By Taylor Smith
Grounded in the Wesleyan/Methodist tradition, Drew Theological School is a leading seminary in Madison, N.J., offering four unique master’s programs and two doctoral programs. more
By Taylor Smith
Tucked away in West Cape May, Beach Plum Farm is a 62-acre working farm that produces over 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables, as well as chickens, eggs, and Berkshire hogs. Produce from Beach Plum Farms is used by a number of popular Cape May restaurants including Blue Pig Tavern, The Ebbitt Room, Louisa’s Cafe, the Boiler Room, and the Rusty Nail. The Farm is also home to a large market, farm kitchen, fine dining, and cottages. Visitors can easily spend an afternoon shopping, eating, and wandering the grounds, or even an entire weekend, to disconnect from the rushed pace of everyday life. Beach Plum also welcomes weddings and private events. more
By Taylor Smith
Governor Phil Murphy held a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport on Monday, June 10 to reveal the 2019 inductees to the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Among this year’s class are Game of Thrones author and Bayonne native George R.R. Martin. Born in 1948, Martin’s father was a longshoreman. Now residing primarily in Santa Fe, N.M., Martin claims to still be a huge fan of the New York Jets, New York Giants, and New York Mets. more
By Taylor Smith
Hoffman’s Ice Cream & Yogurt — with branches in Spring Lake Heights, Point Pleasant Beach, Little Silver, and Long Branch — seems to scream summer at the Shore.
Beginning in 1955, Hoffman’s Ice Cream operated as one of the first Carvel Ice Cream stores in New Jersey. When the franchise expired in 1976, the owners changed the name to Hoffman’s and grew a reputation of their own. The store’s original location was, and still is, in Point Pleasant Beach. more
By Taylor Smith
Brant Lake Camp, founded in 1916, is one of the oldest single-family owned camps in the United States. Situated in the Adirondack Mountains, 3.5 hours from New York City, Brant Lake serves as a summer “home away from home” for boys ages 7 to 15. With the motto of “Where sports are done right,” Brant’s facilities include 15 tennis courts, three baseball fields, two soccer fields, eight basketball courts, a roller hockey rink, two volleyball courts, a climbing wall, an archery range, a putting green, and a large multi-sport stadium. more
By Taylor Smith
Located at 33 Bridge Street in historic Frenchtown, Early Bird Espresso has grown into a beloved coffee stop, particularly among the cycling community. With long daily hours (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.), Early Bird is seemingly always open for a quick pick-me-up. Early Bird’s roaster, Counter Culture (a very chocolate-driven, nutty brew), is complemented by Trickling Springs Creamery, a premium organic and non-GMO dairy in Chambersburg, Pa. more
By Taylor Smith
Summertime in New Jersey is cause for celebration, and the warmer temperatures and bucolic surroundings encourage many residents to venture outdoors. The Mercer and Hunterdon county areas are home to state parks, meadows, fields, untouched forests, and a vast trail system tracing the Delaware River. However, one thing to be conscious of is the plethora of ticks. more
Photo Credit: Sandy Honig
By Taylor Smith
Ira Glass, host and creator of This American Life, will deliver a special presentation on what he has learned about the art and interest of storytelling on Sunday, June 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. more
N.C. Wyeth, Island Funeral, 1939, egg tempera and oil on hardboard.
By Taylor Smith
Brandywine River Museum in scenic Chadds Ford, Pa., presents a new exhibit entitled “N.C. Wyeth: New Perspectives,” on view June 22, 2019 to September 15, 2019. more
Exterior of Firestone Library. (Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications, Princeton University)
A Ten-Year Renovation Transforms Princeton’s Firestone Library
By Donald H. Sanborn III
“We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages,” Albert Einstein is quoted as saying. “The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.”
A 1941 photo of Einstein in his study is on display in the new Ellen and Leonard Milberg Gallery of Princeton University’s Firestone Library, which is across from the University Chapel. The University has completed its ten-year renovation of Firestone, which was “focused on creating a building that is well-suited to support modern library services and contemporary approaches to scholarship, while also providing inspiring, flexible study and work spaces,” the University states in a press release. more
W. Atlee Burpee
Sowing Seeds to Remain Close to its Roots
By Ilene Dube
If you’re a gardener, have ever planted a single seed, or even knew of someone who planted a single seed or read a book about such a person, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the Burpee Seed Company.
Fordhook Farm, Doylestown, Pa. (Smithsonian Postal Museum)
What you may not have known was that founder W. Atlee Burpee started the company in nearby Philadelphia. In fact his Fordhook Farm, on 60 acres in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It operated as an inn for a number of years, and was the subject of an Architectural Digest feature in 2001, but is now a site where vegetables, annuals, and perennials are grown, tested, and evaluated. This year there are three days it is open: on June 21 for the International Master Gardener Conference; and on August 10 and October 5 for public viewing. (For further details, visit www.gardenconservancy.org.)
The Burpees were a well-established Philadelphia family descended from French Canadian Huguenots. The original family name, Beaupe, evolved with an Americanized spelling and pronunciation over the course of several generations. more
The Princeton University Band poses on the steps of Blair Arch in October, 2010. (Photo by R.W. Enoch Jr., Wikipedia)
100 Years of the Princeton University Band
By William Uhl
In 1967, Princeton University’s football team faced Harvard. During the halftime performance, the Princeton University Band marched onto the field, clad in their traditional black-and-orange plaid blazers and boater hats. This time, they had a national audience: ABC was televising the show, one of the band’s first televised performances. Forming the letters “ABC,” the Tiger Band began to play. And as they performed “Who’s Sorry Now?” their formation shifted from “ABC” to “NBC.”
Norm Carter at the 2018 Reunions Weekend, being driven by Hamza Chaudhry ’19. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)
By Laurie Pellichero
A favorite highlight of Reunions Weekend each year is the P-rade, a parade of Princeton University alumni dressed in their class uniforms, from conservative to outrageous. It is led by a grand marshal and other dignitaries, followed closely by the Old Guard, those in classes beyond their 65th reunion. This year, the same as just about every year since he was a boy, Norm Carter is eagerly anticipating the P-rade and all the Reunions Weekend activities, including a Saturday reception and Old Guard Luncheon with President Christopher L. Eisgruber. At 102 ½, he is one of the oldest members of the Old Guard, and says he feels so fortunate to return each year. I asked Mr. Carter a few questions about his long history with the University.
Princeton University Endowment Outpaces Ivies As Princo Seeks to “Invest Well” and “Do Good”
By Donald Gilpin
“Invest Well. Do Good,” reads the headline on the website of the Princeton University Investment Company (Princo), which manages most of the University’s $25.9 billion endowment, the largest endowment per student in the country and one of the five largest overall.
Recent results for the endowment — a 14.2 percent investment gain for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2018 — and its support of an increasing share — 55 percent for 2018-19 — of the University’s annual budget indicate that Princo has indeed been investing well and doing good. more
Kinder, Gentler, and Community-Oriented
By Anne Levin | Photographs by Charles R. Plohn
Last February, Princeton Council approved a settlement of $3.925 million in a lawsuit with seven members of the Princeton Police Department. Filed in 2013, the suit accused police chief David Dudeck of harassment, discrimination, and creating a hostile work environment. The town did not admit any liability, and the plaintiffs agreed to not file another suit.
The settlement marked the end of an unsavory chapter in the history of law enforcement in Princeton. But things have actually been on the upswing since 2015, when former police captain Nicholas Sutter was promoted to replace Dudeck, who was permitted to retire soon after the suits were filed.
A different culture that began to emerge then appears to now be firmly in place. Transparency, diversity, an openness to change, and respect are the department’s core values. While nine officers have retired over the past few years, new recruits — several of whom are under 30 — come from a variety of non-traditional backgrounds. Of the 61 officers now on the force, six speak Spanish. One speaks Mandarin. Six are African American, including the first black woman officer in the department’s history. There is an officer dedicated to LGBTQ issues.
“It’s not just ethnicity or gender,” says Sutter. “It’s also about backgrounds. We have former teachers, former members of the military. We even have some talented musicians. There is a vast level of experience here that we might not have seen before.” more
By Stuart Mitchner
Princeton University Press celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005, the same year that Peter Dougherty began his illustrious 12-year term as director and British singer songwriter Kate Bush recorded a love song about a man obsessed by “a complete infatuation with the calculation of Pi (π),” the mathematical truth that coincides with the March 14th birthday of Albert Einstein, Princeton’s most renowned citizen.
Bush’s song about a man who loves loves loves his numbers lends a retrospective allure to my mathematically embattled school days, especially when she croons — sensually, caressingly, deliciously — a series of nothing but numbers that become things of beauty as she makes love to “three one four one five nine two six five three five nine” and on into infinity. And when she imagines a “great big circle” of numbers surrounding her pi-infatuated lover, she could be describing the cover of Millions, Billions, Zillions: Defending Yourself in a World of Too Many Numbers, by Princeton professor of computer science Brian W. Kernighan, whose small but numerically mighty book landed on my desk recently along with The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digital by his computer science colleague at Princeton Ken Steiglitz. Both books are, of course, from Princeton University Press, as is Daniel Kennefick’s No Shadow of a Doubt, timed for the 100th anniversary of the 1919 eclipse “that confirmed Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.” Although Kennefick is a physics professor at the University of Arkansas, he qualifies as a local, his previous books, all about Einstein, having been published by Princeton. more
East Point Lighthouse
(And they make great day trips!)
By Wendy Greenberg
A gleaming white lighthouse, capped with red, towers over a strip of land at Sandy Hook, between Sandy Hook Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The lighthouse has been standing there since it was built in 1764.
“Think about that,” muses Carol Winkie, president of the New Jersey Lighthouse Society (NJLHS). “Sandy Hook Lighthouse, the oldest lighthouse in the United States, was built before the United States was a country.” Sandy Hook is the lone survivor of the Eastern Seaboard Colonial lighthouses.
The lighthouses of New Jersey that stand today are beacons of maritime history. It is a quirky history, and a fascinating one. The “ABCs” (Absecon, Barnegat, and Cape May) were designed by George G. Meade, a hero of the Battle of Gettysburg. Finn’s Point Rear Range Lighthouse was built in Buffalo, N.Y., shipped by railroad, and pulled on wagons by mules to Supawana Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in 1877. The Tinicum Rear Range Lighthouse sits in a football practice field in Paulsboro.
And, sadly, the original 1868 Tucker’s Island Lighthouse, a white tower with red trim, went into the sea in 1927, and soon after the entire island, formerly a resort, was wiped out. A replica stands today. more
By Taylor Smith
The recent measles outbreak has sparked much discussion over vaccinations, particularly as they apply to children. What some people may not realize is that there are a variety of vaccines recommended for adults as well. Childhood vaccines wear off over time and factors like your age, job, lifestyle, and degree of travel can indicate an increased risk for certain preventable diseases. And the CDC states that older, hospitalized adults have immune systems similar to newborn babies, making them particularly vulnerable to infections. more
By Taylor Smith
The celebrated 2019 Spring Lake Irish Festival will take place on Saturday, June 15 from noon to 5 p.m. Affectionately dubbed the “Jersey Shore’s Irish Riviera” for its history of Irish culture and immigration, Spring Lake is the spot for this annual event featuring live music, dancing, food, children’s activities, and shopping. Traditions like the Irish Soda Bread Contest, beer and wine garden, and Irish step dancers are favorites. This year’s musical acts are The Snakes and Doubting Toms. more