‘Christmastide’

Christmastide, an anthem by Tom Shelton, sends chills down my spine whenever I hear it. Today I was fortunate to hear Shelton’s Youth Choir render it twice, in a day of beautiful music, first at morning worship, when the Chancel Choir also sang one of my favorites, Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. They reprised it tonight, along with joyful music from the Chancel and Handbell Choirs, directed by Hyosang Park, in a concert entitled “Rejoice!”

Here is the link to hear Christmastide, from Sunday, December 17 at 10 a.m.

This post is a thank you to the musicians at Princeton United Methodist Church – and to musicians around the globe – who put their hearts and souls into bringing the hopeful strains of Advent and Christmas music into churches and concert halls everywhere. How can anyone not believe in the divinity of our Creator when listening to these harmonies?

So – thank you to these musicians, and as you read their names, you will see that several do double and triple duty. Many of them perform in professional ensembles. But there’s nothing like hearing your own friends make music in your own house of worship. Kudos to Park, who put the program together, as well as to Shelton.

In the Chancel Choir are Mandy Du, Yvonne Macdonald, Joan Nuse, Lori Pantaleo, Françoise Maitre, Karen Hoagland, LaVerna Albury, Jenni Collins, Lindsay Diehl, Stephen Offer, Curt Hillegas, Yannick Ibrahim, and Jim Frisbee. They gave us Handel’s Christ is Born (arranged by Jon Paige) and Shepherds Come Rejoicing by Joseph M. Martin, and Purcell’s Rejoice in the Lord Always.

 In the Youth Choir are Elli Collins, Juli Collins, Maggie Collins, Shermel Morgan, Julia Potts, and Aditi Rapaka. After joining the Chancel Choir for the Purcell, they sang two old world carols and then, with Jenni Collins as soloist, Shelton’s Christmastide.  

The Handbell Choir played News of Great Joy in an arrangement by Arnold Sherman and O How Joyfully, arranged by John Behnke. Ringing were Irene Yu, Diane Peterson, John Macdonald, Yvonne Macdonald,  Joan Nuse, Bob Nuse,  Amy Gardner,  Bill Gardner, Julia Ciccone, Mary Ciccone,  Sarah Betancourt, and  Heather Hansen.

The orchestra closed the program with Handel’s Rejoice Greatly, featuring Bill Gardner on trumpet, along with Elizabeth Rouget, Violin; Myles McKnight, Violin; Paul Manulik, Viola; Gabrielle Hooper, Cello; Scott Collins, Clarinet; Amy Gardner, Clarinet; Bill Gardner, Trumpet; Julia Hanna, Piano. Ian Macdonald and Eric Gillette managed the video stream, available here on this Facebook page. Or on the website.

As Rev. Jenny Smith Walls said, in using the words of Kate Bowler for the benediction, “We have quieted our souls to listen, for your word made flesh is life to us.”  

                       ———————- Barbara Fox

On Christmas Eve at 4 p.m. the Children’s Choir leads a family-friendly candlelight service — and at 8 p.m. a traditional service features the Chancel Choir, Youth Choir, and instrumentalists. All are welcome.

He Wanted Us to Pray

I just watched the “Beautiful Day” movie – how did I manage to wait so long? As a young mother, everything I knew about child psychology, I learned from Fred Rogers, never mind Spock. I’m basking in the memory, playing the trailer, remembering how I started to write a Vacation Bible School curriculum focused on The Neighborhood, was encouraged by the Fred Rogers people, but never got it done.

Basking, I’m looking up various references that you might enjoy. He grew up in Latrobe where his sister has an art center. In this interview he talks about the lessons he earned early in life, and at minute 18 he tells how he learned how it felt when someone turned you down. People desire to be in touch with honesty (minute 20).

“The very first view that we have of our whole world is that view of our mother’s face during nursing. And so we get our very first impressions of what this world is like through our mouth and our eyes. And, if what’s good is coming into our mouth and what’s good is coming into our eyes, we have a mighty strong beginning.”

Tom Hanks was sooo good, but he had to be persuaded to take that role.

“It’s in the pause that the greatest potency is found…” says Matthew Rhys, the Welsh actor who, when he played the Esquire writer, managed to lose his Welsh accent. He and Hanks were interviewed by Judy Woodruff on PBS News Hour.

I didn’t know that the movie plot was based on a true story, that there really WAS an Esquire writer, Tom Junod, who was changed by his interviews with Fred.

Said Junod:  He was leading me to that moment of prayer that whole time that I was with him. And what did Fred want from me? He clearly wanted me to pray. He clearly believed in prayer as a way of life. He prayed every day of his life. He woke up in the morning and prayed, and wrote, and prayed for people. And so I wrote that. The answer to: What did Fred want? He wanted us to pray.

I saw this movie with 30 people at Stonebridge at Montgomery on a Saturday night. The lights went up, people were leaving, but the credits were still rolling and somebody was still singing and I was transfixed. I knew it had to be the REAL Fred Rogers. Finally the credits parted and showed a glimpse of the real Fred’s face.

Alone among those thirty, I was the one — TA DA! – who recognized the real Fred. Here’s the real Fred singing “It’s You I Like.”

Joseph Pilates, Anthony Rabara — and Jacqueline Winspear

Sari Mejia Santo, Anthony Rabara, Me

I’ve been taking classes in the Pilates Method ever since Anthony Rabara brought it to Princeton in the ’90s. He teaches the purest form of the now famous body work devised by Joseph Pilates. Back then, this method was known mostly in the New York dance community. Rabara was one of the first eight trainers certified by Joseph Pilates’ protegee, the late Romana Kryzanowska.

Thanks to Rabara and his studio’s expert teachers – they go through more than 600 hours of training — my severe arthritis is held at bay. With discerning eyes they can spot the slightest misalignment and cue the corrections that prevent injury and strengthen muscles that you didn’t know you had.

This week I had the very exciting opportunity to study with Romana’s daughter, Sari Mejia Santo. She leads Romana’s Pilates International, which operates a global instructor network in 40 countries and 30 U.S. States. My lesson turned out to be a demo for a dozen instructors in the room. It was challenging, to say the least, but she made it fun.

In a delightful coincidence, I had just come across a passage in a Maisie Dobbs mystery by Jacqueline Winspear that mentions Joseph Pilates, who developed his technique on wounded soldiers during World War I. In “Birds of a Feather,” set in England between the wars, Maisie’s assistant, Billy, gets to “study exercises and movements to counteract the lingering effects of war time injuries.”

“What ‘e says, Miss, is that I’m increasing my core. . .

“Your core?” Maisie watched Billy brush out the mane of a mare with an enviable track record…

“There are all these different exercises, some to stretch me legs, some me arms, and me middle, and some are really small movements right ‘ere,” Billy pointed to his stomach with the curry comb, “which is me core.”

“Well, it seems to be doing you a lot of good. I saw you walk across the stable yard with barely a limp.”

“The main thing is that the pain ain’t what it was.”

So says Billy. The main thing, for me, is that going to the Rabara studio is fun – and the “really small movements,” as Billy puts it, keep me feeling young.

:

Farmers Market ChitChat

I like to stop in at the Montgomery Friends Farmers Market, Saturday mornings at the Village Shoppes, just down the road from me. As I was chatting with my longtime friend, Lorette Prudden, I found a young entrepreneurial journalist, Daniel Feng, pitching his magazine to Prudden, who runs the market, asking if he could sell a student-run magazine there.

Prudden knows that I retired long ago, but she introduced us on the off chance I could offer encouragement or advice. The advice that I could come up with ‘on the spot’ to a middle schooler: “Stay curious. Listen and then ask more questions.”

ChitChat magazine, Daniel explained, is a student-run magazine dedicated to the promotion and appreciation of Chinese culture — events, holidays, and everyday life — in the greater Princeton Area.  This bilingual magazine has been printed in both Chinese and English and both the hard copy and the website look snazzy. Editors can be reached at chitchatmagazine2019@gmail.com.

Prudden knows a thing or two about marketing. Running the farmer’s market is a sideline to her small business consulting group, Team Nimbus. Some of her tips can be found in her book Formerly Corporate, and here are some easily accessible ones from her blog titled Summer Marketing.

“Summer is short,” Pruden reminds us. “Don’t overthink this! The key to success lies in infusing your marketing efforts with the spirit of summer!”

Remembering Bob Geddes

Robert Geddes, the founding dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture, the William R. Kenen Jr. Professor of Architecture, renowned urbanist and innovative educator, died on Feb. 13, 2023. He was 99.

Robert Geddes
Photo courtesy of Princeton University Press

Engaged with his projects and liberal politics to the last, Robert Geddes entertained and informed fellow residents of Stonebridge at Montgomery at occasional presentations. Aided and encouraged by another resident, the politically savvy Ingrid Reed, he railed against the potential destruction of his beloved Liberty State Park and fretted about the future of Philadelphia’s Roundhouse. He also loved to speak about his former students who now lead departments at prestigious universities, and he devoted time and energy to the work of Princeton Future. 

Richard K. Rein, in his column for TAPInto Princeton. tells about the work of Princeton Future. Rein also discusses how Geddes’ students founded the movement known as “the new urbanism.”

Geddes’ students, carrying on the broad view of architecture and looking purposefully not just at buildings but also at the space between the buildings, became the founders of the movement known as the “new urbanism.” The husband-and-wife team of Andres Duany, Princeton Class of 1971 and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk ’72, along with Stefanos Polyzoides ’69, were joined by Elizabeth Moule, who earned a masters in architecture at Princeton in 1987 and is now the wife and partner of Polyzoides, to form the Congress for the New Urbanism along with Peter Calthorpe (from Yale), and Daniel Solomon, (Columbia and Berkeley).

The founders were joined by several more Princeton alumni to become early leaders of the movement. These include environmentalist and architect Douglas Kelbaugh ’67 *72, landscape architect Douglas Duany ’75, and writer and educator Ellen Dunham-Jones ’80 *83. (Full disclosure: This reporter was a Princeton roommate of Polyzoides, who is now the dean of architecture at Notre Dame.)

Geddes’ obituary from Princeton University summarized how he was “a pioneer in forging deep connections between architecture and the humanities, social sciences, public affairs and urban design. He always focused on the social basis of design — for buildings, landscapes and cities.”

From an early age, Geddes was known to be a convener, locally as a co-founder of Princeton Future. He continued that at Stonebridge, co-founding a “Guys Group” to meaningfully engage with ethical and social problems. After his cherished wife Evelyn died, he was especially lonely on Sunday afternoons and instigated — with help from Julia Bowers Coale, president of the Residents’ Association — informal teas on Sunday afternoons.  

Geddes and his wife Evelyn moved to Stonebridge when they were in excellent health and were still traveling abroad. With their new Stonebridge friends, George and Barbara Wright, they visited museums in New York and Philadelphia and attended performances on Broadway and at Caramoor in upstate New York, Many Stonebridge friends helped Geddes in his last years. After Geddes’ wife died, two residents who knew what it was like to be suddenly alone – Jeff Tener and Barbara Wright –committed to have pizza with him every Friday. 

As for me, busy with my own too many doings, I had only limited time to be with Bob. I wish I had had more time. But I can immerse myself in his website and in his book “Fit,” to glean his “lively, charming, and gently persuasive” wisdom.

Remembering Barbara Hillier

Barbara Hillier’s memorial service was yesterday at the Princeton University Chapel. She died at age 71 on November 21, 2022. How she combined motherhood and an atypical but impressive career was explained in detail – perhaps for the first time, for most of us — in her obituary.

One of her stellar projects was the convention center in Irving, Texas. As described, “She created a vertical convention center that soared 170 feet into the Texas sky with convention rooms at different levels, all connected by amazing escalators and with expansive terraces protected from the hot Texas sun. The design minimized its land consumption, and the center had a huge visual presence from the highways to the Dallas airport. The building has won every imaginable award…”

Bob and Barbara Hillier at the opening of the Copperwood Apartments

As explained by Pam Hersh in this Tap Into Princeton column. Barbara earned her master’s degree in architecture from Princeton University without taking a required course — because it was taught by her husband.

Bob Hillier’s presence as a community activist and founder of Studio Hillier looms large in a good way, but perhaps the most visible image of his influence is the Princeton Public Library, led by an architect in his previous firm, the Hillier Group. Less obvious is the library constructed at NJIT by the Hillier Group and the Hillier family’s notable gift in 2019 to NJIT. The current firm, Studio Hillier, is embedded in the Witherspoon-Jackson Neighborhood and recognized for its commitment to his home town.

The snapshot of Bob and Barbara Hillier was taken at the opening of the Copperwood apartments in 2014. Barbara Hillier received the first Woman of Achievement award, given in 2013 by the Women in Business Alliance at what is now the Princeton Mercer Regional Chamber.

Contributions in Barbara Weinstein Hillier’s honor may be made to Alzheimer’s Association, Delaware Valley Chapter.

Ebenezer on the Couch

At McCarter, Lauren Keating’s rewrite of Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” relates Scrooge’s obsession with money to Dickens’ life story.  Of the two children in the play who have symbolic names, “Want” and “Ignorance,” Dickens was a child of want.

While previous productions delighted audiences with spectacle and magic deployed by the spirits who scare Ebenezer Scrooge into generosity, Keating’s version is much more generous with psychological insights. For instance, it opens with a peddler who introduces all the characters, including Ebenezer’s obnoxious father. Ebenezer, played by Dee Pellettier, skillfully reveals his gradual change. 

As a collector of antique buttons, and a member of the New Jersey State Button Society, I have been doing research on the history of button making and ran across what I believe to be a significant insight into Dickens’ childhood. In 1852, in his ”Household Words,” he described the Birmingham button factories: ‘range beyond range of machines—the punching, drilling, stamping machines, the polishing wheels, and all the bright and compact, and never-tiring apparatus which is so familiar a spectacle in Birmingham work-rooms. We see hundreds of women, scores of children, and a few men… Very young children gather up the cut circles. Little boys, ‘just out of the cradle,’ range the pasteboard circles, and pack them close, on edge, in boxes or trays; and girls, as young, arrange on a table the linen circles…”

Far from being outraged at this child labor, Dickens wholeheartedly approved. Compared to his own experience, the button making tots had it easy. After all, they were with their parents and worked only 10-12 hours a day.

In contrast, when Dickens was 12, his job (pictured above) was to paste labels on bootblack jars in vermin-infested smelly factory with long hours. Meanwhile his father was in debtors’ prison, accompanied by his mother, along with the younger children.

If naysayers object to Ebenezer being played by a woman, oh well. As Keating points out, gender differences were more accepted in Dickens time than in Victorian times. Dickens refers to “the cook and the cook’s special friend.”

If this version more openly preaches the moral of the story, so be it. That’s in the true spirit of Charles Dickens.

The ghost of Christmas Past begins to change Ebenezer in Lauren Keating’s version of “A Christmas Carol” at McCarter Theatre. Photo by Matt Pilsner.

Correction: earlier I listed the Dickens publication as “Household Matters.” Apparently it was “Household Words.”

A Palmer Square Saint

On All Saints Day I was remembering Mary Hultse, who left this earth in 2018 and left Princeton before that. In preparation for the All Saints Day service on November 6 at Princeton United Methodist Church, we were asked to think about who were the saints in our lives

The name “saint” implies perfect, but according to Derek Weber, who quotes Psalm 149 in his All Saint’s Day meditation for the Upper Room Disciplines book, “saints of God are those who accept the invitation to dance. A saint is someone who knows something of the joy of living, even in the hardest moments of life. A saint is someone who knows something of the exuberance of praise, even when tears fall like rain and sweat falls like great drops of blood.”

As a successful advertising executive at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Mary Hultse commuted to Princeton from an apartment on the Upper West Side, where she was a regular at Riverside Church. Then she bought a second apartment, a fourth-floor corner walkup on Palmer Square, so that she could look out over Princeton University and enjoy walking around town. She retired in 1990.

Mary had such joie de vivre – going dancing, loving beautiful art, anything Hungarian, and clothes. She told stories of escaping Hungary with gold coins sewn into the hem of her dress. With a passion for the arts – she loved to sing, act, and dance – she joined local theater groups and played Aunt Eller in “Oklahoma” at Washington Crossing. She was beloved by the staff at Richardson Auditorium, where she volunteered as an usher. Devoutly faithful, she enthusiastically participated in the life of Princeton United Methodist Church (PrincetonUMC) and was in charge of the Altar Guild. She reveled in her Hungarian heritage and loved the daughters of a Hungarian family as if they were her grandchildren.  

She was a trooper – not just in drama, but in stamina – even with arthritis and knee surgery, she trudged up four flights, 67 steps, to keep her view. She had Moxie, like the name of her former German shepherd.  She had faith and extreme hospitality.  But what we loved about Mary is that she helped us to be our Best Selves.

Everyone she met was perfect – beautiful, wonderful, perfect. When you think about Mary glowing with compliments — that’s the kind of love that Jesus offers. Unconditional love. Like at PrincetonUMC, when we say “You are enough because God is enough.”

The same qualities that made her a good executive – persistence, insistence – eventually evolved into just plain obstinance, masking depression and the beginning of dementia. When she began to fail, she refused to move away from her apartment. It was so hard to help her, because she would agree to something one day and refuse the next day. 

An ad-hoc care team of a dozen PrincetonUMC people did help her stay in that apartment. We alternated taking her places. One woman did her wash. Others brought her home for meals and took her shopping. Walking behind her, we pushed her up those stairs and fetched cappuccinos from the Palmer Square kiosk. We worked with Princeton Senior Resource Center. We worked with Palmer Square management and (surreptitiously) with her doctors. We worked with McCaffrey’s. (Wanting to be independent, she would go to McCaffrey’s on the bus but not be able to get home. They would call us to come pick her up and we would dispatch someone on the Mary Team.) A couple from the church put in endless hours to organize her finances and pay her taxes. Along with her Hungarian friends, we were her family.

In the end, we were the benefactors, because in helping Mary, we got to be the best we could be. We surprised ourselves. We found out how good it felt to act out our faith.

In his meditation Weber refers to the English carol Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day. “In his own voice and with his life, Jesus calls all to dance with joy for this gift of life eternal. . . On All Saints’ Day, we remember those whose dancing with their Lord has given us all hope. And we aspire to follow them in the music and dance Jesus is leading.”

Mary Hultse embodied the spirit of the eternal dance.

Embodied Faith: experience spirituality in a new way

I’m excited about this. You knew I would be. Annalise Hume begins a four-session “Embodied Faith” workshop on Monday, September 26 at 7:30 p.m. I’m inviting all my friends and movement buddies to attend — by zoom or in person. Here’s how Annalise describes what we’ll do.

“Our bodies hold memories and store our stories. By paying attention to how we feel or want to move, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and God. Each week we will experience a passage of scripture or theological theme through a combination of prayer, movement, play, and journaling. If you yearn for a fresh way to experience God this year, come and play. No previous dance, yoga, or movement experience necessary.“

ANYBODY can do this. “While the sessions are movement based, our brain-body connection is so strong that you are welcome to do the entire class in your imagination without moving at all. All abilities and disabilities are welcome.”
These four sessions are sponsored by Princeton United Methodist Church and any reader of Princeton Comment will be my guest. The sessions are every other Monday from 7:30-8:45pm by ZOOM or in person in the church’s Fellowship Hall at 7 Vandeventer in Princeton. Register here:

https://princetonumc.breezechms.com/form/1353a5

Buttons, buttons- did you ever see such buttons as these?

When a friend finds out I collect buttons, it’s hard for them to imagine what KINDS of buttons I collect. Here are two ways to be beDAZzled by buttons.

One. Page through the offerings of a button auction to benefit a nonprofit button group here . These enamel buttons and the glass buttons above (courtesy of Armchair Auctions) will give you a taste of the gorgeous buttons available.

Two. Drop by the New Jersey State Button Society‘s show on the Saturday after Labor Day, September 10, 10 to 3 p.m. If you get there a little before 1 p.m. you can hear the talk, “Buttons Go to Work” featuring uniform and work buttons, as below. The show is in Titusville, just south of Lambertville, so make a day of it!