Update on Diana Henriques

After 20 years at the New York Times, investigative business reporter Diana Henriques took an offered buyout from the paper, late in December.
Henriques, who wrote the much lauded best seller about the Madoff scandal, The Wizard of Lies, will speak at the Princeton Regional Chamber lunch on Thursday, January 5.

The Henriques buyout was first reported on Talking Biz News on December 16. The same source noted that, early in her career, Henriques had reported for the Times of Trenton. She h"as chosen to remain on staff as contributing writer.

Henriques responded to Talking Biz News with this explanation:“I have accepted the buyout, but was immediately offered and accepted a contract to work as a contributing writer in the business news section, beginning next week. I will keep a desk in the NYT building and will retain my current email address, phone number and mailing address. I’m actually filing a story the week after Christmas and another in January. So from a practical standpoint, this really is no big deal, even within the business journalism world — to the outside world, it is less than a non-event."

She has written three other books Fidelity’s World: The Secret Life and Public Power of the Mutual Fund Giant (1995) and The White Sharks of Wall Street: Thomas Mellon Evans and The Original Corporate Raiders (2000) and has various other contracts dealing with the Madoff book.

Maybe this won't be her last trip to our college town  -- Henriques has been quoted as saying she is considering some "teaching opportunities."

A Question of Dignity: January 2

The worst crime of slavery, even worse than physical abuse, is the erosion of dignity. So said Princeton University professor Kwame Apiah in his remarks after the Princeton Public Library showing of the film “Prince Among Slaves” last month. Not in Our Town Princeton will offer an opportunity to discuss the film, and Apiah's remarks, as part of the Continuing Conversations series on Monday, January 2, at 7:30 p.m. at the Princeton Public Library.

Wilma Solomon and Marietta Taylor will lead the discussion. Those who did not see the film are welcome to attend and might also want to check out the website of the film.
"What you are essentially doing is you are removing the identity of an individual and you are giving him a very different identity-one that you as a slave owner choose and this communicates very effectively that the person is now a slave...the person is now chattel..the person is now someone who is owned."

A question to think about: If "dignity" is defined as the state of quality of being worthy of honor or respect, to what degree do you think that African Americans and  people of color today are treated in such a way as to diminish their identity and dignity?
All are welcome to NIOT's Continuing Conversation on Monday, January 2.

Something New on New Year's Eve

Since my husband and I were juniors in high school we have always been together on New Year's Eve. It's not exactly a superstition (some believe that whatever you do on December 31st, you'll keep doing throughout the next year), but it is certainly a tradition. The year I had a babysitting job, he found out where, and he showed up at midnight, to keep the tradition going.
So since December 1955, when we danced in the Engroff basement to Teresa Brewer's  hit "Till I Waltz Again With You,"  New Year's has always been important to us.
Though we like parties, we also like to just sit together, review the year, and watch the Times Square ball drop. Better yet, when we were Moravians, some 40 years ago, the  it Watch Night,and everyone picked a verse from the offering plate to be their Watch Word for the New Year.

We're Methodists now, at the church on the corner of Nassau and Vandeventer (Princeton United Methodist) and I just learned to my delight that our church is going to have its own Watch Night service, as part of its Saturday Evening Gathering, As below:
"On New Year's Eve we will have a special Watch Night Service followed by a New Year's Eve Celebration.  In the tradition of John Wesley's Watch Night services, we will review the year that was, take stock in where we are now and commit ourselves to the year ahead,' says one of the pastors, Trey Gillette. Immediately following the service, there will be a celebration of food, fellowship and fun. Those attending are encouraged to bring a dish or treat to share.  There will also be music, games and even karaoke for the brave and bold. The Service begins at 5 p.m. and festivities will conclude by 8 p.m.

 "If you've never had the chance to come to the Saturday gathering, this will be a great opportunity to see what it is all about," says Gillette. All are welcome!

Teresa Brewer is long forgotten on the hit parade. Deservedly so in my opinion. Any one who has the gall to sing about waltzing to a tune in 4/4 time deserves to be forgotten. But I still remember her on New Year's Eve and am thankful to still be here.

Save the Date: Diana B. Henriques on January 5

"Bernie Madoff thought he could avoid the implacable dead-end finale of the Ponzi scheme and somehow get away with it," writes Diana B. Henriques, the New York Times financial reporter who wrote Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.

HERE's an UPDATE on HENRIQUES AS OF DECEMBER 30.

She has just agreed to speak at the first Princeton Regional Chamber luncheon in 2012. Mark your calendars for Thursday, January 5, at the Forrestal Marriott when her topic will be "Beyond Bernie Madoff -- Fallout from History's Biggest Fraud." Cost: $45 for members who register, $50 for walk-ins, $65 for non-members. Register here, 

Her book has been cited by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as the "definitive" Madoff biography. It is based on the her award-winning coverage in The New York Times and two years of additional research, including the first in-prison interviews with Madoff himself.

Henriques warns that the next fraudster, like Madoff, thinks he won't get caught. "Right now," she writes,
"some new Bernie Madoff is exploiting our need for trust to build another world of lies. We will read about him next month or next year. Until then, his victims are telling themselves how generous and respected he is in the community... That is the most enduring lesson of the Madoff scandal: in a world full of lies, the most dangerous ones are those we tell ourselves."

December 5: Meet Kwame Anthony Appiah

Meet Kwame Anthony Appiah, not only in Wikipedia,  but also in person, on Monday, December 5, at 6:30 p.m., when the Princeton Public Library screens "Prince Among Slaves," the PBS documentary for which he was the consulting scholar. Terry Alford, author of the biography on which the film was based, will also speak. The program is free, and refreshments will be served.

With a Ghanian father and a British mother, he grew up mostly in Britain, and describes his life here. With a PhD from Cambridge, he has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Harvard. He lives in Pennington and is the Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton.  

Appiah's interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual theory; he is known as a critic of the Afro-centric world view. 

One of his books,  In My Father's House, is described as a wide ranging collection of essays, "covering everything from Pan Africanism, to the works of early African-American intellectuals such as Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. Du Bois, to the ways in which African identity influences African literature."

The story of Abdul Rahman Sori, who is profiled in Prince Among Slaves, is taken from the promotional materials for the documentary which premiered on PBS 2008.  

In 1788 a slave-ship set sail from West Africa, its berth laden with a profitable but fragile cargo: hundreds of men, women and children bound in chains and headed for American shores. Eight months later the survivors were sold in Natchez, Mississippi. Among them was the 26-year-old Abdul Rahman Sori, heir to the throne of one of the largest kingdoms in Africa.

Captured in an ambush, he was sold to English slavers for a few muskets and some rum. After enduring the brutal Middle Passage to America, he was purchased by a struggling Mississippi farmer named Thomas Foster. Foster hoped that the strong African would help establish his farm.

 Sustained by his deep faith and drawing from his well-honed intellect, Abdul Rahman applied his leadership abilities and knowledge about crops such as cotton to help Foster eventually become one of the wealthiest men in Mississippi. In the meantime, Abdul Rahman married an American-born enslaved woman, and together they had nine children.

Did it have a happy ending? Read the rest of it here. 

Co-sponsored by the library, Unity Productions and Not In Our Town Princeton, this program is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.