I voted at Princeton University’s Jadwin Gym earlier today, where six other districts were moved due to the hurricane damage (the local schools were closed until yesterday, when electricity was restored).
Turnout seemed good for the time of day, but there were no lines.
NJ polls don’t close until 8PM, and NJ voters can text “WHERE” to 877877 to find out where to vote.
Vote Romney!
The Township and the Borough posted the changes on their websites.
I’m voting for Dick Woodbridge for mayor,
In Princeton: the John Witherspoon school
In Plainsboro: Got an email from a friend,
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab has opened its cafeteria and locker rooms to the public until 8pm tonight. They are offering heat, hot showers, phone and laptop recharging, wifi, vending machines, microwaves and CNN.Scudders Mill Rd to Campus Drive to Stellarator Drive (!!!) to the guardhouse where you show id. They have staff to direct people to the cafeteria.
Public Service Electric and Gas crews of 3-4 trucks are working street-by-street. The traffic lights from Princeton to Kingston on Lincoln Highway (Rt. 27) are now working.
Fortunately the electricity at casa de Fausta’s back on.
At the same time that PSE&G is working, several other crews from private tree services are clearing the hundreds of fallen trees, so many roads and local streets are blocked. Downtown, Van der Venter is still closed by the movie theater.
All the public schools remain closed until Monday.
All things considered, we are blessed to have come through with relatively minor damage.
The day before her latest personal appearance in The View, Michelle Obama was in the vicinity for a $10,000/plate fundraiser that blocked traffic on Herrontown Road for most of the day. Surprisingly, the local papers did not report on the visit, except for a brief preview, PRINCETON: Some local Dems to skip the first lady. They probably “skipped” because of “other plans” that most likely do not involve coughing up ten grand.
However, NJ.com does have a report (more on that in a moment).
The home hosting the fundraiser had a huge tent in their side yard, but the hosts are the soul of discretion,
Representatives from the Obama national campaign office in Chicago and the New Jersey office did not respond to requests for comment to discuss the fundraiser, due to be held at the home of Andrew and Carol Golden.Mr. Golden runs the company that manages the $17 billion endowment fund of Princeton University, while Ms. Golden works for Corner House, the local substance abuse program. She also is the chairwoman of the board of trustees of the Mercer County chapter of Planned Parenthood.
The couple are donors to Democrat politicians and causes, with Ms. Golden having given $11,000 to Texans for Truth, a group that challenged former President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard, election records showed. She declined to comment last month about the fundraiser.
I couldn’t find any photos of the event on the White House website.
However, the most interesting part of the event may be this:
First Lady Michelle Obama has made a campaign stop in New Jersey, urging her husband’s supporters to volunteer in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign – especially in swing states such as neighboring Pennsylvania.
As you may recall, in 2008 Obama took Pennsylvania by 10.1 percentage points over McCain. The Obama campaign is clearly not expecting that to repeat itself since Michelle was telling people on Sunday
“We need you to head over to Pennsylvania,” she told 230 people gathered in a white tent. “Get in the car, drive on over to Pennsylvania for a few days or a weekend to help get out the vote in that state.”
Also interesting,
Neither party has done much public campaigning in New Jersey, which is likely to go to the Democrats on Nov. 6. But campaigns have raised more than $5 million each in the moneyed state, with the president ahead by about $200,000.
That Obama has out-raised Mitt by less than 5% in New Jersey is astonishing. The bluest parts of the Garden State tend to be, like Princeton, the most affluent (with some exceptions). Maybe it has something to do with this.
Over in Ohio, another of Pennsylvania’s neighbors, today Mike Rowe meets Mitt to talk about how to get America back to work. Bryan Preston has the schedule.
Makes you wonder the residents of which state – Illinois? Michigan? – is the Obama campaign asking to head to Ohio to help get out the vote.
Stacy McCain’s been reporting from Ohio. Follow his links for his reports.
UPDATE,
Via Bryan’s commenter Allston, here’s the letter Mike Rowe wrote to Mitt,
Which brings me to my purpose in writing. On Labor Day of 2008, the fans of Dirty Jobs helped me launch this website. mikeroweWORKS.com began as a Trade Resource Center designed to connect kids with careers in the skilled trades. It has since evolved into a non-profit foundation – a kind of PR Campaign for hard work and skilled labor.
Thanks to a number of strategic partnerships, I have been able to promote a dialogue around these issues with a bit more credibility than my previous resume allowed. I’ve spoken to Congress (twice) about the need to confront the underlying stigmas and stereotypes that surround these kinds of jobs. Alabama and Georgia have both used mikeroweWORKS to launch their own statewide technical recruitment campaigns, and I’m proud to be the spokesman for both initiatives. I also work closely with Caterpillar, Ford, Kimberly-Clark, and Master Lock, as well as The Boy Scouts of America and The Future Farmers of America. To date, the mikeroweWORKS Foundation has raised over a million dollars for trade scholarships. It’s modest by many standards, but I think we’re making a difference.
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Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa. But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too. We need people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new address early next year.
Everybody’s been talking about the bear, and now there’s a dead bear,
Bear Found Dead Along Route 95
It’s unclear, but possible, that this was the same bear that was in Princeton this week.
The bear was found run over on Route 95 near the intersection of Route 31 at Exit 4
Not only was there a dead bear, it then went missing,
The adolescent black bear that wandered around Princeton most of the day Wednesday and Thursday could be the same bear that was struck by a car and killed on Interstate 95 early this morning, but possibly not.State officials are urging people not to jump to the conclusion that the bear killed on the highway is the same one spotted in Princeton in recent days, though it is a possibility.
State police confirmed to Planet Princeton that a black bear was struck by a vehicle on Interstate 95 in the northbound lane near Exit 4 just after 6:30 a.m. The bear matched the general description of the bear seen in Princeton in terms of size and weight. Gruesome photos of the bear taken after it was struck on the highway show it was probably struck at high speed, possibly by a tractor trailer.
The Division of Fish and Wildlife received a call about a bear killed on Route 95 this morning, but when a DFW official arrived at around 7:30 a.m., the bear was gone, DFW Spokesman Bob Considine said. Officials are not sure who took it.
“It’s illegal to remove it,” Considine said.
It could be the same bear, or another bear. Sometimes siblings wander in the same area.
Maybe he took a Reichenbach fall, maybe he’s now a rug.
This morning at 8AM the phone rang (yes, I was already up), and it was the Township Emergency Alert system calling with a recorded message telling residents that a bear had been sighted.
Turns out, the bear was up a tree at the cemetery yesterday, and apparently
traveled from the vicinity of the Princeton Shopping Center to the cemetery at the corner of Witherspoon and Wiggins streets in Princeton Borough around 7 p.m. on Wednesday.The bear was spotted about 50 feet up the tree, but then came down and headed through the cemetery back towards Princeton Township.
At which time I was at a party at someone’s back yard somewhere along his route.
A Patch reader has nicknamed Princeton’s newest furry friend “Tu-Tu Bear,” both because he was spotted near Paul Tulane’s grave and because he’s a small little bear. Small, as far as bears go, but “it is probably a 100 to 150 pound juvenile male “looking for its own turf,” said animal control officer Mark Johnson, so keep away.
At least it’s not an alligator.
There’s a bear in the woods!
The Dinky stays where it is…for now,
University Scraps Arts and Transit Plans (emphasis added)
The first phase of the proposed Arts and Transit Neighborhood plans involved the creation of a Steven Holl-designed arts complex, the conversion of the existing Dinky buildings into cafe and retail space, the move of the Dinky farther from the downtown into a transit plaza that would include an indoor waiting area and the Wawa, a roundabout at University Place and Alexander Road, a separate pedestrian crossing for Forbes College, and a new entryway into the Lot 7 garage.
The Dinky had already been moved away from the center of town once’ this move would have made it even more impractical.
The University is Not.Pleased.
With respect to future collaborations between the University and the two municipalities, and how Monday’s outcome affects that relationship, Mr. Durkee noted, “I don’t think it helps at all.”
That’s tact!
UPDATE:
“Tact”, and possibly revenge?
However, there may be an unexpected downside to halting the planned Arts and Transit Neighborhood for the Township and the Borough. The University currently supports the community with voluntary payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs. Administrators said that the cancellation of the Arts and Transit Neighborhood would likely have an impact on the payments.
The University’s current agreement with the Borough is set to expire this year and was expected to be renewed.
“I think that is completely up in the air at the moment,” Tilghman said of the renewal. “There is no question that what happened last night is going to factor into our thinking about this going forward.”
The negative outcome of Monday’s meeting may have even further-reaching consequences, as Durkee said the community’s failure to move the Arts and Transit Neighborhood project forward would put a damper on the future of the University’s relationship with the town.
“It doesn’t augur well for future relationships when the response to the University’s request for support … is the response we got last night,” he said.
Developing…
Princeton Township just called declaring a snow emergency. This is what things look like right now at casa de Fausta,
