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Allison Slater Tate '96, pictured with her daughter. (Photo: Courtesy Allison Slater Tate)

About five months ago, Allison Slater Tate ’96 submitted an essay called “The Mom Stays in the Picture” to The Huffington Post’s Parents section. Like other stories she’d written, it combined personal experience with a bit of friendly advice. The takeaway, based on Tate’s recent trip to a photo booth with her 5-year-old son, was that moms “need to make an effort to get in the picture,” instead of just taking the pictures, even on the days when they’re not looking or feeling their best:

“Our sons need to see how young and beautiful and human their mamas were,” she wrote. “Our daughters need to see us vulnerable and open and just being ourselves — women, mamas, people living lives. Avoiding the camera because we don’t like to see our own pictures? How can that be okay?”

The post resonated with moms, becoming the most popular item on The Huffington Post. Millions read it in its first week alone; hundreds of thousands shared it on Facebook. It landed Tate on Katie Couric’s syndicated talk show, and it inspired action, too. Mothers from around the world sent her photos and stories. Friends made pledges to one another, promising to make sure that they would stay “in the picture.” Lisa Belkin ’82, a senior columnist at The Huffington Post and one of Tate’s mentors, described her own response to the essay: “I read it. I cried. Then I opened the closet where I cram thousands of my own family photos and started to search.”

“It’s changed my life,” Tate says, “because people are telling me it’s changed their lives — and that’s crazy to me.”

With an expanded audience, Tate has started to write more regularly, both for her website, allisonslatertate.com, and for The Huffington Post. A mother of four children — ages 10, 8, 5, and 10-months — she says that she now tries to make her posts more universal, with less complaining about the day-to-day frustrations, but remains open and honest about how she approaches the challenges of parenting.

Tate majored in English at Princeton, led tours for Orange Key, and wrote for The Daily Princetonian sports section. After graduation, she pursued a career in television and film, first at The Late Show with David Letterman in New York and later in development roles in Hollywood. While she often worked with writers, she didn’t begin writing until about five years ago, when she started an anonymous parenting blog from her home in central Florida.

With support and encouragement from Belkin and others on the Alumni Association’s online parenting discussion group, Tate eventually began to put a byline on her work and submit pieces to well-read blogs like The New York Times' Motherlode — a choice that ultimately paved the way for “The Mom Stays in the Picture.” 

Tate says that at home her sudden fame didn’t change much — her kids “actually don’t know who Katie Couric is.” But the experience, she says, taught them a worthwhile lesson: “Writing can be powerful.”

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William Hines '78 as Rex, King of Carnival. (Photo: Sean Gardner/Reuters)

This is a corrected version of a story posted Feb. 20, 2013. The correction appears at the end of the story.

During the last three decades, William Hines ’78 has been deeply involved in New Orleans civic life, heading local boards for the United Way, Teach for America, and public television, to name a few. But nothing could have prepared him for his most recent leadership role — as Rex, King of Carnival, at last week’s Mardi Gras celebration.  

“It probably was the most surreal day of my life,” Hines told PAW.

From Monday’s Lundi Gras ceremony through Tuesday’s Mardi Gras festivities, Hines donned custom-tailored royal garb to greet local dignitaries and hundreds of thousands of revelers in a series of events, including a four-and-a-half-hour parade through the city. He met with reporters and made nerve-racking toasts, without the benefit of written notes. But the whirlwind celebration, he says, actually was a relief compared to the buildup, when he had to keep his status a secret from friends and family for nearly three months.

Hines, a New Orleans native, is well acquainted with the history of the Rex organization, which crowns the annual king and queen. He knows, for instance, that the last Princetonian to wear the crown was Frank Strachan ’27, in 1976. Hines was an undergraduate at the time, majoring in the Woodrow Wilson School. After completing law school at the University of Virginia and spending one year in Washington, D.C., he returned home in 1982, beginning a successful law career. He now serves as managing partner of Jones Walker. 

Along the way, Hines took a deep interest in New Orleans’ future, from education to economic development. After Hurricane Katrina decimated the city in 2005, he continued his civic activities, and today, he proudly rattles off signs of a promising outlook —Forbes ranked New Orleans as the nation’s top “brain magnet,” he notes, while Inc. called it “America’s coolest start-up city.”

But for Hines, the city’s pull goes well beyond economics. “When you’re from New Orleans, it is truly a sense of place,” he says. “We have our own unique music, our own unique architecture, our own unique food, our own unique art. … It is a culture, a way of life.”

For the record

In an earlier version of this post, Hines was erroneously identified as Rex in an Associated Press file photo from 2011. Herschel Lee Abbott Jr. was the Rex featured in that image.

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.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama presented the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation to 20 honorees, including alumni Frances Arnold ’79, Sidney Drell ’47, and Barry Mazur *59, as well as Anne Treisman, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology Emeritus.

(Photo: Ryan K. Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation)   Arnold, who received the technology and innovation medal, is a professor of chemical engineering at Caltech. A leader in protein engineering, her work uses “methods of laboratory evolution to generate novel and useful enzymes and organisms for applications in medicine and in alternative energy,” according to her lab website.

(Photo: Ryan K. Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation)   Drell, a science medal recipient, is a professor and deputy director, emeritus, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. He made significant contributions to particle physics and quantum theory, and in the last 15 years, he’s been a leading voice on nuclear nonproliferation issues, working at the Hoover Institution.

(Photo: Ryan K. Morris/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation)   Mazur, a mathematician at Harvard, also received the science medal. According to The Boston Globe, his love of math blossomed from a childhood quest to “better understand the link between his radio station’s transmitter and the home radio receiver.” For the last 50 years, Mazur has used his problem-solving skills to explore number theory.

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.

From left, Opera del West music director Eve Kochen Budnick '84 with her husband, Larry, and sons Ryan '16 and Andrew '13. (Photo: Courtesy Eve Budnick)

In 2006, vocal music teacher Eve Kochen Budnick ’84 and a Ph.D. student named Rebecca Grimes decided to stage an opera in the Metro West suburbs of Boston. The working name for their company was “two chicks and a piano,” Budnick jokes, but they eventually settled on Opera del West — drawing on both their locale and the title of a Puccini opera, La Fanciulla del West.

The company found a venue (The Center for Arts in Natick, located in a converted fire house), auditioned performers, and rehearsed its inaugural performance, a collection of scenes from famous operas. To the creators’ surprise, Budnick says, opening night drew a line of patrons that stretched out of the door. And seven years later, the little-company-that-could is still chugging along, staging two productions each year. Grimes has moved out of the area, but Budnick, the company’s music director, has managed to draw collaborators from Boston’s well-stocked arts community.

On Feb. 10, Opera del West will perform a pair of one-act operas, one old and one new — “Coffee Cantata,” one of Bach’s few secular works; and Dan Shore’s “An Embarrassing Position,” the recent winner of the National Opera Association’s Chamber Opera Competition.

Budnick, a music major at Princeton, has worked in the field since graduation. She is on the vocal music faculty at Boston University and also teaches at the Rivers School Conservatory. While her undergraduate major was important, she says that she often finds herself drawing on the other subjects she studied at Princeton, such as foreign languages (Opera del West performs each work in its original language), drama, and poetry.

Opera has found a niche in Natick, according to Budnick. Performers seem to enjoy the experience, and audiences appreciate the intimate setting and fresh productions. But in many ways, the company remains as it was at its beginning. “It’s still a labor of love,” Budnick says.

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.

Baltimore Ravens president Dick Cass '68, right, talks with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at a fan forum in 2012. (Photo: Mitch Stringer, USA TODAY Sports)

As president of the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, Dick Cass ’68 maintains a relatively low public profile. But his role behind the scenes is enormous. Coach John Harbaugh told The Washington Post last year that Cass “ties everything together” — from offseason acquisitions to the game-day schedule.

Cass, a former D.C. lawyer who joined the Ravens in 2004, got his start in the NFL when he represented Jerry Jones during his acquisition of the Dallas Cowboys in 1989. Ten years later, he was involved in two franchise transactions closer to home: the sale of the Washington Redskins to Daniel Snyder (he represented the estate of former owner Jack Kent Cooke), and Steve Biscotti’s purchase of 49-percent share of the Ravens. When Biscotti eventually became the majority owner, he hired Cass fulltime.

The Ravens, vying for their first Super Bowl title in Cass’ tenure, have had an eventful year that included a 10-6 record in the regular season, a remarkable playoff run that included two wins on the road, and early in the season, a brief public mention for the behind-the-scenes president: When linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo expressed his support for marriage equality, a Maryland legislator asked the team to reprimand the player. But Biscotti and Cass stood by Ayanbadejo, encouraging him to speak his mind.

Cass played freshman football and rugby at Princeton, majored in the Woodrow Wilson School, and later attended law school at Yale. He also served as one of Princeton’s first young alumni trustees.

Last year, Cass told the Baltimore Business Journal that an NFL franchise is different than most businesses because of the public scrutiny it endures and the community pride it can inspire. NFL teams also have a different set of goals, he said, with an explanation that should be music to fans’ ears:

“We don’t run the Ravens to maximize profit,” Cass said. “We run the Ravens to win football games.”

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.

Don McCarthy '70 (Photo: Kris Hanning)

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.

Teri Noel Towe '70 (Photo: Courtesy Teri Noel Towe)

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.

Bob Callahan ’77, pictured before a match against Yale in 2010. (Photo: Beverly Schaefer)

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.

Jeff Kreisler '95 stirs up laughs as managing editor of The Final Edition, a humor website that launched in 2011. (Photo: Courtesy Jeff Kreisler)

By Mark F. Bernstein ’83

Anyone who followed this year’s political campaigns could hardly know whether to laugh or cry. Those who wanted to laugh would have done well to log on to The Final Edition, an Internet humor site managed by Jeff Kreisler ’95 that bills itself as “satire with teeth.” Think of it as an edgier version of The Onion.

Items on the website don’t have to be political, although during the election season politics seemed to be a topic that kept on giving. Now that the votes have been counted, The Final Edition is again broadening its range, tackling anything that might be ripe for mockery. On a typical morning in mid-November, for example, the site’s “news feed” included the following stories: “New Second Avenue Subway Will Include Bike Lanes,” “From Here to iTernity: Apple Launches iTombs,” and a zombie advice column (showcasing “the increasingly fashionable ‘Z’ way of life”).

Kreisler is well known for his standup tours and his satirical book, Get Rich Cheating (and was profiled in PAW’s Jan. 19, 2011, humor issue). He joined The Final Edition as a writer in April 2011, shortly after it was founded by Tony Hendra, a former editor of Spy magazine. He was promoted to managing editor that fall.

Kreisler’s role on the website tends to be more administrative, choosing what goes online and where, although he also contributes some writing. He finds greater scope for his creative energies on its weekly podcast, The Final Edition Radio Hour (actually only 30 minutes long), which airs Thursday nights on the Progressive Radio Network. Kreisler co-hosts and introduces reports from the show’s far-flung correspondents. In a recent story, which he wrote and narrated, faux economists debated whether the best way to restart the economy after the collapse of the subprime mortgage bubble is ... to launch another bubble. In Kreisler’s hands this rather ludicrous idea slyly makes a sharper point about an economy in which “[i]rrational speculation and massive overreaching ... enriches everyone who matters.”