7 40 755 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c3745a296b7ffab88e65e878ef7eafcf.png 68fc8d391ab0efe701923c6ffd2e9844 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data b/w photo Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 5/6/2021 Date Depicted (Display) Text version of the date field -- can handle non-numeric characters (ca. 1850s, [1844]). This is the content date field that will display. Unknown Abstract (& Historical Note) Natural language description of the map itself, providing a general summary of the map and noting significant features. This is the place to introduce keywords and proper names that might be of interest to researchers, but do not warrant a separate subject heading of their own. Inset maps should also be described here, with their full titles given. Whenever historical or explanatory information is available, it should be included here as well. This includes information about items or events that are larger than just the map itself; for example, information about cartographers, a description of the map's historical significance (for example, "This is the first printed map of Saratoga Springs"), notes on the laws leading to a map's creation, descriptions of changes in state or county lines, information about the organization that created the map, how often maps were updated, and information about the map's creation and publication. Many State Archives maps have historical information in the catalog record -- that should be captured in this field. Roosevelt Baths Spa - hydrotherapy - showers - mineral water - balneology - Saratoga Springs - wellness - health URL https://www.timesunion.com/saratoga/article/Roosevelt-Baths-Spa-in-Saratoga-Springs-marks-6390446.php Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Miles Herman Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hydrotherapy in the showers with varying temperatures at the Roosevelt Bathhouse. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Unknown, but possibly in the mid-1950s Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Image 4 of 57 from Tyler McNeil, "Roosevelt Bath & Spa in Saratoga Springs marks 80th Year," The Ties Union, July 17, 2015. URL: https://www.timesunion.com/saratoga/article/Roosevelt-Baths-Spa-in-Saratoga-Springs-marks-6390446.php#photo-6482579 Description An account of the resource During the 1930s, Saratoga Springs constructed several spas and bathhouses to emulate the grand European Spas. With the popular writings of Dr. Simon Baruch and support from President Franklin Roosevelt, the spas in Saratoga Springs did a booming business in different types of hydrotherapy, including showers. https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/e1f38e614f2ed999a3c4dc5ce6aeb848.png 9a6a3a655d491eb0b69171819fe02000 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Watercolor Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Miles Herman Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 5/7/2021 Date Depicted (Display) Text version of the date field -- can handle non-numeric characters (ca. 1850s, [1844]). This is the content date field that will display. Unknown Abstract (& Historical Note) Natural language description of the map itself, providing a general summary of the map and noting significant features. This is the place to introduce keywords and proper names that might be of interest to researchers, but do not warrant a separate subject heading of their own. Inset maps should also be described here, with their full titles given. Whenever historical or explanatory information is available, it should be included here as well. This includes information about items or events that are larger than just the map itself; for example, information about cartographers, a description of the map's historical significance (for example, "This is the first printed map of Saratoga Springs"), notes on the laws leading to a map's creation, descriptions of changes in state or county lines, information about the organization that created the map, how often maps were updated, and information about the map's creation and publication. Many State Archives maps have historical information in the catalog record -- that should be captured in this field. Golf - Saratoga - Wellness - Health - Saratoga Golf and Polo Club URL https://www.saratogagolfpoloclub.org/About-Us Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hyland Clubhouse Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Unknown Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. The Saratoga Golf and Polo Club Description An account of the resource The Hyland Clubhouse at the Saratoga Golf and Polo Club was built in 1914. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/ba9e0a4a1c18b780829770b2fcb21002.mp3 02c236a9adb5311329626f9efdf25f0f https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d07535096f3ef0b580cda8eea464de2b.jpg fbc61a7d9d9c4d35313132759b71a87e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Relais sur glace, ou abalakov. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January 18, 2014 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available <a title="Wikimedia File" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abalakov.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abalakov.jpg</a> Description An account of the resource Ice climbing gear taken at 45° 34′ 11.78″ N, 7° 19′ 31.87″ E Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fanny Schertzer Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource J. Dym Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Creative Commons Medium The material or physical carrier of the resource. digital photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ice Ice Bébé Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 29, 2016 Description An account of the resource An interview with Skidmore Biology faculty member Erika Schielke by Stephen McCann, '16, as part of Producing Radio Doc, Spring 2015, taught by Eileen McAdam Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McCann Subject The topic of the resource Skidmore College -- Faculty -- Oral History Skidmore College -- Documentary Project -- Student Skidmore College -- Documentary Project -- Audio https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/017aa467f0e783320cb321b256522d35.jpg 614591447a2f84a923dd2da35e6c813d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Will Kertzman Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Immigrant City Historical Marker Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Historical Marker Database. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=126384 Abstract A summary of the resource. Historical Marker in Downtown Mechanicville talking about the history of immigration tied to industrialization in the city during the 19th century Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Will Kertzman https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/70e2cbb3b06f7acff39c4955fa0d8838.jpg ae5cdb17f1e6d8af86d58b2db0589c08 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Adult and Senior Center of Saratoga Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 5/12/17 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Phoebe Radcliffe Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 197x-60YearsYoung-Dancing Title A name given to the resource In a Dancing Mood Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 197x Description An account of the resource A newpaper clipping showing two seniors, Agnes Roman Czuk and Victor Szumachowski, people dancing in Ballston Spa Provenance A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource. Adult and Senior Center of Saratoga Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Newspaper Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [The Saratogian] dancing events Saratoga Springs Senior Center https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/20f2dd9eee4f3823e659e468f936d427.jpg 57b8942911cee630846d6dce7f9db7f3 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/96f45051febdbab684e8c4adc6a0e516.jpg af990dc6e3aa54d0d70936f176b4505e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Springs History Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1706- Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Repository Name of the repository that holds the original item. Saratoga Room, Saratoga Springs Public Library Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Jillian Seigel Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 43270 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In court case, it's sunlight vs. parking Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dimopoulos, Thomas Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Hill County Observer Subject The topic of the resource Transportation Description An account of the resource Parking garage proposal halted; The Mouzon House which as solar collectors on its room would find itself in the shadows of the 5-story parking garage. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text EnvironmentalJustice SaratogaSprings transportation https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/67d1225cb07c877b07fe1b03f8f15cd2.png 6a7340fd79a3a64a33c2e9fd58fcaee4 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/60555438ac9eeac6baabbaf3f784541b.mp4 3ca9406bb6487045522393e6f6a79901 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data video Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2 minutes, 13 seconds Producer Name (or names) of the person who produced the video Vickie Riley Director Name (or names) of the person who produced the video Vickie Riley Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. J. Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 04/11/2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Memoriam of David H. Porter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 4, 2016 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Skidmore College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Skidmore College Description An account of the resource A video remembrance of President emeritus David H. Porter (1935-2016) that is part of the College's <a title="David H. Porter In Memoriam" href="https://vimeo.com/161512190">video collection</a>. Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Vickie Riley; Wendy Anthony Subject The topic of the resource Skidmore College -- Retirees -- Faculty Skidmore College -- Retirees -- Administrators Skidmore College -- History Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b273943583213f37158518ec57f6cfdd.png e18eb161254e0cb9aa2de8c7bb49be41 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d1eb4562877c5181fbad3468f96879d6.mp4 b03f9cdb61db75c820f0d741be27d068 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d5a5459c9feed2bbc5d7ae6600fdfe53.mp4 e823ee8256b49aaf1b42fd8042e97cd8 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/09ec7a18ae589802c1603539f8fbe94a.pdf 43acd760db00e8d25e6b61c221aa774b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/91eed9008539f6a5109b6eb219a5b022.pdf e9ae28398870c40e5ffa1b0112347379 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Moving Image A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:25 Producer Name (or names) of the person who produced the video Vickie Riley Director Name (or names) of the person who produced the video Vickie Riley Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 30, 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Memoriam: Anne Palamountain Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 24, 2015 Description An account of the resource Anne Palamountain, wife of Skidmore’s fourth President, Joseph Palamountain, was a vital presence at the College during his 22-year presidency (1965-1986)and beyond. In this interview,she reflects on some her first impressions of Saratoga Springs, the turbulent 60’s, her priorities as Skidmore’s “First Lady”, and the challenges and rewards of her career. Language A language of the resource English (eng) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Vickie Riley Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/86371536d339028b913632e8d3c32e8f.png 3bfbc672f3dd417b7c45e1d284e4a15c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource August 11, 2023 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Eric Morser Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Subject The topic of the resource Labor History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jesse O'Connell Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. August 11, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Unity There Is Strength Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4aea028df24299fb939411d4d3b2b819.jpg f2cefe88c543babca67c79894b418b72 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Repository Name of the repository that holds the original item. Brookside Museum, Saratoga County Historical Society (Ballston Spa, N.Y.) Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Will Kertzman Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Indian splint basket Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource after 1800 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Brookside Museum https://brookside.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/14DDC26E-6C77-400C-88FB-853469144896 Abstract A summary of the resource. A woven basket made by Native Americans who remained in Saratoga County and the surrounding areas after the revolutionary war. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Will Kertzman Indigenous Saratoga County https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/361c07eebbd8aa8351b779dbee994d95.gif 25deee9294cbeae3623c2ca541ebc2c6 Map Cartographic document Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Mattie Saulnier Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 6/5/21 URL https://www.vizettes.com/kt/upstateny-history/ny-na/upstate-local-sites.htm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Indigenous trails near Ballston Description An account of the resource Map detailing numerous indigenous trails and campsites Ballston Spa Indian trails Indigenous round lake https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8066b2a6f406acd8dc0bd829f47e7a43.jpg f6b64c956b36d4ddeecd465f0aaaa075 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d152bf013dc4b1fc72209f355954d428.jpg a80008c002bc5c01b0f22f5bf0b1b4d7 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/bdda4b092cb0d34f3b66dc9b8a3b81b7.jpg 882922852e9107b4e51f5d719a350742 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Abstract (& Historical Note) Natural language description of the map itself, providing a general summary of the map and noting significant features. This is the place to introduce keywords and proper names that might be of interest to researchers, but do not warrant a separate subject heading of their own. Inset maps should also be described here, with their full titles given. Whenever historical or explanatory information is available, it should be included here as well. This includes information about items or events that are larger than just the map itself; for example, information about cartographers, a description of the map's historical significance (for example, "This is the first printed map of Saratoga Springs"), notes on the laws leading to a map's creation, descriptions of changes in state or county lines, information about the organization that created the map, how often maps were updated, and information about the map's creation and publication. Many State Archives maps have historical information in the catalog record -- that should be captured in this field. Medical Department - Influenza Epidemic 1918 - Love Field, Dallas, Texas. Preventive treatment against influenza, spraying the throat and Medical Department - Influenza Epidemic 1918 - Spraying machine, preventive treatment against influenza, Love Field, Texas URL National Archives Record: <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45499289">https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45499289</a><br />and <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45499291">https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45499291</a> Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data A throat spray machine to prevent the Spanish Flu. Photograph taken at Love Field, Texas, in 1918. Unknown photographer. National Archives image. Title: Throat Spray Machine during the Spanish Flu in Texas Date:1918 Creator: Unknown Provenance: National Archives and Image 41 of 42 from https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/The-Spanish-flu-100-years-later-May-we-never-13416907.php Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Influenza Epidemic 1918 - Love Field, Dallas, Texas. Preventive treatment against influenza, spraying the throat and Spraying machine, preventive treatment against influenza, Love Field, Texas https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8ea2b722eeea8123ac29729740b4b928.jpg 736c25be2ad08a45bfcb22b6fb6c1749 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9505fd1c09599a7cf16e19d9917a8940.mp3 9d6f079b52609a13d20d047ac10e1810 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Evolution of Beekman Street (20th century-2016) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/13/16 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Skidmore College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available DS: 113A Storytelling Interviewing, Skidmore College Description An account of the resource History of Beekman street, evolution of Beeekman, artist identities/roles, the future. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Original recording wave file, 16 bit 44.1 khz Zotero Interviewee Amejo Amyot, M'elle Pirii-Lee, Cecilia Frittelli, Interviewer Jonah Brenner, Amanda Peckler, Yuelin He, Max Lowe, Dejon Bunn-Constant Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jonah Brenner Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Amejo Amyot Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Original recording wav Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 47 min Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 16 bit, 44.1 khz Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 12/6/13 Time Summary A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview 00:00:00 Header 00:00:30 I’m Amejo Amyot and I live in Saratoga Springs, NY. I was born in Salamanca, NY on an Indian Reservation. 00:03:08 Discusses art classes in high school and how it was discouraged. 00:04:30 Saratoga Springs in the 1960s. 00:07:50 Discusses the history of Beekman Street before she started the project in 2000. There were 7 or 8 restaurants along Beekman Street. Mostly Italian people. 00:11:05 Urban renewal. They got rid of the historic nature of the city. 00:12:45 Talks about what sparked the creation of the art district and the influence that her time in Florida had on the project. 00:16:46 Efforts she took to get rid of crime in the neighborhood and make the area safe. 00:19:00 Artists were in the 3rd floors of Broadway buildings, but they were getting priced out. Artist did not have a place to go. That was the idea of Beekman. 00:22:00 Goals of the project. Live on the street, work on the street, street fairs, and foster a community. 00:22:45 Discusses how the city council was afraid of Artists. 00:25:25 Evolution of the street since the late 90s/early 2000s. 00:31:08 Artists involvement in the project and the different people that supported her. 00:32:36 Talks about the recession in 2008 and the impact it had on Beekman. 00:38:00 The major setbacks of the project and how the city did not continue to support the arts district. 00:39:50 Why the neighborhood will not come back as an arts district. 00:45:40 Discusses her favorite memory on the street. Jazz bands on the street that played every Friday night. It was the place to be. 00:47:19 End Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Amejo Amyot Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/13/16 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Skidmore College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available DS 113A Storytelling Interviewing, Skidmore College Description An account of the resource Her life, Beekman Street, Reasons she started the project, How the street has changed over the years, The impact of the recession. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jonah Brenner Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 12/7/16 oral history https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/be500b8c85351ae2ebdd144625b699b1.mp4 51672d244f201826f1337f922e325104 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9650c25470d316d446e2a76b197cb018.pdf 4e6c422aabf91ba1fe71e59f1ee34b00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Amy Godine Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 29, 2021 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Zoom Interview Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mia Barr Subject The topic of the resource Jewish history of Saratoga Springs Abstract A summary of the resource. Amy Godine is an independent scholar and historian who studies the Jewish history of Saratoga Springs, the Black experience in the Adirondacks, and other stories of marginalized communities and identities in the area. In this interview, she primarily discusses the Jewish history of Saratoga Springs, including the Seligman Affair, the draw of the mineral springs for Jewish immigrants, the "Gut" neighborhood, Jewish farmers outside city limits, and the often forgotten yet significant story of Jewish hotels and boardinghouses in Saratoga Springs, among other topics. Immigrants Jewish history mineral springs Saratoga Springs underrepresented people https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/0112e20e3c4af230a84be1720072fcb0.jpg 6ee0b6f04ad290999f54d721e83579fd https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4e3e521d48a56480b5499c111d29058f.jpg f9d7aded77e3dd1fd9e7cc6ce6b45299 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/fe0f2a2372764f954c14703677d93c31.m4a d49d47cd73d72d4331124a36c6efa747 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/03c1fa9f243af125000abc19ea842efa.pdf 007f650d827c0373ec64efbab65a5e09 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Rizzo, Emily Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Warner, Andrew Location The location of the interview Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Jordana Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 6/27/18 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio recording Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2-Jun-18 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rizzo, Emily, 18 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Audio, Photo Language A language of the resource English (eng.) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio recording Title A name given to the resource Interview with Andrew Warner, 83 alumni oral history Skidmore College https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/96149523e7d47ed2f26bebc6b3d00c4f.JPG 32c7cca128253b0263fdb5e57d80e03a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ann Henderson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/18/2014 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eileen McAdam https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a923b00f26b6f564bc83709ed9c9544b.mp3 10c95f65ffe6b95e3f41c671e997edd5 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/e2af96bf5c5073b90755905544a10109.pdf 8c5febcb1ce7050a6375360fbdcc7176 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1bab73aa661e3dd3055aa25aec9aa9c3.pdf 826ebbc7d52f75685bf7b6b6a466b5df Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Eileen McAdam, Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ann Henderson Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 45:00 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 30, 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ann Henderson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 18, 2014 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Ann Henderson, Registrar at Skidmore College and Director of Institutional Research, was an integral part of Skidmore from 1990-2010. In this interview, she talks about the technological changes that occurred across campus including her initiative to move Skidmore to an online course registration system and being part of a selected group of small institutions helping Oracle design a software that would meet all of the necessary registration and advising requirements.  9/11/2001 Campus Culture Dean of Studies English Department Jon Ramsey Phyllis Roth https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8f943dc3abc3fc2b13899d761ce66827.jpg 4e09e8950f9b7db28a8c3ef262f9ba65 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1d4b9f70c8d8a84e034deefa4e02305b.m4a 81f124c905fcaf2bbeff4cc168e0e8ce https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d75d0a3eea3b78dec510fbf2bd8e14da.pdf c59428a0a63fb3144eac3232ee4b5254 PDF Text Text Ann Schapps Schaffer ‘62 Interview Log 00:00:00 Class of 1962 00:00:10 Majored in Romance Languages: Spanish, French, and Italian 00:00:20 When graduated, worked for United Nations in translation 00:00:30 Tutored in Spanish, Italian, and Latin once starting family 00:00:35 Started taking class, “Collecting Art Successfully” 00:00:45 Only took one art history class at Skidmore 00:01:10 Started teaching class on purchasing contemporaty art 00:01:30 Trustee at Montclair Art Museum and a trustee of ICI, trustee at Museum of Modern Art, Co-Chair Photography Council at Guggenheim, and involvement at Tang, Vice President of the National Advisory Council 00:03:00 Interest in culture started at Skidmore: lectures, such as Robert Frost 00:03:30 Gave interviews to prospective students, and donate financially 00:04:20 When bump into other Skidmore alum, a lot of friends in the art world 00:04:51 Opened home to Art History class to see personal contemporary art collection 00:05:20 Likes art that’s photograph based, where what you see is not what you get 00:06:00 When language major, you read the greatest works 00:07:00 Loved sociology and psychology courses 00:07:50 Since all girls school, encouraged to cement solid friendships 00:08:00 Didn’t worry about boys, so went to more lectures, met with Professors instead 00:09:00 Memories of Happy Pappy Weekend, when fathers would come to visit Skidmore 00:09:30 Daily life in dorms: had strict curfews, and spent time in other’s rooms as an international student helped students settle into Saratoga 00:10:15 No phones, fax machines, or computers 00:10:30 Wrote papers, had to white out letters, and retype letters 00:10:45 Spoke to parents max once a week, and maybe now with technology lack of independence 00:12:25 Creative Though Matters has always been underpinning of school, all girls school made that possible, because some girls may have been shy to express opinion with strong male voices in the room 00:13:00 Geared to think that we could do anything 00:16:45 Donated with what her and Ian Berry thought best to learn with at Tang 00:18:10 Even if you don’t see friends for a while, pick up where you left off 00:19:30 Tried to engage his personal background for other students to understand his background 00:22:00 Tries to use his resources now to help others get similar oppurnities   � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Rebecca Zosia Stern '16 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ann Schapps Schaffer Location The location of the interview Skidmore College Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Rebecca Stern Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 26/06/2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ann Schapps Schaffer '62 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 6, 2017 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English (eng.) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rebecca Stern Curating Fraces Young Tang Teaching Museum Romance Languages Skidmore College https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/745f0730cd37fb8cb837fcdfdee36694.jpg 121f376bf3035819e8d876a6da25f8b5 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/929d62ce27166cad1c83b8565713c1e0.m4a 8c5c0771aa9aca275334946c61ba3731 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/72884b2f97d7e29e264c8bee0b1140d4.jpg 6996ce0101f9959b285b20315192948a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/86ac753ae12344d373f4f886fba59b22.pdf 3982fb6ceeb301292b73e94aca4f657f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Rizzo, Emily Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Blodget-Holberton, Anne Location The location of the interview Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Jordana Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 6/27/18 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio recording Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1-Jun-18 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rizzo, Emily, 18 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Audio, Photo Language A language of the resource English (eng.) Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio recording Title A name given to the resource Interview with Anne Blodget-Holberton, 73 alumni oral history Skidmore College https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/eb92d7dcc1c2c812a9e6fa1876dd0958.mp4 9031f78cb8d8af947955acd649ff74f8 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/5eaa129b65bb3ae359350118c56061a6.pdf baf863f7e37ca4fc41db23eacbdeee3e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/20d795144eb6938acc7b6b6e3e1a719a.pdf 0b11420b6f22cdcc6575d695a9c11410 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Anne Clothier Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 27, 2021 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Isabelle Jaber Abstract A summary of the resource. Anne Clothier is a historian who works as the Director of Education at the Brookside Museum, home of Saratoga County History Center in Ballston Spa. In this interview, she discussed. maternal medicine, medical history, and its connection to the COVID-19 pandemic (Cholera, Chickenpox, Spanish Flu), and the role of women in establishing formal healthcare in the County. She also discussed the importance of framing and agriculture, and the roles of various demographics, Native Americans, Native American-Quebecois people, objects related to medicine, Native Americans, and industry, women in religious communities, and religion and history in Saratoga County. agriculture chickenpox cholera hospital medicine native american native american-quebecois obstetrics reproductive health spanish flu women women's health https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/9b5fc62598f978d8e17650e1a3081c7f.jpg adca20006157629dd5a6b3d32a93cc85 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Anne Palamountain at the Cube Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/18/2014 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eileen McAdam Subject The topic of the resource Palamountain, Anne Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jordana Dym Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Please cite the photographer if you use this photograph. https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b60aed25c1e4cb0100600aefb1d59eb7.mp3 f2bc5e394b5acd6558f3c6d38293eb04 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/356976c19250c15ad9003f38d71d9dc2.pdf 0eb03c23bcd0aec067380702d8fdb668 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/114d6433b5b634dab978bd9600c9630f.pdf 315c76445ed53535af929525dd00aeb9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview <a title="Eileen McAdam, Sound &amp; Story Project of the Hudson Valley" href="http://www.soundandstory.org/audioproducers.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eileen McAdam, Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley</a> Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Anne Palamountain Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 45:00 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 30, 2018 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Anne Palamountain Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 18, 2014 Language A language of the resource English (en) Has Version A related resource that is a version, edition, or adaptation of the described resource. This interview was used in a memorial video created by the Skidmore College Video team in January 2015, <a title="Anne Palamountain, A Remembrance" href="http://www.skidmore.edu/news/2015/0227-anne-palamountain-video.php">Anne Palamountain: A Remembrance</a>.&nbsp; The video alone can be found on <a title="Anne Palamountain: A Remembrance (video)" href="https://vimeo.com/117927061">Youtube</a> Description An account of the resource Anne Palamountain, wife of Skidmore’s fourth President, Joseph Palamountain, was a vital presence at the College during his 22-year presidency (1965-1986) and beyond. In this interview, she reflects on some her first impressions of Saratoga Springs, the turbulent 60’s, her priorities as Skidmore’s “First Lady”, and the challenges and rewards of her career. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Board of Trustees Campus Culture Campus Move coeducation Collections Employee Tuition Benefit Program Faculty Gender Equity Financial Instability J Erik Jonsson Joseph Palamountain Skidmore History Social Work Department Town-Gown Relations https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d497ba3cb00ddeaa20a030400a0faa81.jpg dcc0f6ff7ceb2708f063716778c72fe6 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/08a8cccca0bc25914b62ced8f98ba55c.mp3 3f4f7b031f4fb8421b4ad66dd2b42256 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Latinx Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sandoval, Alicia Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Arielmy Morel Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Arielmy Morel Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/28/17 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HI251C: History of Latinx in the U.S. Description An account of the resource Arielmy (Ariel) talked about moving from her home country of the Dominican Republic to the U.S. and life as an Afro-Latina in both the U.S. and D.R. Language A language of the resource English, Spanish Abstract A summary of the resource. Arielmy was born in the Dominican Republic in 1998 and moved to the U.S. at the age of three with her older brother and her mother to join her father in New Jersey.  In this interview we discuss her migration story and the reasons for her migration north, yet the focus is her life and experience in the U.S. Ariel identifies herself as an Afro-Latina. Ariel reflects on what it means to be black and latinx in the U.S. as well as how she is seen and treated by U.S. society. Ariel also speaks about her education and her experience with bilingual education and as a latinx person in the education system.  Finally, Ariel reflects on her identity as a mixed-cultural being, as a bilingual being, as a person of color, as a woman, as an immigrant, as a U.S. citizen and as a student. https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3081bdedc3e73020aa74452180f8db9f.jpg 8869f64df1d9fc9e987387dff877a623 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/be858e860befcec07fd69dda47ec889d.mp3 bc75d3d47960924b58771e55820e5a56 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3bf3ab72698aa14d1b4e5b7e47ca9a2f.wav 2a005eb0f720cb9afe4cccf4f2f80015 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2abd52655158f56eef842464f5084abd.pdf 79da71e07be34a13f33e8aeee90c5812 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Barry Goldensohn Years at Skidmore: 1981-2003 Interviewer: Lena Drinkard Location of Interview: West 55th Street, NY, NY Date of Interview: 6/16/2015 00:00:00.00 Header 00:00:33:00 Born in Flatbush Brooklyn, in an immigrant community. Attended a diverse and eclectic James Madison High School with many famous graduates. 00:01:21:00 Barry’s Sister is the famous choreographer Deborah Hay. 00:04:44.24 Went to college at Oberlin University. Met his wife Lorrie Goldensohn and many close friends. 00:7:52.00 Rob and Peggy Boyers found out that Barry could be hired at Skidmore College because Hampshire does not have tenure. 00:8:31.20 Barry takes us through a day at Skidmore as a Professor. Taught two literature classes and one workshop a week and saw students in between and after classes. Discusses senior thesis informal meetings for a potluck dinner. 00:11:17.00 “A perfect professor of poetry.” 00:15:51.15 Barry discusses the students he stays in touch with. 00:19:03.08 Discusses Skidmore’s approach to education. 00:24:57.13 Barry talks about the writing critiques and workshops he led for students. 00:27:22.15 The writing process. 00:27:26:20 “If there’s one thing I know about my friend Barry Goldensohn, it’s that he dislikes sweet food, sweet music, sweet literature” - Peg Boyers. 00:29:23.22 Rob Boyers and the liveliness of Salmagundi and other faculty members is what kept Barry at Skidmore. “Saratoga’s a one horse town and you’re the horse.” 00:32:22.17 Barry on what makes a successful marriage. 00:39:50.28 Barry ended up teaching three to four classes a semester with students who know him and one another very well. 00:45:44 “I only retired from teaching not from writing.” The way he taught took a lot of time, so he needed more time for his life. � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/65e7c7c64e3013ecb9f169b96e98fcb1.pdf 430983a94293ac4a42e5bcafda2e9139 PDF Text Text Interview with Barry Goldensohn by Lena Drinkard, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, April 1, 2017. Lena Drinkard: This is Lena Drinkard, interviewing for Skidmore Retiree Memory Project. I am with Barry Goldensohn in New York City and it is April 1st, 2017. Barry, I’d like to start off my giving you a chance to introduce yourself and talk about where and when you were born. Barry Goldensohn: I was born in Brooklyn, in an area that used to be called something like Flatbush, and now is probably called something else. Went to grade school and high school in an overheated, immigrant-family community—extended community. Pretty varied, my closest friends in high school were a mixture of Italian, German, Greek and Jewish. The—My high school was just a neighborhood high school but its graduates are Ruth Bader Ginsburg, my sister who’s a very famous choreographer Deborah Hay, and Chuck Schumer, Norm Coleman (used to be governor of Michigan or Minnesota, something like that), five nobel prize winners—Ruth Bader Ginsburg did I mention her? And… full of second and first generation immigrant families where there was a lot of pressure to succeed on the part of the kids. My family came from, my mother’s family came from Odessa, and my grandfather was an officer in the (...) army. They left Odessa after the great purge, the great pregome, that drove all the jews out of Odessa in 1905, after the potential episode. And, it was a family that followed the pattern of Odesza families. There was one gifted child in the family, that was my mother, so the family all sacrificed and sacrificed so she could have her ballet lessons. She studied with a student of Magnitsky who would drive up to the mental hospital that Magnitsky was at at the Hudson and bring him down to teach classes. Which was spectacularly for my mother because he really took a shrine to her, regarded her as very special, sent her off to work at an LA company in New York. Then, she got rheumatic fever, which damaged her heart so she taught ballet for the rest of her life. But my sister had no choice. Choice of a career. Nor did my daughter. My mother started on my daughter right away, working on her flexibility. As an infant, Mind you. [Laughs] But my sister stayed with it my daughter didn’t. I got brought on and put into ballet classes when I was a kid because it was cheaper than getting a babysitter. It took for my sister but it didn’t take for me. I left at thirteen. Being dragged to the studio, I had no ability whatsoever. But again, this was James Madison high school. And then in my junior year I took a national test where the Ford foundation early admission scholarship and I wound up at Oberlin. I wanted to go to Columbia but they had no dorm room’s for students for the first couple of years and it would have been three hours a day commuting from Brooklyn. And Yale had pulled out of it at that point. And I was forbidden to to go University of Chicago by a father of one of my close friends who persuaded my parents that the school had been ruined by John Maynard Hutchins. Remember him? He turned it into a very progressive, wonderful school, but I wound up at Oberlin in the process of elimination. Met my wife and got married there and met my closest, my oldest friends. �LD: Did you start studying poetry at Oberlin? BG: In High School. And had a very good, wonderful teacher. Very inspiring and sophisticated. LD: So how did you end up at Skidmore? BG: I was the Dean of Humanities and Arts at Hampshire College before I was at Skidmore and decided that I was writing too little and was persuaded by a psychiatrist friend, that if I wanted more time at writing I should quit my dean’s job which was too engrossing. So I applied to Skidmore and got a job almost by accident as it turned out. The committee chose me but then it went up to the dean and the president and they said oh we can’t accept him, he’s a dean and he’s probably got tenure and we can’t hire people with tenure. Bob Boyers was giving some lectures at Northwestern University and was sitting on a poetry segment and of all things, the teacher was teaching a bunch of my poems. So Bob walked into the faculty lounge with that teacher, and said to him as he entered the room, oh we tried to hire him but we couldn’t because he’s got tenure at Hampshire. And a voice in the back of the room said, “they don’t have tenure at Hampshire.” So Bob called up Peggy, asked her to confirm that, and if that was in fact the case, tell the dean and tell the committee and I wound up getting invited for an interview [Laughs] That’s enough background. LD: Can you take me through a day at Skidmore as a Professor? BG: Well, a day, interesting. Just teaching literally two literature classes and one workshop a week So, and then seeing students in between and after classes. And I wound up often teaching three or four classes a semester because I had a bunch of students who wanted to do their senior thesis in writing poetry, poetry writing. So they met as an informal group but as a class. And we’d meet in the meaning so there wouldn’t be schedule conflicts with their other classes. Often over a potluck dinner. Then it would go on sometimes into the wee hours at either my house or one of their apartments. So it was kind of a senior seminar, right? Every semester I taught a course I loved which was The Introduction to Poetry. I taught it sort of half as a history of English poetry class and half as a course of methods and different types of methods, different historical periods. Starting with Chaucer and winding up with contemporary poets, spending a lot of time with seventeenth century and nineteenth century. I mixed up along the way. And then I taught seventeenth century poetry. My first lecture in that class was Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Al of the work of John Milton was written in the seventeenth century. Some of the greatest poets in language and we’re not going to look at them at all [Laughs] You’ll have to get them in other courses and I focused on the lyrical poems of the seventeenth century. And then writing workshops, and other intro fiction classes. �LD: When I spoke to Professor Goodwin she described you as the “perfect professor of poetry.” BG: What could she have meant by that? LD: I’d like to know what you think! BG: Well, I was actively involved in making it, and reading it, and teaching it as well. So I brought together a pretty full background in the literature and of course the poets concerned with making poems and how poems are made. Looking at the students, how poems are made, how these particular poems are made. LD: Can you talk about your relationship with the students? BG: As my wife puts it describing her students at Vassar, “Oh you fall in love with a few students every year” and I think that’s pretty true. And I like students and in general, I liked teaching them. I liked expanding their minds, and expanding their knowledge. And I was trying to teach them to love what I love, and maybe that’s what Susan was talking about. Also, teaching writing courses at Skidmore, generally I worked with students for 3-4 years and they got to be my friends. You know, ordinary lit teachers don’t have that experience, working semester after semester with the same students. You know you’ll take one course with Professor Boyers maybe the intro to fiction course and another fiction course but that’s about it. Or a victorian lit course, you’d take a three courses in the course of four years. Anyway, my students worked with me semester after semester after semester. Because you could repeat workshops and so, it was the especially nice part of the kind of teaching I’ve done over the years, that you got to know the students very well. LD: Can you think of one student in particular that you had that had an impact on you during your time at Skidmore? BG: That had an impact on me yeah. Well, Mark Woodward, who stayed around working at Salmagundi. Mark did a lot of work with both Bob and me, and has stayed writing and writing. But in this neighborhood there are a couple of students who, anyone you really know and care about has an impact on you. And I went to a reading earlier, or last weekend, by one of my Skidmore students who lives in Austin now but, showed me a draft of her book, she said, it doesn’t have the dedications in the book so I’ll have to send you a regular copy!. Jardeen Lebair, is a wonderful writer, only student I remember who won both our jury poetry and fiction prize in the same year. Remarkably talented student. But there are a lot of students I stay in touch with. �One of my former students, Laura Marshall lives a few blocks up on the west side. Bruce Baker, who’s a very very gifted student, star of the hockey team and he’s now coaching… he’s deeply involved in the city since he’s graduated with minority education, education of the deprived. So he coaches for different hockey teams ad well as teaching. He started off on the ground floor for Teach of America. He was the recruiter for Teach of America and then he said, “Why am I recruiting people to do something that I should do myself?” So he wound up teaching in the city schools, but one because he was male and because he was white, and because he is movie-star handsome, he became a very popular teacher. So popular, that he decided to have a semi-pro hockey career while he was teaching, so they’d keep him on a semester a year while the other semester he’d be playing hockey. He explained to me how, he lives on this block, so we see him, and of course in his hockey career he’s broken every bone—small—bone in his body. He’s also a coach for Columbia's informal hockey team, it’s not a varsity sport. But I don’t know there’s been a lot of students over the course of the years I’ve come to love and stayed very close too and it’s a significant part of our social life, my relationship with former former students, not only from here but from Hampshire and Goddard. Now, Goddard in the mid-sixties when I got there was a magnet school for the daring and the adventurous student. That resident undergraduate program no longer exists. But my students there were spectacularly good. A lot of them are pulitzer prize winners and guggenheim winners and you know major award winners. One of you I’m sure you know of, the playwright David Mamet, and I’ve had two students while we’ve been here in New York. Naomi Wallace who was a Hampshire student and Mammoth. LD: How would you describe Skidmore at the time that you taught, if you describe Goddard as the school for the, can you fill in the blank for Skidmore? BG: Skidmore had a much more traditional approach to education, like the schools I went to, like Oberlin than Hampshire or Goddard. My Hampshire students—I don’t want to slight them either, two of my senior thesis students went on to win Macarthur Genius awards. Naomi Wallace was one of them and Peter Cole who has been teaching one semester at Yale and the other semester living in Jerusalem and running a press for Israeli and Palestinian poets, crossing a lot of boundaries. But Goddard was more a traditional education in a way for someone who has devoted his life to advanced, progressive schools. Like the progressive high school we started early in the sixties, in the Bay Area with a bunch of quaker friends. That was at the very beginning of a whole rash of progressive high schools that were starting to emerge and people would come, we’d often have more visitors than students. LD: What year was this? �BG: That was ‘62-’65 and I graduated with the first graduating class I wanted to go back to college teaching. But my first graduating class of students went to Reed, Stanford, Santa-Cruz. They were on the board of the student-faculty administration group that was defining Santa-Cruz which is interesting. And other schools within the california system. Interesting group of students. That school, after the people that started it passed it on to other faculty members, it got sort of swept up as a southern most adjunct of the haight-ashbury counter-cultures and it was destroyed basically by that it became a fairly destructive place and only lasted a few years. But it was good for the students who went there. One of the student went to Oxford with a grant and got first in PPE, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, that’s degree you get if you want to be prime-minister. Almost all of the proceeding prime-ministers and most of the subsequent prime-ministers had that degree first. LD: It seems like you really knew and understood each student you had— BG: Oh, I would never say that [laughs] LD: Do you think the types of students changed at Skidmore from when you first got there to when you retired? BG: I’m not sure. I taught for about twenty-two years. There seemed to be always, a leavening of very committed and very serious students. I taught fairly esoteric courses. Seventeenth century poetry, poetry writing, and the Intro to Poetry course, that was the longest draw class of the largest cross-section of students. But by and large, the students who went on to work with me, were a largely self-selected group, so I find it hard to generalize about the general run of students. And I heard one of my students saying to someone else, “Oh I would never dare offer Shitty work to Professor Goldensohn.” With a self-selected crew that knew I expected a lot from them, they worked hard. So, I don’t know if that’s the whole student body it’s hard to generalize but they were always enough of those to keep my classes full. LD: Is it challenging to grade someone else's creative writing? BG: Oh, I hardly think of grades. The really challenging part is discussing them. And how you talk it over in the group, in the workshop and individually. What to say, often the harsh things to say, that will help them see the problems that they are running into. [Laughs] Another overheard conversation. I was talking to one of my students in my office and three of my students were right outside my office, having a raucous so I couldn’t help overhearing, conversation about “You know what he said to me?” “ You know what he said to me?” You know, like throw this away or that’s terrible! Or start over again! But if you’re going to teach writing seriously, you have to be candid about what they’re doing. And it’s hard, you try to be rigorous but teaching �poetry writing, which is the main thing at Skidmore has these contradictory elements. You want rigorous attention to what you’re doing, but you don’t want to lose as in any art, the sense of play in getting there. Because a lot of the most creative work comes with playing with it. Play with it play with i! I told my students. You have to catch your mind at its most expansive and least predictable moments. Often this is helped by just lying down. You know, your mind often releases itself more creatively, at the moment before you fall asleep or at the moment you’re waking up. Or when you’re just lying down. I remember one of my students saying “Oh he thinks we do our best work on our backs!” [Laughs] But it’s being open to the mind at play and not working in predictable grooves. And then showing it to people that will tell you the truth about what you’re experiencing. LD: How do you experience criticisms? BG: Well, Peggy Boyers. Just last week, I showed her a draft of a poem. And she said, “Barry, it’s too sweet!” [Laughs] And I said Peggy, you’re the person I remember saying,” If there's one thing I know about my friend Barry Goldensohn, It’s that he dislikes sweet food, sweet music, sweet literature. I think she’s right. And as a matter of fact, I had written the word “sweet” a number of times and swept them out. She was right, I was giving into the sentimental side of myself. It had to do with being eighty and losing a lot of your friends. You know? And that comes with being eighty. It’s in some ways an apologetic… and how do you keep going when people are dying? People you love are dying? So I took some sweetness out. It didn’t belong in that poem. LD: So it sounds like your identity as a writer… well everyone’s identity as a writer changes throughout their lives, in what specific experiences they are going through, but when you were at Skidmore as a professor, how did you divide your time between teaching and writing? And because you were surrounded by Peggy Boyers, and Rob Boyers and all these faculty members that were passionate about poetry did that inspire you? BG: It’s what kept me at Skidmore. It was Bob and the liveliness of the Salmagundi world he created. I used to tease him by saying, Saratoga’s a one horse town and you’re the horse. [Laughs] But Salmagundi brought conferences together every year, it brought fascinating people every year, so I got to know and be friends with Susan Sontag (who I had actually known earlier from my New York City Days) and George Steiner, and all sorts of fascinating people, intelligent people. I got an offer for both Lorrie and I to teach at University of Florida, just move down there from Iowa, (oh I left out that I taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop for a couple of years) and it enabled Lorrie to get a free PHD because she was a faculty wife. LD: And at the time you were at Skidmore she was at Vassar. �BG: Well we lived in Saratoga, and I would drop her off Tuesday morning on this train and pick her up Thursday night. And she would teach all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, all day Thursday. As the president of Hampshire said to me, when she found out, “Oh my god that sounds like the kind of relationship where your marriage is going to last forever.” Because there’s just enough space between you. And it happens, we have our sixty-first anniversary coming up, LD: What’s the secret to a long—? BG: Hanging in there. LD: Can you elaborate? BG: Becoming one another’s best friend. My wife says, “learning to understand the things that are difficult about the person you’re with,” which is profounder than “hanging in there.” LD: And she writes poems as well… BG: Yes, she’s my first reader always. LD: What were some of the things you guys did in Saratoga at the time? Because as you said, it’s a one horse… BG: Hanging out with Bob and Peg and the other writers. One of my former students from Goddard, Catherine Davis, I recruited her for teaching poetry at Skidmore and we hung out a lot. And, she called me up and told me I was offered a job at University of Washington for half the work and twice the pay, what should I do? And I said, if I ever heard of a no brainer in my life.. LD: Was there anything about Skidmore that you disliked during your time there? Or what was challenging? BG: Well, it’s hard to say. I’m not a good hater. Let me tell you one of the things I liked a lot. The English Department was very congenial, there was not a divided part department. As a Dean at Hampshire, none of my senior faculty were on speaking terms with one another. That happens in schools and departments. I was the Dean of Humanities and Arts. I mean that’s ridiculous!. Lorrie’s Vassar department was which she called a “dysfunctional family.” We saw one of her colleagues recently and I said, “Oh how is so and so?” and she says, “Urg.. She’s still teaching…” [Laughs] “I mean this is a woman in her late seventies I’m speaking to, still carrying �over the animosity from her teaching years, and it deeply divided… that’s never been the case in my years at Skidmore. The only experience I had like that was when I was at Iowa. The Writing Workshop was loosely related to the English Department. And the English Department had a wonderful guy.. was what the rest of the school called “happy valley” because he was just great at human relationships. He then moved to take over the English Department at Suny Albany, I think his name was John Gerber, and when i took over the Hampshire job, I brought him down to Albany and asked him how did you do it? How did you create such a peaceful environment and unified community? And he said, it wasn’t me, it was the years. It was in the sixties and seventies when everything was expanding and I never had to get rid of anyone for budgetary reasons and all I could do was hire people, and set things up. It was the time, but that underlies his genuine openness to people that made that experience at Iowa so wonderful. What he had to do at Albay was very difficult which was cut down the undergraduate programs because Albany had no right offering a doctorate. LD: What do you think made the English department at Skidmore such a unit at that time? BG: I don’t know, I asked Bob Boyers at the time if it was always like that and he said during the Vietnam war, political divides really split up the department but then they got back together or at least by the time I got there it seemed like a congenial group of people. LD: And then did you watch, sort of, new faculty members come in throughout the years and it shifter? BG: Yeah. One of them, Susannah MIntz, who is chair is getting married so I offered her (.....) LD: And those sort of soirees you mentioned, where you would sit with students and have a seminar at houses? Did that happen the entire time because— BG: Yes, pretty much. After a year, the pattern became that I would have a bunch of students. Say six- ten independent students wanting to work on poetry as their senior projects and I realized I would be dead meeting with them every week as a service session and that they had a lot to learn from one another, so they would sign up for an independent study but we met as a group. The faculty thought I was crazy for teaching three, four classes. But that was fun. It was students who knew me well, and one another well, which means they could speak very cANDIDLY TO one another. I remember students saying once in class about a poem, “that’s the stupidest poem I’ve ever read in my life!” In a thick New York accent and the student who wrote it said, “Oh you know… I wrote it on my way to class and I really shouldn’t have offered it. [Laughs] And You know, students could hear one another say things like that, and they didn’t have to be mandy-pandy with one another. You try to create in your class a series with a respect �one another, as people who are trying to learn to do something very difficult, to write a poem. They had to be able to speak to one another and say I think you should change this. And then those exchanges would be very illuminating. LD: I’ve wondered if we’ve sort of lost something over the years because the relationship you describe with your students, *Lorrie walks in * it feels like there are more boundaries implemented at Skidmore between the Professor’s and the students and each other. It feels like there are more unspoken rules about you know, a maybe more professional relationship established today? BG: Well, I thought my relationship with my students was very professional ​about​ writing poetry. Uh, a greater, are you talking about a greater area of things you can’t talk about? LD: Mhm, yeah. BG: You know, I’ve thought about that a lot. [Lorrie talks to Barry] BG: No one taking a course in seventeenth century who has been sexually traumatized should take a course in Shakespeare’s tragedies or comedies for that matter, or seventeenth century poetry which is often playful and its respect for women was less accompanied with attitudes about male and female roles. Very unusual. One of my favorite eighteenth century poets, was about one of the great boundary breaking woman who was irreverent and a giant figure in her age, her name was Aphra Bayne. I would blush now to recite her most famous poem. You know it’s really hard to say. The pre-selection process that I was talking about I think would have… and also the atmosphere, the free give and take served as a kind of barrier for people whose vulnerabilities would now allow them to do that. Because they were open. It was an open secret, so to speak. Very much self-selected. Just as it is an open secret that terrible things happen in Hamlet and Othello and Macbeth. You can’t taming of the shrew for the instance, is a brilliant comic fantasia on sex roles or gender roles. And the women keep their power. The shrew says you “marry me you marry my tongue.” LD: Okay, well we’re reaching the end of the interview. I’m wondering if there's anything we didn’t get to that you’d like to talk about or share. Maybe a story or some piece of information that you’d like to end with. BG: No, I’d just like to say I really liked teaching at Skidmore. But I put a lot of work into dealing with student papers and was eager to retire at sixty-five to have more time of my own for my own writing. I’ve written three books since then. Lorrie’s written three ever since she’s �retired. We’re… as much as I like teaching, I only retired from teaching ​not ​from writing. Because the way I taught took a lot of time, and I wanted more time for myself. LD: That’s a great place to end .Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it! BG: I enjoyed it! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lena Drinkard Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Barry Goldensohn Location The location of the interview New York City Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Lena Drinkard Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 4/26/17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview With Barry Goldensohn Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 1, 2017 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Retiree Memory Project Language A language of the resource eng Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. "Interview with Barry Goldensohn," Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project, accessed April 26, 2017, http://ssmp.skidmore.edu/admin/items/show/620 Description An account of the resource Barry Goldensohn came to Skidmore in 1981 as professor for poetry in the English department. In this interview, he discusses everything from the diverse Brooklyn community in which he was raised, to his experiences teaching and writing alongside his wife, Lorrie Goldensohn. He also describes his close relationship with his students—many of which went on to find immense success as writers. Despite his love for teaching, Barry left Skidmore so that he could devote all of his time to his true passion—writing. Academic Rigor Campus Culture Curriculum English Department Faculty and Administrative Relations Faculty and Student Relations Salmagundi https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/f861993b114c100c3263b37845a092c0.jpg c567d45deea3a7a40f90b4fc5c337722 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/76435908edb223aba598d3c046c4a656.mp3 c9cc240c82a791c9e84da66dda16fc63 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Latinx Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Mulhern, Hayley Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Beatriz Loyola Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Beatriz Loyola Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/30/17 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HI251C: History of Latinx in the U.S. Language A language of the resource English bicultural culture education family Gender identity immigration language Latinx Mexico migration Nationality oral history Skidmore College Skidmore faculty work https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/28081795ff072709d8b89c96ebf79ad3.mp3 b1557e832d26a1e1256b73efa012346c https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c32c9616b15b137afcdafe99afaa0410.pdf 268447d0d96f03406078941b84899158 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2cb3d0267c2b5c4b5786368ab152365a.mp4 614132ede777ac68dde6c88d2e649f0d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Saratoga County Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Will Kertzmann Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ben Kemp Location The location of the interview Zoom Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp4 audio recording Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Ben Kemp Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 30, 2021 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Will Kertzman Abstract A summary of the resource. Interview with Ben Kemp, director of Grant Cottage which included discussion of the history of the towns of Corinth, Greenfield, and Schuylerville in Saratoga County, challenges and programming at the Cottage (in Wilton, NY). He also reflected on ways in which wealthy people had different experiences than "common folk." colonial Corinth glass bottle Greenfield Saratoga Springs schuylerville https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/cc8038814c5e62f770f4bac5413ef3b5.JPG 2869b9d9a3cf0e65dda9587598353851 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8b70ad1e4a064010f854d607b987498d.mp3 fb50e97167f893d59365fdaeccc83337 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1844591779534a0324bb2be123a09160.pdf 6211e04b033deb7d8269c8be1de3bbee https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/bafa16de22996c19723c641191f07468.JPG 7a1b9774eb6b3f32579317e95e22375e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/7abc3a4b940ddbc03035eb0a01548878.JPG c788632722d7d840f347bdd10a00362c https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1ce586bc5b14dd64b75ad8ee5ec35d6a.JPG 598bc109b6c1b08b410fe9a408ddc908 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/615b531a4fb466502ffabc4c9fa8b6ca.JPG 45606424bc352d16ceb8fb8208e1fe89 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/25ba143b7c301ecb415263c0b7f2725e.pdf c1ece65511f6074dfa0abd8411e9b7c6 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/bcdaafd5f24bb7942cca1ccb8a0c5acf.pdf f7f539e4f9e1f79d4e8ffa36d77a3327 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a3ff99faf8ea448fa30520c4cf4777f8.pdf 2828f0342526d891a429ae8368be35dd https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/6d9743a03fda2099f8d2aa847a31db64.mp3 b5c2561388de58e1571c03021a19b19b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/50821ea7a3ad7958932123cbdc0cb6b8.m4a 5db3f4f36182b00eaf1bb342fbc1caae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Milan Stimler Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Beverly Mastrianni Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Beverly Mastrianni Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 28, 2019 Language A language of the resource English Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource This is an interview with Beverly Mastrianni for the Skidmore Saratoga memory Project. Mastrianni is an alumna of Skidmore College, arts advocate, and artist in Saratoga Springs. She chronicles her work with the community and in the studio in this ninety minute interview. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Milan Stimler, '21 Subject The topic of the resource Interview with Beverly Mastrianni Date Created Date of creation of the resource. October 28th 2019 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d928fd68586b0ecef14421ab921c9cb9.jpg d8e547a74527a32487160313c72776d2 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/014354824acba652bc94fe3b6c36f939.mp3 daae92dd6dac24b9fb947651281ec98a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3ea5d8ce2e62cb2c85ca13bc6e9aa1d2.pdf 996d9dd58a2cf6c219693fc421664e8d https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b779d7b5cc662d2605a58e6ed8e0a6dd.pdf c2f1780e7b6ff38e96f80c4016c574a1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Emily Meagher (Class of 2016) Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bill Fox Location The location of the interview Skidmore College Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:11:49 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 02/10/21 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill Fox Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 12, 2016 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Abstract A summary of the resource. Interview with Bill Fox by Emily Meagher, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, May 12, 2016. Date Submitted Date of submission of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Submitted may be relevant are a thesis (submitted to a university department) or an article (submitted to a journal). November 23, 2020 Description An account of the resource Bill Fox was a member of Skidmore’s sociology faculty from 1976 to 2011. During his 35 years of service to the College, he was a valued teacher in his discipline and much appreciated mentor to many junior colleagues. He chaired the Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Department for multiple terms and served on numerous all-college committees. In this interview he reflects on educational quality at Skidmore; early IT support of quantitative teaching; student-faculty interactions; chairing a joint department; and changes in community life, the physical campus, the student body, academic administration, and the all-college curriculum during his tenure. He ends by musing on the personal impact of a professional life spent at Skidmore. 4-1-4 Academic Calendar David Porter Diversity Eric Weller Fran Hoffman Interdisciplinary Collaboration J. Erik Jonsson Liberal Arts Education Library Renovation Phyllis Roth Skidmore Social Life https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3aff948070e5ec89a96f823efb4a0bec.jpg dc5224e6215ae7a0cccf896c560e38ee https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/c4cf925ee4b65fdec31f5dd5439dd4f6.m4a 217f5d3ac941f72d96b6ff1e87e70336 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bill Ladd Interview https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1a9bb39223da7c413d7200ee47dee61d.pdf d23b0809cfbedf3ce7a4650ec81f5ae3 PDF Text Text Ladd 1 Interview with Bill Ladd by Harry Sultan, Skidmore College Saratoga Memory Project, Skidmore College, NY June 1st, 2018 Harry Sultan: Who are you? Bill Ladd: Better question. Like, why don't we try... you know, I have so many stories, just you need to be more direct. HS: Okay, let's just start, if you could introduce yourself. BL: Sure, my name is BIll Ladd, I'm class of '83 and I am a trustee on Skidmore's Board of Trustees. HS: Where are you from? BL: I'm originally from Wayne, Maine, 04284. And I live in, currently, Framingham Massachusetts. HS: What does it feel like to be back at Skidmore? BL: I'm here a lot. I love it, um I was just here two weeks ago for the trustees meeting and commencement but this is nice because I'm with my classmates. And it's a great, we've just have always had a great class. So I love seeing not only my classmates but also the people I encountered my six years on the alumni board as chair of reunions so I would come every year and meet - oh, and I also called every single alum who had a reunion, and that's 29,000 people and I started with my 8th grade teacher Mrs. Jane Chilcott. HS: Even if you come back so often, is there one thing you look forward particularly for coming back to Skidmore? BL: Well first of all, the campus is georgious; but it's always the people, because the people make the college. And from every spectrum of groundskeeping, - they call it campus safety now, but for me it'll always be campus security - to everybody, it's just a great place to be. I mean literally, it changed my life, and I owe Skidmore my life. It's always great. HS: Was there one specific moment at Skidmore that you felt like was really pivotal in changing your life? �Ladd 2 BL: There are so many. Skidmore; I just had breakfast with a couple of my professors and they always raised the bar just a little bit higher than I ever could touch. And they brooked none of my charms which - I can be pretty charming - but um, and I owe them that, because they always taught me to do my very best and in fact, the late and great Phyllis Roth used to say, "is this your very best work?" and I'd have to roll my eyes and just "ugggggh no". And she'd say, "okay, you have until 5 o'clock to make it better", and I'm like 'okay'. And that has lasted me all my life. HS: What kind of classes were you taking with these great professors? BL: Um English, Psychology, History - Tudor History. I just saw my professor, Pat Lee, and literally she's just phenomenal. Susan Cress, um Joanna San Grando, of course I was a theater major so I would say Caroline Anderson, you know instilled in me, real pre-professional standards and yea, I will always be in debt to them. HS: So what was your average week like? BL: (laughs) Psychotic. As a theater major we were just happy to see the sun, cause we were always - if you weren't in class, you were in rehearsal, or getting ready for rehearsal or in performance and it was just non stop, so. There's a story of my senior year, I was just running like a gerbil on a treadmill and I get this letter from Academic Advising and I though 'oh noooo'. And I'm standing there in Case Center staring at Ladd Hall which was named for my grandparents and I'm thinking, 'how do I tell my grandparents I'm getting kicked out my senior year?'. So I sucked it up and I opened it and it said, 'congratulations, you've made dean's list' and I'm like 'get out of here, that can't happen'. And I went up to Academic Advising, and they said 'no, here're your grades' and I'm like, 'how did that happen? I don't know'. So that was a good moment too. HS: So is there any feeling, explain what it must feel like to go back into that place where you spent so much time as a student and know that after all those years you made Dean's List. �Ladd 3 BL: Yea, you know I never thought of myself as a good student. But it was just, every corridor has a memory and I think about how I grew as a person, my classmates, both who are here and not here anymore and just like, I never saw myself as a trustee, and here I am a third generation trustee which is kind of weird; it's kind of like getting kicked up to the grownups table at thanksgiving. You're there and you're like, 'am I really supposed to be here?' but the answer is yes, I am. But it's a really humbling feeling because I served the college and the students and I have the kids, I meet as many kids as I can and I ask them to call me either Bill or Uncle Bill but if you call me Mr. Ladd, I'll slap the taste out of your mouth. C'mon, let's get away from that because when you have your name on a couple of buildings people can get kind of freaked, so I'm like, 'everybody breathe. And unclench. All is well'. I'm just paying it forward. HS: And when you walk around campus all these times you've come back, is there one place that really evokes-- BL: There're so many. Kimball, my freshman dorm and the pantheon of champions, is always wonderful. It's, I just take the time, you know when I drive up onto campus, especially as a trustee they don't allow you to have a whole lot of free time so I just look and take it all in, the green, the quad, it's definitely georgious. I think about, we used to always have to perform in the field house, course now you have a theater - not that I'm bitter - but I spend so much time in Colton House where Alumni Affairs is, and in North Hall where Advancement is and it's just, you know, I'm really honored to be able to come back in the capacity that I am and be the leader that I am, which is something I'm always trying to work with. HS: Do you remember your first night in Kimbal? BL: I do. When I pulled up in my orange Volkswagon Rabbit diesel. The first two people I saw were Jim van Law and Mark Venter and I remember going and meeting my roommate for the very first time who, spoiler alert, teaches here now - Peter McCarthy. Country mouse, city mouse, it was kind of like that. And it was just, yea, we all just kind of gathered and went to the dining hall, which is �Ladd 4 lightyears in difference from the palace that you have now. I don't want to hear nobody complain about no food cause it was not like that back in the day. And we just all coalesced. HS: And did you ever for a second think, as a freshmen back then that this is where you'd be now. BL: (laughs) Oh sure! Not hardly, are you kidding? I was just happy to graduate and then it was like, you know, it was just not even on my radar. Just wasn't. HS: And so other than some theater classes and some english classes, what other activities did you take part in? BL: Do you know anything about being a theater major? Hello? It's um, I remember all the movies on campus, you know they had a lot of horror pictures back in the day like when a stranger calls and the tag line is - the original, not the horrible remake - it's, 'have you checked the children' and so what we would do is, after the movie, we would wait about an hour and then we had extension phones in each of the suites around campus and we would call ya know, Penfield which is an all female dorm and somebody would pick up the phone and we'd say, 'have you checked the children', and you'd hear screaming, and we were like "yes, yes! Good stuff!", we'd get really immature stuff like that which I'm very - I wear with a badge of pride. Dressing up as Frankenfurter for Rocky Horror Picture Show, um it was just a lot of work in theater and going downtown, I wasn't really a bar guy because we didn't have time. You know? But we did go to the Exec which had amazing steak fries, that's where the theater crowd hung out. We went to the rafters - disco, woot woot - good stuff. Yea, but it was wonderful, and we get to talk about these situations with our classmates who are here at reunion which is nice. HS: Did you study abroad? BL: No I did not. I couldn't figure that out in my head; how I could do that and then come back in and get plugged in for the spring shows, if you had left in fall. My son did, he figured that out, but I did not. So, but I lived abroad, it was okay. �Ladd 5 HS: So what was your senior year like, wrapping things up did you have a senior project or senior performance? BL: It was a play, it was you know, coming to grips with, well what're we going to do after graduation and during my - in 1980, I did my first movie while I was still a student here. And back in the day, in the theater department movies were looked down upon - it's all about the theater - well I like movies, I like TV, so just trying to figure out what my next steps were but also, when I graduated I was there with like my dad who was a trustee, my grandmother who was the very first alum to be a trustee and I'm thinking, 'okay'. And of course my amazing class, and it was just trying to be able to put those pieces together and, but I'll tell ya that senior year went by in a snap. When you tell the kids, 'look, just stop, look around, try to be present, remember this moment right now because it'll be gone' and all of a sudden, they're in May and they're walking up in front of you. HS: So if you could talk to your freshmen year self right now, what would you tell him? BL: That's a great question. Um, I don't know, just be you. And thankfully I was, but just relax cause, well I am the first openly gay trustee at Skidmore, and I didn't come out until I was 25. But at that point it wasn't really, there wasn't really the atmosphere to be okay with that. So I would just say, just you know, as my grandmother used to say, 'you don't always have to tell all you know'. Which is one of my, I have a collection of sayings from her. I would just say, you know, 'continue to be you' and, 'you are enough'. That's what I tell my son all the time. Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn't. HS: Did you have a core group of friends? BL: I was very blessed to have a lot of friends in varying degrees, I mean different majors and it was just a good group of, I mean I'm still here, one of my sophomore roommates, we were in the only sophomore triple on campus, um two art history majors and a theater major - hilarity ensues - you know, some of the things we did. You know we just collected friends. And um, we were never in the �Ladd 6 popular crowd, and I still couldn't figure out how that happened, but um these many years later we're making new friends, ya know we're not the same people as we were when we were students, thank god. Some of us have grown up and gone very different ways, I mean, I was a theater major, so naturally after 35 years in motion pictures I'm a pastor. Yes. Gods got a sense of humor. But no, that was the great thing, I didn't have time for sports, though I should have played tennis but I couldn't figure out a way to get another couple of hours in the day. Just wasn't gonna work. HS: Could you bring it back to that sophomore year triple for a little bit? BL: Oh god it was great. Well we had a really sucky number, and we were like, okay what do we do? Well there's one way to keep on campus, we should become a triple, we kind of looked at each-other. We all lived in Kimbal, and we said, okay let's do this. And then we had, we got our number, we got our room, and I chose the modular unit, it was my little perch. And it was really terrific. We had such a great time. There's a famous comedy album called, When You're in Love the Whole World is Jewish and we would play that nightly and we would just laugh ourselves to sleep. It was just so much fun. We did have some, there were some romantic exploits of my roommates that were interesting, but you know it was just terrific, and our other roommate who cannot be here, he lives in the next town over from me in Massachusetts and so that's really great. Yea we were just in, they were like "they put you three in a triple?". Well that's what triple means, three. Um, and it's just the stuff of legend, we would terrorize parents during parents weekend by opening up a window and going, 'Mommy? Mom, I'm lost' and watching the, ah so good. So naturally the ministry called. It's one of those things, why did they put them together. And 35 years later, we are still very close so that's terrific. HS: So what was a normal Friday night for you? BL: No such thing, they all kind of blended. Are you in rehearsal, okay you go through classes and then literally you had like maybe five or ten minutes to gobble down �Ladd 7 your meal and then run back to rehearsal and then, and that's, I do have a bad eating habit because of Skidmore. I can eat a meal in five minutes which is not always good. But, yea it's like 'what's going on this weekend? What're the movies? Anything good?". Or sometimes we'd drive out and, you know, to the old Pyramid Mall and see horror pictures like the Fog - that was really great - and the original Friday the 13th, you know, always fun. American Warewolf and yea, it was just, kind of one of those moments. Back in the day, McDonalds used to have the shamrock shakes and we would go downtown cause thats where McDonalds was, and get a shamrock shake and would say, "look! it's the exorcist" and go "bleaah". Again, not the high mark of taste in humor, but we were young and stupid. Um, that would be, we would make our own fun but it was, we spent a lot of time on campus ya know, the whole bars and drinking thing just wasn't mine. HS: So did you ever interact with the locals and the local businesses? BL: Always, cause you know, when you did go downtown that's just who you were with and coming from a very small town you really don't want to show yourself off not to be a good neighbor, let's just put it that way. And in fact, Steve Sullivan who's class of '78, he'd graduated before but he was always very connected to Skidmore and owns Old Bryan Inn, and Longfellows and connected me to the folks in town and so I just always looked at Saratoga as an extension of Skidmore and really great relationships. And I still do, I really love coming back, I think Saratoga is just an amazing place. HS: Are there any establishments that you went to in college that you look forward to coming back to now BL: Well a lot of them are closed. Theres The Parting Glass, always was great. Of course Old Bryan Inn, hello, nat'(urally). But a lot of the, Mrs. Londons, a lot of the places have since gone by the wayside because that's what happens as time passes. And oh, sorry OBI still has the best french onion soup. Old Bryan Inn. It's in a little crock and it's got that molten cheese over the top, forget it that's just, �Ladd 8 forget it. That's all I have to say to my classmates, they're like "oh my god, so good". HS: Is there anything, outside of academics that really stuck with you as a life lesson that stuck with you from being at Skidmore? BL: I have to go back to 'Is this your very best work'. Because, in the industry, motion picture industry, no one is going to ask you that. It is that personal kind of standards and scholarship that you always carry. And you know if something is your very best. You know if you've kind of shined something on and it's just not right. And of course I would pair that with what my grandfather said, 'there's two ways of doing something, the easy way and the right way' and in this world you have your word and your name. No one will ever ask you that, but you know. And so all those cobbled together and that has lasted me all these years because it's just, you are yourself and if you don't hold yourself to higher standards, no one else will. HS: Is there one thing from back during Skidmore that you wish you could change? BL: Yea. I wish I hadn't contemplated suicide my freshmen year. It was a very dark place you know, being in the closet, in fact this is the last thing - I don't have many more closets to come out of - but I just talked about this in the latest board of trustees meeting, and I did. And Skidmore saved my life, I mean literally my house counselor, my RAs got me into counseling and that actually started the process of me coming out. But I wish I hadn't had done that, um I wish I hadn't pretended but that's, that's where I was, and that's where the country was at the time so now, thankfully that served me to be first of all, me, and like I said, the first to be openly gay trustee which I don't really think much about and it's like, "oh, that's right, I guess I am" but like, well you know, they look like me, and I'm like "well you know, looks can be deceiving" and it allows other people to tell their stories. So in a roundabout way, I hope I've answered your question. Something like that. �Ladd 9 HS: Do you think Skidmore today is more of a safe place for young men and women to be themselves? BL: I think it is. You know, that's a journey, it's not like a destination, once we're there, we're there, because as the world changes you know, this environment has to change in being reflective of that change and having a place where people can be themselves authentically 100% and that's a goal and it's a continuing process that the trustees are very aware of - excuse me - and the college is very aware of. Yea, it's remarkable. HS: And is there anything you hope does change with Skidmore? BL: I hope we get more endowment money? Sorry, just you know. I want to see - I'm not a big fan of the word diversity, because I think it's kind of limiting, or like the word multicultural, I like the word reflective - the reflective of the world, because I want to be in that world, I don't want to be in just a very anglo-centric environment, cause frankly it bores the teeth out of me and that's not where I've lived. I've lived in the world, and I like the world being reflected. In fact Lynda Jackson Chalmers and I were sitting next to each-other at commencement and said, 'ya know' she's class of, oh golly, nineteen seventy-, I want to say nineteen seventy-one or seventy-three, and she said, 'I remember when, you know I first came on the board, there were maybe twelve students of color and as we sit there and as we sat in this commencement - which was cold, and rainy, and wet - we had lots of time to just huddle together and there was just wave after wave of children - sorry, they're children - they're grownups, in quotes. But kids from Asia and African countries and it was just so enlightening and heartening that it's like, imagine, and then she goes "I don't even count anymore because there are so many kids" and I just said, 'ya know, imagine the courage it takes to not just go to a different state, go to a different country or continent. And these kids from China and the Asian countries, as well, and that's very in-strata of me, the Asian countries as well as the African countries'. All I had to do was come from Arizona and look what they've done and look who they are, and we were just sitting there �Ladd 10 welling up with pride. And also humility and gratitude that these kids felt safe enough to come to Skidmore and just rock the place, so it was a very big moment - still we were freezing to death, but there we go. HS: And when you were going up on that stage to graduate, what was the world like that you were going into BL: Let's see, '83? Ronald Reagan. It was the early 80s and it was a surreal moment. You know materialism, at least in my life, it was all about stuff and achievement rather than being the person and it took me a while to figure that out so I just, ya know, right after I graduated I started getting work on All My Children, which was a soap opera back then. But it wasn't about doing good acting work, and I didn't get that until later and I went, 'Oh, okay', I was ill-prepared but that was because of my own development. Yea, it was a different time but I'm glad I did it. HS: Was there, amongst your friends, was there general optimism about the prospect of post college? BL: I don't really, I think we all just though, sure we can do anything cause you know when you're young and arrogant, 'hey, you know, I can do that'. And that's what we did. We were just talking about that actually last night, there were two classmates of mine who were making $11,000 out of college and they're one dream was to make their age in thousands and you know, we just thought well we can do that and it was, you know, I guess that's kind of the Skidmore motto, 'hell, I went to Skidmore, I can do anything' or that's always been my motto. But you figure it out, and I think that's um, there was the optimism. There certainly wasn't the divisiveness that is, well back in the old days you know Russia was a communist country, not colluders anyway. Just, things have changed and its a different environment now. HS: So if you meet someone today who's thinking about going to Skidmore BL: Well yea I'll interview them. Yea. HS: What are some of the things, if they ask you "should I go", what's your boiler plate �Ladd 11 BL: I don't really have a boilerplate. I grill them pretty hard because I love this college, look ya know, if you're someone who wants to be a member of this world, a conscious member and who's willing to take risks in their education to really stretch themselves, then this is the place to go. If you're looking for a backup school, bye bye, no no. You know just go somewhere else. But if you really want to be a stuck in citizen, then this is where you want to be, cause it will change you in ways you cannot foresee and you can't study for it. You can't take a test for it. And just get ready, cause you think 'yup, this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to business school, business school, business school', and then ding, you're over here doing something else, 'yes, I'm in environmental science, how did that happen?' This is being prepared to being a conscious member of this planet and I think it'll help to be, to have that liberal arts education because people change careers, not jobs, at least nine times and baby you gotta be able to pivot cause if you ain't got pivot you got diddly and that's the nicest thing I can say. And that's been the hallmark of my life because of all the different careers that I've had and here, ya know, when I think I can't be surprised anymore (laughs) I called the ministry, 'are you fricking out of your mind', but you have to have, like all those skills? Trust me I use my education a lot. HS: Can you give me an anecdote about how Skidmore has affected not just your life in theater but your life as part of the ministry? BL: Oh absolutely, you have to be able to write. In fact I just finished my ordination paper after a year and I defend it on June 21st so, you know - include prayers here - but you have to be able to write and tell a story and that goes into crafting a sermon, and mine are not only crafted pretty well but are under 15 minutes. You go in, you make your point, you get the hell out, but also it looks at fundraising, stewardship. Again, it's all about storytelling, how you tell that story. I also used my filmmaking tools for not only for Skidmore, but also for the church. Because it's about, not only reaching out to the church community but also to the wider community. Again, it's story, it's communication, it's also being conscious of your �Ladd 12 environment and in the world environment, psychology, sociology, economics, publicity, vision, you know, and empathy, all those, it's just like, I use my education every day. HS: I'm trying to be mindful of the time, but do you have any last just profound great, unbelievably best stories from Skidmore? BL: I think that'll have to be in our volume 2, because I have a lot of stories. Some I can share, and some I cannot. HS: Can you share one? BL: It's like, 'be funny!' oh thanks, thanks for that. Um well, first day I walked on thet set of Ghost Story, I was an extra with some lines that eventually got cut, I was scared ridiculous. And then, cause it was January, it was twenty-below, yea, and I'm like 'okay', just trying not to throw up and there is this famous actor, producer, director, John Houseman standing outside and I have my first scene with him. And I'm like, I wanted to die. And I just said, 'um Mr. Houseman, my name is Bill Ladd, and I'm going to be working with you today, and it's a true honor' and he kind of gave me a side look and I went 'oh crap, I'm done' and I said, 'I'm a theater student here' and I said 'I'm a very devout member of your history and what you have done.' He says, 'Like?' I said, 'well you produced The Bad and the Beautiful with Lonna Turner and Kirk Douglas' and he said, 'Really?' and I said, 'yea I'm a huge fan' but also 'Mercury Theater, it's I really admire you' and so it put a big smile on his face, the ice was broken, cause you know frost was forming on our limbs, and we sat down for the next couple of hours until they set up the shot and started to work. And that's how I didn't have a heart attack on my first day in motion pictures. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sultan, Harry Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Ladd, Bill, '83 Location The location of the interview Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Jordana Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 6/27/18 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio recording Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bill Ladd, '83 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1-Jun-18 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sultan, Harry, 17 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Audio, Photo Language A language of the resource English (eng,) Description An account of the resource Ladd, '83, was a theater major who studied with Carolyn Anderson. He hails from Wayne, Maine, and currently lives in Framingham, Massachusetts. He recalls faculty including Phyllis Roth and Pat Lee pushing him to excel, acting in a movie while still in college, and being the third generation in the Ladd family to serve as a Skidmore College trustee. He notes that he is the first openly gay trustee at the College. His social life included friends, movies at the old Pyramid Wall, and alum Steve Sullivan, '78, who owns the Old Bryan Inn and Longfellows. Ladd also opens up about the one thing he would change about his time at Skidmore, was contemplating suicide during his first year of College. He also describes how Skidmore helped him accept himself and has become a safer place for "young men and women to be themselves." Now finishing a transition to a career in ministry, Ladd talks about how the writing and storytelling skills honed at Skidmore have served his work in theater and now for the church. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio recording alumni Helen Ladd Joanna Zangrando oral history; Pat Lee Peter McCarthy Phyllis Roth Skidmore College Susan Kress; Kimball Dormitory https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/64c498b82adf8e7095fc4b2a19a39b95.jpg cd4b03fe43422d2c893154fed17bf657 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/0879d7e71568b86ee47ad881507b9b7f.mp3 f954379110cad1825084927a4e00a6b7 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/31435760f338e2a087f96a137facdaf5.pdf eeb10e1296e72abf7744939b57dbecf3 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/f8f1ce7b1129f74ccb36e76083c3d3c3.pdf 757900c107a0631e8e4a94c83ff5a7cc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Eileen McAdam, Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bob Desieno Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit December 13, 2018 Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bob Desieno Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 8, 2015 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Dym, Jordana, Stern, Rebecca, '16 Description An account of the resource Bob DiSieno, was a faculty member and Chair of the Mathematics and Computer Science department from 1983-2006. In this interview, he discusses expanding the use of computing across campus, forming the Science Planning Group to strengthen the role of the sciences on campus, and working as an Advisor to the Dean of Faculty. Language A language of the resource English (en) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eileen McAdam Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio, Transcript Date Created Date of creation of the resource. November 18, 2015 Date Submitted Date of submission of the resource. Examples of resources to which a Date Submitted may be relevant are a thesis (submitted to a university department) or an article (submitted to a journal). November 18, 2015 Date Issued Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource. November 18, 20125 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. November 18, 2015 Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Zotero Artist Eileen McAdam Academic Rigor Academy of Lifelong Learning Administrative Computing Art Department Collaborative Research David Porter DeSieno Prize Faculty and Administrative Relations Harder Hall Information Resources Council Interdisciplinary Collaboration Liberal Studies Mathematics and Computer Science Department Palamountain sciences student body Tenure Town-Gown Relations https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1d3b00a42690890337d0c233ffc2261b.jpg 28fae9c3f949ea33590ed3370f1f9625 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/80900b752d2abee6c3495653b36e230b.wav b3376f3bb6413ff88c111b2af7eaef16 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Cavicchi, Julia Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed O'Brien, Brittany Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Scribner Library, DocLab Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Dym, Jordana Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 17/10/2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Brittany O'Brien, 2011 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 7, 2017 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. SSMP Oral History Project Description An account of the resource Brittany, a psychology major at Skidmore, is currently working for ESPN. Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource audio recording https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/30b19af9f85eb73e5e4335654729bde6.jpg b86c829683627fdcdbeac9e14ecd416e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/6af1b596e0a6c860c4f0fc85fef2a38a.m4a 8cc556c87e8a7395f2184c915bc6183b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/f6780462d8781d59e67b7bd6d28f5dac.pdf 1e28a7af457893117c89af7bf7be06a3 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Carolyn Anderson Years at Skidmore: 38 full-time (1981- 2019) Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 7, 2022 00:00:00 Header 00:00:24 Grew up in Westchester County, NY, near NYC; frequently attended theater in NYC. 00:01:08 Started college at Briarcliff, worked at HB Studio in NYC, took some theater courses at Vanderbilt, then completed degree at Middle Tennessee State U, majoring in English and Theater; graduate degree in Theater at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. 00:02:30 Started teaching at Emma Willard School, became Executive Director of the Albany League of Arts, began teaching one class at Skidmore, then 1981 began teaching full time. 00:04:12 Skidmore theater faculty at that time: Alan Brody, David Rosengarten, Rebecca & Dale Bendalsom, Larry Opitz, plus Joan Lane was an assistant, did some management training. 00:05:33 Anderson taught Voice and Speech, Acting, and American Theater History. 00:06:23 Also taught seminars for plays, exploring the intellectual/academic aspects of the texts. 00:07:58 Was Chair during planning/building of new theater; both joyful and challenging. 00:08:41 Had shared a theater with Dance Department and office space in multiple locations. 00:09:50 Worked with Opitz to create an intimate theater design for the new theater that brought the student actors closer to audience; at this age their vocal instrument is still developing. 00:10:43 State of the art equipment: a joy to prepare students, a challenge because cost. 00:11:05 Must continually update equipment to prepare students for professional theater. 00:12:00 Supportive administration. Theaters are complex structures so they cost a lot on their own, in addition to requiring frequent equipment upgrades. 00:13:05 I learned applied components of theater during graduate & undergraduate school. 00:13:25 Needed to teach applied; plus wanted to provide the seminars to teach the intellectual/thinking part. 00:13:41 Lynne Gelber taught a 4-1-4 course with Alan and saw that combination in one class. 00:14:16 “To me … the most exciting part of starting a play is doing the research…” 00:14:45 Worked with many Skidmore presidents and interims. 00:15:26 Felt tremendous support from administration; blessed to have a theater department in a college that values the arts. 00:15:52 Had to convince people: “If we didn’t have this equipment … no point in doing it.” 00:16:15 Department provided Karl Broekhuizen with arguments for why more funding was needed, and he convinced the board. Very generous donors, including Jean Bernhard Buttner. 00:16:44 Also, Alan Brody made difficult decision to sell NYC property (nursing building). �00:17:49 Community relationships — Skidmore is a vibrant place because of its arts, music, theater, dance, and lectures, and people from surrounding communities come to campus for that. 00:18:20 Skidmore’s events often reviewed in local media - indicates importance to community. 00:19:12 College theater programs can often offer works that local groups can’t; eg. “big plays.” 00:20:42 Skidmore students post graduation: many well known in theater, plus in other fields. 00:22:21 Has long been a Board member with Capital Repertory Theatre. 00:22:57 Retired 2019. Still working with Capital Rep, which is moving to new space; also writing (drawing from teaching experience to share ideas); birdwatching and gardening. 00:24:38 A challenge: helping people know that theater is more than an applied art. It can provide skills relevant to a variety of fields, including research skills, quick thinking, etc. 00:25:43 As chair, a joy: making it possible to hire guest artists, eg. Anne Bogart and Will Bond. 00:27:00 University Without Walls was a valuable resource to people already working in the arts; provided them with a chance to earn degree. Sad to see it go. 00:28:25 Curriculum reconfiguration challenge solved by varying the number of production credits that would be required - provided a range of credits for students to decide. 00:29:55 Skidmore governance structure important “because we have a say in how things go.” 00:30:15 An honor to be on the Committee on Academic Appointments and Tenure — entrusted with being both thorough and fair; also, learning about colleagues work “made me feel much closer to the College.” 00:30:55 Also served on Committee on Academic Rights and Freedoms, Faculty Council, plus ad hoc hiring committees and task forces; eg. one examined the needs of the Music Department this task force work led to construction of the Zankel. 00:32:56 Also worked with the Women’s Studies group (eg. Mary Stange and Kate Berheide); “I always tried to teach something in our curriculum that would support that program, Women in the American Theater … Women Actors Throughout History … .” 00:33:48 Physical changes on campus. Had worried that growth would destroy the beauty, but it didn’t; still a beautiful campus. 00:34:49 Eg. new athletic center, new science building, library renovations, Tisch, Zankel. 00:35:35 Students: now more people of color, and “people are freer to be who they want to be.” 00:36:24 Increase in men: Still more women in theater program — “that always is the case in theater, I think, but … there certainly have been more men, and that’s really helped.” 00:37:29 END � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/eb0fd5515e0a1fb72837e61b210ea6b1.pdf 90b92ac08fc6f586fdebfd94918d5d10 PDF Text Text Interview with Carolyn Anderson by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, November 7, 2022. LYNNE GELBER: It’s November 7th, 2022, and this is Lynne Gelber with Carolyn Anderson and Sue Bender doing the interview. And, it’s really nice to have you, Carolyn. Why don’t you start by telling us a little about where you grew up? CAROLYN ANDERSON: Well, I grew up in Westchester County, New York, right … very close to New York City, Chappaqua, Yorktown Heights. Right on, near, the now Metro North. So, I was able to get into the city quite a bit and see a lot of theater growing up. Which was, I think, one of the reasons that I decided to go into this world of theater. LG: What were your favorite things that you saw? CA: Oh, I think the first thing that I saw was when I was, I think it was in the fifth or sixth grade, a production of Threepenny Opera. LG: Oh! And where did you go to get your training? CA: Uh, well, I started my college career at Briarcliff College in Briarcliff Manor, New York. And then I did some work at HB Studio in New York City, on Bank Street. It is still there, I believe. Then I was at Middle Tennessee State University. Did some courses at Vanderbilt in Theatre, too, but ultimately finished at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. And then I went to graduate school at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where I majored in Theater. LG: What took you down to the South? CA: Oh [laughs]. Well, that’s a bit of a personal question, but it’s ok, I’ll answer it anyway. I was attracted to someone who lived in the North and I followed him all the way to Tennessee, where he was in school. And that actually turned out not to be a good idea [laughs]. But the school was fine because I was able to major in English and I studied with a lovely poet named Virginia Peck, and so majored in English and Theater there. LG: And, what brought you to Skidmore, and when? CA: Oh, ok, sure. I started my teaching career at Emma Willard School in Troy. And, a former chair of the Theater Department, Alan Brody, his daughter Elise was a student at Emma Willard. And he would come down to see the plays and he talked to me after, one time, and he said, “Gee,” he said, “You know, if you ever decide you want to teach college students, I’d love to have you.” So, I thought about that but I stayed at Emma Willard for a while. And then I ended up actually working as the Executive Director for a regional arts council called the Albany League of Arts. And Alan convinced me that I should start teaching at Skidmore. “One class only,” he said, “Just one class!” [laughs] So it was a beginning acting class. And then he said, “You know, maybe your Board will allow you �to teach a little more.” And I said, “I don’t think so.” I said, “I know they will not. It’s not fair to them; I can’t do that.” So, he … LG: This was the Emma Willard Board or the? CA: No, pardon me, the Arts Council board. The Arts Council board. And so, it ultimately turned out that after a couple of years I left the Arts Council and started to teach full time at Skidmore, around 1981. I started out as a guest artist and then moved to a tenure track line a couple years after that. LG: And who else was in the department at the time? CA: Well, Alan Brody was, of course. And David Rosengarten was there. And two designers … Becky and, you know, I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember … this is what happens [laughs] when you get to be my age, right? You forget names … Bendalsom! Rebecca and Dale Bendalsom! Got it! Yeah. And I’m trying to think it through, was anybody else? Yes, we had a secretary … she was really an assistant in the department who did a lot of the management training. Her name was Joan Lane, who passed away recently. Umm, I’m trying to think … other? I think we were it. I think we were it. Oh, and Larry Opitz, of course, as a designer! And actually, I think when I first came on, he may have been on sabbatical … I don’t recall, but yes, Larry Opitz, of course! And he was primarily a designer at the time, and also designed for, at that time, the José Limón Dance Company, and had quite a career with them. LG: I’m just curious what courses you taught and what was the most fun? CA: Ah, at that time I taught Voice and Speech, and I taught Acting, and I taught American Theater History. The most fun was the, for me, the American Theater History course because the students really had no idea that the theater HAD a history, and going back to the colonial era. So, it was always sort of a lot of “ah-ha” moments from them. But I enjoyed that tremendously. I liked the Acting class too. That was lovely to teach. LG: What was the most challenging? CA: Of the classes or …? LG: Well, let’s start with the classes and then move out from there. CA: (laughs) Ok. The most challenging courses during this time, certainly it would be the history course, but also, we, and this was at Alan’s design, we also created seminars for all of the plays that we did. And this is one of the things that I thought was just wonderful about Skidmore, because it allowed us, as we are known today and certainly yesterday, as an applied art, but this gave us a chance to broaden the academic discourse within our program and throughout the college, so that people could see that theater does have a tremendous intellectual component. And so, I really valued that and tried throughout my �tenure as Department Chair, and I know this is true of Larry, too, to always engage the students intellectually in the material that surrounds the actual play text. So, that, to me, was the most fun and challenging also because you had to engage people from other departments who maybe would wonder, “Why should I come to the theater to speak about this?” But I think after a while people really began to understand what our goals were with this, trying to really tie in to the liberal arts more thoroughly. LG: When did you become chair? CA: I became chair after Alan … Alan went on sabbatical, I took over, and then he left, he went to another school, to Texas? Barnard, I think? LG: MIT. CA: Oh, MIT. But I think he did a stop at Barnard, too, along the way, because he did do performances in the Miller theater there. So it was during the time that we were building our, going to build, our new theater, so it was very joyful, very challenging. But it was, I would say, in the ’85, ’86, somewhere in there when we were building the theater. We moved into it, I think, in the mid to late ’80s. LG: And where had you been before that? CA: We shared the theater that is now the dance theater. We shared that space with the Dance Department. With Isabelle Williams, you may recall Isabelle Williams? Yeah, we shared with the Dance Department and we would share the lighting equipment with them, the stage management. All of that was a shared endeavor. And our offices were, for a time, in mobile homes that were set up near the dance theater. And it was not always pleasant to come in and find mice in your [laughs] office and oh …yes. LG: Well, that’s one of the challenges, isn’t it? CA: Yes, that was a big challenge, the little mice. But then when the Green.., the, now-known as the Greenberg Child Center, you know, when they moved in, we were in that office space for a while, too, then we moved out to the new theater. LG: Did you have a role in how the theater was being constructed, and…? CA: Yes, thank you for asking that question. And someone who could give you much more detail on that is Larry Opitz, but the two of us worked on that tirelessly to create a theater that was … that was intimate so that our students wouldn’t have to fight to get their voices to the last row, because at this age they are still developing their vocal instrument, and so we wanted a theater that felt intimate and that would bring the actor closer to the audience. And that’s why we had that thrust theater, it’s a thrust, proscenium thrust theater, is what it is. So, it was full of joy, getting all these new lighting instruments and things. Some of the instruments we used were from the old theater. Also getting a state of the art — at that time, state of the art — dimmer boards and electrics. It was really quite �wonderful. So, we were able to really train our students on some of the best equipment. And now, of course, that’s all changed! [laughs] None of that exists anymore! We can’t even, I’m sure that they couldn’t even donate some of that stuff because now we have incredible equipment in that theater- lighting instruments that can be rejiggered through computers. You don’t have to get up on big tall ladders to move them, unless the designer wants many more lights than you have. So, there’s just a lot of updating that has to happen in a theater, and that’s very expensive. And that’s one of the challenges, is meeting the budget requirements of the College, which you want to do, you want to stay within that framework. But if you want your program to move along with what’s going on in the profession, you have to find ways to sacrifice some things to make sure that your design program is moving along, that the students are able to go out into the professional world after knowing, learning, on the newest equipment. LG: What kind of support did you get from the administration? CA: A lot. We were, I think we were very, very lucky. Karl Broekhuizen, who was the Business Manager, Treasurer, I think that’s his title, at the time — he was great, but he was really tough on us. — He said, “This building was supposed to cost three point something million” and … we got a gift of a million and the other two million were raised, but it ended up costing close to eight million. And, if you understand how theaters are built, [laughs] they cost a lot of money. And I was told, and I could be wrong, but this one contractor told me the most expensive buildings to build are hospitals, prisons and theaters. And, you know, it’s because you have to keep updating the equipment, but also there’s just so much that goes into the construction of a theater. The scene house, the … you know, all that stuff. LG: Where did you learn all of those components? CA: Um, by … a lot of that in graduate school, and in undergraduate school. I mean, that’s really part of the training, you know, and that’s the applied part of the art. You have to know about this. But again, one of the things that I know Alan wanted to do, and certainly Larry and I carried through with, was really bringing the intellectual life to the program — making sure it was there so that the students realized that it wasn’t just doing, it had a lot of thinking, it had to do with a lot of thinking, too. LG: Yeah, I did a 4-1-4 with Alan. CA: Oh, yes, yes! LG: We were reading … now I don’t remember what French play it was, but in the morning — because we would meet with them all day long — in the morning we would study this as a piece of literature; in the afternoon the students got up out of their seats and we ended up doing a scene from that …which we opened to the rest of the community. CA: Right, that’s lovely. �LG: That’s the sort of thing that your department was doing. CA: Right, right. I loved it. It was great. I mean that, to me, is …you know, as a theater director I have to say that the most exciting part of starting a play is doing the research. Doing the deep dive into the author or authors, the, you know, the thematic content, as well as understanding the structure of how the play is … how it’s built. LG: So, who was the president at the time? CA: There was Joe Palamountain, and David Marcell — When Joe was sick, he stepped in to help out. And then after that was … David Porter. LG: Was Phyllis there for a year, also? Interim year? CA: Phyllis was there too. She did an interim at one point, too. And so did Susan Kress, when I was there, so there were a lot of, yeah. Now, Phyllis … LG: Roth. CA: Yeah, Phyllis Roth, right. Phyllis Roth. That’s right, thank you. [laughs] I do remember. She was a good friend to all of us. Definitely so. But I felt that — going back to your point, though — I felt a tremendous amount of support from the administration and I feel, and I know my colleagues do, past and present, probably, that we are blessed to have a theater department in a college that values the arts. So, yeah. LG: The reason I ask is because you had mentioned how much above budget, the original budget, and so obviously that … CA: Well, that was the challenge, I mean that was the real challenge, because we had to convince people that if we didn’t have this equipment, I mean there’s no point in doing it because of what the students need to learn while they’re here. LG: Who did you have to convince, besides Karl? CA: Well, Karl. Well, he had to convince the board, you know. But we gave him some arguments and then they ultimately went ahead with it. And, you know, Jean Buttner Bernhard … was… Bernhard Buttner, excuse me, was wonderful, and you know, very … that whole family, Arnold, Van and all, they were very generous to us, and I think they gave another gift, too. So, we ultimately came up with it. And also, part of this, going back to Alan Brody again, one of the ways that we started the fund for the theater was to sell the nursing building in New York City, and that provided a big leap in funds. But, you know, it was a sacrifice. You know the College has to make those choices. And, I think they made a good choice, frankly. LG: So, when did you retire? �CA: In 2019. 2019. Yeah, it seems like … yesterday, actually! It really does. But, you know I just have been so grateful to have been a part of this Skidmore community, and what you’re doing, you know, really helps us to stay connected with it, which is important. I think that, you know, going back to the theater and to the rest of the College since I was there, our relationship with the town, you know through the arts programs, music and theater and dance, and just all the lectures, the public lectures. I mean this is a vibrant place, just vibrant, and I think … I love the relationship with the community. And the greater Capital Region, too! I mean people come to the Tang Museum. When I was at Skidmore, I don’t know if this is still the case, they reviewed our plays as though, you know, we’re just part of another theater. LG: Who’s the they? CA: Thank you, the Times Union, the Saratogian. The Knick News, which used to be. But they all reviewed our plays and reviewed the art shows. And so, I think we felt like we were all a part of something bigger and important — that we’re bringing Brecht to the community! We’re bringing Chekhov, we’re bringing Beckett, you know, all these playwrights. Shakespeare. So that, you know, we felt like we were making a contribution. SUE BENDER: Carolyn, might you describe some of the opportunities of being a director in a college program? CA: Oh sure! Yeah. Well, one of the opportunities, one of the most important things is that when one’s directing in college, in a college environment, you can direct the big plays. You can direct the plays of Chekhov; you can direct the plays of Shakespeare. Regional theaters can’t always do this, particularly if they have to have so many equity actors in their show for that particular time. They can bring in local actors that are non-equity, but they can’t always bring in the full equity company to do a big play. So, you know throughout my career I was really able to do the work of a lot of important artists. Including Sarah Ruhl — the play that they’re doing right now is Eurydice, which I’ve done before here. And, also, Passion Play, which had a huge cast! So, I feel really lucky that we’ve been able to do that work. LG: And the students, too, would be given enormous challenges and opportunities. CA: That’s well said. Absolutely enormous challenges, to … well first of all, to understand these works, but then to do them. It’s really quite an honor, indeed. LG: Did you have any role to play in the students, after they graduated, in where they went and what opportunities they had? CA: Yes. You know, this is interesting, I’m really glad you asked that question because I was at Skidmore the other night at a rehearsal, helping a colleague … LG: For Eurydice? �CA: Yeah, you know, just watching, helping out a colleague, and in that room were three people who were former students but they were there as employees! So that’s great. That made me feel so good! The other thing, too, is that you can turn on television, go to the movies, and see some of our actors in, you know, important roles. In Mrs. Maisel, The Wonderful Mrs. Maisel, Mike Zegen is in that! He was a student of ours. Zazie Beetz, she was a wonderful student. She was in a couple of big movies, The Joker, and she’s done some series. And, Ian Kahn did a television series called The Turn; he played George Washington. So there … and Jon Bernthal’s been in a lot of films. So, I feel like … and there are a lot of people who do design work too that are, that have their designs done all over the country. And people are in public relations in the theater. And, they are also lawyers, doctors, psychologists, and some of them are running for public office, you know, so they’re citizens, good citizens, and that’s what we want mostly. LG: With good roles to play. CA: With good roles to play! [laughs] Well said. LG: Am I correct in remembering that you also have played a role in the theater in the Capital district? CA: Yes. I am one of the early board members of Capital Repertory Theatre. I’m still on the board. I’m in charge of their Nominating Committee, chair of their Nominating Committee and I’m on their Education Committee. I feel very proud to be doing that. It’s a lot of work, you know, boards are hard workers. But I enjoy it and it keeps me … it keeps me going. LG: When did you retire? In two thousand …? CA: Nineteen. LG: Ok. And what have you been doing since then? CA: Well, working at Capital, doing a lot with Capital Rep, because we just, you know we’re in the throes of moving into a new space, so that has taken a lot of time in terms of, you know, fund raising, getting new board members, spreading the word, that kind of thing. But also, I have been going back through several directing notebooks that I have — for every play that I direct I keep a notebook about the various rehearsals and the process and all that — and pulling out various ideas that I think may help others along the way, so I’ve been trying to write something about that. And it takes time to go through everything, and I realize, not everything is worth saving [laughs]. So … yeah, so I’ve been working on that. I like to do bird … I love birdwatching, particularly waterfowl. I love hiking. And doing a lot of gardening. LG: Are you part of a group that goes out birding? CA: No, I’m not, but I know of groups. I mean, I’m a member of a couple of groups but I don’t, �I haven’t gone out with them. LG: And gardening. CA: And gardening, yes! Yes, I love gardening. Vegetables and all that. So, yeah! LG: Well good. I’m trying to think of what we haven’t covered, Carolyn. SB: [inaudible/whisper]. LG: Yeah, I was getting to the challenges. Um, what are the, what do you think, in the larger sense, what were your greatest challenges? CA: Well, I, and I think I mentioned this earlier, I think, to keep on Alan Brody’s path, that theater is an applied art, but it is more. It can provide skills to students that are useful in a variety of fields. So, that was a huge challenge. Because I would have parents in my office saying, “why should they major in theater?” You know? And you say, “Well, you know, research skills, being able to think fast on your feet…” you know just so many different things. So, I think that is always a challenge for people in the arts, in this day and age particularly, with the economy the way it is. I think the other thing, too, that certainly keeping the budget going in tight, when the cost of plywood goes up for scenic design, the cost of materials goes up, but your budget doesn’t change, so that means you may not be able to have a guest artist. I can say one of the joys, and we feel very proud about this, is that when I was chair — I rotated off and on, chair with other people in the department, but — I was very happy to help bring Anne Bogart here, who’s an acclaimed contemporary director. She’s world renowned, and so we had her here every summer, and that to me was a tremendous joy because we were also able to hire one of her company members as a teacher, Will Bond, and that kind of training is, makes a huge difference in how students approach their physicality and their vocal work. So. LG: Did the students participate in the summer program with Anne Bogart? CA: They were, they could definitely do that. Some of them did. Some of them chose to do that, yes, definitely. Another challenge, a couple of things … one challenge that I feel that, and I don’t know how I still feel about this except I feel bad about it, and that is University Without Walls. During my time it really gave so many people in the theater a chance to do more, people who didn’t have a degree. And, you know, they got their degrees from University Without Walls, working with us, many of us as advisors. And then when the College had to close that program I certainly understood why, you know, I really understood it, but I felt so, I felt very sad about it. LG: Ok. Why don’t you say why, in your opinion, the College closed that program. CA: Well from my opinion it was that they couldn’t afford to keep it, is what I gather was the �main reason. I don’t know of any other reason but that. Maybe they felt, too, that it didn’t quite work with the mission at hand, was part of it also, but I know it was a very valuable resource for people in the arts. Um, the other challenge that I had, which I think we ultimately met but was very difficult for us to get our heads around, was the whole changing of the curriculum, when we were asked to think about reconfiguration and all that. But you know I think we found a way to solve it, but it was hard. It was hard during that era … with my colleagues particularly, just kicked and screamed along the way, but we found a way to solve it for us and I think it works. LG: How did you reconfigure? CA: Well, what we did was we looked at our production work and we changed our production requirement credits so that it could be optional between one and four credits, because the students, at one point in rehearsal, which is the last couple of weeks, are all there all the time, so for counting time, I thought, well, let’s just do that and they could pick. So, if one credit suited them for their coursework fine, or if four did, that was fine. So, it ultimately worked out, but it was a challenge. So that was another one. LG: Carolyn, you did a lot of work outside of your department. Do you want to talk about that? The committees? CA: Sure. Yeah, sure. I think the governance structure is very important to liberal arts colleges because we have a say in how things go. I served on the Committee on Academic Appointments and Tenure for two terms, two full terms, and a term that was a replacement term, so I got to really know a lot of the faculty members and their work. And to me, it’s a real honor to be on that Committee because you are entrusted with being as fair as you can be and as thorough as you can be with the materials provided. I learned so much about what my colleagues were doing and it made me feel much closer to the College. I really valued that work. I was also on the Committee on Academic Rights and Freedom, for a while. And on a committee called, which was called Faculty Council at one point, and I think we were in charge of the elections! [laughs] That was early on. I think Kate Berheide was on that too! Yeah, forgot about that just until you mentioned it. Oh, and then there would be these committees that would pop up, like ad hoc committees for, you know, I was on the search committee for the president, that hired Phil Glotzbach. I was on search committees for the development Vice President, when we hired Chris Hoek. And also Tad Kuroda and I were on a committee, a task force, to examine the needs of the Music Department when they were in Filene and to see if there was a way that that place could be reconfigured or should we build a new music building. And Tad and I, after several weeks and months of dealing with this, decided that they just had to have a new music building, so he wrote up that report and so I was very pleased to be able to help my colleagues in Music. LG: What was Tad’s role at that time? �CA: He was an Associate Dean of the College. Yup. SB: So that was the foundation for Zankel? CA: That was the foundation for Zankel, that task force. And I think at the time Chuck Joseph may have been in the administration as well … or maybe not yet. LG: He was chair of the Music Department. CA: He was chair of the Music Department, yes, that’s right. Because I know Tony Holland. We interviewed him and he took us around to see the cramped space of the Filene building. Yeah, um … yeah, and I, you know I also cherished the work that I did with Mary Stange and Kate Berheide of the Women’s Studies, the Women’s Studies group, and I always tried to teach something in our curriculum that would support that program. Women in the American Theater, you know, Women Actors Throughout History, all that stuff. So, yeah, and Kate Berheide and Mary Stange and then Catherine Golden … so, it was, that was really a wonderful time of growth. And Penny Jolly was very involved with that as well. But, yeah. Yeah, huh. A lot [laughs]. LG: Anything else we haven’t covered that you would like to mention? CA: Um, yeah, yes. I don’t want to take all of your time but I, one of the things that I really have enjoyed over the years was watching the physical changes on the campus. When I first [laughs] this is going to sound really snotty, but at first, you know, coming to work in the morning, into the woods, years and years ago, was just so beautiful! Because I love woods. But then, then we had this big, the campus plan. The big plans for the campus. And after a while, you know, I thought, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen to these woods?” You know, “this is just so beautiful and I hate this, I hate this,” and my gosh! Over the years to see how it has, you know, flourished and grown, with the pond and all the trees around it that they protect and take care of, and, you know I really enjoy that, and, you know I was really wrong about that! [laughs] It’s so beautiful to drive on the campus! But … so that would be one thing. SB: What things did you see added to the campus during your time here? CA: Um, well, the theater, of course. The gym, the new athletic center. The science … which was partially, I mean it’s done now, but it was being started, it was starting. Um, the renovation of the library. And also, Tisch was being built, too. Yes, so quite a few of them. And Zankel, of course. Yeah, so I’ve really seen this campus grow, and I just, the physical changes are really quite wonderful. And some of the architecture is really lovely too, yeah. LG: What about the changes in the student body? CA: Well that I am very, you know, when … I’m glad to see that we’re, we have more people of �color, I’m glad to see that we have people who are not … they feel comfortable in being on campus because of how they define themselves individually. That’s changed. You know all of this has changed since I’ve been here. People are freer to be who they want to be and I think the College is really providing, giving a warm atmosphere to have them. LG: Umm, the growing number of men on the campus, since you arrived. What kinds of changes did that bring about in the theater? CA: Well, it, it actually did bring a great change for us, for a certain time. But then, you know, things sort of … we’re getting more and more women still, and that always is the case in theater, I think, but um, yeah, there certainly have been more men, and that’s really helped. [laughs] LG: Um, are there any other issues that we should bring up that we haven’t touched on? CA: Mm-mnn. LG: Well, thank you. This has been enlightening and very enjoyable. CA: Well, thank you for inviting me. I’ve enjoyed talking about this a great deal. Yeah, thank you for doing this project! � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 10, 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Carolyn Anderson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 7, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource Carolyn Anderson came to Skidmore in 1981 after teaching at Emma Willard and working with arts and theater groups in the Capital Region. She taught courses in theater history and acting and served as department chair. A central focus of her teaching was to develop students’ appreciation of theater as a literary art. She also played a role in the building design of the Bernhard Theater. Carolyn was active in the Women’s Studies group until her retirement in 2019. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Alan Brody Albany League of Arts Anne Bogart Arthur Zankel Bernhard Theater CAFR Capitol Repertory Theater CAPTS David Porter Isabelle Williams Karl Broekhuizen Larry Opitz Phillip Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Tad Kuroda Theater Department UWW Will Bond Women's Studies https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/20e95a3a929f69df109dada4f00fa508.gif 4b0afc180b2402dd8144aaadd55d2df0 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/f886ad1d2da3cd79705f6b7b7615befe.mp3 a7d0f138fd571604a1633869ae628e79 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Evolution of Beekman Street (20th century-2016) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/13/16 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Skidmore College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available DS: 113A Storytelling Interviewing, Skidmore College Description An account of the resource History of Beekman street, evolution of Beeekman, artist identities/roles, the future. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Original recording wave file, 16 bit 44.1 khz Zotero Interviewee Amejo Amyot, M'elle Pirii-Lee, Cecilia Frittelli, Interviewer Jonah Brenner, Amanda Peckler, Yuelin He, Max Lowe, Dejon Bunn-Constant Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Yuelin He Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cecilia Frittelli Location The location of the interview 143 Grand Ave. Beekman Street, Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Digital Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 37 minutes Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 16 bit, 44.1khz Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Yuelin He Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 12/12/2016 Time Summary A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview 00:00:05.28Header 00:00:23.03 Introduction. History of her business. Been around in textile industry for a long time. Born in Boston in 1958. Graduated in 1980 with a degree in theater design and in fiber arts. 00:04:23. Relationship with weaving. Father's influence. 00:05:39 Introduced to Beekman Street in 2001 by Amio. Did not find space until 2007. Involved with this street since the very inception. 00:08:36 Relationship with Amio. Nice vibe, history, and restaurant drew her to Beekman Street. Working and LIVING IN THE SAME AREA. Perfect and quiet place for artists to live and work. 00:10: 54 Artists on Beekman street. 00:15:14. The idea of showing the public the process of production. Lifestyle. Products with story. More excitement about products. 00:18:28. Adaptation to the art district community. 00:19:53 Economic crisis. Shop locally, shop meaningful. 00:21:14 Promotion of shop eco-friendly, local, small. 00: 22:44 Operation of the studio. 00:24:36 Add experience to business. Not just about selling the product. Lifestyle. The idea of making something beautiful and having some people appreciating it. 00:26:36 Customers composition and products. 00:27:27 Favorite moment with Beekman Street. Art Fair. Show case. Festive event. 00:29:36 Differences in working in big cities and working in small community 00:31:39 Challenges artists face. 00:34:22 The thriving history of Beekman Street and the current status. 00:35:36 Possibility to make Beekman Street thriving again. 00:36:17 Government needs to do more. 00:37: 24 End Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Cecilia Frittelli Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/07/2016 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Yuelin He Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource History of street, evolution, artists identities/roles, the future Language A language of the resource English oral history https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/28c8f03200f07bebaa6b515412e95f1c.png 41571b7b59919dc01252c33228c4efb1 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/994451d3685fb16283fcb9841f979da1.m4a 713ee2d2a215d99a2eb5cc1ce2b46c3e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2b623f3c21cfe626fbfeed1fa6d510d1.pdf 46201f3f4630b5238e37321f9e816d56 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Charles (Chuck) Joseph Years at Skidmore: 1985 – 2010 Interviewer: Rebecca Zosia Stern Location of Interview: Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 Date of Interview: 2/19/2016 00:00:00 Header 00:36:00 Born in Pennsylvania 00:02:00 First experiences in music around church 00:04:00 Began college experience at West Virginia University 00:05:14 Began interest in Stravinsky in undergrad and went to University of Illinois where interest blossomed. 00:7:00 Benefits of trading ideas on a college campus 00:7:45 Attracted to Skidmore because of Liberal studies program 00:09:16 Changes in Liberal Studies curriculum that required thinking in cross disciplinary terms 00:10:50 Skidmore atmosphere was conducive to change, a lot of women faculty 00:11:40 Infusion with new faculty helped change curriculum 00:14:7 Describes city and Skidmore relationship 00:16:10 Introduced an ethnomusicology course with Professor Gordon Thompson 00:17:24 Conception of artists in residency program 00:20:30 Started to teach course with Isabella Brown on Stravinsky and Ballanchine 00:24:40 Beginning to plan a new music center that would become Zankel 00:34:50 Trying to capture music as it evolves to study academically 00:36:00 Discussing Stravinsky research with primary sources 00:44:00 Discussing later academic interests in Broadway musicals 0048:35 Daughter went to Skidmore as a dancer and studied American Studies 00:53:00 Skidmore fosters an environment to challenge conventional wisdoms 00:57:40 Interest in American Studies, and how culture changes � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/465c16c0fcaf7c37890a59338d3f22ed.pdf f5689bf7e983406d47bd87dbc930ed3d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Rebecca Zosia Stern '16 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Charles Joseph Location The location of the interview Scribner Library, Skidmore College Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:45 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 19, 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Charles Joseph Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 19, 2016 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Charles M. Joseph came to Skidmore in 1985 as a Professor of Music. During his years at the College, he served as Department Chair as well as Dean of the Faculty/Vice President of Academic Affairs. In this interview Joseph describes his work on expanding the music curriculum, the relationship between his Stravinsky scholarship and interdisciplinary teaching, and his vision for what was to become the Zankel Music Center. Academic Affairs Artists in Residence Board of Trustees Curriculum David Porter dean of faculty Diversity Filene to Zankel Hall (Transition) Interdisciplinary Collaboration Liberal Arts Education Liberal Studies Music Department Zankel Music Center https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/2ab4c359d1ca90e8d2e4720c040fb386.jpg cf0be52b1e3a65bd549f7b980d5157df https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/23a043a7a56c0cd112bb666e57dd40a7.m4a 6c08a1d3b7e9ff6e01e21bb8a7511fa9 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/cd20cf47b101fbe701fbbd003f53b012.pdf e0b3f2d6b8ad6fd966e39d4741b9c600 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/d2f206d62a9f79dcc9296fff14dc6653.pdf 7499c22945e5ab10e3325f007fe73e29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Maria Mayboeck Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Chris McGill Joseph Location The location of the interview Scribner Library, Skidmore College Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit November 19, 2018 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:28:47 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Chris McGill Joseph Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 26, 2016 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Chris McGill-Joseph joined the Skidmore workforce in 1987.  She has been a Skidmore wife, UWW student, Administrative Assistant, Skidmore parent, and Special Projects Manager, and she has long had a radio show on Sunday mornings on WSPN. In this interview she talks about the many transitions she witnessed - the move to the new campus, the adoption of technology, the arrival of men as part of the student body, and the opening of many new buildings.  She also touches on the mentoring she received throughout her career and reminisces about her role as manager of the Presidential Search process and administrator for the First Year Experience and the Middle States Association accreditation.   9/11/2001 Campus Move dean of faculty History Department Michael Arnush Pat Oles Peer Tutor Program Phil Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Tad Kuroda Technological Changes WSPN Radio https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1182585b8ec2914de675b08ff26c3cb6.jpg 2fa58ae7a1971b4f71094219f2855c4e https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a9dca358374c4fc446367e71746941b9.m4a 6b75089c5be99e432f7d614eb8c7a33b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b80ebec90a6a1e903a48da5d2d79a01b.m4a f49dffed3d61a0194718e6a536f2d552 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Latinx Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Hocker, Anna Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cinthia Duran Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Cinthia Duran Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/27/17 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HI251C: History of Latinx in the U.S. Description An account of the resource Cinthia talked about her hometown of Quito Ecuador, and her experiences both at home and abroad Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. In this interview Cinthia Duran, a young Latin American woman from Quito, Ecuador, discusses her cultural background. Cinthia is a sophomore and an international student at Skidmore College. The piece primarily focuses on Cinthia’s relationship with her home country, diversity within Quito, the increasing number of gangs in the city, how dance allows her to express her cultural heritage, and her international travels. Cinthia interweaves her experiences as a student in Italy and America, and reviews how these explorations have added to her identity as a Latin American woman. Cinthia also discusses American immigration policy, in relation to Ecuador, by sharing the stories of friends who have attempted to immigrate and/or travel short term to the U.S. but have been rejected. Finally, Cinthia reflects on her own identity as a Latin American instead of a Latina, and how her experiences have further encouraged her to travel and help those around her. dance Ecuador identity immigration Italy Latinx oral history race Skidmore student Tricultural Trilingual https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/1995eae01e88df09afb896563ba739f8.jpg 39ab459dafea23dd08b5278bed10785a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a4b9e8b1f70149fcc424203c4a69cb75.mp3 dfb8b54ac4c5e64e5d2614e594082476 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/4e1700ff9a491e2f76b48a66d40fde12.mp3 3f500814a2f85189620058fb537108c4 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/fddd33a9b906dc9004f5047812b204d8.mp3 306818ddc6eab0f10a7edad18fd7ecd3 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Latinx Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Maria, Cristal Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cristian Fernandez Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Cristian Fernandez Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/27/2017, 3/31/2017 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HI251C: History of Latinx in the U.S. Description An account of the resource Cristian talked about his experiecne growing up in a household with a woman as the breadwinner and about his racial and ethinic identity and how it intersects with gender. Language A language of the resource English Abstract A summary of the resource. Cristian Feranadez is sophomore and Business and Political Science double major at Skidmore College. He is the son of Dominican immigrants. His mother is a legal U.S. resident who immigrated when she was 9 or 11 years old, in 1976 or 1978. His father is a U.S. citizen that immigrated at the age of 13, in 1979. Cristian's parents emigrated in the midst of political and economic instability on the island, when political tensions between Juan Bosch's supporters and Joaquin Balaguer's supporters were felt. A large flood of Dominican immigrants arrived in the U.S. starting in 1980. Cristian's parent's immigrated right before this wave, possibbly contributing to his parents' unusual access to education and resources. This would later affect his household composition with a breadwinning mother, and his access to private, higher education at Skidmore. Dominican Republic ethnicity family Gender identity Intersectionality Latinx oral history Phenotype race Skidmore College Skidmore student https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b61094f1393bf3b1b9f80c8141308290.jpg ad63cbd061da7551bd531fedac062e9a https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b796c9caaa93fcd2d3f2950747773f2d.mp3 762436727176ac5d57f11ac0d209a54d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Latinx Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Harripersad, Reshma Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Daniela Menchaca Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Daniela Menchaca Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 3/29/17 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HI251C: History of Latinx in the U.S. Description An account of the resource Daniela talked about what it was like to live as a Mexican-American in the Texas, and her connection to her Mexican cultural heritage. She speaks on overcoming stereotypes and the issues she faced to come to college in New York._ Language A language of the resource Spanish, English Abstract A summary of the resource. Daniela Menchaca was born and raised in a San Antonio, Texas, very close to the border which played an essential part in shaping her connection to her Mexican cultural heritage. Since her hometown was close to the Mexican-American border, she has close ties and was raised in a culturally Mexican environment and is very proud of her connection with that. However, as someone who is "white-passing" she has struggled to establish her Latinx identity in both her own hometown and at college. Therefore, she addresses being between American histories and Mexican histories, both aspects of her identities. As someone from a low socioeconomic status, she has fought against stereotypes and underfunded educational support in order to attend college. She speaks on how her parents have influenced her view on education and the support that she has had from individual teachers to be where she is.  bicultural education ethnicity family Gender Hispanic identity immigration Latinx machismo Mexico oral history Phenotype Politics race Skidmore College Skidmore student Southwest Texas https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8a490139188c429472c9bba294a7014d.jpg 786316ef1a9cf19bf83ffc97f9c4cda3 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/8c7bc545d98c897b337600b4a526be16.mp3 42376f4afe241f0b71f16cfe4e5715c7 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/cf49a5b921a0323510c5f73baf6ac47f.pdf 9291c6e701d0865e6b92d295962ccb53 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Dave Marcell Years at Skidmore: 1964-1992; 2001-2008 Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College Date of Interview: January 15, 2019 00:00:00 - Introduction by Gelber 00:00:30 - Where Marcell grew up, history of his education. 00:00:45 - Story of how Marcell heard about the job at Skidmore College 00:02:55 - The American Studies program at Skidmore during the ‘60s 00:04:20 - The death of Val Wilson and Marcell accepting the job offer at Skidmore 00:06:00 - Further description of the American Studies Department and Marcell’s responsibilities as the head of the department 00:07:24 - The classes Marcell taught during the beginning of his career 00:09:00 - Growth of the program and becoming a department 00:10:08 - Friction between the American Studies department and other departments 00:10:55 - Course registration of Fall ‘64 00:13:00 - Marcell’s biggest challenges during his career 00:15:20 - The hiring of new professors in the American Studies Department 00:16:00 - How Marcell became the Provost and why the job was open in the first place 00:20:00 - Comparison of Skidmore to other colleges at which Marcell worked 00:21:30 - Challenges of being the Provost at Skidmore College- becoming a co-ed college 00:24:40 - The orange juice riots 00:26:00 - Development of new landscaping and buildings on campus 00:28:20 - Aggregate cost of all capital investment at Skidmore 00:28:47 - How Skidmore came to build the new campus 00:30:28 - Funding new buildings on campus 00:33:15 - Expanding the applicant pool beyond just women 00:35:00 - Mishap writing letters to parents of prospective students 00:37:30 - Describing the collegial culture of Skidmore 00:39:55 - The tightness of the budget during the ‘60s and ‘70s 00:42:40 - Number of females on the faculty 00:44:30 - Rejection of a union for the faculty 00:45:50 - Marcell describes the nursing program 00:47:30 - Downfall of the nursing program 00:52:00 - Beginning the Phi Betta Kappa Chapter at Skidmore 00:54:20 - Discussing how special Skidmore was as an employer in Marcell’s experience 00:57:00 - Having to fire someone for the first time 00:58:00 - Discussing positive relationships with colleagues 00:59:03 - Closing remarks � https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/e208c12ea8a061083426217f919e4a10.pdf 693c01817a67d8f5be220afe5db7c36d PDF Text Text Interview with Dave Marcell by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, January 15, 2019. LYNNE GELBER: This is Lynne Gelber and I'm here with Dave Marcell. It's January15th, 2019. So Dave, let's start by telling us where you grew up grew up. DAVE MARCELL: I grew up in central Florida in the 40s and 50s, my parents retired after World War II. I went to public school in Deland, Florida, and then attended the university that was in the townStetson University. One of my professors at Stetson was an American studies PhD from Yale. He was my mentor and ideal, and thanks to his influence I went on the Yale. Did a doctorate in American Studies from '58 to '64. The last year I was at Yale, I was teaching in the history department and finishing my dissertation and I got a phone call from the secretary in the American Studies department. She said, "Would you please come over here. There's a man here who wants to interview you." I said, "What's that for?" She said, “For a job!" I said, "Well, I've got a job." She said "Well, I don’t know what to do with them. Would you please come over here? He's very nice." And I said, "Well, I've got pick my dissertation up from the bindery and drop it off. I'll be over there in an hour." And I went over, and it was Edwin Mosley. LG: And Edwin's position at the time was? DM: Edwin Mosley's position was Dean of the Faculty at Skidmore College. We had a nice chat. LG: Do you know how he had heard of you? DM: He was, he just happened to swing by. He was visiting doctoral programs in American Studies, and I don't know where he had been before. His degree was from Syracuse, which had a doctoral program. But, anyway, we had a nice chat. I remember saying that I had a job I was going to continue on as an instructor for the following year, but he described Skidmore and the position and I liked him and I said, "Sure I'll come up." And so, I came up with their American Studies department. �LG: Now, was there an American Studies department? DM: No, there was an American Studies program and it had been up and running for three or four years and the person who was coordinating, directing it, was leaving. He had gotten tenure, but he was leaving and he'd accepted a position at Long Island University. So, I came up and they had a long schedule of two days of meetings and it started off with 1/2 an hour with the president of the college, with Val Wilson, and I think this was a Thursday afternoon. I spent 1/2 an hour, 45 minutes with him- lovely, lovely man- and it was just a wonderful conversation and I thought, "My gosh, if the leadership of the college is reflected by this man, he would be a wonderful person to know." And then the Dean turned me over to a faculty member named Irwin Levine. He put Irwin on my case he did. He didn't want the fellow who was leaving to introduce me to the students because there'd been some complexity about his departure and his relationship with the other students. So anyway, Irwin took me by the hand, the arm and squired me around and we were instantly friends. And the rest sort of his history. LG: Except that Val WIlson... DM: I went back to New Haven, picked up the New York Times on Sunday, and there was Val Wilson's obituary. He had died either that afternoon or the next afternoon. He was out playing tennis with a student. He had a heart condition, and he knew that he had this condition, but it was still a very sudden and terrible thing. So Edwin Mosley called up and said, well, our decision will be delayed but anyway, the visit was just terrific. I loved Saratoga and, anyway, they made me an offer and I accepted it. The date of this, I remember because I came up here on the 15th of April and... the year? Oh, God. 1964. Yeah, I remember driving up the Northway thinking, "Gosh, I wonder if I'll be coming this way again." And so, anyway, they made the offer and I accepted it and it was, it was an unusual organizational structure because the American Studies program-and I think was the only interdisciplinary program that had a major- there was an Asian studies program, but I don't even think it had a minor at that time. Anyway, what the director of American Studies did was offer core thematic courses in American culture and then the student major would flesh out this core of courses with courses with courses �in the discrete departments in the American subject areas. And as it happened in those days, the American assistants in history, government, or philosophy were all just really super people so the aggregate of the program, depending on how the students organized their courses, was really terrific. LG: So your title was what? DM: Director of the American studies program. I was... LG: And your responsibility was... DM: I coordinated all the courses, I supervised all the majors, and the majors were only juniors and seniors, but there were about 20. I would guess something like that. I taught- in those days the full load was six courses. I got one course relief from doing all of that other stuff and then I had to fabricate from whole cloth, five new courses, and coordinate with the students supervise the senior theses, which was part of the requirement in those days... LG: So what courses did you teach? When you started? DM: I had a two-semester sequence called the history of American civilization, which was a freshman and sophomore lecture coursetwo lectures in one discussion group a week. And then I had seminars in different subject areas. I had one called American Documents that took traditional all major readings in the subject area. And then I had an interest in American intellectual history. I had, I wrote a dissertation on the idea of progress and its place in the pragmatic tradition, James Dewey and Beard, so I taught a course in American Intellectual history. Gosh, I can even remember- a senior seminar in how to use interdisciplinary sources to flesh out and put into context certain events and episodes in American history and so forth. LG: How many students were in there at the time? DM: In the seminars there would be anywhere from 10 to 15. In the large freshman course, there were 50 or 60 and it was it was a full load. I don't remember a lot of it because it went by so fast. We had a new �baby. LG: So you had 50-60 people in one section? DM: Yeah. Large lecture, two lectures a week, and I broke it down into three or four discussion sections. And then the program grew, and in about, by about '67 we really needed another faculty member and were authorized to do that. I hired a guy from the University of Pennsylvania. Brilliant, wonderful colleague, Stuart Bluman. Did you ever remember Stu Bluman? He spent most of his career at MIT and then at Cornell and he was with us for a couple of years. And at that point we became a department and what, what status that gave us, I do not know, but it created a lot of friction with other departments. LG: Like history? DM: History, Philosophy. Back in those days the departments were really quite siloed and there was great emphasis on each department as a major. There were, other than the Asian Studies program and American Studies, there weren't any interdisciplinary majors. It wasn't until the late 60s the students could create an elective major and then later until the Liberal studies curriculum came into being, and the college made a macro commitment to interdisciplinary team as part of its identity was almost a complete reversal of what I experienced as a as a young faculty member here. LG: Do you think the conflict was competition for majors? DM: Oh yes, oh my goodness. My first formal experience at Skidmore was registration of for the fall semester of '64 and symbolically, the registration was down in the Canfield Casino and each department had a table and people could go around and pick courses out. And there was a senior History major who wanted to take the course in American Documents, but that was a 200-level and she needed a 300-level and I said well I think what I can do is give you some extra assignments, and you can sign up for an independent study. You'll take the 200-level course, do this extra work... and she's all, "That sounds wonderful." So I signed off. Five minutes later, like a V2 rocket, the chair of the history department was in front of me, Louise Dalby, "What are you doing, blah blah blah." I told her what �happened. She said you didn't ask my permission. I said, "Oh, well, it's better to ask permission than excuses, and so forth. Do I have it?" She said, "Of course." Anyway, we became good friends and over the years after that. But I remember someone describing to me the departmentalization as a small well-defined fiefdom of whose boundaries were patrolled by the chair of the department. And that that may echo with some of your recollections, too. LG: What were your biggest challenges, over the years, do you think? DM: Juggling it all, because the field of American studies had a kind of metabolism that was just very rapid, because of its multidisciplinarity. It has all kinds of disciplines and subdisciplines that feed into it. Trying to stay on top of what was happening with the field, as well as make sure that whatever courses you were putting together would be useful and recognizable by people in the field was a challenge. I was lucky I- the second year that I was at Skidmore, '65 or or '66, I went to the state meeting of the American Studies Association and became the editor of a bibliography that came out every year on studies in the theory and teaching of American studies. So I did that for about 10 years and that gave me a kind of professional reason to keep surveying the field and seeing what new programs were offered. What new methodologies and approaches were emerging and so forth. So I kept changing my readings in my courses because when you come out of the graduate program, I was a history- government major as an undergraduate. I had taken one American literature course, but so I had to educate myself in a lot of the areas. So I just kept changing my readings and then try to keep up with myself and stay a paragraph or two ahead of the students. I was also trying to write, and get the book done ... LG: And your program kept growing. DM: And then growing the program kept growing. LG: So then you did some hiring? DM: We hired Prof. Bluman, Stu Bluman, and at what time? I guess about '69 or '70. We hired Mary Lynn, who had spent a year teaching in the history department and gave another dimension to American �Studies. I was trying very hard not to duplicate work that was being done by the Americanists in the other areas, and but by that time, we probably had a total, oh, I don't remember, 30 majors at junior and senior level. And it just kept growing as an enterprise and I stayed as chairman of the department until '77 and then became Provost and academic VP. LG: Now, why did that happen? DM: It happened because I was elected to the search committee for the Provost and we had interviewed three or four candidates and I got a call from the President asking if I would have lunch with him. That was Joe Palamountain, and he asked if I would be willing to resign from the search committee and become a candidate for the Provost job. And I said, "Well if it's okay with the other members of the search committee and if it's okay with the CAPTS committee, yes." And so he did all those bases... LG: In retrospect, do you know why that reconfiguration was taking place? DM: What had happened, and it happened about three or four years after I first arrived at Skidmore, Edwin Mosley, who was Dean of the Faculty, his position was changed into Provost and Dean of the faculty and Norma McCurry, who had been the Dean of the College and who had been in effect, the chief academic officer was moved to report to Edwin. Norma was a brilliant, wonderful woman her- She was a linguist, but she had been in effect, the chief student affairs officer. Edwin, who was a very, very academic affairs. He was he was a very distinguished scholar as well as a just a legendary teacher and so the that division of labor, I think for both of them worked out well. And so what happened was the other person became Dean of the Faculty, do I remember who it was? I'm not even sure. They divided it up at some point. Who became the Dean? Eric Weller became the Dean of Studies and that supplemented some of the academic advising work that Norma had been responsible for. But, by the time Edwin was being replaced, Edwin became ill, and I remember there had to be an acting Dean and whether there was an acting Provost or not, I don't remember. The positions were separated for the purposes of that search, and they ran the search for the Provost first. And then when I was appointed, my responsibility was to run the search for the Dean of the Faculty. That became Eric. We ran a national search on... �boy, these are old synapses, I haven't tested these in a long time (laughs). But Ed, as you can imagine, anybody who moves into an upper level administrative position, after having spent 14 years as a faculty member... Memories are long, issues are complicated, and every idiotic thing I said as a young first or second year faculty member trailed behind me. But, looking back at Skidmore from having moved to other institutions and having worked at- after I return took I took early retirement here when I was 55LG: And what year was that? DM: '91, and I worked at Rollins College for two years. I worked at Bennington College for two years and seeing those institutions and comparing them with Skidmore, Skidmore had a much more professional and collegial culture than those other institutions. As a matter fact, when I went over and worked at Bennington, Bennington was in the middle of a capital campaign and in the middle of that capital campaign, the trustees seized control of the college from the faculty, fired 1/3 of the faculty, and went through the convulsions that... well, they were, they were on the weekly supplement to the New York Times. You may remember some of those things, they ripple out, and Bennington had a culture where every faculty member felt they had a veto over anything at the college and they had a brilliant and interesting and wonderful faculty. But as an organizational structure, their culture was just absolutely toxic. LG: But let's get back to Skidmore. Once you became Provost, what were the highlights, and what were the challenges? DM: Well, the challenges were basically to support the administrative structures that were already in place in terms of both the academic, this cultural student affairs area. All of the deans and directors on the academic side reported up to the Provost and then there were two other VP for business and development. So, one, I had to learn enough about the discrete areas of student affairs, computers. The computers, IT reported to the Provost, and so forth to make sure that we have the right people running those operations I inherited. For example, admissions, about which I knew absolutely nothing. But we happily had a just brilliant, wonderful director of admissions, �Benny Wise, and I asked her what she needed and what I needed to know in order to be her supervisor. She took me under her wing. And we were off and running. One of the first things that she said is we have done some things and haven't planned ahead for doing them. I said, "Well, what are you thinking of?" "Well, we went coed." Well I knew we had done that, but I knew it from the point of view of a faculty member. I said, "What are the kinds of planning steps we might've taken and shouldn't-should have?" She said, "Well, all we did was in effect, say the words, we would no longer discriminate against male applicants, and we sat back and waited. And sure enough they began to dribble in." But, and mercifully, because she was such a creative person, she had a whole series of recommendations on how to make the college more attractive to male applicants. But all of these were things that couldn't be siloed, they had to be decisions made in consultation with the faculty, with plant, with development, with alumni affairs, and so forth. LG: Can you give me an example? DM: Well, how does one prepare a 90% single-sex institution to morph into a 60/40%? What are the things that competitive, coeducational institutions offered that we don't? Well, physical education and athletics was one of them, but was only one of them. They had to change all of the dietetic expectations. Do you remember the orange juice riots? LG: I remember, when the trustees were here. Can you describe the orange juice riots? DM: Well, the boys, as they went through the lines over in the dining hall wanted seconds and thirds, and that was a new experience for the staff over there for planning, etc. etc. etc. And they wanted seconds on orange juice (laughs) and this is one of the things about Skidmore and I don't think I appreciated at the time, but Skidmore was in the in the business of inventing itself as an institution on so many fronts. We were building a new campus. That was one decision that we made which was made in the nick of time. We went coeducational and that's another one made in the nick of time and all of these- both of those decisions involved huge leaps of faith. I remember when I first got here that Eric was taken out to see the new campus by Levine and we drove out into the woods and there was a backhoe digging a hole which became the basement of the library. �And I began to realize as I worked at the college after five or 10 years that every time we built a building, the next year, the interior space of that building would have to be changed because it wasn't just right. And so we were, we were lucky enough to be flexible enough to imagine that as we grew programmatically, we had to change the landscape, we had to change the environment and that in turn changed one of the widgets that was planning the next stage, and so forth. And we were doing this on a shoestring. The endowment for Skidmore when it made the decision to build a new campus was under $1 million and we'd never raised capital money. There was one project I heard about later that we raise the money for father's hall that was on the old campus and that was raised through parental solicitation, but the early campus planning that we undertook projected that the new campus would take 25 years and $25 million. Here we are, how many years later the new campus is still- and the latest building is going up- cost more than the... LG: The Integrated Sciences Building. DM: The integrated sciences building cost more than the whole campus. When Joe retired, I remember him, Joe Palamountain. Joe was president from '65 to '87. I remember when he bid farewell and retired from the campus. He reported that during his tenure, we had constructed 37 buildings. What, how many are we done now? it must be 90 or 100. LG: And some of them have been taken down and replaced (laughs). DM: Yeah! I asked somebody in the administration the other day whether we had an aggregate cost of all of the capital investment in Skidmore, in what the campus is now, and nobody quite has it. So, anyway, I guess I keep shifting my focus because I didn't prepare for this, but looking back, it was an act of faith. How Skidmore came to build the new campus was a series of developments that nobody could imagine. The campus, the Hilton estate, had been in probate ever since the 30s. Lucy Skidmore Scribner had tried to get it for the college but it didn't get out of whatever the complexities were behind that until 1960, and we had a parent who was on the Board of Trustees at RPI, J. Eric Johnson, who was the CEO of Texas Instruments, and his daughter had been a student at Skidmore and she'd gotten ill. I don't know the details, but �the college had just taken wonderful care of her, they'd bent over backwards to make sure she didn't lose time, and he was so impressed by that, that when the Hilton estate came on the market, he offered to buy it and donate to the college if the college would build from scratch a whole new campus. And he did that, as Joe Palamountain used to tell the story: We took a deep breath and decided to go for broke and we almost did. (laughs) And he bought this piece of property, 650 acres, $130,000 donated to the college and we went on a- and this is all before I arrived. We had, I think was a Ford foundation grant, to plan the first iteration of new campus planning and that was what was in process when I joined the faculty in '64. We hired architects from San Antonio, Ford and Carson. They had built a number of campuses, one of which was Trinity University in San Antonio. We have some buildings that look very much like that campus. But the planning was systematic, and so forth. Most institutions, most mature colleges, if they venture in a new capital project, the Board won't authorize it unless you've got half in hand and half in site. The only building that I think we may have been able to do that with was the Zankel Music Hall because Arthur Zankel left us a bequest. And everything else, all we had were plans and hopes and dreams and a certain amount of momentum. And we had a, the New York State dormitory bond issue would- they bonded out some of the first buildings that were built. This library that we’re sitting in now was the firstLG: First building? DM: First building to open, and it opened in either '65 or '66. Do you know what it cost? 1.4 million. And so, but what happened is, we just kept venturing and I wasn't aware of this at all. I didn't think about these things when I was a faculty member. I was trying to get my exams graded and so forth, and so but every year as we constructed more, built more, grew more, our capacity to raise money grew and our ability to attract more students grew. And one of the reasons why Benny Wise was so concerned that we hadn't been planful in going coed was that we'd missed opportunities, because in the decade of the 70s a lot of single- sex institutions went coed. Well, our original plan was that we would build a campus for 2,000 women that was what we envisioned in '62, three, four, not realizing the market for women was going to get extremely tough and tight in the 70s. �LG: Because they could then go to other institutions. DM: They had more choices. Yeah, I remember vividly my first meeting with Louise Wise. I said, you know, "What are your biggest problems and how can I help?" I said, "I don't know anything about your area, but if you know what you need, you tell me and we're going to go get it for you." She said, "We need to expand the applicant pool." I said, "Tell me about that. What was our applicant pool this year?" She said, "Oh, 1,830." I said, "How many did we accept?" "Just under 1,830." And I said, "What were we trying to shoot for as a goal?" We were trying to shoot for, I think, was 400 students in the freshman class and I said, "So you're telling me that we are not a selective institution now, but we aspire to become one?" "Yes." "So, okay, how do we do this?" She had a whole series of ideas. One was using new computer capabilities to communicate with the families of applicants in a very targeted and personal way. And I said, "Well, how can I help?" She said, "I have a project for you. I want you to write a letter as the Chief Academic Officer of the College to the parents of each student and tell them why, from an academic point of view, you think Skidmore would be a good place for their son or daughter." I got to work, and we cobbled up a letter. She was also a very good editor, happily, and letters went out. I get a letter back almost in returned mail. This was this was in March of of my first whole year and it was from a father who said, "Dear Provost Marcell, happy to get your letter. I found.... he said but how are you going to find a roommate for my son Nancy?" And I said, "Oh, golly." So I sat down, "Mr. Owens, we're just venturing as a new way of communicating with parents, we're personalizing our communications, and unfortunately the computer kicked out the wrong gender for your letter and I apologize, but don't worry we'll take good care of Nancy should she decide to come here." And I signed this and thought, I can't send this out. I said, "P.S. I still can't understand why you named your son Nancy." (Laughs) Anyway, come September, there's a knock on my door and here's this very nice guy standing there with a very sheepish young woman, and it was Nancy. But that was the kind of the thing that Louise knew what we should be doing, and she had all kinds of other ideas. And the same thing with computers and so forth. I could barely type a letter on the computer, but I talked with the people in what is now IT, what did we need, and was able to go out and find Ken Hapeman. You may remember Ken, I said the same thing to him: "You tell me what you need and I'll try to get it for you." And help me understand why you �needed it and so forth and so on. So it was, it was easy to do because the institution had such a good collegial culture. LG: Could you describe that culture a little bit? DM: Well, I first experienced it as a faculty member on committees. Academic Freedom and Rights, Tenure, Faculty Council. Those kinds of things. But there was also one committee, that I don't even remember what it was called, but it monitored the budget. And there were two faculty members sitting on it, and so forth, and I just began to realize that while I thought, I probably had been here five or six or seven years before I went on that committee. I thought I knew the college pretty well, and until we walked through the budget, I realized I didn't anything about why these budgets were there, why they were organized the way they work, what the history was of each line item in the budget. And it took three or four years to get that, but there was never any- that I experienced- never any attempt to limit the information flow between administration and faculty, and there were always rumors that Ted Butler really had a pot of gold. LG: Do you want to say, for the record, who Ted ButlerDM: Ted Butler was the budget officer and chief accountant, but what I realize, and in those days that the total operating budget of the college was maybe $20 million. Do you know what our contingency fund was for the college? $250,000 for everything. And every budget was so tight that if any operating area of the college could come in with a surplus, it could be then used for those areas that couldn't control her budgets and so forth. Every budgetary year was an act of faith and throwing of the dice. There was one year, about, and I didn't know this until after I retired and read the history of Skidmore. We had four buildings going up at same time and we didn't have the money for any of them, other than what we were able to borrow through bonding and whatever the capital campaign was going to be able to do that year. We got, and you may remember this because it happened- when did you come? LG: '66. �DM: '66. It happened in 1970. Our auditors provided an audit report to the Board of Trustees that they could not assure our publics that Skidmore would be a going concern given the value of the assets, the indebtedness, the cash on hand, etc. etc. And that's a crisis for an institution. And it was reported to the Board and the Board said we will plunge on ahead, we will redouble our fundraising activities etc. etc. We'll either launch a new capital campaign or something and anyways, looking back from this vantage point, Skidmore seems very different. One of the ways we were funding the new campus- when I first got here in '64, the student population was somewhere between 1,350 and 1,400 students and that was '64. In '65, we grew to 1,500 students, we added 10 faculty members that year and we were going out and hiring young faculty at competitive prices and, I don't know, somebody must've been worried about how we were, because we hired at competitive prices, how we were going to stay competitive for those new 10 faculty as they aged in place because Skidmore's upper level salaries were not competitive, and so forth. So here we were trying to make it up as we went. LG: Do you think it was because there were a lot of females on the faculty? DM: That was part of it because I know there had been times that I heard about back in the depression where married couples had to split one salary and women were notoriously underpaid, etc. Probably when I came here, 3/5 of the faculty were female, something like that. It was like you, somewhere I heard this image at a development conference, and it really struck me to the quick. It's like imagining some guy running down the street with a bag of bicycle parts and is trying to put the bicycle together, get on it and pedal and accelerate all at same time. And thinking back, this is what Skidmore was going through. I can remember in '70 or '72. All of a sudden we were not to get the salary increase for the next year and what a blow this was to people. We all thought, "Oh my God!" Well, we managed to scratch up, I think a 2% increase belatedly after the damage was done from telling everybody no raises this year. LG: Yeah, faculty wasn't happy about that, were they? DM: Faculty was ever happy about anything. And I'll tell you one of the reasons why they're not happy. And this is sort of self-analysis, too. Faculty are really smart and every faculty we've got is the expert in �their field. LG: Do you think that's why the faculty ultimately rejected a union? Remember that? DM: Did we ever really seriously consider a union? LG: We had representatives. DM: Several groups were talking about it I know. I don't know, but it's very hard to go from a situation where, say you're in a department of 10 people and you're the expert on so-and-so, but you've also got opinions about everything, and I remember trying to grasp all of the things that in '77 I suddenly found myself administratively responsible for, and I didn't know anything about. So I'm thinkin, "Okay, well...." Anyway. LG: Those are challenges! Okay so what do you think was the greatest moment for you? Of course, of your career here. DM: Gosh. I'll start at the other end. The most difficult series of experiences was the closing of the nursing department. And that that was difficult personally because the first year that I was here I had in my freshman class a senior nurse who was just brilliant. She was just, and then over the next couple of years, the old nursing pattern was you spend your first year in Saratoga then go to New York for two years of nursing, you take advantage of all those clinical sites and all of the sophistication of the hospitals, and this and that, and then you'd come back to Saratoga for your senior year. And the women who came back to Saratoga from their senior year, they were worldly, they were cosmopolitan. They hadyou talk about growth- and anyways so I always just loved the nurses. And then one of the things that happened in the late 70s, as I kept working with Louise Wise for admissions, she said, "We're going to have a hard time enrolling our class in the nursing program." She alerted me to that about the second or third year. I said, "What's happening? Why, why? We have had at Skidmore since the 20s a baccalaureate nursing program that really is a flagship program." I would venture to say that of all the programs we had at Skidmore, it had the most power and prestige of any of our programs. Better than art, better than, I don't know, what our strong programs were. �LG: Can you describe the downfall? DM: Well, what was happening across the country and, finally by the time our program graduated the last nursing student in '85. Statistically, women who wanted a career in medicine, more women wanted MDs than BSs in nursing. And nursing programs all around the country, distinguished programs were just folding. Well, it's a complicated thing. As we began to realize that this was a problem for Skidmore, we had a building on 38th St., a campus that housed 80 some odd students, classrooms, labs- wonderful building, beautiful piece of location, right around the corner from the big-what was a big hospital down there? Anyway. I remember the year that we finally made the decision that we would close the program, Louise had said we need to enroll 40 new nursing students. We have an applicant pool of X. And if we get 15, we'll be lucky. And we needed to fill those beds in the nursing building down there. I don't know what the building cost. Anyway, it was happening all over the country and we had done studies. The chair of the board directed me to make a study about the field of nursing and what he wanted was a ringing endorsement of the nursing program. I spent three months doing as much research as I could. I came back with a program with a report that said, unless we can find some way of either distinguishing ourselves as different or, whatever, our program is not going to be competitive and that's that. And next we started off with what was, historically, I think probably the strongest program in the college. It was just market forces and, oh God, and we had a very strong nursing faculty. Half of them were graduates of Skidmore and they were fiercely loyal to the program, to the college, and this and that. And one of the things that, as I was trying make this report, we had started a UWW nursing program, and we had 1/2 a dozen students in it. But we had to make use of the Skidmore faculty in order to deliver that program to the UWW students. Well, I said, "Well, is there any nursing program we can affiliate with?" So I went down and talked with the people at Russell Sage. Russell Sage has a very respectable nursing program. And I raise this with the faculty down there and they just curled their lips and would have nothing to do with it because the clinical sites that were available in this area did not compare with the clinical sites in New York. And they were right! On the other hand, what does it take to produce a baccalaureate nursing graduate? Did you have to have all... Anyway, it was doubly complicated as I was to learn because the National League �for Nursing, which was the organization that controlled the standards for the profession, said you could not transfer a course in nursing from one academic program to another. In other words, if you were halfway through your nursing schedule at Sage you couldn't pick up your nursing credits and transfer to Skidmore. The NLN wouldn't....so anyway... LG: I'd like to end this on a high note, though... DM: (laughs) You can edit out some stuff, I hope. LG: One of the most positive moments for you. DM: I think the most positive moment, it's very selfish. We applied for a Phi Beta Kappa Chapter at Skidmore. I think this was like 1970, something like that, and I had gone to a university that didn't have a Phi Beta Kappa Chapter and it had a chapter installed three or four years after I graduated. And one of the nice things about having a new chapter installed is the new institution can pick I think it's five alumni to induct into their Phi Beta Kappa Chapter and Stetson did that for me. So when we were looking at Phi Beta Kappa at Skidmore, one of the criteria is how many of your faculty have Phi Beta Kappa keys. And I was able to raise my hand. And that's small and impersonal. I think some of the big stuff- I was very much in favor of the 4-1-4 curricular change but I didn't play much of a role. I was very much in favor of the liberal studies curriculum because, here we were, as an institution making a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches to...the world is interdisciplinary as we experience it, and so forth. When I first came here, and I had to make sure if I was dealing with Jefferson, I wasn't poaching on the history department's turf or something. And Harry Prosch never forgave me for having the temerity to write about James and Dewey without being a philosopher. Anyway. LG: Dave, thank you so much. This has been fascinating. Bringing back memories... Is there anything that you want to say that we haven't... DM: Well, Skidmore... I think we all knew.... and at different stages in ourI spent off and on 35 years....I retired, I took early retirement when I �was 55, went off and did other stuff and then I came back. And I worked halftime for eight years as a fundraiser. And what I realized is how special, how lucky we are. Yeah, God. When Irwin was squiring me around the first day on campus, we walked across, were out behind Father's Hall and Henry Gallant comes out. How are you, and we chatted, and it was fun, and this is my department chair this and Henry said, "When at Harvard, I did this and that, we chatted." Henry went off and Irwin said that's my department chair, I said "Yes, you both mentioned that," and he said, “he can't go to football games." And he said, "He thinks those guys down there in the huddle are talking about him." (laughs). You'll have to edit some of this stuff out. (laughs) LG: Dave, thank you so much for doing this. DM: Well, there's so much more to talk about, but on the other hand, and I didn't realize this until you-I thought Skidmore was the norm, because it's all coming out of graduate school, I went straight from college to graduate schools to Skidmore and I didn't know anything about... I took the job as Provost at Rawlinson, got there in August and the President told me my first assignment was to fire the athletic director. And I said, "Well, why haven't you done that?" "Well, we were saving that for you." "And have you already reached the decision that should happen?" "Yes." I said, "Okay." He was a very, very nice guy and there was a whole history of conflict with coaches and this and that. Anyway, so, I took him out to lunch less and I said, "What would you like to do with the rest of your life? You're a tenured faculty member and we need a new athletic director, so I have been told." And he couldn't have been nicer. He said, "Well, I'd like to do this and this and this." And I said, "Well, let's do that. " Anyway, our weekly staff meetings are in the president's staff and I'm taking notes furiously. The names don't mean anything. The issues... So I'm taking notes. And about the third or fourth staff meeting Pres. refers to something, and I go back and look at my notes and it was directly opposite to what had been said at the previous day. I looked up and the guy was the vice president for development was looking at me, and he just went..... And I just went, "Oh, shit." But I was lucky with this one when I became Provost, the guy who was the EP for business affairs here was a close friend of Joe Palamountain and he was brilliant guy. He'd been a mathematics major at Syracuse, Jim McCabe, and he was a vice president for research and marketing at Merck before he came here, and he just took me under his wing. We would have lunch once a week and he explained everything and Jim �was a delightful guy in staff meetings. He never argued, and yes was, "Well maybe we ought to try that!" No was "Well, I'm not so sure that's a good idea." I was a faculty member, I was all, "God damn it, we gotta do this, and that." I thought, "I want to grow to be just like that." And it just wasn't in my nature. LG: So a place of good colleagues. DM: Mmm. LG: Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Lynne Gelber Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dave Marcell Location The location of the interview Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio Recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:04 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit February 3, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dave Marcell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource January 15, 2019 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource David Marcell, came to Skidmore as Director of the American Studies program in 1964 and became the College’s Provost in 1977. In this interview he describes early initiatives in interdisciplinary teaching and learning at the College, including a young faculty member’s experience of navigating a curriculum tightly defined by disciplinary boundaries.  Marcell paints a lively picture of the College’s culture and administrative structure throughout the 70’s and 80’s, including the “orange juice riots” and supportive collegial relations. Marcell also reflects on challenges the College faced as it constructed a new campus, navigated the changes created by coeducation, and closed its highly regarded nursing program.  After 10 years away, Marcell returned to Skidmore to work for several years in Advancement.  Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History admissions American Studies Budget Crisis coeducation Eric Weller J Erik Jonsson Louise Wise Nursing Program Palamountain Val Wilson https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/a90cdf911c898a807f1fd7dc1ecb4796.jpeg 9b4c193c5896a1cdb32a209aa363254b https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/b0d43b5b6363539c537325330ebc6dce.jpeg 69fc13aae0e5fc82e33c1204c1c7765c https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/ca5b381108ea9b28101cb89d8d3160ff.m4a ba88612f8fd8d0bf1cca1bdf0cbdb0e1 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/6f662762fd131eea6fd87629d833d9e5.pdf d01ba86005b38220c567eb49f1acbb85 PDF Text Text February  11th,  2018   Chris  Cocchi  (interviewer)   Dave  Paterson  (interviewee)   Skidmore  College,  Scribner  Library     Christopher  Cocchi:  Ok,  testing  1,2,3.  I  think  its  working.  Ok!  So  uh,  first  thing  is  that,  uh  do  you,   just  to  go  over  uh,  verbal  consent,  uh  do  you  agree  to  what  you  signed  before  about,  you  know,   hav-­‐  lending  your  voice  to  the  uh,  Saratoga  or  Skidmore  Memory  Project  [Skidmore  Saratoga   Memory  Project  (SSMP)]  and  uh,  you  know,  letting  it  be  used  online  and  whatnot?     Dave  Paterson:  I  do.     CC:  Cool,  thank  you.  Anyway,  first  things  first  I  just  have  to  record  just  the  empty  the  noise  here   so  that  they  can  edit  it  out  so  I'm  just  gonna  be  silent  for  about  a  few  seconds  here     [Pause]     CC:  Ok,  so  for  the  record,  my  name  is  Christopher  Cocchi,  I'm  here  with  Dave  Paterson,  in  the   Skidmore  Library  in  the  Media  Viewing  room,  and  I'm  interviewing  him  for  the  Public  History  in   Skidmore  with  Professor  [Jordana]  Dym.  So  uh,  I  guess,  to  begin,  uh,  what's  uh,  just  tell  me   about  yourself,  like  uh,  when  were  you  born  or  like  where  did  you  live  growing  up?     DP:  Ok,  I  was  born  in  south  Boston-­‐   CC:  Um  hm.   DP:-­‐in  1954.   CC:  Um  hm.   DP  :  And,  uh,  I've  been  in  Saratoga  [Springs]  for  the  last  47  years.  I've  taught  for  over  30  years  at   the  [Saratoga  Springs]  high  school  here,  [as  the]  Social  Studies  department  head,  and   overlapping  15  years  at  The  University  at  Albany.  Uh,  in  the  midst  of  all  that  teaching  of  I  was   also  President  of  the  Saratoga  Springs  History  Museum,  and  for  19  years  a  friend  of  mine  and  I   have  run  a  company  called  Saratoga  Tours,  where  we  give  historic  tours  of  Saratoga  Springs.     CC:  Ok  cool.  So  uh,  what  got  you  interested  in  history  in  the  first  place?     DP:  Probably  my  8th  grade  history  teacher,  uh,  Mr.Curren  [SP?],  and  uh,  he's  the  first  one  who   made  who  made  it  more  about  how  and  why  instead  of,  memorizing    who,  what,  when,  and   where  and  dates  and  all  those,  and  uh,  I  always  liked  to  read.  And  once  I  started  reading   history,  then  I  wanted  to  read  more,  it's  like,  now  I'm  writing  for  Saratoga  Living  Magazine,  I   think  the  new,  the  new  relaunch  of  the  magazine  just  came  out  a  couple  days  ago,  and  I  have   an  article  in  there  that  I  wrote  for  them  about  the  blizzard  of  1888  when  we  got  57  inches  of   snow.  But  while  I  was  researching  that,  and  reading  up  on  that,  then  I  found  a  bunch  more   questions  I  wanted  answers  to  so  then  I  go  off  on-­‐  and  that's  the  great  thing  about  history,   you're  never  done.     �CC:  Um  hm.  That's  very  cool.  Now  uh,  where  did  you  go  after  your,  uh,  experience  in  public   school,  like  which  university  did  you  [DP  starts  speaking]  go  to  from  there?     DP:  Oh,  uh  college-­‐wise  I  was  at  the,  first  was  at  the  University  of  Miami.   CC:  Um  hm.   DP:  Uh,  I  was  playing  Baseball  also  at  the  time  so  I  left  Miami,  um  I  ended  up  getting  degrees   from  Boston  College,  uh,  University  at  Albany,  and  [  The  College  of]  Saint  Rose.     CC:  Ok  cool.  And  what  was  your  first  experience  out  of  college?     DP:  [Deep  breath]  [You]  mean  work  wise?   CC:  Yeah.   DP:  I  taught  for  half  a  year  in  Rutland,  Vermont.  I  was  the  fourth  teacher  they  had  hired,   because  the  7th  and  8th  graders  were  driving  all  the  substitute  people  crazy,  and  I  remember  I   started  in  February,  oh  I  think  1980,  and  I  get  through  the  rest  of  the  school  year  with  them,   and  a  matter  of  fact,  on  like  the  second  the  second  to  last  week  of  school,  the  assistant   superintendent  asked  me  if  I  was  available  to  come  back  an-­‐  oh-­‐  then  next  year  and  I  said  I  was.   And  he  said  they  were  going  to  give  me  like  a  "The  8th  grade  teacher  of  the  year  award"  and  I   said  oh  this  is  great,  and  then  the  next  week  I  got  laid  off!   CC:  Oh!   DP:  [Laughs]  So  I  was  going  to  go  back  to  Boston  and  open  up  a  sporting  goods  store,  and  uh,   on  my  way  down  through,  I  had  interviewed  at  Saratoga  High  School  before,  but  they  already   had  a  position  filled,  on  my  way  down-­‐  I  was  packing  up  my  car  literally,  on  the  day  I  was  going   to  go  to  Boston,  when  Saratoga  called  and  said  "we  have  an  opening,  do  you  want  to  come  up   and  interview?"  [Unsure  mumble]  I  said  ok,  I  will.  So  I  went  up,  they  hired  me,  and  I've  been   there  for  the  last  40  years.     CC:  Uh,  so,  what  was  your-­‐  what  was-­‐  wh-­‐  what  was  your  teaching  at  Saratoga  High  [School]?     DP:  Uh,  really  good.  Uh,  Saratoga  [Springs]'s  a  really  good  school  district.  Uh,  I  taught   everything  you  can  teach  in  the  Social  Studies  from  grades  7  to  12.  Every  level  of  student,  from   the  weakest  kids  we  had,  a  lot  of  kids  with  special  needs,  up  to  the  Advanced  Placement   courses,  uh  I  think  I  was  only  the  2nd  Advance  Placement  U.S.  History  teacher  in  the  county   when  we  started  that  program.  Um,  I  also  taught  in  summer  school  I  taught  phys.  ed.  [Physical   Education],  I  taught  English,  Social  Studies,  so,  but,  you  know,  all  in  all  a  terrific  experience.   Great  kids.     CC:  So,  how-­‐  did  anything  change  over  the  years  that  you  were  teaching  History  at  Saratoga   High  School?     DP:  [Deep  breath]  Well,  [pause]  that's  one  of  the  great  things  about  history,  things  do  change  as   time  goes  on,  um  the  first  kids  I  taught  in  the  1980's,  I  don't  know  if  you'll  remember  Chris  but   there  used  to  be  a  show  on  TV,  a  TV  show  in  the  80's  called  "Family  Ties".   CC:  Um  hmm.   �DP:  And  most  of  the  kids  in  the  80's  were  a  lot  like  that  Alex  P.  Keaton  character.  You  know,   they  were  the  Michael  Fox  character,  um,  very  preppy  kind  of  thing,  and  we  went  through  ph-­‐ phase  for  a  while,  but  then  we  get  into  a  phase  where  uh,  everybody  was  getting  piercings   everywhere,  and  then  we  got  into  a  phase  where  the  clothes  got  kinda  wild,  and  then  it  went   back  to  more  conservative  dress.  So  it's  kinda  been  all  over  the  place,  and  uh,  its  interesting   because  towards  the  end  of  my  career  I  noticed  I  was  teaching  a  lot  of  the  sons  and  daughters   of  kids  I  taught  30  years  before.     CC:  Did  uh  the  material  you  taught  change  at  all  or  was  it  pretty  consistent?     DP:  Well  the  tough  thing  with  History  is-­‐  and  Math  teachers  don't  understand  this-­‐  um,  there's   a  finite  amount  of  information  to  teach  in  the  AP  [Advanced  Placement]  or  Regents   [Examinations]  Math  or  Science  courses,  so  they  can  usually  schedule  their  courses  to  end,  let's   say,  mid-­‐May,  or  early  May,  which  will  give  them  to  review  for  either  the  AP  exam  or  the   Regents.  Well,  History  just  gets  added  onto  every  year.  So,  for  example  when  we  get  to  2001,   you  can't  leave  out  9/11,  that's  too  important  [of]  a  piece  of  history.  So  as  you  add  things  in,   you  have  to  edit  other  things  that  you've  been  teaching  over  time.  So,  you  figure,  when  I   started,  was  the  first  year  Reagan,  Ro-­‐Ro  Ronald  Reagan  was  president,  um  when  I  ended   [Barack]  Obama  was  president.  Well,  a  lot  changed,  and  then  you  gotta  teach  all  that.  So,  the   amount  I  had  to  teach  changed,  and  I  think  my  methods  of  teaching  changed.     CC:  Could  you  go  into  that,  like  wh-­‐wh-­‐  how  did  your  methods  change?     DP:  Well,  [Cough]  education  isn't  a  once  size  fit  all,  I  don't  think,  although  I-­‐it  does  make  me   laugh  because  [the]  New  York  Department  of  Education  continually  talks  about  differentiated   instruction,  which  is  the  idea  that  every  student  should  be  treated  differently  and  taught   according  to,  you  know,  what  they  can  do.  And  I  agree  with  that  philosophically,  [Cough]  yet   they  want  every  kid  to  sit  down  for  same  Regents  exam,  whether  you  live  in  Long  Island,  or   Brooklyn,  or  Saratoga  Springs.  And  to  me  that  is  a  little  ridiculous.  I  never  had  a  student  fail  a   state  test,  but  I  think  the  reason  for  that  is,  because  even  with  lowest  level  kids  I  taught,  I   always  treated  Social  Studies,  and  I  think  it's  true  of  any  subject  [test],  as  a  vocabulary  test.  As   long  the  kids  understand  what  the  questions  are  at  the  end  of  the  year,  they  can  answer  them.   What  happens  is  a  lot  of  teachers  think  they're  being  a  good  teacher,  what  they'll  do  something   like  this,  they'll  say,  I'll  be  teaching  a  class  and  I'll  say  "Ok,  so  were  when  the  immigrants  were   coming  into  New  York  City,  and  they  were  being  processed,  and  they  were  slowly  getting   accepted  and  they  got  jobs  in  factories,  and  they  started  to  learn  the  English  language,  and   customs  in  America,  that's  called  Assimilation."  Well  some  teachers,  thinking  they're  just  trying   to  help  the  kids,  will  just  refer  to  it  as  "fitting  in",  'cus  the  kids  will  understand  it  better.  The   problem  is  when  they  get  to  the  Regents  exam,  the  Regents  uses  the  word  "assimilation",  and  if   a  student  doesn't  associate  the  word  assimilation  with  the  immigrant  experience,  they're  not   going  to  get  the  question  right.  So  I  learned  early  on  that  vocabulary  was  an  important  part.   Also  early  on  when  I  was  teaching  it  was  a  lot  more  chalk  talk  lecturing,  as  then  as  time  when   the  technology  get  so  good  with  the  Smartboards  and  things,  I  could  work  in,  instead  of  telling   �kids  about  Martin  Luther  Kings'  [Jr.]  "I  Have  a  Dream"  speech,  I  can  play  them  a  quick  5  minute   excerpt,  I  can  show  them  an  inauguration,  um,  so  that  was  good.     CC:  Ok,  uh  do  you  have  any  like,  uh  stories  from  any  particular  incidences  [incidents]  from  your   time  in  the  [Saratoga]  high  school?     DP:  [Laughs]  Stories  relative  to  what?     CC:  I  guess  like  for  instance  like,  did  you  ever  have  like  a  student  that  like,  made  you  think  "Hey,   you  know,  this  might  be  an  interesting  way  to  teach  it  next  time."  Or  did  a  teacher  come  up  to   you  and  say  something  that  like,  made  think  of,  like...     DP:  Oh  several  times,  I  think  most  of  the  times  the  changes  I've  made  in  my  teaching  methods   over  the  years  came  from  a  feedback  I  got  from  students.  Um,  because  you  a  different  group  of   students  every  year,  and  they  come  at  things  from  a  different  perspective.  Uh,  one  of  my   favorite  students  ever  was  a  young  man  who  came  up  to  me  and  said,  he  was  very  nice,  he  was   thanking  me  for  the  course,  for  teaching  the  course,  for  teaching  the  course  and  everything,   and  then  he  said  "You  know  what  I  really  liked  a  lot  was  when  we  worked  in  groups."  And  I   hadn't  really  been  too  big  on  group  projects,  but  for  the  next  years  I  took  a  couple  of  the  units   and  I  made  them  group  projects  things,  and  all  of  them-­‐  well  not  all  of  them-­‐  most  of  the  kids   really  seem  to  like  it.  So  then  the  next  year  I  did  a  little  more  of  that,  and-­‐and  that  happened  a   few  times  in  my  career,  he's  now  a  very  successful  doctor  at  a  Mass.  General  Boston   [Massachusetts  General  Hospital  at  Boston].     CC:  Cool.  Uh,  so  what  was  like-­‐  wh-­‐what  was  life  like  living  in  Saratoga  [Springs]  at  the  time,  'cus   you  were  new  to  the  area,  correct?     DP:  Yeah  Saratoga  [Springs]  is  uh  [small  pause]  it's  an  interesting  city.  Uh  when  I  first  moved  up   here,  there  seemed  to  me  there  was  a  strong  feeling  like  Broadway  was  the  dividing  line  in  the   city.  And,  briefly  when  I  first  moved  here  I  lived  in  an  apartment  on  the  east  side  of  Broadway.   And,  but  for  most  of  the  time  I've  been  here  I  lived  in  a  house  on  the  west  side.  And  it  seemed   to  me  in  maybe  the  first  10  years  I  lived  here,  there  was  a  dividing  line  between  the  people  of   west  Saratoga  [Springs],  west  of  Broadway  and  east  of  Broadway,  and  so,  of  course  I  got  curious   and  I  started  doing  research  and  talking  to  people,  and  uh  the  [Saratoga]  High  School  used  to   be,  way  back  when,  over  where  uh,  uh  Lake  Ave.  [Avenue]  Elementary  School  is.  So  the  kids   from  [the]  West  side  of  Saratoga  [Springs]  had  a  longer  walk  than  the  kids  from  the  east  side  of   Saratoga  [Springs],  and  there  was  a  train  that  cut  the  path,  they  went  by  where  the  Price   Chopper  is,  Railroad  Place  [Aparements].  So,  the  kids  from  the  West  side  had  to  time-­‐  since   they  used  to  let  them  home  for  lunch-­‐  but  you  had  to  time  it  right  so  the  train  wasn't  holding   you  up.  Um,  and  o-­‐  and  then  the  trains  disappeared  and  all  that,  but  that  "feeling"  seemed  to   stay  with  a  lot  of  old-­‐timers.  So  that  was  interesting  to  me.  That's  now  changed,  I  don't  feel  that   now.  Saratoga  [Springs]  is  uh,  I  think-­‐  I  think  I  read  that  as  of  two  years  ago,  for  the  first  time,   there  are  now  more  people  living  in  Saratoga  [Springs]  who  weren't  born  here  than  were  born   here,  so  that's  a  big  change  in  that.  Um,  but  Saratoga  [Springs]  you  know,  you  look  at  its  over   �the  years,  it  reinvents  itself  all  the  time.  And  I  think  it's  done  that  when  the  [Saratoga]  City   Center  came  about  in  1984,  Saratoga  [Springs]  got  revitalized,  and  boy,  where  else  would  you   want  to  be  now?     CC:  Um  hm,  so,  how  do  you  think  the  people  of  Saratoga  [Springs]  changed  during  your  time   uh-­‐   DP:  The  time  I've  been  here?   CC:  Um  hm.   DP:  [Deep  breath,  pause]  Well,  I-­‐I  thought  it  was  noteworthy  that  a  couple  years  ago  Saratoga   [Springs]  get  [got]  named  the  "Friendliest  city  in  New  York",  'cus  I  think  the  people  are  very   friendly.  Um,  we're  also  very  also  very  much  Wonderbread,  in  the  sense  that  we're-­‐  like,  I  don't   know  what  we  are,  90%  Caucasian  or  something,  so  its  been  nice  to  see  an  influx  of  minorities   into  the  city  of  Saratoga  Springs,  and  uh-­‐  and  its  been  to  see  the  city  of  Saratoga  Springs  kind  of   incorporating  the  kids  or  the  students  from  Skidmore  more.  Uh,  there  was  a  time  there  were   the  community  town  and  gown  relationships  weren't  that  great.  But  I  think  the  college  has   made  an  effort  and  I  think  the  community  has  made  an  effort  to  try  and  get  closer,  and  I  think   that  helps  both  sides.     CC:  I  guess,  is  it  ok  if  you  give  an  example  of  when  times  weren't  good  between  the  community   and  the  college  and  maybe  a  more  recent  example  how  [DP  starts  speaking]  that  kinda  works   for  the  better?     DP:  Ok,  I  have  to  go  into  my  little  history  thing  here  for  you  to  do  that  Chris,  but  I  would  say   this,  there  was  a  time  not  too  long  ago,  I'm  going  to  say  the  1960s,  and  maybe  the  50s  and   maybe  even  the  70s-­‐  but  I  wasn't  here  so  I'm  not  sure,  when  every  year-­‐  'cus  in  those  days   Skidmore  was  uh-­‐  until  the  late  60s-­‐early  70s  Skidmore  was  downtown,  the  campus.  But   whenever  the  Skidmore  kids  came  to  start  a  new  school  year,  li-­‐  businesses  would  have  signs   like  "Welcome  Skidmore  Students"  and  badubub,  you  know,  and  the  whole  community  was  like   "Oh,  we're  happy  to  have  the  Skidmore  kids  back."  Well  when  I  came  here  in  1981  there  was   none  of  that.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  even  some  "We  don't  want  those  Skidmore  kids   down  here,  where  you  got  to  keep  an  eye  on  them,"  and  blahblahblah.  But  now  I've  noticed  in   the  last  few  years  they're  back  to  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  is  talking  again  "Why  don't  we  put   those  signs  up  again?"  Uh,  so  that's  a  good  thing.     CC:  Ok  cool.  So,  I  know  you  mentioned  that  during  this  time  you  became  involved  with  the   [Saratoga  Springs]  History  Museum.     DP:  Yup.   CC:  How  did  that  happen?     DP:  I  think  I  got  involved  with  like  six  or  eight  groups  in  Saratoga  Springs,  but  I  became   president  of  the  [Saratoga  Springs]  History  Museum.  The  reason  was  I  was  down  there  alot,   researching  things-­‐  as  I  said  when  we  started,  as  I  get  questions  on  things  I  have  to  delve  more   into  them.  So  a  lot  of  questions  I  had,  I  always  think  the  best  way  to  teach  history  is-­‐if  I  can  get   the  kids  to  relate  to  it  from  things  that  happened  in  their  community,  then  they  can  kinda  see  it   �with  the  United  States  and  maybe  globally.  So  I  was  in  the  [Saratoga  Springs]  History  Museum   alot  doing  research,  and  at  one  point,  um,  the  director  at  the  time,  asked  me  if  I  would  be   willing  to  join  the  board.  So,  I  did,  I  joined  the  board  at  the  [Saratoga  Springs]  History  Museum,   and  I  learned  alot  from  those  people.  Many  of  them  were  old-­‐timers,  uh,  who  had  been  here   forever.  And  I  just  listened  to  them  tell  their  stories.  Fascinating.  So,  then  that  director  left,  and   I  was  one  of  the  people  in  charge  of  finding  the  new  director.  So  the  person  we  ended  up  hiring   was  Jamie  Parillo  [James  D.  Parillo],  he's  still  the  director  there  now,  young  guy,  he  had  worked   at  Saratoga  National  Battlefield  [Saratoga  Battlefield,  part  of  the  Saratoga  National  Historical   Park].  Um,  once  Jamie  came  on  board  he  brought  kind  of  a  youthful  exuberance  to  it.  As  a   matter  of  fact  we  started  a  program  where-­‐  'cus  I  said,  "We  gotta  reach  out  kids  more."  So  we   started  something  that  hadn't  been  done  before,  it  was  a  Junior  Membership,  so  that  any  kid   who  wanted  to  be  a  member  of  the  [Saratoga  Springs]  History  Museum,  basically  got  a  free   membership.  So  they  got  a  membership  card,  and  any  time  they  wanted  to  go  to  the  museum   to  check  things  out  or  research,  they  could  go  down  there.  So  I  thought  that  was  good.  Uh,   when  I  first  became  president  of  the  museum,  we  were  suffering  a  little  bit  because  uh,   financially,  cus'  we're  dependent,  the  museum  is  dependent  of  grants  and  donations,  uh  and,   uh  an  antiques  show  they  had  once  a  year.  And  they  were  struggling,  and  we  were  in  the  red,   we  were  in  debt.  And  I'm  happy  to  say  that  by  the  time  I  left  as  president  we  were  in  the  black,   we  were  showing  a  profit.  And  I  think  they  are  doing  fine  now.  Um,  so  all-­‐all  of  that  was  a  good   experience.       CC:  So  what  did  you  do  at  the  [Saratoga  Springs]  History  museum?  You  were  on  the  board-­‐   DP:  Yup.   CC:  You  helped  with  the  director  [search],  so  what  else  did  you  do  there?     DP:  Well  when-­‐  it's  easier  to  say  when  I  was  president  of  the  board,  because  when  I  was  on  the   board  I  was  doing  whatever  the  president  at  the  time  wanted  to  do  or  the  director,  and  it   wasn't  that  much.  When  I  became  president,  I  thought  to  myself,  "Saratoga  [Springs]  history  is   so  great,  there's  so  much  here."  Um,  "And  this  museum  is  so  great,  it's  the  oldest  museum  in   the  city."  So  I  had  every  member  of  the  board  pick  a  month  of  the  year,  and  whatever  month   they  picked  they  put  on  a  program  for  the  public  on  some  aspect  of  Saratoga  [Springs]  history.   And  we  had  everything  from  board  members  reenacting  plays,  to  doing  readings,  to  just  telling   the  history  of  the  potato  chip,  uh  all-­‐  but  all  of  them  learned  more  about  the  museum  and   about  Saratoga's  [Springs']  history  by  doing  that.  So  when  their  time  came  up  to  leave  the   board,  a  lot  of  them  wanted  to  stay  on  because  now  they  felt  more  invested  in  it.  So  I  was  very   proud  of  that.     CC:  Ok,  so  who  do  you  think  the  community  interacts  with  the  museum,  maybe  first,  when  you   first  came  on,  and  maybe  today,  too  as  well?     DP:  When  I  first  came  on  I  had  the  feeling  that  the-­‐  and  at  the  time  the  proper  name  of  it  was   the  "Saratoga  Springs  Historical  Society",  and  that  sounds  a  little  puffy,  a  little  high-­‐brow,  and   that's  kinda  how  I  though  the  museum  was.  Um,  like  appealing  only  to  old  money,  and  not  a   place  that  would  be  welcoming  to  like  a  young  family  in  Geyser  Crest  [a  neighborhood  in   �Saratoga  Springs],  or  any  student  anywhere  in  the  city,  even  at  Skidmore.  Uh,  the  other  good   thing  we  did,  by  the  way,  over  time  was  that  we  started  bringing  in  Skidmore  interns,  which   were  great,  because  they  were  learning  history  but  they  also  gave  us  good,  young  ideas  and   they're  good  with  the  technology.  But  I  think  when  I  first  came  here,  all  the  museums  in  the  city   were  c  -­‐were  like  uh,  only  for  you  know  that  little  percent  at  the  top,  at  least  that  was  the   perception.  And  I  think  now,  I  think  we  have  11  museums  in  the  city,  I  think  now  they're  a  little   more...  they're  perceived  to  be  more  accessible  by  more  people.     CC:  Ok.  I  guess  if  there  was  one  thing  that  you  really  liked  about  both  the  High  School  in   Saratoga  [Springs]  and  the  museums,  what  would  that  be?     DP:  The  people.  Um,  the  museum  and  the  community  has  wonderful  volunteers,  uh  anytime     something  comes  up  or  somebody  needs  something  or  group  needs  something,  I've  seen  the   people  of  Saratoga  Springs  step  right  up  and  get  into  it.  Um,  I  know  on  the  Skidmore  Campus   you  guys  have  a  program  called  "Skidmore  Cares"  where  I've  seen  you  out  raking  leaves  for   senior  citizens,  that's  great!  At  Saratoga  High  School  we  had  a  program  in  participation  in   government,  and  one  of  the  sections  of  it  that  I  taught,  that  class,  that  whole  class  for  [high   school]  seniors  was  to  go  out  and  to  contribute  to  the  community  somehow.  And  they  came  up   with  this  great  project,  and  a  matter  of  fact  we  planted  a  vegetable  garden  over  on  the  east   side  of  town,  oh  God  that  was  in  1997,  it's  still  there,  and  they're  still  using  it  for  the  soup   kitchen,  the  vegetables.  [Coughs]  So  I  think  the  people  have  been  really  rere-­‐  same  at  SUNY   Albany  [Sate  University  of  New  York  at  Albany]  when  I  was  down  there,  I  think  the  uh...  and   whenever  people  go  all  pessimistic  about  the  future  or  current  times  and  things,  I  don't,   because  uh,  first  of  all  I  have  historic  perspective  so  I  know  how  history  has  ups  and  downs,  but   I  also  have  great  faith  in  people,  and  I  think  uh,  I  think  people  will  pull  us  through.     CC:  Ok,  I  guess  if  there's  one  thing  you  would  like  to  change  in  some  form  in  the  high  school  or   the  museum  system,  what  would-­‐  what  would  you  like  to  do?     DP:  Change?  Hmm...   [pause]   DP:  Umm....   [long  pause]   DP:  I  have  to  think  about  that  for  a  second.   CC:  Take  your  time,  no  big  deal.   [long  pause]   DP:  Well  there  is  a  lot  of  changes  I  would  like  to  see  made  in  public  education.  I'll  just  give  you  a   couple  of  ideas.  I  would  like  to  see  every  student,  no  matter  what  their  academic  level  is,  take  a   semester  of  BOCES  [Boards  of  Cooperative  Educational  Services  of  New  York  state],  of   vocational  training,  and  learn  how  to  change  oil  in  a  car,  or  change  a  tire,  or...um...  you  know   there's  a  lot  of  options  at  the  vocational  training  school-­‐  or  basic  plumbing  or  carpentry  or   something.  Uh,  I-­‐I  think  we  went  for  a  long  time  in  this  country,  where  we  were  kinda  elitist,   and  we  just  said,  "the  only  people  really  who  are  successful  are  the  people  who  go  to  college,"   and  I  don't  think  that's  true.  We  will  always  needs  craftsmen,  plumbers,  electricians,  and   �actually  in  this  country  right  now  we  have  shortage  of  those.  We  have  a  storage  of  people  who   can  do  this-­‐  I  mean  everyone  wants  to  be  the  next  great  Einstein,  well,  Einstein  still  needs  a   place  to  work  and  someone's  gotta  build  that.  And  um,  so  I  would  like  to  see  more,  a  little  more   emphasis,  an-­‐an-­‐and  not  so  much  snobbery  looking  down  the  nose  at  vocational  training.  So  I   guess  that's  one  thing.  The  second  thing  would  be  ...  [clears  throat]  I'm  not  sure  how  you  do   this  so  Chris  I'll  leave  this  up  to  you,  I  hate  cliques,  it's  the  one  thing  I  hated  the  most  teaching   in  the  [Saratoga]  High  School  all  those  years.  So,  I  would  almost  like  to  see,  I  don't  know  you   would  do  it,  but  some  school  come  up  with  some  system  where  anyone  sits  anywhere,  at  the   cafeteria  table.  It's  not  cliques  all  sitting  together  or  ganging  up  on  somebody.  Because  the   bullying  that  goes  on  now  that's  made  headlines?  That's  gone  on  forever!  And  I  think  it  comes   from  cliques.  And  bullies,  basically,  are  insecure,  and  I  think,  in  a  way,  cliques-­‐  they're  kinda   tribal  in  nature,  they  make  insecure  people  feel  better  if  they're  with  a  bunch  of  other  insecure   people.  So,  I've  always  hated  that.  Now,  we've  had  a  couple  of  classes  there,  class  of  '84,  the   class  of  '90,  the  class  of  '94,  uh  those  three  in  particular  stick  out  to  me  because  they  weren't   cliquey.  Everybody  in  that  class  seemed  to  get  along  with  everybody  else!  And  that  was  great.     CC:  Ok.  Anything  about  the  museums  you  would  like  to  change?     DP:  Uh,  not  I  just  wish  they  would  find  a  way,  or  somebody  would  come  up  with  a  way,  that   more  people  in  town  didn't  feel  intimidated  by  them,  and  would  ch-­‐and  would...  maybe  what   you  do,  I  don't  know  how  you  would  do  this,  if  they  could  get,  uh  an  endowment  of  some  kind,   um,  and  everybody  in  the  city,  for  like,  one  year,  could  just  go  to  any  museum  they  wanted   whenever  they  wanted  for  free,  just  so  people  would  go  and  see  what  we  have  here.  We  have   this  treasury  here,  but  A.  People  don't  wanna-­‐  or  can't  perhaps,  pay  the  money  to  join  the   museum,  or  B.  they  feel  intimidated  because  they  don't  feel  like  they're  welcome  in  the   museum,  and  I-­‐  if  we  can  get  a  more  welcoming  feeling  somehow,  um,  after  we  started  the   program  were  we  get  the-­‐  let  the  kids  be  free  members,  I-­‐I  let  the  kids  put  on  a  program  one   night,  I  think  it  was  in  May  one  year,  on  the  history  of  immigration  into  Saratoga  [Springs],  and   they  did  like  five  different  groups  of  immigrants,  and  they  put  up  an  actual  display.  And  we  left   it  up  in  the  museum  for  the  whole  summer.  People  loved  it!  Uh  but  they-­‐  all  the  words  were   from  the  kids,  the  pictures  were  all  chosen  by  the  kids,  they  put  it  up-­‐  well  we  had  an  opening   night,  and  I  was  hoping  we  might  fifteen  to  twenty  of  the  parents  to  show  up,  this  was  a  class  of   uh,  trying  to  think,  maybe  35  kids  I  had  in  it.  We  had  three  hundred  people  show  up!  Uh  they   were  streaming  out  the  door  and  the  parents  and  the  grandparents  were  so  proud  of  their  kids,   but  the  other  thing  I  noticed  was  so  many  of  them  were  said  [saying]  to  me,  "Hi,  I've  never  been   in  here  before."  And  it  was  great  to  at  least  get  them  in  the  museum.     CC:  Hmm.  So  what  was  it  like  starting  the  tour  uh  company?     DP:  Oh  the  tour  company?  Well,  unbeknownst  to  the  two  of  us,  this  is  with  my  buddy  Charlie   Kuenzel,  Charlie  was  a  science  teacher,  I  had  taught  two  of  three  kids,  and  Charlie  was  doing   tours...  they  weren't  tours,  Charlie  would  take  his  science  classes  around  to  the  springs  to  test   the  mineral  waters,  went  to  rock  formations  in  the  city  like  down  in-­‐  have  you  been,  I  know   you've  been  Chris,  you  know,  High  Rock  Spring?  Where  you  can  see  where  the  earthquake   �caused  the  springs  to  start.  So  he  would  take  his  kids  around  town  to  that.  Well  I  was  trying  to   start,  and  I  eventually  did  start,  a  Saratoga  [Springs]  history  class  for  [high  school]  seniors.  So  I   was  taking  of  groups  of  kids  mostly  down  to  the  casino,  to  the  museum  [the  History  Museum  is   in  the  old  building  of  the  Canfield  Casino],  into  Congress  park  and  tell  them  the  story  of  that.  So   one  day  and  I  thi-­‐  I  wa-­‐  oh,  what  we  did  was  we  each  started,  for  professional  development  for   teachers,  offering  a  two  hour  course  for  teachers  on  the  history  of  Saratoga  Springs.  He  was   doing  it  from  the  science  point  of  view  I  was  doing  it  from  history.  And  somebody  said,  "I  took   Charlie's  course,"  he  took  my  course,  and  somebody  said,  "Why  don't  you  guys  just  do  this   together?"  And  uh,  so  we  said  "Alright,  we'll  try  it."  So  we  started  teaching  that  to  teachers  a   couple  times  together.  We  became  great  friends,  we  hit  it  off  great.  The  science  and  social   studies  and  the  history  meshed,  and  uh,  that's  how  the  tour  business  started.     CC:  Cool,  so  when  did  you  start  that  independent  of  the  school?     DP:  1999,  I-­‐I  think  it's  been  almost  twenty  years.  And  over  that  time  we've  tours  to  uh,  two   hundred  FBI  agents,  the  Second  Circuit  of  Appeals  [United  States  Court  of  Appeals  for  the   Second  Circuit]  including  jus-­‐  including  Justice  [Ruth  Bader]  Ginsburg,  Demi  Lovato  and  her   band,  umm  [pause]  oh  I  mean  any  kind  of  group  you  can  imagine  uh  we've  given  tours  too.     CC:  And  have  you  changed  that  [DP  starts  speaking]  since  you  started?     DP:  Oh  of  course!  We've  worked  with  uh,  Professor  Dym's  classes  here  at  Skidmore,  and  at   Skidmore  orientation.     CC:  Anyway,  have  you  changed  the  tour  over  the  years  as  well?  Or  has  it  [DP  starts  speaking]   remained  pretty  consistent?     DP:  Well  the  nice  thing  is  with  history,  it  really  doesn't  change...   CC:  Um  hm.   DP:  ...and  if  it  does  if  there's  something  wrong.  [laughs]  Um,  but  what  has  happened  over  time   is,  every  year  I've  learned  more  of  the  history  of  Saratoga  [Springs].  Like  I  don't  you're  learning   of  it  ever  stops.  And  so  that's  changed,  a  lot  of  things  have  been  added  to  it,  but  like  I  said   before  with  teaching  a  history  course,  if  you're  adding  more  things  to  it  you  gotta  look  for   things  to  take  out.   CC:  Mm  hm.   DP:  Um,  so  that's  happened.  But  mostly  it's  the  same  as  what  we  did  twenty  years  ago.     CC:  I  guess  has-­‐  have  you  learned  anything  that  surprised  you  recently?     DP:  Oh  all  lot,  um  [pause]  Gideon  Putnam,  came  to  Saratoga  Springs  when  he  was  twenty  five   years  old,  and  his  wife  was  uh  Doanda,  I  think  was  twenty  two  or  twenty  three.  He  is  considered   the  founder  of  Saratoga  Springs,  now  there  were  people  here  before  him,  but  he  was  a   lumberman,  and  he  laid  out  the  village  of  Saratoga,  down-­‐  what  is  now  downtown  Saratoga.  His   wife,  Doanda,  would  whitewash  trees,  put  whitewash  on  trees,  and  then  he,  the  lumberman,   �would  cut  the  trees  down,  and  that's  how  they  made  the  roads.  So,  two  things  having  to  do  him   I  learned  that  I  thought  were  interesting.  One  was,  we  always  thought,  "This  guy  is  a  genius  for   making  a  road  one  hundred  and  forty  seven  feet  wide  in  the  middle  of  the  woods,"  because   today,  I  mean,  it's  great  width,  you  know,  'cus  most  streets  aren't  like  that,  especially  not  in   1789.  Well  it  turns  out  we  found  writings  of  Gideon  Putnam  and  the  reason  the  street  was  that   wide  was  because  he  was  a  lumberman,  and  he  pulled  a  cart  behind  his  horses,  he  would  let   them  back  the  cart  up  without  having  to  make  all  these  fancy  maneuvers,  so  he  could  turn  the   cart  around,  at  one  hundred  and  forty  seven  feet,  and  that's  why  the  road  is  that  wide.  So  it   was  very  practical  but  that  was  interesting.  The  other  thing  about  him  I  thought  was  interesting,   well  two  things,  two  more  things.  One  was,  he  set  up  the  first  school  in  Saratoga,  first  public   school,  he  set  up  the  first  church  in  Saratoga,  both  over  on  Washington  street,  and  he  also  set   up  the  first  burial  ground,  and  unfortunately  he  was  the  first  one  buried  in  the  burial  ground.   And  the  last  thing  about  him  that  I  think  is  interesting  is  that  I  never  knew,  uh  was  that  his  uncle   was  the  founder  of  Marietta,  Ohio,  so  it  must  have  been  in  their  blood.     CC:  Anyway,  I  guess,  since  we're  starting  to  approach  thirty  minutes  here,  I  guess  I'll  leave  off   with  one  question  that,  in  class  we  discussed,  and  then  I  think  as  a  historian  you  might  find   interesting,  we  noticed  that  in  the  town  of  Saratoga  [Springs]  there's  a  lot  of  statues  of  horses,   and  uh  they  have  jockeys  and  there  is  a  Civil  War  solider,  but  there  isn't  really  as  many  statues   as  individuals.  Who  do  you  think  you  would  like  to  see  a  statue  of  in  town?     DP:  Oh!  What  a  good  question.  Professor  Dym.  Uh,  how  about  uh,  let's  see,  "Who  would  I  like   to  see  a  statue  of,"  -­‐  well  interestingly,  of  all  the  people  in  Saratoga  history,  the  one  we  have  no   idea  what  he  looks  like  is  Gideon  Putnam.  Everyone  else  we  at  least  have  a  sketch  or  a   photograph  or  something,  we  have  no  idea  what  he  looks  like.  His  wife  we  have,  his  kids,  but   not  him,  so  I  don't  you  could  do  that  statue.  Uh,  who  would  you  do  a  sat-­‐  want  to  hear  an   interesting  fun  fact  about  Saratoga  Springs?     CC:  Sure!   DP:  Almost  all  of  the  great  things  that  happened  in  the  city  since  1789,  since  Gideon  Putnam,   were  done  by  people  who  moved  here,  not  by  people  who  were  born  here.  That's  fascinating.   Um  alright  so  who  do  we  want  statue  to?   [Long  pause]   Mine  would  be  a  little  bit  controversial,  but  my  statute  would  be  to  John  Morrissey,  John   Morrissey  not  only  built  the  Canfield  Casino,  but  he  founded  the  racetrack  [Saratoga  Race   Course],  and  I  think  most  peop-­‐  and  you  can  make  a  pretty  good  argument,  that  over  the  years,   those  two  things  were  the  two  biggest  attractions  in  Saratoga  Springs.     CC:  Ok  cool,  anyway,  thank  you  for  your  time  today!     DP:  Oh,  thank  you!     � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Oral History Description An account of the resource Many people who have worked or studied at Skidmore College or lived in Saratoga Springs or the surrounding area carry the memories that help us tell the stories of our communities. This collection offers a glimpse into our past in the voices of those who have shared their stories. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data .wav Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit The date create the item in euro 8/03/18 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Cocchi, Christopher, 2019 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Paterson, Dave Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Lucy Scribner Library Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Christopher Cocchi: Ok, testing 1,2,3. I think its working. Ok! So uh, first thing is that, uh do you, just to go over uh, verbal consent, uh do you agree to what you signed before about, you know, hav- lending your voice to the uh, Saratoga or Skidmore Memory Project [Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project (SSMP)] and uh, you know, letting it be used online and whatnot? Dave Paterson: I do. CC: Cool, thank you. Anyway, first things first I just have to record just the empty the noise here so that they can edit it out so I'm just gonna be silent for about a few seconds here [Pause] CC: Ok, so for the record, my name is Christopher Cocchi, I'm here with Dave Paterson, in the Skidmore Library in the Media Viewing room, and I'm interviewing him for the Public History in Skidmore with Professor [Jordana] Dym. So uh, I guess, to begin, uh, what's uh, just tell me about yourself, like uh, when were you born or like where did you live growing up? DP: Ok, I was born in south Boston- CC: Um hm. DP:-in 1954. CC: Um hm. DP : And, uh, I've been in Saratoga [Springs] for the last 47 years. I've taught for over 30 years at the [Saratoga Springs] high school here, [as the] Social Studies department head, and overlapping 15 years at The University at Albany. Uh, in the midst of all that teaching of I was also President of the Saratoga Springs History Museum, and for 19 years a friend of mine and I have run a company called Saratoga Tours, where we give historic tours of Saratoga Springs. CC: Ok cool. So uh, what got you interested in history in the first place? DP: Probably my 8th grade history teacher, uh, Mr.Curren [SP?], and uh, he's the first one who made who made it more about how and why instead of, memorizing who, what, when, and where and dates and all those, and uh, I always liked to read. And once I started reading history, then I wanted to read more, it's like, now I'm writing for Saratoga Living Magazine, I think the new, the new relaunch of the magazine just came out a couple days ago, and I have an article in there that I wrote for them about the blizzard of 1888 when we got 57 inches of snow. But while I was researching that, and reading up on that, then I found a bunch more questions I wanted answers to so then I go off on- and that's the great thing about history, you're never done. CC: Um hm. That's very cool. Now uh, where did you go after your, uh, experience in public school, like which university did you [DP starts speaking] go to from there? DP: Oh, uh college-wise I was at the, first was at the University of Miami. CC: Um hm. DP: Uh, I was playing Baseball also at the time so I left Miami, um I ended up getting degrees from Boston College, uh, University at Albany, and [ The College of] Saint Rose. CC: Ok cool. And what was your first experience out of college? DP: [Deep breath] [You] mean work wise? CC: Yeah. DP: I taught for half a year in Rutland, Vermont. I was the fourth teacher they had hired, because the 7th and 8th graders were driving all the substitute people crazy, and I remember I started in February, oh I think 1980, and I get through the rest of the school year with them, and a matter of fact, on like the second the second to last week of school, the assistant superintendent asked me if I was available to come back an- oh- then next year and I said I was. And he said they were going to give me like a "The 8th grade teacher of the year award" and I said oh this is great, and then the next week I got laid off! CC: Oh! DP: [Laughs] So I was going to go back to Boston and open up a sporting goods store, and uh, on my way down through, I had interviewed at Saratoga High School before, but they already had a position filled, on my way down- I was packing up my car literally, on the day I was going to go to Boston, when Saratoga called and said "we have an opening, do you want to come up and interview?" [Unsure mumble] I said ok, I will. So I went up, they hired me, and I've been there for the last 40 years. CC: Uh, so, what was your- what was- wh- what was your teaching at Saratoga High [School]? DP: Uh, really good. Uh, Saratoga [Springs]'s a really good school district. Uh, I taught everything you can teach in the Social Studies from grades 7 to 12. Every level of student, from the weakest kids we had, a lot of kids with special needs, up to the Advanced Placement courses, uh I think I was only the 2nd Advance Placement U.S. History teacher in the county when we started that program. Um, I also taught in summer school I taught phys. ed. [Physical Education], I taught English, Social Studies, so, but, you know, all in all a terrific experience. Great kids. CC: So, how- did anything change over the years that you were teaching History at Saratoga High School? DP: [Deep breath] Well, [pause] that's one of the great things about history, things do change as time goes on, um the first kids I taught in the 1980's, I don't know if you'll remember Chris but there used to be a show on TV, a TV show in the 80's called "Family Ties". CC: Um hmm. DP: And most of the kids in the 80's were a lot like that Alex P. Keaton character. You know, they were the Michael Fox character, um, very preppy kind of thing, and we went through ph-phase for a while, but then we get into a phase where uh, everybody was getting piercings everywhere, and then we got into a phase where the clothes got kinda wild, and then it went back to more conservative dress. So it's kinda been all over the place, and uh, its interesting because towards the end of my career I noticed I was teaching a lot of the sons and daughters of kids I taught 30 years before. CC: Did uh the material you taught change at all or was it pretty consistent? DP: Well the tough thing with History is- and Math teachers don't understand this- um, there's a finite amount of information to teach in the AP [Advanced Placement] or Regents [Examinations] Math or Science courses, so they can usually schedule their courses to end, let's say, mid-May, or early May, which will give them to review for either the AP exam or the Regents. Well, History just gets added onto every year. So, for example when we get to 2001, you can't leave out 9/11, that's too important [of] a piece of history. So as you add things in, you have to edit other things that you've been teaching over time. So, you figure, when I started, was the first year Reagan, Ro-Ro Ronald Reagan was president, um when I ended [Barack] Obama was president. Well, a lot changed, and then you gotta teach all that. So, the amount I had to teach changed, and I think my methods of teaching changed. CC: Could you go into that, like wh-wh- how did your methods change? DP: Well, [Cough] education isn't a once size fit all, I don't think, although I-it does make me laugh because [the] New York Department of Education continually talks about differentiated instruction, which is the idea that every student should be treated differently and taught according to, you know, what they can do. And I agree with that philosophically, [Cough] yet they want every kid to sit down for same Regents exam, whether you live in Long Island, or Brooklyn, or Saratoga Springs. And to me that is a little ridiculous. I never had a student fail a state test, but I think the reason for that is, because even with lowest level kids I taught, I always treated Social Studies, and I think it's true of any subject [test], as a vocabulary test. As long the kids understand what the questions are at the end of the year, they can answer them. What happens is a lot of teachers think they're being a good teacher, what they'll do something like this, they'll say, I'll be teaching a class and I'll say "Ok, so were when the immigrants were coming into New York City, and they were being processed, and they were slowly getting accepted and they got jobs in factories, and they started to learn the English language, and customs in America, that's called Assimilation." Well some teachers, thinking they're just trying to help the kids, will just refer to it as "fitting in", 'cus the kids will understand it better. The problem is when they get to the Regents exam, the Regents uses the word "assimilation", and if a student doesn't associate the word assimilation with the immigrant experience, they're not going to get the question right. So I learned early on that vocabulary was an important part. Also early on when I was teaching it was a lot more chalk talk lecturing, as then as time when the technology get so good with the Smartboards and things, I could work in, instead of telling kids about Martin Luther Kings' [Jr.] "I Have a Dream" speech, I can play them a quick 5 minute excerpt, I can show them an inauguration, um, so that was good. CC: Ok, uh do you have any like, uh stories from any particular incidences [incidents] from your time in the [Saratoga] high school? DP: [Laughs] Stories relative to what? CC: I guess like for instance like, did you ever have like a student that like, made you think "Hey, you know, this might be an interesting way to teach it next time." Or did a teacher come up to you and say something that like, made think of, like... DP: Oh several times, I think most of the times the changes I've made in my teaching methods over the years came from a feedback I got from students. Um, because you a different group of students every year, and they come at things from a different perspective. Uh, one of my favorite students ever was a young man who came up to me and said, he was very nice, he was thanking me for the course, for teaching the course, for teaching the course and everything, and then he said "You know what I really liked a lot was when we worked in groups." And I hadn't really been too big on group projects, but for the next years I took a couple of the units and I made them group projects things, and all of them- well not all of them- most of the kids really seem to like it. So then the next year I did a little more of that, and-and that happened a few times in my career, he's now a very successful doctor at a Mass. General Boston [Massachusetts General Hospital at Boston]. CC: Cool. Uh, so what was like- wh-what was life like living in Saratoga [Springs] at the time, 'cus you were new to the area, correct? DP: Yeah Saratoga [Springs] is uh [small pause] it's an interesting city. Uh when I first moved up here, there seemed to me there was a strong feeling like Broadway was the dividing line in the city. And, briefly when I first moved here I lived in an apartment on the east side of Broadway. And, but for most of the time I've been here I lived in a house on the west side. And it seemed to me in maybe the first 10 years I lived here, there was a dividing line between the people of west Saratoga [Springs], west of Broadway and east of Broadway, and so, of course I got curious and I started doing research and talking to people, and uh the [Saratoga] High School used to be, way back when, over where uh, uh Lake Ave. [Avenue] Elementary School is. So the kids from [the] West side of Saratoga [Springs] had a longer walk than the kids from the east side of Saratoga [Springs], and there was a train that cut the path, they went by where the Price Chopper is, Railroad Place [Aparements]. So, the kids from the West side had to time- since they used to let them home for lunch- but you had to time it right so the train wasn't holding you up. Um, and o- and then the trains disappeared and all that, but that "feeling" seemed to stay with a lot of old-timers. So that was interesting to me. That's now changed, I don't feel that now. Saratoga [Springs] is uh, I think- I think I read that as of two years ago, for the first time, there are now more people living in Saratoga [Springs] who weren't born here than were born here, so that's a big change in that. Um, but Saratoga [Springs] you know, you look at its over the years, it reinvents itself all the time. And I think it's done that when the [Saratoga] City Center came about in 1984, Saratoga [Springs] got revitalized, and boy, where else would you want to be now? CC: Um hm, so, how do you think the people of Saratoga [Springs] changed during your time uh- DP: The time I've been here? CC: Um hm. DP: [Deep breath, pause] Well, I-I thought it was noteworthy that a couple years ago Saratoga [Springs] get [got] named the "Friendliest city in New York", 'cus I think the people are very friendly. Um, we're also very also very much Wonderbread, in the sense that we're- like, I don't know what we are, 90% Caucasian or something, so its been nice to see an influx of minorities into the city of Saratoga Springs, and uh- and its been to see the city of Saratoga Springs kind of incorporating the kids or the students from Skidmore more. Uh, there was a time there were the community town and gown relationships weren't that great. But I think the college has made an effort and I think the community has made an effort to try and get closer, and I think that helps both sides. CC: I guess, is it ok if you give an example of when times weren't good between the community and the college and maybe a more recent example how [DP starts speaking] that kinda works for the better? DP: Ok, I have to go into my little history thing here for you to do that Chris, but I would say this, there was a time not too long ago, I'm going to say the 1960s, and maybe the 50s and maybe even the 70s- but I wasn't here so I'm not sure, when every year- 'cus in those days Skidmore was uh- until the late 60s-early 70s Skidmore was downtown, the campus. But whenever the Skidmore kids came to start a new school year, li- businesses would have signs like "Welcome Skidmore Students" and badubub, you know, and the whole community was like "Oh, we're happy to have the Skidmore kids back." Well when I came here in 1981 there was none of that. As a matter of fact there was even some "We don't want those Skidmore kids down here, where you got to keep an eye on them," and blahblahblah. But now I've noticed in the last few years they're back to the Chamber of Commerce is talking again "Why don't we put those signs up again?" Uh, so that's a good thing. CC: Ok cool. So, I know you mentioned that during this time you became involved with the [Saratoga Springs] History Museum. DP: Yup. CC: How did that happen? DP: I think I got involved with like six or eight groups in Saratoga Springs, but I became president of the [Saratoga Springs] History Museum. The reason was I was down there alot, researching things- as I said when we started, as I get questions on things I have to delve more into them. So a lot of questions I had, I always think the best way to teach history is-if I can get the kids to relate to it from things that happened in their community, then they can kinda see it with the United States and maybe globally. So I was in the [Saratoga Springs] History Museum alot doing research, and at one point, um, the director at the time, asked me if I would be willing to join the board. So, I did, I joined the board at the [Saratoga Springs] History Museum, and I learned alot from those people. Many of them were old-timers, uh, who had been here forever. And I just listened to them tell their stories. Fascinating. So, then that director left, and I was one of the people in charge of finding the new director. So the person we ended up hiring was Jamie Parillo [James D. Parillo], he's still the director there now, young guy, he had worked at Saratoga National Battlefield [Saratoga Battlefield, part of the Saratoga National Historical Park]. Um, once Jamie came on board he brought kind of a youthful exuberance to it. As a matter of fact we started a program where- 'cus I said, "We gotta reach out kids more." So we started something that hadn't been done before, it was a Junior Membership, so that any kid who wanted to be a member of the [Saratoga Springs] History Museum, basically got a free membership. So they got a membership card, and any time they wanted to go to the museum to check things out or research, they could go down there. So I thought that was good. Uh, when I first became president of the museum, we were suffering a little bit because uh, financially, cus' we're dependent, the museum is dependent of grants and donations, uh and, uh an antiques show they had once a year. And they were struggling, and we were in the red, we were in debt. And I'm happy to say that by the time I left as president we were in the black, we were showing a profit. And I think they are doing fine now. Um, so all-all of that was a good experience. CC: So what did you do at the [Saratoga Springs] History museum? You were on the board- DP: Yup. CC: You helped with the director [search], so what else did you do there? DP: Well when- it's easier to say when I was president of the board, because when I was on the board I was doing whatever the president at the time wanted to do or the director, and it wasn't that much. When I became president, I thought to myself, "Saratoga [Springs] history is so great, there's so much here." Um, "And this museum is so great, it's the oldest museum in the city." So I had every member of the board pick a month of the year, and whatever month they picked they put on a program for the public on some aspect of Saratoga [Springs] history. And we had everything from board members reenacting plays, to doing readings, to just telling the history of the potato chip, uh all- but all of them learned more about the museum and about Saratoga's [Springs'] history by doing that. So when their time came up to leave the board, a lot of them wanted to stay on because now they felt more invested in it. So I was very proud of that. CC: Ok, so who do you think the community interacts with the museum, maybe first, when you first came on, and maybe today, too as well? DP: When I first came on I had the feeling that the- and at the time the proper name of it was the "Saratoga Springs Historical Society", and that sounds a little puffy, a little high-brow, and that's kinda how I though the museum was. Um, like appealing only to old money, and not a place that would be welcoming to like a young family in Geyser Crest [a neighborhood in Saratoga Springs], or any student anywhere in the city, even at Skidmore. Uh, the other good thing we did, by the way, over time was that we started bringing in Skidmore interns, which were great, because they were learning history but they also gave us good, young ideas and they're good with the technology. But I think when I first came here, all the museums in the city were c -were like uh, only for you know that little percent at the top, at least that was the perception. And I think now, I think we have 11 museums in the city, I think now they're a little more... they're perceived to be more accessible by more people. CC: Ok. I guess if there was one thing that you really liked about both the High School in Saratoga [Springs] and the museums, what would that be? DP: The people. Um, the museum and the community has wonderful volunteers, uh anytime something comes up or somebody needs something or group needs something, I've seen the people of Saratoga Springs step right up and get into it. Um, I know on the Skidmore Campus you guys have a program called "Skidmore Cares" where I've seen you out raking leaves for senior citizens, that's great! At Saratoga High School we had a program in participation in government, and one of the sections of it that I taught, that class, that whole class for [high school] seniors was to go out and to contribute to the community somehow. And they came up with this great project, and a matter of fact we planted a vegetable garden over on the east side of town, oh God that was in 1997, it's still there, and they're still using it for the soup kitchen, the vegetables. [Coughs] So I think the people have been really rere- same at SUNY Albany [Sate University of New York at Albany] when I was down there, I think the uh... and whenever people go all pessimistic about the future or current times and things, I don't, because uh, first of all I have historic perspective so I know how history has ups and downs, but I also have great faith in people, and I think uh, I think people will pull us through. CC: Ok, I guess if there's one thing you would like to change in some form in the high school or the museum system, what would- what would you like to do? DP: Change? Hmm... [pause] DP: Umm.... [long pause] DP: I have to think about that for a second. CC: Take your time, no big deal. [long pause] DP: Well there is a lot of changes I would like to see made in public education. I'll just give you a couple of ideas. I would like to see every student, no matter what their academic level is, take a semester of BOCES [Boards of Cooperative Educational Services of New York state], of vocational training, and learn how to change oil in a car, or change a tire, or...um... you know there's a lot of options at the vocational training school- or basic plumbing or carpentry or something. Uh, I-I think we went for a long time in this country, where we were kinda elitist, and we just said, "the only people really who are successful are the people who go to college," and I don't think that's true. We will always needs craftsmen, plumbers, electricians, and actually in this country right now we have shortage of those. We have a storage of people who can do this- I mean everyone wants to be the next great Einstein, well, Einstein still needs a place to work and someone's gotta build that. And um, so I would like to see more, a little more emphasis, an-an-and not so much snobbery looking down the nose at vocational training. So I guess that's one thing. The second thing would be ... [clears throat] I'm not sure how you do this so Chris I'll leave this up to you, I hate cliques, it's the one thing I hated the most teaching in the [Saratoga] High School all those years. So, I would almost like to see, I don't know you would do it, but some school come up with some system where anyone sits anywhere, at the cafeteria table. It's not cliques all sitting together or ganging up on somebody. Because the bullying that goes on now that's made headlines? That's gone on forever! And I think it comes from cliques. And bullies, basically, are insecure, and I think, in a way, cliques- they're kinda tribal in nature, they make insecure people feel better if they're with a bunch of other insecure people. So, I've always hated that. Now, we've had a couple of classes there, class of '84, the class of '90, the class of '94, uh those three in particular stick out to me because they weren't cliquey. Everybody in that class seemed to get along with everybody else! And that was great. CC: Ok. Anything about the museums you would like to change? DP: Uh, not I just wish they would find a way, or somebody would come up with a way, that more people in town didn't feel intimidated by them, and would ch-and would... maybe what you do, I don't know how you would do this, if they could get, uh an endowment of some kind, um, and everybody in the city, for like, one year, could just go to any museum they wanted whenever they wanted for free, just so people would go and see what we have here. We have this treasury here, but A. People don't wanna- or can't perhaps, pay the money to join the museum, or B. they feel intimidated because they don't feel like they're welcome in the museum, and I- if we can get a more welcoming feeling somehow, um, after we started the program were we get the- let the kids be free members, I-I let the kids put on a program one night, I think it was in May one year, on the history of immigration into Saratoga [Springs], and they did like five different groups of immigrants, and they put up an actual display. And we left it up in the museum for the whole summer. People loved it! Uh but they- all the words were from the kids, the pictures were all chosen by the kids, they put it up- well we had an opening night, and I was hoping we might fifteen to twenty of the parents to show up, this was a class of uh, trying to think, maybe 35 kids I had in it. We had three hundred people show up! Uh they were streaming out the door and the parents and the grandparents were so proud of their kids, but the other thing I noticed was so many of them were said [saying] to me, "Hi, I've never been in here before." And it was great to at least get them in the museum. CC: Hmm. So what was it like starting the tour uh company? DP: Oh the tour company? Well, unbeknownst to the two of us, this is with my buddy Charlie Kuenzel, Charlie was a science teacher, I had taught two of three kids, and Charlie was doing tours... they weren't tours, Charlie would take his science classes around to the springs to test the mineral waters, went to rock formations in the city like down in- have you been, I know you've been Chris, you know, High Rock Spring? Where you can see where the earthquake caused the springs to start. So he would take his kids around town to that. Well I was trying to start, and I eventually did start, a Saratoga [Springs] history class for [high school] seniors. So I was taking of groups of kids mostly down to the casino, to the museum [the History Museum is in the old building of the Canfield Casino], into Congress park and tell them the story of that. So one day and I thi- I wa- oh, what we did was we each started, for professional development for teachers, offering a two hour course for teachers on the history of Saratoga Springs. He was doing it from the science point of view I was doing it from history. And somebody said, "I took Charlie's course," he took my course, and somebody said, "Why don't you guys just do this together?" And uh, so we said "Alright, we'll try it." So we started teaching that to teachers a couple times together. We became great friends, we hit it off great. The science and social studies and the history meshed, and uh, that's how the tour business started. CC: Cool, so when did you start that independent of the school? DP: 1999, I-I think it's been almost twenty years. And over that time we've tours to uh, two hundred FBI agents, the Second Circuit of Appeals [United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit] including jus- including Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg, Demi Lovato and her band, umm [pause] oh I mean any kind of group you can imagine uh we've given tours too. CC: And have you changed that [DP starts speaking] since you started? DP: Oh of course! We've worked with uh, Professor Dym's classes here at Skidmore, and at Skidmore orientation. CC: Anyway, have you changed the tour over the years as well? Or has it [DP starts speaking] remained pretty consistent? DP: Well the nice thing is with history, it really doesn't change... CC: Um hm. DP: ...and if it does if there's something wrong. [laughs] Um, but what has happened over time is, every year I've learned more of the history of Saratoga [Springs]. Like I don't you're learning of it ever stops. And so that's changed, a lot of things have been added to it, but like I said before with teaching a history course, if you're adding more things to it you gotta look for things to take out. CC: Mm hm. DP: Um, so that's happened. But mostly it's the same as what we did twenty years ago. CC: I guess has- have you learned anything that surprised you recently? DP: Oh all lot, um [pause] Gideon Putnam, came to Saratoga Springs when he was twenty five years old, and his wife was uh Doanda, I think was twenty two or twenty three. He is considered the founder of Saratoga Springs, now there were people here before him, but he was a lumberman, and he laid out the village of Saratoga, down- what is now downtown Saratoga. His wife, Doanda, would whitewash trees, put whitewash on trees, and then he, the lumberman, would cut the trees down, and that's how they made the roads. So, two things having to do him I learned that I thought were interesting. One was, we always thought, "This guy is a genius for making a road one hundred and forty seven feet wide in the middle of the woods," because today, I mean, it's great width, you know, 'cus most streets aren't like that, especially not in 1789. Well it turns out we found writings of Gideon Putnam and the reason the street was that wide was because he was a lumberman, and he pulled a cart behind his horses, he would let them back the cart up without having to make all these fancy maneuvers, so he could turn the cart around, at one hundred and forty seven feet, and that's why the road is that wide. So it was very practical but that was interesting. The other thing about him I thought was interesting, well two things, two more things. One was, he set up the first school in Saratoga, first public school, he set up the first church in Saratoga, both over on Washington street, and he also set up the first burial ground, and unfortunately he was the first one buried in the burial ground. And the last thing about him that I think is interesting is that I never knew, uh was that his uncle was the founder of Marietta, Ohio, so it must have been in their blood. CC: Anyway, I guess, since we're starting to approach thirty minutes here, I guess I'll leave off with one question that, in class we discussed, and then I think as a historian you might find interesting, we noticed that in the town of Saratoga [Springs] there's a lot of statues of horses, and uh they have jockeys and there is a Civil War solider, but there isn't really as many statues as individuals. Who do you think you would like to see a statue of in town? DP: Oh! What a good question. Professor Dym. Uh, how about uh, let's see, "Who would I like to see a statue of," - well interestingly, of all the people in Saratoga history, the one we have no idea what he looks like is Gideon Putnam. Everyone else we at least have a sketch or a photograph or something, we have no idea what he looks like. His wife we have, his kids, but not him, so I don't you could do that statue. Uh, who would you do a sat- want to hear an interesting fun fact about Saratoga Springs? CC: Sure! DP: Almost all of the great things that happened in the city since 1789, since Gideon Putnam, were done by people who moved here, not by people who were born here. That's fascinating. Um alright so who do we want statue to? [Long pause] Mine would be a little bit controversial, but my statute would be to John Morrissey, John Morrissey not only built the Canfield Casino, but he founded the racetrack [Saratoga Race Course], and I think most peop- and you can make a pretty good argument, that over the years, those two things were the two biggest attractions in Saratoga Springs. CC: Ok cool, anyway, thank you for your time today! DP: Oh, thank you! Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33 Minutes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dave Paterson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource February 11th, 2018 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Description An account of the resource An oral history interview with Dave Paterson, formerly a History Teacher at Saratoga High School and president of the Saratoga Springs History Meusuem, currently a tour guide at Saratoga Tours. In this interview, he discusses his journey to Saratoga Springs, his views on how things have changed, his history of working for the High School and the Museum, as well as what he is still learning today. Language A language of the resource ENG Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cocchi, Christopher, 2019 History Saratoga Springs Saratoga Springs High School Saratoga Springs History Museum Saratoga Tours teaching https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/730185ca71ceaa47d45c9e65e0a23b09.jpg cdc3c38dddb3c800eb635577e421a702 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/20222186c6bd9b738489db9568bc7ddf.wav 65a9f8a6e9d2d18b3866fe4c93c84263 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Evolution of Beekman Street (20th century-2016) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/13/16 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Memory Project Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Skidmore College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available DS: 113A Storytelling Interviewing, Skidmore College Description An account of the resource History of Beekman street, evolution of Beeekman, artist identities/roles, the future. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Original recording wave file, 16 bit 44.1 khz Zotero Interviewee Amejo Amyot, M'elle Pirii-Lee, Cecilia Frittelli, Interviewer Jonah Brenner, Amanda Peckler, Yuelin He, Max Lowe, Dejon Bunn-Constant Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Dejon Bunn-Constant Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David Plaskett Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 06/12/2016 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Digital Audio Recording Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Dejon Bunn-Constant Location The location of the interview 69 Beekman Street, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Interviewee: David Plaskett Interviewer: Dejon Bunn-Constant Location of Interview: Kitchen of Black Elks Lodge, 69 Beekman Street Date of Interview: 12/10/16 00:00:01.13: Header 00:00:12.02: Introduction. Resident of Saratoga Springs and Black Elks Lodge since 1998 00:00:59.37: Discussion on decline of participation of Black Elks Lodge and fraternities in general. Misconception on lodge and change from the festive, young, organized, active participation it used to have. Focus on functions of lodge - bar, parties. Loss of knowledge of history. 00:04:35.11: Recounts history of the Drill team as an integral part of what Elks used to be. Used to be source of pride and representation of Saratoga in competitions with other cities. Meetings and social gatherings used to be face of Black Elks. Community, support driven. 00:08:32.23: Clarifies racist history of Elks lodge - exclusion lead to need for Black fraternity members to create own space. Emphasis on sameness between Elks of all races despite division in history. 00:10:09.44: Mentions that Elks started in England. 00:13:13.07: Explains that original purpose of fraternal organizations was loving, giving. That purpose has been clouded. 00:14:12.58: Stresses importance of young membership, transparency of history key to people knowing the reason why they are joining, 00:15:19.23: Tells history of Frederick Allen in Saratoga Springs, organization of City Hall. 00:16:56.34: Remarks Black Elks Lodge being the first and last Black lodge in New York. Declares desire to keep Lodge alive due to racial significance in Saratoga. 00:19:14.17: Discusses exclusion and lack of appreciation of the lodge by the larger Saratoga community. Lack of funding and desire by townspeople to keep lodge alive. 00:21:47.05: Notes how lodge historically had auxiliary attractions to gain membership that no longer exists. 00:24:05.39: States belief that lodge should have membership drive as rejuvenation effort. 00:25:42.40: “Can We Talk” by Tevin Campbell starts playing in the distant background, remarked by Mr. Plaskett as he discusses meetings historically being members only. 00:26:43.18: Describes color guard - women in parades held by fraternities in past who would wave the fraternity’s flag and do a routine to introduce the fraternity being represented. 00:28:48.31: Not many original Elks members left to remember and recount history and legacy to newer generations. 00:31:03.04: Downplay of lodge’s legacy and importance by the rest of Beekman Street and the rest of Saratoga. Makes clear that the town actually wants to see the Arts District and the Lodge gone. 00:32:45.51: Arts District began being rented by people of too wealthy a class for artists to survive and maintain the businesses and homes they had along Beekman Street. Severity of the collapse, refinancing occurring around 2010. 00:37:14.01: Closing. Remarks importance of interviewer’s interest in the history of the Lodge and maintaining the narrative of the Lodge as a method to draw attention to it. Emphasis on knowledge of history as most powerful tool to use. Unsure if he believes Lodge should attempt to rejuvenate itself or let go of history, disappointed tone. 00:40:46.40: End. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 40:46 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Plaskett Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dejon Bunn-Constant Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Original recording wav file. 16 bit 44.1 khz Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 12/10/2016 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available DS113A: Storytelling Interviewing, Skidmore College. Description An account of the resource The overarching theme of the interview I conducted displays Mr. Plaskett's doubtful yet hopeful view for the future of the Lodge. He has been living in Saratoga and participating in the Lodge since 1998 - he has been an Elks member since his youth. As a senior citizen, he remarks the shift he has observed in the priorities and reasons why people join (or do not join) the lodge. Lastly, he focuses on the importance of knowing and maintaining the history of the Elk's lodge, as there has been blatant prejudiced disregard for the continuation of the lodge by the larger Saratoga community. He hopes that by keeping history alive and continuing the narrative, the essence of what Elkdom means to the Black Elks will be kept alive as well. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 12/13/16 Subject The topic of the resource Saratoga Springs -- Beekman Street Arts District -- History oral history https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/33c7d009b97b5a3241993e0f2f33d99e.JPG 7a3db360e4cd4c7ad1eb4f22671ee017 https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/59a91ac6a92dbafb8ea923ebb4a3ce18.mp3 8d350de488d75127de4f61dc95f7ad91 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource David Porter Interview (Sound) https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/500355f8fca789da6ec92f54c7f3c9ae.pdf 3b8ab1741480a09d28d0dcb599d0a2ae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource David Porter - Log https://www.ssmp.mdocs.skidmore.edu/files/original/3a3e2a10b43ef636f0c5e179ff56769f.pdf 5452b585741aef9bf1e220a12e607e57 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Skidmore College Retirees Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Eileen McAdam, Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valley Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David Porter Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:45:00 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit December 13, 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Porter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 18, 2015 Description An account of the resource <a title="David Porter, President, Skidmore College" href="http://www.skidmore.edu/skidmorehistory/centennial/leaders/david-porter.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">David Porter</a>, President of the college from 1987-1999, saw the college through many landmark moments. In this interview he talks about his background in Classics and Music; learning on the job; the recruitment of a more diverse student body; renovating the Library; and the development of the Tang Teaching Museum. &nbsp;A <a title="David H. Porter" href="https://vimeo.com/161512190">video celebration </a>of his life and presidency draws on this interview. Language A language of the resource English (en) Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Commission on the 90's Diversity Divestment from South Africa Library Renovation Tang Museum