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Protecting Landscaping Workers And Our Air Quality: You Can Help
To the Editor:
The recent renewed national focus on equity as well as the multiple impacts of the coronavirus pandemic have made it especially important to focus on protecting everyone’s health, especially the health of outdoor workers in our community.
During the summer months, when poor air quality already poses a health risk, the use of gas-powered lawn equipment for landscaping maintenance in general, and gas-powered leaf blowers in particular, makes the problem even worse. Lawn equipment and leaf blowers emit pollutants and fine particulates that are hazardous to human health and are often loud enough to damage the hearing of workers who are not adequately protected.
Homeowners and businesses that employ landscaping services can help by asking them to limit or discontinue the use of gas-powered leaf blowers and/or convert to electric or battery-powered equipment and to provide hearing protection for all workers. Cloth face coverings also may be of some respiratory protection, and of course should be available, and worn, when workers cannot maintain physical distancing from each other while working or traveling between work sites.
For a list of landscapers that use electric and batterypowered equipment and other less polluting and quieter methods, please visit www.quietprinceton.org and click on “quiet landscapers.” DR. GEORGE DIFERDINANDO JR., MD, MPH Chair, Board Of Health Clover Lane SOPHIE GLOVIER Chair, Princeton Environmental Commission Drakes Corner Road
Writers’ note: This letter was endorsed by both the Princ eton Board of Health and the Princeton Environmental Commission at their July meetings.
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 pub lication. 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.
To the Editor:
Beth Behrend is the person Princeton needs to continue to lead the School Board. Her consistent, calm demeanor will help guide our school system through challenging times. We need her experience from the past couple of years: managing the hiring of an interim superintendent, navigating our entry into the world of virtual education, and holding the importance of unity in the midst of diverse pressures.
As we move into the coming challenges we need continuity and collaboration. We need her philosophy that we are all in this together. Her leadership of the Board of Education has been notable for its inclusivity, its professional approach to complex issues, and its vision for the future of schools in Princeton. A unified School Board will be needed to hire the very best permanent superintendent and assistant superintendent of schools for our town.
Beth brings personal experience of teaching children – I taught with her in a religious education program at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation and observed her love of children in action and her ability to engage their curiosity in learning. Beth brings administrative experience from time serving on the board of trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation.
Beth brings legal experience – understanding the emerging laws regarding education and having the facility to deal with litigious issues will be essential in the coming months.
Beth is All About the Kids! Her commitment to the children of our town is primary. She firmly believes public education is the keystone of our democracy.
Please join me and my husband Carl in voting for Beth Behrend for School Board in the election on November 3, 2020. REV. CAROL S. HAAG Ridgeview Circle
PPS Reopening Plan Places Young Students at Risk for Learning Loss, Behavioral Health Issues
To the Editor:
I am deeply disappointed in the Princeton Public School Board’s reopening plan for elementary schools. Limiting our youngest students to two half-days of in-person instruction a week will only serve to exacerbate the learning loss our children suffered during the chaos of this spring, as well as contribute to more behavioral health issues due to lack of socialization with peers.
The data on this coming out of Wuhan is sobering — nearly one in five children in grades 2-6 there report depression and/or anxiety following their shutdown and closure of school. I would think this data would have been a call to action for the PPS Board to do more, especially given Princeton’s relatively low community transmission rate and clear strides in contact tracing. Sadly, it was not.
I applaud the Princeton YMCA and other community agencies for formulating child care options for times students are not in school. As a full time working parent, I will avail myself of whatever options exist. However, I fail to see how this ensures a quality, equitable education for all Princeton students, nor do I understand how this is any more “safe” than having all kids in the controlled environment of school full-time with on-site before and after school care.
Seeing Merits and Flaws in Planned Franklin/Witherspoon Housing Project To the Editor: In my view, the PPS plan to reopen schools places our most vulnerable students at risk of further learning loss and behavioral health issues and needs to be re-thought to ensure a quality academic and social-emotional learning experience for all Princeton students. The current plan shows an appalling lack of creativity, care, and concern for the long-term welfare of our children. MARGARET JOHNSON Burr Drive 13 • TOWN TOPICS, PRINCETON, N.J., WE d As a neighbor of the planned Franklin/Witherspoon housing project, I see merits and flaws. It is a laudable goal to expand and improve affordable housing. The housing needs to be more than a stark apartment complex; it should feature green spaces throughout to give it a gracious quality. Also, it should rise no more than two stories on NES day, augu ST Franklin Avenue and three stories on Witherspoon Street, so as to fit the residential neighborhood. The neighborhood is already the most overcrowded one 5, 2020 in Princeton, thanks to the AvalonBay housing. Now the planner wants to add, in addition to the affordable housing, in the same space, 80 luxury apartments, with the most expensive ones costing over $4,000 a month. There are enough high-priced apartments in the Avalon complex as it is! The argument is that the income from the luxury apartments will finance future affordable housing. Has anybody seen the calculations for the profits after deductions for building management, maintenance, and finance fees? I wonder how much will be really left to finance future affordable housing.
With the nearby schools there is a daily traffic jam from 8 to 9 a.m., and after 3 p.m., on Franklin Avenue going from Moore to the Avalon Project, and long lines in both directions on Jefferson and Moore streets. Why does the new project need a garage? The nearby “hospital parking” garage is underused and the argument for expanding affordable housing in this neighborhood was that it should be walking distance to downtown.
Finally, a note in the time of the coronavirus pandemic: The denser a neighborhood and its rental units, the greater the risk of spreading infections. MARKUS WIENER Jefferson Road Continued on Next Page
Princeton Faces Issues of Scale, Design, Public Safety in Building New Housing
To the Editor:
Thanks to all who worked hard to settle the social and legal issues in affordable housing [“Council Approves Last of Affordable Housing Ordinances,” July 29, p. 1]. I write as a resident and a retired member of the Princeton Emergency Planning Committee.
Now that the affordable housing ordinances are largely in place, Princeton faces issues of scale, design, and public safety. It will be up to the Site Plan Review Board and, ultimately, the Planning Board to strive for the best site designs and safest construction materials rather than only formulas put forth by developers.
Many large fires have occurred in multi-unit housing in New Jersey (notably Edgewater, Maplewood, Lakewood) as well as in other states. In Edgewater, 500 people lost their homes in January 2015 in the large AvalonBay wooden housing development. This event was preceded in 2000 at the same site, when the same company’s development went up in flames destroying nine nearby, occupied homes and more than 12 cars.
Fifty years ago, building codes required masonry firewalls between adjacent units. Now firewalls are few and far between, and are not necessarily non-combustible, even though the projects are ever larger and taller. Over the last several decades the building codes have been steadily eroded by industry influence. This affects affordable, market, and luxury rate housing. Residents have been distracted by fancy kitchen appliances and other amenities, assuming the building construction is safe or the “government” wouldn’t allow it.
A large fire in Princeton (Grigg’s Farm) at Christmastime in 2016 left one person dead and 35 homeless. It took more than a year to rebuild the burnt units. This fire might have been worse but for the spaces between buildings. The Griggs units are two and three stories, as opposed to the five or six stories being built today. Greater heights pose more serious dangers to fire fighters as well as residents.
Currently, fire and building codes cannot originate at the municipal level. The states adopt these fire and building codes and can have input only every three years, but the construc tion industry also has great influence on state decisions. States do not always give such input and when done their recommendations do not have to be heeded. The national entity making these decisions is NOT a government agency.
Princeton should not be intimidated by aggressive developers, especially those with a history of large, costly fires. It must strive to protect the public, current and future.
The cost difference between wood and non-combustible materials — e.g., masonry, concrete, and heavy steel (light steel buckles in intense heat) — is not great especially in comparison to losses to residents, towns, and local businesses when a fire occurs (see buildingstudies.org). The companies which build such housing protect themselves with insurance but many residential renters do not have such protection.
The primary solutions to fire safety in Princeton’s proposed large scale housing are: a) for developers NOT to attach huge wooden buildings with inadequate firewalls, but to have separated structures; and b) to use non-combustible construction materials for large multi-unit housing. GRACE SINDEN Ridgeview Circle
Hoping Town Can Make a Change Regarding “Ubiquitous” Leaf Blowers
To the Editor:
I read Janet Heroux’s letter to the editor on July 22 regarding leaf blowers behind her house and could write the identical letter, unfortunately many of us could.
I live next door to a hair salon that was closed for over four months during this pandemic, and every other week a crew of landscapers would get out and blow the parking lot from front to back. An insane process which is so loud, burns gas, and results in sending a cloud of debris into my yard.
Recently I was on Palmer Square painting and I listened and watched a leaf blower that ran from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., just blowing dirt and dust into the street, which blows right back in and then the process is repeated the following week.
Like Janet, I wish we were not held hostage by the noise and stink of these ubiquitous machines, which regretfully have become part of our everyday lives. I do hope our town could make a change? MARIA EVANS Leigh Avenue
To the Editor:
Does anyone really like, or want, the use of leaf blowers?
Think about how they’re used. It isn’t just dead leaves and grass clippings that get blown into the air. It’s fungi, bacteria, animal and bird droppings, pesticide-laden dust, and anything else that has fallen or been applied to the lawn.
But if you watch landscapers work, they don’t just blow the debris off the lawn, they blow it into the street, where it lofts into the air rubber tire bits, diesel exhaust soot, and brake-pad wearings. (And virus-laden dust? What’s the proper “social distancing” measure for someone using a leaf blower?)
And then, of course, there’s the noise. Are you working at home, or learning at home? Can you concentrate on anything when a leaf blower fires up? Certainly not. So why is your productivity worth less than that of a landscaper?
Ban leaf blowers.
Ban them now.
Ban them forever.
And, yes, I know there’s a registry of companies that don’t use leaf blowers, but what’s the point if not everyone uses it?
Other towns have banned leaf blowers. Why can’t, or won’t, a self-proclaimed “environmentally-conscious” Princeton?
End the hypocrisy; ban leaf blowers. MICHAEL D. DIESSO Harrison Street
Applauding Plan for Both Affordable and Market-Rate Housing in Franklin Development
To the Editor:
One of the primary charms that encouraged us to re-settle in Princeton over 20 years ago is the proximity of so many interesting people from different backgrounds that help support a diversity of culture and commerce. We congratulate the Princeton Council, and the leadership of Council members Cohen, Lambros, and Sacks for realizing this goal via ordinances to make it easier for new middle-income housing units to be realized.
We were lucky that 25 years ago, there were a variety of housing options for people who a) could not afford $400K+ for an up-to-date, free-standing home, but b) wouldn’t qualify for subsidized housing. Princeton shouldn’t just be just for those who were lucky enough to buy in, or get on the right list a long time ago. We are a more diverse community when a range of housing for newcomers of all wealth levels is available.
This is why we applaud the plan for integrating both afford able and market-rate housing in the development on Franklin Avenue. Besides offering walking-distance homes for dozens of new families who can’t afford other neighborhoods, we will be saving fellow taxpayers over $4M by allowing market-rate housing to help pay for the development. Moreover, let’s try not to further stigmatize low-income families by economicallysegregating them into 100 percent affordable housing developments.
We live nearby and walk, bike, and drive through the Witherspoon corridor regularly. Many of my neighbors have or had apartments with tenants. We like that the density of our community can support a variety of small businesses that employ and serve our neighbors. DOUGLAS AND ADRIENNE RUBIN Laurel Road (Formerly, Ewing Street, Franklin Avenue, and Chestnut Street)
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BOOK/FILM REVIEW A Midsummer Night’s Dream of Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020) T he screen test was shot over the shoulder of a bewigged man in period costume, presumably the title character in Danton, a film of the French Revolution that was never made. The young actress clearly has had experience, her voice and diction are excellent, she projects a spirited youthful appeal (“I want to see the king. I want to tell him how things really are”), but as soon she becomes emotional (“my mother is sick, we don’t have enough to eat”), you’re roll ing your eyes, and when the man responds with loud laughter at the idea that the king would care, you think at first he might be mocking her performance. Danton cares enough to give her money for bread, a gesture that surprises and touches her and leaves her struggling for words, she’s choked up, virtually speechless, radiant with gratitude (“Oh you — you’re — won derful!”) as she bolts from the room. Comments (Library of America). Next move was to watch her as Hermia in the 1935 film A Midsummer Night’s Dream while rereading the play Harold Bloom calls Shakespeare’s “first undoubted masterpiece, without flaw, and one of his dozen or so plays of overwhelming originality and power.” His only regret is that almost every production he’s seen has been a “brutal disaster.” Most likely Bloom would include Max Reinhardt’s film version, co-directed with William Dieterle, among the disasters. Arriving in Depression Era movie theaters with words by Shakespeare, music by Mendelssohn, and dance sequences by Nijinska, the picture scared of f a u d i e n c e s and alienated reviewers like the New Republic’s compare / Between our statures; she hath urged her height; / And with her person age, her tall personage, / Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him. / And are you grown so high in his esteem ... Because I am so dwarfish and so low? / How low am I, thou painted maypole? ... How low am I? I am not yet so low / But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.” Ferguson could be describing de Havil land’s command of the scene when he ends his review by suggesting that the cast would have been better off performing an other play than this “product of a poet’s exuberance and youth. Its phrases ring like bells, there is an easy strong vigor and charmed air to the whole. But owing to circumstances and the matter of a few centuries in time, its words regarding her as a belle. Her father’s opinion of her moral purity was abundantly justified; she was excellently, imperturbably good; affectionate, docile, obedient, and much addicted to speaking the truth.” The words have a quality not unlike Agee’s appreciation of de Havilland: “thoughtful, quiet, detailed, and well sustained ... an unusually healthful-seeming and likable temperament ... an undivided pleasure to see.” Wondering if my instinct about de Havilland’s screen test resemblance to Winona Ryder had any merit, I searched online and found this quote from Ryder about the back story of Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence: “Scorsese would talk to me about this movie ‘The Heiress’ with Olivia de Havilland. We were talking about this scene in it, and suddenly we were rolling. It was very intentional, and I didn’t realize — because we talk old movies all 15 • TOWN TOPICS, PRINCETON, N.J., WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2020
Put yourself in the place of whoever’s Otis Ferguson, are beautiful as the time.” reviewing the test and you’ve gone from feeling judgmental (that bit about the sick mother) to wanting more of her, you’re sorry she left, you’re already missing her. Forget the low grade you’d give her reading of the hackneyed dialogue, forget the French Revolution, forget the test: she’s a delight, the camera loves her (as the saying goes), she matters, she’s there, and in spite of the mob cap and period dress, spirit and energy like hers don’t date, she’s “modern,” the surge of life that briefly filled that space some 80 years ago transcending decades of films, fads, and fashion, something fine and true shining through. “An Undivided Pleasure” Reviewing The Dark Mirror (1946) a decade later in The Nation, James Agee writes, “I very much like Olivia de Havilland’s performance. She has for a long time been one of the prettiest women in movies; lately she has not only become prettier than ever but has started to act, as well. I don’t see evidence of any remark able talent, but her playing is thoughtful, quiet, detailed, and well sustained, and since it is founded, as some more talented w ho ob s er ve d that any film that runs “well over two hours,” costs “more than a million,” and was “press-agented for months ahead” is doomed to be discussed by “culture clubs” and critics who “will put on their Sunday adjectives.” As for American hus- bands, as soon as they “get one load of the elves and pixies,” they’ll go back to the sports page. Noting that the humor in Reinhardt’s Dream is based, “like the best of Shakespeare, on people,” Ferguson thinks the “formal comedy element” could have been done “far better by using people who (like Olivia de Havilland) might read the lines with some comprewords in a book, not in the mouths of fools.” It’s worth men tioning that this summation directly follows on Ferguson’s lamely worded reference to de Havilland’s “comprehension of what the lines are all about.” It’s her Hermia who offers the exuberance and youth and vig or and charm, who makes the phrases ring like bells, and brings the beauty of the words into the 20th century. In fact, I used the word “modern” about de Havilland’s screen test because she reminded me at times of a modern actress, the Winona Ryder of Night on Earth (1991) and The Age of The Last Star In “The Last Star,” a January 2015 Entertainment Weekly interview, de Havilland talked about being the only surviving cast member of Gone With the Wind and recalls losing the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Academy Award. While entering de Havilland’s name for Supporting Actress was actually studio strategy to avoid splitting the Best Actress vote with Vivien Leigh, Olivia’s Melanie is in the best sense a supporting character (the calm in the eye of Hurricane Scarlett), given the way that her warmth and integrity make a perfect foil for Leigh’s flamboyant Scarlett O’Hara. Having outlived everyone involved with GWTW by almost 50 years, de Havilland had continued fulfilling that role as a supporter and spokesperson for the film and everyone in it (she said she’d seen it “about 30 times”). The fact that she was all by herself didn’t make her melancholy. “Instead,” she said, “when I see them vibrantly alive on screen, I experience a kind of reunion with them, a joyful one.” Mean What You Say playing is not, in an unusually healthfulseeming and likable temperament, it is an undivided pleasure to see.” Without naming her in his brief review of Devotion, a movie from the same year about the Brontë sisters, Agee finds de Havilland’s Charlotte “the only roundly realized human being” in a “vapid” film. Typically, Agee provides a line that begs to be quoted, describing a little known French actress in a small role as being, in relation to the rest of the film, “like a court dagger dismembering a tomato surprise.” Singled Out My first move on learning of de Havilland’s death at 104 last week was to hension of what they were about.” Although being singled out by a demanding reviewer must have pleased the 19-year-old actress, Ferguson’s faint praise doesn’t do her justice. Rather than merely comprehending her lines (she was born to the task, having been named after Olivia in Twelfth Night by her English professor father), she “suits the action to the word” with spirit and spontaneity. In one passionate exchange with Helena (act III, scene 2), whom she believes has wooed her lover Lysander away from her (“you juggler! you canker-blossom! You thief of love!”), she rises to a pitch of glorious outrage at the thought that the taller Helena has used her small size against her: Innocence (1993). The Heiress On the occasion of de Havilland’s 100th birthday, I mentioned her Oscar-winning performance as Catherine in William Wy ler’s The Heiress (1949), from the Henry James novel Washington Square. Besides having the year 1916 in common, James died on February 28, de Havilland was born on July 1, the way the actress bravely, forthrightly surrenders herself to the role of Catherine, she could have been reading over James’s shoulder as he wrote: “She was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle countenance. The most that had ever been said for her was that she had a ‘nice’ face, and, though she was Redefining Design I nterviewed for the Academy of Achievement as “The Last Belle of Cinema,” de Havilland explained what drew her to the character of Melanie: “The main thing is that she was always thinking of the other person ... She had this marvelous capacity to relate to people with whom she would normally have no relationship.” No less important in de Havilland’s development as an actress was the simple lesson she learned from James Cagney, who told her, “whatever you say, mean it,” advice she also had from GWTW director Victor Fleming: “Remember, everything that Melanie says, she means.” —Stuart Mitchner DISTINCTIVE SELECTIONS OF WOODS, FINISHES AND STYLES INSPIRING CUSTOM DESIGNS PROJECT MANAGEMENT FROM CONCEPT TO COMPLETION reach for Agee on Film: Reviews and “Now I perceive that she hath made an heiress, no one had ever thought of
Redefining Design Redefining Design
DISTINCTIVE SELECTIONS OF WOODS, FINISHES AND STYLES
INSPIRING CUSTOM DESIGNS DISTINCTIVE SELECTIONS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT WOODS, FINISHES AND STYLES FROM CONCEPT TO COMPLETION INSPIRING CUSTOM DESIGNS
PROJECT MANAGEMENT FROM CONCEPT TO COMPLETION
