Princeton Alumni Weekly | The Weekly Blog: Alumni News Archives

January 5, 2011

Fall fashions, Princeton style

It all started in October, the month of playoff baseball. Selden Edwards ’63 was watching a National League Championship Series game between the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants on TV when he spotted a familiar striped pattern in the front row at AT&T Park, right behind the dugout. Could it be? A Class of 1962 Princeton Reunions jacket? Edwards hit rewind on the broadcast, snapped a photo with his phone, and sent it off to his friend and classmate Bill Hardt ’63, a longtime Princeton volunteer.

Hardt passed the picture along to friends via e-mail. In December, after several weeks and some unsuccessful queries, Bruce Dunning ’62 cracked the case, confirming that the mystery fan was Andy Hall ’62 *66, a Bay Area engineer and consultant.

Hall explained in an e-mail reply that he’d worn the jacket twice during the Giants’ playoff run – once in the Philadelphia series and once in the World Series. Fellow fans told him that they loved the jacket’s orange, black, and white stripes, a perfect match for the Giants’ colors. “One person, a row behind us, was seriously interested in buying one,” Hall said. “I told him it was a special edition and not available. I think I saved him from a lot of grief.”

January 4, 2011

Griswold '95 helps start school in Somali camp

(Antonin Kratochvil)

When journalist Eliza Griswold ’95 first traveled to Somalia in 2007, she visited the refugee camp near Mogadishu founded and run by Hawa Abdi, an ob-gyn now in her 60s. “Hers was one of the only functioning hubs of aid and civil society,” says Griswold. “Never, in a decade of travels, have I seen such an island of clam in the midst of one of the world’s most forgotten war zones.”

In the midst of civil war, Abdi has provided a safe haven for thousands of people. What started as a one-room women’s hospital on her family’s farm became a shelter for people during the famine in the early 1990s, and has grown to a home for some 90,000 displaced people who have flocked to her farm. They get drinking water and learn how to farm and fish. And thanks to help from Griswold, a small fraction are getting an education.

Continue reading Griswold '95 helps start school in Somali camp…

December 23, 2010

Top alumni newsmakers of 2010

After much deliberation, we've narrowed our list of top alumni newsmakers to six standouts in business, sports, the arts, and public service, presented below in alphabetical order. Add your write-in candidates or thoughts about our top six in the comments section.


Jeff Bezos ’86 The Amazon.com chief has staying power: 11 years after his appearance as Time’s Person of the Year, he was named one of the CEOs of the decade by Marketwatch.com.	Jason Garrett ’89 A midseason promotion made the former Tiger star Princeton’s first NFL head coach. Through six games at the helm, his Dallas Cowboys are 4-2.	Elena Kagan ’81 This year, Kagan went from arguing cases in front of the nation’s highest court – as solicitor general – to serving on it as a Supreme Court justice.

W.S. Merwin ’49 A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Merwin again joined elite company in the world of letters by becoming the 17th poet laureate of the United States.	*David Petraeus 85 87* In June, Petraeus left the U.S. Central Command to take over new responsibilities as the top American commander in Afghanistan, replacing Gen. Stanley McChrystal.	Terri Sewell ’86 One of Princeton’s newest alumni in Congress, Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, made history as the first African-American woman to represent her state.

Photos: Wikipedia (Bezos, Garrett, Kagan, and Petraeus); Library of Congress (Merwin); Sewell for Congress (Sewell).

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Posted by Brett Tomlinson on December 21, 2010 at 12:15 PM | 1 Comment

December 10, 2010

Names in the news: Chart toppers

Gen. David Petraeus *85 *87 is Barbara Walters’ most fascinating person of 2010. Last year’s honoree also was a Princetonian – First Lady Michelle Obama ’85. [ABC News]

On a short list of the decade’s top CEOs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ’86 and Google’s Eric Schmidt ’76 each rank among the top five. [MarketWatch]

Twitter's official 2010 list of notable new users includes Queen Noor of Jordan ’73 (@queennoor) and Donald Rumsfeld ’54 (@RumsfeldOffice). [Twitter.com]

A profile of crossword champion Dan Feyer ’99 includes a video of him demonstrating his speedy solving skills. [New York Times]

Recent graduate Jonathan Schwartz ’10 plays a key role in the much-anticipated Spider-Man musical. [Broadway.com]

December 8, 2010

Where are we? A PAW blog contest

The table of contents in PAW's Dec. 8 issue featured the photo at left above, along with the question, "Where are we?" If you guessed Wallace Hall, you have a good eye for campus buildings. And we'd like you to try another:

Where are we now? Post your answer on PAW's Facebook page or e-mail it to PAW. The first correct response will earn a prize.

UPDATE: Elise Wright '83 was the first to correctly identify the Lewis Science Library. Become a fan of PAW on Facebook to follow future contests.

November 23, 2010

Tiger '94 re-launches vintage polo brand

Alex Tiger ’94 (right) with his business partner, John Dowling, in Boast polo shirts.

Anyone who played tennis in the 1970s and ’80s might remember — or even have deep in their drawer – a polo shirt with a Japanese maple leaf logo. That preppy Boast brand shirt was worn by the likes of tennis great Jimmy Connors and many others but disappeared in the 1990s. This fall Alex Tiger ’94 and his friend and business partner John Dowling re-launched the brand that was started in 1973 by Greenwich, Conn. tennis pro Bill St. John out of his station wagon. Currently available only online (at boastusa.com), the vintage polo with the maple leaf is staking a comeback. Tiger spoke with PAW’s Katherine Federici Greenwood.

Why did you want to re-launch the Boast brand?

I am avid racket sports [player] – tennis and squash. I grew up with this brand really in the mid ’80s. It was the shirt that we all wore on tennis and squash courts and just walking around. I was wondering what happened with that brand a couple years back. I had shirts that were 10 or 15 years old that I wore in high school and I am still wearing them. … I looked on the Internet, and I couldn’t find [the brand]. Eventually I was able to track it down and found out that [the company] was still in business, but not really putting out the type of product it was putting out before. It was somewhat dormant. It was selling polo shirts without the maple leap logo to high-end racket and country clubs, which would sew their own logos onto the shirts. So we tracked down the founder, [Bill St. John].

Continue reading Tiger '94 re-launches vintage polo brand…

November 18, 2010

Kelley '79 talks about Princeton roots in campus visit

David E. Kelley ’79, the award-winning writer and producer of television hits like The Practice, Boston Legal, and Ally McBeal, spoke at Princeton Nov. 17 as part of the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Performance Central series.

In an on-stage interview conducted by Broadway producer Jordan Roth ’97, Kelley described an early foray into script writing at Princeton. Facing a deadline for a freshman course on Homeric literature, he decided to put his own spin on a class paper, writing a play that imagined Plato, Socrates, and Homer meeting in heaven and debating their views on literature. “I wrote a dialogue, turned it in, and then really ducked for cover,” he said.

The weekend after turning in the paper, Kelley traveled with the men’s hockey team to play Harvard and stayed behind in Boston, his hometown, missing class on Monday. He knew that skipping a lecture could cost him a letter grade – the professor, Lois Hinckley, had a rule against absences – but he decided to take his chances.

Continue reading Kelley '79 talks about Princeton roots in campus visit…

November 10, 2010

Cambanis *00 explores Hezbollah in campus talk

Thanassis Cambanis *00 (Michael Robinson Chavez)

Thanassis Cambanis *00 first went to Lebanon in 2006 as the Middle East bureau chief for The Boston Globe. After three years in Baghdad reporting on the Iraq War, Cambanis had been assigned to cover the war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Islamist political party and paramilitary group based in Lebanon that the United States lists as a terrorist organization. He had seen the influence of Hezbollah on Iraqi Islamist insurgents, and he wanted to find out what made the group tick.

In a Nov. 9 speech at the Woodrow Wilson School, Cambanis traced Hezbollah’s influence throughout the different strata of Lebanese society, from a hard-core fighter he met in the rubble of a border town to the modern “soccer mom” who felt a strong cultural link to Hezbollah.

“This connection between the constituents of Hezbollah and the party is at once political, martial, and spiritual,” Cambanis said.

Continue reading Cambanis *00 explores Hezbollah in campus talk…

November 3, 2010

Election results for alumni candidates

Five of the 12 Princeton alumni running for U.S. Congressional or gubernatorial seats won their elections Nov. 2, according to news reports. For more details, follow the links below.

Governor

In a bid to regain the office he held from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s former Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich ’79 lost to incumbent Democrat Martin O’Malley. [Baltimore Sun]

California Republican Meg Whitman ’77, the former CEO of eBay and lead donor for Princeton’s Whitman College, fell to former Gov. Jerry Brown. [Los Angeles Times]

Senate

On Wednesday morning, Republican Ken Buck ’81, district attorney for Colorado’s Weld County, remained deadlocked in his race against Democrat Michael Bennet, the state’s junior senator. [Denver Post]

UPDATE (Nov. 3, 11:12 a.m. EST)

The Denver Post has announced Bennet as the winner in Colorado’s senate race.

House of Representatives

The morning after election day, Randy Altschuler ’93, a co-founder of two start-up businesses and Republican challenger in New York’s first district, trailed in a close race with Rep. Tim Bishop, a four-term incumbent Democrat. [Newsday]

UPDATE (Nov. 3, 11:20 a.m. EST)

With 99.3 percent of precincts reporting, USA Today has called the election in favor of Bishop, who leads by 3,332 votes (1.8 percent of votes counted).

UPDATE (Nov. 8, 12:13 p.m. EST)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Altschuler jumped ahead by 400 votes after a routine check of totals discovered an error in the tallies relayed to election officials. More than 9,000 absentee ballots will be counted later this week.

Continue reading Election results for alumni candidates…

October 26, 2010

Names in the news

After departing The Amazing Race, Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 and Jonathan Schwartz ’10 are off to South Korea and Broadway, respectively. [Los Angeles Times]

The American Sport Art Museum and Archives has selected sculptor Harry Weber ’64 as one of its Sport Artists of the Year. [KMOX.com]

Former NFL lineman Ross Tucker ’01 wrote about blows to the head in a recent column, noting that while rules may reduce the number of dangerous hits, they “will never completely eliminate the problem.” [ESPN.com]

Ariel Capital Chairman and CEO John Rogers ’80 will chair President Obama’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability. [Chicago Sun-Times]

W.S. Merwin ’48 delivered his inaugural reading as the U.S. poet laureate at the Library of Congress Oct. 25. [Washington Post]

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Posted by Brett Tomlinson on October 26, 2010 at 11:30 AM | No Comments

October 13, 2010

WMAP completes nine-year probe

The WMAP spacecraft, shown in this NASA rendering, has measured the oldest light in the universe for the last nine years. (NASA/WMAP Science Team)

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) was launched in June 2001 to make fundamental measurements of the universe, and by all accounts, its nine years of exploration have been a resounding success.

Science named WMAP its "breakthrough of the year" in 2003, and more recently, in an Oct. 10 editorial, The New York Times said "it is hard to overstate just how far this one small satellite has carried us in our understanding of the history of the universe." NASA's WMAP home page lists the program's "top 10" contributions, including the first "fine-resolution, full-sky map" of cosmic microwave background radiation, and a definitive age of the universe: 13.73 billion years old, accurate to within 1 percent or 0.12 billion years.

Its mission complete, the probe was sent into retirement orbit around the sun last month.

From WMAP's beginning -- and in a preceding project, the Cosmic Background Explorer -- Princeton scientists played an important role in the measurement of background radiation, the oldest light in the universe. Key contributors include the late astrophysics professor David Wilkinson (WMAP's namesake), the late physicist Robert Dicke, current professors David Spergel ’82 and Lyman Page, and senior research physicist Norm Jarosik.

"The end of WMAP is a moment of sadness, joy and satisfaction," Spergel said in an Oct. 13 University release. "Sadness -- thinking about its journey come to an end. Joy -- from thinking about the pleasure of working with my colleagues on the WMAP team. And satisfaction -- thinking about its successful nine-year run."

Read more about WMAP's contributions to the field of cosmology in W. Barksdale Maynard ’88’s Sept. 22 Princeton Alumni Weekly feature about Princeton astronomers.

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