Corrections or additions?

Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on May 24, 2000. All rights reserved.

Between the Lines

Unless the U.S. 1 annual wall calendar sports some hideous

error, this week marks the first three-day holiday weekend of the

summer season. Here at U.S. 1 the office will be closed on Monday,

Memorial Day. The deadline for both classifieds and display ads will

be Friday at noon. And press releases for the Preview section should

be here by Thursday at noon. (And, yes, as much as we like E-mail

and use it in all sorts of Information Age ways, it is still true

that faxing to 609-452-0033 will give your press release better exposure

and a better chance of publication than E-mailing it.)

In downtown Princeton it also marks the double witching hour of parades,

street closings, and Princeton University Reunions. If you are driving

down Route 1 and thinking about a detour through Princeton to add

some diversity to your daily routine, think again. The Borough’s streets,

alleys, and parking lots will be jammed full.

The good news, though, is that those who brave the traffic may get

an excellent return on their investment. More than just a bunch of

hail fellows well met bending elbows in the class tent, Reunions is

also a chance for the best and the brightest of the major reunion

classes to showcase their knowledge in a wide array of stimulating,

entertaining panels.

Our Survival Guide section, beginning on page 4 of this issue, previews

a small fraction of these panels, many of which address the same issues

that are a staple of this publication: entrepreneurism, global business,

parenting, privacy and the Information Age, genetics and ethics (with

Peter Singer), managed (or mismanaged) health care, careers, and more.

While the university never says so directly, most of these panels

are easily accessible to visitors with or without class numerals after

their name. If anyone looks at you funny, just tell them you are trying

to find a guy from the Class of 1969 — mere mention of that notorious

class, the last one to graduate before the introduction of coeducation,

usually causes gatekeepers to take a step back. (Getting into the

class tents, where demon alcohol is served, is another matter. You

will need an official badge, a name tag, and — if things keep

going as they are — a urine sample to enter those party sites.)

While we are venting, permit us another word about that traffic. As

faithful readers know, we at U.S. 1 are in favor of highways, the

bigger the better. That’s why we favor 90 percent of the proposed

Millstone Bypass (the 10 percent we don’t like is the section that

runs along the D&R Canal, which we would like to see run parallel

to and near Route 1 instead). But we are also in favor of pedestrian-friendly

streets. We have used this space to prod the authorities to install

better pedestrian crossings on Washington Road, for example.

Now we would like to make a modest proposal for Nassau Street, particularly

during crunch times like Princeton Reunions. That’s when Princeton’s

finest need to get out of their patrol cars, and take center stage

at intersections like Nassau and Vandeventer, Witherspoon, and Mercer,

and direct pedestrians and motorists alike to ensure a safe and efficient

flow of traffic. We will all be safer and more of us will reach those

aforementioned events on time. Now excuse us, we’re looking for a

guy from the Class of ’69.

Corrections or additions?

— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.