Tim Koons-McGee Goes for the Cold (Ice Cream)

The December 2, 2015 issue of PAW featured Tim Koons-McGee and his peripatetic career path, along with his evolving family structure, in its "Life: 35 Years Out" section.  The article read:

Tim Koons-McGee ’80 tried “a million” careers — he owned a swimming-pool company, trained thoroughbred racehorses, and restored historic homes — but nothing stuck. “All of them were successful, but there was always this burning desire to do something else,” says Koons-McGee, who lives in a suburb of Louisville, Ky. 

Then, at the age of 40, he came out as gay. He explained this to his 10-year-old daughter (he was divorced from her mother), who soon decided to live with him full-time. Several years later, his romantic partner of 10 years died of a brain aneurysm, and within the next year his father and brother also died. Koons-McGee became, he says, “a high-functioning alcoholic.” One night he found himself in a bar in Louisville and asked himself, “What am I doing?” He went to Alcoholics Anonymous the next day and has been sober since. 

He met Roy McGee at an AA meeting. The two were married in Montreal in 2007 (they changed their last names to Koons-McGee) and resolved to embark on a career together: running an ice cream shop. “We went to the bank at the height of the Great Recession,” Koons-McGee says. “They thought we were insane.” 

After friends and family offered help — and a different bank offered a loan — the pair opened The Comfy Cow in Louisville in December 2009. “We had lines out the door, even though it was winter,” he says. The shop has an eclectic vibe, with recycled church pews and ice cream scoops hanging from the ceiling. There are now eight Comfy Cow shops in three states. 

At 57, Koons-McGee has found success, in more ways than one: “I’m very comfortable in my own skin, and that’s a good place to be.”

President Obama to Nominate Beth Colbert to Lead Office of Personnel Management

On November 10, 2015, President Obama announced he would nominate Beth Cobert to serve as the Director of the Office of Personnel Management. In a press release, President Obama said,

“Beth will bring tremendous depth and quality of experience to her role as Director of the Office of Personnel Management. As Acting Director, Beth has effectively pursued strategies to strengthen cybersecurity and improve the way the government serves citizens, businesses, and the federal workforce both past and present. I thank Beth for her commitment to serving the American people and look forward to working with her in the months ahead.”

Anne-Marie Slaughter Examines the "Toxic Work World"

Anne-Marie Slaughter published an essay in the September 20 New York Times's Sunday Review section with the title "A Toxic Work World." In the essay, Slaughter looks at the issues around child child care and caregiving in general in the U.S. workplace. She also makes recommendations to tackle the problems, which, she argues, are leading the economy to "hemorrage talent and hollow out our society." She writes, 

To support care just as we support competition, we will need some combination of the following: high-quality and affordable child care and elder care; paid family and medical leave for women and men; a right to request part-time or flexible work; investment in early education comparable to our investment in elementary and secondary education; comprehensive job protection for pregnant workers; higher wages and training for paid caregivers; community support structures to allow elders to live at home longer; and reform of elementary and secondary school schedules to meet the needs of a digital rather than an agricultural economy.

Paul Jargowsky Makes Waves with Study on "Architecture of Segregation"

Prof. Paul Jargowsky of Rutger-Camden has published a new study, "The Architecture of Segregation: Civil Unrest, the Concentration of Poverty, and Public Policy." is getting noticed in the NY Times, Washington Post and Atlantic, for example. In fact, the lead editorial in the New York Times on Sunday, September 6, was titled after the book and mentioned Jargowsky several times. The introduction to the study states:

Over the past year, scenes of civil unrest have played out in the deteriorating inner-ring suburb of Ferguson and the traditional urban ghetto of inner-city Baltimore. The proximate cause of these conflicts has been brutal interactions between police and unarmed black men, leading to protests that include violent confrontations with police, but no single incident can explain the full extent of the protesters’ rage and frustration. The riots and protests—which have occurred in racially-segregated, high-poverty neighborhoods, bringing back images of the “long, hot summers” of the 1960s—have sparked a national conversation about race, violence, and policing that is long overdue.

Something important, however, is being left out of this conversation: namely, that we are witnessing a nationwide return of concentrated poverty that is racial in nature, and that this expansion and continued existence of high-poverty ghettos and barrios is no accident. These neighborhoods are not the value-free outcome of the impartial workings of the housing market. Rather, in large measure, they are the inevitable and predictable consequences of deliberate policy choices.

To address the root causes of urban violence, police-community tensions, and the enduring legacy of racism, the genesis of urban slums and the forces that sustain them must be understood. As a first step in that direction, this report examines the trends in the population and characteristics of neighborhoods of extreme deprivation.  Some of the key findings include:

• There was a dramatic increase in the number of high-poverty neighborhoods.

• The number of people living in high-poverty ghettos, barrios, and slums has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7.2 million to 13.8 million.

• These increases were well under way before the Great Recession began.

• Poverty became more concentrated—more than one in four of the black poor and nearly one in six of the Hispanic poor lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty, compared to one in thirteen of the white poor.

• To make matters worse, poor children are more likely to reside in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor adults.

• The fastest growth in black concentration of poverty (12.6 percentage points) since 2000 was not in the largest cities, but in metropolitan areas with 500,000 to 1 million persons.

Winston Weinmann to Sail in Hamilton Burr Regatta in NYC on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2015

Come support Princeton sailors and classmate Winston Weinmann (sailing as a "Veteran Duelist") at the 3rd Annual Hamilto -Burr Regatta on Saturday, September 12 in NYC. Racing takes place from 12:30-4:30 pm at the Hudson River Pier at 26th Street (Pier 66) at Hudson River Community Sailing. You can view the racing from park on the shore. Registered spectators may be able to go out on spectator boat (depending on availability). Spectator registration is free on the HBR web site. Party on Lightship Frying Pan from 5 pm, with a cash bar. The awards ceremony is at 5:30 pm and the after-party starts at 9:00 pm.

Mark Milley Takes Command as Army Chief of Staff

Gen. Mark Milley has taken command as the 39th U.S. Army Chief of Staff. In an August 14 ceremony at Fort Myer, near Arlington National Cemetery, Gen. Milley took over from Gen. Raymond Odierno. As reported in the Washington Post, Gen. Milley said,

Freedom is a very expensive gift paid for with the blood of those from earlier generations. A short distance away at Arlington cemetery, he said, are so many “soldiers of freedom” who sacrificed their lives.

“There is no cheap way to change, and more importantly, there is no cheap way to buy freedom,” Milley said. “The only thing more expensive than fighting and winning a war is fighting and losing a war — and fighting and winning a war is what the United States Army is all about.”

An August 22 Associated Press story focused on his considerations of the role of women in combat units. He said, 

“Right now I would call myself right on the line,” he said in the interview while flying to Fort Benning to attend an Army Ranger School graduation that included the first women ever to pass the rigorous Ranger training course. After the ceremony he briefly met privately with the two trailblazers, Capt. Kristen Griest, 26, and 1st Lieutenant Shaye Haver, 25.

Milley said that in coming weeks he will weigh a wide range of information, including Army assessments of the experience of Israel and other countries with women in combat, as well as studies by the Marine Corps, data collected during Army experiments and judgments reached by his own experience in war.

“Whatever decision is made is going to have some pretty far-reaching impact,” he said. “So it’s a big deal, and I want to make sure I’m thinking it through.”

Reuven Koret Writes About "Panicking Obama" and Iran Nuke Proposal

Reuven Koret is now contributing columns to the Jerusalem Post under the title "A Zionist Abroad." In his August 7 column, "A Panicking Obama Just Crippled His Chances in Congress," Koret writes,

The headline emerging from President Obama’s Tuesday meeting with Jewish leaders was stunning. If Congress rejects the Iran deal, he reportedly said, we can expect rockets to “rain down on Tel Aviv.”

If Congress rejects the deal, he said, the Iranians will attempt to race to the bomb, the US will be forced to attack them, and Iran will respond by attacking Israel directly through proxies.  “They will fight this asymmetrically. That means more support for terrorism, more Hezbollah rockets falling on Tel Aviv,” Obama was quoted as saying. Surprisingly, he said that the result of congressional disapproval would not be the US going to war with Iran. Israel would suffer most. “I can assure you that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical response that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities.”

News flash for Obama (who doesn’t appear to understand what asymmetrical means): Israelis have faced rockets from Iranian proxies for more than a decade now. And we have lived to tell the tale.

Koret's bio on the site says, "After 30 years writing and publishing from Israel, Reuven Koret now reports from Europe. He loves to write about how Europeans regard Israel and Israeliness."

Michael Evans Named President of China's Alibaba Group

Michael Evans has been named the President of China's Alibaba Group, effective immediately. The company is a major force in online commerce. He will continue his service as a management member of the Alibaba Group Board, having previously served as an independent director since the company’s initial public offering in September 2014. An Alibaba release said,

“Michael has been a close advisor to Alibaba Group for many years, and we greatly value his deep knowledge of our business, his experience as a proven business builder and leader globally, and his more than 20 years of experience in China,” said Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang.

“Globalization is Alibaba Group’s most important strategy for the coming decades, and our goal is to help 10 million global businesses and serve 2 billion consumers around the world. We have been laying the foundation for many years and now we need a global team in place with best-in-class talent to bring our vision to fruition. To that end, I can think of no one better than Michael to help Alibaba become a truly global company.”

Prior to joining Alibaba, Evans spent 30 years in global finance, including the last 20 years as a Partner of Goldman Sachs, where he served as Vice Chairman, head of Global Growth Markets, and Chairman of Asia, in addition to leadership positions in the Securities and Investment Banking Divisions before leaving the firm in 2014. Evans is a member of the Board of Directors of Barrick Gold Corporation, Castleton Commodities International LLC and several not-for-profit organizations. Evans won an Olympic gold medal for his home country Canada as a member of the men’s eights rowing team in the Los Angeles 1984 Summer Olympics.

Peter Elkind Explores Sony Hack for Fortune Magazine

The horrendous hack of Sony Corp. and release of internal documents falls under the journalistic gaze of Peter Elkind in the July 1 issue. Titled, "Inside the Hack of the Century," the 12,000-word story was called one of the magazine's most important ever by Fortune editor Alan Murray. The article appeared in three parts online. Early in the piece Elkind writes,

Three weeks later—starting at about 7 a.m. Pacific time on Monday, Nov. 24—a crushing cyberattack was launched on Sony Pictures. Employees logging on to its network were met with the sound of gunfire, scrolling threats, and the menacing image of a fiery skeleton looming over the tiny zombified heads of the studio’s top two executives. 

Before Sony’s IT staff could pull the plug, the hackers’ malware had leaped from machine to machine throughout the lot and across continents, wiping out half of Sony’s global network. It erased everything stored on 3,262 of the company’s 6,797 personal computers and 837 of its 1,555 servers. To make sure nothing could be recovered, the attackers had even added a little extra poison: a special deleting algorithm that overwrote the data seven different ways. When that was done, the code zapped each computer’s startup software, rendering the machines brain-dead. 

From the moment the malware was launched—months after the hackers first broke in—it took just one hour to throw Sony Pictures back into the era of the Betamax. The studio was reduced to using fax machines, communicating through posted messages, and paying its 7,000 employees with paper checks.

Dr. Henri Ford Separates Conjoined Twins in Haiti

In a lengthy procedure in May, pediatric surgeon Henri Ford separated conjoined twins, the first such surgery performed in Haiti. The chief medical correspondent of CBS News, Dr. Jon LaPook, observed the surgery and filed this report on CBS, which includes a video segment:

There's nothing unusual about twins holding hands. But 6-month-old infants Marian and Michelle Bernard share much more: They were born joined at the abdomen. 

When we saw them, they were minutes away from one of medicine's rarest and riskiest operations. Improbably, the 2010 earthquake that brought so much death and destruction to Haitialso helped bring Michelle and Marian a shot at a normal life. 

Their future was in the hands of Dr. Henri Ford. Born in Haiti, he and his family left a Port-au-Prince neighborhood in 1972. He became an ivy-league-trained pediatric surgeon, now Chief of Surgery at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. He rarely returned to his home country, but that changed when the earthquake struck. 

"I arrived the second day that the airport opened and pretty much went to work and spent two absolutely grueling weeks, the toughest ones of my life," said Ford. "When it came time to leave, I recognized that I couldn't just say, 'Yes I did my share and it's over.' It wasn't a one and done thing." 

When Michelle and Marian were born, their doctors asked Dr. Ford if this risky operation could be done in Haiti for the very first time. The procedure would require sophisticated medical care in a country where millions still lack even basic health care.

Beth Cobert Steps in at Hack-Wracked OPM Agency

Beth Cobert become the interim director of the federal Office of Personnel Management today, Saturday, following the resignation of the OPM's director after hackers gained access to over 22 million personnel files. Cobert has been the U.S. chief performance officer and a deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. The White House's OMB website said this about Cobert's career:

Beth Cobert is the Deputy Director for Management. She was confirmed on October 16, 2013. Cobert previously served nearly thirty years at McKinsey & Company as a Director and Senior Partner. During her tenure, she worked with corporate, not-for-profit and government entities on key strategic, operational and organizational issues across a range of sectors, including financial services, health care, legal services, real estate, telecommunications, and philanthropies. She led major projects to generate performance improvements through process streamlining, enhanced customer service, improved deployment of technology, more effective marketing programs and strengthened organizational effectiveness. Within McKinsey, Cobert held multiple leadership roles in people management including recruiting, training, development and performance management of staff. She has been a champion for professional development and initiatives to support women's advancement to leadership positions. Cobert also previously served as a board member and chair of the United Way of the Bay Area and as a member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council. Cobert received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Princeton University and a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University. She and her husband Adam Cioth have two children.

Jennifer Daly Maienza Featured in PAW Podcast, on Her Triangle Days

Jennifer Daly Maienza was featured in a PAW podcast recorded at the 2015 Reunions, looking back on her experiences with the Triangle Show. The interview is avaliable on iTunes, and PAW provides a transcript of Maienza's comments, including this excerpt:

Triangle I stayed with all four years. I sang and danced my way through high school and continued it on and loved it. It meant a lot to me. For a shy girl with a stutter, that’s where I could come alive, on stage. I did the Reunions shows, I did the “ding” shows, I did the tours, the whole kit and caboodle. 

There was one show, I think it was my junior year. We were driving to Buffalo in the bus, and a girl who had the lead in the dance — the dance solo in the big 20-minute very serious and meaningful as only Triangle can be dance number, on, I think the poor in New York City, something ridiculous like that — she sprained her ankle. So I had to step in, because I can dance, and I learned the entire thing dancing up and down the center aisle on the bus. It was kind of weird — it was the only practice I had because we got there and got changed and did the show. But somehow we pulled it together and I pulled it off.

PAW's Brett Tomlinson interviewed other classmates, and those comments will be posted as they appear on the PAW site.

Reunions Events to Remember Arye Stein-Azen '14

Several events at this weekend's Reunions will be held in remembrance of Arye Stein-Azen '14, the son of our classmate David Azen and Margot Stein ‘83. He passed away two months ago after three and a half years fighting a rare form of pediatric cancer. There will be a memorial service Friday afternoon, a Tigressions arch sing Saturday night, and a fund he established before he passed to help other students struggling with health issues. 

Aryeh Stein-Azen Memorial Service

Friday May 29 at 5 pm

Whitman Dining Hall

There will be an opportunity for people to share stories about Aryeh, brief speeches from a few people, and some singing from the Tigressions. We're also encouraging everyone to add pictures to our Google picture link. We'll be playing a slideshow of these images during the service.

Aryeh Stein-Azen Memorial Fund

In his last days, Aryeh established a fund at Princeton University to create a center to aid students with difficult health issues. It is our hope that this center will support students by providing a variety of services and integrated health support at school.

Gifts can be made online at https://makeagift.princeton.edu/MakeAGift.aspx

Aryeh's name and fund should be noted in the comments box. Checks should be made payable to The Trustees of Princeton University with a memo line indicating the Aryeh Stein-Azen Fund. Checks can be mailed to the following address:

Aryeh Stein-Azen Fund

Princeton University

Alumni and Donor Records

Attn: Helen Hardy

PO Box 5357

Princeton, NJ 08540

Tigressions Arch Sing Dedicated to Aryeh Stein-Azen

Saturday May 30 at 10 pm

1879 Arch

Join the Tigressions and TG alums for songs and a moment of remembrance dedicated to the memory of Aryeh Stein-Azen, son of Tigressions co-founder Margot Stein ‘83 and boyfriend of Katy Dammers ‘13.

Robert Klitzman Analyzes Issues of Embryo Control

In the wake of the dispute between actress Sofia Vergara and her former fiance, Nick Loeb, over the control of two fertilized embryos, Dr. Robert Klitzman analyzed the tangled issues of parenting, contracts and control in an essay for CNN. Loeb wants them implanted into a surrogate; Vergara does not. A contract the couple had signed required mutual consent for the eggs to be implanted.

Published on May 7, the essay was titled "Does Sofia Vergara Own Her Embryos?" Klitzman wrote,

The dispute raises ethical dilemmas. The children, once born, would presumably have strained relationships or no contact with Vergara, which would be difficult for them. 

It's not just celebrities who are confronting these issues. 

Are embryos property -- like say, sneakers, flowers, fish or toothpaste? Who really should own them? Will the children who are born from them have rights to know or have relationships with their biological parents?

Gen. Mark Milley Nominated to be Army Chief of Staff

Gen. Mark Milley was nominated on May 13 to be the next Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, taking the place of Gen. Ray Odierno, who is retiring this summer.

Gen. Milley has been the commander of the Army Forces Command in Ft. Bragg, N.C., since last August.

An article in the Army Times stated,

A 1980 graduate of Princeton University, Milley has served in the 82nd Airborne Division and 5th Special Forces Group. He also served with the 7th Infantry Division, the 10th Mountain Division, the 25th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division. 

Milley, a native of the Boston area, also previously served on the operations staff of the Joint Staff and as a military assistant to the defense secretary. 

If confirmed by the Senate, Milley will lead an Army in transition as it undergoes a steep draw down and sweeping reorganization amid increasingly tight budgets. He also will take the reins of a combat-hardened Army that continues to respond to contingencies around the world even as it recovers from more than a decade of war and back-to-back deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. . . More recently, in his role as commander of Forces Command, Milley was appointed the general court-martial convening authority in the case of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

Marc Safran's Wife Plays Key Role in Murder Case Investigation

Marc Safran's wife, Dr. Mary Jumbelic, played a key role in cracking a murder case in Upstate New York. Accordiing to Syracuse.com: 

Dr. Robert Neulander and his wife, Leslie, took a fruit basket to an ill friend from Jewish temple in September 2012.  

Two days later, Leslie Neulander was dead. The story was a tragic slip and fall in the shower.  

That ill friend was former Onondaga County Medical Examiner Dr. Mary Jumbelic. She led the ME's office for 11 years before retiring in 2009. 

As it turned out, Jumbelic became the impetus for the investigation that ultimately led to Dr. Neulander's murder trial and conviction  Thursday.  

The death was initially ruled accidental by Jumbelic's replacement, Dr. Robert Stoppacher. But District Attorney William Fitzpatrick credited Jumbelic for getting the ball rolling again before he contacted nationally-renowned experts.

Free Performance by Princeton University Pianists Ensemble in NYC on May 3

The Princeton Alumni of the Arts is proud to present the Princeton University Pianists Ensemble in concert at Steinway Hall in New York on Sunday, May 3, at 7:30 pm. The address is 1155 Avenue of the Americas.  Admission is free, but seating is limited, so please sign here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1555844

Steven and Sharon Lieberman to be Honored by Yeshivat Chevevi Torah

Classmates Steven and Sharon Lieberman will be honored by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah on May 18 during the YCT Annual Tribute Dinner in New York. Steven Lieberman is the chairman of the YCT board of directors. the YCT website states,

Mr. Lieberman is a partner at the firm of Rothwell, Figg, Ernst & Manbeck in Washington, D.C.  He specializes in intellectual property and constitutional law and his current clients include The New York Times Company, Dow Jones, Fox, McGraw-Hill, NBC, CBS and Time Warner.  Mr. Lieberman has also devoted a substantial portion of his practice for the past 25 years to pro bono work on behalf of the Jewish community. Mr. Lieberman has served on the Board of YCT since its founding. 

Alex Silverman Pens Crossword Puzzle for the NY Times

Today's New York Times ran a crossword puzzle created by Alex Silverman. A Times "Wordplay" piece about the puzzle said in part,

Beatles songs are a lovely way to start the week. Alex Silverman appears to be making his debut in The New York Times today with a theme that reconfigures songs by the FAB FOUR as the favorites of people for whom the songs would be appropriate.

I was impressed that Mr. Silverman was able to stack these songs — we have two double stacks, an additional 15 stretching across the center and a shaded revealer at 32- and the end of 35-Across — although I also felt that it didn’t quite have that Monday smoothness that I appreciate in, say, a Lynn Lempel or Andrea Carla Michaels puzzle. (You see me looking at you, northeast, don’t you?) I had BIOME instead of BIOTA at first, neither of which felt like a Monday word. I wasn’t thrilled with L BAR crossing NBAER. I wish the grid didn’t begin with an abbreviation like SYST and end with NEUR and ERNS.

In a Facebook comment about the puzzle and Times's thinking about it, Silverman wrote, "The blog posters talk about this as being my 'debut' puzzle--which I suppose it is, but I have no idea what I would do as an encore.

Robert Klitzman Considers Airline Pilots as Medical Patients

Professor of clinical psychiatry Rober Klitzman wrote an essay for CNN on March 31 reflecting on the issues of reporting and confidentiality involving patients such as airline pilots. This piece, "What If My Patient is a Pilot?", reflected issues raised by the recent deliberate crash of a Germanwings jet by its co-pilot. Klitzman wrote,

The FAA requires that pilots self-report any diagnoses. But health care professionals have no obligation to notify anyone. They may know that a pilot has a medical problem that is poorly or not treated and may endanger passengers, but these providers have no obligation to do anything about it.

These issues are crucial, given that Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed the Germanwings Flight 9525, killing 150 passengers. We still don't know why he committed suicide-murder, but the latest reports indicate he was treated for suicidal tendencies before getting his pilot license.

The Germanwings disaster has demonstrated that current standards of medical and psychiatric evaluation are inadequate. The FAA requires only that pilots fill out a psychological questionnaire, asking whether they have had psychological symptoms. But pilots are not assessed in person by a psychiatrist. Such face-to-face assessments can provide crucial information that self-report forms might miss, partly because pilots might answer inaccurately.

PAW Highlights Yadin Kaufmann's Middle East Investments

The April 1 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly featured Yadin Kaufmann in an article titled, "Yadin Kaufmann '80: Building High-Tech Bridges." The article discussed Kaumann's success in mentoring Palestinian entrepreneurs from the West Bank. The article states,

So last year he started the Palestinian Internship Program, which offers high-tech professionals the opportunity to polish their skills and expand their contacts by working for Israeli and multinational companies. The program — which started with eight interns, most of whom came from the West Bank — is the first to place Palestinians in internships with tech companies in Israel.

Kaufmann, a New Yorker who emigrated to Israel in 1985, worked for several years at Israel’s first venture-capital fund, Athena Venture Partners. He now runs Sadara Ventures, the first investment fund to focus on Palestinian technology companies, which he co-founded with a Palestinian partner, Saed Nashef. The firm is looking to cultivate “the WebMDs and the Booking.coms of the Mideast” and give Palestinian professionals the chance to build their businesses at home, rather than having to emigrate to tech sectors overseas, says Kaufmann, who lives near Tel Aviv with his wife, Lori Banov Kaufmann ’81.

John Rogers Inspires NY Times Essay on Money and Decisions

John W. Rogers Jr., founder and chief executive of Ariel Investments in Chicago, inspired a new hire at his company at a lunch they shared. The new hire, then 22-year old Mellody Hobson, went on to become the president of Ariel Investments. 

In a New York Times essay on March 26, Hobson reflected on the lunch and Rogers's comments in an essay titled "Making Money Secondary in Decisions," in a "Your Money" special section. Hobson wrote,

I hung on John’s every word, filing away his every utterance. 

And then he told me this: “Don’t make decisions based on money.” Come again?  

This was peculiar advice for an investment manager to bestow — wasn’t every investment decision he made based on his research into which companies would thrive and make money? . . . 

From my older and wiser perspective, the warning is so legitimate that it is deceptively simplistic. Yet I see people making major life decisions for the wrong reason — money — nearly every day. So I question the young person who wants to take the job that pays more over the one that inspires her, the graduate who pursues the field he thinks will be more lucrative instead of the one in which he will thrive, the bride or groom who marries the financially secure mate over the one who offers true compatibility, partnership and love. They ought to anchor personal life choices with long-term consequences in something more meaningful than money. 

Doug McGrath Writes About "Beautiful" Project in PAW

Doug McGrath drew on his experience writing for the Triangle Show in penning the Tony Award-winning musical "Beautiful," about the career of singer-songwriter Carole King. In an essay titled "Writing Carole King's Life, Thanks to the Triangle Club," in the January 7 issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, McGrath wrote,

Everything I used to write Beautiful, I learned from my Triangle shows: sitting in the audience and listening for what works and what doesn’t and when it doesn’t, quickly finding a way to change it. It was at 185 Nassau St. and McCarter Theatre that I first learned not to be sentimental about something just because I wrote it.

At Princeton, I performed in several Triangle shows before writing one. The first show I wrote, Happily Ever After — for which I did the book and co-wrote the lyrics with David E. Kelley ’79 — received a fairy-tale reception from The Daily Princetonian. My second show, String of Pearls, which I wrote senior year, was more string than pearls. Our first run-through ran longer than Lawrence of Arabia. The officers of the club brought me into a room that in my memory had one lightbulb hanging from a fraying cord. They told me I needed to cut the show — a lot. I was shocked by this impertinent notion. Of course, they were right. This lesson stayed with me — by the time Beautifulopened, it was 20 minutes shorter than when we started.

Steve Strogatz Ponders "Pi" and Asks "Why?"

Pi Day came and went peacefully, with moderate intake of pies, and Cornell math professor and Google Scholar Steve Strogatz turned to the pages of the March 13 (of course) issue of the New Yorker to describe pi and ask why if so fascinates segments of the public. In the article, "Why Pi Matters," Strogatz notes,

So it’s fair to ask: Why do mathematicians care so much about pi? Is it some kind of weird circle fixation? Hardly. The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach. Even young children get this. The digits of pi never end and never show a pattern. They go on forever, seemingly at random—except that they can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi.

Pi touches infinity in other ways. For example, there are astonishing formulas in which an endless procession of smaller and smaller numbers adds up to pi. One of the earliest such infinite series to be discovered says that pi equals four times the sum 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – 1/11 + ⋯. The appearance of this formula alone is cause for celebration. It connects all odd numbers to pi, thereby also linking number theory to circles and geometry. In this way, pi joins two seemingly separate mathematical universes, like a cosmic wormhole.

Honorary Classmate Michael Graves Dies at 80

Michael Graves h80 died yesterday in Princeton at the age of 80. He had been the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus and an honorary member of the Class of 1980. An obituary in the New York Times stated,

Mr. Graves was first associated with the New York Five, a group of architects who achieved cult-like stature by helping to redefine modernism in the 1970s. He went on to design projects like the headquarters of the health care company Humana in Louisville, Ky., and the Portland Municipal Building in Oregon, which exemplified postmodernism with their reliance on color and ornament and made him a celebrity.

He used his fame as a brand, designing housewares for Target while continuing to run a busy practice even as postmodernism fell out of fashion and Mr. Graves’s reputation with it.

The School of Architecture's profile of him can be found here.

Sally Frank Quoted in NY Times Article on Women and Eating Clubs

A February 20 article in the New York Times quoted Sally Frank on her perspective on eating clubs and women at Princeton. Titled "At Princeton, Women Make Strides at Clubs That Once Barred Them," the article said:

Ivy’s elections also resulted in a gender-balanced group of officers, which had not happened in recent years. Ms. Mott said that she was excited about that, and encouraged by the opportunities for change given the short institutional memory of the club. 

Also buoyed by the results was Ms. Frank, now 55, the woman who took on the male-only clubs and won. 

“It’s extremely gratifying,” she said. “The election isn’t going to end all sexism on Princeton’s campus. But it can help.”

On the Move: Florence DiStefano Hudson Joins Internet2

After a long career at IBM, class president Florence DiStefano Hudson will be joining the Internet2 consortium at Senior VP and Chief Innovation Officer. Hudson assumes the new post on March 16. A press release from Internet2 stated:

Hudson has more than 33 years in leadership positions at IBM including vice president and director in Corporate Strategy, vice president in the Systems and Technology Group, and vice president and acting chief technology officer of the IBM Global Industrial Sector. She brings a unique integration of business and technical experience and will provide senior strategic leadership for Internet2 and the broader research and higher education community in the areas of innovation, advanced technologies and new services . . .

In her new role at Internet2, Hudson will serve as the primary focal point to stimulate and catalyze the tremendous innovative capacity of the entire Internet2 community. She will organize new technology-driven initiatives across and beyond advanced networking and infrastructure, federated identity management and cloud services. She will also broaden the scope and value of Internet2 to its members by collaboratively and proactively working with the research and education (R&E) community to develop and implement new, leading-edge concepts.

Internet2® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation's leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research, and community service missions. I

PAW Remembers 1981 Cover by Rob Smiley

The Princeton Alumni Weekly's Throwback Thursday feature on February 25 looked back fondly on Rob Smiley's New Yorker-inspired cover that appeared on the May 4, 1981 cover.  The item said,

Princeton history columnist Gregg Lange ’70 once called Rob Smiley ’80’s May 4, 1981, cover image — pictured at right — “the most successful PAW cover of all time, and my favorite by far.”

The illustration shows a map of Princeton and beyond, executed by Smiley as an inspired parody of Saul Steinberg’s famous cover for The New Yorker, titled “View of the World from 9th Avenue.” Steinberg’s map ran in 1976; Smiley’s ran five years later (with the standard PAW banner; the New Yorker-style type was added for a poster version of the image).

“The loving touches — the WPRB radio tower on Holder Hall, the prominence of the Nassau Hall bell, PJ’s Pancake House, and even the New Yorker typeface replacing the PAW banner, were executed brilliantly by Smiley,” Lange wrote. “The resulting homage has been one of the few PAW covers to be reproduced for the public by popular demand, not to mention sold for real money.”