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Don’t let the word “salad” fool you. As a kid, when Carolyn Gratzer Cope ’98 thought about leafy greens, she also had meat in mind, along with cheese, bacon, croutons, and creamy dressing. “The more it resembled a burger, the better,” Cope writes in a recent post on Serious Eats. But as an adult, the author of the food blog Umami Girl has turned to healthier options that can turn a bed of lettuce into a hearty meal: roasted winter squash, root vegetables, and the like. In the latest installment of Cope’s "Crisper Whisperer" column, readers chimed in with their favorites as well, including chickpeas, avocado, sunflower seeds, and pulled pork.

 

In other posts this week: When it comes to recovery time, “less is less,” professional triathlete Jordan Rapp ’02 writes in a Slowtwitch.com post. … New York Times ArtsBeat blogger Dave Itzkoff ’98 looks at the latest example of odd author memorabilia being sold online: J.K. Rowling’s boots, given to a fifth-grade class in Omaha 12 years ago. … On the Disruptive Economics blog, Forbes.com contributor Timothy B. Lee *10 questions the logic behind Netflix’s plan to split its streaming video and rent-by-mail businesses. … John Stossel ’69 of Fox News cries “Ponzi! Ponzi! Ponzi!” in his look at Social Security and Medicare, backing the words of Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry. … Photographer David Cardinal ’81 posts this captivating view of the Princeton Mill on the banks of the Millstone River two weeks after Hurricane Irene.

Nearly 40 years after graduating from Princeton, Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region Shanta Devarajan ’75 still remembers one particular message from his freshman orientation.

 

“‘Do something with your Princeton education that will benefit people less fortunate than you.’… Some of the things I’ve learned over the last 10 years relate back to this message,” he told incoming freshmen at the Reflections on Service keynote address held in McCosh 50 Sept. 13. The event was aimed at inspiring new Princetonians to participate in civic-engagement activities on campus and to be proactive in taking on their own projects.

 

Devarajan described a week he spent in a village in Gujerat, India, working alongside women who live on about $1 a day, as well as his leadership of the World Bank’s World Development Report. While working on these projects, Devarajan began questioning why regions such as Africa and South Asia were still mired in poverty despite numerous government programs aimed at reversing the crisis.

 

“Programs intended to help poor people are being captured by politicians,” he said. “The problem is that poor people don’t perceive that it’s a problem of politicians – they assume it’s a problem of just life being terrible.”

 

 

 

In an Aug. 22 item on The Washington Post’s “Achenblog,” Joel Achenbach ’82 examines a fascinating new finding of “ancient squiggly critters” in Western Australia that may be the planet’s oldest fossils. As Achenbach notes, “We don’t know how nonlife became life, whether it was in a small, warm pond, or at the edge of a deep-sea hydrothermal vent, or in the back of someone’s refrigerator,” and we may never know. But the new microfossils appear to indicate that there was life on Earth not long after the planet became habitable, Achenbach writes. Whether these are indeed Earth’s oldest remnants of life remains open to dispute. Click here to read the full explanation.

 

In other posts this week, “Feministing” blogger Chloe Angyal ’09 interviews actress and director Vera Farmiga. … On “HuffPost Tech,” Bianca Bosker ’08 takes a look at Facebook’s new privacy settings. … Rick Klein ’98 of ABC News’ “The Note” debunks hall-of-shame misstatements from Democrats and Republicans with PolitiFact.com editor Bill Adair. … Is coupon clipping anti-feminist? Laura Vanderkam ’01 argues that it may be on her “168 hours” blog. … And finally, “Serious Eats” blogger Maggie Hoffman ’04 has the enviable job of reviewing a bottle of wine each day for the site’s Summer of Riesling.

 

A few years ago, playwright Marvin Cheiten *71 noticed that Princeton’s Hamilton Murray Theater was empty from late August to early September, between the end of the Princeton Summer Theater season and the start of Theater Intime’s fall calendar. Cheiten and director Dan Berkowitz ’70, who had staged works at Hamilton Murray, inquired about the vacancy. “We know the theater, we like the theater,” Cheiten recalls saying. “Could we perhaps use it, and use as many Princeton students as we can?”

 

Theater Intime and the University were amenable, and in the span of seven years, Cheiten and the California-based Berkowitz have become August regulars, staging a half-dozen original works with a rotating cast of local performers and Princeton undergraduates.

 

This year’s production, the historical tragedy Zenobia, opens its six-show run Aug. 19. The play debuted on campus in the summer of 2005, and Cheiten said he has made the script “sharper” with a series of recent changes. It tells the story of Queen Zenobia, the third-century leader of Palmyra (now part of Syria), who used her political and military clout to take on the Roman empire. Carolyn Vasko ’13, a veteran of Lewis Center productions and Triangle Club shows, plays the title role.

 

Zenobia marks a change of pace for Cheiten, whose most recent plays have been comic mysteries built around a teen detective and her father. In the ill-fated queen, he expects audiences to find a sympathetic protagonist. As she loses her power, she becomes a better person. “It’s a tragedy,” Cheiten said, “but yet, I don’t think people will leave frowning.”

 

In May of this year, when her friends asked her what her plans were after graduation, Rachel Blum ’11 would answer simply, “I don’t really know yet.”

 

She didn’t have a job lined up and, despite 16 years of schooling, still wasn’t ready to decide what kind of work she even wanted to look for. So instead she decided to do something that by her own admission is “kinda crazy.” Blum would spend her summer “getting some alone time,” by traveling the country in her green 2001 Honda Civic, sleeping on the floors and couches and guest beds of Princeton alumni in every city she visited.

 

She has traveled clockwise from her home in Jacksonville, Fla., through the Southwest to California, then up the coast to Vancouver, where she was yesterday. In the coming weeks she’ll complete the circuit, driving to New England via the Northern states before heading south, back home to Jacksonville. In all, she estimates she’ll stay with about two dozen Princeton alumni during her trip, and a handful of friends and relatives as well.

 

Mark Zee ’03, who hosted Blum in Houston, said he was excited to help her as a way to give back to the Princeton community. “I did Princeton in Asia, and I crashed at so many Princetonians’ houses all over Asia, so it was pretty easy for me to say yes,” Zee said.

 

To Zee – and to most of Blum’s hosts – Blum was a complete stranger when she e-mailed him asking for a roof for a night. “When I get to a city where I know someone, of course I try to stay with them,” explained Blum. “But otherwise I just send an e-mail to a bunch of alumni and see who writes back.”

 

 

 

 

In a recent Q&A, Professor Cornel West *80 said that President Barack Obama should “be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it.” [New York Times]

 

St. Louis unveiled an eight-foot bronze sculpture of rock ’n’ roll icon Chuck Berry, created by local sculptor Harry Weber ’64. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

 

U.S. Soccer ended Bob Bradley ’80’s five-year run as the men’s national team coach, dismissing him on July 27 and hiring former German national team coach Jürgen Klinsmann. [FoxSoccer.com]

 

Seattle columnist David Brewster remembered the lasting contributions of arts patron Bagley Wright ’46, who died in July. [Crosscut.com]

 

A New Hampshire newspaper profiled Jacques-Andre Istel ’49, whose wide range of experiences include spurring the growth of recreational skydiving and founding a town in the California desert. [Keane (N.H.) Sentinel]

Lawyer Janet Lapidus Nova ’88 was the first to block the pie attack on Rupert Murdoch during the News Corp. chairman’s July 19 appearance before the British parliament. (In its version of the wire story, The Straits Times of Singapore called Nova “Murdoch’s other crouching tigress.”) [New York Times]

 

The late Dick Foran ’34, an actor best known for his roles as a singing cowboy, was featured in four films on Turner Classic Movies July 22. [New York Post]

 

NetApp co-founder Dave Hitz ’86 spoke about how his experience as a ranch hand in California prepared him for a career as a tech entrepreneur. [Forbes]

 

Lauren Bush ’06, co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit FEED Projects, spoke about her ongoing work to fight world hunger, a “silent killer” that is more deadly than HIV, AIDS, and malaria combined. [Fox News]

 

Candler Young ’94 and longtime friend Karim Zia have launched a community-minded venture capital fund that aims to make investments in Washington, D.C. [Washington Post]

After the July 6 Reunions and Commencement issue reached mailboxes, PAW readers began sending a second batch of photos from reunion events. Below is our third gallery of reader photos, selected from the recent arrivals. Click the images for a larger view of the photos, as well as captions and credits. The larger photos also can be viewed as a slide show; advance to the next photo by clicking on the right side of the image.

 

 

Click here to see all of the Reunions 2011 photos posted on The Weekly Blog, and visit our Web bonus slide shows and videos at PAW Online.