Beth Fitzgerald, head of Fitzgerald Life Coaching at 259 Nassau Street in Princeton, is a certified life coach, certified John Maxwell Coach, Master ETF Practitioner, international speaker, and trainer. She believes that coaching is the act of empowering the individual to harness their goals, dreams, and aspirations. more
Donna Gustafson has been appointed interim director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, one of the nation’s largest and most respected university-based museums. more
If you have ever played golf, two terms you want to avoid are “whiff” (which means you totally missed the ball) and “duff,” which is a very bad shot. Even worse, COVID-19 and pandemic possess detrimental connotations. So, when Community Options had to postpone their annual golf tournament at TPC Jasna Polana, Community Options Enterprises Chairman Phil Lian decided to have a golf tournament avoiding all of these negative outcomes. The new mission was to have a tournament with no green fees, no dinner, no club costs, no missed balls, and most importantly, no chance of virus spread. more
In an effort to limit the financial burden on The College of New Jersey’s campus community during the COVID pandemic, TCNJ’s Board of Trustees approved a budget at its June 30 meeting that will result in a lower overall cost of attendance for undergraduate students for the coming academic year. more
Terhune Orchards farm store is filled with fresh fruits and vegetables all year long. The Princeton-based farm grows over 40 varieties of crops and many varieties of each crop. The harvest also changes each week. The staff at Terhune pick every day to ensure that patrons are getting the freshest and most nutritional produce available. more
Rutgers University’s Alumni Association will present a Virtual Alumni Career Fair on Wednesday, July 22 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The HireNew York-Metro Virtual Alumni Career Fair will include Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, well-branded franchises and retail stores, state and local governments, federal agencies, and nonprofits looking to hire full-time, salaried employees. more
A view of Alexander Hall through the Blair Arch, Princeton University. Photo courtesy of the Collection of The Historical Society of Princeton.
Exploring the Lintels, Portals, and Tunnels of Princeton University
By Ilene Dube
Several years ago, during a summer rainstorm of biblical proportions, I found myself trapped on the Princeton University campus. My car was parked on University Place, and, wading through eight inches of water, I saw that all the arches on the western side of campus had become waterfalls. Foaming liquid rushed down the stairways, like Princeton’s own Niagara Falls.
I sought shelter in the University Store, but the combination of the air conditioning and my now-soaked clothing made my teeth rattle, so I found a spot under an awning outside where I had a front-row seat to Blair Arch. It, too, had become a waterfall.
Built in 1897, Blair Arch was at one time a gateway to the University — vintage photographs show the Dinky station located on the lawn in front of its grand staircase. I have heard a cappella groups performing in Blair Arch, their sound resonating against the stone, and Blair Arch is where many a bride and groom, dressed in white lace and black tails, pose for wedding photographs.
Holder Hall. Photo by Charles R. Plohn.
I wasn’t alone under the awning. About 25 people had gathered beneath the makeshift shelter, and I was beginning to feel like an intruder. Suddenly the rain let up and water stopped flowing from the mouth of the arch.
A young couple appeared at the top of the steps to the gothic structure. Several of the folks who had been under the awning jumped out with video cameras as the young man under the arch dropped to his knees and opened a tiny box. The woman’s hands went to her face, as if in disbelief — you could see her lips mouthing “oh my god.” Several more colluders appeared on the steps carrying big letters spelling out, “Will you marry me?”
Two of the men under the awning introduced themselves as the fathers of the bride and groom.
I congratulated them, assuming the young woman did say “yes.”
One of the most beloved spots on campus, Blair Arch was designed by the Philadelphia-based architectural firm Cope and Stewardson, considered masters of the Collegiate Gothic style, and was featured prominently in the movie A Beautiful Mind (2001), starring Russell Crowe as Nobel Prize-winning economist/mathematician John Nash and Jennifer Connelly as physicist Alicia Nash. more
Maya van Rossum and her son, Wim.
Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum Advocates for Environmental Rights
By Lori Goldstein | Photos courtesy of delawareriverkeeper.org
As the Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum is the voice of the Delaware River as well as the leader of a staff of attorneys, scientists, grassroots organizers, and 25,000 member advocates who comprise the Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN). Whenever she speaks, her voice is passionate, energetic, and confident.
Maya van Rossum speaks at an anti-fracking rally.
She is also the author of a landmark book, The Green Amendment: Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment, in which she argues that since existing environmental laws have failed us, each state must protect its inalienable right to a healthy environment with a Green Amendment to its constitution’s Bill of Rights. And she has launched a national Green Amendment movement to advance constitutional environmental rights across our country.
The first time I heard van Rossum speak publicly was at a Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) meeting in December 2019. The DRBC is the agency charged with managing the Basin’s water resources. The governors of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, plus a representative from the federal government, form the Commission, with the objectives of protecting water quality and a sustainable water supply.
At the meeting, she and some 100-plus fellow activists, dressed in neon-green shirts and headbands that said “No PennEast,” were there to protest the controversial PennEast pipeline that would run beneath Pennsylvania and cross the Delaware into New Jersey. Each activist had three minutes to read a portion from a 16-page community comment. When DRBC Director Steve Tambini referred to their “prepared script,” van Rossum grabbed the microphone to say she strongly objected to his attitude toward their commentary, which represented the serious concerns of community members in both states, some of whom had traveled five hours by bus.
How does she speak with such feistiness and authority? As the Delaware Riverkeeper for more than 25 years, van Rossum “protect[s] the Delaware River and its watershed, 13,539 square miles of land spanning … Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and New York.” A licensed environmental attorney, she commands respect with her expertise as the community-appointed custodian of this domain. Beginning with the East and West branches in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the Delaware forms a natural border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey until it meets tidewater at Trenton, then flows through Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington, and ultimately, after its 330-mile journey, empties into the Atlantic Ocean.
American Rivers, a national advocacy organization, named the Delaware River its 2020 River of the Year. This honorary designation celebrates its great progress and ongoing work towards clean water and river restoration. more
Veblen at the blackboard in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study. (Photographer unknown, from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA, undated.)
Celebrating His Many Gifts to Princeton — in Woodlands and Mathematics, for Town and Gown
By Donald Gilpin | Photographs courtesy of the Institute for Advanced Study
This June 24 marked the 140th anniversary of the birth of Oswald Veblen. Veblen’s Princeton legacy – at Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the town – has been monumental, and now, through the Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW), Princeton is preparing to deliver a gift in return.
FOHW, a nonprofit, volunteer-led cultural and environmental organization, is eager to honor the legacy of Veblen and his wife Elizabeth as it continues to restore and preserve the 95 acres of Herrontown Woods, now Herrontown Arboretum, that the Veblens donated to Mercer County in 1957 and 1974, with Princeton receiving it by transfer from Mercer County in 2017.
The FOHW, which will soon sign a formal lease with the town, is moving forward in assembling a team of architects, builders, and volunteer workers to formulate plans for repairs to the Veblen House and Cottage. They are also creating an outdoor exhibit on Veblen using the boarded-up windows of the house as exhibit space, a “Windows into the Past” to tell stories about the Veblens, who moved into what came to be known as the Veblen House in 1941.
Veblen, his extraordinary achievements, his legacy, and its lessons for today were the basis of Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber’s 2020 State of the University letter to the community in February. Eisgruber highlighted Veblen’s contributions to the world of mathematics and the world-famous Princeton University Department of Mathematics, Veblen’s influence in the founding of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and bringing about its location in Princeton rather than Newark, and his accomplishments in bringing hundreds of refugees to IAS, Princeton, and other U.S. universities in the 1930s.
His story, Eisgruber wrote on “The President’s Page” of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, “not only illuminates Princeton’s past but also illustrates how today’s actions can shape the University for decades into the future.”
Describing Veblen as “a faculty member with tremendous vision and constructive energy” who “probably did as much as anyone to reform and improve this University,” Eisgruber emphasized Veblen’s “humanitarian courage” in his insistence on bringing refugees, like Jewish emigres Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Eugene Wigner, to Princeton, “to the great benefit of this University and our country.” Eisgruber continued, “At a time when anti-Semitism and nativism are on the rise, we need to remember the principles he exemplified.”
In his State of the University report, Eisgruber cited Veblen’s “critical role in rescuing Jewish scholars from persecution in Europe.” He noted, “Veblen worked with the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars to accommodate refugees at Princeton and elsewhere in the country. The scholars whom Veblen helped bring to Princeton included professors of mathematics, physics, economics, and art history.”
The FOHW “Windows into the Past” exhibit, to be mounted in the coming months, will expand on these stories of Veblen’s life and more. It will feature photos and narrative from Veblen’s Norwegian ancestry and his boyhood in Iowa in the 1880s and 1890s to his prominent role in the Princeton University Department of Mathematics and in the founding and growth of the Institute for Advanced Study in the 1920s and 1930s. It will also focus on his leadership in founding Princeton’s open space movement and the impact of his rich legacy in the present. more
Mansion in May 2020 Designer Showhouse and Gardens Presents “Splendor in September”
By Laurie Pellichero | Photos Courtesy of Dannette Merchant
Historic 1920s country estate Tyvan Hill, located just 45 minutes away in New Vernon, has been chosen as the Women’s Association for Morristown Medical Center’s (WAMMC) 19th Designer Showhouse and Gardens, Mansion in May 2020 (MIM). Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the May 1 opening date of the Mansion was postponed, and it will now be presented as MIM 2020’s “Splendor in September.”
Founded in 1893 to provide financial support to Morristown Medical Center, part of Atlantic Health System, WAMMC has raised more than $25 million to date in support of the hospital’s mission to bring cutting-edge technology and superior health services to the community. With more than 400 volunteer members, WAMMC hosts a number of events, but its signature fundraiser is the Mansion in May Designer Showhouse and Gardens, open to the public every two to three years. Since its inception in 1974, this fundraiser has raised over $15 million for a variety of causes at Morristown Medical Center.
Tyvan Hill, a 10,000-square-foot U-shaped brick and stone mansion, was designed by prominent New York architectural firm Peabody, Wilson & Brown for John Wesley Castles Jr. and his wife, Dorothea Bradford Smith Castles. Built between 1928 and 1929, it features details such as a bell tower, curved staircase, elegant paneling and moldings, and an outdoor pool and pool house. There is a mystery to how it got its name, but it is thought that it was named as such by the Castles after a visit to the village of Tywyn in Wales.
As to why it was chosen as this year’s showhouse, Katie Nolle, president of WAMMC, says, “The Women’s Association is always searching for a ‘worthy’ mansion with wonderful history, and Tyvan Hill more than fits our expectations. The whole property, including the gorgeous grounds, provides a spectacular site for our premier fundraiser.”
Kathy Ross, “Splendor in September” co-chair, notes that “in addition to its architectural pedigree, its beautiful rooms, manageable size, and lovely grounds, it is a delight to bring life back to this beautiful home. Tyvan Hill has been a family home since it was built, particularly from 1958 until 1972 when it was occupied by the family of Anne and Donald McGraw; their four boys filled its walls with typical boyhood pursuits. The McGraws were avid horsemen and very involved in the Spring Valley Hounds and the Morris County Bridle Path Association. An elegantly designed map, dating from between 1925 and 1930, depicting the association’s network of bridle paths and area estates and other landmarks, has long been a fixture at Tyvan Hill. more
Tosca, Teatro Regio Torino. (Photo by Edoardo Piva)
Princeton-Raised Jonathan Tetelman is One of Opera’s Rising Stars
By Anne Levin | Photos Courtesy of Jonathan Tetelman
Opera star Jonathan Tetelman spent the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic sheltering at his parents’ house in Princeton. Only a month before, he had sung lead roles in La Traviata and La Boheme on the stage of London’s Royal Opera House.
Upcoming European engagements for the 30-year-old tenor were being canceled. But Tetelman, an American Boychoir School graduate who was born in Chile and raised in Princeton, didn’t seem fazed. “It’s nice to spend some time at home, relaxing, doing my taxes,” he said at the time.
A month later, Tetelman was back at his apartment in New York, waiting for things to settle down and clearly feeling more restless. “I was supposed to go to Italy, Warsaw, Germany, and Seattle, but those dates have been canceled,” he said. “And now Tosca in Buenos Aires was just canceled, with the next scheduled performance not until August. It’s very difficult for freelance artists, and so many others around the world, who aren’t able to work during this pandemic, and have no other means of support for themselves and their families.”
Judging by reviews he has been receiving in publications across the globe, this interruption in Tetelman’s schedule shouldn’t pose much of a problem once the music world returns to some semblance of normal.
“In this production we were lucky to have the extraordinary tenor Jonathan Tetelman, a young figure who already receives excellent reviews and begins his career in the great theaters,” reads a review in the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio. “His presence on stage is difficult not to compare to the young Jonas Kaufmann of the 2000s, just before being today’s superstar, with a voice in the transition from light to dramatic-lyrical repertoire.” more
Area Mental Health Experts Offer Advice for Managing Stress
By Wendy Greenberg
By the time you read this, we may be in a different phase of the constantly evolving health and social upheaval brought on by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic: lost jobs, school and business closures, caring for the sick, and grieving for those we lost.
But no doubt the long-term mental fatigue will remain, and, we have been warned by experts, the insidious virus probably will remain as well. For many, the anxiety and stress are real, but manageable. For others, support is needed.
Area mental health experts — many of whom have shifted to video sessions, such as HIPAA-compliant telehealth, or offer basic landline phone guidance — are ready to help.
In a March interview, Dr. Frank A. Ghinassi, president and CEO of Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care (UBHC), and senior vice president of the Behavioral Health and Addictions Service Line at RWJ Barnabas Health, referred to anxiety emanating from the then-new coronavirus as “anticipatory stress.”
But that was then. Now the stress is long-term and “reactive to the realities of the pandemic,” he says. “The two- to three-week period of initial lockdown was a hallmark,” he says. “Many people have left their normal routines for that long before in their lives, for vacation for instance, but we are now past that timeframe. In week seven, you don’t know if you are on mile seven of a 10-mile race, or of a 26-mile race; there are no mileposts.”
There are few studies on this type of mental fatigue secondary to a pandemic response of this duration, he notes, because this has not happened at this scale since the flu pandemic of 1918. But the further we are from “normal daily life,” the more chance individuals will experience difficulty in coping.
“One of the main current differences now are that there very few people in New Jersey who don’t know someone, personally, who has tested positive for the virus and that has changed the level of experienced stress,” says Ghinassi.
Dr. Frank A. Ghinassi, president and CEO of Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care.
Is Anxiety Normal?
Whitney B. Ross, Executive director of Trinity Counseling Services
“This is different from September 11 [2001],” says Whitney Ross, executive director of Princeton’s Trinity Counseling Services (TCS), which provides licensed professional counseling services. “The country and world had a spotlight on a small area, and supported New York City and its victims. It was helpful to the victims’ families, and the recovery was faster. We don’t have that now. This situation is new for everyone.”
“It makes perfect sense that we are anxious,” says Ross. “There is a lot to be anxious about. We will be dealing with the issues a long time. There are horrific situations. I would be concerned if I heard people were NOT anxious. The question is, how can we deal with anxiety in out-of-control situations?”
Uncertainty breeds anxiety, according to mental health experts.
“This is a time of great uncertainty, and anxiety tries to demand certainty, which is not possible,” says Rachel Strohl of Stress and Anxiety Services of New Jersey, based in East Brunswick. “It is helpful to recognize that it’s okay to feel the uncertainty, while acknowledging the difference between facts and feelings. It is important that people learn the skill of realistic thinking, as opposed to positive or negative thinking,” notes Strohl.
When Is Support Needed?
Belinda Seiger, counselor and director of the Anxiety and OCD Treatment Center of Princeton, has herself stated in an online introduction that anxiety is a part of being human, “but when worry, panic, or obsessive thoughts and compulsions take over, you need new strategies to get back to living your life, not battling your brain.”
Anxiety, she explains, “is a natural response to feeling threatened. Anxiety and fear are natural responses to have, but it’s important to distinguish these real concerns from our tendency to ruminate and obsess about things that are out of our control. Focusing on strategies to deal with our concerns, rather than engaging in worrying, can help us manage our anxiety in uncertain times like this.” more
By Stuart Mitchner
I’ve just returned from an online adventure, one of those therapeutic expeditions available to aging- and sheltering-in-place columnists writing about, in this case, self-help books geared for seniors like himself.
I’m leading with Joan Chittister’s The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully (BlueBridge $19.95) because the cover image of a hand resting on an open book looks good on the same page with the cover and subject of Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why (Scribner Touchstone $17), and its suggestion that people “ultimately” read “to strengthen the self.”
The cover on The Gift of Years definitely aroused my curiosity. Like any traveler in the realm of rare books, I’d go a long way online to identify that charismatic, centuries-old volume, but since no amount of Zooming gives me a clue, my only choice is to discover as much as I can about the painting itself. Who painted it, where and when, and who does the hand belong to? My virtual quest takes me to a seaside town in Cornwall, near Penzance, home of Gilbert and Sullivan’s pirates and the gallery displaying the portrait (Mrs. Forbes, the artist’s mother), painted in 1910 by Stanhope Alexander Forbes (1857-1947). Seen in full, the picture tells another story. While the cover image of hand and book suggest a patina of graceful aging befitting the title, the seated woman’s melancholy expression seems ironically at odds with a book called The Gift of Years. A closer look at her hands and it’s clear that they’re more accustomed to hard work and rough weather than graceful aging and rare volumes like the one in the painting. It’s easier to imagine “Mrs. Forbes,” a French woman born Juliette de Guise who married “an English railway manager,” as a character from a novel of the period, like Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives Tale or E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End.
Forster came to mind because he’s quoted in Chittister’s introduction: “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Once again curiosity sets me searching. Which novel does that come from? Or is it from an essay? And how do I know it’s actually from Forster? Soon I find myself at a Google crossroads, one path leading to 1907 and Forster’s novel The Longest Journey, the other taking me to 1949, where the same quote about letting go is attributed word for word to Joseph Campbell, who wrote about mythological journeys in The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Apparently, Campbell’s followers have staked his claim to a sentence he found in Forster. And who set all this mental traveling in motion? An author whose community review on Goodreads portrays her as “a Benedictine sister who was voted the most inspirational woman alive in a 2007 survey.” more
Photo courtesy of usla.org.
Well Trained and Ready to Serve
By Taylor Smith
Garden State residents have a nostalgic fondness for the Jersey Shore.
Those 127 miles of Atlantic coastline extending from Sandy Hook to Cape May bring to mind long, hot, thrill-filled days riding waves, building sandcastles, dining on seafood, enjoying sweet treats, and braving amusement park rides on the boardwalk after dark. A key component of the Jersey Shore experience is the ocean itself, and with that comes Beach Patrol units, which function as a highly elite team of ocean rescue lifeguards.
Each town has its own ocean lifeguard program. For example, since the 1940s, Sea Bright’s beaches have been surveyed and guarded by Sea Bright Ocean Rescue (SBOR). SBOR responds to emergencies covering 4 miles of public ocean. During the summer of 2015, SBOR pulled over 100 people from the Atlantic Ocean and prevented “well over 1,200 dangerous incidents,” as noted on www.seabrightnj.org. These rescues included emergency medical aid, underwater search, and recovery operations.
New Jersey lifeguards are on duty daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. Each lifeguard rookie completes over 75 hours of rigorous testing and training to earn a place on the ocean rescue team. Returning lifeguards also undergo 24 hours of training, including physical and medical conditioning, before the start of each new summer season. Each lifeguard is CPR-AED certified and all lifeguards are trained as aquatic medical first responders.
According to Lifeguard Certification NJ, candidates must be able to swim 500 meters in 10 minutes or less, pass an open water test, deep diving tests, a written exam, and a running test, which may be conducted on a track. During the summer season, all on-staff lifeguards are asked to maintain peak physical condition through daily training sessions that usually take place before their 9 a.m. start time.
The full United States Lifesaving Association (USLA) program includes kayak skills, rescue boards, and scanning the surf, along with instruction on how to deal with spinal injuries, heat stroke-related illnesses, missing persons, drug-related incidences, drownings, rip tides, undertows, inclement hurricane conditions, sharks, jellyfish stings, and more. more
In place of its now-canceled, annual three-day XPoNential Music Festival taking place on the Delaware Riverfront in late July, fans will be able to revisit past years’ performances online as WXPN presents “XPNFest Fridays.” Two complete, back-to-back complete sets from the festival archives will be available every Friday night at 7 p.m. during July, with full sets by Courtney Barnett (2015) and Low Cut Connie (2019). more
Have fun creating and learning from home with a collection of WheatonArts Family Art Workshop video tutorials (https://www.wheatonarts.org/learn/family-activities/family-art-workshops/). Great for all skill levels and ages, each tutorial is paired with engaging discussion questions and links for further learning. A new video is added each week. more
Cook along with five-time James Beard Award winner and New York Times best-selling cookbook author Dorie Greenspan in this special virtual fundraising event for Princeton Public Library (PPL) on Sunday, July 12 from 4 to 5 p.m. more
On June 18 through June 24, Sourland Conservancy hosted the Hopewell Elementary graduating fifth graders and their family to commemorate the moment by planting a pollinator meadow. The families each chose a 30-minute time slot, in order to maintain strict social distancing, to plant in the Foraging Forest in Hopewell Borough Park, which is right next door to their school. more
Alzheimer’s New Jersey’s Walk to Fight Alzheimer’s is scheduled to take place at Educational Testing Service’s Princeton campus on Sunday, October 11, 2020. One hundred percent of money raised will support New Jersey individuals and families. Participants can choose to walk virtually or in-person at 660 Rosedale Road. Registration opens at 8:30 a.m. on the day of the event and the walk will begin at 10 a.m. Festivities include refreshments, music, and door prizes. Parking is available on site. Register online in advance at https://alznj.akaraisin.com/ui/walkalznj2020 and choose from one of five walks: Point Pleasant Beach (September 26), Liberty State Park in Jersey City (October 3), Princeton (October 11), Morristown (October 18), and/or Paramus (October 25). more
