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(Courtesy Benetton Basket)
(Courtesy Benetton Basket)
David Blatt '81's crowning achievement in basketball came in September 2007, when the American-born Israeli coach led the Russian national team to the European championship, shocking Spain in the tournament final.
 
This week, Blatt's squad again takes aim at one of international basketball's giants, facing the United States in the quarterfinals of the FIBA World Championships in Turkey Sept. 9. The Russians are 5-1 in tournament play, while the Americans are a perfect 6-0.
 
In a New York Times profile Sept. 6, former Princeton coach Pete Carril and Tiger teammates Craig Robinson '83 and Steve Mills '81 explained some of the traits that have made Blatt one of Europe's most successful pro coaches.
 
“He was a typical Princeton guy in a sense,” said Mills, the former president of Madison Square Garden. “He was an incredibly smart player and understood everything Coach was trying to get us to do on the court.”
Jordan Culbreath '10 (Courtesy Princeton Athletics Communications)
Jordan Culbreath '10 (Courtesy Princeton Athletics Communications)
After practicing in 94-degree heat Wednesday morning, Princeton running back Jordan Culbreath ’10 looked fairly fresh – drenched in sweat but smiling and standing tall.
 
“I’m happy to be out on the field,” Culbreath said in his first interview since returning to the Tigers. “I never thought I’d be able to put the pads on again, but I’m getting that opportunity, so I’m going take advantage of every day I get out here.”
 
For most of the last year, Culbreath has battled aplastic anemia, a life-threatening blood disorder. The condition sapped his strength and kept him out of the classroom (and off the football field) for two semesters while he received treatment near his home in northern Virginia.
 
In the months that followed his diagnosis in early October 2009, Culbreath dealt with a series of complications, but in January, he said, his condition started to improve. He began to work out more regularly in the spring, and this summer, doctors cleared him to play football. By late July, when he started to increase the intensity of his workouts, his return to the field started to seemed realistic, Culbreath said.
 
Conor Madigan '00 (Courtesy Kateeva Inc.)
Conor Madigan '00 (Courtesy Kateeva Inc.)

When Conor Madigan ’00 started studying organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) as a Princeton undergraduate, he saw a potentially brilliant technology for everything from flat screen TVs to mobile phone displays. But the hype surrounding it, he says, was “wildly premature.” 

Fast-forward 12 years. Madigan is now the CEO and co-founder of Kateeva Inc., a leading startup in the OLED field, and he thinks that by 2013, the technology will bring brighter, crisper, and more energy-efficient flat-screen TVs to the marketplace. Kateeva’s job, he says, will be to “address one of the key manufacturing challenges that’s slowing down the adoption curve.”

Kateeva's solution -- a technique that uses inkjet printers and a micro-dryer to deposit the light-emitting organic materials used in OLED screens -- earned the 32-year-old Madigan a spot on Technology Review's 2010 list of the world's top 35 innovators under age 35, released this week.

Princeton football's 1967 training camp at Blairstown. (George Peterson '65/PAW Archives)
Princeton football's 1967 training camp at Blairstown. (George Peterson '65/PAW Archives)

On Aug. 25, Princeton football kicked off practice for the 2010 season on campus, at the recently renovated Finney and Campbell fields. But previous generations of Tigers may remember a very different site for August workouts: Blairstown, N.J., near the Delaware Water Gap. The secluded retreat hosted football's preseason practices from 1949 to 1972, when new coach Bob Casciola '58 decided to work out on campus to accommodate a larger roster and provide indoor options on rainy days. In 1967, a few years before Blairstown's final football camp, PAW featured the training locale in the photo essay reprinted below.

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From 1949 to 1972, Blairstown served as the football team's secluded training retreat.

From PAW, Nov. 14, 1967

A Blairstown Portfolio

Photographed by George Peterson '65

The Princeton Summer Camp is located three miles north of Blairstown, New Jersey, not far from the Delaware Water Gap. The Camp is owned by Princeton's Student Christian Association and financed, independent of the University, by charity.

Jordan Culbreath '10 (Photo © Beverly Schaefer)
Jordan Culbreath ’10 (Photo © Beverly Schaefer)

Football standout Jordan Culbreath ’10, who was sidelined with a life-threatening blood disease in 2009, has been cleared to rejoin Princeton’s team this year, the University announced Aug. 25.

“First and foremost, we are thrilled to see Jordan’s health improve over the last few months,” head coach Bob Surace ’90 said in a press release. “Regardless of what he does between the lines this season, he is already an inspiration to our entire program.”

Culbreath, the Ivy League’s leading rusher in 2008, left a Sept. 26, 2009, game at Lehigh with an ankle injury. When team doctors evaluated his condition, they recognized other concerns, including fatigue. Days later, Culbreath was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare condition in which the body stops producing enough new blood cells. He received extensive treatment near his hometown in northern Virginia.

The posts on Douglas Elmendorf ’83’s blog don’t sound like the typical Web fare - “Estimated Impact of the Stimulus Package on Employment and Economic Output,” “Latest Projections for the TARP,” and “Annual Summer Update of the Budget and Economic Outlook.” But Elmendorf is not the typical blogger. He’s the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Capitol Hill’s nonpartisan analysis service, and when he posts (or speaks, or releases a report), the markets listen. On Aug. 19, for instance, Elmendorf released the CBO’s latest outlook, which included the following:

“According to CBO’s projections, the recovery from the economic downturn will continue at a modest pace during the next few years. Growth in the nation’s output since the middle of calendar year 2009 has been anemic in comparison with that of previous recoveries following deep recessions, and the unemployment rate has remained quite high… .

commuters.gif tedrowe.gifNew book: Commuters, by Emily Gray Tedrowe ’95 (Harper Perennial)

The author: Tedrowe, who has published short stories in publications including Other Voices and the Crab Orchard Review, says she can trace her literary accomplishments “directly back to what I learned at McCosh Hall and in Firestone.” The English major came out with her debut novel this summer. The idea for Commuters — which examines the repercussions of a later-in-life marriage — came from an experience she had as a teenager, when her grandmother’s 70-year-old friend got remarried.

The plot: The story opens with the sudden wedding of Winnie Easton, a widowed 78-year-old from the small, upstate town of Hartfield, N.Y., to a wealthy Chicago businessman, Jerry Trevis. His daughter, fearful of losing her inheritance, sues to freeze his assets; Winnie’s daughter, Rachel, has financial troubles and gets a loan from Trevis; and his 22-year-old grandson, Avery, pursues his dream of owning a restaurant thanks to Trevis.

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President Shirley Tilghman never got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the ninth annual Princeton Night at Boston’s Fenway Park Aug. 5. Foul weather delayed Tilghman’s flight to Boston, putting the guest pitcher in a time crunch to make a connection for her overseas flight later that night. Told that she would have only five to 10 minutes to spend at the game, Tilghman remained at Boston’s airport and caught her international flight.

In spite of the inauspicious prelude, the Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 6-2, and now sport a record of eight wins and only one loss on a Princeton Night.

Pictured above holding Tilghman’s souvenir Red Sox jersey is Ted Gallagher ’67. Red Sox president Larry Lucchino ’67 is directly behind Gallagher wearing a Class of 1952 reunion jacket. Also in ’52 jackets, and shown to the right of Lucchino, are Dick Kazmaier ’52 and Gary Walters ’67, Princeton’s director of athletics. Lanny Springs, class secretary for ’67, provided the photo but like Tilghman was delayed by bad weather. He reached the park in the bottom of the first inning.

At Fenway, Lucchino hosted nearly 40 friends, ’67 classmates, and other Princetonians. By Fran Hulette

When disaster strikes, George Rupp ’64 takes action. As CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee for the last eight years, he has raised funds and coordinated responses to help people affected by natural disasters like earthquakes and storms, as well as other humanitarian crises in post-conflict regions. His latest work has been focused on aiding some of the 15 million people displaced by catastrophic flooding in Pakistan.

The floods, from unusually heavy monsoon rains, have caused a relatively low death toll — about 1,500 people, according to The New York Times — but danger persists for millions of people in hard-to-reach areas who have limited access to food, clean water, and medical care. Online donations from individuals have lagged so far, compared with other recent disasters, but Rupp told the Times that a recent United Nations plea for more aid should “get anybody’s attention.”

Rupp, who received the University’s Woodrow Wilson Award in 2005, spent most of his career in higher education, first as a professor and dean at the Harvard Divinity School and later as the president of Rice University and Columbia University. He turned to humanitarian work full-time shortly after retiring from Columbia in 2002.

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

When Jay Xu *08 took over as director of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum in 2008, the institution was planning an exhibition that would prove to be very personal for him. Shanghai, which runs through Sept. 5, is about his hometown.

The first Chinese-American to serve as a director of an art museum in the United States, Xu grew up during the Cultural Revolution. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that in China he was not allowed to study physics, as he wanted, and instead studied Chinese language and literature. Eventually he became an assistant curator at Shanghai Museum and later enrolled in Princeton’s doctoral program in Chinese art and archaeology.

A scholar of Chinese antiquities, Xu “belies the stereotype of a museum director — he’s chatty and ebullient. And he seems to have a wicked sense of humor,” wrote the Los Angeles Times.

The Shanghai exhibition, with more than 130 artworks, is organized into four sections that provide an overview of the major cultural and historical developments in Shanghai since 1850. Xu told the San Francisco Chronicle that even he learned something about his hometown through the exhibition: “Just because you are a native of Shanghai, that doesn’t make you an expert. I’m a specialist in ancient China, so I learned a lot I didn’t know.”

(Photo courtesy Jay Xu *08)

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

kagan.jpgWith a 63-37 vote Aug. 5, the Senate approved former solicitor general and Harvard Law dean Elena Kagan ’81 as the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

When Kagan joins fellow alumni Samuel Alito ’72 and Sonia Sotomayor ’76 on the high court, it will be the first time since 1842 that three alumni have served together. Kagan is the 12th Princetonian in a line of justices that stretches back to George Washington’s presidency. Below, a look at the University’s other 11 justices.

(Photo courtesy Harvard Law School)

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(Photo by Andrea Cipriani Mecchi)

In creating the protagonists for many of her popular novels, Jennifer Weiner ’91 frequently drew on personal experience. “I’ve written a lot of characters like me,” she told The Wall Street Journal in July. “They went to Princeton, or they’re journalists, or they have gay moms.” But Sylvie Woodruff, the central figure in Weiner’s new page-turner Fly Away Home, is different: She’s a 57-year-old mom with grown kids and she’s just entered the unenviable club of political wives thrust into the spotlight by their husbands’ indiscretions. (Woodruff’s husband, Robert, is a senator who had an affair with a younger woman.)

While Weiner did not have much direct experience to inform her writing, she had plenty of real-life examples, and according to reviewers and readers, she has successfully brought the familiar character to life in her novel. The Associated Press said Fly Away Home is Weiner’s “best offering in years,” and USA Today called it an “unflappably fun read,” partly because Weiner makes Sylvie such a likable and accessible character.

 

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