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This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and the Princeton Environmental Film Festival. A panel of Princeton-area artists will explore how they ensure their creative processes are eco-friendly and aligned with sustainable practices.

From the thoughtful selection of materials to innovative techniques, the panelists are united by their commitment to reducing the environmental footprint of their work while fostering meaningful connections between art and sustainability. The discussion will explore the integration of sustainable materials, eco-friendly techniques, and ethical practices in the artistic process.

Through personal stories and professional insights, the panelists will share their journeys of adopting green practices, overcoming challenges, and influencing both the art world and environmental advocacy. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how sustainable art can inspire change and contribute to a greener future without compromising creativity.

About the Panelists:
Susan Hoenig creates nature-inspired artwork that highlights the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the relationships between habitats, plants, and animals. Reimagining Constructivist Art, her work addresses ecological issues while celebrating the land’s beauty and fostering environmental awareness. A Puffin Foundation Grant recipient and Indigenuity Contest winner, she has also contributed to ecological research and presented her 'Biodiversity Paintings' lecture at the Washington Crossing Audubon in 2022.

Mary Waltham is an environmental artist whose work explores the fragility of our natural world through the dual lenses of science and art. She works across various media, including drawing, painting, video, and installation, often incorporating locally sourced natural materials such as soil, bark, moss, and wood. Through her art, Mary seeks to spark meaningful conversations by bringing landscapes to life in the context of pressing environmental challenges.

Karen Tuveson, a multifaceted artist and community arts advocate, approaches her studio as a creative laboratory where she merges artistic experimentation with eco-conscious values. Her work delves into nature’s intricate layers of light, texture, and color, capturing its dynamic balance while inspiring reflection on humanity’s environmental stewardship. Committed to sustainability, she carefully sources local, eco-friendly materials, aligning her creative process with the natural cycles she depicts and honoring the harmony of the natural world.

Moderator:
Mic Diño Boekelmann is a Filipino American artist, educator, and facilitator born in Quezon, Philippines. As a multidisciplinary artist, her work seamlessly bridges the realms of art and activism, with a focus on climate change, sustainability, and social justice. In addition to her creative pursuits, she is the founder of The Orange Door, a contemporary art space in Princeton, New Jersey, where she champions the arts and their role in fostering community engagement and awareness.

This event was recorded on January 14, 2025.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Princeton Public Schools. The Princeton Public Schools will offer a presentation about the upcoming bond referendum questions followed by a Q&A.

The municipality of Princeton will see over 1,000 new residential units in the next few years, and the school district will soon be welcoming new students into the schools. The PPS facilities need immediate expansion and improvements to continue to provide high-quality programming, maintain elementary class sizes and honor our tradition of neighborhood schools.

We invite you to learn more about the Jan. 28 facilities bond referendum, which prioritizes cost-effective, value-based facility improvements. The referendum allows PPS to access $19.9 million in state debt service funding. It will appear on the Jan. ballot in the form of three questions:

QUESTION 1
Community Park Elementary expansion/renovations
Princeton High School end-of-life HVAC replacement and rehabilitation
Cost: $37.9M
Est. annual tax impact**: $222
Est. debt service aid: $11.4M

QUESTION 2*
Princeton Middle School expansion/renovations
Princeton High School renovations
Cost: $38.3M
Est. annual tax impact** of Q1 + Q2: $447
Est. debt service aid for Q1 + Q2: $18.5M
*Question 1 must pass for Question 2 to pass

QUESTION 3*
Littlebrook expansion/renovations
Cost: $12.9M
Est. annual tax impact** of Q1 + Q2 + Q3: $532
Est. debt service aid for Q1 + Q2 + Q3: $19.9M
*Questions 1 and 2 must pass for Question 3 to pass

**Based on average assessed home value of $853,136

The district has taken into careful consideration the needs of the students, their families and the Princeton community in planning for this referendum. This is a fiscally responsible plan that will expand capacity, renovate common areas and outdated facilities, and allow the district to continue the exceptional education and student experiences at Princeton Public Schools.

This event was recorded on January 13, 2025.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Princeton University Concerts. Pianist and writer Stephen Hough discusses his collection of essays, "Rough Ideas" in advance of the performance on Feb. 20 featuring Hough and the Takács String Quartet.

Hough is also a composer and painter, and has been described by The Economist as one of “Twenty Living Polymaths.”

This event was recorded on January 10, 2025.

This recording is presented in partnership by Princeton Public Library and Not in Our Town Princeton. The N.J. Division on Civil Rights present on "Combating Appraisal Bias and Discrimination in New Jersey."

Housing Discrimination can impact anyone, including renters and homeowners of all backgrounds. The NJ Division on Civil Rights (DCR) enforces the Law Against Discrimination which makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone based on their race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and other protected characteristics. The Law Against Discrimination (LAD) also prohibits discrimination in housing, employment, and places open to the public. Research demonstrates that the undervaluing of properties falls disproportionately on buyers and sellers of color, leading to persistent racial disparities in rates of homeownership and wealth. This has led to a stark racial wealth gap in our state.

In this meeting, audience members will learn about home appraisal bias, how to identify it, and how to report it. Audience members who have received an unfair, inaccurate, or discriminatory home appraisal will learn how to request that their home be reassessed and how to file a complaint with the NJ Division on Civil Rights.

Aarin Michele Williams, Esq. (she/her) is an experienced and versatile attorney who works to champion the principles of equity, justice, and opportunity, over civility or respectability. She is barred in New Jersey, New York and the Southern District of New York but has appeared in various jurisdictions around the country. She is an experienced civil rights litigator, social, racial, and reproductive justice movement lawyer and proud criminal defense attorney. Aarin is currently the Chief Advisor to the Director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights (DCR). She has held various roles with DCR and has led teams in a landmark mortgage redlining matter with the DOJ, published civil rights reports on issues including the spread of white supremacy and bias in the state, promulgated our nation’s first Fair Chance in Housing Act and much more. Currently, she also leads DCR’s home appraisal discrimination initiative, the nation’s first state-based home appraisal task force of its kind.

This event was recorded on January 6, 2025.

Katz discusses his acclaimed podcast, “Inconceivable Truth,” with fellow journalist Charles Stile. The pod details the startling, and sometimes troubling, revelations of a search for his birth father.

FROM THE PRODUCERS

Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter Matt Katz has been searching for his biological father since he was a little kid. But it wasn't until his 40s that he realized he was on the wrong journey altogether. The true story is wrapped in confusion and secrecy, and in the end it upended the truth about who he is – raising questions about identity, fatherhood, medical ethics and what family really means. But will finding answers make him whole, or just make things even more complicated? “Inconceivable Truth,” named a Best of 2024 Podcast by Audible and Vanity Fair magazine, is available free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music.

BIOS PROVIDED BY PRESENTERS


Matt Katz is an investigative reporter, journalist and podcast host who has worked in newspapers, magazines, TV and audio for more than two decades, reporting on everything from local school boards to presidential elections to natural disasters. As an on-air reporter and host at WNYC and NPR for 11 years, he won several awards for watchdog reporting, including a 2022 Sidney Award for publishing never-before-seen images of squalid conditions at jails on Rikers Island in New York. For many years he covered former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, first for The Philadelphia Inquirer and then WNYC, winning a Peabody Award for a series of stories about the Bridgegate scandal that rocked Christie's political career. His book, “American Governor: Chris Christie's Bridge to Redemption,” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2016.

He is executive producer of City Cast Philly, a daily news-and-culture podcast and newsletter about Philadelphia. In 2024 he created, wrote, and hosted an autobiographical podcast, "Inconceivable Truth," that hit the Top 10 on the charts on Apple Podcasts, where it has more than 2,000 reviews and 4.8 stars. Vogue magazine named "Inconceivable Truth" one of the best podcasts of 2024. Matt's reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, PBS, The Washington Post, and Politico Magazine. He also works as an adjunct professor teaching journalism at the University of Pennsylvania. Once upon a time, he wrote a nationally syndicated dating column.

Charles Stile, a Princeton resident, is the veteran political columnist at The Bergen Record/USA TodayNetwork, providing readers street-level reporting and distinctive analysis on all areas of New Jersey politics. He has covered every governor since the final six months of Jim Florio’s tumultuous term in 1993. Stile joined The Record’s State House bureau in 2000 and moved up to become bureau chief in 2003. A year later, Stile guided the bureau during the spectacular collapse of Gov. Jim McGreevey’s administration. He was named a full-time columnist in 2007, making him one of a handful of State House-based columnists in the country.

In October 2023, Stile was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in New Jersey Journalism from the Corporation For New Jersey Local Media at the non-profit’s Third Annual Byrne-Kean Dinner, which recognizes “journalistic excellence on the local, regional and statewide levels.” Before coming to The Record, Stile worked at The Times of Trenton as a reporter covering the business community and later as a as a general assignment reporter chronicling Trenton city politics and urban issues. He joined that paper’s State House bureau in 1993. He began his career one week after graduating from Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey) in 1983, as a city hall reporter for the Sentinel-Ledger of Ocean City. Like many of his protégés on the school newspaper, The Signal, Stile was a student of Bob Cole, the legendary journalism professor. Later that year, he joined the Princeton Packet, assigned to the Princeton University beat.

Stile was born in Mineola, N.Y., and is a 1978 graduate of Lower Cape May Regional High School. He lives in Princeton with his wife, the acclaimed storyteller Maria LoBiondo.

This event was recorded on January 8, 2025.

Author Michael Gabriele explores the rich history of taverns in Colonial New Jersey.

Author Michael C. Gabriele is a lifelong Garden State resident and a 1975 graduate of Montclair State University. He has worked as a journalist, freelance writer and author for more than forty years. Gabriele is a member of the board of trustees for the New Jersey Folk Festival at Rutgers University, a member of the executive boards for the Allied Artists of America, New York, the Nutley Historical Society, the Theater League of Clifton, and serves on the advisory board of the Clifton Arts Center.

From the author: New Jersey was the “Crossroads of the American Revolution,” and as battles raged, colonial taverns formed the social network that held the state together. Taverns were the stage for the unfolding drama of a colony transitioning into statehood and making decisions about declaring a war of independence. New Jersey’s General Assembly, meeting in September 1777 at a tavern in Haddonfield, declared New Jersey to be “a state, not a colony,” in effect, joining the call for revolution and a break from British rule. Taverns were the places where the voices of history took shape, used as recruitment stations for colonial militias and meeting places for local committees of safety, which ran daily municipal matters for communities. George Washington used taverns as headquarters, where he drafted his many letters and planned strategy with his generals. Taverns were the “seedbeds” for the revolution, strongholds for political activities, beacons for travelers, and venues for entertainment, merriment, and libations.

Presented in partnership with the Historical Society of Princeton.

This event was recorded on December 11, 2024