Town Topics Newspaper, March 1, 2023

Eisgruber Visits Council For Annual Dialogue About Town and Gown

Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber delivered his annual update on the University to Princeton Council at its meeting Monday evening, marking the 10th year of what has become something of a tradition.

Echoing some of the issues put forth in his recent State of the University letter to faculty, students, and staff, Eisgruber spoke brie y about the campus since returning to full, post-pandemic enrollment. A continued commitment to diversity, increases in stipends and nancial aid, engagement with the town, and the value of a liberal arts education were among the topics he spoke about before listening to comments and concerns from members of Council.

Eisgruber expressed his gratitude to the town for its work with the University during the pandemic. “Obviously, we’re not completely out of it yet,” he said. “On the other hand, I’ve been very happy over the last week to watch the numbers dropping in Mercer County and New Jersey, and it’s great to be able to collaborate in the way we did. So thank you for that.”

The addition of two new residential colleges and the largest incoming freshman class in University history are among the achievements of the past year, Eisgruber said. More students from low- and middle-income backgrounds are enrolled. Students who use the University’s Pay with Points program, which allows those with unlimited meal plans to use some dining points at selected off-campus locations, have brought “fresh enthusiasm for interacting with the town,” he said. “I think they’re also very interested in engaging with the town in other ways, including volunteer efforts.”

Among Eisgruber’s concerns for the future is the effect of technology on attention spans. “One of the most profound questions right now is how you take the ethos of a liberal arts university and project that into this rapidly evolving technology we are dealing with right now,” he said. “Distraction has risen to the top of my list.”

Councilwoman Leticia Fraga thanked Eisgruber for listening to concerns from the governing body over the years, and making good on them. As an example, she recalled describing to him the Habitat for Humanity project to build two

Trash Cart Rollout Causes Some Confusion

Between a delay in delivery of new trash carts and a yer with the wrong date for pickup of the old ones, the mid-February debut of Princeton’s new trash collection system did not go as smoothly as planned. Several complaints were lodged on the app NextDoor from residents who claimed they were not aware of the new program, despite information in the town’s newsletter, stories in the local press, on yers, and on social media.

Princeton Councilwoman Eve Niedergang, who serves on the Infrastructure and Operations Committee and is liaison to the Princeton Environmental Commission, has been busy posting information to explain the program and correct some misperceptions about its purposes.

“I’ve been very active on NextDoor in the past few days, to repeat the facts about the program,” she said Tuesday morning. “It was signi cant to me that no one came onto the Council meeting last night to complain. So hopefully, the information is getting out there.”

The new system is “part of a larger effort to make more scally and environmentally responsible changes to how the

town approaches waste management,” reads a press release compiled by Taft Communications, the town’s communications consultant, and issued by the municipality after the rollout.

Each household has received one 64-gallon trash cart, designed to save labor by the use of robotic arms. Carts are equipped with a chip linking them to a speci c address. Residents who feel they need an additional cart can order another one for $300 a year; those who want a

32-gallon cart as a second receptacle can get one for $150. Households experiencing economic hardship can submit a request for a reduced fee.

Responding to concerns about those costs, Niedergang said, “We’re very sensitive to the fact that for some families it would be a challenge, but hopefully we are providing an incentive for people to recycle more, and think about how they purchase items.”

The press release from the municipality

University Grad Students Take Steps To Form Union; Administration is Silent

On February 24, just nine days after a rally calling for fair wages, more affordable housing from the University, and the right to form a union, the Princeton Graduate Students United (PGSU) announced that a majority of Princeton University’s more than 3,000 graduate students had signed union cards.

The University’s graduate student workers can now le for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board since more than 30 percent of graduate

students have signed a union card, but PGSU leaders are going for larger percentages before taking the next steps.

“Right now we’re at a majority,” said union representative Aditi Rao, a graduate student in classics. “We’d love to be at a super majority, which is to say we would love to have 67 percent of the graduate body sign their union card. At that point it would be very clear to us and to the University that the grounds are clear for a win.”

Continued on Page 9

SOAKING IN SUCCESS: Members of the Princeton High girls’ swim team celebrate in the pool last Saturday after PHS defeated Chatham 91-79 in New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Group B state final at the Gloucester County Institute of Technology. The Tigers ended the season with a 14-0 record as they earned the program’s first girls’ state title since 1993. For details on the meet, see page 27. (Photo provided by Carly Misiewicz)

John Keats Lives On in PU Professor Susan Wolfson’s New Book

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FAMILY LAW DEPARTMENT

Community Foundation Board Welcomes New Members

Three new members have been appointed to the board of trustees of the Princeton Area Community Foundation, and a founding board member has been named trustee emeritus.

Divorce / Custody / Parenting Time / Marital Property Settlement Agreement / Prenuptial Agreements /Domestic Violence / Child Relocation Issues / Domestic Partnerships / Mediation / Claims of Unmarried Cohabitants / Palimony / Post Judgment Enforcement and Modification / Appeals

Lovepreet Buttar

Lovepreet Buttar, a managing director at Mercadien; Mike Van Wagner, who recently retired as NJM Insurance Group’s vice president of public affairs; and Victoria Rivera-Cruz, the director of HR compliance and employee relations at Cenlar FSB were appointed to three-year terms on the board.

The new trustees bring expertise in accounting, public affairs, and human resources to support the board’s committees.

“We want to welcome our newest trustees, whose tremendous skills and valuable experience complement the talent of our current board members,” said Sonia Delgado, board chair. “We look forward to working with them to continue to make an impact in our communities. We also want to thank our departing trustees for their years of volunteer service on our board.”

The board also voted to name John D. “Jack” Wallace as trustee emeritus. Wallace was one of the Community Foundation’s first board members when the organization was established more than 30 years ago. Since 1991, the Community Foundation has awarded more than $190 million in grants to nonprofits.

Wallace is a former mayor of Princeton Township, the

retired chairman and chief executive of CoreStates New Jersey National Bank, and a volunteer who served in a leadership capacity on the boards of several other local nonprofits.

“Today, the Princeton Area Community Foundation is able to impact many lives and causes in our region because 30 years ago visionaries like Jack Wallace believed in the power of philanthropy,” said Jeffrey M. Vega, president and CEO of the Community Foundation. “Jack has been our ardent supporter for all this time and his belief in our mission will continue to inspire us into the future.”

Victoria Rivera-Cruz

Vega also thanked the seven board members who completed their terms of service for their years of commitment and volunteerism: Ana Berdecia, Jeanne Besser, Vernon Bramble, Shawn Ellsworth, Elizabeth “Betsy” McNeilly, Jamie Kyte Sapoch, and Michael Ullmann.

Topics In Brief

Porchfest Needs Hosts and Performers : The Arts Council of Princeton is seeking hosts and performers for the April 29 Porchfest. The deadline is Friday, March 3. Visit artscouncilofprinceton.org.

Call For Land Stewards: Join the Friends of Princeton Open Space (FOPOS) in March and April for morning or afternoon volunteer sessions under the guidance of FOPOS’ director of natural resources and stewardship to assist with various conservation projects at the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve. Weekday and weekend sessions available. More at fopos.org/getinvolved.

Free Rabies Clinic: New Jersey residents can get rabies shots for dogs or cats on Saturday, March 4 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at Princeton First Aid & Rescue Squad, 2 Mount Lucas Road. Park at 1 Valley Road or 400 Witherspoon Street. Pets must be at least three months old. Dogs must be leashed; cats in a carrier. All must be accompanied by an adult. (609) 924-2728.

Literacy New Jersey Online High School Diploma and Citizenship Classes : For Mercer County residents 18 and older, free classes will be held starting April 3. The diploma classes are held on Zoom; citizenship classes are on Zoom and in person at Princeton Public Library. For more information, call (609) 587-6027 or email mercer@LiteracyNJ.org.

Help in Removing Spotted Lantern Fly Egg Masses : Student researchers from the Princeton International School of Mathematics and Science are available to examine your property and assist in removing the masses. Contact joseph.miller@prismsus.org or SLFresearch@prismsus.org.

Pickleball Courts Now Open to the Public : The courts behind Community Park Elementary School and Community Park Pool are open dawn to dusk on a first-come, first-served basis. Free, no reservations required. This is a trial period through April 1.

Recreation Department Summer Jobs : The Princeton Recreation Department is looking for customer service staff, a day camp counselor, teen travel camp counselor, day camp supervisor, seasonal maintenance worker, and lifeguard/swim instructor for the summer season. Visit princetonnj.gov.

Join Boards, Commissions, or Committees : The municipality is looking to fill vacancies with residents of Princeton who are willing to attend regularly scheduled meetings. Visit princetonnj.gov for more information.

is a many splendored thing... until it's

John A Hartmann, III Chairman

Lydia Fabbro-Keephart Partner

Jennifer Haythorn Partner

Nicole Huckerby Partner

CREATIVITY AND MEMORY: A series of exhibitions, performances, and events celebrating and exploring the life and creative process of Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and former Princeton University professor, kicked off last week.

Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and a former Princeton University professor who died in 2019, is making her presence felt in multiple powerful exhibitions and events honoring her work and her memory

in Princeton over the coming months.

“Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory,” an exhibition of more than 100 items from the University’s archives, opened last Wednesday in the Princeton University Library’s Milberg Gallery, and last Saturday saw the opening of “Cycle of Creativity: Alison Saar and the Toni Morrison Papers,” an art exhibit at the Princeton Art Museum’s Art@ Bainbridge on Nassau Street.

“In all, the ambitious initiative suggests the enormous influence that Morrison had not only on Princeton — where she taught for 17 years beginning in 1989, later lending her name to Morrison Hall, home to the school’s Department of African American Studies — but also on the culture of American life,” states a University press release.

The “Sites of Memory” exhibit is divided into six sections, not so much chronological as thematic, moving freely through time and space, in the manner of Morrison’s novels. Throughout the six sections —Beginnings, Writing Time, Thereness-ness, Wonderings and Wanderings, Genealogies of Black Feminism,and Speculative Futures — the emphasis is on Morrison’s creative process as it evolves from memory and deep research.

“I’ve written on scraps of paper, in hotels on hotel stationery, in automobiles: If it arrives, you know. If you know it really has come, then

The Milberg Gallery exhibition includes several rooms displaying Morrison’s manuscript drafts, letters, photographs, a two-hour video interview from 1987, and other items that the University acquired in 2014. Objects for this exhibit have been drawn from nearly 400 boxes of material collected by Morrison and now owned by the Princeton University Library.

There are yellow sheets from legal pads on which she sketched out character diagrams and relationships, designs for plot sequences, and drafts of text. There are detailed genealogies for the characters from Beloved , Post-it notes, day planners with lines of dialogue, and a screen play for Tar Baby, which later became a novel.

There are outlines of The Bluest Eye, her first published novel; drafts of Song of Solomon ; and hand drawn maps of Ruby, the fictional center of her novel Paradise. There are letters from her editors discussing drafts of her novels, an array of photographs, including one of Morrison as a student actor at Howard University playing a role in Shakespeare’s King Lear, and a striking, spirited letter from the legendary singer Nina Simone.

(Photo by Princeton University, Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy)

Toni Morrison

Continued from Preceding Page you have to put it down,” Morrison wrote in her 1993 The Art of Fiction, as quoted in the exhibit.

In its brochure about the exhibition the Library states, “In its breadth, the collection invites us to consider how history, memory, and the literary imagination relate to one another anew.”

In Art@Bainbridge across Nassau Street from the University Library, Los Angelesbased artist Alison Saar has taken inspiration from Morrison’s archives to create sculptures, prints, and textiles exploring themes of music, work, spiritual practices, and ancestry as elements of the Black American experience.

Particularly prominent in both Morrison’s writing and in Saar’s work are the lives and experiences of Black women, as the past, present, and future interweave.

“As can be seen throughout these galleries, the practices of Saar and Morrison are rooted in Black history,” the exhibition brochure states. “They call on ancestors, both the named and the unknown, not in order to impose a historical viewpoint but rather to define a space for present and future generations of African American artists, writers, thinkers, and creators to see themselves represented and to imagine their own voices.”

Additional Toni Morrisonrelated events coming up include a USPS-sponsored Toni Morrison Forever Stamp dedication ceremony on March 7 at 11 a.m. in Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus; a threeday symposium on Toni Morrison and the Archive, featuring prominent scholars, writers, and artists, March 23-25, taking place mostly in the Lewis Center for the Arts; a Toni Morrison Workshop at McCarter’s Berlind Theatre Rehearsal Room on March 24 and 25, with performance artists Daniel Alexander Jones and Mame Diarra Samantha Speis presenting original work reflecting on Morrison’s influence; Toni Morrison Lectures by Farah Jasmine March 28-30 at 5 p.m. in McCosh 10; and a newly commissioned work inspired by the Toni Morrison Archives composed and performed by Cecile McLorin Salvant and Sullivan Fortner on April 12 at 6 and 9 p.m. in Richardson Auditorium.

The Milberg Gallery “Sites of Memory” exhibit continues through June 4. “Cycle of Creativity” at Art@Bainbridge runs through July 9. All the March 23-25 symposium events are currently sold out, with the possibility of more seats becoming available. The April 12 Princeton University Concerts performances are also sold out.

“It is difficult to overstate the importance of Toni Morrison’s writing to American literature, art, and life,” said Autumn Womack, Princeton University associate professor of English and African American Studies, who curated the “Sites of Memory” exhibition. “This exhibition draws us toward the unexplored corners of her writing process and unknown aspects of her creative investments that only live in this archive.”

—Donald Gilpin

Question of the Week: “What are your favorite spring blooms?”

(Photos by Weronika

A. Plohn)

“I am from Holland, so naturally daffodils and tulips are on my list. I also like crocuses, forsythia, and the blossoms of the cherry trees.”

Peng: “I like to see the white pine flowers on my trees. I have plenty of pine trees in my backyard, so every spring I get to see them.”

Andrew: “I like cherry blossoms. We have a few of them in my backyard, and it’s nice to see them in bloom.”

Ketra: “I like hyacinths. They are so purple and they smell so wonderful.”

Mary: “I love when everything is blooming, but my favorites are the lilacs.”

—Ketra Gardner, Elko, Nev., with Mary Tyson, Hillsborough

Kirk: “I like the clean white blossoms of cherry trees in the spring. They are just beautiful.”

Aubrey: “Redbud trees are beautiful. There is just something about them that always make me think of spring. There are different colors of them too.”

Boonton, with Aubrey Haines, Mount Laurel

—Kirk

Eva: “I like the cherry trees and peonies. I have great childhood memories about peonies that always bring me back to the Chinese tradition. We associate peonies with love, and they are an important part of our tradition. Every time I see those beautiful flowers I think of my country.”

—Eva Dong with Adam and Joey Zhou, Princeton

—Anneke Krainen, Boston, Mass.

Savarese,

—Peng and Andrew Gao, West Windsor

Trash Cart Rollout continued from page one outlines the changes to the system. “More efficient bulk waste collection routes reduce the consumption of fuel and the total hours worked, helping to put less of a strain on both finances and emissions,” it reads, also mentioning “anticipated cost savings from using one driver and a ‘tipper’ instead of two drivers.”

The changes in hauling trash and managing waste “will not only help us contain costs, but also strengthen our response to climate change and create a healthier relationship with the environment,” Niedergang is quoted in the release.

Due to pandemic-related labor and materials shortages, the cost of managing waste has risen dramatically.

For Princeton, that increase has been estimated to be 100 percent higher than the existing cost.

“The real thing driving this was cost,” said Niedergang. “We have other costs, too, that have gone up, so we’re trying to be careful stewards of the taxpayers’ money. For most people, one can is going to be fine. For some, it is not, and that’s why we have a financial assistance program.”

The next stage of the rollout is scheduled to begin Monday, March 13, when those who want to dispose of old trash bins or carts can place them, empty, at the curb on collection day. A sign must be taped to the bins, reading “TRASH.”

For more information, contact the municipality’s waste team at wasteinfo@princetonnj.gov, or Niedergang at eniedergang@princetonnj.gov.

—Anne Levin

Eisgruber Visits Council continued from page one houses in the WitherspoonJackson neighborhood, and the University’s resulting contributions of funding and “sweat equity” to get the job done. Fraga also told Eisgruber that the town is exploring options for a community center.

“This will require collaborations with several entities including the county as well as many of our community partners, which I’m hopeful will include the University,” she said.

Councilman David Cohen told Eisgruber he has had discussions with University Architect Ron McCoy about collaborations related to resilience and reducing the effects of climate change, specifically regarding stormwater planning. “I know it’s on Ron’s radar, and I want to put it on yours and hope we can get full support,” he said.

Councilwoman Eve Niedergang asked Eisgruber if there is any thought to developing housing for low-income workers at the University who can’t

afford to live locally and have to commute. Council President Mia Sacks focused on the importance of maintaining the quality of the town’s public schools. She asked if certain resources, such as the expertise of engineering students, could be channeled in an advisory capacity, especially related to the expansion of facilities that will be necessary as new affordable housing is built.

Councilman Leighton Newlin also brought up the possibility of collaborations with the University, specifically involving the Princeton Housing Authority. “For the future that I think is very bright for public housing in Princeton, I hope that we will continue to collaborate and use the Princeton Housing Authority as a petri dish for the School of Architecture and School of Engineering, and other schools that might have some sort of adaptability to public housing in Princeton,” he said.

The next meeting of Council is March 13 at 7 p.m.

—Anne Levin

741 Alexander Rd., Princeton • 924-2880

GARDEN ELECTRIC”: This year’s PHS Philadelphia Flower Show returns indoors at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 1101 Arch Street, Philadelphia, March 4-12. For first time, the flower show will adopt the concept of a winding promenade, creating a lush, self-guided experience for guests to view and engage with gardens and flowers up close. For tickets and more information, visit phsonline.org.

Rider University Grant

Addresses Food Insecurity Rider University is the recipient of a more than $18,000 grant from the state Office of the Secretary of Higher Education to combat hunger on campus. The funding will address issues of food insecurity, a barrier to learning which has intensified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The monies are to be used through June to help offset expenses associated with operating the Rider Food and Resource Pantry. The grant will also make available meal swipes for students in need, create awareness of the availability of the food pantry as a resource and bring attention to the issue of hunger on campus.

“Every student deserves to be able to focus on their studies and not have to feel

stressed about affording or finding food,” says Leanna Fenneberg, vice president for student affairs. “This grant will help us sustain a number of initiatives that have made a difference for our students.”

Rider has been engaged in the effort to address student food insecurity for several years. In 2018, the University formed the Campus Hunger Task Force and Resource Pantry Advisory Board, which meets regularly to discuss issues related to student food insecurity, access, optimizing communication with students and broader hunger education initiatives.

The number of students using the campus food pantry as a resource has been rising over the last five years. Last semester, 174 students visited the

(Rendering courtesy of Pennsylvania Horticultural Society) pantry, a steady increase from 43 students when the pantry first opened in spring 2018.

The pantry is open every weekday and one evening, giving students access to food, toiletries, school supplies, select clothing, and a microwave and mini refrigerator lending program. Throughout the year, the pantry also features special items such as winter outerwear; residence hall essentials including desk lamps and storage containers; and reusable items like cutlery, plates, bowls, and water bottles to promote sustainable practices.

CANCER CARE

Advanced Cancer Care for Women.

Whether you’ve been diagnosed with breast, gynecologic or any other type of cancer, it is important to have a highly knowledgeable care team who listens carefully to your questions and concerns. At the Penn Medicine Princeton Cancer Center, our multidisciplinary team provides exceptional clinical care, personal attention and compassionate support throughout your journey. Your care team is tailored to your individual needs and may include board certified oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons, specially trained nurses, a dedicated women’s health nurse navigator and others. All backed by Penn Medicine, a world leader in clinical care, education, and research, so you’ll have access to the expertise and advanced treatment options at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center. Visit PrincetonHCS.org/Cancer to learn more.

Women’s Health

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Tiger Park Vigil and Chapel Remembrance Commemorate Anniversary of Ukraine War

On Friday, February 24, one year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, gatherings in Ukraine and around the world took note of the somber anniversary. In Princeton a vigil and rally for a “diplomatic surge,” led by the Coalition for Peace Action (CFPA), took place in Tiger Park at Palmer Square in the afternoon, and an evening event in the University Chapel, led by Ukrainian students, commemorated “365 Days of War” with student speeches and music.

“It was somber and there was a feeling of reflection, but also hope,” said Princeton University first-year student Sofiia Shapovalova, one of the organizers of the University Chapel event. “The students finished their speeches by saying ‘Slava Ukraini,’ which means ‘Glory to Ukraine,’ and the audience would respond with ‘Heroyam Slava,’ which means ‘Glory to the heroes.’ That was very beautiful.”

Shapovalova, who was born in Ukraine, immigrated to the United States in 2008 with her parents, but the rest of her family is still in Ukraine. She reflected on the past year in a speech at the chapel event and also in an article pub -

lished last week in the Daily Princetonian.

“Every day, the people of Ukraine exist in a state of unimaginable horror,” she wrote. “They exist, carrying on with their work and studies, taking care of their loved ones, and praying for a tomorrow they don’t know will come.”

Shapovalova’s mother’s side of the family is in Dnipro, and her father’s side of the family had to relocate from Bakhmut and is now also in Dnipro. “I just want this to stop,” she said. “My uncle is in the army right now. My grandparents had to move, and my grandma doesn’t fully understand the situation, but she talks about how she wants to go back.”

She continued, “My mum’s best friend left the country and is a refugee in Germany. I have another friend who has been working to go to university, and it’s so much more difficult to apply right now because of the situation. I want the people to be able to resume their lives.”

The event in the University Chapel drew a crowd of almost 150 people. “A lot of people from town,” said Shapovalova, “a whole population of Ukrainians

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and Russians that I didn’t know existed came and some brought their flags and their children.”

Eight student speakers — Lasha Shamugia, Sofia Makovetska, Veronika Kitsul, Zhenia Khalabadzhakh, Lianne Chapin, Daryna Yushchenko, Nadya Fischenko and Shapovalova — offered reflections on the war from a range of background experiences. They told about family and friends in Ukraine, as they described how they remember the day of the invasion and living through the past year.

The University Chapel Choir, the Princeton University Glee Club, and Princeton Decem presented vocal musical numbers to complement the commemoration.

At Tiger Park on Nassau Street across from Nassau Presbyterian Church earlier in the day, from 12 to 1 p.m., about 40 people gathered to demonstrate for “a diplomatic surge to prevent endless and nuclear war in Ukraine.”

Carrying signs calling for “Mediation Not Escalation in Ukraine,” “Diplomacy Not War,” and “No Nukes in Ukraine,” the group stood in a vigil for 40 minutes, which was followed by a short rally in which CFPA Executive Director the Rev. Robert Moore spoke and read his recently published op-ed on the need for intensification of diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.

He also read a letter from former Royal Navy and United States Navy fighter pilot Richard Moody warning against supplying fighter aircraft to Ukraine.

“The urgent thing right now is to find a way to deescalate and to get a cease fire,” Moore said. “That isn’t getting the attention and prioritizing it deserves.”

Noting that the war had reached a stalemate with both sides seeking military superiority, Moore continued, “We need to find a way to prioritize diplomacy, not soft-headed diplomacy — it should be hard-nosed diplomacy. Even a cease-fire like the one that ended the Korean War would be better than what we have now.”

Moore emphasized the danger of the use of nuclear weapons as long as the war continues. “We must support urgent and effective diplomacy to bring the yearold Ukraine war to a rapid end, save untold lives being lost in another endless war, and protect humanity from the danger of nuclear holocaust,” he said.

In the conclusion to her article Shapovalova wrote, “The one-year anniversary of war in Ukraine is a difficult event to wrestle with. The word itself — anniversary — seems wrong, as if there is something to be celebrated. The battles of one year ago persist today, at this very moment. There is so much that remains to be done, and a global collaboration is imperative to effectuating an end to this conflict.”

She continued, “In that same moment though, the people of Ukraine exist in a state of remarkable perseverance. They exist, and that is precisely what one year of the war should celebrate — life in the dark and in the midst of death. It is life that flows, in part, within me too.”

—Donald Gilpin

Restaurant Week Returns With Variety of Participants

More than 40 local eateries will take part in this year’s version of Princeton Restaurant Week, being held March 5-11. The annual celebration celebrates the town’s wide-ranging styles of cuisine. Many of the restaurants are offering not only special menus, but also prix fixe and reduced pricing during the event.

Participating restaurants include LiLLiPiES Bakery, the Alchemist & Barrister, Ani Ramen House, The Bagel Nook, The Blue Bears, Blue Point Grill, Cross Culture, Delizioso Bakery and Café, Elements, Elite Five Sushi & Grill, Eno Terra, Ficus, Jammin’ Crepes, Kristine’s, La Rosa Chicken & Grill, Lan Ramen, Le Kiosk, Local Greek, Maman, Mamoun’s Falafel, Medittera, and The Meeting House.

Also participating are Metro North Bar & Grill, La Mezzaluna, Mi Espana, The Mint Indian, Mistral, Nomad Pizza, PJ’s Pancake House, Princeton Soup & Sandwich Company, Say Cheez, Small Bites by Local Greek, Springdale Golf Club, Taim Medierranean Kitchen, Teresa’s Pizza & Wine Bar, Tipple & Rose, Tortuga’s Mexican Village, Trattoria Procaccini, Winberie’s, Witherspoon Grill, and the Yankee Doodle Tap Room.

To view menus and pricing, visit experienceprinceton.org/restaurant-week.

Community College Students

Participate in Flower Show

With seven medals over eight years at the Philadelphia Flower Show, Mercer County Community College (MCCC) horticulture program students — with additional financial support this year from the MCCC Foundation — will participate again at the upcoming show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

The oldest and largest indoor flower show in the world, the Philadelphia Flower Show is an annual event that attracts over 250,000 people. In addition to acres of gardens, the show hosts competitions in horticulture and artistic floral arranging, gardening presentations and demonstrations, over an eight-day period.

“MCCC horticulture students begin preparing for the spring show during the fall semester, and it is an amazing learning experience,” said Horticulture and Plant Science Professor Amy Ricco.

“It is literally the pinnacle of the year.”

Mercer County Community College has been participating in the Philadelphia Flower Show for over nine years. The event helps students put their horticultural planning, forcing, planting, building, and organizational skills to use against a tight deadline. “The experience is similar to working for a very tough client,” Ricco said.

Last year’s group took home a number of awards including a silver medal, the Chicago Horticultural Society Flower Show medal and an Herb Society of America Award for its display “Releaf.” In 2020, students won a gold medal and an Herb Society of America Award for their Mediterranean display “Verdant Veranda.” Leading up to 2020, MCCC’s medal count was one bronze, three silvers and one gold.

Several months ago, it looked as though the quality of MCCC’s display would be compromised due to a technical snafu. During the pandemic, the show was held at an outdoor location in south Philadelphia instead of the Convention Center. “This year the show is indoors and in March,” said Ricco. “We were all jubilant until I realized we had already used a portion of this year’s budget to pay the expenses for last June’s outdoor show; we were scrambling for funds.”

The Pennsylvania Horticulture Society and Mercer County Community College Foundation stepped in to help.

“Then the MCCC Foundation stepped in and granted us $10,000, which we desperately needed,” said Ricco. “The students and I are so very grateful to all the Foundation donors, Mercer County Community College and the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society who all together made it possible for us to compete.”

The Philadelphia Flower Show will be held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from March 4 to 12. Visit phsonline.org/the-flower-show for tickets.

Local family owned business for over 40

University Grad Students

continued from page one

The next step in the process towards unionization is likely to be petitioning the University for voluntary recognition. “It’s rare that an employer will voluntarily recognize its workers and allow them to form a union,” said Tim Alberdingk, a University graduate student in computer science and member of the PGSU communications committee.

“So you go to the National Labor Relations Board to organize a date for an election. If 50 percent plus one vote yes, you have a legally recognized union and you can create a bargaining committee to bargain with your employer. We would then have a direct say over conditions and any kind of changes we want to see at Princeton we could propose in a contract.”

The University has declined to make any public comment on this campaign and the prospect of a graduate student union. When asked for a comment this week, University Director of Media Relations Michael Hotchkiss said the University had nothing to add at this time.

PGSU leaders noted that University President Christopher Eisgruber is planning an event later this month when he will be speaking to graduate students, and he might use that opportunity to define the University’s position on this issue.

“It’s clear what’s going to happen if the vote comes to the table,” said Rao. “And it’s clear what the graduate workers here at Princeton want. I hope the University can see that it’s in all of our favors to just accept the reality as it stands and negotiate and bargain with us in good faith.”

Rao and Alberdingk both pointed out issues facing graduate student workers and cases where the University has failed to provide for them. Among the priorities mentioned were affordable housing near campus, cost of living pay increases, improved benefits for international students, and a seat at the table in negotiating working conditions. They emphasized the financial strains of recent inflation and of living in the town of Princeton.

In January 2022 the University announced an increase of about 25 percent in graduate fellowship

and stipend rates to about $40,000, but both Rao and Alberdingk said that increase was not sufficient to meet the needs of many.

“The increased stipends they provide have done little to mitigate the massive cost of living increases in the past year,” said Rao. “I’m glad to be part of an historic movement of graduate workers across the country who are saying that for far too long graduate students have been the backbone of how universities function in the U.S., and it’s time that the University recognizes that labor.”

Princeton University offers some subsidized graduate student housing, Albergingk said, but that housing is limited and many students have to go looking for housing in the area and end up paying more than 40 percent of their salaries.

“The increase last year helped keep people above water, at least temporarily, but we’re seeing that improvement evaporate with the increased cost of groceries, gas, and everything that people need on an everyday basis,” he said.

Alberdingk also emphasized that the graduate students had no voice in

making decisions that affected their living and working conditions. “We are totally dependent on the University to make decisions about which programs they want to extend and what they want to provide us in terms of support,” he said. “There are no guarantees year to year. You are dependent on a relatively small group of people. You are dependent on their approval, their signoff on what you are doing, and their level of support for your academic progress.”

Rao added, “There are such discrepancies across the board. The University has not standardized any of its management protocols as they pertain to grievances and other big issues on the table.”

Unionization efforts by graduate students at other Ivy League institutions have met with some success in recent years. Yale University was the most recent to unionize in January, after a campaign that had lasted for decades with much opposition from the administration. Columbia, Brown, and Harvard graduate students have also formed unions.

At a February 21 meeting the Graduate Student Government voted to

support the PGSU in its efforts to unionize, and Aberdingk promised that the efforts to enlist support would continue. “We are going to be doing more to build on that momentum and organize more activities,” he said. “Graduate workers deserve a voice in how we do our work. We deserve a say in how we do our jobs. By working together we can accomplish much more than we can on our own. That’s what has inspired me to be part of this effort.”

Rao pointed out that the graduate students’ efforts are a push for better conditions for undergraduates and the whole University as well. “When our conditions are better, their conditions are better,” she said. “I hope people realize that this is a win overall for the larger community, not just the graduate body. There are a lot of people who are relying on a better set of circumstances that comes at the other end of this decision.”

—Donald Gilpin

IS ON

Local Female Nonprofit Is Now Statewide

The female-led networking and nonprofit group Women in Development, founded in Mercer County, has formally changed its name to Women In Development – New Jersey (WID-NJ).

WID-NJ has supported women in their fundraising and nonprofit careers since 2008. Currently, this group offers monthly informational roundtables, networking events, opportunities for mentorship, a platform for nonprofit job postings, and a strong network of support.

Prior to the pandemic, WID-NJ met in person on a monthly basis in Mercer county. Now, both members and non-members can take part in roundtables on Zoom and attend in-person networking events. Virtual programming has allowed WID-NJ to broaden its reach to the entire state. WID-NJ invites all women working in the nonprofit and development sector to their open house, Career Exploration and Success, on Wednesday, March 29 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Princeton Friends School. To register for the open house and learn more about WID-NJ, visit widnewjersey.org.

Updates

to Environmental Resource Inventory Are Presented at General Information Session

At a February 22 meeting of the Princeton Environmental Commission, details of the town’s Environmental Resource Inventory (ERI), which is currently being updated, were presented to the public. The general information session was designed to encourage feedback from the public.

While only a few people offered comments at the end of the session, Princeton’s Open Space Manager Cindy Taylor said anyone who has suggestions, special knowledge, or data they want to contribute can do so by emailing her at ctaylor@princetonnj.gov.

“We want to know if anyone has a specific question about Princeton’s environmental resources,” she said. “We don’t want to overlook something that is important, or perhaps specific to Princeton.”

An ERI is a compilation of texts, tables, and maps detailing natural characteristics and environmentally significant features of a municipality. The document acts as a baseline for measuring and evaluating resource protection issues, and a tool for decision-making by the

municipality. The standard for updating an ERI is once every 10 years. Princeton’s last ERI was in 2010.

The new document, which will not replace the 2010 ERI but augment it, will ultimately be adopted into the town’s master plan and used to make land use decisions. The recommendations are not binding, Taylor said. “Most of what this will give us is information-gathering and analysis.”

Ryan Gibson of the ecological restoration company Ecotone displayed the new recreation and open space map that has been created, noting that it is fluid and will be updated as more properties are acquired for open space. Included on the map are areas designated as municipal or state parks, areas restricted from some development, properties protected by Green Acres regulations, and land that is owned by nonprofits such as D&R Greenway Land Trust, The Watershed Institute, and Friends of Princeton Open Space. Not included are private golf courses with no environmental restrictions, playgrounds,

or natural open space areas without any environmental restrictions. About 3,202 acres are designated for recreation and open space in Princeton, Gibson said. About 40 percent is owned by the municipality and 40 percent is owned privately.

The collection of data has changed and improved since the last ERI was done. Newer technologies and tools are being used. “But there may be some we don’t have time for, which is why we want some feedback tonight,” said Gibson. “We’re only as good as our data allows us to be. Good data is good analysis.”

Data on land use, soil mapping, invasive species, climate, and environmental justice is to be collected. An inventory of bike paths, sidewalks, and public parking will also be done, pointing out specific areas of habitat connectivity and analyzing “greenspace deserts,” which Gibson said are not within a half-mile of open space.

Erica Mosner, a resident of Princeton Community Village, a mix of moderate- and lowincome housing, commented that she hopes that area does not get overlooked in the ERI. “Many people who live here are very conscious of these sorts of issues,” she said. “We do have issues with our trees and shrubs. And we’d be happy to help in any way.”

For further information about the ERI and a recording of the meeting, visit princetonnj.gov and click on the link for the Environmental Commission.

—Anne Levin

Escher Wins Two Prizes For Stockton Biography

Connie Escher’s She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton: The Illustrated Odyssey of a Princeton Slave, published a year ago , has been recognized with two major awards, one from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance (NJSAA) and another from the New Jersey Historical Commission.

The NJSAA prize in the non-fiction scholarly category, presented in partnership with the History and Preservation Section of the New Jersey Library Association and the Special Collections and University Archives of Rutgers University Libraries, was awarded last October to Escher, a Lawrenceville resident and retired Princeton Public Schools history teacher. It recognizes a work that reflects “a new understanding of New Jersey’s history and culture, demonstrates evidence of original research in the application of New Jersey resources, and/or reveals new insights into a topic,” according to the NJSAA website.

Escher will receive her second award, the Richard P. McCormick Prize, on March 8 from the New Jersey Historical Commission at a ceremony in Prudence Hall at Thomas Edison State University in Trenton. The award, given every year to the author of an outstanding scholarly book on New Jersey history and carrying a prize of $1,000, cites She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton as the best scholarly biography of a New Jersey subject by a New Jersey author in 2022.

Escher described her book

about Stockton, a 19th century freed slave who is now famous as a groundbreaking educator, missionary, and key figure in the history of Princeton, as a “part of American history.”

Escher noted, at the time of its publication, “I think this book will be part of the national conversation. This is a big American story about global literacy.”

New Trustees Announced

For Big Brothers Big Sisters

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Mercer County (BBBSMercer) has appointed three new trustees to its board: Armando Alfonso, an environmental engineer for the City of Trenton; Shikha Bajaj, vice president at Publicis Sapient; and Janelle Hazell, the COO of Rue Insurance.

The new trustees join a board of 18, two of whom –Herb Ames and Tisha Cole –joined in 2022, and some of whom have provided their support for more than 20 years.

“Since the pandemic, BBBS-Mercer has sought to expand our board of directors with highly qualified individuals who are dedicated to our mission of youth mentoring and reflective of the communities we serve,” said Kate Noonan, executive director. “We are thrilled to have new directors Armando, Shikha, Janelle, Herb, and Tisha on the board and know their passion and commitment will move our organization forward this year.”

BBBS-Mercer’s board is currently led by Chair/President Gary Marx, principal, BlueCap Economic Advisors, who joined the board in 2019 and became chair in January 2023.

Police Blotter

On February 25, at 12:17 a.m., subsequent to a one-car motor vehicle crash investigation on State Road, the driver, a 32-year-old male from Bristol, Pa., was arrested for driving while intoxicated, hindering his own apprehension, and being under the influence of a controlled dangerous substance. The driver was also found to be wanted out of Bucks County, Pa. He was transported to police headquarters where he was processed, charged accordingly, and later transported to the Mercer County Correctional Facility.

On February 23, at 2:45 p.m., an individual reported that, sometime between 4 a.m. on February 20 and 12:30 a.m. on February 21, his wallet was stolen from his mother’s vehicle on Redding Circle. The Detective Bureau is investigating.

On February 20, at 12:58 p.m., the owner of a Nassau Street business reported that an unknown person requested $40 worth of gas to fill his red BMW X5. Once the gas was pumped by the attendant, the driver fl ed the area without paying. The Detective Bureau is investigating.

On February 19, at 7:30 p.m., an individual reported that an unknown male took her wallet from her purse as she ate at a Nassau Street establishment. Several credit cards were then fraudulently used at stores in the area. The Detective Bureau is investigating. Unless otherwise noted, individuals arrested were later released.

YMCA CAMP MASON

Sharing Gratitude for Dedication of Longtime PHS Teacher Jeff Lucker

To the Editor:

Thanks to Donald Gilpin for the insightful interview with Jeff Lucker, who retired after 53 years of teaching history at Princeton High School [“Jeff Lucker, 53 Years at PHS: ‘It’s Amazing What Can Be Done,’” February 15, page 10]. I especially appreciated Lucker’s quote, “It’s more than simply passion for the subject. It’s passion for the students and an interest in communicating with the students and the interaction with them. It’s amazing what can be done if you have that.”

I’m sending it to my granddaughter to encourage her. A history major at Wake Forest, she believes she is called to teach high school history for exactly that reason — the ability to communicate and interact with students. And, of course, we all are grateful for the dedication of Mr. Lucker and all of the teachers who have done their best during COVID.

BARBARA FOX

Princeton Residents Support Mt. Laurel Doctrine, Fair Share Housing

To the Editor:

equitable distribution of Hurricane Sandy relief or its advocacy on behalf of New Jerseyans facing housing discrimination. Attempts to discredit this organization, one of the pre-eminent fair housing organizations in the country, is an embarrassment for Princeton.

We should remember what led to the establishment of the Mount Laurel Doctrine and the Fair Share Housing Center nearly 50 years ago. Black residents facing blatant housing discrimination, led by civil rights activist Ethel Lawrence, sued Mount Laurel to forbid its practice of exclusionary zoning and allow for affordable housing construction. Despite the progress made, we still struggle to rid ourselves of exclusionary zoning and remain one of the most segregated and exclusionary parts of the country. We applaud FSHC, reject scapegoating and excuses, and reaffirm that Princeton will someday be a place where our rhetoric and policies reflect a sincere commitment to housing for all.

MATT MLECZKO Bank Street UDI OFER Armour Road

The signatories write as private citizens and not on behalf of any organizations. In addition, Mleczko serves as a consultant with the Fair Share Housing Center.

Stonebridge at Montgomery, Skillman Mayor Freda Responds to Letter Regarding Fair Share Housing

To the Editor:

We respect that there can be differences of opinion with regards to housing policy, but Mayor Freda’s comments [The Montgomery News, February 23] to a group of realtors in Montgomery in January go beyond a difference in opinion. They reflect a lingering, unproductive narrative in Princeton. We the undersigned dispute these characterizations and remind the public that they are misguided and unrepresentative.

Mayor Freda suggested that our inclusionary developments inherently underproduce affordable units and that there are issues with how and where they are built. Princeton’s fair share settlement contradicts this narrative. Consider its ambitious plan for housing on Franklin Ave — 50 percent affordable, 50 percent market rate. Or consider that most of this housing will be located on vastly underutilized, already-developed land in walkable areas with access to public transit. More importantly, Mayor Freda implies a preference for an alternative that does not presently exist. Inclusionary developments may not be perfect, but they provide critically important affordable housing now without requiring significant public subsidy. Waiting for a different solution to materialize is a proven strategy to undermine affordable housing construction and belies the urgency of the matter.

Mayor Freda also invoked the greedy developer trope to deflect from our municipality’s failure to provide enough housing. This scapegoats all developers into one amorphous villain, ignoring that this category includes nonprofit and local developers, many of whom are caring, engaged citizens who contribute to the vitality of our community. Moreover, Mount Laurel obligations are negotiated to legalize or make feasible housing that was not under previous rules. It does not suspend zoning rules or the many procedural approvals that projects still require in settled municipalities. Anyone who suggests this either misunderstands the process or is intentionally trying to mislead.

Most disturbingly, Mayor Freda accused the Fair Share Housing Center (FSHC) — without any evidence — of primarily receiving its funding from developers and builders. In reality, FSHC holds municipalities and developers accountable and receives much of its funding from organizations such as the Fund for New Jersey and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We have FSHC’s work to thank for the vast majority of affordable housing built in Princeton and New Jersey, including its work to guarantee the

Letters to the Editor Policy

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

All letters are subject to editing and to available space.

At least a month’s time must pass before another letter from the same writer can be considered for publication.

Letters are welcome with views about actions, policies, ordinances, events, performances, buildings, etc. However, we will not publish letters that include content that is, or may be perceived as, negative towards local figures, politicians, or political candidates as individuals.

When necessary, letters with negative content may be shared with the person/group in question in order to allow them the courtesy of a response, with the understanding that the communications end there.

Letters to the Editor may be submitted, preferably by email, to editor@towntopics.com, or by post to Town Topics, PO Box 125, Kingston, N.J. 08528. Letters submitted via mail must have a valid signature.

I thank Town Topics for sharing this letter with me and the opportunity to reply to it. I also extend an invitation to the letter signers to talk about this. I am a big believer in the idea of actually talking to someone you may disagree with or believe has wrong information; I always welcome anyone to do this with me. You do not have to agree with me for me to listen to you.

I believe that the letter was written after reading a newspaper article referring to a panel discussion I participated in. There was a question and answer session after the panel talked, so I am assuming this letter is based on the newspaper article and not having actually heard all of my comments. If the information I have been given about how Fair Share Housing is funded is incorrect; I have no problem accepting that. And correcting that.

Here is the crux of what I said.

I do not like the fact that inclusionary developments typically provide 80 percent market rates and 20 percent affordable units. I wish the ratio was titled to provide more affordable units. I think that political leaders should try to find ways to increase the number of affordable units provided in these developments.

I also commented that the size and quality of the interiors of the affordable units in many of these developments differ in less than the size and quality of interiors from the market rate units. I do not agree with the difference in quality, and I feel the units are typically undersized. I will note that one of the developers Princeton is using right now does not follow this practice and I applaud them for that.

I commented that since COAH was gutted under former Governor Christie the courts are much more involved in the affordable housing process. And I believe a robust COAH could provide a more consistent and accessible process for municipalities to work with to meet affordable housing obligations.

My record of supporting and pushing for affordable housing in our community goes back decades. My continued support that we do more, and that we push for improving the system to deliver affordable housing, is something that I believe someone in my position should be talking about.

We may have different opinions; but we need to work together to find common ground and move forward. I am always open to and welcome constructive engagement.

MARK FREDA Princeton Mayor Witherspoon Street

Books

Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale Coming March 22-26 at Stuart Country Day School

The Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale, a nonprofit organization that sells donated books to provide college scholarships for area students, will be held at Stuart Country Day School, 1200 Stuart Road, from March 22 to 26. For details, visit bmandwbooks.com.

“We have tens of thousands of books in excellent condition to choose from,” says Kathy Morris, book sale president. “Of note are the private collections of famed Princeton University historian James M. McPherson and best-selling author Richard Preston. Many of these are signed or have the author’s book plate. We also will be selling an unusual collection of books about the Civil War, written from a Southern perspective.”

Buyers will find top-quality used books sorted into 63 categories, with most hardbacks priced at $3 with higher value books priced accordingly, including items in the rare book room, called Collector’s Corner. The sale accepts cash, credit cards, and local checks with ID.

The opening day from 10 a.m. to 5p.m. on Wednesday, March 22 attracts rare and secondhand book dealers from across the eastern seaboard and beyond.

Opening day entrance tickets are $30. All other days are free.

Sale hours are Thursday, March 23 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday, March 24 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, March 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, March 26, Box Day ($5 or $10 per box depending on size), 10 a.m. to noon. Collector’s Corner will be closed.

Hemon, Morrison Converse

About Hemon’s New Novel Novelist Aleksandar Hemon and his Princeton University colleague Simon Morrison will discuss Hemon’s novel The World and All That It Holds (MCD) on Monday, March 6 at 7 p.m.

Cosponsored by Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts and Humanities Council, the Labyrinth at Library event will be held live at the Princeton Public Library and stream online. To register visit labyrinthbooks.com.

According to Ron Charles of The Washington Post, The World and All That It Holds “would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God–or Aleksandar Hemon.” The novel’s “irrepressible voice ... glides along a cushion of poignancy buoyed by wry humor. From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love.”

Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; the memoir My Parents: An Introduction / This Does not Belong to You ; and three books of short stories: The Question of Bruno ; Nowhere Man , which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles . He teaches

at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

The author, most recently, of Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks , Morrison teaches music history at Princeton University. He specializes in 20th-century Russian and Soviet music with expertise in opera, dance, film, sketch studies, and historically informed performance. His other books include Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Toda y; The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years ; and The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev: the Story of Lina and Serge Prokofiev

Labyrinth Live at Library

Hosts Talk on “Seedkeeper”

Diane Wilson and Tessa Desmond will discuss Wilson’s The Seedkeeper (Milkweed) at the Princeton Public Library on March 8 at 7 p.m. Co-presented by Labyrinth Books, the library, and Land, Language and Art, a Global Initiative from the Princeton University Humanities Council, the event will be held at the library and online. For further information, contact labyrinthbooks.com.

Kirkus Reviews comments:

“Uprooted from their land, the seeds Dakhóta women carried with them were not just a source of sustenance, but their link to the past and hope for the future, a symbol of their profound bond with the Earth. They provide a powerful symbol for Rosalie’s rediscovery of her lost family and the ways of ‘the old ones.’ A thoughtful, moving meditation on connections to the past and the land that humans abandon at their peril.”

Wilson is a writer and educator who has published four award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications. She is the author of Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past ; Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life ; and the middle-grade biography : Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector. Wilson is the former executive director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous nonprofit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.

Desmond is a scholar and a farmer. She teaches classes on food, farming, and literature in the Effron Center for the Study of American at Princeton University and co-directs The Seed Farm@ Princeton and the Princeton Food Project. She also owns a homestead farm where she cares for sheep, chickens, and a big kitchen garden. Her research interests focus on community-engaged scholarship and community seed saving.

Food Critic Discusses

Food of Italian Islands

Food critic Katie Parla will be talking about her newest cookbook Food of the Italian Islands in a presentation

and signing at Labyrinth Books on March 4 at 3 p.m. For further information, visit labyrinthbooks.com.

The book contains over 85 recipes, both original and reimagined, including pane frattau featuring Sardinia’s beloved flatbread; bigoli in salsa, a party pasta popular in Venice; coniglio all’ischitana, braised rabbit in the style of Ischia, and torta caprese, Capri’s flourless chocolate-almond cake. There are tutorials on an array of regional pestos while instructions for shaping intricate, fresh pasta shapes are accompanied by QR codes linking to process videos.

The book’s 21 features provide historical insight while unveiling island traditions and pleasures such as the offal delicacies dominating Palermo’s street food scene, urchin diving in Ponza and an overview on the boozy choose-your-ownjourney to making rosolioinfused spirits.

Parla is a television and podcast host, journalist, culinary guide, and educator based in Rome. She has written, edited, or contributed to more than 35 books, seven of them cookbooks, including Food of the Italian South , the New York Times bestseller The Joy of Pizza , and Tasting Rome She co-hosts Gola, a podcast about Italian food and drink culture.

Women’s History Month

Begins with “Wife of Bath”

Marion Turner, the awardwinning author of Chaucer: A European Life , will be joined by Emily McLemore in a discussion of Turner’s new book, The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton University Press). The virtual event will be held on Sunday, March 5, from 2 to 3 p.m. To register, visit princetonlibrary.libnet.info/ event/8021328.

March is Women’s History Month, and in this virtual program Turner and McLemore will explore the role of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath throughout history from the Middle Ages up to #MeToo movement.

Writing in The New York Times Book Review, Erin Maglaque comments, “The history of women in the Middle Ages is fraught with uncertainties, especially when it comes to source material and authorship; Turner unfurls this complexity in elegant, quietly angry prose, grounded in deep scholarly research. . . . Turner’s biography of Alison of Bath demonstrates the stunning resonance of medieval prejudice in the present.”

Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford. Chaucer: A European Life won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.

DIVERSITYIN NATIONALSECURITY

McLemore is a postdoctoral teaching fellow at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in Medieval English literature and gender and sexuality studies. Her research focuses on representations of women and the perpetual entanglement of gender, sex, and violence that extends from

the Medieval period to the modern one.

This program is made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

JALINAPORTER

FormerPrincipalDeputySpokesperson attheU.S.DepartmentofState

JalinaPorterisanAmericanpoliticaladvisorwhowas thePrincipal DeputySpokeswomanfortheUnited StatesDepartmentofStatefromJanuary 2021toJune2022.JalinaPorter'stermended onJune3,2022.

Aseasonedcommunicationsprofessional, Ms.PorterpreviouslyservedintheU.S.Houseof RepresentativesasCommunicationsDirectorforformer CongressmanCedricRichmondofLouisiana.

Thursday,March2 12:30pm

016 RobertsonHall

TjadaD’Oyen McKennahas groundedher careerinthe simplebelief that,no matterwhere someoneis born,no matterwhere theylive,they shouldbe abletolead athrivingand successfullife.

AsChiefExecutiveOfficerof MercyCorps,Tjadaleads aglobalteamofover5,400+ humanitarians,whoprovide immediaterelieftosavelives andlivelihoodsandworkto createtransformationalchange reaching37millionpeoplein morethan40+countries. Tjadaspentmorethana decadeworkingtoend worldhungerinroleswith theBill&MelindaGates FoundationandtheU.S. government.Duringthe Obamaadministration, TjadaservedastheDeputy CoordinatorofDevelopment forFeedtheFuture,theU.S. governmentʼsglobalhunger andfoodsecurityinitiative, andtheAssistanttothe AdministratoroftheU.S. AgencyforInternational DevelopmentʼsBureauforFood SecurityinWashington,D.C.

Wednesday,March1•4 :30pm

Greeting Susan Wolfson’s Keats in the Company of Chopin

He is the most daring and the proudest poetic spirit of his time.

—Robert Schumann on Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)

There is something of the innermost soul of poetry in everything he ever wrote

—Alfred Tennyson on John Keats (1795-1821)

At this time last year I was matching the power and poignance of Chopin’s music with television images of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, mothers and children fleeing to Poland, gazing out from rain-streaked train windows. For the past week, I’ve been listening again to Chopin while reading Princeton Professor Susan Wolfson’s A Greeting of the Spirit: Selected Poetry of John Keats (Harvard University Press $35). So, no surprise, I’ve been finding Chopin in Keats and Keats in Chopin.

On Chopin’s seventh birthday, March 1, 1817, Keats published his first book, Poems , which contained “To Kosciusko,” a sonnet celebrating the leader of Poland’s 1794 rebellion against Prussian and Russian rule. It’s possible that one of Chopin’s British acquaintances called the poem to his attention during the U.K. visits of 1837 and 1848. Chopin played the last concert of his life on November 16, 1848, at the Guildhall in London, a benefit for Polish refugees (“my compatriots”). He died a year later in Paris.

“Strange Thunders”

Keats’s first book closes with “Sleep and Poetry,” whose “dark mysteries” and “Strange thunders from the potency of song” remind me of Chopin nocturnes such as No. 13 in C minor. On the question of which poet is “most akin to Chopin,” the Polish Music Center (polishmusic.usc. edu) posts an essay from 1902 suggesting that Keats “often furnishes passages precisely parallel in ideas and method of expression with those of Chopin” while claiming that the “Greek spirit and imagery” in a passage from Endymion (“O Sorrow, / Why dost borrow”) can be found “in Chopin’s scherzos.”

“Fellowship

Divine”

The passage from Endymion that actually offers the most striking evidence of a shared spirit is one Wolfson quotes in full “because its momentum is its vitality, enacting what it describes with accumulating verbal drama.”

There’s no need to search for “precise” parallels between Keats and Chopin, no need for documented proof that the poet

shares the composer’s “poetic spirit” in lines from Endymion like “the airy stress / Of music’s kiss” or “that which becks / Our ready minds to fellowship divine, / A fellowship with essence; till we shine, / Full alchemiz’d, and free of space.” The sequence beginning “Wherein lies happiness?” achieves the “musical drama” of Chopin in the nocturnesque mood of “old songs” waking “from enclouded tombs.”

Reader/listeners recently immersed in that music can hear intimations of Chopin in references to “a sort of oneness,” a state “like a floating spirit’s,” and “richer entanglements” leading to “the forehead of humanity” and the “orbed drop of light ... that is love,” until “Melting into its radiance, we blend, / Mingle, and so become a part of it.” A moment of Chopinesque beatitude follows the “ardent listlessness” felt when love blesses the world “with benefits unknowingly.”

At this point the “momentum” Wolfson mentions begins “enacting what it describes,” which, with apologies to scholars of poetics, moves more fluently and forcefully without the line breaks:

“for who of men can tell that flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell to melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, the earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, the meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, the seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, if human souls did never kiss and greet?”

Blown Away

Among the brightest gems in Keats’s first book is the sonnet “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer,” his “first great poem,” says Wolfson. In a characteristically lively commentary, she quotes eight lines from Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer, the “gold standard” at the time, then cites George Chapman’s rendition of the same passage, underscoring one line (“The sea had soak’d his heart through”) with the comment, “If you read this out loud,” as did the poet and his friends, “you can hear what blew Keats’s mind” (a “greeting of spirit” from the psychedelic 1960s). After rephrasing Keats’s enthusiasm in the words of a witness who said the reading put the poet “into one of

his delighted states,” Wolfson sums up: “Sounding out Chapman, Keats comes to life as a poet.”

Two Ballads

A YouTube blogspot called Chopin With Cherries pairs Keats’s “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” with Chopin’s Ballade No. 2 in F Major, Op 38, superimposing on the screen as the music plays Adam Mickiewicz’s “The Nymph of Lake Switez” in an English translation. Again, you don’t need “precise parallels” to appreciate what the two ballads have in common — instead of a knight “alone and palely loitering,” there’s “a lad so comely and young,” and for “la belle dame” a young maid who seems to be “his sweetheart fair,” except no one knows who her parents are or where she’s from, as she croons “come to me, come ... and together we’ll dance on the water’s crystal floor ... among visions of ravishment.”

After listening to Chopin’s scoring of the undercurrent of mystery and menace, “the silent air,” the only sound “when the dry twigs rustle and break,” then the sudden winds that “through the deepwood spread,” and “the phantoms seen only in dreams,” I couldn’t help wondering what he might have done with “La Belle Dame,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “The Eve of St. Mark,” or any of Keats’s masterpieces. But why dream of Chopin’s Keats when Keats has already dreamed his own music in a “fellowship with essence”?

“This Living Hand”

“Ending, Unending,” the last chapter of A Greeting of the Spirit, closes with “This living hand,” a fragment not published until the 1898 edition of the Poetical Works I discovered it (or it discovered me) in the Odyssey Press edition used by my father in graduate school. At 19, I heard the last line of the fragment — “see here it is, I hold it towards you” — as a reaching out, an invitation, that would haunt me that summer, my first abroad, when I stood in the little room in Rome where Keats died at 26; visited his grave in the Protestant cemetery, reading firsthand the “name writ in water” epitaph; and finally at the Keats house in Hampstead, where I saw letters by his hand and communed with a black cat on the grounds.

Six years later I typed “This living hand” on a single sheet of paper, along with lines from “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”; the other side of the page was filled with the long “Wherein lies happiness” passage from Endymion, complete with line breaks. The page was folded and unfolded many times during hitchhiking adventures in Europe, the Middle East, and India.

Susan Wolfson closes her beautiful book with the lines from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII that Keats underscored in his copy of the Poetic Works : “When in eternal lines to time thou growest: / So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this and this gives life to thee.” Wolfson’s final thought on Keats in A Greeting of the Spirit : “Shakespeare’s lines mattered to him more than 200 years on, as his eyes scanned the words and brought them to fresh life.”

Poets of March 1

Chopin is monumental, Keats is monumental — a term that seems too grand for other poets linked by birth and death with the first day of March: Thomas Campion and George Herbert in death; Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Howard Nemerov, and Robert Hass (1941—) by birth. Every time my wife and I go for a walk on the D&R Greenway Poetry Trail, I make a point of stopping by the marker for Howard Nemerov (1920-1991), which displays an excerpt from “A Spell Before Winter” that begins “I speak to you now with the land’s voice.” Nemerov spoke to me one midsummer afternoon in Bloomington, Indiana. I was 17. He was handsome, kind, and funny, and we talked about Keats.

Keats and Keeley

Last year at this time, I quoted “To Pelion,” a poem for the Ukrainian moment, which imagines “the mystery ahead” and “the feeling that you’ll never know / What it is when its time has come.”

The poet was Princeton Professor Emeritus Edmund (Mike) Keeley, who died the day before the invasion. That was on February 23, 2022. Only now does the poetry of coincidence hit home: John Keats died February 23, 1821 — two poets breathing their last on the same day of the month 200 years apart, both with an abiding love of Greece.

—Stuart Mitchner

The Labyrinth exhibit of Cliff Tisdell’s paintings about novelist Carson McCullers, originally scheduled to close February 28, has been extended through March.

Princeton’s First

Tradition

2023

request a PDF catalog by email: ctisdell166@gmail.com www.clifftisdellart.com

A weekly opportunity for the Princeton Community to enjoy performances by local, national, and international organists. Performing March 2 is Sandro Russo, Scarsdale Congregational Church, Scarsdale, NY. Performing March 9 is Kathleen Scheide, Church of the Loving Shepherd, West Chester, PA.

B Minor, Op. 74 “Pathétique”

MUSIC REVIEW

Princeton University Glee Club

Presents Annual Nollner Memorial Concert

Princeton University Glee Club paid tribute to former longtime Glee Club conductor Walter L. Nollner this past weekend with a concert linking the high Baroque to the 21st century. Saturday night’s performance at Richardson Auditorium featured a piece by composer and former Princeton student Caroline Shaw as well as three choral/ orchestral works by Johann Sebastian Bach. Led by Glee Club conductor Gabriel Crouch, the concert was in partnership with “02.24.2022,” the Princeton student organization supporting victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Shaw’s The Listeners was commissioned in 2018 by the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and was inspired by NASA’s “Golden Record” of 1977, a pair of phonograph recordings launched into space aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft conveying the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Shaw’s piece was a suite of 10 short settings of poetry, as well as spoken excerpts from the Golden Record. Shaw scored the work for chorus and orchestra with baritone and contralto soloists; the Glee Club nimbly adjusted performing forces when the baritone soloist withdrew at the last minute, and contralto Robin Biers and conductor Crouch took up the solos.

The texts were mostly presented by the soloists, as well as recordings of Carl Sagan and other scientists, complemented by Camilla Tassi’s digital projections.

From the outset, Biers demonstrated a rich and unhurried vocal sound, declaiming the verses cleanly. Throughout the piece, the Glee Club was a well-balanced ensemble with clean accompaniment from a chamber orchestra of Baroque period instruments. Shaw’s choral writing was dissonant but appealing, with the piece proving to be immediately accessible.

Little is known about the origins or intent of Bach’s cantata Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft, BWV 50. A single-movement work for chorus and orchestra setting texts from the Book of Revelation, this work does not fit the usual format of Bach’s cantatas, and it is unclear if the piece is part of something larger or a stand-alone choral/orchestral work. The most prevalent version performed is for double chorus and orchestra, but Dutch organist and musicologist Jan Kleinbussink reconstructed an edition for single chorus. In Saturday night’s performance, the Glee Club presented both versions, each conducted by one of the ensemble’s student conductors.

University senior Shruti Venkat took the podium fi rst, leading the Glee Club in the “single choir version” of the cantata. Venkat and the ensemble opened the work with clarity, emphasizing the percussive nature of the music. Sixteenth-note figures were clean, punctuated by brass and with the orchestra acting as a second chorus. The double-chorus version was conducted by Katie Chou, also a University senior. Chou led the chorus in a stately performance, with the second choir comprised of a chamber ensemble of eleven singers. Both of these young conductors showed clean technique and attention to musical detail. The two versions of Bach’s cantata bracketed a performance of one of the Baroque master’s most popular works. Composed in 1723, Bach’s Magnificat for chorus, orchestra and soloists sets the prayer of Mary proclaiming the greatness of the Lord in a joyful combination of intricate counterpoint and traditional Baroque compositional devices. Soloists soprano Sonya Headlam, contralto Robin Biers and tenor David Kellett joined the Glee Club and orchestra for a performance of clean singing and precise orchestral accompaniment.

Conductor Crouch kept the overall sound crisp and refined from both chorus and orchestra, freeing the chorus to rise to full solid strength on texts of power and affirmation. Headlam sang two arias, with the setting of “Quia respexit humilitatem” suiting her voice particularly well, as instrumentalist David Dickey provided a rich oboe d’amore accompaniment. Biers provided an elegant rendition of the text “Esurientes implevit bonis,” accompanied by flutists Mei Stone and Bethanne Walker, covering the wide range of Bach’s writing well, and demonstrating an appealing and easy-going way of maneuvering difficult lines. Tenor Kellett sang the declamatory “Deposuit potentes” with fire in the upper register and clean vocal runs. The Glee Club was on point throughout the work, with an impressive solo trio of Alyssa Noone, Katelyn Rodrigues, and Corinna Brueckner conveying the comforting text of “Suscepit Israel.”

During the concert Crouch recognized the graduating Glee Club seniors, who may have lost as much as half their college experience to the pandemic. Despite the obstacles of the past three years, the Glee Club is ending this season on a high note, and Crouch fittingly praised this year’s graduating choral class for achieving the “responsibilities and rewards of being in a choir.”

—Nancy Plum

Performing Arts

partner organizations. The Cool Critters area will host farm animals and amphibians Guests can pet some of the critters, ask questions of naturalists and farmers, and watch live demonstrations.

The 90-square-mile Sourland region is home to the largest contiguous forest in Central New Jersey. It encompasses a complex ecosystem of forest, wetlands, and grasslands, and is home to a rich diversity of animal and plant species, many rare or endangered. The forest is especially important as a breeding area for migratory songbirds, particularly those who nest only in large, wooded areas.

Tickets are now available for the festival, with early bird pricing. Visit sourlandmountainfest.com/tickets.

Student Playwriting Winners

QUEEN OF SOUL: The cast of “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.,” a tribute to the late Aretha Franklin,

State Theatre New Jersey March 11 and 12.

Live Concert Tribute

To Aretha Franklin State Theatre New Jersey presents R.E.S.P.E.C.T., an electrifying tribute celebrating the legendary Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin on Saturday, March 11 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 12 at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $40-$98.

Starring a live band and vocalists, the show takes audiences on a journey of love, tragedy, courage, and triumph in a night of music by Franklin. The concert features hits including “Natural Woman,” “Think,” “I Knew You Were Waiting for Me,” “Chain of Fools,” “Respect,” and many more.

This new production is adapted from McGee Entertainment’s Australian touring smash-hit, RESPECT — The Aretha Franklin Story, starring Angie Narayan ( Australian Idol ), also known as Australia’s “Soul Mama.” The show continues to play to sold out audiences across Australia.

State Theatre New Jersey is at 15 Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick. For tickets, visit STNJ.org.

Tickets Now on Sale

For Sourland Festival

On Saturday, July 15 from 3 to 8:30 p.m., the Sourland Conservancy will be hosting its 18th Annual Sourland

Mountain Festival at Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes.

A VIP Experience will again be provided by The Ryland Inn, and will feature live music, local food, craft beer, wine and spirits, mountain history, and family activities. Proceeds will benefit the Sourland Conservancy, the local nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the history and ecology of the Sourland Mountain region of Central New Jersey.

The festival offers music, food, fun, and views in the central Jersey region. This year’s event will offer a wide array of educational exhibits featuring the Conservancy’s

Serving students with average to above average potential from New Jersey and Pennsylvania with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, auditory processing, ADHD, dysgraphia. The only accredited Orton-Gillingham program in NJ.

Announced by Phillips’ Mill Drama at Phillips’ Mill has named the winners of the new student playwriting challenge Play With Words. Two plays were selected to receive top honors, and a staged reading of the plays will be on March 12 at 3 pm. at the Mill in New Hope, Pa.

Journal, and the Moonstone Poets Anthology

Bray’s play We Took Root examines the concept of letting go in order to build anew. She regularly competes at open poetry competitions and is a voracious reader and cross-country runner.

Local playwright Lisa DeAngelis served as juror for the first Play With Words challenge. “I was amazed at the quality of the submissions this year for Play With Words,” she said. “Showcasing a student’s work on stage helps the playwright appreciate the reaction of a live audience to their play.” Phillips’ Mill is at 2619 River Road in New Hope, Pa. Visit phillipsmill.org for tickets.

Decades of Love Songs

By Tom Chiola Quartet

Seventh grader Gracie Lin from Princeton Day School was recognized for her play Our Blue Period, which explores a relationship moving from friendship to romance. This is Lin’s first foray into the world of playwriting, and she was excited to participate in the challenge. She was encouraged to enter the challenge by former teacher Angharad Rebholz. In addition to writing, she plays the cello and piano and enjoys visual arts.

Matilda Bray is an 11th grade student at the Solebury School who published her first book of poetry, Under the Moon as My Sun, in 2018. Her work has been published in Rattle, Tipton Poetry Journal, Sad Girls Club, OpenDoor Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal, River Poets

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Roll Over Beethoven , an allegorical play written by two local high school students, will also be included in the staged readings. Guest artist and playwright Griffin Horn will host the staged reading event, and share his insights on playwriting with the audience. Horn holds a master’s degree in playwriting from Temple University and has taught at McCarter Theatre Center and Arena Stage. He is the author of both fulllength and short plays and his work has been staged in Philadelphia and New York City.

The Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie in Trenton’s Cadwalader Park hosts “From Ellarslie with Love,” an evening of love songs presented by the Tom Chiola Quartet along with Jessica Briggs on Friday, March 10, from 7 to 10 p.m. The program will include selections from the Great American Songbook and more, kicking off a year of celebrations for Trenton Museum Society’s 50th Anniversary. Chiola is seen frequently on the stages of the Kelsey Theatre and the Yardley Players, among other groups. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., with food and beverages to go with the event’s café seating. Tickets are $40 for museum members and $45 for nonmembers, with refreshments included in the ticket price. Reserve tickets at ellarslie.org/concert or call (609) 989-1191.

CLASSIC FAIRY TALE: Philadelphia Ballet’s production of “The Sleeping Beauty,” choreographed by Artistic Director Angel Corella to the score by Tchaikovsky, comes to the city’s Academy of Music March 2-12. The full-length ballet is performed to live music by the Philadelphia Ballet Orchestra. Tickets start at $25. Visit philadelphiaballet.org. (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev)

coming to

(Photo by Jeremy Daniel)

MUSIC, WINE, AND MORE: The Sourland Mountain Festival returns July 15 with a wide range of activities for all ages. Proceeds benefit the Sourland Conservancy. (Photo by Richard Paul)

Gracie Lin

University Library’s exhibition “Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory” and assistant professor of English and African American Studies. Multidisciplinary artists Daniel Alexander Jones and Mame Diarra Samantha Speis visited the University Library’s Toni Morrison Papers archive , a large trove of personal papers, letters, manuscripts and objects that were acquired by the University in 2014 to inspire original creations.

MAGIC AND MYSTERY: “Champions of Magic” brings interactive wonders to the stage of State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick on Saturday, March 4.

“Champions of Magic”

Coming to State Theatre State Theatre New Jersey presents “Champions of Magic” on Saturday, March 4 at 8 p.m. The “Champions of Magic” cast presents “incredible interactive magic, a daring escape from Houdini’s water torture cell, a mind-blowing prediction that must be seen to be believed, levitation high above the stage, and a finale beyond explanation,” according to a press release.

Tickets range from $29$99.

“Champions of Magic,” otherwise known as “The Avengers of Magic” have sold out shows across the globe and have been featured on every major U.S. TV network. Members of the group include Hollie England, Alex McAleer, Fernando Velasco, Richard Young, and Sam Strange. Both fans of magic, Young and Strange met when they were just 8 years old. Spending their teenage years trying — and failing — to make Las Vegas-style illusions with cardboard and tape, they were forced to create original illusions and magic tricks, ultimately creating what has been called “one of the most unique illusion acts in the world.” In 2010, the duo put on their first live show at The Thames Players Theatre in Oxfordshire, later going on to perform at the Edinburg Festival Fringe for four years.

Young and Strange also create online video content of original works. One of their videos went viral for video-bombing the background of a Sky News broadcast outside the Houses of

Parliament, which garnered the attention of publications such as Rolling Stone and Time Magazine, as well as MTV. “The Champions of Magic” opened in the U.K. in October of 2013 at Reading Hexagon Theatre and has since completed six U.K. tours.

State Theatre New Jersey is at 15 Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick. Visit STNJ. org for tickets.

Roxey Ballet Celebrates

Triumphs Over Cancer

Roxey Ballet’s Healing Arts Initiative presents an exploration of the journeys of women who were diagnosed, treated, and survived various stages of breast cancer in its production of The C Word: Personal Stories of Triumph Over Breast Cancer at Mill Ballet, 46 North Sugan Road, New Hope, Pa., on Saturday, April 1 at 7 p.m..

The integrative, multimedia performance celebrates the strength of these survivors through the power of art and nature and their healing effects. The sharing of their personal, physical, and emotional trials has led these women to find support from their fellow survivors, families, and friends, and has taught them to embrace the powerful transformation this disease has made on their lives, bodies, and spirits.

Originally created through interviews with 22 strong women, artistic director and choreographer Mark Roxey and songwriting team Robert Maggio and Matthew Hardy used music, dance, and spoken word to capture the essence of the survivors’ stories and lives.

“I’m honored and touched to produce a project like this that celebrates the lives of breast cancer survivors and all who are facing the challenge of any kind of cancer,” said Roxey. “The art of dance is at its best when you are able to create meaning that transcends the art of dance, when you can do something much greater than the single word ‘dance.’ That is what Roxey Ballet is all about.”

Roxey Ballet first performed the work in 2017 through a partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton Foundation at the Grounds For Sculpture. This project was such a success a repeat performance was requested and in June 2019, Roxey Ballet performed to soldout houses at their former home, Canal Studios Theatre. This healing arts initiative continues due to high demand with new stories collaborating with a variety of service organizations that support survivors to create workshops, outreach, and support above and beyond the performances. For tickets and more information, visit roxeyballet. org/cword.

McCarter to Showcase

Morrison-Inspired Events

McCarter Theatre will premiere a set of commissioned performances on March 24 and 25 as part of campuswide programming celebrating author Toni Morrison’s life and legacy.

The performances are the result of collaborations with McCarter’s Associate Artistic Director Nicole A. Watson and Autumn Womack, curator of Princeton

Taking place at the Berlind Theatre Rehearsal Studio, 91 University Place, the performances will be sneak peeks of their worksin-progress, in conjunction with a three-day symposium organized as part of the concurrent exhibitions “Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory,” the first public viewing of the around 100 original objects from the Toni Morrison Papers, and “Cycle of Creativity: Alison Saar and the Toni Morrison Papers , ” which pairs Morrison’s letters and lectures with Saar’s artworks, on view at the Princeton University Library and at the Princeton University Art Museum’s auxiliary exhibition venue, Art@Bainbridge.

In addition, the jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant will debut an original composition with Princeton University Concerts at Richardson Auditorium on April 12 .

“These performances speak to the collaborative and interdisciplinarity ethos of Morrison’s practice,” said Womack. “They prove that the Toni Morrison Papers continue to inspire artists and makers, as Morrison’s work has always done.”

While McCarter has a long history of commissioning plays, this is the first time the theater is commissioning multi-hyphenate performance artists, which are the culmination of a residency that began in 2022, during which the selected artists were given access to the Toni Morrison Papers. Since then, the artists have worked with Womack and referenced the historical materials with an emphasis on Morrison’s unfinished manuscripts as a point of departure, responding to what they uncover via dance, performance and theater. Both works will be presented during the Sites of Memory symposium weekend.

“Through conversations with Autumn and the curatorial team, McCarter was invited to envision new ways of breathing fresh air into the archives,” said Nicole A. Watson, associate artistic director of McCarter, and curator of the commissions. “Like Morrison, the commissioned artists are expansive in their imaginative and creative genius, political prowess, and civic engagement. This is a rare opportunity to both give voice to Morrison’s magnificent legacy and to amplify the work of singular artists who are in the process of building artistic legacies themselves.”

McCarter and Princeton share a successful history of creative collaborations. Recent cross-campus initiatives include original plays for The Princeton and Slavery Project, an exploration of Princeton University’s history of slavery in 2017 and Manic Monologues: A Conversation on Mental Health, a series of virtual theater experiences that address mental health illness. This project illustrates McCarter’s unique role as a creative hub for arts and ideas and the innovative ways we intersect with Princeton to bring art in dialogue with campus life, and the larger community.”

Performances are at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 (free for Princeton University students with Passport to the Arts using code PUTIGER). Visit mccarter.org.

Folk Music Society

Presents Duo Rakish

The Princeton Folk Music Society celebrates St. Patrick’s Day with a March 17, 8 p.m. concert by Rakish, a duo comprising violinist Maura Shawn Scanlin and guitarist Conor Hearn, at Christ Congregation Church, 50 Walnut Lane. In a performance that is something more akin to concert music, Rakish explores

boundaries, going beyond basic session playing.

“There has been a shift from playing in the more informal setting of an Irish or Scottish session, where, in terms of arrangement, you’re always winging it to a certain extent,” said Hearn. “Over the years, we’ve moved to more of a concert approach, where there is more of a deliberate choice to put our own slant on things.”

“We have moments in a piece where we’ll be playing one way, with me playing the melody and Conor playing harmony, and suddenly we’ll flip and I’ll play harmony while Conor plays melody,” said Shawn. “Having a duo is a nice way of flip-flopping those roles a lot. It’s fun, and it keeps people guessing.”

The name “Rakish” is derived from the traditional fiddle tune “Rakish Paddy.”

Scanlin is a two-time U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion and a winner of the Glenfiddich Fiddle Competition. Hearn, a native to the Irish music communities of Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md., makes his home in Boston, playing guitar for a number of traditional music acts and bands.

Tickets at the door range from $5-$25. Visit Princetonfolk.org.

DANCE FROM DUBLIN: “WINGS: A Celtic Dance Celebration” comes to State Theatre New Jersey on Tuesday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. The new production features Irish and world champion dancers together with live musicians and vocalists. Tickets are $29-$59. The theater is at 15 Livingston Avenue in New Brunswick. Visit STNJ.org.

Debbie Bisno, McCarter’s director of university and artistic partnerships, said, “Our participation in the University-wide programming centered around the Toni Morrison Papers builds on the success of recent projects that amplify scholarship and contribute to current campus conversations.

(Pamela Raith Photography)

MUSIC FOR ST. PATRICK’S DAY: Maura Shawn Scanlin, left, and Conor Hearn, take a concert approach to performing Irish music. (Photo by L. Bichan)

COLLABORATIVE CREATIONS: A rehearsal of Daniel Alexander Jones’ piece “Black Light,” among the events inspired by the Toni Morrison Papers. (Photograph courtesy of the artist)

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“WOMAN AND BUTTERFLY”: This painting by Angela ArreyWastavino is featured in “The Women’s Caucus for Art,” on view March 14 through April 15 in the Main Gallery at Artworks Trenton. An opening reception is on Saturday, March 18 from 6 to 8 p.m.

“Metal Lucidity” by artist Amy Louise Lee will allow each visitor to visually explore her luminous artwork using their imagination without any limitations. Although the free-flowing bright minimalist metal artwork is abstract, taking a moment to look closely at her work, one will start to see familiar and recognizable shapes, similar to the innocence of a child looking up at the clouds. This evokes curious wonder and therefore will open the mind to see the world in a different way. Throughout the exhibition there will be a whimsical element of surprise by introducing AR, augmented reality, to numerous pieces for an interactive technological experience. Playing off the overall theme of the show, this allows the artist to showcase her playful side.

Artworks Trenton is located at 19 Everett Alley in Trenton. For hours and more information, visit artworkstrenton.org.

Area Exhibits

Art@Bainbridge, 158 Nassau Street, has “Cycle of Creativity: Allison Saar and the Toni Morrison Papers” through July 9. artmuseum. princeton.edu.

Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street, Lambertville, has “Metamorphosis” through March 31. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. lambertvillearts.com.

Art on Hulfish, 11 Hulfish Street, has “You Belong Here: Place, People, and Purpose in Latinx Photography” through May 7. artmuseum.princeton.edu.

Arts Council of Princeton, 102 Witherspoon Street, has “Where Color Meets Memory” through March 11 and “Train of Thoughts” through April 15. artscouncilofprinceton.org.

David Scott Gallery at BHHS Fox & Roach, Realtors, 253 Nassau Street, has works by Léni PaquetMorante through April 15. An opening reception is on March 19 from 2 to 5 p.m. davidscottfineart@gmail. com.

D&R Greenway Land Trust Johnson Education Center, 1 Preservation Place, has “Land, Light, Spirit” through March 10 in the Marie L. Matthews Gallery. drgreenway.org.

“METROPOLIS”:

Artworks Trenton Presents

Two New Exhibitions

With its upcoming exhibitions, Artworks Trenton celebrates Women’s History Month and amplifies the voices of creatives Amy Louise Lee and the members of the Women’s Caucus for Art. These two exhibitions represent the mission of the organization, which is to promote artistic diversity by fostering creativity, learning, and appreciation of the arts. From March 14 through April 15, “The Women’s Caucus for Art” will be presented in the Main Gallery alongside Amy Louise Lee’s show, “Metal Lucidity,” in the Community Gallery. An opening reception is on March 18 from 6 to 8 p.m.

“The Women’s Caucus for Art” will present members’ works that represent significant ways of seeing art and our world. These artists will share their voices visually through broad-based themes about gender, identity, race, the environment, the political, and personal. The exhibit will foster and expand a conversation beyond the gallery through community, to create a dialogue with participants. In addition, the exhibition participants will be offering a workshop for young women at Artworks on Saturday, April 8 from 12:30-2:30 p.m. featuring a guided tour of the exhibition from curator Colleen Gahrmann and hands-on art activities.

Ficus Above, 235 Nassau Street, has “Winter’s Hearth” through March 26. ficusbv.com.

Gallery 14 Fine Art Photography, 14 Mercer Street, Hopewell, has “New Year, New Art Members Exhibition” through March 5. gallery14.org.

Gourgaud Gallery, 23AA North Main Street, Cranbury, has “Youth Art Exhibition” March 4 through March 29. An opening reception is on March 4 from 1 to 3 p.m. cranburyartscouncil.org.

Grounds For Sculpture, 80 Sculptors Way, Hamilton, has “Nightforms: Infinite Wave” by Kip Collective through April 2, among other exhibits. Timed tickets required. groundsforsculpture.org.

Historical Society of Princeton, Updike Farmstead, 354 Quaker Road, has “Einstein Salon and Innovator’s Gallery,” “Princeton’s Portrait,” and other exhibits. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12 to 4 p.m., Thursday to 7 p.m. princetonhistory.org

Michener Art Museum, 138 South Pine Street, Doylestown, Pa., has “(re) Frame: Community Perspectives on the Michener Art Collection” through March 5, “Walé Oyéjidé: Flight of the Dreamer” through April 23, and “MidCentury to Manga: The Modern Japanese Print in America” March 4 through July 30. michenerartmuseum.org

Morven Museum & Garden, 55 Stockton Street, has “Ma Bell: The Mother of Invention in New Jersey” through March 5 and the online exhibits “Slavery at Morven,” “Portrait of Place: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints of New Jersey, 1761–1898,” and others. morven.org.

The Nassau Club, 6 Mercer Street, has “Christine Seo: Princeton Solo Show” through June 4. An opening reception is on March 5 from 3 to 5 p.m. christineseo.com.

Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, has “Manifesting Love: Prints and Poetry” and “In Between Doodles” through March 25. princetonlibrary.org.

Small World Coffee, 14 Witherspoon Street, has screen prints by Ilanit Dotan Fuchs through March 7. “Eoin McInerney” is at the 254 Nassau Street location through March 7. smallworldcoffee.com.

Ellarslie, Trenton’s City Museum in Cadwalader Park, Parkside Avenue, has “Trustees Collecting” March 4 through April 15. An opening reception is on March 5 from 3 to 5 p.m. ellarslie.org.

West Windsor Arts Center, 952 Alexander Road, West Windsor, has “Manifesting Beloved Community” through March 4. westwindsorarts.org.

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This metal on canvas work by Amy Louise Lee is part of “Metal Lucidity,” on view March 14 through April 15 in the Community Gallery at Artworks Trenton.

Mark Your Calendar Town Topics

Thursday, March 2

10 a.m.: Meeting of the 55-Plus Club of Princeton, at the Jewish Center Princeton, 435 Nassau Street. Also available via Zoom. Rutgers history professor Jennifer Mittelstadt speaks on “The Real Fight for Academic Freedom.” To join online, visit princetonol.com/ groups/55plus.

11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m .: Princeton Mercer Regional Chamber meets at Princeton Marriott at Forrestal, 100 College Road East, for the monthly membership luncheon. Speakers are Ed Huling, Bodhi Williams, and Ruth Otte of Soil Carbon Partners; topic is “Restoring Soil and Planting Trees to Cool the Earth.” Princetonmercer.org.

4:30 p.m.: Book talk: Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America by Margot Canaday, professor of history, at A17 Julius Romo Rabinowitz building, Princeton University. Free. Sf.princeton. edu.

7 p.m.: Felon: An American Washi Tale , at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, 91 Univer sity Place. Solo theater show by Reginald Dwayne Betts. $12-$17 (free for Princeton University students). Arts. princeton.edu.

8 p.m.: Virtual Game Night sponsored by the Jew ish Family & Children’s Ser vice of Mercer County, with teams of six-10. Jfcsonline. org/2023GameNight.

Friday, March 3

7 p.m.: Felon: An Ameri can Washi Tale , at the Ber lind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, 91 Univer sity Place. Solo theater show by Reginald Dwayne Betts. $12-$17 (free for Princeton University students). Arts. princeton.edu.

7:30-10 p.m.: Fun Night at West Wind sor Arts Council, 952 Al exander Road. Arts and crafts stations, board and card games, collaborative art projects, glow painting, snacks, refreshments. $5$15. Westwindsorarts.org.

8 p.m.: American Reper tory Ballet presents at New Brunswick Perform ing Arts Center, 11 Livings ton Avenue, New Brunswick. $25-$45. Nbpac.org.

Saturday, March 4

9:30-11 a.m.: Up with the Weather?” Lisa Thalheimer, United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, will speak. Held at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab as part of the Science on Saturday lecture series. 100 Stellarator Road. Coffee and donuts at 8:30 a.m. Pppl.gov.

10 a.m.-4 p.m .: 25th Annual Cranbury Craft Show. Apparel, toys, gourmet food, and more. $5 (free under age 13). Cranburyeducationfoundation. org.

12-5 p.m .: Winery Weekend Music Series at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Live music from 1-4 p.m. with Carmen Marranco. Wine, light bites, and more. Terhuneorchards.com.

2 and 7 p.m.: American Repertory Ballet presents at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. $25-$45. Nb -

2:30 p.m.: Felon: An American Washi Tale, at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place. Solo theater show by Reginald Dwayne Betts. $12-$17 (free for Princeton University students). Arts. princeton.edu.

Sunday, March 5

11 a.m.-4 p.m .: 25th Annual Cranbury Craft Show. Apparel, toys, gourmet food, and more. $5 (free under age 13). Cranburyeducationfoundation.org.

12-5 p.m .: Winery Weekend Music Series at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Live music from 1-4 p.m. with Carmen Jeff Penque. Wine, light bites, and more. Terhuneorchards. com.

1 p.m .: Free carillon concert at Cleveland Tower on the Princeton University graduate campus; listen from outside the tower. University Carilloneur Lisa Lonie and guest artists perform.

1 p.m.: Pruning demonstration with Gary Mount at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Free, held rain or shine. Terhuneorchards. com.

2 p.m.: American Repertory Ballet presents Giselle at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. $25-$45. Nbpac.org.

2 p.m .: A virtual discussion, “The Wife of Bath as a Feminist Icon,” with Marion Turner, author of The Wife of Bath: A Biography,” and Emily McLemore. Princetonlibrary.org.

3 p.m.: Richardson Chamber Players present “March of the Women,” works by female composers Clara Wieck-Schumann, Nadia Boulanger, Jennifer Higdon, Valerie Coleman, and Dame Ethel Smyth, at Richardson Auditorium. $10-$20. Puc. princeton.edu.

Monday, March 6

7 p.m.: Author Aleksandar Hemon discusses his book The World and All That it Holds with Princeton University professor Simon Morrison at a hybrid event at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Princetonlibrary.org.

Tuesday, March 7

10 a.m.: Read and Explore: Birds, Nesting and Birdhouses. At Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. After storytime, each child participating will make their own birdhouse and get nesting materials to take home. $12. Registration required. Terhuneorchards.com.

Wednesday, March 8

7 p.m.: PSO BRAVO violin masterclass by composer/violinist William Harvey

at Wolfensohn Hall, Institute for Advanced Study. Free, tickets required. Princetonsymphony.org.

7:30 p.m.: “Rising,” with tenor Lawrence Brownlee and pianist Kevin Miller, song cycle of new settings of Harlem Renaissance texts by contemporary composers. At Richardson Auditorium. $10-$40. Puc.princeton. edu.

7 p.m .: Diane Wilson and Tessa Desmond discusses the novel The Seed Keeper at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Princetonlibrary.org.

Thursday, March 9

10 a.m.-2 p.m.: Princeton Farmers Market at the Dinky train station lot. Local farms, baked goods, artisan foods, gifts, and more. Free parking.

5-7 p.m.: “The Entrepreneur’s Journey: How to Prepare for Fundraising,” hybrid event with panel discussion. Live event is at Princeton Innovation Center BioLabs, 303A College Road East. Princetonbiolabs.com.

6 p.m.: Rhae Lynn Barnes and Tera Hunter discuss After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America at Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street, and online. Labyrinthbooks.org.

6:45 p.m.: Mercer’s Best Toastmasters Club meets at Lawrence Community Center, 295 Eggerts Crossing Road, Lawrence Township. Free. Mercersbest.toastmastersclubs.org.

7 p.m.: “Instruments of the Indian Subcontinent,” a talk by composer/violinist William Harvey, with tabla musician Dibyarka Chatterjee, at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Free. Princetonlibrary.org.

7-8:30 p.m .: “Ode to the Fallen Trees,” concert by Puerto Rican composer and improvisation concert pianist Alfonso Fuentes Colon, with clarinetist Oskar Espina Ruiz. At Richardson Auditorium. Free. Plas.princeton.edu/ events.

Friday, March 10

7-10 p.m.: “From Ellarslie with Love: Love Songs Across the Decades with the Tom Chiola Quartet and Jessica Briggs.” At Trenton Museum at Ellarslie, Cadwalader Park, Trenton. Ellarslie.org/concert.

7:30 p.m.: Clean Slate: A World Premiere Musical, at Mill Hill Playhouse, 205 East Front Street, Trenton. A co-production between Passage Theatre and Rider University. Rider.edu/arts.

Saturday, March 11

9 a.m.-12 p.m.: Princeton Future meets at Princeton Public Library. The topic is “How We Get Around: Land Use and Circulation in Princeton,” led by planner Tony Nelessen. Free. Princetonfuture.org

MARCH

9:30-11 a.m.: “Highfield Tokamaks: The Fastest and Surest Plan to a Fusion Energy Power Plan.” Devon Battaglia of Commonwealth Fusion Systems leads the discussion. Held at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab as part of the Science on Saturday lecture series. 100 Stellarator Road. Coffee and donuts at 8:30 a.m. Pppl.gov.

10 a.m.: Read and Explore: Birds, Nesting and Birdhouses. At Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. After storytime, each child participating will make their own birdhouse and get nesting materials to take home. $12. Registration required. Terhuneorchards.com.

12-5 p.m .: Winery Weekend Music Series at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Live music from 1-4 p.m. with Brian Bortnick. Wine, light bites, and more. Terhuneorchards.com.

3 and 7:30 p.m.: Clean Slate: A World Premiere Musical, at Mill Hill Playhouse, 205 East Front Street, Trenton. A co-production between Passage Theater and Rider University. Rider.edu/arts.

3 p.m.: Virtual author appearance by Dan Gutman, who recently wrote a biography of Albert Einstein for kids. Join via Zoom or watch in Princeton Public Library’s Community Room. Princetonlibrary.org.

7:30 p.m.: La Fiocco period instrument ensemble presents “The Fiddler’s Dance” at Christ Congregation, 50 Walnut Lane. $10$25. Lafiocco.org.

8 p.m.: Princeton Symphony Orchestra presents Seven Decisions of Gandhi, world premiere conducted by Sameer Patel with violinist and composer William Harvey. Princetonsymphony.org.

8 p.m.: R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: A Celebration of the Music of Aretha Franklin, at State Theatre New Jersey, 15 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. $40-$98. STNJ.org.

Sunday, March 12

12-5 p.m .: Winery Weekend Music Series at Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road. Live music from 1-4 p.m. with Jerry Steele. Wine, light bites, and more. Terhuneorchards.com.

1 p.m .: Free carillon concert at Cleveland Tower on the Princeton University graduate campus; listen from outside the tower. University Carilloneur Lisa Lonie and guest artists perform.

2 p.m .: Ewing Township Historic Preservation Society presents “Carlisle Indian School Students’ Experiences in Ewing Township 18851915” by Larry Kidder, at the Benjamin Temple House, 27 Federal City Road. Free. Register at info@ethps.org

2 p.m.: The Trent House presents the video premiere of Whispers of Freedom Just Between Us: A Trent House Story, at the Trent House, 15 Market Street, Trenton. Pre-register at tinyurl.com/ THMarch12.

Derived From the Hemp Plant, CBD (Cannabiodiol) May Offer Benefits For a Variety of Conditions

good place. It is a highly visible location, with neighbors that attract customers. For example, we are right next to the Wawa.”

“

My goal is to educate people about the benefits of Native Ceuticals,” says Phil Rutman.

Owner of Native Ceuticals, located at 1273 Route 206 (State Road), Montgomery Township, he looks forward to introducing people to the company’s products, which he believes will improve health problems.

IT’S NEW To Us

“I want to help people gain an understanding about the benefits of CBD (cannabiodiol) and these products,” he explains. “They have nothing to do with marijuana, do not cause a high, and are not addictive. There are multiple derivatives from hemp, offering a beneficial herbal alternative for treatment of many health problems. This is a growing industry. CBD has been legal since 2018.”

Highest Quality

Rutman’s store is an independently-owned franchise, which he opened in September of 2022. The parent Native Ceuticals company is headquartered in North Carolina. Its mission statement explains that it “is a seed-to-shelf business model providing non-toxic ethically produced CBD and CBD products. It is here that we formulate and manufacture every product available to you.

“Whether farmed ourselves or sourced from hemp farms here in North Carolina, we start with only the best cannabis strains. Our professionally processed oils are then sent for third party testing to ensure the highest concentrations of cannabinoids and the absence of any residual solvents, molds, or pesticides. These extra steps are taken not only to ensure that we are providing the

highest quality products, but more importantly to make sure they are safe for our customers.”

Rutman, whose previous career was in retail, worked as an executive at Macy’s and at Perry Ellis, and explains he wanted to head in a new direction.

“After COVID, I was ready for a change, and I decided it was time to have my own business. I learned about this industry, and I became interested. I’ve tried nearly every product, and have educated myself about all of them. Educating people about this is a major priority, and it is a learning experience for me too.”

The products can target such conditions as stress/ anxiety, depression, mood, sleeping difficulties, stomach upsets, pain, skin problems, and the immune system. In a wide price range, they are available as gummies, gel caps, pills, tinctures (in bottles with droppers), salves, lotions, and roll-ons.

Soothing Relief

“There are topicals and salves for joint, muscle, and arthritis pain,” points out Rutman, “and also lotions for soothing relief of muscle aches. In addition, pills for focus, concentration, and attention span are available. Some products are antiinflammatories, and some have antioxidant qualities.

“Pain relief can often come as quickly as 10 to 20 minutes, and there are no unpleasant side effects,” he reports, adding, “It is important that customers follow the specific recommended dosages. I advise people to start at the lower dose level. Of course, customers are welcome to consult their physician.”

Other products address skin problems, help to reduce wrinkles, enhance collagen, and others can treat conditions such as eczema. There are also non-toxic cleansers.

In addition, pet products are available, including those to help aches and pains, and others with calming effects.

All Ages

Customer response has been excellent, says Rutman. “We have people coming in every day, and often they are repeats. They are all ages, from the early 20s on up. The products are good for any age. The customers say that what we have has really made a difference for them.”

He points out that currently the industry is not FDAregulated. “However, all our products here are tested by an independent third party laboratory for quality and safety purposes.”

He is very pleased both with the enthusiastic response to Native Ceuticals and with the location. “I thought this would be a

He also wanted to offer a pleasing and comfortable environment, and the setting is light and inviting. “I hoped to have a relaxed, calming space. We have chairs if people want to spend time, ask questions, and discuss the products. Everything is on display, with convenient explanations for their purpose.

“There is nothing like us in the area. We are unique. Customers are coming from all over, including Princeton. I enjoy meeting them all, and I hope to make a difference for them. Our products can offer great benefit for general health and wellness. We are here to help people.”

Native Ceuticals

further information, call (609) 2122134. Website: nativeceuticals.com.

—Jean Stratton

ONLINE

problems.” Phil Rutman, owner of Native Ceuticals, is enthusiastic about his CBD (cannabidiol) products made from the hemp plant.

ent chemical compounds. It can address a variety of healthrelated conditions. It is a natural, good, healthy way to help an array of

S ports

Stone Hits High Notes for PU Women’s Hoops, Helping Tigers Rally Past Harvard on Senior Night

Grace Stone experienced some extra nerves to go with the emotions she was feeling as the Princeton University women’s basketball program held its annual Senior Night celebration last Friday when it hosted Harvard.

After each member of the team’s Class of 2023 was introduced, Tiger senior guard/forward Stone grabbed a mic and sang a duet of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” with her mother Karen Stone before the crowd of 1,744 at Jadwin Gym.

“I have never really sung in front of anybody before like that,” said Stone. “She really, really wanted me to sing with her; that song means a lot to us and our family. I know it meant a lot to her so I really wanted to do it. It felt special.”

It was a special evening for Stone and her classmates as they dealt with some mixed emotions.

“It is hard because we are celebrating our journey at Princeton and then you have all of these celebrations with our parents and loved ones and then you have to go and play a basketball game,” said Stone, a 5’11 native of Glen Cove, N.Y. “It was mostly just taking that in, being a little sad, being a little reminiscent and then just getting ready to play.” Harvard came out ready to

play, outscoring the Tigers 16-8 in the second quarter as they built a 30-20 halftime lead.

“Harvard is a really good team, they really speed you up on both ends of the floor,” said Stone. “They were pressuring us a lot and we weren’t really getting into the stuff that we wanted to run offensively. Defensively, we just weren’t finishing plays, we weren’t ending box outs. We were getting caught on screens a lot so they were getting threes. At halftime, we just told ourselves, stick to our Tiger principles, play hard, chase screens, get our hands up, and finish plays.”

Stone played very well in the third quarter, scoring seven points and picking up an assist as the Tigers outscored the Crimson 15-9 in the period.

“I was just getting it on the low block and trying to see what they were giving me,” said Stone reflecting on her third quarter outburst. “I have been practicing being in that position a lot and trying to be aggressive with the ball, spotting up on the three when I can and just trying to make it.”

Princeton closed the deal, overcoming the Crimson down the stretch to pull out a 51-47 win, improving to 20-5 overall and 11-2 Ivy League.

“It was stop, stop, stop

— we forced 23 turnovers,” said Stone. “I think that is the biggest thing. We know in big games, close games our defense is going to win it for us. That is what did it.”

Stone contributed a key bucket in the rally, converting a pass from Kaitlyn Chen to draw the Tigers to within 46-43 midway through the fourth quarter.

“I just waiting there, I didn’t know how she was going to get it to me,” recalled Stone. “She said she saw me, I trusted the process on that one.”

Having lost to Harvard 6759 on December 31 in the Ivy opener, Princeton was fired up for the rematch.

“They left a bad taste in our mouth, we wanted to beat them,” said Stone. “We know that there is potential to see them in the (Ivy) tournament. It is always going to be a good game with them. We really wanted it — I think that showed.”

Getting some vociferous cheering from the Jadwin crowd helped spur the rally for the Tigers

“I don’t know if I have had a crowd that big in my Princeton career,” said Stone. “To have it on my Senior Night when they are honoring us and our journey, it meant so much to have the support from the community, from the student athletes and from everyone. I just thought was incredible. We needed that energy — it was really huge.”

It meant a lot for Stone and fellow seniors Julia Cunningham, Maggie Connolly, Kira Emsbo, and Lexi Weger to all be in the starting lineup against Harvard.

“It has been a really long ride for us, five years basically, they are like my best friends,” said Stone. “It means the world to me to be able to come into the gym every day with them and just grind and then hang out with them afterwards and laugh and cry. Everything about it is incredible that we still get to keep playing.”

Princeton head coach Carla Berube credited her senior group with making an incredible contribution to the program.

“They are amazing, they have just been great teammates; Julia and Maggie are captains but all five of them are really great leaders,” said Berube. “They just embody what we are all about — just playing hard, playing together, and playing for each other. They bring great energy, they bring positivity, they do whatever we need to be successful. Sometimes it is in games but a lot of times it is practice or off the court being a great teammate. They have been amazing, I can’t say enough about them. They are just really special people.”

Falling behind Harvard, the Tigers needed to be more energetic at both ends to get back into the contest.

“It was a couple of things; I thought we just needed to take better care of the basketball and do a better job on the defensive end,” said

Berube. “We were allowing them open looks, our hands were down. They were getting open threes. It is a big game and you are playing for your seniors. You know this is important, it is a lot of emotion. Sometimes the first half is tough. I thought we regrouped really well at halftime and in that third quarter, we were so much better.”

Berube was not surprised to see Stone step up in the third quarter.

“Grace certainly was a spark and that is what she can do,” said Berube of Stone who ended up with 13 points and four rebounds in the win. “All of a sudden, she can take over a game defensively and making threes. She was awesome.”

The Tiger defense tightened up down the stretch. “There wasn’t anything that we had to talk about that we thought they were beating us on,” said Berube. “It was just, ‘let’s play a little more fundamentally sound and stick to our principles.’ That is what you saw in the third

and fourth quarter. When we needed to get stops, we got the stops.”

Junior guard Chen gave Princeton what it needed offensively, scoring a teamhigh 18 points with eight in the fourth quarter and the go-ahead layup with 19 seconds left in regulation.

“Kaitlyn was huge, she just finds a way; she is falling down, whatever it is,” said Berube. “Credit to Harvard, their defense was really tough. They are aggressive, they are long, and they made everything really, really difficult for us. But Kaitlyn Chen is Kaitlyn Chen and she just finds ways.”

Finding a way to turn the tables on Harvard was a big motivation for the Tigers.

“Our team really wanted this game because we didn’t have a great showing up there,” said Berube. “We wanted to play a lot better and we did. It was good enough.”

With Princeton hosting the Ivy postseason tourney from March 10-12, Berube is hop-

ing the Tigers can keep getting better and better.

“It was a great crowd, we can’t wait for two weeks from now,” said Berube, whose team is locked in a first place tie with Columbia in the Ivy standings and plays at Penn on March 3 in its regular season finale. “We just have to take care of business next Friday, it is a big game. It is probably going to be their Senior Day, the Palestra is hard to play in. Hopefully we will have a great week of practice and be ready for that.”

Stone believes that the win over Harvard shows that the Tigers are ready for a big postseason run.

“We have been in close games this season, our nonconference wasn’t easy,” said Stone. “We found ourselves in a lot of close games. We are prepared for this, I think that showed in our end of game situation today. I think we are prepared, I think it is good for us. We really want to come out and bring our best now.”

—Bill Alden

STONE AGE: Princeton University women’s basketball player Grace Stone puts up a shot in recent action. Last Friday, senior star Stone scored 13 points and had four rebounds to help Princeton rally from a 10-point halftime deficit to earn a 51-47 win over Harvard. The Tigers, now 20-5 overall and 11-2 Ivy League, play at Penn on March 3 in their regular season finale.

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Stymied by Stifling Maryland Defensive Effort, PU Men’s Lax Falls 11-5 to Powerhouse Terps

For the Princeton University men’s lacrosse team, powerhouse Maryland proved to be its kryptonite last spring.

Last February, Princeton fell 15-10 to the Terps in a regular season contest. On Memorial Day weekend, the Tigers lost 13-8 to Maryland in the NCAA semis as the Terps went to win the national title to cap an undefeated campaign.

Last Saturday, when the foes met for an early season showdown at Class of 52 Stadium, the Tigers had last year’s setbacks in the rear view mirror.

“It is a very different team for us this year and for them too so there was not too much harping on those two last season,” said Princeton head coach Matt Madalon, whose squad came into the game ranked No. 3 nationally in the Inside Lacrosse media poll with Maryland at No. 9. “We were just trying to put our guys in a good position to win.”

While the clash may have involved a different cast of characters, the ending turned out to be unfortunately familiar for the Tigers as Maryland rode a stifling defensive effort to a 11-5 triumph before a hardy crowd of 1,775 braving the chilly afternoon with temperatures hovering in the low 30s and intermittent snow flurries.

In reflecting on the defeat, Madalon acknowledged that his squad wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be to overcome the Terps.

“We were a little sloppy on Tuesday night (a 14-9 win over Manhattan) so we had a lot of things we had to recalibrate,” said Madalon. “It

was a short week of prep, on some of the finer points of the game we weren’t as buttoned up as we needed to be.”

The Princeton defense produced a fine performance in the first half as the Tigers trailed just 3-1 with junior defenseman Pace Billings and senior goalie Griffen Rakower coming up big.

“We are always happy when we can stack stops, it is hard to manufacture stops against these offenses,” said Madalon, who got 11 saves from Rakower in his one half of action as Michael Gianforcaro handled the goalie duties in the second half. “I think we put ourselves behind playing a man down a little too much today. Billings is always tough, he does a nice job. Griffen had some nice saves.”

At the break, the Tigers focused on getting their offense clicking.

“We just hadn’t settled in, we were 1-for-20 shooting at that point,” said Madalon. “It wasn’t shot selection, it was just putting better shots on cage. We were getting shots from decent spots but we just weren’t locating them well enough.”

Princeton seemingly gained some momentum midway through the third period as it scored twice in 3:35 to narrow the gap to 7-3. The second goal, though, was waved off due to an illegal stick foul on the face-off and Princeton was hit with a three-minute unreleasable penalty.

“It is an odd moment; the penalty or the ability to call a stick check is there for a reason,” said Madalon. “The

face-off guys get their stick mangled at times. It was really unfortunate.”

The Tiger offense did show some punch as Princeton went on a 3-1 run to make it a 10-5 game with 12:04 left in the game.

“I think they started getting going,” said Madalon who got three goals from Coulter Mackesy in the loss with Sam English and Weston Carpenter tallying one apiece. “Those guys, when they look at the tape, they are going to want a little more out of it. They will want that one back a bit. It just took them a little too long to get going. There were some good pieces, we are still figuring ourselves out a little bit.”

Princeton, though, couldn’t figure out the Maryland defense.

“Their goalie (Brian Ruppel-14 saves) did a nice job, he has got a heck of a defense in front of him,” said Madalon. “It was great. We were struggling at times to create advantages but all in all they did a nice job defending us.”

While the loss stung, Madalon believes that the working through the struggles on Saturday can lead to some nice things as the season unfolds.

“We’ve just got to keep continuing to get better, we have got to play more complementary lacrosse,” said Madalon, whose team hosts Georgetown on March 4. “Our defense plays well and our offense is not shooting well. We have got to put 60 minutes together on both sides of the ball. It is just get back to work — you have got to learn from the wins and from the losses. We have got a lot of lacrosse left.”

—Bill

Alden

Tiger Women’s Hockey Puts a Scare into Colgate But Falls to Raiders in ECACH Quarterfinal Series

It may have been blackboard material for the opponents of the Princeton University women’s hockey team, but Cara Morey was on to something.

On the last regular season home weekend of the season when Princeton clinched a spot in the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals, Tiger head coach Morey exuded confidence as she looked ahead to postseason action.

“Our hope is that we are really hot as we head into playoffs,” said Morey. “I think that people are generally scared of the Tigers in the playoffs and I think this year is going to be like the rest. Whoever we play and it is looking like it could be Quinnipiac or Colgate, I

am sure they are wondering, shoot, I just don’t want to face the Tigers.”

Sure enough, Princeton ended up playing at Colgate last weekend in the ECACH quarters and the seventhseeded Tigers put quite a scare into the secondseeded Raiders, who were ranked third nationally.

Last Friday, Princeton junior star Sarah Fillier, who helped the Canadian women’s hockey team win the gold medal at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, assisted on a tying goal and then scored the game-winner as the Tigers rallied to a 3-2 win in the opener.

A day later, freshman standout Issy Wunder scored two goals as Princeton built

a 3-2 third period lead in game two only to fall 4-3 as the Raiders scored two unanswered goals in the last six minutes of the contest. In the decisive game three on Sunday, Fillier struck again, scoring a first period goal as the Tigers jumped out to a 1-0 lead. The Raiders answered back with a goal minutes later to knot the game at 1-1. The foes remained locked at 1-1 until Colgate scored early in the third period to edge ahead. Princeton was unable to find the back of the net again despite putting on the pressure with seven shots in the last 2:09 of the game. Freshman goalie Tyler Hyland made a career-high 43 saves in a losing cause as the Tigers finished the winter with a 15-15-1 overall record.

—Bill Alden

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

STICKING POINT: Princeton University men’s lacrosse player Coulter Mackesy looks to elude a defender in a recent game. Last Saturday, sophomore attacker Mackesy tallied three goals but it wasn’t enough as Princeton fell 11-5 to defending national champion Maryland. The Tigers, now 2-1, will look to get back in the winning track as they host Georgetown on March 4.

GETTING HER FILL: Princeton University women’s hockey player Sarah Fillier, right, goes after the puck in a game earlier this season. Last weekend, junior star Fillier totaled two goals and two assists as seventh-seeded Princeton lost a best-of-three ECAC Hockey quarterfinal series to second-seeded Colgate. The Tigers topped the Raiders 3-2 on Friday in the opener but then lost 4-3 on Saturday and fell 2-1 to Colgate in a decisive game three on Sunday. The defeat left the Tigers with a 15-15-1 overall record. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

PU Sports Roundup

Princeton Men’s Swimming

Takes 2nd at Ivy Championships

Raunak Khosla led the way as the Princeton University men’s swimming team took second at the Ivy League Championships last weekend in Providence, R.I.

Tiger senior standout Khosla shared the Phil Moriarty High Point Swimmers of the Meet with Yale’s Noah Millard. Khosla placed first in the 200-yard individual medley, 400 IM, and 200 butterfly. Khosla closed out his career with 380 career points at Ivy championships to also earn the Harold Ulen Career High Point Swimmer Award.

In the team standings, Harvard placed first with 1,545 points while Princeton piled up 1433.5 in taking second.

Tiger Women’s Track

Takes 2nd at Ivy Heps

Producing a superb performance, the Princeton University women’s track team placed second in the Indoor Ivy Heptagonal Championships in Hanover, N.H. last weekend.

The Tigers piled up 151.5 points, their most ever in the indoor Heps, but it wasn’t enough to win the title as Harvard scored 177 to place first.

Individual victors for the Tigers at the meet included Madeline Wood in the high jump, Alexandra Kelly in the long jump and high jump, and Tessa Mudd in the pole vault.

In upcoming action, Princeton players will be competing in the CSA Individual Tournament in Philadelphia from March 3-5.

Tiger Women’s Lax Defeats Temple

Sparked by McKenzie Blake, the Princeton University women’s lacrosse team defeated Temple 17-9 last Saturday to earn its first win of the season and the first victory for new head coach Jenn Cook.

Sophomore attacker Blake scored six goals on the day as the Tigers outscored the Owls 6-1 in the fourth quarter to break open the game. Blake was later named the Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week.

Princeton plays at Rutgers on March 1 and then opens Ivy League action with a game at Yale on March 4.

Princeton Baseball

Goes 1-3 in Georgia

Scott Bandura had a huge weekend as the Princeton University baseball team started its 2023 campaign by going 1-3 in a four-game set at the University of Georgia.

Junior outfielder Bandura batted .375 with six hits in 16 at-bats in the series. Five of his hits went for extra bases, including three home runs and two doubles. He also scored six

runs and knocked in eight for the Tigers. Bandura was later named the Ivy League Player of the Week.

Princeton lost 12-5 in its season opener on Friday and then fell 9-0 on Saturday before splitting a doubleheader on Sunday, falling 12-7 in the opener before prevailing 12-11 in the nightcap.

The Tigers return to action when they play a three-game set at Duke from March 3-5.

Princeton Softball

Opens with Liberty Classic

Alexis Laudenslager starred as the Princeton University softball team went 2-3 at the Liberty Classic in Lynchburg, Va., to open its 2023 campaign.

Senior right-hander Laudenslager started with a one-hit, three-walk 1-0 shutout of Elon on Friday, striking out 11 batters, one short of her then-career high. The next day, Laudenslager upped that career high to 13, going all eight innings in a 5-4 loss to host Liberty. She was later named the Ivy League Co-Pitcher of the Week with Harvard’s Anna Reed.

In the other results over the weekend, Princeton defeated Morgan State 9-1 on Friday and fell 10-2 to Marshall and 6-1 to Northern Illinois a day later.

In upcoming action, Princeton will be competing in the

Longhorn Invitational at Austin, Texas from March 3-5.

PU Women’s Water Polo Dominates Invitational

Fueled by a high-powered offense, the 13th-ranked Princeton University women’s water polo team went 5-0 at its annual Princeton Invitational last weekend at DeNunzio Pool.

In action on Saturday, the Tigers defeated No. 18 Harvard 11-4 and St. Francis Brooklyn 17-8. A day later, the Tigers topped No. 19 Brown 12-6, Siena 14-7, and LaSalle 16-6.

Princeton, now 12-1 overall, will be competing in the Aztec Invitational at San Diego State from March 11-12.

Tiger Men’s Volleyball Sweeps Harvard

Ben Harrington came up big to help the Princeton University men’s volleyball team post a pair of 3-1 victories over Harvard.

On Friday, junior Harrington contributed a matchhigh 17 kills as Princeton prevailed 25-16, 25-27, 2624, 25-18. A day later, Harrington had 17 kills again as the Tigers won 24-26, 2513, 26-24, 25-19.

The Tigers, now 6-8 overall and 2-2 Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association (EIVA), host FDU on March 3.

Senior Standout Cai Enjoys Memorable Ride

As

PHS Girls’ Swimmers Win State Title, Go 14-0

Things were quiet around the Princeton High girls’ swim team as it went on a bus ride last Saturday morning down to the Gloucester County Institute of Technology pool for a battle of unbeatens against Chatham in the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association ( NJSIAA) Group B state final.

“It was very early in the morning so it wasn’t that loud, a lot of people were still tired, getting up early,” said PHS senior star Beatrice Cai. “Our boys’ team had gone against Chatham last year in the state finals and they lost, so we kind of wanted to win this for the boys. We were all very nervous about that part.”

Once on the deck at GCIT, the Tigers started to make noise.

“In the beginning we were very fired up during our cheer,” said Cai. “We knew we had to get it started from the very beginning, there was nothing to hold back on.”

Third-seeded PHS got off to a good start as it went one-three in the 200-yard medley relay in the meet’s first event to take an apparent 10-4 lead. The advantage was increased to 12-2 as first-seeded Chatham’s top relay was subsequently disqualified.

“I think it motivated a lot of our other swimmers,” said Cai, reflecting on the 200 medley relay DQ. “Obviously it is still going to be a really close meet.”

That triumph set the tone for the meet as PHS went on to prevail 91-79 to earn the first state title since 1993 for the girls’ team and end the winter with a 14-0 record.

“I think we had a good balance across all of the events,” said Cai reflecting on the qualities that made the team special. “We had strong swimmers from the 200 free and all of the way throughout until the 100 breaststroke. There wasn’t any event where we were lacking. The camaraderie we had was something that definitely supported our success.”

Cai, for her part, produced some strong swims in the win, taking third in both the 200 individual medley and 100 butterfly.

“I was very close to second in the IM, like 0.03, it was a little bit of a touch out,” said Cai. “It was the best time for me, so I was happy with that. It was a good swim. Having Courtney [Weber] touch first, it was a good event for us. I did the 100 fly and I was third. I was pretty happy with that, it was around my best time.”

With PHS having piled up 85 points coming into the meet’s final event, the 400 freestyle relay, Cai savored getting the chance to end

her career swimming the lead-off leg for the PHS ‘A’ relay in the race and help clinch a title.

“It is the last event, everyone is waiting to be done but this was still a very important event for us,” said Cai, who helped the quartet take second and secure the state crown. “At the time when I looked at the score, we had 85 so that was little bit of a comforting thing to see. Going into the last relay, I was still a little nervous and a little sentimental.”

Afterwards, the Tigers let loose with a raucous celebration on the deck.

“It is crazy; we were always talking about it and our coach (Carly Misiewicz) was reminding us in the bus that this hasn’t been done in 30 years,” said Cai. “We put all of the effort into it, and seeing all of our efforts be rewarded was really nice. Everyone was so happy. We were jumping up and down and immediately pushed the coaches into the pool.”

PHS head coach Misiewicz saw her team’s 97-73 win over Shawnee in the Group B semis on February 21 as a harbinger of things to come in the final.

“They were up there, they are a very, very talented team; another team I thought we matched up really well against,” said Misiewicz referring to Shawnee.

“Going into it, we thought it could go either way. We had the confidence that we wanted to win. They gave us a really good meet, we did the exact same thing to them. Maybe our girls were just a little bit hungrier.”

The Tigers displayed that hunger against Chatham. “As soon as we got down there, we knew that we were so capable of winning,” said Misiewicz. “Everything just aligned perfectly this year. The mood and the energy was just pure excitement and adrenaline. There was a little bit of nerves and jitters but once you get that medley relay out of the way, going onethree, it was OK, we are in this. It is 10-4, we are up six. This is good, this is where we wanted to be and then all of a sudden I hear them announce that the score is 12-

2. I was like, ‘Wait a minute, what happened?’”

Good things kept happening for PHS as junior star Weber took first the 100 breaststroke along with her win in the 200 IM, junior Kyleigh Tangen placed first in both the 50 and 100 free races, and Jesse Wang won the 100 backstroke.

A pivotal moment in the meet came when Weber and senior Annie Zhao went onetwo in the 100 breast.

“We had 73 going into the breaststroke and once it started shaking out it was if we go one-two-three, that is it,” said Misiewicz. “We want one-two-four and that

PERFECT ENDING:

put us to 85. At that point, all we needed was third place in the 400 free relay. We basically needed no one to get disqualified and we had pretty much secured the win.”

In securing the title, team unity and talent proved to be hallmarks of the success enjoyed by the Tigers.

“The chemistry and our depth were the two major contributing factors,” said Misiewicz. “The best way to really describe it is that this whole season was such a team collaboration, a team effort. Sure we have this person who is an allstar or that person who is an all-star. But at the end of the day, it is how they came together that resulted in us being able to finish off with a perfect season and a state championship.”

Misiewicz relished getting the chance to help the squad come together.

“They were always able to find that next gear and when they didn’t think they had enough and they were thinking they had already gone their best time, they were able to go even faster,” said Misiewicz, who is in her ninth season as the head coach of the PHS girls’ and boys’ swim teams. “It was just incredible to see and I feel very, very lucky and very fortunate to have the opportunity to coach a group of girls like that. I feel truly lucky because not everyone can say that they have such a great experience.”

Cai, for her part, has enjoyed a memorable ride over the last four years.

“It is full circle, it wasn’t even initially a goal like oh I want to win states when I was a freshman,” said Cai. “But having that be my last year and my last race, it feels like a good, complete end to my high school career. I am very, very happy.”

—Bill Alden

Rider Furniture

Princeton High girls’ swimmer Beatrice Cai displays her breaststroke form in a race this season. Last Saturday, senior star Cai placed third in the 200-yard individual medley and 100 butterfly to help third-seeded PHS defeat top-seeded Chatham 91-79 in New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA)

PHS Wrestler Mele Earns Return Trip to States, Determined to Fight His Way into Medal Contention

Blas e Mele is returning to the boys state wrestling tournament a more confident wrestler than a year ago.

The Princeton High sophomore earned his second trip to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA)/Rothman Orthopaedic State Championships Atlantic City by placing second at 132 pounds in the Region 5 tournament last Saturday at Franklin High. Mele reached states last year despite overcoming a midseason injury to become the first PHS freshman qualifier in program history. He begins to compete for a medal in states on March 2 in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City with the finals set for Sunday.

“Last year, the goal was really to make it to A.C., then I had some difficulties in the middle of the season that kind of messed up my season,” said Mele. “This year, I’m really looking to go out there and prove I can compete with the best. Last year did leave a sour taste in my mouth. I would be lying if I told you anything different because I’m a competitor. I like to compete and I train to win.”

Mele is up a weight class from 126 last year. Seeded third, he opened the region meet with a pin of Brandon Castro of South Brunswick. He won, 16-1, by a technical fall over Justin Fearon of Middletown North in the quarterfinals, then pinned second-seeded Vincent DePierro of Manalapan in the semifinals. Top-seeded Patrick O’Keefe finally topped him, 7-5, in the final. O’Keefe edged him in overtime for the District 17 crown the week before.

“Obviously there are things I can fix and improve on, and there are things I’m looking to fix and that I’m going to have to fix if I want to achieve my goal of getting on the podium,” said Mele. “At the end of the day, advancing is the name of the game. Just getting through to the next round is important. Even though I would have liked to get that region title, the state tournament is where you want to do best. That finals match was a 5050 match, and the district match was the same with the same kid — O’Keefe. I’m looking to get those 5050 matches to go my way at the state tournament and not necessarily at regions or districts, even though it would have been nice to win one of the two.”

Mele will be joined in the state tournament this year by fellow sophomore Cole Rose, who earned the fourth and final spot at 113 pounds in Region 5 (Rose’s sister, senior standout Ava, will also be in A.C. after qualifying at 114 for the girls’ state tournament finals).

Mele was only the sixth seed and overcame the No. 3 seed in the quarterfinals to put himself in position to win one more match to reach the state tournament for the first time.

“Last year, we had one state qualifier, and this year we have two,” said Mele. “I think that things will only keep going upwards.”

Marty Brophy was seeded sixth and ended up placing sixth at 138 pounds. The PHS senior, though, shocked third-seeded Cole Pangborn of Rumson-Fair Haven by rallying for a 6-4 quarterfinal win before a pair of losses knocked him out of state spot contention.

“That was probably one of the best matches I’ve seen Marty wrestle Friday night,” said PHS coach Jess Monzo. “It cemented where he is in Princeton. The next day it’s a little bit of a different outcome, but beating that kid was the big thing.

To represent Princeton as a Group 4 school, we’re not a school known for a tremendous wrestling program, but we’re starting to build it. We put three guys in the semis of 14 weight classes. We only had four guys competing in the tournament. To put ourselves out there and put ourselves on the map is tremendous. He was one win from Atlantic City. He gave everything he had.”

Christian Paul fell, 7-3, in the first round to Raritan’s Logan Acevedo at 150. The Tiger junior was seeded 11th , but making his first region meet for the first time was significant.

“It was huge,” said Monzo. “It really let Christian know that he belongs. It validated his season to get to that level. From where he was two years ago as a freshman coming in and last year as a sophomore, and kind of being thrown into the districts at 157 and probably he had to gain a little weight to get over ’42 to actually wrestle. To be a full ’57 and drop down to ’50 this year and do what he did, it cemented all the work he put in and the weights he lifted over the summer. He was big, he was strong this year and his wrestling showed that he can compete at this level. We’re excited for his senior year and what’s to come.”

The week before, PHS came up one spot short of a fifth region qualifier. Chase Hamerschlag placed fourth at 165 in the District 17 meet with the top three moving onto Region 5. The freshman was winning his third-place match before falling.

“That kid that beat him for third place qualified for the state tournament,” said Monzo. “So it kind of let Chase know he belonged. Seeing that made him believe and now it’s going to sting because he knows he can wrestle at that level. But he had a tremendous freshman year, over 20 wins, fourth place in the district, and it’s a good stepping stone as a freshman. There’s plenty to look forward to.”

Overall, the Tigers have enjoyed a good showing. They finished fifth in the districts as a team, and 13th in the regions. Of their region qualifiers, only Brophy, who will run cross country in college, will graduate this year.

“I’m proud of my guys,” said Monzo. “I’m proud of what they did. But if you ask them, I think they want a little more too, which is good. We’ll take what we did and we’ll be excited about it and we’ll look to build on it for the future.”

Mele continues to move

forward. He’s been healthy this season and has gotten some tests along the way that helped him prepare for the final weeks of the season. Mele is 34-4 heading into his return trip to states, and he’s not just satisfied with a states berth. He has a notably different outlook in his return.

“My coaches have pushed me all year, telling me you can win at the highest level, you can get on that state podium,” said Mele. “Everybody’s been telling me that. I’m so grateful for c oach Monzo, coach [Ron] Dolenti, my parents, they’ve been telling me all year, ‘ Blas e, you can do this, you can get where you want to be.’”

Rose, too, had confidence that he could finish better than his seeding to reach the state tournament. He is up a weight class from a year ago, and he had to fight through his bracket to advance. He started with a 15-2 major decision over Hopewell Valley’s Dylan Hersh. He came through with an 11-9 sudden victory win over Manalapan’s thirdseeded Andrew Mucciolo to reach the semifinals. After a loss, his pin of Raritan’s Aidan Davis in wrestlebacks clinched a berth in the state tournament.

“To wrestle like that, to go into overtime, to have to dig deep and pull out a win showed a little bit of grit and a bit of resilience,” said Monzo. “He wrestled at ’20 all year and we made a decision to cut down to 113 for the postseason looking at the way the regions were and the way the weight classes shook out. It was a better chance to get to Atlantic City. I would never say an easier road because at that level there is no easy road. It put us in a better position to achieve our goal.”

Mele didn’t bat an eye in the 132-pound semifinals when he was paired against DePierro, who was seeded ahead of him. The two hadn’t wrestled each other before, but DePierro had done better at last year’s state tournament than had Mele. Mele won their first head-to-head to reach the region final.

“Regardless of who’s in front of me, I pretty much approach every wrestling match the same,” said Mele. “Of course you can think of technical things you can change kid to kid, but your mentality is always the same. It’s always to go out there and score points and be dominant. If you’re not going out there to be dominant, there’s no point to wrestling then. I think that reflects in my wrestling. I get a lot of tech falls. I like to put points on the board. In that match, I was dominant but there’s always things to improve. Some of those scramble positions could have gone either way.”

Wins like that in the region semifinal have helped reinforce his ability. Mele will bring a greater confidence with him this year, the result of not just his season-long success but also the positivity that has surrounded him. Expectations were raised by last year’s success that catapulted in off his youth experience. It has helped this

year to have his coaches and family thinking highly of his chances.

“That’s important because when you hear that every single day, I believe that right now,” said Mele. “I believe I can get on that state podium. That’s just as important. I think that’s the answer. This season, there’s a belief that I can do it. Last year, there was no real belief because I didn’t know if could wrestle. This year, things have gone my way, I’ve been able to compete, I have 30-some matches under my belt, and I believe that I can get where I want to go.”

Mele worked hard after last season to improve himself. His main focus was being better at putting multiple moves together to pick up points.

“At the highest level, to get on that state podium, you can’t just have one thing that works for you,” said Mele. “You have to be able to do one, two, three, four, five things in a row just to get maybe one point, just to get an escape you have to be hitting a sequence of moves. If you’re not training to do them, you’re not going to be able to put it together in a match when it matters. I’ve been working in the offseason with club coaches and training partners in the offseason to improve my chain wrestling and how I can score points.”

Mele used his offseason well, and that focus is a key to his development. While he is in the midst of putting his energy into winning a state medal, he also knows that regardless of this year’s outcome his development won’t end after this season.

“I’m looking forward to getting back to training and improving and seeing where I fell short this year and fixing it,” said Mele. “As much as I love competing, the day in and day out grind is just as fun to me — working to improve and working to get better.”

Monzo has seen improvements in Mele in every facet this year, but the key is in his head. He will go to Atlantic City less nervous about the bright lights on the biggest stage in the state, and he recognizes that he can compete with anyone in his bracket. He has been pushed

all year by a host of training partners that include Rose, Brophy, and brothers Harrison and Tyler Ehee among others.

“It just goes back to the atmosphere in the Princeton High wrestling room,” said Mele. “Everybody is supportive of each other. There were kids that showed up to regions that were not wrestling, they did not have to come but they put it out there. They supported their teammates. I think there’s something special going on in the Princeton High room that you’re not going to find at too many other schools.”

Mele’s experience has shown up in the practice room in ways that are bigger than his wrestling. He has taken on leadership duties and set an example for others. He has helped to raise the level of competitiveness, and that has helped him remain sharper.

“Where he improved the most is in his mental preparation,” said Monzo. “We saw it from the beginning. He took a big role, a big

responsibility this year in helping everyone else warm up and talking them through situations. He’s been a huge help in the room. I think kids seeing that, and seeing a teammate doing that, other people have started to buy in as well. He’s been a really good leader. Marty Brophy kind of showed him the way to lead and guys in the past like [Alec] Bobchin and [James] Romaine who have done it have left a blueprint and now we’re following it. We’re showing the younger guys behind how it can be done.”

Mele will try to take it another step further at the state tournament. He is looking forward to another chance to compete in Atlantic City, this year with both his expectations and his confidence higher in his return trip.

“Every opportunity can’t be wasted,” said Mele. “I’m already halfway through my high school career. I would never think that it would go this fast, but it’s gone very fast.”

—Justin Feil

BLASE OF GLORY: Princeton High wrestler Blase Mele gets ready to grapple in recent action. Last weekend, sophomore Mele took second at 132 pounds in the Region 5 tournament to earn a spot at the upcoming 2023 New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA)/Rothman Orthopaedic State Championships, beginning on March 2 in Atlantic City. He will be joined at the boys’ competition by another PHS wrestler, sophomore Cole Rose at 106. Rose’s sister, senior Ava, will also be in A.C. after qualifying at 114 for the girls’ state tournament final. (Photo provided by Daren Mele)

Andrew Wyeth, “ e Carry Tote”

Andrew Wyeth, Evening at Kuerners print

have done a wonderful job bringing our younger kids along. That is the big thing; we want them to leave a mark and set an example for our younger kids. We have some really talented younger kids.”

Star forward Logue has emerged as one of the team’s top young players.

“Brady is awesome; we have got a good, talented group of young kids but Brady is pretty special,” said Bertoli of Logue who scored a team-high 11 goals and added nine assists. “He has just got a way about him, he has got poise. We struggle to score and he is the one kid that has really scored consistently for us.”

Last Monday, PDS struggled as it fell 8-4 to Gloucester Catholic in the state quarterfinals to end the winter with a 7-11-3 record. Coming into the contest, Bertoli knew that his team faced an uphill battle.

“The reality is that we know what they are bring to the table, their top guys are as good as anyone we have played this year,” said Bertoli, whose team had tied the Rams 5-5 in mid-December before falling 8-2 and 7-3 to them in subsequent meetings. “We are going to get zone time. We are going to control a lot of the play but it is going to be the ability to neutralize them in transition

and slow their top kids down because they are going to get their chances.”

While Brown had hoped that the Panthers would turn the tables on Gloucester Catholic, he has relished his PDS hockey experience.

“It has been incredible, just this team in the locker room over here, it is a family in there,” said Brown, who is heading to Syracuse University where he may play club hockey. “Everyone loves each other, the coaches are great. We have so much fun together in school, out of school, and at the rink.”

—Bill Alden

Sparked by McCann’s Work Ethic, All-Around Play, PDS Girls’ Hockey Advances to State Semifinals

Emily McCann got things rolling for the Princeton Day school girls’ hockey team as it started play in the NJSIAA girls’ hockey state tournament by hosting Newark East Side last Thursday afternoon.

Just over four minutes into the first period, junior forward McCann poked in a rebound to give fourth-seeded PDS a 1-0 lead over 13th-seeded Newark East Side in the opening round contest.

“I was just trying to get my rebound that was there,” said McCann. “I was just trying to get things moving, especially so the rest of the team could play.”

The Panthers kept moving from there, cruising to an 8-1 victory as PDS got contributions throughout the lineup. “We were definitely playing well as a team, keeping the energy high,” said McCann. “It was a good game, it was good to get it done.”

With the Panthers having advanced to the fi nal of the NJSIAA state tournament last winter in its debut in the competition, McCann and her teammates are bringing a lot of energy into this year’s tourney.

“This is the biggest tournament and we were all anxious to get into it,” said McCann. “I think last year’s run gives us confidence — we definitely want to be back there but we know it doesn’t come for free. We have to work really hard in order to get there again.”

McCann, who also stars for the PDS cross country and track programs, puts in a lot

of work to excel in running and on the ice.

“I am not playing club hockey this year so I could focus on running, I have been running just as much as I have during the fall,” said McCann, who averages running 30-40 miles a week. “I have raced three times. I work out with Garden State Track Club, I do workouts with them once a week. I practiced less hockey and just play in the games. I came into the season a little rusty not playing on a club team, once I got going it was final. I think hockey makes me stronger for running and running makes me have more endurance for hockey.”

PDS head coach Julie DeSimone liked her team’s strong start in the state tournament.

“It was nice to get back to it, they played hard today,” said DeSimone. “Everybody got some ice time, so that was good. We know how to play at that level.”

DeSimone credited McCann with being a catalyst for the Panthers.

“Emily always gets things moving, that is why we like to have her on the ice,” said DeSimone. “She is always working hard. In addition to scoring goals, she is backchecking and really just playing a full-rounded game. We love Emily.”

The Panthers displayed good balance as five other players besides McCann also found the back of the net.

“We really did a nice job of getting everybody involved

in the play,” said DeSimone, who got two goals apiece from Grace Ulrich and Brynn Dandy in the win with Eibhleann Knox, Madison Trend, and Mariana Lee also scoring in the win. “I thought we played our game throughout, which is what we wanted to see. We wanted to make sure that we were using this as preparation to go forward. We were happy with how we played our positions and moved the puck well. That is all you can ask for in those games.”

On Monday, PDS came through in a tough game as it edged fifth-seeded Summit 1-0 in the state quarterfinals on a third-period goal by Ulrich with goalie Brigid Milligan coming up big in earning the shutout.

Coming into the clash with Summit, DeSimone knew that her squad faced a challenge.

“I think not having our full roster will be tough, so that is not great,” said DeSimone, whose team is now 7-5-3 and will play at top-seeded Morristown-Beard in the state semis on March 2 with the victor advancing to the final on March 6 at the Prudential Center in Newark. “We have played them before and we know what to expect. It is about putting pucks on net and getting those scoring chances.”

McCann, for her part, was confident that PDS would cash in its chances against the Hilltoppers.

“I think if we really just play hard and do our best, we will do well,” said McCann.

— Bill Alden

TOURNAMENT RUN: Princeton Day School girls’ hockey player Emily McCann, right, goes after the puck in recent action. Last Thursday, junior forward McCann, who also stars in cross country and track, tallied a goal and an assist to help fourth-seeded PDS defeat 13th-seeded Newark East Side 8-1in the first round of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) girls’ hockey state tournament. On Monday, PDS edged fifth-seeded Summit 1-0 in the state quarterfinals. The Panthers,

now 7-5-3, face top-seeded Morristown-Beard in the state semis on March 2 with the victor advancing to the title game on March 6 at the Prudential Center in Newark.

(Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Hun

Boys’ Basketball : Anthony Loscalzo scored 14 points and Mac Kelly added 11 for fifth-seeded Hun as it lost 77-43 to top-seeded St. Benedict’s in the Prep A state semis last week. The loss in the February 21 contest left the Raiders with a final record of 14-13.

Girls’ Basketball : Emily O’Dwyer had a huge game in a losing cause as Hun fell 88-61 at Gill St. Bernard’s in the Prep A state semis last week. Post-graduate guard Dwyer poured in 26 points in the February 21 game as the Raiders ended the season at 11-13.

Boys’ Hockey : Simon Gregoire scored the lone goal for Hun as its lost 5-1 to LaSalle College High last Wednesday in the Atlantic Prep Athletic Conference (APAC) semis. The Raiders finished the winter with an 11-13 record.

Lawrenceville

Girls’ Hockey : Ending a superb campaign on a high note, Lawrenceville defeated the Westminster School (Conn.) 3-1 last Wednesday in its season finale. The Big Red finished the winter with a record of 11-2-1.

third-seeded Trinity Hall last Wednesday in the opening round of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) South Jersey, Non-Public A sectional tournament. Ju-

nior star Mia Hartman tallied a game-high 11 points for the Panthers as they finished with a 2-20 record.

PHS PDS

Boys’ Basketball : Jaden Dublin scored 20 points but it wasn’t enough as 11thseeded PDS fell 47-45 to sixth-seeded Gloucester Catholic last Wednesday in the first round of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) South Jersey, Non-Public B sectional tournament this week. The defeat left the Panthers with a final record of 8-16.

Girls’ Basketball : Running into a buzz saw, 14thseeded PDS fell 67-21 to

Boys’ Basketball: Jahan

Owusu had a big game as 14th-seeded PHS got edged 55-54 by third-seeded North Brunswick last week in the first round of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Central Jersey, Group 4 sectional. Owusu scored a game-high 18 points in the February 21 contest as the Tigers ended the winter with a 10-13 record.

Girls’ Basketball : Riley Devlin starred in a losing cause as 12th-seeded PHS fell 71-37 to fifth-seeded Jackson Memorial last week in the first round of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA)

Central Jersey, Group 4 sectional. Junior star Devlin scored 13 points in the February 21 game as the Tigers finished the season at 13-12.

Local Sports

Princeton 5K Race

Slated for March 18

The Princeton 5K is returning on March 18 for its 14th year.

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

The in-person race starts in front of the Princeton Middle School at 217 Walnut Lane at 8:30 a.m. In 2023, the event will also include a 300-meter kids dash for all children under the age of 10.

Alternatively, there is a virtual option to participate between March 18-25. One

can choose when and where to run (or walk) the 5K in that time period.

To register and get more information on the event, log onto runsignup.com/ Race/Info/NJ/Princeton/ PrincetonNJ5K. T-shirts are guaranteed for those who register before February 27. Registration is also available in person on race day.

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

Dillon Youth Hoops Playoff Results

In playoff action last weekend in the Boys’ 4th/5th grade division of the Dillon Youth Basketball League, eighth-seeded Princeton Restorative Dental edged top-seeded Majeski Foundation 27-26 on Aidyn Shah s buzzer-beater. Shah scored 10 points for the victors while Malcolm Harris had 18 points for Majeski. Second-seeded Ivy Rehab defeated seventh-seeded Princeton Pettoranello 2923 as Zephaniah Chambers led Ivy Rehab with 18 points. Ali Redjal had 12 points for Princeton Pettoranello. Third-seeded Jefferson Plumbing topped sixth-seeded Mason Griffin & Pierson, PC 20-17. Illan Spiegel and Christian Barr each had eight points in the victory while Alex Spies had 10 points for MGP. Fourthseeded Proof Pizza edged fifth-seeded Locomotion 22-20 as Theo Henderson tallied 20 points for the victors. Theodore Hogshire had 11 points for Locomotion. In the semifinals on March 4, Ivy Rehab will face Jefferson Plumbing while fourth-seeded Proof Pizza plays eighthseeded Princeton Restorative Dental.

In the Boys’ 6th/7th grade d ivision playoff action, third-seeded PBA #130 posted a 35-28 win over sixth-seeded Ivy Inn. Aaron Wang led the victors with 25 points. Asa Collins had 14 points for Ivy Inn. Fourth-seeded Pizza Den topped fifth-seeded Milk & Cookies 25-12. Ai Bree Green scored 11 points to lead the way for Pizza Den.

Thank

Top-seeded Corner House and second-seeded Le Kiosk each received a bye for the first round of the playoffs. In the semifinals on March 4, Corner House will play Pizza Den and Le Kiosk will take on PBA #130.

In the Boys’ 8 th /10 th grade d ivision, the Nets defeated the Celtics 37-25, as Leone Westrick tallied 13 points to lead the way in the win. The Knicks received a win by forfeit against the Sixers. In the semifinals on March 4, the top-seeded Nets face the fourth-seeded Knicks while the secondseeded Sixers play the thirdseeded Celtics

In the Girls’ d ivision, Woodwinds defeated Ficus 16-9 as Paige Menapace led the victors with eight points. Delizioso Bakery+Kitchen topped Planted Plate 19-10. Ria Sheth had 10 points for Delizioso. In the semifinals on March 4, top-seeded Delizioso Bakery+Kitchen squares off against fourthseeded Woodwinds and second-seeded Ficus takes on third-seeded Planted Plate.

Recreation Department

Offering Summer Jobs

Applications for all Princeton Recreation Department 2023 seasonal and summer employment opportunities are now available on the department’s website.

Seasonal employment opportunities are available for the following positions: day camp counselor, day camp supervisor, teen travel camp counselor, Community Park Pool lifeguard/swim instructor, Community Park Pool customer service, and seasonal park maintenance.

Instructions on how to

END GAME: Princeton High boys’ hockey player Julian Drezner, left, chases down the puck in recent action. Last Monday, senior forward Drezner saw his high school career come to an end as 10th-seeded PHS fell 9-2 at second-seeded Ridge in the quarterfinals of the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Public A tournament. Cooper Zullo and Ethan Garlock scored the goals for the Tigers as they finished

apply as well as job descriptions can be found online at princetonrecreation.com under “Seasonal Employment.” All interested job seekers are encouraged to apply.

Princeton Athletic Club Holding 6K Run April 15

The Princeton Athletic Club will be holding a 6,000-meter cross-country run at the Institute Woods on April 15

The 6,000-meter run starts at 10 a.m. from Princeton Friends School and is limited to 200 participants.

The entry fee is $33 plus a $2.80 fee until March 24, including the optional

T-shirt. The fee increases after March 24. Same day registration is $55 and will be limited to credit card only – no cash – and space available. This event is chip timed. All abilities are invited, including those who prefer to walk the course.

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

The Princeton Athletic Club is a nonprofit running club for the community. The club, an all-volunteer organization, promotes running for the fun and health of it and stages several running events each year.

741 Alexander Rd., Princeton • 924-2880

for voting us Best Pizza

Since [1950] Conte’s has become a Princeton destination; a great old-school bar that also happens to serve some of New Jersey’s best pizza, thin-crusted and bubbly. The restaurant hasn’t changed much since then; even the tables are the same. It’s a simple, no-frills space, but if you visit during peak times, be prepared to wait well over an hour for a table.

We could not have reached this accomplishment without our dedicated employees and customers.

Thank you from the owners of Conte’s Serving the Princeton community for over 80 years, and we will continue to serve you another 80 years and more.

with a final record of 15-7-1. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Nelson Glass & Aluminum Co.

“Yes, we also rescreen screensregular & pawproof.”

Obituaries

Her unrelenting love and care for them will be eternally remembered deep in their hearts. Alba enjoyed serving the students at the Princeton Regional School for 27 years, always with a smile and a snack to make their day.

Alba is predeceased by her husband of 58 years, Frank; parents, Adele and Pasquale Taliercio; brothers Giovanni, Antonio, and Guido. Alba is survived by her brother, Angelo, in Sorrento, Italy; daughter, Teresa Pietrefesa and husband Craig of South Brunswick, NJ, and her son Vince and his wife Lisa of Hamilton, NJ. She was the best Nonna to Michael Cuomo and his wife Savannah of Marlton, NJ, Christopher Cuomo of Hamilton, and Eric Pietrefesa of South Brunswick. She is also survived by her sister-in-law and her husband, Clara and Silvio Toto, and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and good friends.

A Mass of Christian Burial

will be celebrated at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 2, 2023 at St. Paul’s Church 216 Nassau Street, Princeton. Burial will follow in the Princeton Cemetery. A visitation will be held from 1:30 p.m. until the time of the mass at the church.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to St. Paul’s Parish in Princeton, NJ, in Alba’s remembrance.

Alba’s family and friends would also like to extend our deepest gratitude to her children — Teresa and Vince — who have spent the last two months caring for Alba by her side and making her comfortable.

Arrangements are under the direction of the MatherHodge Funeral Home, Princeton.

Tell them you saw their ad in

PERSONAL PAPERWORK SOLUTIONS...AND MORE, INC.

During these challenging times we are actively supporting our clients providing the following services as “your virtual home office.”

Alba Taliercio Cuomo of Princeton, NJ, passed away peacefully in her sleep in the care of her loved ones after a short illness on February 23, 2023 at 93 years young. Born in 1929, Alba grew up with four brothers in the picturesque seaside town of Sorrento, Italy. After marrying her late husband Frank in Italy, she crossed the Atlantic by ship in 1959 and came to Princeton to raise her family.

Alba enjoyed spending

summers down the shore with extended family, traveling, watching her Italian television soap operas, and encouraging her family to eat more of her homecooked meals and cookies. She also loved going on walks, spending time with friends, and was a devout Catholic of St. Paul’s Parish. Above all she was a loving and devoted wife, mother, and grandmother who always put the needs of her family above her own.

www.ppsmore.com

Our expert services include:

• Personal accounting (Bill payment/check writing)

• Household financial management

• Tax preparation (Assembly & analysis of financial information for tax purposes)

• Income & expense management

• Healthcare cost administration

To talk with us about our services and how we can help you or your loved one during this challenging time please call (609) 371-1466 or email us at info@ppsmore.com.

Specialized Services for Seniors and Their Families, Busy Professionals

DIRECTORY OF RELIGIOUS SERVICES

S unday S

8AM | Holy Communion RITE I

8:30AM | Common Grounds Café

9:30AM | Church School & Adult

Princeton’s First Tradition Worship Service in the University Chapel Sundays at 11am

Wherever you are in your journey of faith, come worship with us

First Church of Christ, Scientist, Princeton 16 Bayard Lane, Princeton, NJ

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector, The Rev. Canon Dr. Kara Slade, Assoc. Rector, The Rev. Joanne Epply-Schmidt, Assoc. Rector,

You are welcome to join us for our in-person services, Sunday Church Service and Sunday School at 10:30 am, Wednesday Testimony meetings at 7:30 pm. Audio streaming available, details at csprinceton.org.

Visit the Christian Science Reading Room Monday through Saturday, 10 am - 4 pm 178 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ For free local delivery call (609) 924-0919

Alba T. Cuomo

Rider Furniture

“Where quality still matters.”

4621 Route 27 Kingston, NJ 609-924-0147

riderfurniture.com

Mon-Fri 10-6; Sat 10-5; Sun 12-5

Let’s Talk Real Estate...

Real Estate Market Update

As we began to recover from the economic effects of the global pandemic, housing was on the minds of not only buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals, but also economy watchers who know how important residential real estate is to the overall economic picture. Uncertainty in the housing market last year and some hyperbole in reporting on the market made it very difficult to look beyond short term trends and focus on the fundamentals of the market.

While we will not have another year like 2022, it is helpful to look back in order to plan for the future. It is also important to understand conditions in our local market rather than focusing solely on what ’s going on in the national housing market.

Join us on March 18th at 11AM for our conversation about what we see in the real estate market over the balance of 2023.

Scan this QR code to register for this free seminar.

HANDYMAN–CARPENTER:

Painting, hang cabinets & paintings, kitchen & bath rehab. Tile work, masonry. Porch & deck, replace rot, from floors to doors to ceilings. Shelving & hook-ups. ELEGANT REMODELING. You name it, indoor, outdoor tasks. Repair holes left by plumbers & electricians for sheetrock repair. RE agents welcome. Sale of home ‘checklist’ specialist. Mercer, Hunterdon, Bucks counties. 1/2 day to 1 month assignments. CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED, Covid 19 compliant. Active business since 1998. Videos of past jobs available. Call Roeland, (609) 933-9240. tf

I BUY ALL KINDS of Old or Pretty

Things: China, glass, silver, pottery, costume jewelry, evening bags, fancy linens, paintings, small furniture, etc. Local woman buyer. (609) 9217469. 10-11

BUYING: Antiques, paintings, Oriental rugs, coins, clocks, furniture, old toys, military, books, cameras, silver, costume & fine jewelry. Guitars & musical instruments. I buy single items to entire estates. Free appraisals. (609) 306-0613. 06-28

TOWN TOPICS CLASSIFIEDS GET TOP RESULTS!

Whether it’s selling furniture, finding a lost pet, or having a garage sale, TOWN TOPICS is the way to go! We deliver to ALL of Princeton as well as surrounding areas. (609) 924-2200 ext. 10; classifieds@towntopics.com tf

ESTATE LIQUIDATION SERVICE:

I will clean out attics, basements, garages & houses. Single items to entire estates. No job too big or small. In business over 35 years, serving all of Mercer County. Call (609) 306-0613. 06-28

WE BUY CARS

Belle Mead Garage (908) 359-8131 Ask for Chris

The Next Generation of Chestnut Hill Living Begins Here

Blake Development presents Highland, a unique collection of 8 new construction custom residences with 10-year tax abatement in the heart of Chestnut Hill. Two models offer 3,000-3,300 square feet on four floors. Enter a gracious foyer with a choice of office/gym/bedroom and powder room. Upstairs a formal living room, dining room and gourmet kitchen outfitted with custom cabinetry, marble/quartzite countertops and Thermador appliance package. A large, covered balcony, is perfect for outdoor entertaining. Third and fourth floors include primary bedroom suite with generous walk-in closet, two additional bedrooms and two full bathrooms. Two car garage with ample storage throughout. Highland offers a turnkey, low-maintenance lifestyle, with all the amenities and conveniences today’s buyer demands, strategically located in one of the area’s most coveted walkable locations.