taylorsmith | Town Topics

October 3, 2012

Jaded Teacher and Single Mother Join Forces in Uplifting Film

WE DID IT, WE DID IT: Nona Alberts (Viola Davis, left), Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal, center) and Jamie’s daughter Malia (Emily Alyn Lynd) are overwhelmed with joy when they learn that their attempt to change Malia’s school from a public to a charter school has succeeded under the new, so-called Parent Trigger Law.

In 2010 California passed the nation’s first “Parent Trigger Law,” a bill which enables a district with an under-performing public school to fire the principal, replace the staff, and convert it to a charter school, if a majority of the parents with students attending it sign a petition. The legislation has proved very controversial thus far, with opponents alleging that the measure is merely anti-union, whereas the sponsors call it an overdue reform intended to give children who are stuck in so-called “dropout factories” a fair chance.

Consequently, Won’t Back Down is opening under a cloud of controversy, which is unfortunate since the film is otherwise a quite engaging and entertaining tale of female empowerment. The reason why the picture has generated so much interest is because it was produced by Walden Media, the same studio that just a couple of years ago released Waiting for Superman, a documentary that came under attack for blaming teachers’ unions for the dysfunctional education system.

Although based on actual events that transpired in Los Angeles, Won’t Back Down is set in Pittsburgh, where we find Jamie Fitzpatrick (Maggie Gyllenhaal) struggling to make ends meet. Between selling used cars by day and bartending at night, the single mother barely has any energy left to attend to the academic needs of her dyslexic daughter, Malia (Emily Alyn Lind).

Convinced that the lagging 8-year-old hasn’t learned to read out of neglect by her teachers at school, she enters the little girl in a lottery for one of the few spots opening up at Rosa Parks, a nearby, highly-regarded, charter school. But when Malia’s name isn’t chosen, the frustrated mother decides to do something about the school the child’s in.

Inspired by the state’s new “Fail Safe Law,” Jamie becomes a tireless child advocate hell-bent on wresting the reins of control from an administration and staff that have low expectations for their students. Along the way, she enlists the assistance of Nona Alberts (Viola Davis), a jaded teacher who had almost given up trying to fight the system.

Initially, Nona is reluctant to get involved, because she could very easily get blacklisted for trying to bust the union. Furthermore, she’s an emotional wreck because she is overwhelmed at the prospect of having to raise her son (Dante Brown) on her own after her husband (Lance Reddick) recently left them.

However, Jamie and Nona bond and, over the objections of bureaucrats, not only garner the requisite number of parental votes but even talk the teachers into surrendering job security in favor of performance-based salaries. The movie is an uplifting Hollywood story that suggests that the solution to public education’s woes might be as simple as a couple of women picking up picket signs.

Very Good (***). Rated PG for mature themes and mild epithets. Running time: 121 minutes. Distributor: 20th Century Fox/Walden Media.

Crawford House Honors Local Businesses That Are Employing Women in Recovery

SAFE HOUSE: Crawford House in Skillman provides shelter and treatment to women in the early stages of recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. The organization will honor several local businesses that have employed residents at its annual Harvest Dinner on Thursday, October 18.

Erin was a student and a part-time lifeguard when she became addicted to alcohol, and then heroin. Last year, the Wayne native made a decision which she says changed her life. She came to Crawford House, the 34-year-old residential treatment center in Skillman for women in the early stages of recovery.

“I felt really safe while I was there,” says Erin, 23, who declined to provide her last name. “I felt like I could open up and just work on my issues, without the influence of the drug world. I could get honest about everything that went on in my life and get it all out in the open. And I could get a job, which taught me a lot of responsibility.”

A year later, Erin still holds the position that has been key to her successful recovery. She is a cashier and floor-worker at Smith’s Ace Hardware in Princeton Shopping Center, one of several local businesses that have hired Crawford House residents who are in the process of recovering. The organization will honor the hardware store along with McCaffrey’s Market, Jordan’s Stationery and Gifts, and Chez Alice of Princeton; Chartwell’s Dining Services and the Red Oak Diner of Montgomery; and Wendy’s, Shop-Rite, and Nelson’s Corner Pizza of Hillsborough; at its annual benefit on October 18, to be held at the Marriott at Forrestal.

“We try to honor someone from the community every year who is a good partner of ours,” says Crawford House Executive Director Linda M. Leyhane. “This year we decided on small businesses in the community, which have been so helpful to us. There are a lot more businesses that choose not to be recognized, for whatever reason.”

The women who come to Crawford House are unemployed, uninsured, homeless, or indigent. They go through a 12-step recovery program based on the model of Alcoholics Anonymous. They have individual and group counseling sessions, and get training in independent living skills. They don’t pay for Crawford House’s services. Funding comes from a variety of sources including the United Way of Northern New Jersey, the Mercer, Somerset, and Middlesex boards of chosen freeholders, foundations, corporations, and individual donors.

“These are women who might have started using drugs at age eight or nine,” says Ms. Leyhane. “They come from families in which drug use is part of their background, their culture. They have usually had multiple treatment failures in the past. It’s not rehabilitation, it’s habilitation. They don’t have the skills that you and I take for granted, like doing laundry, changing sheets, boiling water. We start will all kinds of life skill training.”

With addiction often comes a social aspect. “It’s a very isolating disease,” Ms. Leyhane continues. “You don’t know how to interact socially. If you started using young, you’ve missed out.”

There are about 180 halfway house beds in New Jersey, 22 of which are at Crawford House. Women are referred to the program from rehabilitation and detox centers, physicians, the Intensive Supervisory Program, the New Jersey Substance Abuse Initiative, and the Drug Court Initiative. Crawford House is the only program in the state that also admits clients who refer themselves.

Residents sign up for six months of treatment, but many stay longer. They must be residents of New Jersey, aged 18 or older, free of substance abuse for at least two weeks, and free from communicable diseases like tuberculosis. They must also be employable, because a major part of the Crawford House program is geared to getting and keeping a job. After 30 days of orientation, the women obtain 30 hours a week part-time employment, and contribute a portion of their salary to room and board. The idea is to foster self-worth, economic independence, and self-sufficiency.

“After orientation and two educational groups a day, meetings with a counselor, and attendance at 12-step program meetings in the community, [a resident] develops a good network that will take her out to meetings on her own,” says Ms. Leyhane. “Then she gets a job in the community.”

Lewis Wildman, who owns Jordan’s in Princeton Shopping Center, has been employing Crawford House residents for several years. “Generally speaking, it’s worked out pretty well,” he says. “It’s a great source of employees to be found here, because in general, who is looking for an entry level job in a retail store in Princeton? Nobody. So it’s good for us. Mostly, these are people who are anxious to work. It’s been successful for us and them. I think it’s a terrific program.”

McCaffrey’s Market is another frequent employer of women from Crawford House. “We’re the kind of organization that likes to help out people and give them a second chance, so we do our best,” says Ken Toth, the store’s lead meat merchandiser. “We’ve had quite a few good people from Crawford House. We still have one excellent person who started with us when she was there, and she’s been with us for several years.”

Crawford House teaches residents to fill out job applications and handle themselves in an interview. “It’s how to present yourself, how to dress,” says Ms. Leyhane. “We talk a lot about what takes place in the workplace. Then they go out and get their own positions. That means when they transition out, they have a job, a place to live, and after-care.”

The goal is for clients in treatment to maintain a substance-free lifestyle, learn how to avoid communicable diseases or manage them if already infected, stay employed, have healthy relationships, and transition to independent living.

Success stories vary. “We measure success in a lot of different ways,” Ms. Leyhane says. “If a woman has never worked, has no social security number, and we can get that, then that’s success. If she is reunited with her family, or gets her medical issues attended to, that’s success, too.”

For information about the 2012 Harvest Dinner on October 18, email devdirector@crawfordhouse.org.

“No Job Description”: Kim Guadagno Talks About Being Lieutenant Governor

“Most people don’t know there’s a lieutenant governor,” said Kim Guadagno at a recent meeting of The Present Day Club. She was referring to the newly-created job she has held since 2010.

“There’s no job description; no salary; and no office,” she reported. “Every day I go to work and do something new and different. The rule is that there are no rules.”

At least two aspects of Ms. Guadagno’s job delight her. One is driving into New Jersey and seeing her name at the bottom of the “Welcome to New Jersey” sign. The other is working for Governor Chris Christie.

“I’m lucky,” she said. “This is a really conservative governor who didn’t want to create more government, add more space, or pay another staff member.” As a result, she and Mr. Christie “looked around the State House” and concluded that Ms. Guadagno should also serve as Secretary of State. In that capacity, she acquired an existing office and has responsibilities related to “culture, arts, history, travel, and tourism.”

“The governor is never wrong,” said Ms. Guadagno, “I do anything the governor tells me to do.” Her job as second-in-command is a “reactive office,” she said, except when Mr. Christie is out of state and she becomes acting governor. She made light of the instance last year when both she and Mr. Christie were out of state at the same time and heavy snow fell in New Jersey. “We’re now very careful to check each other’s schedules,” she noted.

Ms. Guadagno said that she had not followed “your traditional trajectory to public office.” After graduating from American University Law School in 1983, she began her public career as a federal prosecutor, working in Brooklyn for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force. When she and her husband, Mike, moved to New Jersey, she joined the United States Attorney’s office in Newark, and later went on to serve as assistant attorney general and deputy director of the Division of Criminal Justice. In 2007, Ms. Guadagno became the first female sheriff of Monmouth County. She does not rule out a second term as lieutenant governor if Mr. Christie is reelected. Either way, she plans to return to private practice when her stint in office is over.

“It’s about the next generation,” said Ms. Guadagno in her comments about economic development in New Jersey. She prides herself on having spoken with “thousands of business people” and cutting through “red tape” by freely circulating her email address and cell phone number. Responding to a question about why the governor chose not to participate in the tunnel project known as ARC (Access to the Region’s Core), Ms. Guadagno said that as it was planned, this “train to nowhere” stood to benefit only New York City. “If they stepped up to the table to pick up more of the cost we’d have done it,” she added.

The Present Day Club is a private women’s club established in 1898 as “an intellectual and social center of thought and action among the women of Princeton.” Located at 72 Stockton Street, membership in the club, which is by invitation only, includes a Wednesday luncheon and invited speaker; bridge tournaments; theater trips, guided day trips, and a book club. The facilities and food service are available for private parties and business functions.

For more information call (609) 924-1014 or write to THEPRESENTDAY@aol.com.

Program for Parents of School Children Encourages a “Healthy State of Mind”

In keeping with Superintendent Judy Wilson’s recent advice not take the measure of students and schools with test scores alone, the public schools will present “Healthy State of Mind,” a panel discussion with behavioral health specialists from around the region on Monday, October 8, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Black Box Theater at Princeton High School (PHS).

PHS Principal Gary Snyder will help facilitate the discussion. He will be joined by Trinity Counseling Service Clinical Psychologist Molly Palmer; Rider University Professor Karen Gischlar; Princeton House Counselor Nicole Orro; therapist Julie Neufeld; and Traumatic Loss Coalition coordinator George Scott. PHS Guidance Supervisor Angela Cecil will also be on hand for the program.

The October 8 event is the first in the public schools’ Princeton Balance Speakers Series for 2012-13. Intended primarily for parents of middle- and high school-age children, the talk will provide information and support in promoting good mental health and a sense of balance in the lives of pre-teens and teens as they negotiate life transitions, relationship challenges, and academic and social issues.

“Judy wanted the first program to have something that would acknowledge that we want a sense of balance in our children’s lives,” said public school spokeswoman
Assenka Oksiloff. The Princeton Balance Series was launched last year; it is intended to offer three events each year that “address issues that span all the grades,” Ms. Oksiloff noted.

In addition to working at Trinity Counseling Service, panelist Molly Palmer and her colleague, Melinda Noel, run a leadership class for eighth graders at John Witherspoon Middle School. The focus of the once-a-week meetings, she said, is on “leadership skills, self-esteem, self-awareness, and positive inter-personal skills.”

“My specific part is going to be about transitions and the risk factors that are associated with transitions,” reported Julie Neufeld describing her role in the October 8 discussion. “Some of the transitions that preteens and teens go through are obvious and clear cut, like moving from middle school to high school. Some of them are a little bit more obscure.” More nuanced problems occur, she said, when a student goes from being first in his or her middle school class to something lower than number one in high school. Being moved from a varsity athletic team to a less competitive one can be similarly problematic. “Sometimes a kid’s identity is so centered around being at the top of the class or being a great athlete,” said Ms. Neufeld. A change that they perceive as a kind of demotion can have a negative affect. She plans, she said, to highlight different types of transitions, “and help parents know what kinds of things might cause an increase in insecurity and a decrease in self-esteem.”

Rider University Professor Karen Gischlar specializes in “behavioral principles,” with a particular focus on the hard-to-manage child. Her other areas of interest are school psychology, and behavioral and academic assessment.

The Princeton Balance Speaker program is scheduled for February 13. The topic will be “Leading healthier lives Through Nutrition and Exercise.”

Area Exhibits 10/3/12

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, from October 4-November 21. The opening reception is October 4 from 5-8 p.m. Visit www.artscouncilof
princeton.org.

Bank of Princeton Community Art Gallery, 10 Bridge Street, Lambertville, is showing works by Alyssa Rapp and Ilene Rubin through October 15. A wine and cheese reception is October 5, 5-7 p.m. Visit www.thebankofprinceton.com.

Bernstein Gallery at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, has works by Negar Ahkami, Ghada Amer, Reza Farkhondeh, Zeina Barakeh, Ofri Cnaani, Parastou Forouhar, and Shadi Ghadirian as part of “The Fertile Crescent” project, through October 19.

Bucks County Gallery, 77 West Bridge Street, New Hope, Pa., presents a solo exhibit by Christine Graefe Drewyer October 5-28. The opening reception is October 6 from 2-5 p.m. Visit www.buckscountygalleryart.com.

College of New Jersey Art Gallery, Pennington Road, Ewing, is presenting “Bruce Rigby: Recent Work” through October 11 in honor of Mr. Rigby’s retirement from teaching. Visit www.tcnj.edu/artgallery.

D&R Greenway, Johnson Education Center, 1 Preservation Place, presents “Sustainable Harvest: Creating Community Through the Land,” a mixed-media show about farmland, iconic farm structures, and new perspectives on crops and creatures, through November 9.

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. A gallery walk with Francois Guillemin is October 14 at 2 p.m. 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 scheduled for October 15-February 28.

Gallery at Chapin, 4101 Princeton Pike, has drawings and paintings by Dot Bunn through October 26. The reception is October 3 from 5-7 p.m. 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 “Sanctuary II” by Edward Greenblat, “A View of South Beach” by Martin Schwartz, and “Spiritual Places,” a group show by AgOra, through October 7. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday, noon-5 p.m. or by appointment.

Garden State Watercolor Society presents its 43rd Annual Juried Exhibition October 8-28 at Prallsville Mills in Stockton. For times and details on special events, visit www.garden
statewatercolorsociety.net.

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” October 7-28. The opening is October 7 from 1-3 p.m. Visit www.cranbury.org.

Hopewell Tour Des Arts is an open studio tour, self-guided, that starts at the Hopewell Train Station on Railroad Place or The Brothers Moon restaurant at 7 West Broad Street, Hopewell. The fifth annual event is October 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and October 7 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

JB Kline Gallery, 25 Bridge Street, Lambertville, is showing “At the Same Place at the Same Time,” paintings by S.L. Baker, through October. The opening is October 13, 6-9 p.m. Visit www.slbaker
paintings.com.

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” is on view through October 21. “I Look, I Listen: Works on Paper by Marlene Miller” is exhibited through October 14. “Creative Hand, Discerning Heart: Story, Symbol, Self,” runs through
December 30. 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.

Lawrenceville School’s Marguerite & James Hutchins Gallery, Gruss Center of Visual Arts, Lawrenceville, has a Faculty Exhibition 2012 through October 27. The opening reception is October 5 from 6-7 p.m. Visit www.lawrenceville.org.

Lewis Center for the Arts’ Lucas Gallery, 185 Nassau Street, opens its season with a drawing show by more than 40 students, October 9-26. The opening reception is October 9, 4-5 p.m. 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 begin October 10 with Sarah Charlesworth, photographer. Sculptor Pam Lins speaks October 24, painter Josephine Halverson on November 7, and filmmaker Su Friedrich on December 5. Visit www.princeton.edu/arts.

Bill A2586: Council Forum Drawing Battle Lines

Princeton Borough Council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, October 9 will be dominated by one issue: Concern about a bill pending in the State Assembly that would exempt private universities from municipal land use law. Mayor Yina Moore, who along with Township Mayor Chad Goerner has been active in a statewide effort to prevent the bill known as A2586 from passing, said that a special town forum on the subject is being held to help inform the public about how they can help defeat the measure.

“We’re inviting mayors from other towns who share our circumstance of having land owned by a private college or university,” she said. “During the council meeting, we’ll have [representatives from] the New Jersey League of Municipalities, the American Planning Association’s New Jersey Chapter, who wrote the petition and extensive paper on the problem; legislators, and other organizations who have opposed the bill and therefore support our position that it is not fair to municipalities or citizens.”

The mayors invited to the forum are among 17 municipalities in New Jersey that contain property owned by private universities. Invited speakers include Michael Cerra, senior legislative analyst; and Charles Latini Jr., president of the American Planning Association’s New Jersey Chapter.

The Senate version of the bill passed 26-8-6 last June. The Assembly version has been referred to the Assembly Higher Education Committee. The bill would exempt private colleges and universities from complying with local zoning codes under the Municipal Land Use Law. As of Tuesday, October 2, 956 people had signed a petition on the American Planning Association New Jersey Chapter’s website opposing the measure. A group called Coalition for Safe Neighborhoods has created a flyer that was mailed to local residents, and is currently airing a radio spot expressing opposition to the bill.

While local officials are opposed to the bill, representatives of private colleges and universities have said that it would put them on equal footing with public institutions in the state. Last month, Mayor Moore sent a letter to Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman asking that the University issue a written statement opposing the bill.

“Princeton Borough strongly believes that no developer in Princeton should be exempt from the salutary controls established by the State Legislature in the Municipal Land Use Law,” she wrote. “Those controls include land use planning procedures and law designed to protect communities from a wide variety of threats, including to public safety and health, to the local economy and quality of life, and to the environment. Exempting institutions from those controls could seriously damage the interests of Borough residents in neighborhoods adjacent to a proposed developer as well as the interests of Borough residents as a whole.”

Ms. Tilghman responded in a letter: “Given Princeton University’s 250-year history of being both a responsible developer and a very good community citizen, I was astonished by the belief of Princeton Borough that the adoption of Assembly Bill No. 2586 could subject the community to ‘a wide variety of threats, including to public safety and health, to the local economy and quality of life, and to the environment.’ Princeton is our home and will always be our home, so whether this legislation is adopted or not, we would never jeopardize the well-being of our community. If the legislation is adopted, we would continue to consult with local officials and residents before proceeding with any major project, and would continue to try to address community needs as well as university needs as fully as we can.”

The October 9 forum will be divided into four segments: Short, prepared remarks by speakers, statements by a panel of representatives from impacted communities, and questions from the audience concluding with drafting of an action plan “to more vigorously oppose the legislation,” according to a press release issued by the Borough this week.

Ms. Moore hopes members of the public will attend to ask questions and offer comments. “We have a core contingent,” she said. “We hope to get a good showing, and we want to hear from the public. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get a couple of mayors or representatives from towns that already have public colleges and universities, so we can understand what that experience is about.”

Police Investigations Continue Into U-Store, Campus Incidents

Police investigations are ongoing into two incidents that took place last month on the Princeton University campus. One involved a student allegedly taking explicit photographs of another student while he was sleeping. The other concerned an employee at the University Place Princeton University store who police say was visited by a prostitute and took part in paid sexual acts at the store after hours.

But Jim Sykes, president of the store, says it isn’t clear that the incidents involving employee Eric Everett and a prostitute actually took place after the U-Store’s 4 a.m. closing time. Mr. Everett, who worked in the U-store’s campus location, was arrested and charged with prostitution and shoplifting after the store manager discovered money was missing when he audited the safe.

Revelations about the sexual acts came to light only after Princeton Borough police were informed of the missing funds. Also arrested was Brittany Smith, 20, of Keyport, who was not an employee of the store.

“From our perspective, all we were aware of was an employee theft,” Mr. Sykes said Monday. “We had no idea of the other part of it until a release came out from the Borough Police. What we can’t confirm is that this happened after hours. I mean, we’re open until 4 a.m. We’re just not sure of when it happened.”

It was on September 20 that the U-Store manager checked the safe and found that it came up short. “He asked everyone about it, and then Mr. Everett started to tell him about having his ex-girlfriend there,” Mr. Sykes said. “That started a sequence, and we informed the police.”

Mr. Everett, who was arrested September 24, apparently met Ms. Smith on Craigs list and arranged for her to visit him at the store on at least three occasions. The pair allegedly helped themselves to several items from the shelves. Borough Police learned of the sexual acts while investigating the thefts. Ms. Smith was arrested on September 25 and found to be in possession of a marijuana pipe and Adderall tablets.

Both Ms. Smith and Mr. Everett were charged and released without bail. Ms. Smith was charged with prostitution, possession of a controlled and dangerous substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Mr. Everett, who is 23 and lives in Bordentown, was sent a letter terminating his employment at the store.” We hired him when he was 20,” said Mr. Sykes. “He lives at home. He seemed like a fairly normal guy. It’s a shame.”

Richard Charles Tuckwell, a 20-year-old Princeton University student from Australia, was charged last month with one count of invasion of privacy after allegedly taking photographs of another male student after he drank alcoholic beverages and fell asleep. Borough Police said the incident occurred on September 16 after Mr. Tuckwell met the other student at a party at one of the University’s eating clubs. The two went to a campus dormitory. The student, who fell asleep, awoke to find Mr. Tuckwell photographing him.

Mr. Tuckwell surrendered voluntarily to police on September 21. He was processed and released. The investigation, which also looks into whether Mr. Tuckwell sexually assaulted the other student, is continuing, according to Borough police.

Last May, Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi took his own life after his roommate broadcast video he took of him engaged in sexual activity with another man.

“It’s not that we’re really comparing this case to that,” said Borough Police Captain Nicholas Sutter of the Princeton University case. “But it is a serious incident, and we’re treating it as such.”

The Name Game: Consolidated Municipality To Be Called “Princeton”

The municipality that will be created on January 1, 2013 as a result of the consolidation of the Borough and the Township will be known as “Princeton, N.J.”

“What’s in name?” asked Township Attorney Ed Schmierer before he described the criteria that he, Borough Attorney Maeve Cannon, the transition task force lawyer, and a representative from the state Department of Community Affairs used to come up with the suggestion, which was unanimously endorsed at a joint meeting of Borough Council, Township Committee, and the Transition Task Force on Monday evening. Noting that “the law is silent” on what a new government would call itself if it becomes consolidated, Mr. Schmierer pointed that “we’re probably first to be consolidating two major municipalities in 100 years.”

With that in mind, the group focused on “what the voters voted for” when they endorsed consolidation, and the answer was the name that appeared on the ballot: “Princeton, N.J. to be governed under a borough form of government,” or, simply, “Princeton, N.J.”

Ms. Cannon reported on the attorneys’ suggested creation of a “small committee” to go through the list of existing ordinances in the Borough and Township in order to identify conflicts and make recommendations to the two governing bodies. Township and Borough unanimously endorsed this proposal, and the committee will consist of municipal administrators, lawyers, and two representatives from each governing body. Administrators were charged with convening the first meeting. Ms. Cannon estimated that there are “quite a few conflicts,” especially regarding fees, although construction fees will be considered separately.

Gary Patteson presented the Transition Task Force’s final recommendations on boards, committees, and commissions in the new municipality. These included consolidating the two existing Human Services Commissions into a nine-member body; adding one member to the 8-member Joint Recreation Board, and keeping the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee as a separate from the Traffic and Transportation Committee. Consolidation of the two municipalities’ Affordable Housing groups and Shade Tree Commissions was suggested, and, in all instances, cross-pollination from existing groups was encouraged.

Other recommendations included using the Township’s Citizens Advisory Committee, which has focused on financial concerns, as a model for a new group, and following the Borough model for a Public Safety Committee. It was also suggested that an ordinance may be in order the establish the presence of a member who is “expert in animal biology” on the Animal Control Committee.

A discussion of leaf and brush collection was postponed until the next joint meeting, and it was announced that the consolidation celebration originally scheduled for December 31 has been moved to January 1 at Township Hall to dovetail with the swearing-in of new officials.

At a separate meeting that preceded the joint meeting, Township Committee endorsed an ordinance to pay an amount not to exceed $129,504 to the Yedlin Company, Construction Management Services for overseeing construction in the two buildings being refitted for consolidation. Township Mayor Chad Goerner, who had earlier expressed doubt about the need for this contract, reported on Monday night that he had met with the engineering staff and reviewed building plans, and was satisfied that transition expenses are not going to be as much as he anticipated. Renovations to accommodate Corner House in the Monument Building account for the lion’s share of the work, Mr. Goerner noted.

During the meeting’s “announcements” section, Chief Financial Officer Kathy Monzo reported that the completion of the 2011 audit marked the second year in row “with no recommendations or comments of note.” Deputy Mayor Liz Lempert urged area residents to report long or difficult commutes resulting from the Department of Transportation’s changes on Route 1, to the Township website.

Stirring the Pot

A domestic moment Saturday on the Princeton Battlefield circa 1770-something — if you air-brush out the cars and the phone lines. The occasion was “Colonial Days Revisited,” which featured tours of the Clarke House and the battlefield, a horseshoe challenge for kids, Colonial domestic and Revolutionary War demonstrations, and a children’s scavenger hunt. (Photo by Emily Reeves)

September 26, 2012

Obituaries 9/26/12

Howard “Pat” Curtiss

Howard “Pat” Curtiss, an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, died September 20, 2012 after a stoic struggle with bladder cancer. He is remembered as a pioneering researcher in the field of helicopter dynamics and aerodynamics and as an exceptional teacher and advisor to his students. His lifelong fascination with flight was both infectious and exciting.

Professor Curtiss was highly regarded for his contributions to understanding the complexities of helicopter forces and motions. He was director of the Princeton University Dynamic Model Track for nearly 30 years and a leading theorist. He published pioneering studies on helicopter rotor blade motion, authored influential work on control system design, and was the co-author of a highly regarded textbook, A Modern Course in Aeroelasticity.

Professor Curtiss served as a consultant for many aerospace companies, including Sikorsky, Agusta Helicopters, Kaman Aerospace, and Piasecki Aircraft. In 1985, he was appointed as an honorary professor at the Nanjing Aeronautical Institute. In the following years, he served as visiting research fellow at Glasgow University and the Technical University of Braunschweig. In 2000, Professor Curtiss delivered the American Helicopter Society’s Nikolsky Honorary Lecture, named for his thesis adviser, Alexander Nikolsky.

Most recently, he designed a new helicopter rotor blade that significantly improves the load-carrying ability, cruising speed, and range of Sikorsky S-61 helicopters. The rotor blades are manufactured by Carson Helicopters, and are used on the “Marine One” helicopter fleet used by the President as well as by the British navy.

Professor Curtiss’s technical contributions are only surpassed by the influence he had on his undergraduate and graduate students. He combined an enthusiasm for his field with sparkling wit and patience with those new to a complex and sometimes bewildering topic. Many of his students became professors, researchers, administrators, and leaders in industry and government.

Born March 17, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois (named “Pat” for his birth on St. Patrick’s Day), Professor Curtiss completed a B.A.E. at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1952 and his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1965. After participating in Naval R.O.T.C. Training, he was commissioned and served as a Line Officer on the U.S.S. Mississippi, from 1952 to 1954.

No description of Pat would be complete without mentioning his lifelong love of sailing – from his first experiences at the Erie Yacht Club, to competing in the 1947 Lightning Junior Championships, to weekend racing at the Jersey Shore, and to adventures with Betty on the Metedeconk River. He advised the Princeton Sailing Team for many years and enjoyed sailing with Sam, his grandson.

Professor Curtiss was also noted for the quality of the apple pies he often baked at Christmas.

Pat is survived by his wife Betty Curtiss of Princeton, N.J., daughter Lisa Curtiss of Brooklyn, N.Y., son Jon Curtiss of Ann Arbor, Mich., stepchildren John Fenton of Atlanta, Ga., Anne Fenton of Falls Church, Va., Agnes Mironov of Stockton, N.J., and grandchildren Cami, Sam, Elizabeth, Marek, Crosby, Kalena, and Kit. Professor Curtiss’s first wife, Betty Ruth Cloke Curtiss, passed away in 1985.

His gentle, friendly spirit will be greatly missed.

His family is thankful for the love and support shown by their friends and communities, and is grateful to the doctors, nurses and staff of the University Medical Center at Princeton, whose care was compassionate and generous.

In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to the R.P.I. School of Engineering (Checks to Gifts Processing Center, P.O. Box 3164, Boston, Mass., 02241-3164—In memory of Howard C. Curtiss, Jr) or to Habitat for Humanity (Checks to Habitat for Humanity of Trenton, In memory of Howard “Pat” Curtiss, Jr., 601 North Clinton Avenue, Trenton, N.J., 08638).

A memorial service will be held in Princeton, N.J. on a date in November to be announced.

———

Rudolf F. Lehnert

Rudolf Frederick Lehnert, 83, passed away on September 18 after a short battle with lymphoma. Born in Munich, Germany, the family lived on Long Island and moved to Princeton in 1937. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1948 and Princeton University in 1952 as an aeronautical engineer. His connection to the University continued with a long-term engagement with the Forrestal Research Center; a highlight of this time was an outreach project in 1965 to help establish the aeronautical engineering department at the Kanpur campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.

Later, Rudy managed the Nassau Delicatessen on Princeton’s Palmer Square, the family business established by his parents Fred and Therese Lehnert. His love of sport fishing then led him to the position of VP of engineering, and later president, of Egg Harbor Yacht Company, and a subsequent role as a consultant to boat owners.

Rudy served on the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, was a NAUI-certified SCUBA instructor, ham radio operator, a member of the Princeton Lions Club, the Citizen’s Range and Recreation Club of Central N.J., and the National Rifle Association. Rudy was well known for his long-standing connection with Princeton University, which included service as the webmaster and treasurer for the Class of 1952, his enthusiastic support of the University’s sports teams, and his membership in the Princeton Varsity Club.

He is survived by his wife Mildred McCool Lehnert, with whom he recently celebrated 60 years of life together, his son John Lehnert, daughters Cheryl Costello and Laurie Horan, grandson Sean Horan, and granddaughter Katie Horan.

Calling hours were held at the Mather-Hodge Funeral Home on Sunday, September 23 from 2 to 5 p.m. and Monday, September 24 from 9 to 11 a.m., with a memorial service to follow. Burial was at the Princeton Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Temple University Hospital Cancer Center 3401 North Broad Street, Philadelphia Pa. 19140 or Rudy F. Lehnert ’52 Memorial Fund P.O. Box 5357 Princeton, N.J. 08540.

———

Marion F. Clohossey

Marion Frances (Daly) Clohossey, of San Jose, California, passed away peacefully with family present on Friday, August 17, 2012, at the age of 86. She was a long-time Princetonian, from her birth in 1926 until early-2010 when she moved to California to be closer to her 4 children. She was born to Joseph and May Daly in Princeton, who lived on Pine Street for almost 50 years. Marion spent her first 20 years living on Pine Street, resided more than 30 years on Jefferson Road, and thereafter for 20 years at Elm Court on Elm Road.

She attended St. Paul’s Grammar School and was a valedictorian of Princeton High School Class of 1943. From 1942-1952, she worked as a secretary at Princeton University’s Astronomy Department for Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr. In 1946, she married Edward A. Clohossey, of Rumford, Maine. She also worked for 1 year in Niagara Falls, NY, while her husband attended Niagara University on the GI bill. After her children were grown, she also worked at Educational Testing Service and at Princeton University’s Firestone Library.

Marion enjoyed watching various Princeton University events including crew practices, ice skating on Carnegie Lake both as a child and parent, concerts at the University Chapel (especially the PHS Christmas concerts), the American Legion’s fireworks at Palmer Stadium, walking at Marquand Park, swimming at the YMCA and Community Park pools and in the ocean at Manasquan, many PHS sporting events including basketball, lacrosse, soccer, tennis and cross-country. She loved trees and gardening, especially her dogwoods and azaleas. Marion also enjoyed taking her children to various local museums in Princeton and Trenton. Her proudest accomplishment was having raised her four children.

Marion was predeceased by her husband, Edward A. Clohossey, a WWII U.S. Navy radioman, in 1999, and her brother, John K. Daly, PHS Class of 1942 and D-Day Purple Heart recipient with the U.S. Navy, of Blue Ridge, Georgia, in 2008. She is survived by her 4 children, Susan Brennan and her husband James of San Jose, California; Michael Clohossey and his wife Natalie of Sacramento, California; Daniel Clohossey and his wife Laurel of Menlo Park, California; and Constance Perry of Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was the proud grandmother of 8 grandchildren: Hannah Brennan Infante, Patrick Brennan, Conor Brennan, Marc Mason and Monica Mason Borel, Paloma Clohossey, Kelly Perry and Edward Perry. She was also the great-grandmother of 6. She is also survived by a cousin, Joe Hall, of Princeton Junction, numerous nieces and nephews, brother-in-law Walt Clohosey and his wife Grace, of Middletown, Connecticut, and her sister-in-law, Edwina Clohosey, also of Middletown, CT.

She will be buried at St. Paul’s Cemetery in Princeton beside her parents.

The family would ask that, should remembrances wish to be made, they be made in her name to the Princeton Education Foundation (www.pefnj.org) or to the Princeton Public Library.

———

John C. Yeoman

John Cornelius Yeoman (Jack), 86, passed away on Saturday, September 15, 2012 after an extended illness. He had pulmonary fibrosis for several years and gave up the hard fight in Peachtree Christian Hospice.

Jack was born in Utica, New York on August 25, 1926. He was the son of Ethel Keefer and Earl Walker Yeoman. He was raised in Princeton, New Jersey and graduated from the Pennington Preparatory School. Between Army services in Germany during World War II and Japan during the Korean conflict, Jack graduated from Wake Forest University.

Jack married Elinor Weber Yeoman in 1953 and they spent their honeymoon at Boy Scout Camp Pahaquarra where Jack was the camp director. He was an executive with the Boy Scouts of America, an Eagle Scout and a member of the Order of the Arrow.

In 1954 Jack joined Palmer Square, Inc. in Princeton as a comptroller and soon became secretary/treasurer and general manager, positions he held until Palmer Square, Inc. was sold by Princeton University in 1983.

He was one of the founders in 1959 of the Princeton Chamber of Commerce and was president in 1971. He was awarded the “Man of the Year” award by the Chamber of Commerce in 1982. For fourteen years he was treasurer of the United Way and helped organize the Princeton Merchants Association. In 1975 he was awarded the Gerald B. Lambert award for civic service. Jack was a member of the Princeton Rotary Club and was made president in 1964. He was also treasurer of the Princeton Arts Council. Additionally, Jack served as an elder and deacon at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Princeton. Politics was always a part of his life and in the early 1970’s, Jack was elected to the position of Republican Committeeman and Municipal Chairman for Princeton Township.

Jack moved to Dunwoody, Georgia in May 1983 to retire, but it didn’t last long. In September 1983 he became controller of Meteor Photo in Atlanta, where he was employed until May 1994. Because his residence in Dunwoody did not have a sunny yard, he and his wife bought a home in Alpharetta, where Jack spent many happy hours in his flower garden. He was a member of Windward Association of Retired Men (WARM) for many years. While retired, Jack and Elinor traveled to many countries and had many happy memories of their trips together.

After Hurricane Andrew, Jack traveled with his Church group to Homestead, Fla. and Mexico to re-build homes. During this time, Jack also tutored third graders in reading and arithmetic at APC and Creek Side Elementary School.

Jack was preceded in death by his brother, William Russell Yeoman. Jack is survived by his wife of 59 years, Elinor Weber Yeoman, his son John C. Yeoman, Jr., and his wife Tiffany. Sisters Barbara Y. Antonelli of Jupiter, Fla. and Nancy Y. Field of Indianapolis, Ind. Several nieces and nephews also survive.

A celebration of Jack’s life was held on Saturday, September 22, 2012 at the Alpharetta Church at 11 a.m. Mr. Yeoman’s ashes are to be interred in Princeton Cemetery in the Yeoman Plot at a later date. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Shriners Children’s Hospital. SouthCare Cremation and Funeral Society in Alpharetta, Georgia is in charge of arrangements. Please express condolences online at www.southcare.us.

———

Jacob Goldsmith

Jacob Goldsmith, infant son of Tasha and Scott Goldsmith, passed away on Monday, September 17 2012. Jacob is survived by his parents and grandparents: Charlotte Hussey and Dan Bauer; Stephen and Heather Goldsmith; and Sheila Ellman; aunt, Aislinn Bauer; uncle and aunt, Richard and Jessica Goldsmith; and cousins, Anthony and Alyssa Goldsmith. The family thanks the staff at Capital Health Medical Center, and friends Jessika Thomas, Rebecca Crider, Ray Tucholski, Helen and Tim Sharpley, the Rusling Hose Fire Company and HTFD District 3. Donations for the Goldsmith family for funeral expenses in lieu of flowers may be sent to 1314 Genesee Street, Apt.1, Trenton, NJ, 08610. Donations in Jacob’s name to First Candle, 1314 Bedford Avenue, Suite 210, Baltimore MD 21208, first
candle.org are appreciated. Friends and family are invited to gather on Sunday, September 30, 2012 from 12pm to 4pm at Colonial Firehouse, 801 Kuser Road in Hamilton.

———

John F. Hayes

John F. Hayes, 81, died Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at his home in Lawrence Township, NJ.

John was born September 26, 1930 in Boston, Massachusetts to John F. and Marie F. Hayes.

After serving in the U.S. Air Force, in Iceland and Morocco, and working for defense contractors, in post World War II Europe, he moved his family to California and worked for RCA as a project manager on the TIROS project, the world’s first weather satellite.

Mr. Hayes also served as vice president for the Singer Corporation in the newly-opened 1 World Trade Center in New York, after which he formed his own international electronics export business.

He is survived by his wife of over 50 years, Sonja Hayes; a daughter, Michaela Van Orden of Flemington, NJ; three grandchildren; a brother, Paul, and a sister, Judy, both of Boston, MA and many nieces and nephews and their families. He is also survived by his beloved Dalmatian and constant companion, Norton.

A memorial gathering will be held on Sunday, September 30, 2012, at the Kimble Funeral Home, 1 Hamilton Avenue in Princeton, NJ from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. with remembrances beginning at 12:30 p.m.

To extend condolences and sign the guest book, please visit www.TheKimbleFuneralHome.com.

———

Six Years Later the Question Remains: Why is the Dinky Station Being Moved?

To the Editor:

After sitting through the SPRAB meeting last night I have the same question that I had six years ago: why is the Dinky station being moved???

1. All of the Arts buildings can be built and be even more beautiful, if the Dinky is not moved,

2. All of the environmental attributes of the plan can be realized and many of its detriments diminished, if the Dinky is not moved,

3. The grandeur of the current Dinky station as a gateway to Princeton, McCarter, the Seminary and the University can be retained, if the Dinky is not moved,

4. The Lot 7 garage can be accessed either below grade at its south end (only a 9 foot clearance is necessary because the garage’s clearance is less than 9 feet), or at grade at its north end (all cars accessing the garage from Alexander currently cross the Dinky at-grade), if the Dinky is not moved,

5. The service tunnel can readily pass under the Dinky tracks, if the Dinky is not moved,

6. The public’s transportation deed easement on all of the 3.5 acres can be set aside on the portion of the land occupied by the Arts buildings, if the Dinky is not moved,

7. The freight building can be expanded (while preserving its historic features) to create a convenience store for the Forbes and Arts students, if the Dinky is not moved,

8.The Wawa could be relocated to the gas station on the corner of Alexander and Faculty to provide convenience items in close proximity to the new Hibben&Magee, Lawrence and other nearby housing as well as fueling services to those driving on Alexander, if the Dinky is not moved,

9. A lot of money would be saved, if the Dinky is not moved, and

10. Much goodwill will be restored, if the Dinky is not moved.

Alain L. Kornhauser

Montadale Circle

A Short But Sweet Salute for Princeton’s Departing President, Shirley Tilghman

To the Editor:

In her 11 years as the president of Princeton University, Shirley Tilghman has helped make the best even better.

Richard Trenner

Province Line Road

Workable, Environmentally Sound Composting Program Saving 20 Tons a Month from Landfill

To the Editor:

It’s important that the food-composting program be kept alive. Princetonians have put 18 months of work into the separated compostable waste program to cut down on trash going into the landfill, and have proven that it is entirely workable and environmentally sound. We understand that we are diverting about 20 tons a month from the landfill to a sustainable composting site. Four hundred sixty families already participate and many more want to sign up but must now wait until we hear if this program is to continue in 2013.

The program is straightforward: Food and everything compostable goes into our separate green wheelie bins. The big trash bins are almost empty.

This program is also compelling for economic reasons because if our curbside food collection stops, we will actually pay higher taxes since the weight of our garbage going into the landfill will be heavier. As local landfills fill up, solid waste will have to be trucked to the midwest, increasing our costs even more, whereas food waste can continue to be processed locally.

Other communities are watching us to see if they too can save money by implementing the program that Princeton is testing. Why not ask the contractor who wins the bid to take our separated trash or amend Princeton’s bid request immediately to include a food-composting pickup for all contractors?

New administration in 2013: please continue to provide this separate pickup. We will be Princeton New Jersey, and we can make this important pioneering program successful.

Lindy and Zvi Eiref

Dodds Lane

The Current Experiment on Route 1 Only Postpones the Inevitable Long Term Solution

To the Editor:

We are hearing/reading multiple complaints about the negative impacts and the ineffectiveness of the NJDOT experiment of closing left turns onto and from Route 1 at its intersections with Washington Road and Harrison Street. A decade ago it was recognized that the main problem for traffic in the Penns Neck area was the east-west flow to and from central NJ’s largest employer, Princeton University. A solution that solved the east-west traffic flow and the Route 1 north-south flow was agreed to by almost everyone in the affected areas. The main feature of the solution was to put Route 1 in a cut that would pass under Washington Road.

This solution came about as a result of scores of meetings and negotiations among residents, towns, environmental organizations, and governmental agencies. The group [in which I was a participant] was called the Penns Neck Area EIS Roundtable. Among all of the possible changes to Route 1 intersections that were considered by the Roundtable, one solution, which became known as the “Preferred Alignment,” respects the environment, gives relief to West Windsor and Princeton residents, businesses and visitors, and improves NS flow of traffic on Rt 1.

Most people who have studied the traffic on Route 1 think the current experiment just postpones the inevitable long-term solution. Had plans for the Preferred Alignment moved forward when it was approved it would have been shovel ready for the stimulus money, and we could be driving on it now. This latest experiment by NJDOT demonstrates the need for the Preferred Alignment.

Lincoln Hollister

Ridgeview Road

Hoping the Administrators of Consolidation Will Continue Curbside Compost Collection

To the Editor:

I write regarding the award-winning curbside pickup composting program that Princeton has successfully pioneered for well over a year. By signing up for this convenient service, hundreds of families here have effortlessly sent tons of organic waste to a commercial composting facility, instead of to landfills. This program includes many more materials than even the most dedicated backyard composter could handle: bones from meat/poultry/fish; table scraps and dairy products, soiled paper plates, towels and napkins, anything labeled “for commercial composting,” and — best of all — pizza boxes.

And of course this program also benefits those who cannot or do not wish to do backyard composting.

Like other curbside compost customers, my household has taken pride in reducing the amount of “plain old trash” left to throw out. So we’re disappointed to learn that this valuable service has not been included as a requirement in the waste collection bids for consolidated Princeton. This omission seems puzzling, because our municipality has to pay for trash disposal by weight, and wet organic material is the heaviest component of regular trash. Continuing this popular program could actually save money; but if it is not in every bidder’s response, how will the bids be comparable?

I hope that residents will continue to have the option of compost collection. Our town has shown itself to be a leader by achieving consolidation. What a pity if this progress is accompanied by a step backward in our “green” leadership.

Caroline Hancock

Laurel Road

Princeton-Area Businesses, Individuals Thanked for Donation of 102 Backpacks

To the Editor:

A huge thank you to Princeton-Area businesses and individuals for the generous donation of 102 backpacks filled with school supplies and fun lunchboxes for less-fortunate Princeton Public School students. What an amazing feeling for these Princeton kids to start the school year with a cool lunchbox and a great backpack filled with brand new school supplies. These kids got to walk into school feeling good about themselves and the new school year.

Special thanks to community partners Walmart and Target in Nassau Park, Blue Ridge Mountain Sports and PNC Bank in the Princeton Shopping Center, Princeton University Women’s Soccer Team, Princeton Health Department, and the Princeton Rotary Club. Additionally, we received donations from over 20 Princetonians!

Again, the Princeton-Area community business and individuals made a difference for these young Princeton Public Schools students.

Ciara Celestin

Ambassador Girl Scout Princeton Troop 71204

Cynthia Mendez,

Director, Princeton Human Services

Legal, Environmental Perspective on AvalonBay To Be Addressed by Environmental Lawyer Oct. 7

To the Editor:

Princeton residents will want to know of the upcoming public talk about AvalonBay and its environmental impacts. Save the date: October 7, 2012, 3 p.m.

Aaron Kleinbaum, Esq., legal director of the Eastern Environmental Law Center, will discuss “Sustainable Redevelopment in Princeton: The Legal and Environmental Perspective on AvalonBay.” The talk will be given at Princeton Engine Co #1 (the firehouse), 13 Chestnut Street, Princeton (light refreshments will be served).

Mr. Kleinbaum will speak about AvalonBay’s lack of transparency about potential contamination at the old hospital site; resistance to LEED construction, and, refusal to consider public open space. He will situate these local issues in the regional and national contexts of sustainability, environmental protections, and climate change. He will also discuss the mission of the Eastern Environmental Law Center, with particular attention to environmental justice.

The talk is sponsored by Princeton Citizens for Sustainable Neighborhoods (PCSN), for whom the event is also a fundraiser, with donations to be shared with EELC.

Mr. Kleinbaum, who has been retained by PCSN along with land-use counsel and an urban planner to represent PCSN at Planning Board hearings on AvalonBay, authored the letter to the Planning Board and municipal engineers insisting that AvalonBay make public the EcolSciences report commissioned by AB through Maser Consulting LLC. That report had not been released until Mr. Kleinbaum’s letter exerted sufficient pressure to gain its availability for public scrutiny for this central matter of public health.

Mr. Kleinbaum has previously served as vice president for environmental affairs at Ingersoll Rand and as external environmental counsel to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, among other environmentalist positions. A civil engineer, he received his J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law in 1990.

All are welcome. For further information, contact Daniel A. Harris, dah43@comcast.net, (609) 683-0198.

Jane Buttars

Dodds Lane

AvalonBay’s Environmental Impact Statement Said to Gloss Over Contamination of UMCP Site

To the Editor:

Princeton citizens should know that the AvalonBay Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), prepared by Maser Consulting, fundamentally misrepresents the Phase I environmental investigation on the old hospital site, performed by EcolSciences in September of 2011.

The “Conclusions and Recommendations” of the EcolSciences report states that “a soil boring investigation should be performed to assess the integrity of the four active underground tank systems.” This recommendation contradicts the AvalonBay EIS, which states that “no underground tanks or contamination were found on the property” (EIS, p. 10). Whether or not these underground tanks indeed pose a public health concern, the complete misrepresentation of the Ecolsciences report in Avalon’s site plan submission to the Planning Board is scary. It breaks the public trust by bringing into question the motives for such a blatant misrepresentation. Maser, on behalf of AvalonBay, did not provide the EcolSciences report to the Planning Board staff.

The AvalonBay EIS glosses over the fundamental issue of site contamination. The EcolSciences Report was made available this month only after environmental attorney Aaron Kleinbaum, retained by Princeton Citizens for Sustainable Neighborhoods, insisted that the undated environmental investigations cited, but not properly referenced, in the Maser EIS for AvalonBay, be made available to the public (letter to Planning Board and municipal staff, 8/22/12).

The old hospital site is listed on the Environmental Inventory (DVRPC 2010) as a “known contaminated site.”

In addition to the issue of storage tanks, the Ecolsciences report calls for “subsurface investigations to determine if the underlying soils and ground water have been impacted by the sewer lines and/or historic septic system discharges.” No such reports on subsurface investigations have been submitted by AvalonBay. But Mr. Kleinbaum has properly called for such Phase II studies; he is particularly concerned with the subgrade laboratory at the hospital, which predated strict environmental regulations. The Ecolsciences Report recommends remedial measures to close out the spill cases at 6 and 10 Harris Road. And on the decommissioning of the hospital, it states: “residual maintenance feed stocks, hazardous waste streams, and other hazardous constituents and chemicals should be transferred offsite to another medical facility or be disposed of prior to manifest. All lead-lined doors … should be appropriately disposed as part of future demolition activities. Documentation verifying proper clearance from the NRC [National Regulatory Commission] should be provided relative to decommissioning of X-ray equipment and the linear radiation therapy unit with the cancer treatment ward.”

I know the public cares about environmental contamination and the decommissioning of the hospital. I want to make sure that the EcolSciences “Conclusions and Recommendations” (previously unavailable) are made public for professional scrutiny and appropriate municipal action. I am distressed, as I think other Princeton citizens are also, that the AvalonBay EIS document misrepresents the scientific conclusions of the organization to which it contracted an important job concerning Princeton’s public health.

Alexi Assmus, PhD

Maple Street

“He Didn’t Talk Down to Us”: Princeton Students Impressed by Dick Woodbridge

To the Editor:

Last Saturday, a few friends (all Princeton students) and I attended a community barbecue. As we mingled with the other guests, we had the opportunity to speak with one of the candidates for mayor of the newly consolidated town of Princeton, who happened to be a Princeton alum as well (class of 1965).

Dick Woodbridge was knowledgeable and friendly, and he didn’t talk down to us just because we were students. He told us about his time studying electrical engineering at Princeton University, about having served in the volunteer fire department and about his experience as Mayor of Princeton Township and Council President in the Borough. He impressed us, and we left the event confident that he was the right man to make consolidation a success for Princeton.

When we graduate, we hope to make contributions to our communities as valuable as those made by Mr. Woodbridge to his.

Jacob Reses ‘13

The Community Knows What It Wants And Avalon Bay Refuses to Listen

To the Editor:

Responding to one of the “Frequently Asked Questions” posted on the Princeton Healthcare System website www.princetonhcs.org “What will happen to the site of the original hospital?” Barry Rabner, President and CEO responds: “After a careful process, during which approximately 125 potential purchasers expressed interest in the Witherspoon Street property, we have reached an agreement with AvalonBay Communities Inc. to buy the current hospital along with nine homes that Princeton HealthCare System owns along Harris Road. We selected AvalonBay because it was important for us to find a buyer that would be an excellent community partner. The company has extensive experience in developing sites like ours, and their representatives demonstrated sensitivity to the interests of the community and the neighbors who live near projects they have developed in the past.”

It would be interesting to know the scope of the “careful process” and due diligence performed by the UHCS that supports Mr. Rabner’s confidence in making that bold assertion — what other “community and neighbors who live near projects” developed by AvalonBay support that claim? One is hard pressed to find any such evidence when searching the web.

One wonders if Mr. Rabner still stands by his assertion that AvalonBay is ‘an excellent community partner…” and whether he still believes AvalonBay has “…demonstrated sensitivity to the interests of the community and the neighbors…” The residents of Princeton can attest to the fact that AvalonBay has not been sensitive to the interests of our community as expressed in our Master Plan and Borough Code.

Instead of a development that incorporates linked public open space and green construction (requirements of Borough Code), Avalon’s site plan calls for a single 280-apartment monolith, an over 360,000 square foot wood-framed building on less than 6 acres of land (50 units per acre). This is a development for which AvalonBay promises “zero” LEED construction. This private “Community” is diametrically opposed to and destroys Princeton’s vision for a rejuvenated Witherspoon Street created as a result of more than two years of community-wide meetings. A mixed-use redevelopment with public parks and playgrounds, walkways, and neighborhood-friendly retail was envisioned when the MRRO zone was created in consultation with hospital officials. The MRRO zone was designed specifically for the old hospital building site on Witherspoon Street in 2006. The community knows what it wants and the developer refuses to listen. Princeton can and must do better.

“Excellent community partner” sensitive “to the interests of the community”? AvalonBay is not.

Kate Warren

Jefferson Road

Of Love Songs, Baseball, and Sausage Grinders: Celebrating T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway

Written in the aftermath of Joseph Conrad’s death in 1924, Ernest Hemingway’s tribute in the Transatlantic Review’s Conrad Supplement included this sentence: “If I knew that by grinding Mr. [T.S.] Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over Mr. Conrad’s grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear, looking very annoyed at the forced return and commence writing, I would leave for London early tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder.”

Hemingway was 25. Two years earlier, in a November 8, 1922 letter to Ezra Pound in response to Pound’s touting of Eliot’s groundbreaking work, The Wasteland, Hemingway suggested that if Eliot “would strangle his sick wife,” sexually assault “the brain specialist” treating her, and “rob the bank” (Eliot was a clerk at Lloyd’s Bank at the time), “he might write an even better poem.” Below this broadside Hemingway added a brisk, cynical disclaimer (“The above is facetious”) that leaves the toxic mixture on simmer.

“A damned good poet and a fair critic,” Hemingway says of Eliot decades later in a July 9, 1950 letter to columnist Harvey Breit. In case you think he’s mellowed, Hemingway is only warming up. In fact he’s in one of his favorite metaphorical modes, pitching “high and inside,” to see if he can “turn a hitter’s cap around.” Next paragraph he’s saying “some of us write and some of us pitch but so far there isn’t any law a man has to go and see the Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot from St. Louis where Yogi Berra comes from.” The free-association reference to the New York Yankees’ catcher is what prompts the reference to Eliot the poet and critic, and then this: “but he can kiss my ass as a man and he never hit a ball out of the infield in his life.”

Today being T.S. Eliot’s 124th birthday, it’s hardly the occasion to be documenting his fellow midwesterner’s epistolary boorishness. But there’s another, more local occasion. Next month Hemingway and his novel, The Sun Also Rises, will be the subject of several events at the Prince
ton Public Library capped by an October 25 talk by Sandra Spanier, co-editor of Volume One of the Cambridge University Press edition of Hemingway’s letters (see story this issue for details).

Play Ball

If Hemingway can use tropes from the National Pastime as a means of measuring character, manhood, and literary ability, why not follow his example? Baseball may also help me demonstrate why my fondness for Hemingway and his work endures, undiminished, in spite of his personal flaws and phobias, and may even explain why I’ve never warmed to Eliot, whose essays and poetry have been among the most rewarding reading experiences of my life.

Okay, let’s look at Eliot the player. As a pitcher, he would specialize in offspeed stuff, with a killer curve and a knuckleball so devious and outré that hitters tie themselves in knots trying to follow it. Better yet, let’s make him a position player. Forget that ill-natured crack about his abilities with the bat, I see the deceptively fragile St. Louis Kid as a solid .300 hitter with sneaky power and a Mr. October reputation for performing in the post-season clutch, like the game-tying grand slam he hit in the last of the ninth inning of the 1922 World Series; you knew The Wasteland was out of the park the instant Tom Terrific connected. The Kid’s one big drawback was very big indeed, however; he lacked color. The sports writers did what they could, with their catchy nicknames, but it made no difference. Before, after and during the game, Eliot kept to himself. In the locker room, he was a one-man monastery.

This is where the big guy from Oak Park wins your heart. Injury-prone, yes, but with an eye that was the envy of Joe DiMaggio. A master bunter and a lifetime .330 hitter (as he once described himself), he could hit to all fields and his line-drive home runs cleared the wall straight and true. Best of all, he loved the game, ready to talk about the ins and outs
of it forever, recollecting key plays with such fondness that he made kids all over America want to grab their mitts (or pens, pencils, typewriters) and head for the nearest diamond. Granted, he drank between innings, delighted in high slides (he kept his spikes razor sharp), fought with umpires, opponents and teammates, roared when he won and raged when he lost. Sure, he said hideously offensive things about other players, but you knew that stuff ate him up, made him crazy, until the July morning in 1961 when he could no longer play through his injuries.

Let Us Go Then

T.S. Eliot’s poetry simply turned up one day in the room my parents called the study. Nobody, no parent, no teacher presented Eliot to me and said, “You must read this.” I was a sophomore in high school, where literature was confined to a textbook created by “educators.” It’s possible that my Medievalist father, who had no interest in Eliot beyond his High Church leanings, left the Collected Poems in plain sight for me, the way he used to do when pretending to make Classic Comics appear by magic.

Easily the coziest room in the house, the study had a roll-top desk, a day-bed by the window, and a wall of books. My departure for the new world took place on a grey midwinter afternoon, mist in the air, snow on the ground. Settling back on the daybed’s heaped-up pillows, I started reading. The first two lines instantly took me in, the poet’s spectral hand beckoning me aboard, and so began the reading journey that still continues:

“Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky….”

In popular music, specifically rock and roll, that’s called a hook, and it’s a great hook, as irresistible as John Lennon’s, “Let me take you down,” from “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Was Lennon echoing Eliot? Probably, though he might not have known it, just as the Beatles might not have known that Sgt. Pepper would be compared to The Wasteland.

Getting back to the idea of Eliot the player, if he was on the mound and you were at the plate, the next pitch, where the evening is compared to “a patient etherised upon a table,” is unhittable. You just watch it go by with your mouth hanging open. What was that? Where did he get it? Is it even legal? A literary spitball? And a few lines later, after the “muttering retreats,” “cheap hotels” and “sawdust restaurants,” he reads your mind about the impossible line he just pitched you, saying, “do not ask ‘What is it?’ Let us go and make our visit.”

That second “Let us go” leads you to the stanza that seals your fate. Never mind baseball, it’s witchcraft when the poet waves his wand and turns “the yellow smoke” into a cat rubbing its back and its muzzle “upon the window-panes” and licking “its tongue into the corners of the evening.” The first time you read what the “yellow smoke” does is as close as you ever come to loving Eliot, as it makes “a sudden leap, / And seeing that it was a soft October night, / Curled once about the houses, and fell asleep.”

Then everything changes and the Harvard scholar looms at the ghostly lectern, no more to be loved than a distant voice serving “visions and revisions” with “toast and tea.” By now the poet is miles away, but still in possession of this normal, baseball-playing, girl-crazy, red-blooded American 15-year-old’s unworthy attention, with lines never to be forgotten (“When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall”) and smooth, sensuous imagery (“Arms that are braceleted and white and bare” and “in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair”) as J. Alfred “Do I dare disturb the universe?” Prufrock approaches his fate. At this point the original excitement has faded, and the last lines about growing old and the mermaids singing and the “chambers of the sea” where “human voices wake us, and we drown” make the schoolboy reader edgy and uneasy. Outside the window it’s gone from dusk to night, and he’s thinking of the pretty young mother across the street who’s dying of cancer.

When Less Is More

I just finished reading the last 15 pages of The Sun Also Rises, where Hemingway’s impotent protagonist Jake Barnes (“I got hurt in the war” he tells the prostitute when she puts her hand between his legs) encounters a fate not unlike Prufrock’s. After the drunken fireworks of the fiesta at Pamploma, Jake is very much alone. By all rights, he should be glad to be on his own. He decides to go to San Sebastian because “it would be quiet there.” He takes the train, stops at a hotel he knows, unpacks, has lunch, goes for a swim, all his movements crisply documented in Hemingway’s less-is-more prose. He sees a boy and a girl out on a raft, she’s laughing at the things the boy says, she’s undone the top strap of her bathing suit and is “browning her back.” Jake says nothing about what seeing this does to him but Hemingway makes you feel it, making you care about Jake in his aloneness far more intensely than you ever did for Prufrock, so that when Jake dives deep, “swimming down to the bottom,” it’s as if you’ve followed him into the undercurrent of Hemingway’s art: “I swam with my eyes open and it was green and dark. The raft made a dark shadow.”

Summoned to Madrid by Brett, the woman he loves and who loves him, hopelessly, Jake once again goes about the business of living, relating the incidental details that make you hurt for him, and all without a single nudging word from the author, who vicariously enjoys the big meal and the three bottles of wine at Botin’s while never letting you forget that it’s all death and denial and we know Jake is doomed as he reports how he got from the train to the hotel and how he consoled Brett, who is recovering from a failed romance. The conversation that ends the novel mirrors the one the thwarted lovers had at the book’s beginning, both times in a cab, sitting close to one another, she saying, “We could have such a damned good time together,” he saying, as the car slows suddenly, pressing her against him, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Hemingway’s love song comes to an end more desperate than Eliot’s. But it’s the pitcher poet who provides the perfect epitaph, closing out the game, a scoreless tie.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing
to me.

Toni Morrison Reading From New Novel At Richardson Auditorium Next Tuesday

HOMECOMING: Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison will return to Princeton to read from her new novel, “Home,” October 2 at 5:30 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium. “It is an honor to welcome back Toni Morrison,” said Chair of the Council of the Humanities Gideon Rosen.

The Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved Toni Morrison, will read from her new novel, Home, at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 2, in Richardson Auditorium, Alexander Hall, at Princeton University. Ms. Morrison is the University’s Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus.

Sponsored jointly by the Center for African American Studies and the Council of the Humanities, the reading is free and open to the public. Tickets are required for admission and can be picked up from the University Ticketing Office at the Frist Campus Center beginning Thursday, Sept. 13, for Princeton University I.D. holders, and Thursday, Sept. 20, for the public. The University Ticketing Office is open from noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. There is a limit of two tickets per person.

“The Center for African American Studies is delighted to have Professor Morrison return to Princeton to read from her new novel. Her work is so important to 20th- and 21st-century literature, and to be able to hear it from the author herself is truly an amazing thing,” said Wallace Best, professor of religion and acting chair of the Center for African American Studies.

Morrison is also the first 2012-13 Belknap Visitor in the Humanities, through the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. Professor Gideon Rosen, the Stuart Professor of Philosophy and the Chair of the Council of the Humanities, is also excited by Morrison’s return to Princeton. “It is an honor to welcome back Toni Morrison. We celebrate her homecoming as well as her new book, aptly titled Home. The Belknap Visitor is our highest honor, and no one is more deserving than Toni Morrison,” he said.

Morrison’s nine major novels, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, and A Mercy have received extensive critical acclaim. She received the National Book Critics Award in 1978 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved. In 1993, Morrison became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. In 2006, the New York Times Book Review chose Beloved as the best work of American fiction published in the last quarter-century. On May 29 this year, Morrison was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, which is the highest civilian award in the United States.

Published in May by Knopf, Home is the story of a young African American soldier, returning home from the Korean War to the pre-civil rights South.

Labyrinth Books, of 122 Nassau St. in Princeton, will be on location selling signed copies of Home before and after the reading.

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Area Exhibits 9/26/12

The Arts Council of Princeton at Paul Robeson Center has sculpture by Jonathan Shor on view on the terrace through September 29. The Annual Members Show is in the Taplin Gallery through September 29. For more information call (609) 924-8777 or visit www.artscouncilofprinceton.org.

Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street, Lambertville, has “Expressions in Wood, Glass and Bamboo,” works by Charlie Katzenbach and Norine Kevolic, through September 30. Visit www.lambertvillearts.com.

Cafe 44, 44 Leigh Avenue, is showing “Art + 10” through October 1. Paintings and photography, subtitled “A Slice of Life,” are the subject of the show, which includes works by Heather Stoddardt Barros, James Bongartz, Betty Curtiss, Jeannine S. Honstein, Stephen Kennedy, Ryan Lillienthal, Meg Brinster Michael, Tasha O’Neill, Katja De Ruyter, Gill Stewart, Karen Stolper, and Mary Waltham.

Firestone Library at Princeton University, has in its Milberg Gallery “Woodrow Wilson’s Journey to the White House,” through December 28. In Cotsen Children’s Library through September 30 is “Noah’s Art: Designing Arks for Children.” “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 scheduled for October 15-February 28.

Gallery at Chapin, 4101 Princeton Pike, has “Yardsong: A Botanical Adventure” through September 28. The show is of digital photography by Madelaine Shellaby. From October 1-26, drawings and paintings by Dot Bunn are on view. The reception is October 3 from 5-7 p.m. Call (609) 924-7206.

Gourgaud Gallery, Cranbury Town Hall, 23-A Main Street, Cranbury, hosts the “Winter Workshop Series Exhibit” by workshop artists including Linda Gilbert, Colleen Cahill, and Hannah Ellis through September 30. From October 7-28, Colleen Cahill will show her pastels, watercolors and mixed media pieces in a show called “Transitions.” The opening is October 7 from 1-3 p.m. Visit www.cranbury.org.

Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, presents Ming Fay’s “Canutopia” installed in the new East Gallery through February 15. Artists displayed in other GFS galleries through September include Sharon Engelstein, Willie Cole, and Marilyn Keating. See www.groundsforsculpture.org.

Hopewell Tour des Arts is an open studio tour, self-guided, that starts at the Hopewell Train Station on Railroad Place or The Brothers Moon restaurant at 7 West Broad Street, Hopewell. The fifth annual event is October 6 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and October 7 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

MCCC Gallery, Mercer County Community College, West Windsor, is showing “Roger Hane and The Big Idea,” works by the illustrator Roger Hane, through October 4. Visit www.mccc.edu/gallery.

Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street, presents “Portrait of Place: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761-1898” September 28-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.

New Hope Sidetracks Art Gallery, 2A Stockton Avenue, New Hope, presents its Sixth Annual Naked in New Hope exhibition, a group show about the human body, through November 3.

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.

Princeton Brain and Spine Care Institute at 731 Alexander Road, suite 200, presents “The Activity of Form,” a photography exhibit by Laura McClanahan, Greg McGarvey, Barbara Osterman, and Larry Parsons, through September.

Princeton Day School Anne Reid ‘72 Art Gallery is presenting “Peter Lighte: Pieces of China” as its first show of the season, October 1-5. An opening reception and silent auction is September 28. Opening hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.pds.org.

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.princ
etonlibrary.org.

The Princeton University Art Museum presents “Encounters: Conflict, Dialogue, Discovery” through September 30. The show includes more than 60 works from the museum and private collections and mixes media, historical period and place of origin. “Root and Branch,” which explores the form of a tree in art and includes several art forms, runs through November 25. The Museum has installed 12 sculptures by Ai Weiwei at Scudder Plaza, in front of Robertson Hall, through July 2013. 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 October 6-February 17. 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.

Quiet Life Gallery, 17 North Main Street, Lambertville, shows “Fearless Fighters’ Portraits” by Elise Dodeles through September 30. Visit www.quietlifegal
lery.com.

Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, has an exhibit called “The Future is Female 2.0” through the month of September.

Trisha Vergis Gallery, 287 South Main Street (Laceworks Complex), Suite 11, Lambertville, is presenting a Gallery Sneak Preview on Saturday, September 29 from 4 to 9 p.m. The preview will feature five local artists and a champagne toast to a new adventure. Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 1 to 6 p.m. Call (609) 460-4710 or visit www.trishavergisgal
lery.com.

A Mortal Courts Dracula’s Daughter in Animated Comedy

BUT DADDY, I LOVE HIM!: Count Dracula (left, voiced by Adam Sandler) desperately tries to convince his daughter that a vampire is not a compatible companion for a mortal person. However, Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez) has fallen hopelessly in love with Jonathan (not shown) who managed to crash the lavish birthday party that Dracula was giving for Mavis and refuses to listen to her father.

I know it’s a little early in the season, but if you’re ready for a Halloween film that’s a lot of fun for the whole family, have I got a cartoon for you. More romantic and funny than spooky and spine-tingling, Hotel Transylvania is a tenderhearted tale that gets most of its laughs by turning the basic scary movie convention on its head.

The picture unfolds from the point of view of Count Dracula (Adam Sandler) and a beleaguered brotherhood of peace-loving creatures who have not only been unfairly demonized as monsters but are actually more afraid of humans than humans are of monsters. Who knew? As victims of bad press and paranoia, they naturally shy away from making any contact with humans.

After his wife’s untimely demise at the hands of an angry mob, an understandably overprotective Dracula restricts his daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), to the safe confines of the family’s hilltop mansion, which is far removed from any prejudiced townsfolk who might be armed with torches and pitchforks. Inside that protective bubble, “Daddy’s Little Ghoul” was raised on nursery rhymes in which all the villains were people.

Figuring that his fellow social outcasts might also enjoy a sanctuary of tranquility safe from humanity, Dracula transforms his sprawling estate into the Hotel Transylvania, a swanky, 5-stake (read “5-star”) resort that caters strictly to fellow monsters. The plot thickens when he lowers the drawbridge over the moat to the castle to welcome his friends to celebrate Mavis’s birthday.

A passing hiker, who stumbled upon the place, manages to slip in alongside Frankenstein (Kevin James), The Mummy (CeeLo Green), The Werewolf (Steve Buscemi), Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), The Invisible Man (David Spade), and other invited guests. Jonathan (Andy Samberg) may be a mere mortal, but the party crasher is just the right age to appreciate the blossoming beauty of a rebellious teen-age vampire.

It’s cross-species love at first sight, much to the chagrin of Count Dracula whose desperate efforts to discourage his defiant daughter prove futile. His cries of “You’re barely out of your training fangs!” and “There are so many eligible monsters!” fall on deaf ears, as Mavis opts instead to heed her late-mother’s sage advice that “A zing comes along only once in a life.”

A child-friendly Halloween adventure that sends a universal message of tolerance through the oft-repeated maxim in the movie that monsters are people too.

Very Good (***). Rated PG for action, rude humor, and scary images. Running time: 91 minutes. Distributor: Sony Pictures.

Mercer Street Friends Food Bank Helps More Than Just Inner City

NO JUNK FOOD: Pallets of canned foods await delivery in the sprawling warehouse of Mercer Street Friends Food Bank, where director Phyllis Stoolmacher keeps a close eye on nutritional content. The organization will celebrate its 25th anniversary of serving those in need with a party at the warehouse on Friday, October 5. (Photo by Andrew Wilkinson)

It’s Thursday at the Mercer Street Friends’ Food Bank facility in Ewing Township, and the 10,000-square-foot warehouse is bustling with activity. As is customary each week, local charities are loading their trucks with fresh produce, canned vegetables, and packaged foods to feed the hungry of Mercer County.

In one corner of the sprawling space, volunteers repack bulk bags of pasta into smaller, family-size packages. Another group nearby assembles boxes of Parmalat milk, plastic containers of fruit cups, and other foods for the “Send Hunger Packing” boxes that go home with children who get free breakfasts and lunches at school, but might not have access to adequate food over the weekends.

There is significant hunger in Mercer County. Most local residents are unaware of how widespread a problem exists. The statistics are sobering: More than 25,000 here are “food insecure,” meaning they lack consistent access to adequate food. A large proportion of them are children. The Food Bank, which will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary with a festive fundraiser in the warehouse on October 5, moves about 50,000 pounds of food a week, to some 60 organizations including the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, Homefront, the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton, and the Princeton Deliverance Center.

Phyllis Stoolmacher, the Food Bank’s energetic director, knows the numbers by heart. She has been shepherding the program since its inception. “Our role is to garner resources and ensure that hungry people have a steady and reliable source of food,” she says, during a briskly paced tour through the warehouse. “There’s a lot of excess food out there. We secure it and redirect it to other non-profits – shelters, meal sites, day care centers. People just don’t realize the extent of hunger in Mercer County.”

The donations come from the food industry, retail stores, the USDA’s Emergency Food Assistance Program, the State Food Purchase Program, farmers, and community food drives, among other sources. And Ms. Stoolmacher is picky about what she accepts – no junk food. “We have high standards,” she says. “No soda, no candy, no Ramen noodles. About 50 percent of what we have is fruit and vegetables. It has to be nutritionally sound. We’re the second smallest food bank in the state, but we certainly have the highest standards.”

Ms. Stoolmacher likes to think of the Food Bank as not just a food distribution program, but a hunger prevention program. Through its member organizations, the Food Bank holds nutrition workshops and outreach to make healthy food more available to those in need. The federal program formerly known as food stamps is now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and the Food Bank initiated a SNAP Outreach in 2010. “People might not realize that they qualify for this, and we help them break down barriers,” Ms. Stoolmacher says. “I’m disturbed by the rhetoric of putting a negative view of food programs for the poor. This is not an entitlement program. It enables people to put food on their tables, and the money that is spent in the local community, in local supermarkets, is revenue.”

Middle class people who live in the suburbs are the fastest growing segment of those the organization serves. “Most people understand that hunger is a result of poverty,” Ms. Stoolmacher says. “But they assume that it is an inner city problem. That’s not true. Since the recession, it has spread to the suburbs. People have lost their jobs, and they are just not finding work. We’re seeing more food pantries opening in Hamilton Township than in the city of Trenton. We work with several groups in Princeton. There isn’t a community in Mercer County, or America, that doesn’t have hunger.”

A program of the Trenton-based, Quaker-affiliated Mercer Street Friends, the Food Bank was initially housed in the city’s Rescue Mission. The spacious warehouse in Ewing Township’s West Trenton section is outfitted with refrigeration and freezer areas. It is the logical spot for the gala party that will mark the organization’s twenty-fifth birthday. “We’re a Quaker-based organization, so we’re not going to do this at the Hilton,” Ms. Stoolmacher says. “We wanted to note the anniversary and use it as a way to raise funds and awareness. So what better place than our warehouse?”

Food, wine, music, and a silent auction are part of the festivities. Auction items range from a Michael Graves signed drawing to a week in France, with much in between. Tickets are $75.

“We’re celebrating and we’re thanking our volunteers, because we couldn’t function without them,” Ms. Stoolmacher says. “They do the physical work. They make things happen. And we really believe in engaging the community.”