Valeri Drach Weidmann

The Vietnam War was finally ending. Richard Nixon was in the White House, the Civil Rights and Feminist movements had taken to the streets, and a group of young mothers who just wanted some time to talk began meeting at the Unitarian Society in East Brunswick.

Some are still meeting today (though all the kids have grown), and through the month of December they will be exhibiting Timeless Views: A Mixed Media Show at the Highland Park Public Library.

The Drama Department of Highland Park High School is staging the well-known drama Twelve Angry Jurors, based on the teleplay Twelve Angry Men. Reginald Rose's story of a jury that must weigh the death penalty for an inner-city teenager has a popular history back to 1954, when it first aired on television, and is most remembered as a 1957 film directed by Sidney Lumet.

Whether on television, the big screen, or live on stage, Twelve Angry Men is powerful stuff that asks a lot of its actors.

The drama begins in a claustrophobic jury room as one juror, convinced of the boy's innocence, tries to persuade the others to acquit.

"About thirty years ago I wrote a love story about a Rabbi, and these subsequent stories concern a connectedness to all religions," Selden says.  "I believe that in religions there are principles and practices that are ever the same: giving and loving."

For eight summers, while Cynthia Walling was an Elizabeth High School teacher, the Highland Park artist lived, studied and painted in San Miguel de Allende.

On a recent September evening, as the Raritan River returned to its banks, we caught up with local shopowner and author Steven Hart at his Nighthawk Books store for a chat about diverse subjects, literary and otherwise.

High up on Hart's list this fall is the publication of his first detective novel, We All Fall Down (Black Angel Press, 2011). His heroine, Karen McCarthy, is a tough cop who defies some of the usual stereotypes. She's down-to-earth, unattractive, and subject to some human foibles usually reserved for the male of the species. Sent to patrol the streets of Bridgeborough, a working class town near the Pine Barrens, Karen stumbles upon the murder of the police chief's wife.

As summer simmers to a close it's as if we're losing another childhood. Book clubs are growing introspective -- no more beach novels for us.

Some of September's children seem to be living quiet lives of desperation (sounds familiar?); others are victims of race and class. And a whole genre has been emerging: the aging baby boomer looks back at the 1970s.

"How would you like to have a job where you can wear your pajamas all day?" Award winning author Wendy Mass addressed a crowd of more than fifty at the Highland Park Public Library on a recent Thursday evening.

According to a family therapist who has been counseling couples in Highland Park for nearly 30 years, having the right number of children can make or break a marriage.

In the early 1970s, PBS, that bastion of civilized television, gave us the first reality show, a documentary that followed "An American Family," the Louds, as the mother asked her philandering husband for a divorce. The heated and painful scene unfolded in their living room, as we watched uncomfortably from ours.

God of Carnage, running through June 5 at George Street Playhouse, delivers us to another American living room as two families meet to duke it out. This show may be making theatrical history, with the ultimate in Method bathroom humor -- a comedy with no holds barred.