About Me

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 I recently traveled to Munich, Germany and to Salzburg and Vienna in Austria. In Salzburg I participated in the Salzburg Global Seminar at the Schloss Leopoldskron. The entire trip was enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, and enlightening. Though I was unaccompanied , I connected with students and faculty from my alma mater, Princeton University and with other Princeton alums in Munich and in Salzburg. While in Vienna, i connected with colleagues whom I had met in Salzburg, and with a friend of a friend who lives and works there.

I found it reassuring to connect with folks with whom I have things in common. That said, it was a pleasure to be unaccompanied at times. That "alone time" provided opportunities to meet and chat with strangers. At the airport in Newark where my flight was delayed due to weather, I chatted with a woman who was headed to her native Poland to visit family and friends. She told me that she was a registered nurse who loved her work and had recently retired. I learned that we shared an interest in the biological sciences and that, like me, she had considered a career as a biologist. Her route to nursing was circuitous, much like my route to a career in law.

At the Salzburg Global Seminar I met interesting and influential people from all over the world. I made friends with a family from South Africa and enjoyed chatting with a family from Saudi Arabia and a young man from Nigeria who is currently residing in London. An impressive young Latino from San Diego was at the SGS as an intern or fellow and we chatted about his carreer and aspirations as a documentary filmmaker.

Tom Toles editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post was among the speakers at the seminar.Tom shared some sobering observations and comments about the work of editorial cartoonists and journalists in the U.S. at a time when the current occupant of the White House delights in attacking the media,refers to the media as the enemy of the people and has even tweeted a video of a fake physical assault on CNN by the Republican president. 

Thulisile Madonsela delivered the opening keynote speech at the SGS. Thuli's many accomplishments and contributions to law,social justice and human rights include, but are not limited to, serving as a technical expert in the drafting of the post-apartheid constitution of South Africa put forward by then- President Nelson Mandela. Thuli, her delightful daughter Wenzile and son Wantu and I spent time together exploring the city of Salzburg. We walked and talked and explored and learned about Salzburg and each other before returning to the schloss for the closing gala.

Stay tuned for more about my travels!

  On my way to participate in the Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg, Austria, I spent a few days in Munich, Germany. While there I connected with a young Latino, a student at Princeton University. Sergio came to my attention shortly before my trip, when another Princeton Latina reached out to seek help in finding him affordable housing in DC . Hearing that he was in Munich, I emailed him and suggested that we meet in Munich. He replied and we met.  I learned that Sergio was in a summer program of Princeton students studying German in Munich Sergio 's parents are from Puerto Rico and from Guatemala and that he grew up in Bridgeport, Conn.  I told Sergio that as a history buff, I was tempted to visit the Dachau Memorial at the site of the Dachau concentration camp, a short distance from Munich.He mentioned that a group of students and faculty from his program would be visiting Dachau the next day. Sergio suggested that I join them and I agreed to do so. The next day, I visited Dachau with the Princeton group.  My father was a WWII veteran who served in the infantry and fought at the Battle of the Bulge, I had a keen awareness of the atrocities committed at Dachau and in the Nazi's other concentration camps. I have vivid memories of films taken by war correspondents and released after the allied forces arrived at the concentration camps to free the survivors. During my childhood I watched TV with my father and learned about the gas chambers, the crematoria, and the many atrocities committed by the Nazis, their allies and supporters.  Today the Dachau Memorial site is a very clean, well-ordered museum site with exhibits containing numerous artifacts including prisoners' personal belongings. Family photos,diaries, letters, items clothing and other items are displayed. Also on display are instruments of torture that were used on the prisoners. Visitors can walk through a building that houses a gas chamber where prisoners were gassed to death and a crematorium where their remains were burned in ovens. Most of the barracks,each originally built for 200 prisoners and which later housed 2000 at a time, have been razed.  The nationalist, hate-mongering, press-bashing,violence-laden terminology used by German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, enablers and supporters in the lead-up to his reign of horror sounded very familiar and very contemporary .That alone is very unsettling.   

Last night I saw my daughter Marisol playing the part of Rochelle in the play 

Martin Denton, Martin Denton. I was delighted by the play and by the actors. 

For Marisol, all the world is and has been a stage- from day one! 

Marisol attended Helikos: Scuola Internazionale De Creazione Teatrale in Florence, Italy where she honed her natural talents and the skills she had acquired at TADA!,in the Hunter College High School's Musical Repertory Company, at Princeton Summer Theater and the Black Arts Company and at McCarter Theater. It all comes together beautifully when she is on stage or directing others.

As an advocate and practitioner of social justice policies and practices, I am delighted by Marisol's use of theater to raise the voices and to present the perspectives of those who are rarely seen or heard or promoted in the world of commercial theater. Martin Denton, Martin Denton speaks to the importance and influence of artists and the arts in their most authentic forms. 

Marisol and her fellow artists have opened my eyes and my mind to the importance of theater and the  performing arts as forms of expression and as sources of inspiration. I am a better person for it! Thank you Marisol and thank you artists everywhere!