Plainsboro that we would terminate the trial prior to its scheduled 12-week duration if we became convinced that unintended consequences could not be satisfactorily mitigated. We are making good on that promise today.”

“The DOT said they would cancel the trial if it was a disaster, and we’re all thankful Commissioner Simpson listened to the public outcry, kept his word, and pulled the plug,” said Township Deputy Mayor Liz Lempert.

“NJDOT crews will remove all barricades, barrels, and signage associated with the trial in the coming days,” reported DOT spokesperson Joe Dee. All traffic movements that were permitted prior to the trial will be restored, including right turns from Route 1 northbound onto Varsity Avenue and Fisher Place, and left turn movements from Route 1 southbound at Fisher Place and Washington Road.К

While the trial had reportedly eased traffic flow on Route 1, Mr. Simpson acknowledged the “unintended consequences” that had occurred as a result of eliminating left turns for Route 1 northbound motorists at Washington Road and Harrison Street.

“Unfortunately, the trial disrupted the Penns Neck neighborhood with additional traffic and created safety concerns. Our efforts to resolve those issues and guide motorists to the Scudders Mill interchange were unsuccessful,” Mr. Simpson said. “Increased congestion along Alexander Street in Princeton was also a concern.”

“We will be exploring value-engineered solutions involving a buildable project or projects to fight congestion in this corridor,” Mr. Simpson said. Mr. Dee concurred, noting that “the department will work with county and local governments, residents and other stake holders toward longer-term solutions to the traffic congestion along this stretch of Route 1.”

Elected officials who voiced opposition to the trial in recent weeks included the Mercer County Board of Freeholders, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, and Township Committeeman Bernie Miller. Ms. Lempert, who is the Democratic candidate for mayor of Princeton, was instrumental in mounting an online survey on the Township’s website, documenting motorists’ responses to the Route 1 trial.

In comments made after the decision to end the trial, Ms. Lempert acknowledged that “the Penns Neck citizens’ group deserves a lot of credit for organizing a successful protest.”

Her Republican opponent in the upcoming mayoral election, Richard Woodbridge, similarly noted that “it was really the West Windsor residents that caused the DOT to stop the experiment.

“We should have taken the lead there,” added Mr. Woodbridge. “We need to do a better job of getting ahead of these projects rather than reacting to them. It was such an obviously bad idea it should have never gotten off the ground in the first place.”

In a letter to Mr. Simpson written days after the cancellation, Township Mayor Chad Goerner had a different perspective. “As you know, our community was one of the first to actively voice concerns regarding the trial both in regional mayors’ meetings and also via a resolution expressing those concerns in 2011,” he wrote.

In the wake of the cancellation, Mr. Dee reported that elected officials, members of the business community, and others have “urged that a number of options be revisited, such as extending West Windsor’s Vaughn Drive to Washington Road, widening the Mercer County-owned bridge that spans the Delaware and Raritan Canal on Alexander Road and building an overpass near the intersection of Route 1 and Harrison Street.”

Residents Share Concerns At Borough Council Forum On Land Use Laws

At a public forum focused on a pending Assembly bill that would exempt private colleges and universities from municipal land use laws, panelists warned that passage could set a precedent enabling other non-profits, such as hospitals and private schools, to bypass local zoning regulations. The forum was held at a meeting of Princeton Borough Council last Tuesday, October 8, and attended by about 50 people.

Borough Mayor Yina Moore, who has been closely involved in organizing opposition to the proposed legislation, commented this week that she was encouraged with the response to the event. “I’ve heard from a lot of people,” she said. “I know that a lot of people who weren’t there watched it on TV. It was very informative. Now, we’re ready to act.”

The Senate version of Assembly bill A2586 passed 26-8-6 last June and is now in the hands of the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee. A group of citizens and local officials is planning to attend the Committee’s November 8 meeting in Trenton to express opposition to the bill, “whether or not they have the item on the agenda,” Ms. Moore said. “We have a pretty broad representation, including some Princeton University students, though the administration seems less interested. There will be quite a bit of involvement.”

Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman, responding to a letter last month from Ms. Moore asking that the University oppose the bill, declined, saying the University “would never jeopardize the well-being of the community.” Those in support of the legislation say it will speed up the process of construction projects and give private institutions parity with public universities, which currently pursue development without review by local zoning and planning boards.

“They call it a parity bill. We call it a disparity bill,” said panelist Michael Cerra of the New Jersey League of Municipalities. “We don’t accept the argument that it is a parity bill. It creates an unequal playing field. It puts local governments at a disadvantage.” Mr. Cerra called the amount of opposition to the bill by citizen groups across the state “astonishing.”

Charles Latini Jr., resident of the American Planning Association’s New Jersey chapter, said the legislation would exist to promote the partnerships of large-scale universities such as Princeton with developers and could have a “devastating effect” on communities. “You may lose control of your town,” he said. “And for the other towns that do not have colleges or universities: Be concerned.”

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said large, private universities might not mean to hurt the community, but they might not understand the bill’s implications. What communities should watch out for, he added, are partnerships between the private educational institutions and biotech research firms.

While Assembly member Jack Ciattarelli (R-16) said he is tracking the bill closely and predicted it will be defeated by a slim margin, his colleague Reed Gusicora (D-15), who has a letter in this week’s Mailbox (page 14), was not as optimistic. “I think this is pretty much wired to pass,” Mr. Gusciora said. “I think it’s a power play by developers and private interests. It’s throwing land use out the window. I think we have a long way to go.”

Several local residents spoke at the forum, none of whom were in favor of the bill. Resident Todd Reichert asked whether the universities had been invited to the forum, “because I’d love to hear their arguments.” He added, “Good fences make good neighbors. And the good fence of a municipal land use law provides the kind of protection that I as a non-17-billion-dollar endowed resident would like to have on my side, since I don’t have those dollars and powerful people on my side.”

Ms. Moore said that Princeton University, Rider University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Princeton Theological Seminary were invited to the forum. Princeton and Rider universities declined the invitation, while the other two institutions did not respond.

Resident Heidi Fichtenbaum, an architect, said that lots of “back of house” buildings have to be built on campuses for storage and other uses. She used the example of a massive book storage facility that Princeton University is building in the Forrestal complex to illustrate what could happen if the municipal land use laws were not being followed. “If something like that went up in the middle of Princeton, people would be aghast,” she said. “We would lose complete control with this law.”

Resident Kip Cherry said there is reason to believe the bill is unconstitutional. Marvin Reed, former Township mayor, said, “Good town/gown relations depend on good planning and good zoning, and that’s what we have to keep in place.”

Ms. Moore urged citizens to make their voices heard regarding opposition to the bill. “If you think taxes are bad now, you haven’t seen anything if this bill passes,” she said, encouraging people to attend the November 8 meeting of the Higher Education Committee in Trenton. But Mr. Tittel urged people to take action immediately instead of waiting for the meeting. “Get to members now,” he said.

Hour-Long Debate Gives Candidates Chance to Talk About Their Strengths

Residents of Princeton had two debates to watch last Thursday evening, and timing was all. Before tuning in to see the 9 p.m. vice presidential debate, many people headed over to the Jewish Center of Princeton at 7:30 p.m. to hear candidates Liz Lempert and Dick Woodbridge talk about what each of them believes they would bring to the office of mayor of the “new,” consolidated Princeton in 2013.

The level of discourse between the two candidates remained highly civil during the hour-long debate, and the moderator’s performance could not be faulted. Barbara Trout, a League of Women Voters representative from Burlington County, was poised and congenial as she gave the candidates their instructions and read questions that had been written earlier that evening on index cards distributed to members of the audience. Princeton Community TV videotaped the debate, which has been made available on their website (www.princetontv.org).

As they have on other occasions, Mr. Woodbridge used his answers to emphasize the breadth of his experience as a former Township mayor and Borough Council president, while Ms. Lempert focused on the more recent achievements of Township Committee, where she has served for four years as a member, and deputy mayor.

The candidates differed on a number of issues, including the significance of national elections on local politics; the disposition of the Valley Road School building; and how each of them proposed to keep taxes flat.

Mr. Woobridge suggested that it would be “a mistake” to allow national politics to interfere with local issues that tend toward the more mundane business of doing things like fixing potholes. Ms. Lempert, who coordinated the local campaign for President Obama in 2008, said that national platforms on issues like affordable housing and environmental concerns do “translate at the local level.”

In discussing the Valley Road Building, Ms. Lempert emphasized the fact that since they own it, its future is up to the school district. While she allowed that being directly across from Township Hall makes it a valuable piece of real estate that might work as a community center, she concluded by suggesting that “we need to figure out the finances.”

“Use it or lose it,” said Mr. Woodbridge in his more pointed response. Describing the building as looking “like a crack house,” he faulted the school district for its failure to maintain it and for the Board’s unwillingness to accept a “free offer” that would have turned the Valley Road Building into a community center.

“I can guarantee there will be no new taxes introduced in 2013,” said Ms. Lempert in answer to the question of maintaining flat taxes. “We’ve done it for the last two years,” she said, referring to Township Committee and citing the “invaluable” work of the Township’s Citizens Advisory Group.

Mr. Woodbridge proposed that municipal finances be treated “as a real business,” and noted recent conversations he has had with Borough Administrator Robert Bruschi and Township Acting Administrator and Chief Financial Officer Kathy Monzo. He said that he would look forward to creating budgets that were not based on preceding years, and to ask for other players, like Mercer County and the school district, to seek cost reductions.

In response to Mr. Woodbridge’s frequent references to his experiences with, and desire for non-partisanship in the next Princeton government, Ms. Lempert pointed out that “almost every” current “board and commission has Republican representation.” Both candidates acknowledged the importance of tourism in Princeton, and the need to find new ways to support it. Mr. Woodbridge suggested that town-gown relations have “deteriorated” in recent years. His own recent meeting with University Vice President Bob Durkee and Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristen Appelget, said Mr. Woodbridge, should be a precedent for regular meetings in the future. In response, Ms. Lempert cited Township Committee’s recent success in negotiating a voluntary payment from the University in lieu of taxes.

While Mr. Woodbridge spoke of his three main credentials for being mayor as “experience, experience, and experience,” Ms. Lempert noted hers: “current experience.”

Signs of Times Past

If you’re old enough to have American roadside memories, you may read this row of signs from last weekend’s Friends of the Princeton Public Library Book Sale this way: Book Sale/Saturday/Prices Low/Sure to Save/Burma-Shave. In fact, this table of History and Americana is being browsed during the Saturday afternoon calm following Friday’s tumultuous opening. Co-chairs Sherri Garber and Eve Niedergang report that this year’s sale broke last year’s record. (Photo by Emily Reeves)

October 10, 2012

Announcing “Smart Traffic Solutions” Demonstration on Saturday, October 13

To the Editor:

I would like to know what Joe Dee and the NJDOT consider “something severe enough to stop this pilot program” if 9-plus accidents in Penn’s Neck since the pilot program started is not enough? Is a negligible increase in traffic flow worth a child’s life when there are more viable, cost effective solutions available to us? These solutions will eliminate traffic lights on Route 1 as opposed to shifting the problem to residential neighborhoods, east-west commuters/travelers, and visitors. These solutions include: 1. Harrison Street overpass, 2.Vaughn Road Connector and 3. widening Alexander Road Bridge over the canal. The solutions are already in line with the preferred alternative that NJDOT and others have developed.

Further, Joe Dee from the NJDOT never mentions the fact there WAS funding for these projects in place less than 10 years ago but since the project was delayed so long the funding had to be returned. That funding has since been redistributed to other towns in New Jersey. Joe Dee mentioned it will cost the state approximately $1 MILLION to close the jug handles.

$1,000,000 to place a few barriers, signs, counters, and make it more pleasing to the eye if deemed permanent. Am I the only one that thinks that’s outrageous? In my estimation that’s $20,000 per orange barrier. No wonder they “don’t have funding.” If you would like to see more viable solutions put into place visit Change.org then “find” NJDOT and sign the petition.

Please join Smart Traffic Solutions in our demonstration at the corner of Washington Road and Wilder Ave in Penn’s Neck Saturday October 13. Questions? Email SmartTrafficSolutions@gmail.com Together we can substantially improve traffic flow for everyone and remove traffic lights on Route 1, not shift the problem.

Eric Payne

Washington Road

Supporter of Liz Lempert for Mayor Notes Her Role in Design, Financing for New Pool

To the Editor:

I’m writing to urge the election of Liz Lempert as our united Princeton’s first mayor. I support Liz for many reasons, but I want to note especially her key role in finding agreement for the design and financing of our spectacular new Community Pool.

Liz worked tirelessly, quietly, and effectively for over two years to bring together Borough Council and Township Committee members, supporters of different design options, and the Recreation Board and Recreation Department. She focused on the importance of a modern facility that would meet the needs of our whole community for decades and still be affordable for all, as part of a recreation infrastructure that will serve all of Princeton’s residents and families. As she will as mayor, Liz brought our varied community together to produce a result that works for all of us.

As a member of the Princeton Parks and Recreation Fund, I saw first-hand how important Liz Lempert’s leadership was to the Pool. I know she will provide that same kind of inclusive leadership in moving a consolidated Princeton forward in every way.

Jeff Orleans

Meadowbrook Drive

Princeton Environmental Commission Memo Asks Planning Board for “Proof of Remediation”

To the Editor:

Princeton citizens, caring about the health of our community, should know the Princeton Environmental Commission (PEC), in an October 4 memo to the Planning Board and the Site Plan Review Advisory Board, has asked for “proof of remediation,” or an explanation as to their invalidity, of “recognized environmental conditions” listed in a Phase I environmental study by Avalon’s consultant EcolSciences. This study recommends further investigations at the old hospital site (September 2011).

Prompted by research conducted by Princeton Citizens for Sustainable Neighborhoods, the PEC concluded at its meeting of October 1 that AvalonBay should provide the Phase II environmental investigations recommended by Ecolscience. Attorneys for AvalonBay and Princeton HealthCare said at the meeting that they did not know whether these investigations had been performed. PEC Commissioner Victoria Hamilton remarked that it would be weird if Avalon had not followed the recommendations of its consultant Ecolsciences to investigate further, and said if these investigations have not been done, the Planning Board should follow up on them because it could be a problem. An independent environmental investigation, paid for by the applicant, was proposed by PCSN attorney Aaron Kleinbaum, due to the conflicting nature of three environmental reports that are known to exist on the old hospital site.

The EcolSciences Report was only released by Avalon after attorney Kleinbaum wrote a letter to municipal authorities. EcolSciences recommends soil boring near the four active underground tank systems on the property, soil and groundwater investigations for possible releases of laboratory solvents and other chemicals from the sewer lines and the former septic system, a geophysical survey for unknown buried tanks, and other remedial measures to close out former spills. It also recommends all hazardous materials should be transferred offsite or disposed of under prior manifest. Nuclear Regulatory Commission clearance of proper decommissioning of X-ray equipment and linear acceleration radiation therapy unit within the cancer ward should be documented. Lead-lined doors must be properly disposed of during demolition.

AvalonBay initially did not submit the EcolSciences to the Planning Board and instead submitted an Environmental Impact Statement by another firm it hired, Maser (June 6, 2012), which summarized EcolSciences in one sentence: “Site specific investigations performed for the property by EcolSciences regarding the presence of underground tanks and possible contamination revealed that no underground tanks or contamination were found in the property” (p. 10). Borough Engineer Jack West stated at the PEC meeting that the AvalonBay/Maser EIS was “inadequate” and would need to be “updated.”

The EcolSciences Report was issued without access to “at least eight of the Medical Center’s environmental documents,” according to Mr. Kleinbaum, who cited from his letter to PEC (October 1, 2012, online at www.Facebook.PrincetonCitizensFor). According to Mr. Kleinbaum, “An independent investigator would not tolerate the absence of this information before making any conclusions.” The PEC consequently asked also for a report on these documents in their memo.

“The Princeton Environmental Commission must recommend that the [AvalonBay] application not move forward until further independent environmental due diligence is conducted,” concluded Attorney Kleinbaum.

Robert Dodge, PhD

Maple Street

Route One Changes Creating Gridlock, Destroying Quality of Life in Princeton

To the Editor:

The closing of left turns at Washington Road and Harrison Street on Route One has created gridlock in Princeton. The town already had a traffic problem, given that about a decade ago traffic measurements indicated that it had worse congestion than major Midwestern cities. The recent closings have significantly increased the volume of cars using Alexander Road, a narrow, twisting road not designed to handle even a fraction of the traffic that now crawls along it during the morning and evening rush hours. Hapless commuters to New York City and Philadelphia, people who form a large segment of the Princeton population that has been long abused by New Jersey Transit, are now forced to experience the “service interruptions”, “signal delays,” and “congestion” of the train commute on their way to and from Princeton Junction, before they even board a train. Frustrated and, in some cases, enraged drivers are engaging in dangerous practices such as illegal U-turns and lane crossings and running red lights.

Princeton — its elected officials and its residents — needs to fight back. Concerned citizens can register their displeasure on the township’s website: www.princetontwp.org There is a quick survey that can be accessed by clicking on a link on the front page of the website. Let’s not let fly-by drivers on Route One ruin our quality of life by snarling our roads. After all, residents and would-be residents might decide to put the pedal to the metal and leave Princeton behind. What would happen to tax rates then?

Curtis A. Glovier

Drake’s Corner Road

New Westerly Road Church Honors Land and Values of the Community

To the Editor:

On November 11, Westerly Road Church will hold a ground-breaking ceremony for the new construction of a church in Princeton. For a long time our thriving church has exceeded capacity in our current location and after years of discussion, deliberation, and input from the community, we have an approved design that is a credit to Princeton. The church (on Bunn Drive and Herrontown Road) is an applicant for the SmartGrowth designation and has been designed for sustainability, efficiency, practicality, and beauty. With an efficient design that will be LEED certified and a tight footprint that allows for the preservation of the remaining 7.5 acres as a protected environmental easement, it’s a project that honors the land, the values of the community, and our faith convictions.

We offer our heartfelt thanks to the Princeton community, public officials, and the Township staff for your support and hard work on this project. We extend an invitation to the community to join us for the ground-breaking ceremony on Sunday, November 11 at 2 p.m. (at the Bunn Drive site), and to join us for worship in our new facility in late 2013 — until then, you will always be warmly welcomed at our current location on Westerly Road.

John Beeson

Associate Pastor, Westerly Road Church

Emphasizing His Deep Roots in Community, Supporter Makes Case for Dick Woodbridge

To the Editor:

It is with great conviction that I enthusiastically support Dick Woodbridge as candidate for the first mayor of united Princeton.

At this crucial time in Princeton’s history, it is imperative that we choose the best candidate to help us smoothly transition through the merging of the two Princetons. This process will help to determine the success of the new government, and will be highly visible on a State level.

Dick’s highly-regarded experience as a former mayor of Princeton Township and on Township Committee, as well as his membership on Borough Council qualify him as the only candidate with experience in governance in both Princetons. Dick’s deep roots in our community, dating back from grade school through college at Princeton University, along with his lifelong professional career in Princeton as an attorney, make him highly qualified to lead us at this time. Dick’s long-time devotion to local volunteerism and community activism allows him an insight which will be most beneficial in bringing the two communities together.

Never before has it been more important for Princeton to choose its leadership. We are fortunate to have an ideal candidate to move us forward into the first chapter of our future as a united Princeton. I endorse Dick Woodbridge for mayor and I urge all Princeton voters to do the same.

Susan D. Carril

Westcott Road

In the Week of the Library Book Sale, A Cautionary Tale of Abandoned Books

To the Editor:

A couple months back, a house near ours was looking deserted. A dumpster finally appeared and I noticed among the discards some wood that would be perfect for a backyard project. I knocked on the door and got permission to take anything I wanted. Days later, I stopped by again and noticed some old science books, mostly physics. I took one about Einstein, intending to return later for a closer look. The next morning, the dumpster was gone. Again I knocked, and learned that this unassuming house I walk by every day had been the home of no less than Julian Bigelow, chief engineer at the Institute for Advanced Study for von Neumann’s 1940s project to build one of the world’s first computers.

Though Bigelow’s papers and a few books will end up in various archives and a Bryn Mawr sale, thousands of books were thrown out for lack of a home. I’ll always wonder what books slipped away just out of reach. The loss had particular poignancy for me because I know a bookshelf where they might have been perfect, in the former house of the great mathematician Oswald Veblen out in Herrontown Woods.

Though Veblen’s uncle Thorstein is better known, Oswald may have left the greater mark. His vision and influence were instrumental in building the Princeton U. math department into a powerhouse, designing Old Fine Hall, and bringing the Institute, and Albert Einstein, to town. We also owe him gratitude for hundreds of acres of greenspace in town. The Institute Woods and Herrontown Woods would likely not have been preserved if not for Veblen’s influence, generosity, and love of nature.

But Veblen’s contributions to the world we now inhabit extend beyond Princeton. Though most of Bigelow’s books were lost, they led me to recent writings by George Dyson (Turing’s Cathedral) and Jon Edwards. Therein lie descriptions of Veblen’s role in helping get German math and physics scholars out of Germany before World War II, “undoubtedly delaying the development of Hitler’s bomb.” His work on ballistics during the world wars increased the accuracy of Allied artillery and stirred early interest in developing machines to expedite the necessary trajectory computations. Dyson devotes a chapter of his book to Veblen’s role in spurring and facilitating development of the computers we use today.

All of which brings us back to those empty bookshelves in a boarded up house in Herrontown Woods. When Veblen died in 1960, after a life of transformative service to University, Institute, town, nation and world, he left behind one wish for that house–that it be made into a library and museum. That wish remains ungranted, as the neglected county-owned house and nearby farmstead move toward demolition. A citizens group has submitted a proposal to restore the buildings and put them to public uses, but like the dam restorations at Mountain Lakes, all depends on funding.

Lest more books slip needlessly into the abyss, I encourage anyone seeking a good home for books related to the Veblens and other Institute luminaries to contact me (609.252.0724, veblenhouse.org). If individuals and local institutions come forward to grant the Veblens’ dying wish, we’ll have some fine bookshelves to put them on.

Stephen Hiltner

North Harrison Street

Pin Oaks Are Most Populous Street Trees In Borough Says Shade Tree Commission

To the Editor:

The Princeton Borough Shade Tree Commission is pleased to announce its inventory of approximately 2300 street trees (102 species) is now officially on line and accessible to the general public. The tree survey and data collection took three years. The Commission thanks all in the Borough who volunteered so many hours to make the new data system possible.

Starting October 1, 2012, anyone can access the street survey by going to the Shade Tree Commission’s website, address www.pbshadetree.org, clicking the green word DATABASE in the left side column, and following the instructions provided on the website. Users will be guided through steps to choose any address in the Borough and obtain the species names and sizes of curbside street trees at that address.

In addition to satisfying the tree curious, this inventory will enable municipal employees to maintain the database, identify aging trees requiring removal, schedule the removal of diseased or damaged trees, and plan for replacement trees. They can also record citizen reports about trees in distress or requests for trees to be planted in vacant sites. Database reports will assist Public Works staff in diversifying tree species along a street (a means to forestall the spread of some diseases), and in selecting replacement trees with proven salt resistance or with mature heights appropriate to a particular street’s features, considering signage, utility wires, sidewalks etc.

A look at the new database reveals that pin oaks are at present the most populous street trees in the Borough, followed by sugar maples. London plane trees are in third place, then red maples, thornless honey locusts, Norway maples, and Japanese zelkova, with 95 other species following in decreasing numbers.

Princeton Borough has earned “Tree City” status for 17 years. Maintenance of the database will help consolidated Princeton track growth of its diverse urban forest and keep a healthy tree canopy going forward. A similar survey to cover roadside trees in the Township is underway, and results will be added to the Borough’s on-line data in 2013, post-consolidation.

Princeton Borough Shade Tree Commission

Alexandra Radbil, Chair,

Pat Hyatt, Vice-Chair,

Sharon Ainsworth, member, Marie Rickman, member,

Welmoet von Kammen, member, database master,

Jenny Crumiller, Borough Council liaison

Pointing Out the Potential for Contaminated Debris, Dust When Hospital Is Demolished

To the Editor:

I meant to write much earlier than this to thank Jane Buttars, Dr. Vojislava Pohristic, and Alexi Assumus for providing the much needed information on the status of the environmental impact on the neighborhoods surrounding the old hospital site. I am surprised by the lack of response or concern shown by local residents when there is a strong possibility that the site is contaminated and that there is not only the actual demolishing of the buildings (lead paint, lead doors, asbestos, medical waste, X ray equipment, etc.), but the removal of hospital also poses threats to the surrounding water systems.

Do residents realize the amount of dust particles which will spread over the area? I remember the amount of dust/dirt that settled on our front porch and window ledges and came in through the window screens when the new sewer lines were put in a few years ago and all that debris came from just digging up part of the street and sidewalks.

In May of 1980 when Mount St. Helens erupted in Oregon “Over the course of the day, prevailing winds blew 520 million tons of ash eastward across the United States and caused complete darkness in Spokane, Washington, 250 miles from the volcano.” I am certainly not comparing the volcanic eruption to the demolition of the old hospital site, I am simply pointing out that the debris from the hospital will cover quite a bit of Princeton and the debris will not only be concrete and glass dust but, unless the contaminated items in the hospital are not disposed of in an environmentally safe way, residents have some major health issues to deal with.

Nancy Green

Lytle Street

Obituaries 10/10/12

Albert I. Aronson

Albert I. Aronson passed away on October 8, 2012, after a brief illness.

Born on June 11, 1927, in New York, N.Y., Albert Aronson was a Bronx High School of Science graduate, and he earned an engineering degree from Syracuse University.

An electrical engineer at RCA and GE, Mr. Aronson’s career reached from the opening years of the space age, with his work in the TIROS weather satellite program, through to research that would help form the basis of the Iridium satellite system. He received several patents and awards.

An abstract expressionist painter, Albert Aronson was a vibrant member of the Princeton-area arts community. He was the recipient of several awards, including the Mercer County Artists’ Purchase Award. He received an associate degree in fine art from Mercer County Community College.

Mr. Aronson was an active member of Community Without Walls, and his volunteer work included tutoring in the Trenton After School Program.

Mr. Aronson was predeceased by his wife, Yvonne Aronson, and his eldest daughter, Linda Siler. He is survived by his son, Barry Aronson; daughter, Diane Aronson; and his partner, Trudy Glucksberg. He was the loving grandfather of William, Thomas, and Camille.

A memorial remembrance is planned for November 17, 2012, 2 p.m., at the Arts Council of Princeton.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations please be directed to the Arts Council of Princeton.

———

Helen P. Marke

Helen P. Marke, 94, of Skillman died Monday, October 8, 2012 at Stonebridge at Montgomery.

Born in Orange, she was a resident of Irvington before moving to Toms River and then to Skillman seven years ago. Helen was a dressmaker and later worked as a bookkeeper at Disbrow Manufacturing in East Orange. She was an avid reader, enjoyed traveling, cooking, and most of all spending time with her family.

Wife of the late Joseph R. Marke, she is survived by her daughter and son-in-law Jeanne M. and Bernard Adler, a son Joseph Marke, seven grandchildren Joshua, Matthew, Seth, Genevieve, Emily, Joseph, Heather, and 12 great grandchildren.

The funeral will be private under the direction of the Mather-Hodge Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to a charity of your choice.

———

Irene Stokes

Irene Stokes, 84, a long time resident of Jefferson Road in Princeton, passed away on September 2, 2012 in Coventry, Rhode Island. Mrs. Stokes had been battling cancer and had moved to Rhode Island less than one year ago to be near family.

Irene Rouba Stokes was raised in and around Rutland, Vermont. She moved to Trenton in the 1950’s where she worked as a secretary at a Trenton bank before marrying and starting a family in Princeton.

During the 1980’s Irene worked for the Princeton Regional School District at both Community Park and John Witherspoon schools. Over the years Irene opened her home to various Mormon missionaries and became a second mother to them while they resided with her.

She was a caring hostess and enjoyed cooking for these young men and offering guidance. They, in turn, cared deeply for her and over the years sent cards and letters thanking her for being such a loving hostess.

Over the past decade, Irene enjoyed serving as a volunteer at the University Medical Center at Princeton. Irene was well known in her neighborhood. She truly enjoyed every person she met and went out of her way to say hello and to bring cheer to those she greeted, whether stranger or friend. She will be remembered for her friendliness, her passion for gardening, and her love of animals, especially her beloved cat, Freddie. She loved her home and her neighborhood and felt a deep connection to Princeton and to Jefferson Road.

Irene is survived by her husband, William D. Stokes, her son and daughter-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. William D. Stokes, Jr. and various relatives in Massachusetts. Irene will be dearly missed by her friends in Princeton.

Irene:

I’d pull your weeds

and edge your yard and

fix your television.

You’d pay me more than I deserved

and feed me

and give me vegetables from your garden.

You sure could keep one company

With the things that you would say

But then you moved

and got sick

and I heard you passed away.

You died loved, Irene.

I won’t forget you.

B. Weinstein

———

George Robert Wills

George Robert Wills, husband of Derry Light and father of Ylonka, Sylvia, Caleb, Devon, and Rowen, died peacefully on Friday, September 14, 2012 in Princeton, where he resided for over 40 years.

Bob was born on January 15, 1940, and grew up in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father was an engineer. An ardent reader and learner, Bob graduated in 1962 with a BA from Duke University, subsequently earning his MA and PhD.

He taught at Arizona State University, then moved to Princeton in 1966 to work at ETS. Bob attended law school at Rutgers University, was editor of the Law Review, and went to work in the office of the New Jersey Attorney General. In 1973 he became Deputy Public Defender in Trenton, and in 1976 went into private practice in Princeton, where he had maintained an office ever since.

In the 1980’s Bob earned an MTS, an MDiv, and a ThM from Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, and Princeton Theological Seminary, respectively. While at Yale he participated in a pastoral care program that affected him deeply and gave him a new, more compassionate outlook as a lawyer.

Bob was a great supporter of the arts and of his children’s sports interests, as well as of the Princeton Montessori School, which his three younger children attended from early childhood through elementary school. He was a devoted member of Pretty Brook Tennis Club. Bob loved life, Irish songs, and a good round of golf. He will be sorely missed.

In addition to his wife and children, Bob is survived by his brother, Don, and sister-in-law, Marge, his cousin, Jack, and Jack’s wife, Glory, his son-in-law, Didier Dubout, his former wife, Ludmilla Forani, his niece, Talia, and five grandchildren.

A service will be scheduled for January. In lieu of flowers, friends may make a donation to Merwick Care and Rehabilitation Center or to the American Cancer Society.

———

James H. Bish

James H. Bish, age 81, died early Monday, October 1 2012 following an extended illness. Mr. Bish graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University in 1953 and returned to Princeton as a permanent resident in 1988.

Jim Bish was born on February 28, 1931 in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Following his college years at Princeton and a tour of duty in the U.S. Army as an artillery officer, Mr. Bish attended Harvard business school, graduating in 1958 with an MBA degree.

After employment at Texaco and Marathon Oil in their international divisions, Mr. Bish joined the Chase Manhattan Bank in 1966 and remained there in a variety of senior executive positions in international banking until his retirement in 1988. Mr. Bish’s responsibilities at Chase included serving in Hong Kong as regional director for South and Southeast Asia. Mr. Bish then returned to New York City where he served as area director for Asia-Pacific and also for Africa. He subsequently served as executive managing director of Chase Manhattan Capital Markets Corp. He was later appointed to the position of CFO for global affairs at Chase Investment Bank.

Despite suffering a partially disabling stroke shortly after his retirement, Jim Bish remained active in the Princeton community as a member of the Nassau Club, the Springdale Golf Club and the Chase Alumni Association.

Mr. Bish is survived by his wife of 46 years, Elisabeth, his daughter and son-in-law, Sondra and Fred Grant of London, England, his son, Michael Bish of Santa Cruz, California, and his sister-in-law, Verena Siegrist and her two daughters and three grandchildren, all of whom reside in Switzerland.

A private memorial service will he held in the near future. Donations in lieu of flowers may be made to the Princeton Hospice Memorial Fund, 208 Bunn Drive, Princeton, N.J. 08540, and The Lewis School, 53 Bayard Lane, Princeton, N.J. 08540. Arrangements are under the direction of The Mather-Hodge Funeral Home Princeton.

———

Hans-Dietrich Weigmann

Dr. Hans-Dietrich “Dieter” Weigmann, PhD, 82, of Princeton died Sunday, September 30, 2012 at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro. Mr. Weigmann had been a resident of Princeton since 1961. Mr. Weigmann was born in Rostock, Germany, and was the son of the late Hans-Theodor and Gertrud (Buschmann). He received his doctorate in organic chemistry from the Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany. For thirty-four years, he worked at the Textile Research Institute in Princeton, NJ, as a fiber and textile chemist, and was one of the most distinguished scientists in his field, making many contributions to both fundamental sciences and applied technologies. In 1990, he was recipient of the Olney Medal, the highest honor in textile science.

He was a loving husband, wonderful father and grandfather, and true friend to all who knew him. He is survived by his wife of fifty-four years, Christa C. (von Schwind) Weigmann, his brother, Hans-Helmut Weigmann, and his two daughters, Stefanie of Boston, MA and Jessica Weigmann of New York, NY. He is also survived by Stefanie’s daughter Mai Babila-Weigmann, and Jessica’s husband Mark Warren, and their children Ezekiel and Oona Warren-Weigmann. We will all miss him very much, as will the rest of his family in Germany, his many friends in Princeton, in Marathon, Texas, where he spent many happy days, as well as friends he made all over the world.

Dieter was brilliant and passionate, curious, kind, and generous. He loved birds and long walks in the woods. He was a great sailor and sculptor. He told the most beautiful and epic stories to his grandkids, and he made the grandest sandcastles. He left us too soon.

There will be a memorial gathering November 11th at 350 Herrontown Rd., Princeton. The Funeral will be private under the direction of the Mather-Hodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

Popular Lines of Children’s Designer Clothing Are Available at Milk Money Consignment Shop

KIDS’ CORNER: “We make this more of a boutique, a fun, happy experience for customers. And we are really filling a need for people, especially in this difficult economy.” Michelle Towers, owner of Milk Money, is enthusiastic about the children’s consignment shop, and is also photographer of record for this photo.

Milk Money at 51 North Tulane Street is cheerful, charming, friendly, and fun. Its bright decor and color scheme are immediately appealing to children and adults alike.

The children’s consignment shop, which opened several years ago, has been owned by Michelle Towers for the past year and a half. Ms Towers, who formerly lived in Paris, focusing on photography (she also worked for photographer Pryde Brown in Princeton), has worn many hats during her career, including running a restaurant in Pennsylvania.

“I have always been very entrepreneurial” she explains, and when the opportunity to acquire Milk Money presented itself, she was eager to start a new venture.

“I’m a mom, and I had been a customer,” she adds. “The time was right. I believe if it’s meant to be, it will show itself to you. Milk Money is a great concept. It’s a franchise — there are five in New Jersey and Pennsylvania — but it’s independently-owned, and it gives you an enormous amount of freedom. You make it suit the location you’re in and the tastes of the customers. I am very independent and like to be my own boss, but the company’s there to support you if you need it”

Gently-Used

The shop offers gently-used (and some never worn) clothing for infants and children up to 12- or 13-years-old, sizes zero to 16. The selection is especially focused on designers, often European, such as Mini Boden, Petit Bateau, Caitimini, and Hanna Andersson. Other lines include Papo d’Anjo, Gap, Polo, and Crew Cuts (the children’s line of J Crew).

Popular items today are jeans, of course, and the girls especially love skinny jeans. There is also an expanded section of boys’ clothing for all ages.

“We have a lot of European customers,” reports Ms. Towers, “and the flavor is different with European clothes. These lines are not easy to get, and you won’t find them all over by any means. The British Mini Boden line is a favorite with boys and girls, and has tops with fun graphics and designs, and also dresses.”

“We’ll sell a lot of coats in the winter, and after Halloween, people start asking for snow — pants, jackets, etc. We already have a big selection of Halloween costumes, and customers are calling for them right now.”

Shoes and boots are also very popular, particularly Uggs and Hunter rain boots. Footwear for tiny feet, including infants, is available as well.

In addition, Milk Money offers a variety of the very popular Melissa & Doug toys. “These are new, not used, and we are one of the few stores in the area to carry them,” says Ms. Towers. “Their sticker books are very popular for boys and girls, and also scratch pads, puzzles, magnets, and the arts and crafts items for beads, pretend cupcake-making, etc.”

“Bugaboo”

One of the most popular sections at Milk Money contains the selection of strollers, carriers, high chairs, and bikes. “We do very well with equipment,” notes Ms. Towers. “We cannot keep strollers in the store. The selection we have is so well-made, including ‘Bugaboo’. It’s an organic wooden system-type stroller and grows with the child, having different uses. Strollers are multi-use now, and double strollers are very popular too.”

Other items include the Norwegian Stokke high chair, which also grows with the child. The comfortable Ergo carrier is organic and versatile, and is a baby carrier that can also become a backpack.

“We also have a Skuut balance bike made of wood and without pedals,” points out Ms. Towers. “It’s European-made and helps children learn to balance a small two-wheeler.”

The Milk Money arrangement with consignors is 60 percent for the store, 40 percent for consignors. In addition, there is a one-time 10 percent consignment fee for entry into the system. Items must be clean, in good condition, and reflect up-to-date styles. They are accepted on Tuesday and Thursday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Good Styles

“Clothes must be good brands, good styles, and in good shape,” says Ms. Towers. “When the consignment is completed, everything is listed, and consignors are directed to a website to track their balance. Also, on Saturdays, we have a drop-off day, when whatever people bring in is accepted for consignment or donated to charities.”

“We have two seasons,” she continues. “Fall/winter and spring/summer. We are currently accepting fall and winter items through December.”

“In mid-season, we lower some of the prices of items that haven’t sold. Also in January and July, we have a 50 percent off clearance sale. And we have a bag sale twice a year, when whatever you can fit in the bag is $20. That is very popular!”

Consignors are notified before the bag sale, if they wish to retrieve their clothes. After the sale, all unsold items are donated to charities helping children in need.

Consignors include people from all over the area and from as far away as New York, as well as European residents in Princeton, reports Ms. Towers. “They all bring in wonderful things, and customers love the selection. They are so appreciative and kind. There are so many regulars who love to come in — it’s almost a life-style for them!”

Customers enjoy the convenient arrangement of the shop, with categories for boys and girls, babies, and age-identified areas, she adds.

What’s Hot

“Every two weeks we send a newsletter to customers, which could include back-to-school specials, What’s Hot’, and a Wish List. All the consignors get this too. We also have a lot of things to see on Facebook.”

Ms. Towers couldn’t be more pleased with the direction Milk Money has taken. “With our selection of higher end designer clothes, the shop is set up more like a retail than a consignment shop. We are more of a boutique, with the brands we carry and the new toys. And our layout is not that of a typical consignment shop.

“There is a lot of work involved in having a consignment shop, but the reaction has been even more enthusiastic than I expected. I love seeing the clothes come in, and I enjoy meeting the people. Some of the customers have been pregnant, and then later, they come in with the babies. This is wonderful! This is a happy business.”

Prices cover a wide area, with dresses and pants starting at $8.

Milk Money is open Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday 11 to 4. Friday hours will be extended to 7 in the future. (609) 921-1665. Website: www.milkmoneylove.com.

The Living World of Books — Life and Love in the Margins

…in 1946 in the Village, our feelings about books … went beyond love. It was as if we didn’t know where we ended and books began. Books were our weather, our environment, our clothing. We didn’t simply read books, we became them, we took them into ourselves and made them into our histories …. Books were to us what drugs were to young men in the sixties.

—Anatole Broyard, from Kafka Was the Rage

My copy of Volume 2 of the Norton Anthology of English Literature looks its age. The spine is so faded you have to get close to read the title. The corners are frayed and there’s a tear in the front hinge. Still, it’s held together nicely all these years, even more supple now than it was when it was given to me by the College Department at Norton, my working copy. The genius of The Norton Anthology was its compatibility. Unlike most college texts, you could, as the introduction boasted, read it under a tree. This is the same copy I curled up with, studied, loved, warmed my hands by, in various motels from Mississippi to North Dakota when I was on the road as a college representative talking up a text that was by then already in demand in English departments across the country.

When the Norton Anthology’s general editor M.H. Abrams, who turned 100 on July 23, was recently asked by the New York Times (“Built to Last,” August 23) “Why study literature?” his response was “Ha! Why live? Life without literature is a life reduced to penury.” He went on to say that literature “illuminates what you’re doing,” “enables you to live the lives of other people,” “makes you more human,” and “makes life more enjoyable” (not to mention, he might add, contributing to your longevity). Abrams’s younger co-editor Stephen Greenblatt (b. 1943) chimed in to the effect that literature enables him to “enter into the life worlds of others … other times, other places, other inner lives.”

Life and Love on the Page

That phrase, life worlds brings to mind two of literature’s most complex and enduring “inner lives,” Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), the 17th-century physician philosopher who wrote Religio Medici, and the inimitable Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), who once observed of Browne, “A library was a world to him, every book a living man, absolute flesh and blood.”

Among the many things to love in Coleridge is his penchant for writing thoughts like that one in the margins of books that often did not even belong to him. It’s a thought I quote whenever I get a chance and it serves as the epigraph for my novel, Rosamund’s Vision. Coleridge’s scribblings fill six fat, masterfully documented volumes of Marginalia in the Collected Works of S.T.C. published in the Bollingen Series by Princeton University Press, wherein Coleridge, the so-called “damaged archangel” of Norman Fruman’s biography, gives us an intimate blow by blow account as he makes his way through the works of the “crack’d Archangel” Browne (as he’s named in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick).

When Browne writes “I never yet cast a true affection on a woman,” Coleridge can’t resist declaring — all but breathing the words in your ear — that he has loved and still does love “truly, i.e. not in a fanciful attributing of certain ideal perfections … one Woman.” Ten pages later, when Browne wishes that humans “might procreate like trees without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition,” Coleridge comes right back at him: “Are there not thoughts, & affections, & Hopes, & a Religion of the Heart, — that lift & sanctify all our bodily Actions where the union of the Bodies is but a language & conversation of united Souls?”

There’s a hint of the thought process behind today’s preferred modes of communication when Coleridge, after, in effect, blogging Browne, presents the intimately annotated volume to his “one Woman,” Sara Hutchinson, the lost love of his life, along with a letter that takes up three pages preceding the title page. It’s after midnight, March 10, 1804, Saturday night, Barnard’s Inn, Holborn, London, when Coleridge begins the letter (“But it is time for me to be in bed”) in a state of playful wonderment after quoting Browne at length (“what Life! what Fancy! — Does the whimsical Knight give us thus a dish of strong green Tea, & call it an opiate?”). With that, he signs off: “I trust, that you are quietly asleep,

And all the Stars hang bright above your Dwelling

Silent as tho’ they watch’d the sleeping Earth!”

Leave it to Coleridge to say good night with two lines from his own poem “Dejection: An Ode,” which he first worked out in a letter to Sara said to be the only other surviving piece of their correspondence.

When you think about it, it’s an outrageous violation of textual dignity, to scribble at length on the pages of a book you’re presenting as a gift to someone you love, using Sir Thomas Browne as a sort of go-between, a messenger bearing a lecture and a love note. Today Coleridge could have done it all online without marring the original. And there’s the rub. What better example of the qualities and capacities and organic essence of actual documents and tangible volumes vs. the web and high tech devices like Kindle? At the same time, aside from my key source, Volume I of Princeton’s Marginalia, I could never have assembled this column, or any others, without the mysterious Archangels of cyberspace.

Book Sale Life

“A living world” — that’s my “fanciful attributing of certain ideal perfections” to the Friends of the Library book sale I’ve been helping with for more than 20 years now. The books on display October 12-14 have passed through and been held by many hands. Regardless of genre, books with a past are more than an assortment of bound pages, especially when they have spanned several lifetimes in the hurly burly of the world. A Kindle can give you the message, it’s handy, it can house a world of literature, but qualities such as atmosphere, touch and texture, author signatures and inscriptions, and the glorious illusion of being “in touch” with the author, are simply not available.

In Jackie’s Hands

It happens that we have a pretty good crop of signed/inscribed books at this year’s sale, not counting the one auctioned off at the annual meeting for a sum that shows how much a mere signature can add to the monetary value of a book. Hundreds of first editions of Roger Kahn’s popular profile of the Brooklyn Dodgers, The Boys of Summer, are available online for as low as $10. But if you are fortunate enough to have the copy (first edition or no) that Jackie Robinson actually held in his hands and inscribed to a friend, the value soars. Thus this year’s first transaction occurred before the event when a copy of Kahn’s book inscribed by Robinson fetched $950 at the Friends auction.

So Long, D.H. and W.B.

I once owned and cherished a book of William Butler Yeats’s later poems signed by Yeats, bought from Logan Fox at Micawber. Another book that I treasured and also eventually sold was a book of poems signed by D.H. Lawrence. The truth is, there’s only so much you can derive from being able to read and fondle your signed Yeats or your signed Lawrence, thinking “the man who wrote Lapis Lazuli” held this, or the man who wrote Women in Love held this.” When the water heater conks out, or you need a new roof, or the basement floods, it’s so long Yeats and see ya later Lawrence.

Sgt. Randall Jarrell

Unless you’re a big Norman Rockwell or Paul Theroux fan, the most desirable signed book that we have this year is a first edition of poet Randall Jarrell’s third collection, Losses (1948), which is being offered for as much as $780-800 online; the only catch is our copy lacks the dust jacket. Otherwise ours outclasses the competition. Probably dating from 1951-52 when Jarrell (1914-1965) was teaching in the Creative Writing program here and living in T.S. Eliot’s house on 16 Alexander Street, the book is inscribed to a student “from her teacher (Sgt.) Randall Jarrell.” Since most of the poems in the collection (viz. “The Dead Wingman,” “A Camp in the Prussian Forest,” “A Field Hospital”) relate to Jarrell’s years in the Army Air Force as a celestial navigation tower operator, a job title he considered “the most poetic in the Air Force,” he includes his serial number, a unique touch (it seems unlikely that Norman Mailer or James Jones cared to add their dogtag numbers when inscribing copies of The Naked and the Dead and From Here to Eternity). Another, more mysterious number is 7 above 7, in the form of an equation, which is explained in a note posted under the inscription, from a mother to the son she was presenting it to: “Mr. Jarrell was trying to enliven a book signing so he put in his army serial number. He added the 7/7 because I got all seven right on his modern poetry exam identifying poets given a sample of their poetry.”

Besides being known for his war-related poems (“the best poetry in English about the Second World War,” said Robert Lowell), the most famous being the frequently anthologized “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Jarrell was also one of the premier critics of his time. His main work at Princeton includes six lectures on W.H. Auden, the revising of his novel, Pictures from an Institution (based on his adventures as a teacher at Sarah Lawrence), and a number of poems, among them “The Lonely Man” and “Windows,” where a woman is darning and a man is “nodding into the pages of the paper” — “What I have never heard/He will read me; what I have never seen/She will show me.”

Jarrell’s untimely death at 50 (he was hit by a car while walking along a road in North Carolina; suicide was suspected but never confirmed) occasioned a memorial service where his friend from Princeton days John Berryman read “Dream Song 121” (“His wives loved him./He saw in the forest something coming, grim,/but did not change his purpose”). Robert Lowell called him “the most heartbreaking poet of our time.”

Literature-oriented browsers at the upcoming Friends book sale, particularly those trooping through the door at Friday’s 10 a.m. $10 preview, might keep an eye out for D.H. Lawrence’s rarely seen small volume, The Ship of Death and Other Poems; the first American edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses; and a first of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, in remarkably fine condition, the gilt title on the spine glittering clear and bright. Too bad we don’t have the dust jacket; copies so clothed are going for $10,000-$18,500 online.

Playing Princeton University Chapel’s Organ, Cameron Carpenter Dazzles Audience

Organ recitals are not known for drawing crowds of fans leaping to their feet after a number played by an unseen artist on an instrument often a mystery to all but those who play it, but Pennsylvania native Cameron Carpenter is no ordinary organist and his recital on Saturday night at the Princeton University Chapel was far from a staid series of 18th and 19th-century pieces. Organ audiences often have no idea what is going on back there with the keyboards and pedals, but Mr. Carpenter has addressed this problem by making his performances multi-media. For Saturday night’s performance, this included a “picture in a picture” large screen, with cameras trained on his hands and feet. The four keyboard manuals of the University Chapel’s 1928 Aeolian-Skinner organ took up most of the screen, with a smaller view of the pedals, and even the most novice audience member could marvel at Mr. Carpenter’s technical agility and feathery touch on the keys. Many times during the performance, audience members could be seen shaking their heads in amazement at what would have been much less appreciated without the screens. Mr. Carpenter’s concert included only eight pieces (one of which was twenty-five minutes long), but the program included variety between classical and popular music and repertoire which showed Mr. Carpenter’s growth in confidence as an artist since he last played in the chapel.

Mr. Carpenter’s technical strengths include the incredible power of his hands, with the ability to stretch an interval of a 6th between two fingers; and the speed of his feet, requiring great balance on the bench. The success of his career as an organist is also due to his imagination, shown in the first few pieces he played. Beginning with his own arrangements of popular tunes, it was not until the fourth piece that Mr. Carpenter played a complete piece as it was actually written. His impressionistic fantasias on a theme from The Summer of ’42 and “Hey Jude” capitalized on the dynamic capabilities and stop combinations of the chapel’s organ, with his uncanny ability to extend his hands among manuals. His arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Suite #1 for Unaccompanied Cello (with his own interpolated passages) was played largely on the pedals, and his interpretations of Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor found great drama in the work and quick tempi for the fugue.

Mr. Carpenter’s evolution as a performer was seen in his choice of works by Richard Wagner, Charles Ives, and in particular Franz Liszt. Liszt would have liked Cameron Carpenter. A musical renegade himself, Liszt took the polite early 18th-century piano and turned it into a monster virtuoso instrument through performance technique many at the time thought must have come from demonic possession. With similar spell-binding technique (although rooted in his own self-discipline and talent), Mr. Carpenter is presenting the organ as a concert instrument capable of much more than what churches and funeral parlors can provide. Through his registration choices, Mr. Carpenter found humor in the excerpt from Ives’ Piano Sonata Number 2, and his quick and light touch on the Choir Manual depicted the “murmuring forest” of Wagner’s Siegfried excerpt.

Mr. Carpenter saved the most powerful and complex piece for last: Liszt’s Fantasie und Fuge über den Choral “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” from Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophéte. Liszt originally composed this massive work for organ, but Mr. Carpenter no doubt took the piece to new heights, emphasizing the importance of opera in 19th-century keyboard music and taking full advantage of the organ’s 137 ranks and more than 7,000 pipes. Mr. Carpenter’s performance held the audience through the entire twenty-five minutes, but this was not a piece he necessarily would have done several years ago when he first played recitals at the University Chapel and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center. Including a work such as this on the program showed that Mr. Carpenter’s reputation as a brilliant and original performer is secure, and audiences are hungry to hear not only complex organ works not often heard but what Mr. Carpenter will do next.

Teacher Moonlights as Prizefighter to Save School’s Music Program

BOY AM I EVER OUT OF SHAPE: Scott Voss (Kevin James, facing the camera), a biology teacher, is being coached and trained by a retired kick boxing champion (Mark DellaGrotte, back to the camera). Scott is training to fight in a mixed martial arts prize match in order to win enough money to donate to his school so that his best friend Marty Streb (Henry Winkler) won’t lose his job as music teacher, which the principal wants to cut in order to balance the school’s budget.

Scott Voss (Kevin James) is a bored biology teacher at mythical Wilkinson High in Massachusetts, a cash strapped school suffering from low morale. Scott is part of the problem, because he sets a horrible example for his students, such as stealing candy from vending machines and always arrives late for class.

During recess, the bored 42-year-old bachelor always flirts with the beautiful school nurse, Bella (Salma Hayek). However, she routinely rebuffs his advances with gentle reminders of how often she’s rejected each of his requests for a date.

The plot thickens when Principal Betcher (Gregg German) assembles the faculty in the auditorium to announce the latest budget cuts. The measures include plans to eliminate after school activities such as the debate club and field trips, and also the entire music program.

That means Scott’s colleague and friend, Marty Streb (Henry Winkler), will be callously laid-off right before earning tenure. And to add insult to injury, the dedicated music teacher’s firing comes at a time when his wife (Nikki Tyler-Flynn) is pregnant.

This dire state of affairs inspires Scott to prevail upon the principal to preserve his pal’s position. But Betcher says the school simply doesn’t have the $48,000 to pay Marty.

Therefore, Scott, who hasn’t wrestled competitively since college, decides to raise the cash by moonlighting in the ring as a mixed martial arts fighter. With the help of Marty and a retired kickboxing champ (Bas Rutten), he proceeds to whip himself, a middle-aged couch potato, into shape.

Here Comes the Boom is a sweet-natured sports story that combines familiar elements from Rocky (1976) and Nacho Libre (2006). Directed by Frank Coraci (The Waterboy), the movie showcases Kevin James’s comic genius at his best, such as pratfalls in a mask while wearing ill-fitting stretchy pants, or futilely wooing the woman of his dreams.

The plot inexorably builds to a showdown between Scott and an intimidating adversary (Krzysztof Soszynski) for a purse that conveniently matches Marty’s salary. Wouldn’t it be nice if Wilkinson’s student body and school band were on hand in the Vegas arena to cheer for their altruistic teacher, and better yet if Bella had a change of heart and also arrived ringside for a kiss at the moment of truth?

Here Comes the Boom is a pat Hollywood tale of redemption where a perennial loser transforms himself into a beloved hero who wins the match, saves his best friend’s job, and gets the girl!

Very Good (***) Rated PG for sports violence, crude humor, and mild epithets. Running time: 105 minutes. Distributor: Columbia Pictures.