OCTOBER 2022 FREE
Martian hunter
COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
Princeton Junction native brings Black + Jewish exhibit home By ReBeKah SchroeDer
A jar of soil sits in the Jewish Center of Princeton’s “Black + Jewish” exhibit besides a panel on lynch laws, where by exploring race, religion and interactions between groups, the complexities of an under-discussed historical relationship are unearthed. Ten of these panels are on loan from the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University in Georgia and have traveled from curator Adina Langer’s public history class to the
state of New Jersey; intending them as a “backbone for conversation” within the local community, Langer, her students, and TJC members have been working to articulate the reality of what people of these identities have endured — just as much as what they achieve from working together. For Langer, who grew up in Princeton Junction, this step towards discussion starts with education. The combination of images and text, designed in the KSU program, highlights topics such as the emergence of the civil rights era,
European immigration through the “Golden Door” of Ellis Island and the Great Migration, and the presence of Jewish refugee professors at historically black colleges and universities due to World War II. The exhibit, subtitled “Connection, Courage, Community,” remains on view at the Jewish Center through until Oct. 31. To expand the project’s scope from Atlanta to a context much closer to home, TJC congregants Linda Oppenheim, Michele Alperin, Miki Mendelsohn, and Wilma Solomon produced supSee LANGER, Page 2
First-time author crafts a mystery By Dan AUBrey
Grovers Mill local William Dock poses for newspaper photographers shortly after the 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast. Paul Ligeti writes about the event and its impact on the area in this month’s West Windsor Chronicles starting on page 18.
A successful middle-aged architect lets himself into a dark New York City apartment, passes through an entry hall faintly scented with a familiar perfume, calls out a woman’s name, and, after moving into the ornately decorated living room, is greeted by the dead body of the young designer with whom he has been having an extramarital affair. So starts the mystery West Windsor writer Victoria Weisfeld shares with readers in her newly released novel Architect of Courage. “When I started, all I had in my
mind was the opening situation,” Weisfeld says during a recent interview at a local café. However, by the book’s conclusion, that architect, Archer Landis, and the reader have traveled a thenrecently changed post-9-11 world, confronted personal secrets and become ensnared in a deadly plot. Up until the current release of this first novel, Weisfeld called herself a short story writer whose works have appeared in mystery anthologies and noted mystery magazines, including Ellery Queen, Sherlock Holmes and Black Cat. She is also a member of Sisters
mercereats.com
ME rce r Eats
& Drinks
of Crime and Mystery Writers of America, reviews New Jersey theater for TheFrontRowCenter.com, and reviews crime/mystery stories for the United Kingdom’s crimefictionlover.com. While the author spent decades writing for such organization as the National Academy of Science and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she says, “Dating back to being a teenager I always wanted to be a fiction writer, but I needed to earn a living. When I left the corporate world, I worked freelance for several years. (And) I said I’m not getting younger See WEISFELD, Page 9
1179 NEWARK, NJ