Princeton Diary - October 6, 1999

 

When orange was in vogue

Tiger stripes return, and Lake Carnegie takes a coffee break

by Janice Harayda

Harry's Luncheonette, a Witherspoon Street landmark, burned down on July 12, in a fire that police said appeared to have begun with an electrical malfunction . . . "princeton sci-guys create mighty mice through genetic engineering; we could be next!" read the headline on a front-page story in the tabloid newspaper, The Trentonian. The article reported on research by Princeton neurobiologist Joe Tsien and his collaborators at two other schools, who found that adding a gene to mice boosted the animals' ability to excel at a range of tasks . . . Susan Rea '00 has become the latest university athlete to disprove sportscaster Frank Gifford's tongue-in-cheek comment that "there's no place in sports for intelligence." She has achieved a better-than-perfect 4.06 grade point average while starting in every women's varsity soccer game that her team has played in her time at Princeton . . . In August members of the Princeton Club of New York had a rare chance to view Spanish art masterpieces at the Hispanic Society of America, which does not normally offer guided tours or lend out its collections. Club members saw works by Goya, El Greco, and Velázquez, on a tour led by Marcus Burke '69, curator of paintings at the Society . . . The August issue of British Vogue called orange "one of autumn's hottest hues" and said that the color "makes a great foil for animal prints." The magazine devoted pages to such items as a $560 faux-tiger pouch bag by Versace and $650 knee-high ponyskin boots in safety-cone orange by Patrick Cox . . . David Michaelis '79 remembered John F. Kennedy, Jr. in the September Vanity Fair as someone whose "ability to be himself, despite odds no one would bet on, was a miracle to witness." Michaelis worked on Senator Edward M. Kennedy's 1980 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination . . . Folger's Coffee has been running a television commercial that shows a female coxswain commanding a male crew with orange-and-black oars. The commercial, filmed in June at Lake Carnegie, includes members of the U.S. National Rowing Team . . . The September issue of New Jersey Monthly offered as a "public service" a list of suggested activities for Princeton students looking for alternatives to the Nude Olympics, including "Do your homework for a change and while you're at it, call your folks (no, not collect) and thank them for financing your education" and "Just get drunk and go to the mall like regular college students" . . . Joe Zawadsky '51 was the big winner in a raffle at the annual Princeton Football Association Golf Classic Awards Dinner. He took home one of the "Tiger" football helmets that were reintroduced last year (and are believed to have been styled to represent a tiger with flared-back ears) . . . The new editor of Princeton Alumni Weekly, on assuming her post, immediately was told a half dozen variations on the same joke, including: "How many Princetonians does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to change the light bulb and two to talk about how much better the old light bulb was." Nonetheless, she cheerfully survived, aided by many whose acts of grace and kindness have kept the heat burns to a minimum, particularly Asa Bushnell '47, Charlie Gogolak '66, Robert S. Heilbronner '87, Susan Lowell Humphreys *79, John S. Kuhlthau '58, Stanislaw Maliszewski '66, Liz Osborne s'50, h'36, and Cynthia Tougas Penney '83. Thanks-and an imaginary helmet-to all.

Princeton Alumni Weekly welcomes contributions to Princeton Diary, a compendium of offbeat, unusual, or newsworthy items from the campus and beyond. Send items to Janice Harayda, Editor, Princeton Alumni Weekly, 194 Nassau St., Princeton, NJ 08542 or e-mail them to jharayda@princeton.edu.


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