In Praise of the February Issue

When the February PAW arrived in my mail, I read it through with varying attentiveness, as I have been doing ever since I first began receiving it my senior year on campus.

This particular issue was unusually moving. As an aging pastor I was touched by both the “Lives Lived & Lost” feature on departed fellow grads and the piece on obits by Douglas Martin *74. Other features were, if not always easy or comfortable reading, worthwhile as always: environmental challenges, issues of diversity and free speech, and even the effects of the conflict in Ukraine on campus life, as the Princeton community engages with the world.

As an elderly, undistinguished, and not particularly wealthy alum who finds occasional difficulty coming to terms with a rapidly evolving world, I often wonder about my connection with a university which in many respects has changed almost beyond recognition since my undergrad years. Yet the connection remains. As evidenced even in the digital age by PAW’s regular arrival in the mail, month after month, year after year, for well over 50 years now, the University somehow has tried to maintain a connection with me, whatever I have done or not done to keep the connection.

Locomotives to Old Nassau — and particularly to old faithful PAW, which after all these years still seeks me out in the mails to tell me what is up on campus, and how the Princeton community strives to make our world a better place.