On view through September 5, 2022, at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, “The Pigeon Comes to Jersey City!” celebrates the art and characters of beloved children’s book author and illustrator Mo Willems. This young learner exhibition features best-friend duo Elephant and Piggie, faithful companion Knuffle Bunny, and The Pigeon, the wiley city bird best known for his antics in Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! more
Are you interested in learning what makes Stuart girls unstoppable?
The admissions staff at Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart will hold a 30-minute virtual conversation on Thursday, August 4 at 12:30 p.m. The session will touch on the application process and hopes to demystify the factors to consider when deciding whether or not a given independent school is right for your child. more
Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) has appointed Anastasia Rivkin, Pharma.D., Ed.D., as the dean of the School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, effective July 1. Rivkin has been serving as the interim dean.
“Anastasia’s leadership and expertise provide tremendous strength for the future of FDU’s heath initiatives in pharmacy and beyond,” said Michael J. Avaltroni, university provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. more
Current, former, and future Rutgers students, faculty, staff, and fans are welcome to partake in Scarlet Knights pride during Homecoming Weekend on October 20-22. Rutgers football will be facing Indiana and the matchup should be a heart-thumping event. more
The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) foundation has elected David Rago, owner of Rago Arts and Auction Center (https://www.ragoarts.com) in Lambertville to its board of directors.
An expert in the field of American ceramics, art, and pottery, Rago began dealing in American decorative ceramics at the age of 17 and has authored several books on the subject. He also tours and lectures nationally and appeared regularly on the PBS series, The Antiques Roadshow.
Rago Arts and Auction is a leading U.S. auction house with $30 million in annual sales. It serves thousands of sellers and buyers providing personal service and competitive commissions for single pieces, collections, and estates.
Rago was awarded a B.A. in English from TCNJ in 2016. He and his wife established The David Rago and Suzanne Perrault Faculty Endowment and are generous annual donors to TCNJ’s School of The Arts and Communication. more
Considered to be the top aquarium in the Northeast, Camden’s Adventure Aquarium is a premier and scientifically sound facility where children can interact with aquatic creatures in a whole new way.
Over 15,000 animals are located on site, including endangered penguin and shark species, sea turtles, and coral reef (among others). Special attractions like the Little Blue Penguins, Nile Hippos, the Shark Bridge, Shark Tunnel, and touch tanks will leave lasting memories. From the Great Hammerhead Shark (the largest of its species) to the Giant Pacific Octopus, there is so much to see and learn. more
Located along the Delaware River in New Hope, Pa., Solebury School’s Summer Day Camp is a great option to keep kids busy, healthy, and having fun throughout the warmer months.
Campers are overseen by a dedicated and highly trained staff that enjoys spending each day outdoors as much as the kids. Solebury also prides itself on being a confidence building setting where children can express themselves, test new skills, and improve already established skills like swimming, theater, and a variety of sports. more
Washington Crossing Historic Park will hold its annual Memorial Day ceremony on Sunday, May 29 from 1 to 2 p.m. at the gravesite of Continental soldiers located near the Thompson-Neely House.
The observation will include a Colonial color guard, fife and drum music, Revolutionary War reenactors, veterans, and other honored guests. The keynote address will be delivered by USAF veteran Frank Lyons. At the ceremony, the Daughters of the American Revolution will dedicate a plaque at the original gravesite of 24-year-old Captain Lieutenant James Moore. Moore served in Captain Alexander Hamilton’s New York Artillery Unit before his death on December 25, 1776. more
Labyrinth Books welcomes Maggie Edkins Willis and Samira Iravani for an in-person event (with the option of virtual) on Sunday, June 12 at 2 p.m. Willis will discuss her debut middle grade graphic novel entitled Smaller Sister, which touches on the author’s own real-life experiences navigating confidence, body image, and the everlasting bond of sisterhood. more
Celebrate Princeton’s LGBTQIA+ community on Friday, June 3 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the Princeton Shopping Center. The special event will include music, games, activities, giveaways, and more. Rain date is June 5.
Families of all ages are welcome to participate. There will be a bubble show by OMG Bubbles, hula hooping with Color Me Hoopy, yoga, a community mural, and live tunes from DJ Mona of Mon Amie Events NYC. more
Works by iconic 20th-century landscape photographer Ansel Adams are now on display at the Galleries at Liberty Hall Academic Center at Kean University.
The “Early Works” exhibition features 42 original vintage photographs by the master photographer of the American West, ranging from the 1920s to the 1950s. It is open to the public with a pay-what-you-wish (PWYW) admission. more
Located at 100 Straube Center Boulevard in Pennington, Cambridge School is an independent K-12 day school that specializes in helping students with language-based learning differences, such as dyslexia, ADHD, dysgraphia, auditory processing disorder, and executive function difficulties, among others. However, the school prides itself on teaching to learning differences, not disabilities, as some educational institutions perceive it. more
On Saturday, April 9, Princeton Junior School’s Odyssey of the Mind teams competed in the New Jersey State Finals at Princeton High School. There, both teams qualified to advance to the World Finals taking place at Iowa State University, May 25-28.
The Grade 6 Team competed in Division II against other New Jersey middle school 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students and placed second in their long-term problem, Escape Vroom. The Grade 5 Team competed in Division I against elementary students and placed third for their Matryoshka Structure. more
Pearl S. Buck, circa 1931. (Wikipedia/Arnold Genthe)
“If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday,” author and activist Pearl S. Buck is quoted as saying. To understand Buck’s work as the author of The Good Earth and founder of the organization that became Pearl S. Buck International, based in Bucks County, Pa., it is helpful to search her upbringing as the daughter of a missionary in China.
Buck (1892-1973) was the daughter of Absalom Sydenstricker, a Southern Presbyterian missionary, and Caroline Stulting Sydenstricker. When Buck was 5 months old, the family moved to China, eventually settling near Nanking; they chose to live among the Chinese people rather than in a missionary compound. Pearl S. Buck International’s biography of Buck notes that she “played with Chinese children and visited their homes … she later used this material in her novels.”
However, Buck also observed the suffocating effect of Absalom’s work on his relationship with his family, especially his treatment of Caroline. Buck’s mother had “accompanied her husband to China, where she was homesick for the remaining 40 years of her life,” writes Peter Conn in Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
“Carie’s emotionally impoverished marriage and exile provided Pearl a tragic example of the price that women pay for the loyalty to codes and customs that oppress them. It was the most important lesson Pearl would ever learn … [she] would not, as Carie had done, collaborate in her own defeat,” Conn writes. But he adds that, despite Buck’s rejection of her father’s religious beliefs, she inherited “his evangelical zeal, his sense of rectitude, and his passion for learning … she became, in effect, a secular missionary, bringing the gospels of civil rights and cross-cultural understanding to people on two continents.”
Conn writes of Buck’s mother, “Wherever she lived in China … Carie always made a flower garden. These were places of beauty and refuge, walled off from the Chinese streets that surrounded them.”
Asked whether this influenced the agrarian theme of The Good Earth, Conn tells this writer, “I thought of the gardens much more … in terms of a kind of emblem for the general disquiet and sense of loneliness that Pearl’s mother confronted, from the time she got to China until she died.”
VJ Kopacki, historic house director and curator for Pearl S. Buck International, adds that Caroline was “vibrant, thoughtful, and had a head full of ideas — and the only place in which she could express herself … was in that space of her garden. She could release some of that feeling of isolation and exile.” Kopacki observes that Buck “was an outspoken critic of the way that men, specifically American men, tended to treat their wives.” more
Located in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, every year the Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center celebrates Children’s Day on May 5. Children’s Day is a Japanese national holiday and is the final celebration of Golden Week, a collection of four national holidays within seven days. It is a day set aside to respect children’s individual personalities and to celebrate their happiness. more
Drew University in Madison, N.J. has recently announced the addition of a musical theater minor. This new program will supplement the popular theater arts major and four other program minors.
The minor is an interdisciplinary program incorporating the study of acting, dance, movement, vocal arts, performance history, and related musical subjects. The program distinctively offers students the opportunity to create original musicals as well as to participate in immersive experiences. more
The Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum (SSAAM) and Sourland Conservancy have joined forces to purchase and save the historic True family farmstead in Skillman, N.J.
The property was originally owned by an African American Union army veteran who worked as a farmer after the Civil War. In 1891, after his death, his wife Cordina married Spencer True, a descendant of the former slave Friday Truehart. Interestingly, Truehart had gained his freedom in 1819 and became an early African American landowner in the Sourland region. Spencer and Corinda made their home on the farmstead, which originally included the land on which the National Historic Register-listed Mt. Zion AME Church stands today. Spencer and Corinda donated the land for the church in 1899 after the original church, built around 1866 on the Sourland Mountain, burned down. Mt. Zion AME Church welcomed its African American congregants until 2005, and now serves as the home of the Stoutsburg Sourland African American Museum. more
Join the Arts Council of Princeton and the Paul Robeson House of Princeton to commemorate Paul Robeson’s 124th birthday on Saturday, April 9 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.
The gathered community will celebrate with the laying of a wreath on Robeson’s bust outside the Arts Council and the acknowledgement of the first Robeson Scholars to honor area students who excel in the arts and athletics. A reception will follow with cake for all to enjoy. more
The war in Ukraine has touched the minds and hearts of many, including the greater Stuart Country Day School community. Cindy Michalak, Stuart’s college counselor whose family has roots in Ukraine, and science teacher Natalie Voicu, who was born in Ukraine and whose extended family remains, recently gave a presentation on the history of Ukraine and the current war. more
Monmouth University President Patrick F. Leahy has been named to ROI-NJ’s Influencers: Higher Education 2022 list. The list highlights university leaders in New Jersey who have spearheaded meaningful improvements to their institution in the past year. According to ROI-NJ, presidents selected for the list represent schools that “graduate some of the top students in the country, many of whom will have global impact. Just as important, they will teach first-generation graduates that will have local impacts of equal measure.” more
