In the News!

Last Thursday, the NJ public broadcasting network televised a live debate of the three candidates for Governor in this year's election. The incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs chairman who has spent lavishly on his election efforts, has been far behind in the polls to Republican Chris Christie, the former federal prosecutor who has gone after corrupt officials (and by the way, weighs about 400 pounds). During the debate, they had taped questions from voters to ask the candidates. Mine was the first one they used.

http://www.njn.net/newspublicaffairs/coverage/09governorrace/debate1001.html

It's about 35 minutes into the debate. A few weeks before, I had been walking down Nassau Street and was stopped by an NJN reporter who asked if I wanted to ask the candidates a question.

Christie's non-answer was the subject of much commentary the next day. In fact, the state's leading conservative columnist said that if Christie does go on to lose, he might well look back to that answer:

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/10/mulshine_on_first_debate.html

Corzine and Christie are now in a dead heat.

Also, although I haven't seen it, there's a Jumbotron at the entry to the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. An animation Sean did for his magazine is now playing on that screen.

Finally, Janet and her audio description work at McCater and elsewhere. Margaret Pfanstiel, the woman who developed the technique and was Janet's mentor, recently passed away. The Wash Post did a lovely story on her. Janet was one of the first small group of describers that Margaret trained.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/03/AR2009100302661.html?referrer=emailarticle

Margaret got an award from the national coalition for audio description at their annual meeting at the Kennedy Center in DC in August. Janet was the presenter and she closed her narrative by saying that "Margaret proved that you don't need sight to be a visionary."