Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /home/mdocsski/public_html/ssmp.skidmore.edu/bootstrap.php on line 127
15 40 764 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/2725b6a59d80f0e3e7afd07e0be898a5.m4a b620e55b68d82edacc500ad540ec10ae https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/7eb6d06fdef2e97afa4d8420d6210a60.pdf b7e39ef16a649ef49a88990981dd41c1 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 Rimmele Wood, '24 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rachel Clothier Location The location of the interview Zoom (Virtual Interview) Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Audio recording (MP4) 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 Rachel Clothier Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 2020 Description An account of the resource Rachel Clothier, Corinth Town Historian, talks about general stores in Saratoga County Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Clothier, Rachel Wood, Rimmele Subject The topic of the resource Saratoga County (N.Y.) -- History Saratoga County (N.Y.) -- General Stores https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d01346f746655134a4f0c2c3737bc4d6.png f721c161c88fff50a0ad02dcac7f7713 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 Health, History, Horses Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 24, 1956 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. The Saratogian https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/ccb6607671649749b18ef0ef1cdc42db.pdf 7dfd33ca5fe521ea7d8469f0f697ca3c PDF Text Text HARRY T. BURLEIGH’S LIFE MUSIC and H arry T. Burleigh (18661949) started his life as a musician early. Living in a musically talented household in post-Civil War Erie, Pennsylvania, Burleigh learned African-American spirituals from his mother and maternal grandfather and participated in Burleigh family concerts at home. While he considered his mother his first music teacher, his voice teacher, George F. Brierly, was the most important influence in his hometown, where he experimented with a wide array of instruments, including guitar, piano, and other string instruments, as well as singing. Congenitally shortened ring fingers ended the musician’s early dreams of becoming a concert pianist. Burleigh quickly gained national attention. As a pre-teen, Burleigh drew local notice for solos performed in school and church choirs. When the New Orleans University Jubilee Singers came to Erie in 1888, he joined their tour, traveling and singing with them for eight months. In 1892, at just 16 years of age, Burleigh auditioned for and received a full four-year scholarship to the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. Erie’s citizens came together and donated money to help him afford living in this cultural capital. During the summer of 1892, Burleigh worked at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, where he also may have sung at Bethesda Episcopal Church. His time in Saratoga working in the service industry and singing in the church likely brought him in contact with local socialites, some of whom may have helped finance his education at the Conservatory. He also had the opportunity to hear world-famous African-American soprano Sissieretta Jones (Black Patti), who sang in Saratoga Springs that August. While Burleigh was at the Conservatory, Czech composer Antonín Dvorák mentored the young baritone. The two mutually inspired each other with the “Symphony in E Minor” (from the New World) reflecting the composer and Conservatory director’s appreciation for the significance and musicality of African-American music notable in his use of two spirituals. Because Burleigh was so integrated into the art music scene, his compositions (over 260 works) and choral arrangements (almost 190) are valued and analyzed by scholars and performers. By combining his classical training and the AfricanAmerican musical traditions he grew up with, Burleigh, in a sense, legitimized African-American spiritual music for a largely white audience. Throughout his life and career, which included singing for decades as a soloist at St George’s Episcopal Church of New York, Burleigh made a concerted effort to be true to his musical and cultural roots. Although there is only one known recording of him performing, his legacy continues on through his arrangements of spirituals from “Deep River” to “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” and his many original compositions. Layman’s Magazine of the Living Church, 1940. Photo: New York Herald-Tribune � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/9e5c5a7dfe198e09ce93bc356e0d2dd5.pdf 3961d39e15efbad1bbc1432b30ba461d PDF Text Text TIMELINE December 12 1886 May Harry Thacker Burleigh was born in Erie, PA to Henry and Elizabeth Burleigh. 1888 Burleigh joined Fisk University Jubilee Singers of New Orleans, with whom he traveled for eight months. Harry T. Burleigh (l) with grandfather Hamilton Waters and brother Reginald Waters (r), ca. 1868. From Snyder, Harry T. Burleigh. Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1882. (Burleigh not pictured). Wikipedia. December 1891 Summer 1892 Burleigh spent the summer in Saratoga Springs, NY, working as a waiter at the Grand Union Hotel. He immersed himself in the music culture, including performing at services at the Young Men’s Christian Association. Broadway at the United States Hotel, Saratoga Springs, ca. 1900, Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress, Print and Photographs Division. 1898 Facade of the National Conservatory of Music of America, 47-49 West 25th Street, New York City, 1904. Wikipedia. Burleigh moved to New York City to study at the National Conservatory of Music on a full scholarship. 1894 Burleigh was chosen as a soloist with the choir at St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York City after competing against 60 others. Married poet Louise Alston on February 9. 1899 1900 Alston Waters Burleigh, Harry T. Burleigh and Louise Alston Burleigh's son, was born. Burleigh became the first AfricanAmerican soloist in Temple Emanu-El’s choir in New York City. Temple Emanu-El, 65th Street, New York City 1906 Burleigh sang at the African American Council Convention for delegates from 20 states. 1916 Burleigh released the first of a series of arrangements of “Deep River”, one of his most famous works. 1919 Three generations—Rachel Farley, Louise Alston Burleigh's mother; Louise Alston Burleigh, and Alston Waters Burleigh, circa 1900. Photo courtesy of the Burleigh family. Snyder, Harry T. Burleigh. 1914 Burleigh helped to found the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). 1917 Burleigh's original composition, “Little Mother of Mine” was made famous by opera singer Enrico Caruso. George Broome, a friend of Burleigh’s, established the first black recording phonograph recording company, Broome Special Photograph Records. Burleigh sang his own arrangement of “Go Down, Moses” for Broome, which was his only commercial recording. 1949 1924 Harry T. Burleigh died of heart failure at age 82, in New York City. Burleigh made his radio debut on a broadcast celebrating his 30th anniversary as the baritone soloist at St. George’s Church. St George’s Church, 209 E. 16th Street, New York City, ca. 1905. Library of Congress, Print and Photographs Division. Harry T. Burleigh, 1943 Digital Library, University of Pennsylvania � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/70f3d722650635d988e7e11f2b0bb7a2.pdf e7594afe5bb9fc376c67fd24c546b2b2 PDF Text Text AFRICAN-AMERICAN MUSICAL ROOTS of Harry T. Burleigh Spirituals Minstrel Shows Ragtime James Reese Europe and Band (Badger). Wikipedia First page of “The Frolic” (Burleigh). Burleigh’s Arrangement of “Deep River,” 1907 (first page). Courtesy Historical American Sheet Music, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, RBR Music 694 African-American slaves performed a wide variety of spirituals and other Christian music. Many of these songs were coded messages of subversion against slaveholders, or which signaled escape. The title of this spiritual as arranged by Harry T. Burleigh refers to crossing the river Jordan, which was a symbol in many spirituals not only of a wish to reach heaven, but also of a yearning to be freed from slavery (Jones). Burleigh in 1906 - Musical Director of the St. George’s Men’s Club minstrel show. Photograph from the 1907 minstrel show program. Developed in the 19th century, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment in the antebellum and Reconstruction periods. Minstrel shows included both black and white entertainers who wore blackface, and the shows mocked AfricanAmerican music and culture through racial stereotypes. Beginning in 1906, Burleigh ran a vaudeville show for St. George’s Men’s Club in New York City. He served as musical director, where performances included more than the racial mockery typical of minstrelsy. The 1907 program reveals only one ragtime tune typical of the Zip Coon character (a dominant racial stereotype). Ragtime music, syncopated music primarily performed on the piano, contributed greatly to the development of harmonic and melodic complexities of later African-American music (Jones). Though Burleigh called ragtime “the old plantation melody caricatured and debased,” many of Burleigh’s compositions such as “The Frolic” used syncopated rhythms that were clearly influenced by ragtime (Snyder 322). James Reese Europe, a prominent African-American musician, considered ragtime to be a true and natural expression of African-Americans, saying “the Negro plays ragtime as if it was second nature to him -- as it is” (Berlin 246). � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/2517863b17b5e84bb72317caebfd1036.pdf 20f29326986e6b48dac5c1d0c0b5d5aa PDF Text Text in AFRICAN-AMERICANS SARATOGA A frican-Americans have lived in the Capital District for centuries, with 400 serving in the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. Nearby Saratoga Springs has long served as a tourist destination for white and black Americans. In the nineteenth-century, the tourism of wealthy white travelers provided AfricanAmericans, including Harry T. Burleigh, with a range of work and business opportunities. So a small year-round presence of 3-5% of the population – growing from 88 in 1830, to 158 in 1855, to 315 in 1960—increased in summer months. African-Americans lived and worked throughout the community of Saratoga Springs. Many settled on Congress, William, Cowen and Franklin Streets close to big hotels and businesses downtown where many were employed. While many held jobs in services – including music and entertainment, cooking, cleaning, racing, staffing dining areas, and laundry -- AfricanAmericans were also respected jockeys, entrepreneurs, and business owners in Saratoga Springs. 4 Solomon Northup Solomon Northup, shown dressed in a “plantation suit.” Twelve Years a Slave, 1859. 5 Saratoga Spa State Park Saratoga Spa State Park, established in 1911 as the New York State Reservation, preserved the spring waters and was built as a resort to draw in all Americans to a European-style springs experience. Today, it is a nationally acclaimed historical landmark, and has been home since 1966 to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center as well as many springs and bathhouses. Working man's view of Broadway, circ. 1890. Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection, Saratoga Springs History Museum. 1 Jack’s Harlem Club Jack’s Harlem Club, owned by Isaiah Jack, served both African-American and white Saratogians. This African-American owned and operated business lasted as a club only through the 1940s, however, his restaurant lived much longer and was equipped with a cabaret on the second floor. This cabaret became Jack’s Harlem Club in 1950. Jack invited singers, impersonators, and comedians to contribute to the entertainment of black and white Saratogians and visitors. Detail, The Saratoga Spa, Saratoga Springs, NY, 1952. Skidmore College, Scribner Library digital collection. 6 Grand Union Hotel Jack’s Harlem Club Cabaret, 1941. Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection, Saratoga Springs History Museum. 2 Hattie’s Restaurant Hattie’s Restaurant, known as the Chicken Shack, served as an integrated restaurant that fed Southern cooking with a Louisiana touch in Saratoga Springs since 1938. Originally located west of Broadway at 7 South Franklin Street, the restaurant is now located at 45 Phila Street. Aerial view of Grand Union Hotel, 1916. Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection, Saratoga Springs History Museum. 3 Saratoga Race Course Trainer Wesley Smiley, former steeplechase jockey with horse Graham of Geniva. Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection, Saratoga Springs History Museum. The Grand Union Hotel, which employed African-Americans as service staff, is where Harry T. Burleigh worked in summer 1892 as a wine steward. Under a new owner in 1872 the hotel became one of the world's largest hotels, with music performances by Victor Herbert and his orchestra -- possibly with a Burleigh cameo. There was a dining room serving 1,400, 824 guest-rooms, a mile of covered piazzas, two miles of corridors, 12 acres of carpeting and an acre of marble tops and floor tiles.” (Denby 42) 7 United States Hotel Hattie Austin at the door of Hattie's, 1969, 7 South Franklin Street. Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection, Saratoga Springs History Museum. Saratoga Race Course, opened in 1863, is the third oldest racetrack in the U.S. It’s been in use almost every year since 1864 and in 1999, was ranked as Sports Illustrated's #10 sports venue of the twentieth century. It employed many African-Americans as jockeys, grooms, and stable hands. Isaac Burns Murphy, the “Prince of Jockeys,” especially thrilled crowds in the 1880s and 1890s. Some African-American jockeys, like Wesley Smiley, became trainers. Solomon Northup – a free person of color who was tricked, taken away from his home in Saratoga Springs, and sold into slavery – is an integral part of Saratoga’s history. Solomon and his family moved to Saratoga Springs in March 1834, initially residing on Washington Street, and later moved to the United States Hotel. Northup, like many of his African-American contemporaries, worked in tourism, first as a hack driver for Isaac Taylor who owned Washington Hall and later at the United States Hotel, where he got to know Judge Marvin, the man who ultimately helped secure his release from captivity in Louisiana. Northup was a musician who frequently played at the United States Hotel and other area hotels. Solomon’s story not only produced great works like the book and later film, Twelve Years a Slave, detailing his enslavement and escape, but also increased popular interest in Saratoga Springs. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "United States Hotel, Saratoga Springs, N.Y." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1898 - 1931. Vacant since an 1865 fire, the United States Hotel was rebuilt at a cost of more than a million dollars in 1874. At the height of hotel construction in Saratoga, the United States Hotel was among the largest hotels in the world. It contained “768 rooms, a parlor greater than four thousand square feet, and a dining room of more than ten thousand square feet” (Sterngrass). Hotel manager Joseph Smith wrote in 1897 that “[t]he waiters employed at the Spa are usually colored men, the [United] States [Hotel] never having had any other.” (Armstead) Map: Saratoga Springs, NY. Burleigh Lith., Troy, NY, 1888. Courtesy of LOC. Geography and Maps Division. � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/c84eed705bae6fd9765da1cd2d620d46.pdf 83bc8c6aaf78d63dbe13bc794e8719af PDF Text Text 1892 BURLEIGH IN SARATOGA: THE LORE THE HISTORICAL RECORD Burleigh was “discovered” in Saratoga Springs with the help of summer residents in 1880. Area newspapers, including The Saratogian and Albany Evening Journal, do not reveal a direct connection between Burleigh and Mrs. MacDowell. Nor do the Bethesda Episcopal Church archives. It seems unlikely that Burleigh first came to the area in 1880, at 14 (as the 1964 article said). Newspapers seem to first have noted Burleigh in 1892. An article on the Grand Union Hotel staff member described his singing in a service at a Y.M.C.A. affiliated with the Presbyterian church. WORK, WORSHIP SONG and “The services at 4pm began to attract such crowds there was not room for all to hear. To one of the services that year also came the mother of the famous American composer, Edward C. MacDowell. She was Mrs. Frances Knapp MacDowell, a guest at the United States Hotel. Like the others she was entranced and came again and again to hear the Negro youth. In 1892, Mrs. MacDowell made is possible for Burleigh to attend the National Conservatory of Music in NY, where another of his friends became Anton Dvorak, American composer.” - The Saratogian, April 24, 1964 “I have a warm spot in my heart for Saratoga Springs and for its people. I’ll never forget the start I received there. It gave me encouragement to strive higher.” –Harry T. Burleigh, The Saratogian, 1964 Bethesda Episcopal Church was founded in 1830. Saratoga Springs’ first Episcopal church, which seated 600, moved to Washington Street near Broadway, in 1847. Although a 1964 Saratogian article claims Burleigh sang in this church choir in 1880, no documentary evidence yet found confirms the story. Harry T. Burleigh may or may not have been discovered by the classical music world in Saratoga Springs. However, during the summers of 1892 and 1894 he was in the Spa City. The published record confirms the young singer’s dedication to work, worship and song which were a hallmark of his later life and career in New York City. “The new rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association were occupied yesterday for the first time for a Sunday service. The Rev. Dr. F. A. [Netle] of Chicago presided, and the Rev. Dr. Merrick Johnson of Chicago delivered an address. Harry Burleigh, colored, of Erie. Pa, assistant head waiter at the Grand Union, sang “I’m the Child of a King.” Selection from “Prettily Played: Shakespeare Produced on the Grand Union Lawn,” - August 15, 1892, Evening Journal. Fulton County Postcards Website Y.M.C.A. In 1892, Burleigh performed at a Sunday service at the YMCA in Saratoga Springs, inaugurating its new rooms at 18-20 Phila Street for worship. This is a description of the Y.M.C.A.’s mission and activities from Kirwin’s Saratoga Springs Directory. Bethesda Episcopal Church Choir, ca. 1890s. Courtesy of Bethesda Episcopal Church Archives. Text from Kirwin’s Saratoga Springs 1983 directory. 1894 FELLOW PERFORMERS A RETURN ENGAGEMENT By 1894, the New York Herald confirms Burleigh’s growing stature. An article on “Saratoga’s Big Season” (August 19) includes Burleigh as a ‘notable guest’ affiliated with the National Conservatory of Music who will sing at a “musicale at the North Broadway cottage of Mrs. John. W. Ehninger of New York.” A week later (August 26), the paper reported how the home’s “spacious parlors were filled with a fashionable and appreciable audience.” Fellow African-American singers also performed in town, including the soprano Sissieretta Jones. Untitled Document Thomas M. Tryniski 309 South 4th Street Fulton New York 13069 www.fultonhistory.com North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY. Detroit Publishing Col. ca.1900. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. The ‘cottages’ of wealthy summer visitors lined North Broadway. At the top was Woodlawn Park, now the home of Skidmore College. On this street, Burleigh gave a private concert in August 1894. file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Desktop/hello.html2/18/2007 11:01:03 AM In Saratoga Springs, Burleigh encountered New York socialites, clergy and fellow workers. The town also hosted many African American performers, including successful opera and troubadour singer Sissieretta Jones, known popularly as “Black Patti.” Sissieretta Jones Born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner (1869-1933) studied voice at the New England Conservatory. Known as “Black Patti” after an Italian fellow-soprano, she gave concerts in Saratoga Springs that attracted thousands, possibly including Burleigh, in August 1892 and 1894. The Daily Saratogian described one: “[A] great crush of people... began pouring into the park an hour before... the concert. Both entrances were used and the rush did not cease for an hour and one half. Every chair, bench or seat Music Pavilion & Lake, Congress Park, ca. 1880. From the Wittemann Brothers’ Saratoga Album (1883). Archive.org of any kind,... was taken and still sixty percent of the people stood during the entire program... [T]he pavilion... was surrounded on all sides by the crowd of between five and six thousand people who were attracted by the phenomenal singer they were anxious to hear. Black Patti, University of Washington Libraries, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5cded9f5ef689b106d7c18bc94320afd.pdf 2d657130ac1d6ea0ff04b8e63d387440 PDF Text Text “The plantation songs known as “spirituals” are the spontaneous outbursts of intense religious fervor, and had their origin chiefly in camp meetings, revivals and other religious exercises. …. It is a serious misconception of their meaning and value to treat them as “minstrel” songs, or to try to make them funny by a too literal attempt to imitate the manner of the Negro in singing them….Their worth is weakened unless they are done impressively, for through all these songs there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man…. The message is ever manifest that eventually deliverance from all that hinders and oppresses the soul will come, and man—every man— will be free.” -Harry T. Burleigh, 1917 ABOUT the EXHIBIT This exhibit was researched in Fall 2016 by students in Elizabeth Macy’s 2016 Blues and African-American Musical Heritage class. Timeline and Biography: Kenter Davies, Joey Freeman, Jon Wiedemann African-American Musical Roots: Willy Bresee, Joseph Eisele, Sayeed Joseph African-Americans in Saratoga: Leonardo De Jesus Oliveira, Tyler Magner, Kelsea Schimmel Burleigh in Saratoga: Olivia Cox, Taylor Fohrhaltz-Burbank, Jules Koslow MDOCS’ Jordana Dym and Jesse Wakeman provided additional research and planning. Poster design by Michael Zhou, ’17. Saratoga artist Daesha Devón Harris contributed photographs from her series, “and yet must be...my Promise Land.” Exhibit posters were printed with support by the Music Department and MDOCS’ Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation “Project Vis” grant. Special thanks to Jeremy Day-O’Connell, Music, and Shelley Curran, Zankel, for support for hanging the exhibit, and to Jamie Parillo, Director, Saratoga-Springs History Museum for sharing photographs from the George S. Bolster Collection. Additional visual materials come from the Special Collections, Scribner Library, Skidmore College; Prints and Photographs Division and Map Division, Library of Congress; Art and Picture Division, New York Public Library, Digital Collection; Historical American Sheet Music, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University; Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries; Saratoga Room, Saratoga Springs Public Library; Bethesda Episcopal Church Archives (Saratoga Springs); and MDOCS’ Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project (ssmp.skidmore.edu). Sources “African American Spirituals.” Library of Congress Online, URL: https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197495. Armstead, Myra B. Young. “African-American Life.” Saratoga Springs, A Centennial History, Field Horne, ed, Kiskatam Publishing. 2015. -----. Lord Please Don’t Take Me in August: African-Americans in Newport and Saratoga Springs, 1870-1930. University of Illinois Press, 1999. Badger, Reid. “James Reese Europe.” Encyclopedia of Alabama, 5 October 2009, URL: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2470. Berlin, Edward A. King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era. Oxford University Press, 2016. Burleigh, Harry T. From the Southland: Piano Sketches by Harry T. Burleigh. Theodore Presser Co., 1914. Denby, Elaine. Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. Reaktion Books, 2002. Fiske, David, Clifford Brown and Rachel Seligman, Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Greenwald, Helen. The Oxford Handbook of Opera. Oxford University Press, 2014. Jones, LeRoi. Blues People: Negro Music in White America. Quill, 1963. “Century’s Best - SI’s Top 20 Venues of the 20th Century”. Sports Illustrated. June 7, 1999. “Saratoga Race Course,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Lynn, Mary C. Make No Small Plans: A History of Skidmore College. Skidmore College. 2000. Nicholson, James. The Notorious John Morrissey: How a Bare-Knuckle Brawler Became a Congressman and Founded Saratoga Race Course. U. Press of Kentucky, 2016. Owsley, Dennis. “The Jazz History Of St. Louis-Part 1: The Ragtime Era And The Roaring Twenties.” St. Louis Public Radio, 4 July 2014, URL: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/jazz-history-st-louis-part-1-ragtime-era-and-roaring-twenties#stream/0. Rehl, Jane W. Honorable Work: African-Americans in the Resort Community of Saratoga Springs, 1870-1970. Historical Society of Saratoga Springs, 1992. Snyder, Jean. Harry T. Burleigh: From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance. University of Illinois Press, 2016. “Spa State Reservation Commission,” Saratoga Springs: 250 Years in Maps, 2015, Skidmore-Saratoga Memory Project, URL: http://ssmp.skidmore.edu/exhibits/show/mappingsaratoga/. Sterngrass, Jon. First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport, and Coney Island. JHU Press, 2003. University at Albany Planning Studio, Planning & Design Recommendations For The West Side Neighborhood,Saratoga Springs, New York, Fall 2001. URL: http://www.albany.edu/gp/files/2001_Fall_West_Side_Saratoga_Springs.pdf. � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1c499641efefd717f8c0add8166b83d1.pdf 15ce2e77491dee43e47ee3bdbc54e8eb PDF Text Text Harry T. Burleigh th year 150 Commemoration � 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 Harry T. Burleigh 150th Commemoration Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 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 Harry T. Burleigh Exhibit Posters Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 30, 2016 Language A language of the resource eg Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Zhiyu (Michael) Zhou https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/3d315bfa54a05937323786925c442481.jpg e01d0182326b8ab1875f4d1eb8a0dd8c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/66bb262ad4c1c55176cc4c7c528b7eea.mp3 32a3d81ffd927dfa4e5e03c5643c0ff5 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/48d693eeffba411e5daca4114e9bf83e.pdf d7d8508d019f55133e20a8550d4e427f PDF Text Text Narrator: Sean Collins Interviewers: David Guo ‘25, Chloe Hanrahan ‘24, and Elena Shostak ‘24 Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 4, 2022 Chloe [00:00:01] Testing. Testing. Sean [00:00:03] Testing, testing. Chloe [00:00:05] Testing, testing. Elena [00:00:07] Oh, yeah, that's better. Chloe [00:00:09] Cool. So. Hi. Sean [00:00:13] Hi. Chloe [00:00:13] Welcome to your interview. Sean [00:00:16] Yes. Chloe [00:00:16] We just wanted to start off by getting to know you if you feel comfortable on more of a personal basis. Sean [00:00:21] Sure. Chloe [00:00:22] So introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your community, like, was growing up. Sean [00:00:29] Sure. So my name's Sean Collins. I'm organizer and representative with the Service Employees International Union Local 200 United. I am also the Treasurer for the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO. About myself, oh, gosh, I've been, I've been with the Local, now as a staff member for, going on ten years in February. How I got to be here, I was telling you before, Elena, right? Sorry. And David? David [00:01:02] Yep. Sean [00:01:02] David. I was telling Elena before outside. I come from a military family. My father was a, was a marine, an enlisted Marine for 23, 24 years. And my mom worked various jobs when I was younger and through my adolescence. She was a flight attendant when she was pregnant with me and into, into, you know, the first year or two of my life and then worked other odds and ends jobs, as you know, due to my, wherever my dad was stationed, you know, wherever we were living at the time. So I was born in Bethesda, Maryland. But I lived in upstate New York—I've lived in upstate New York most of my life. I'm 32. And I would say of that, of those 32 years, about, like, 20, 21 of them have been in upstate New York. I live out in, up in Plattsburgh, out in Oneonta, and lived in the capital district for 14 so years now. I went to Califorina, I went to high school in California and also lived some time in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina, you know, a couple of times as well. But once I graduated high school, my grandmother, my nana who lives in Binghamton, New York, where my dad is born and raised, she has a New York address, so I used her address as if it was my address to get in-state tuition at SUNY Morrisville. And I think my dad as a marine, he could sort of keep his residency as, �you know, wherever he wanted, even though he was stationed wherever. And so a combination of that I was able to use, and I don't think it's illegal, but it's probably not kosher, if you will. Sean [00:02:39] But I used, I went to SUNY Morrisville for my first year of school studying journalism technology, which was a sort of a new program geared towards, like, you know, at the time it was like 2007, 2008 where they thought, like, blogging was the future was like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias and like Andrew Sullivan, you know, all those, like, now they're now I realize, like, really obnoxious bloggers. That was, it was the, it was the thing at the time. And so I was studying that, and then I immediately got, like, bored with it. So, I transferred to UAlbany to study political science and, you know, sort of when I that's how I came to the Capital District. And yeah, I studied political science, political theory at UAlbany until I left UAlbany. I say left; I didn't graduate. I never completed my bachelor's degree. I got a job with Citizen Action of New York, which is a, you know, grassroots, depending on your perspective. But as it says and as it says on the website: it's a grassroots organization, membership organization that works on, like, left, progressive issues. I did communications and, like, PR work for them and then I was kind of more of a desk job and I got tired of talking, you know, on behalf of working people. And I wanted to sort of have them have their own voice. And so from, you know, the opportunity, I'm skipping some stuff, but the opportunity arose for when I was at Citizen Action to start as an organizer with the local, Local 200. And I've been here ever since. Chloe [00:04:19] You touched on that you studied political science, I think. Right? You touched on that. You studied political science. And I think Elena or David, if you want to ask the question that we have in relation to actually your political affiliation, if you're cool with talking about that. Sean [00:04:32] Sure. Elena [00:04:34] So on your KeyWiki it describes you as involved in with the Albany Democratic Socialists of America. And we were wondering if you could describe yourself as a democratic socialist and what that means to you? Sean [00:04:48] Yeah, I would, yeah, I am a member of the DSA, Democratic Socialists of America. I would never, I would never describe myself as a democratic socialist. I think that's just, like, an unnecessary redundancy in terms I would consider myself a socialist. What does that mean, right? As, you know, socialism essentially is is that, you know, workers on the means of production and democratically operate them and determine how they, how they function. Right. And then there's no competitive markets as this is just those markets exist to serve the motive of profit. And so that's, that's what I consider, that's what I consider myself. I think it took me some time to sort of develop that. It definitely started in college doing student organizing and working, you know, through that student organizing, working alongside unionized faculty and unionized graduate instructors, unionized staff on campus, you know, in the most, like, union dense, one of the most union dense parts of the country. It's like, it's like New York City, and then the capital region is, like, up there, in, like, the top five, if not top three. And so it was through that, through those studies, through those interactions with those professors and all those folks that it sort of came to that. And, you know, I joined DSA, you know, like, a lot of folks, you know, in the, in the lead up to the 2016 election and not so much motivated by Bernie, but, like, definitely that in the lead up to when it was increasingly obvious what the outcome was going to be, that Trump was going to win. And it felt like even if I didn't necessarily agree with the DSA, you know, in the totality. It's, you know, a socialist who's not, you know, �who's not a part of an organization. There's, you know, it's they're not, they're not doing, they're not doing socialist organizing and they're not doing socialism because it's right there in the name. It's a social exercise. Chloe [00:06:55] That's awesome. So from what I understand, from what you just said, that kind of like your work with unions, your education, and all of that has kind of played into not just like what you do for a living, but also like your personal beliefs. Would you say that that's accurate? Sean [00:07:09] Yeah. You know, another thing I always, I, so my mom was a flight attendant. She was a unionized flight attendant. And, you know, later on when I say I come from a union family, so I certainly come from a working class family for sure. My dad was an enlisted Marine. You know, my paternal grandmother was, was a union nurse who worked for the state for years, still works for, like, you know, as a substitute nurse, or at least until very recently worked as, like, a substitute nurse for the Binghamton schools. And so, where was I going with this... So, yeah, I definitely, definitely I sort of, as I sort of got started studying these things, I start to pose these, these questions to, you know, to my parents or to my family and stuff like that and start to pull back the, you know, layers of the onion. I was, like, oh, yeah, there's my mom was the flight attendant; my grandmother was, you know, was a nurse; my, my grandmother worked for, you know, as a, you know, civil employee, civil service employee for the State Department and did, like, refugee work for a long time. And then, you know, I had mentioned that my father was a marine and I, setting aside all the issues of American, the American military that we don't need to go into, like, gratuitous detail, you know, on its face there is, there's a, it's a, like, maybe not its face, but, like, there is a noble, you know, notion to that that, you know, here is he is signing up to serve, you know, his country, right? And for me, it's something that I came to glean, like, through high school and into and definitely into college. Is that, like, well, why is that? Why is that particular form of service so, you know, so unique when, you know, I mean, teachers, you know, that the binmen, you know, pick up your trash like all these folks are contributing to their country, to their communities and stuff like that. Sean [00:09:04] And, but that's not, it doesn't, it's not attached with the same sort of value and valor, valor, like, or military service, even, even though, like, especially now, like, I would say, you know, someone who's working in a public school, you know, setting, you know, as a teacher or a teaching assistant or whatever is in an uphill battle one way or the other. And so that sort of, that sort of that, that notion of, like, service on my father's part and also being, you know, subject to the state, you know, it's just, like, I lived where they sent him. I went to school was based on that. I interface with communities based on that, and so I worked and I, you know, when I was a, you know, teenager, I worked on base. I worked at that grocery store. I worked at the exchange like the, like, which is basically I don't know how familiar you are with, like, a military base with the PX is basically like the Macy's on base with like a Rite Aid, you know, it's like but so I, you know, I worked those places and it just sort of that's where I was. And I sort of didn't realize it until much later on, when I was filling out all the paperwork, I was, like, as a federal government employee, I was a member of the AFGE, didn't even realize that that was the thing I had signed up because I was 16 and wasn't thinking about it in those terms. And I come from a sort of somewhat union family, but not like one that was like, you know, it's not like I, my father worked for like GM and his father worked for GM. It's a little bit different. David [00:10:32] Okay, thanks. So,you talked about how you moved from a desk job to essentially organizing, so what was the process like for you in that, like, step up? �Sean [00:10:48] Right. David [00:10:49] Was it, like, difficult? Sean [00:10:50] Well, yeah. So, you know, when I was working at Citizen Action, I was doing, like, other organized, community organizing. And just by nature of, like, these organizations, you always sort of, you know, interfaced with, like the members of the organization or the other coalition partners and their members and their activists and their leaders and stuff like that. And so in that way I was doing, like, organizing, but it was more like, you know, back at the house type of thing, preparing press releases, helping folks draft, like, letters to the editor, you know, updating our website, you know, tracking our press and taking pictures at the rallies. And so I was, I was, you know, I was acting as a—I was organizing. And I was also still involved with, like, the student organization that I was a part of in college, which no longer exists, but, you know, I was, I was still, like, engage with that and, but, you know, I, so it was, it yes, it was a desk job. But I what I mean is, is, like, you know, some of my mentors that I met with there were more, they're doing more of the nuts and bolts organizing of, like, talking to folks, you know, bringing folks into the organization, having those one on ones, really building those relationships. Whereas my role was sort of I say this, you know, thinking back on when I was 21, 22, but I was the sort of topic expert as to, like, how to coach them on how to talk to the press, something that I barely knew how to do, but, like, you know, how to write letters to the editor, you know, these sorts of things. And, and, but I just, you know, I still do a lot of that stuff, but like now I also get to do these, like, one on one conversations with workers and doing, you know, identifying their issues and interest. And, you know, they're, they're in many ways like the essential qualities they have of being a leader or being an activist or being whatever. And they're in their workplace or in their communities. Chloe [00:12:38] Yeah. We were really interested in some of the work that you've done for unionized workers at, like, Capitol Roots. Sean [00:12:45] Oh, yeah. Chloe [00:12:46] And so we were wondering because Capital Roots, from what we understand, is like a nonprofit dedicated to food access and sustainability, but it's fostering a workplace that's not conducive to its employees. It's retaliatory. And we were wondering what it's like to be unionizing or fighting against a system where it's something that the public might view as, like, a good, like, oh, it's a nonprofit, it's helping people, but it's also not helping its workers. So what is that kind of that tension or that struggle or what has that been like? Sean [00:13:24] It's been it's honestly it's been incredibly perplexing. You know, I've you know, again, living having lived in the area for, like, you know, ten, 15 years, you know somewhere in there, now 14 years, I, I've lived, you know, and within, you know, rocks, you know, a stone's throw of, one of their community gardens. And over the years, I had heard stories from past staff about, like, the issues at that, at their workplace, and it was always, like, you know, as an organizer, an union organizer, every, you know, we keep a list of, like, the non-union workplaces that we would like to organize and for various reasons and Capital Roots was there because it does have this and, like, a lot of nonprofits, it does have this, like, sort of stated mission. But I always think, you know, around, like, sustainability and food access and, you know, care for its community. But I always think that the thing is with those things is that, like, you can't really genuinely and authentically perform that service or whatever it is to the community without starting, you �know, without starting at home. Which is not to say that, like, I don't recognize, or the staff don't recognize, the struggles of a nonprofit organization that probably would always want to do more. Any, you know, just taking Capital Roots out of the equation, any nonprofit would probably like to do more for its employers because it doesn't have that, like, profit motive. But, it, it doesn't. You know, I think it's, there are, it becomes, then, a sort of an internal question of, like, what's, you know, what's more important on balance, you know, for the management and its donors or its board, I should say, is, you know, doing this work internally or projecting that we're doing it internally and also, you know, doing an externally, that is a really sloppy way of putting it. But, yeah, it's been, I think, you know, and I think I actually said this in, like, one of the, one of the, to one of the reporters who came to our rally at the beginning of July is just that, like, we understand, these folks aren't working for this organization do not expect to make you know, you know, you know, six figure salaries or anything like that. There's, you know, there's a recognition that, like, nonprofits, you know, do have that, they do rely on grants and funders and foundations and donors and volunteers. Sean [00:15:37] And there's nothing wrong with that. But, you know, set aside the financial stuff, there's other things that the employer can do that, you know, can confer respect and dignity in other ways in terms of how managers and directors talk to their staff and deal with their staff and interact with their staff that they don't do. And that doesn't cost anything to sort of be nice and respectful. And the last thing I would say, too, you know, as a, as a, you know, as a union, our local 200 United, virtually all of our employers are nonprofit employers, colleges and universities, which we have about six, seven thousand members in that division of our union. They're all nonprofit employers, different kind of nonprofit, but they are still nonprofit. A lot of the human service agencies, you know, that provide care and services to, and, you know, day habilitation programs and these sorts of things to the developmentally disabled and in different parts of the state. You know, they're nonprofit employers that we have a lot of public sector workers in school districts, towns and villages. I, you know, in upstate New York, they're, they're nonprofit workers. So it's, it's, you know, they're different, but we, you know, one of the things that we've had to actually convey at Capitol Roots at the bargaining table is that, like, we don't need you to lecture us on nonprofit. We get nonprofit, but it's just that, you know, it's that other stuff that we were, I was talking about before that is, is missing there. Elena [00:17:09] So when a workplace like Capital Roots puts out a statement with buzzwords like valued staff, how does that impact the workers and the union workers fighting for their valued staff? Sean [00:17:21] I'm sorry, say that again. Elena [00:17:22] Oh. So how do these buzz words like valued staff impact workers and union workers fighting for a truly valued staff? Sean [00:17:30] Yeah, I mean, they see stuff like that. I see stuff like that. And knowing everything that's happened and they're all you know, they've all, I mean, the thing about a union, right, is that it, it's the workers coming together to, you know, obviously need to, to bargain and negotiate their terms and conditions of employment. That's what happens. That's the contract. That means the end result, hopefully. Right. But in that, in those interim stages, what happens is, is they're talking to one another, they're communicating, they're creating. I always, you know, just explain it to workers. Is that, like, management, any manager, you know, administration, whatever, they have a system of being able to communicate information and get information back from, you know, and they control it. �That's the beautiful thing about being, you know, the management administration. And so when we're forming a union, we're doing the same thing and we're sharing information across, you know, departments or across, like, job titles and, you know, different, like, programs in the case of Capital Roots. And then, you know, that filters back out to, like, the union leaders and the folks in the negotiating committee. And then we exchange that obviously with the, you know, with the employer, you know, like at Capital Roots. And so what is it? What does it mean when they see stuff? Is that like what I think the managers, you know, at Capital Roots and other places fail to realize is that, like, it drives them crazy because it's just, like, that's not true. Like, it's not, that's demonstrably not true. Just as like a, like a case point with like Capital Roots when we first started organizing there back in, like, May, late May, early June, there's 29. Yeah, 29 directors and staff as of today. As of, what time is it? It's 3:58. So Melissa's last day ends in an hour and one minute. And so with her departure, they're down to 12 staff and 12, you know, 12 staff and directors. So a 50%, like, loss. And it's, and they don't value they don't. She had an exit interview. It was, as she described, it was a very cold experience with her, the HR manager as just, like, barely acknowledged, like, thank you for your three... no, there's no thank you for your three years of service. Not in a genuine sense. And, and that's it. Sean [00:19:38] But what's happening and the reason why I have a hard stop here at 4:30 is, is that they're meeting up at Rare Form Brewing. All the current remaining staff and the former staff are going to get together to have a drink and send, you know, Melissa off. That's where, that's, that's an actual demonstration of value. But what's happened as staff have left, you know, there, in respect to, but what's happened as those folks have left is that, like, if you were liked if you were, to be candid, if you were one of the kiss asses, you got, you got the doughnuts in the morning and the "goodbye"s "was really nice knowing you". And then Melissa, who's been there for three years in their Gardens program, you know, has a cold, you know, exit interview. And it is otherwise just like it's not acknowledged at all. And I went out, you know, I'm just reading between the lines and all that. I imagine there's relief that she's gone. There's another one down, which, you know, I think, again, is just like if you valued her, especially someone like, her, who's been there for three years, I mean, you not only value her, the relationship, the personal relationship, the professional relationship you have, but particularly her as professional three years of experience working for this organization, which is a long time in Capital Roots terms, three years of, you know, knowledge and institutional memory of about how the organization works. All the relationships she has with the gardeners and the volunteers that she works with across their 50 some odd 55 gardens across like Saratoga Counties, Albany, Rensselaer, Schenectady County. Those are all relationships that she's built, not singlehandedly, but she's been a part of building over, over three years. And it's just, like, well, good riddance, because you and this one regard, you went too far. David [00:21:16] It's a bit of a topic switch, but could you elaborate a little bit more about your work with the non tenure track professors at Skidmore and what specifically is your role in that fight? Sean [00:21:27] Yeah, yeah. So I, SEIU 200 United and SEIU, the, you know, our international union which has locals across the country and members 2.1, 2.3 million members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. That's what makes us an international those, those two. Back in like 2012, 2013, they launched what was at the time called, like, adjunct action and then became, like, faculty forward this, this nationwide organizing project to organize first adjunct faculty and then all faculty off the tenure track primarily, but where possible, all faculty. So what makes Skidmore different from, like, other like public schools, like the SUNYs or your CUNYs in a place like New York is that �public sector, you know, employees are governed by state law. And so there they can, faculty that have access or have tenure are eligible to organize, whereas non tenure track faculty at private colleges and universities, the faculty that are on the tenure stream that are in the tenure streams, rather, they are...there's a 1979 Yeshiva ruling, Yeshiva University of New York City that says that because they have access to tenure, they are, they have their they have a managerial role in their colleges and universities in terms of the budget and the finances, in terms of curricular design, in terms of personnel in hiring and hiring faculty hiring adjuncts or non tenure track faculty or filling tenure vacancies and then tenure in promotion itself. So setting aside that, like, the Yeshiva ruling is, you know, you know, as it's applied today doesn't really, it doesn't make sense in the contemporary college or university that we started organizing SCIC or SEIU the royal way, if you will, started organizing faculty across the country, particularly non tenure track faculty. Sean [00:23:35] And so our local, we started, we launched our campaign at Marist College because like I said before, we have we already had about, like, four or five thousand members in higher education. And if you throw a dart at a college or university along, like, the New York State Thruway corridor, we have members on that campus. So, like, I represent members at, like, Vassar College and Bard College in the Hudson Valley. We have members at Marist as well, and then other colleges across the state, too. So we started at Marist because there was, like, at the time I think it was like five hundred or six hundred adjunct faculty and we were, like, well, we already have these, like, two hundred plus, like, janitors and building and grounds workers who maintain the campus and we have, like, it's it's a, it's an incredible contract that those workers have. I mean, they're making you know, it it's just like I think starting rate for, like, a janitor is like $22 an hour, like premier, like health insurance benefits, a pension. It's a good, like, union job. And you can say and then those folks, you know, a lot of our members who, you know, are working as a janitor, they don't themselves have, you know, college education, but they can send their kid to school at a place like Marist or in a place like Vassar for free. And so it's, you know, it provides, you know, that sort of social mobility for their, for their children. Sean [00:25:22] So we started we were, like, this is a great contract, you know? And, you know, of course, of course that will win this campaign at Marist. We did not. It was it was it was. Marist is a very interesting college. I, what's his name? Bill O'Reilly is an alumni from there. So, it sort of gives you a little bit of a taste of what the student body is like. And we, we, we, we lost that election. But as part of, like, a lot of the press and sort of attention that the campaign got, not necessarily lost, but the campaign got a friend of mine, our acquaintance who became a friend through organizing here in the Capital District. He's like, "I am an anthropology professor at Saint Rose, and they just canceled one of my courses and I'm pissed about it and I want to organize my workplace". And he just fired off an email over like the college Listserv and, and then got a bunch of responses and started meeting up with them for drinks and so on and so forth. And then they won their union like 3 to 1. Then we organized SUNY Schenectady Community College. We organized Siena. There's a bunch of other organizing victories across the state from there. Fordham University. Ithaca College, Wells College out in the Finger Lakes. So we, you know, we won a lot of, you know, victories across the state at about in 20. I forget the actual timeline. Now it's some say 2018, some say 2019. I'll just agree with the folks who said 2018 because they've been right about most everything else. We start, we had a conversation at that cafe over in the, that Fresh Market Plaza. You know, over here I met with Pete Murray, who's a philosophy professor here at Skidmore, and Kate Paarlberg, who at the time was a history professor in International Affairs and History. I think her background is, like, in Latin American and Caribbean studies. And I met with them and that, you know, they were like, this is, these are, these are various, you know, issues and concerns. One �of the ones that they talked about was the pay disparity at the time, I think it's been chipped away a little bit. But the pay disparity between men and women, you know, faculty where so again, philosophy Pete Murray and then Kate, history. So, you know, the liberal arts, you know, the humanities, sort of generally equally valued or undervalued by college administrations. Sean [00:27:09] He made $10,000 more than her, something like that, again, it was 2018, so I might be inflating that a little bit, but there was a pay discrepancy, nonetheless. And then looking into data that the administration has done, that the faculty have sort of dug up themselves through surveys and talking among their colleagues and identified it, too. So, like, whether it's 10,000 or not, the point is it's demonstrable and it's across the, you know, across the college. And so we started having conversations and it was very slow going at first. And, you know, but you know, it, we sort of got, got some heads, you know, some steam into 2019 and then, then the pandemic interrupted everything. And then last semester, well, not last semester, the fall of 2021 semester, we sort of had a conversation at the beginning and it was like, you know, things were starting to open back up. All the frustrations that we've seen across the, you know, economy in across the workforce, you know, sort of they played out here, too, in their own sort of specific way to faculty. Sean [00:28:09] And, you know, my role, to answer your question right, is as the organizer, is to sort of push them to talk to their colleagues and to build support for the unions to, you know, sort of execute, you know, a plan to win that we sort of developed together. But that is informed by, you know, my experience at other places and, you know, what I've seen at other colleges and universities across the country. And so we had a conversation that beginning of fall 2021, which is that, like, if this is going to happen, if we're not going to continue to burn ourselves out, you know, reaching a certain threshold and then, you know, new faculty come and go and we are back to square one in many ways, and we really need to just put our shoulder into it. And that means like having, you know, conversations with as many faculty, if not all of the, at the time we thought it was about 180 non tenure track faculty. You need to go out and have like if you think about it, there is like ten folks in the cause. Like if you each have two conversations and identify two supporters a week, you know, two times ten times, you know, sixteen weeks in the semester, you know, you go from there. And so that's, that's where, you know, we did that through the fall into the spring. And then in May, we reached the threshold that we set of 60% support across the college. And that's when we went public. Sean [00:29:28] And then there was the election. Well, initially, the college was sort of reticent. They were, you know, allowing the election to go forward. We were able to reach an agreement. I'm sure you might have a question about that. We were able to reach an agreement. They had an election in September, and then they won their election, you know, 2 to 1, at least in both the full time and the part time unit. And so now, you know, my role transitions from organizer, solely organizer not that I'm not still an organizer, but, like, now I'm, like, transitioning to, like, being the representative. So helping them set up, you know, a negotiating committee, identifying who wants to serve in that negotiating committee, identifying what the bargaining priorities are through surveys, and then preparing those as with, with the response to those surveys, which is, like, all right, well, now we know what folks are looking for. Now I help them memorialize this into, like, an actual, like, contract proposal. And then we go to the table with that committee that they elect from among their peers. And I serve as the chief spokesperson for the committee. But, like, they develop the proposals and help develop our counterproposals and counterproposals to counterproposals. And again, I think it's, you know, it's in many ways, it is like the organizing drive, too, though, is that, like, I, you know, I always describe my �role as is that, like, I'm a mouthpiece, but a mouthpiece is nothing without the person who is the voice. And that's you all. It's the workers themselves. And so I can help sort of translate it because, you know, Skidmore can afford a, you know, a pricey attorney. So I could sort of translate it into their language. But I don't, what I can't do is I can't, like, provide the narratives of the day-to-day experience of the faculty or any worker. And so that's where they come in. So I'm the chief spokesperson, but that's really inflating the role. It really, I would really be nothing without, like, I would, I can't accomplish anything on my own because I don't work here. They do. And they have to be able to talk about their experiences and what changes and solutions they think need to be in place. Chloe [00:31:20] Yeah, I am. I am. I know of one adjunct professor. She used to come to the German club that I'm a part of. Ruth McAdams. Oh, yeah. And she's. She's wonderful, very kind, warm. And I know that she had a hand in. Sean [00:31:34] Oh, yeah. Chloe [00:31:34] A big hand in this. Sean [00:31:35] Oh, yeah. Chloe [00:31:36] And I was just wondering a little bit about, like, the, the power dynamic between a non tenured track professor speaking out and, and advocating for herself, theirselves, themselves, himself and, and also what you think of the overall shift in academia to adjunct professors. Like, there's this big wave of it's becoming solely adjunct and lecturers. These tenure track positions are fading away. So those two questions and then if you see this, this shift in any other fields to more, like, add on people than actual salaried guaranteed health benefits, all those kinds of things. Sean [00:32:19] I first, I should say, like, Ruth McAdams is, is an incredible organizer and as near as I could tell, also an incredible professor and instructor. And I actually, I didn't even realize until, like, I think it was about, like, two or three months ago that she also speaks German. I was, like, “Oh, this is crazy.” And she's an English professor too, I think that's wild. So, she's great. And the rest of the committee and there's so many folks on it. Diana Barnes, Pete Murray I mentioned before, Mike Paulmeno here in the library a lot of, you know, I just and I'm, Eileen Sperry in the English Department and I should stop because I’m going to forget somebody, but they're all incredible. The question of, like, the role or about, like, the risks that they take as non tenure track faculty in organizing. You know, I think it's it's, it's, it's, it's, a little, it's, it's interesting because, like, I think in many ways, like academia is no different than the rest of the workplace. Right. They, they a boss is a boss is a boss. I tell workers this all the time. However, there is the, the thing that is unique to a Skidmore college compared to like Walmart or Starbucks is that this sort of, the, the culture of academic freedom in the university or the academy as a, as a place of the free exchange of ideas. Sean [00:33:40] And to be able to arguably say, and this is changing obviously a lot, but like the, to say the controversial thing or the, the, the, or maybe the unpopular thing or in the case of organizing, I think the undesirable thing, at least in the eyes of the administration, they would prefer, like any other boss, they would prefer to have unilateral discretion to set the terms of conditions of employment. Right. And so I think so that's the sorta, like. So I think in the case of is, is Ruth taking a risk or any of those committee members taking a risk? Of course, absolutely. Any worker who organizes their workplaces but is engaging in, what I believe it to be, like, the most courageous thing that anyone �could do is to basically risk the thing that pays their bills by trying to organize it. But it's, it's a I always say it's a, it's the best gamble you can make because if you do it, I mean, the sky's the limit from there. And so, however, like, I do think that there are, there's sort of the culture of academia make it a little bit, a little bit not safer, but like, you know, it's, it's, it's there's, it dulls the edge to that risk. A little bit, just a little bit. And I think, you know, you could see similar trends of that in, like, other organizing that we're seeing. So we've seen a lot of organizing happen in, like, the not for profit space, like a lot of, like the Guttmacher Institute as, like, a, like, a pro-choice, pro-choice or pro-abortion, like, you know, advocacy and research organization, where the workers organize. Now, the boss, like, was, they were, came out really strongly against it, very harshly against it. And there was retaliation there as a part of that organizing drive. Sean [00:35:17] But, I think that nonprofit space is, you know, is a place where that is, that, that instances like I don't want to say rare, but it's like a little bit it's not as, not as likely as, like, what you would see at Starbucks, right. Or Amazon or what have you. I mean, so there's nonprofit organizing, a lot of, been a lot of newsroom organizing, which is interesting. So, like, the Los Angeles Times, a few years ago, they organized and it had been for the number was, like, a hundred and forty seven years there had been, had been a non union newspaper. Compared to, you know, other side of that on the right coast, on the cool coast, the east coast that the New York Times one of the, like, the longest, you know, running union newspapers in the country. So, you know, I think these, these workplaces where they're more, like, liberally minded or, you know, and, you know, or, you know, progressive oriented. There's, there's been I think we were seeing just there's been more propensity of them to organize. But, you know, there's still risks at any of these places. What was the other part of your question was like what makes colleges and universities like sort of different, right? Chloe [00:36:29] Yeah, like if you, if you, what you, sorry. If you see, what do you think of the field of academia moving towards this? And then if you see the trend, oh you just answered the question, you see it in other places. Sean [00:36:43] Yeah you do see it I think in terms of, like, I think what's happening in academia is like they've been toying with this, experimenting with this for the better part of, like, let's say forty, fifty years. So, you know, Sodexo is on campus, right? Even though the workers here are direct employees of the college, Sodexo is a subcontractor. You know, so it's, it's, you know, the college is nonprofit, but it's brought in this profit, you know, oriented for profit corporations around it's dining halls. That's pretty common on college campuses. You have a lot of subcontracted employees in not here, but in other places like janitorial building and grounds, the facilities maintenance of a college, the dining halls. So there's, there's that I think that, that is. But with adjuncts I think it's, I mean, I just think that is just like corporate logic, you know, in academia and, and it's not, it's not in any way dissimilar. Not really. In the end of the day, in terms of the result, in terms of like what we're seeing in charter schools and, and the charter school movement, it's just like, you know, like what happened in New Orleans, you know, it's just, like, oh, you know, there was a historic hurricane that, like, flooded the city, you know, basically they shed, like, what, like, half their population over the course of a year from everybody, you know, that was affected by that moved to Houston and they never came back. And they're like, we'll get to the levees. But first, we're going to completely charterize our public schools. Sean [00:38:07] And, and that is just to get out from underneath union contracts and to bust unions and to, you know, to cut pay, cut benefits the whole year. And I think the same, like, the same thing is happening with adjuncts. It's just that, like, you know, even, �even within our union, right? With that recently formed union there's Ruth who is a full professor, not a full professor, but as a full time professor, you know, teaching a full course load, making, you know, north of sixty thousand dollars something like that, whatever her salary is, like, I don't recall offhand. And then, you know, there's an English adjunct who is teaching maybe two courses this semester who is making forty-five hundred dollars a course. So if she if, if she's teaching a full load or full and also doesn't have any service obligations like Ruth, even though Ruth and others engage in service, they don't have any service obligation. So if you do the math there, I mean it just like as a I mean, it's a that's, that is not even, you know, a fraction of what Ruth makes for teaching that exact same course. And Skidmore said, maybe setting aside Skidmore for a second and thinking about a place like actually, like, Marist, where there is, you know, it's, there's, it's a little bit more they have a, like the full-time professors have, like, you know, they have a heavier course load than the faculty here do. And, then the, the faculty here do, I mean, I mean, you're talking about like a six thousand dollar, sometimes, thousand dollar difference between in terms of the pay parity or lack of pay parity between a part timer and a full timer. And that's, that's just it's not profit extraction necessarily, but it is like inherently exploitative. Elena [00:39:50] So you're sitting here with three future members of the workforce? Sean [00:39:54] Oh, yeah. Elena [00:39:55] How do you think we as our generation can fight against our labor being co-opted? Sean [00:40:00] Oh, I love this question. I always, I always listen to this whenever I talk to students. Unless you're like a Vanderbilt like or something like that, like, unless you're like, you know, like Anderson Cooper and you have a you know, you're going to have a boss when you graduate college. You have a boss now in college. I mean, I don't know if you any of you do like work study or anything like that. So you're already engaging in, you know, work, I mean, and, and are already experiencing it even if you don't have a work study, you know, obligations. But if you're, you're already being taxed essentially to get an education that they tell you is essential by having to take out student loan debt, that you will probably, you know, once you enter the workforce, will struggle initially and maybe over the long term, too. I mean, I went down to Albany and I, you know, as we said before, I sort of cheated my way into in, in school to in state tuition and then left. And I have twenty-eight thousand dollars in student loan debt for, you know, a piece of paper that I decided not to get, but like ostensibly, you know, whatever. But so, like, you're already, you're already being taxed to sort of enter the workforce because they tell you that this degree is essential and then you're going to get into the workforce. And it's definitely not going to be, you know, at worst, it's not going to be, you know, consistent with the cost of living in the area. Most likely you're not going to be in it, most likely because it's the United States and you're not going to be in a democratized, you know, workplace where you have a right to representation, where you have just, you don't have just cause, you don't have just cause protections. You, you don't you can be terminated at any time. You're an at will employee. And, and so I think, I think the, the thing I always tell students is that your, if you're not currently a worker now, you're going to be a worker, you're going to have a boss, and that person is going to have, you know, and it's, it's, it's an unbalanced relationship. They, it's asymmetrical. They have all the power, all unilateral discretion, all arbitrary authority. And you ask “how high?” That's your, that's your role. Unless, of course, and that's why it's important to organize a union so that you, let's say when they say “jump” well let's talk about how the hell we are going to jump first and why are we jumping? You know, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the point of a union. �David [00:42:14] So last question. Do you have anything else you'd like to share about yourself or your work? This archive? Sean [00:42:21] Sure. Anything else that I think, so as a, as a, you know, as a union organizer and then as we talked about initially, as a, as someone who identifies as socialist, I find it, you know, it's as it is right now. The two things are sort of, you know, or they're sort of at odds with each other. Not at odds with each other, they struggle with, there's a tension between them. Whereas as a socialist, I believe that, like, you know, management as a whole is in the way of workers being able to, I think, truly and efficiently, like, you know, perform their, their jobs in the service they provide to the community, whether it be educating, you know, future workers, or, you know, you know, providing fresh, you know, sustainable food to, to folks, whatever the case may be that management is in the way. But yet my job inherently requires me to interface with management and, you know, sort of bite my tongue and say, like, “you're kind of worthless.” I can't say that to them. That just wouldn't go over well. Not worthless, but, like, you are, you, you're kind of the bigger waste here than the workers are. You might think our demands are excessive or whatever the case may be, but you especially, you know, at a college, you know, you make two hundred thousand dollars and you have, you know, you can, you look at us and you talk about, like, our demands around like staffing. So I also represent a lot of building maintenance workers, like I was saying before. And so they look at our demands around, like, we need more janitors. How can you have a thousand acre plus campus that has so many millions of square footage to, to clean so many bathrooms, so many stairwells, so many, you know, trash cans to empty, all these different things. Sean [00:44:00] And we're talking about staffing and you're saying, “oh, it's a, is it, that's, we can't afford that.” It's, like, well, you have, you know, this human resources office has, like, six people to basically one of them set your schedule, likem, you're not working efficiently, efficiently by that, by your own logic, you know, compared to us. And so that wouldn't go over well, that would not, that would, that would be received poorly. And sometimes you do get an opportunity to say that. But sometimes you just have to bite your tongue or at least rather than, like, I had to bite my tongue and just like, yes, you're a socialist, but your job is also to, to, to try to do the most for, for your, for our members. Right. And so I have to ,I have to be at it. It's an interesting tension to, to tell, so that that's one thing. And then I just about myself and I think this is, it applies to anything, any job you're going to do, whether it be working in the labor movement or, you know, you're saying physical therapy, right? You know, so care work. Right? History is, is imbued in everything that we do. It informs everything that we do. And the more you know about whatever the thing you're doing. So I read a lot of labor history just as, you know, as interest, but I also just read, like I have a thing with monarchs. I just read about, like, I just finished a book about King George III. And I, you know, I'll just, I'll just dart around. My, my wife got me, like, a book on, like, Sultan Mehmed, that was, like, incredible. And so just like, it's not relevant to labor history, but history itself imbues, it informs, it blazed the trail that’s behind us. And there are lessons from it to apply to what's what we're going to try to do ahead. And that applies to the labor movement, that applies to care work. There are lessons from those historians from, you know, folks doing stuff like yourself and documenting these narratives. It's all, it's all really important. And so everyone should and I know you were saying this before you. It was this class got you interested in history because history is fucking cool and you just got to find the right stuff that, you know, speaks to your interest. And that's something, you know, I just think is always important to think about. So. Yeah. �Chloe [00:46:14] Thank you so much Sean. Sean [00:46:16] Thank you. This is awesome. Chloe [00:46:18] Four Minutes early. Elena [00:46:19] Yeah. So 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 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 Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview David Guo '25, Chloe Hanrahan '24, and Elena Shostak '24 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sean Collins Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 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. Eric Morser Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit August 11, 2023 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 46:25 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 Sean Collins Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 4, 2022 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Labor History Digital Archive Description An account of the resource Sean Collins is a union representative and organizer with Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 200United. He also serves as a delegate and President of the Troy Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO. He lives in Troy, NY, with his wife, Ashley, and their son, Benjamin. Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eric Morser Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a5fab781dc7a3c1d29e1a1ebe7da073e.jpg 07db1e243b9d9977008bda51412abcf0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a0fd2aad76c6cba59087b36adf439923.jpg 0fab5bb1c3a9f84f9a2f6fd63ba2934a https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/590ef8db18e7ab03dd32dbef91b277e9.jpg 13cb163fc16126ad96b67edd4f8393b7 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5ab8fae722c0ffa51c08107bece955ca.jpg c0daf65bf43a1620b6e9092a16a35cd0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5dc2f9f418db273188a5684969662f9d.jpg 2af846a39c51994c094f7108979406ac https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e06412c34ac9040a006f4de82f83976d.jpg e25c83dc52b7a531d77d9e9276c36f8e https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/2358e00b4ff3b3d5353f47c0bcfec19f.jpg 144fdcf416c1c7066b136806a7e68432 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/fb5bb149246187ec002d24fcf4c5fc02.jpg b039ee78e5b3e5a0b270a52faa50c164 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a05688903655edeb1168283e0a7cea52.jpg 4a892fd3102c7877b0fcf89d520b195e https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0613edd36b023b313561b674310c3457.jpg 58101f0ed0f1ce0af58a6e7c134f12e2 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/fa450d1e955c9e22eff1b4e836f81552.jpg edec9e05d48ab07f51076e41fb455d07 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/bad897332f1828bb7d46c5a5f7203352.jpg 07db1e243b9d9977008bda51412abcf0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d6b234bd9af9bee5302e674e4642843e.jpg 28751a34e75fb0005430a1594e42a384 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d96cc152c8b5a45aa9f161a9e1b57ff3.png 8ef18dd6bdcdbe08710de763df1217b2 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/6577d14c34400b5148f6d51f7cf1cede.JPG 852e99c6ba7c8e60c5676910cc68d750 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/ff35ae03fadcd770e17b84270e0a6b15.JPG 3b9dd57d5299b8be5e94e577d1d96441 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4a3c363e08aa29e3a9f1c6b316faa8eb.JPG 41f506f7f872a3f9e80f831de273aef8 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8db8fa62192b39284aef8818751fa153.JPG 41f14c9c886176dfda3d74834c0f39df https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8a00458f10986f4407beee19f6357aa9.JPG 2bbaa70fc69423d43c5e13a318aca863 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5c5244f61883548291f2610f273cf958.JPG 1752da94cd910895816d10233098c6bb https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/7426e341efcc1e8676c5cc526c6765fb.JPG 29410ca290265191a982dc73848e60e6 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/efe74447b0a5997e94ef37b5c91b90bc.JPG c6d2cd4c4163e7171d794c87cab18ff9 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8e37e1a8a9f869b157a549563c0275cd.JPG cbecbd017fd3f999077fcf2f4d41d230 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0bdf62ba07f60de8805c1e5033c131ad.JPG e67a3acf23b87cf3260b773a8160db30 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0ee9c1897cc08eca9abbbe72cb2aa4ac.JPG 33252656acf7fdcccb1c4553072195fd https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/00347f57e72c7101701196ed3a3bbb6e.JPG 4221739ddd7f6cfb43bbe4daf433c101 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5fc4f978197a47f66ec3b47cd9ced9ee.JPG 67fc9ecad4c5ccbf4af5e9d484af7180 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/90a8d40173da5ddad0deb8d6bd224f64.JPG 69bec8ea18b2edeca387555dc7fc656d https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0c0c91ba7f311181e741877433262659.JPG c5518f9ed1046f32a298a79629ba1195 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/32c983f43671aef06bc5724a0e367809.JPG afab04f4b3f55e2b4730b27acc329a5b https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/6b0746aed9cd063c96d06280eb817230.JPG adf6ed6f87a948c6e164ad83fd057695 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0e38075f64f5d77adf8bd54b5547155e.JPG 4a4d2cdf4a27caeb25817f25368e09d0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5954e5afee08d9a121d94b062e5c49ce.JPG 746b1e641f6540b0ee788ecbe9683d6e 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 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 Sixty Years Young Gala Photos Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 6, 2015 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/958441f436c8d73d779bd6a60997213a.jpg 143c139f1e48aa7185ae2dc4a739a6ca https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/516730e0f7f77e0b09b15ee024d501c4.m4a 503aedc03c87c750272724526b7bdb4a https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/410dc76737a349cc3b55d44b0fc7f6c6.m4a 69cb76297528d5b00b219bf1c00280ff https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8205096cf774cf5ba82bb170968ceb6c.m4a 962843fc1926ebfecb00979311834fb3 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 Claire Fink Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Odette Ireland Location The location of the interview Skidmore College and Saratoga Senior Center [Zoom] Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 2 Hours Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Claire Fink Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 06/11/2020 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 Odette Ireland Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 6, 2020 Description An account of the resource In this oral history , Ms. Odette Ireland recalls memories including the time during World War II her home was occupied by French soldiers, when she first met her husband, and raising a family. Language A language of the resource English (EN) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Claire Fink Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Claire Fink, Odette Ireland and Elayne Ireland Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Skidmore. College family France oral history fall 2020 preserving our past saratoga senior center World War II https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/30b19af9f85eb73e5e4335654729bde6.jpg b86c829683627fdcdbeac9e14ecd416e https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/6af1b596e0a6c860c4f0fc85fef2a38a.m4a 8cc556c87e8a7395f2184c915bc6183b https://ssmp.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://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/006f6146d6cbe2e1072e5168ea2ecdc5.jpg 6c660fc9c717b46a85cfead79ed99466 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/307aa7ae22cc5c820c973f23260465b0.m4a 8eeba3958dc15d004b318073fbad2bf1 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/34e15cf6251afbe5876ba5a50e54cb0e.pdf dd01159a5491494176ff3478eb1ebce7 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Lisa Aronson Years at Skidmore: 32 (1984 - 2016) Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: November 7, 2022 00:00:00 Header 00:00:24 Born 1946 in Detroit, MI; raised there & did undergrad in Art History at Wayne State U, then in 1971 attended Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, for graduate work 00:01:00 Worked various jobs in NYC for 2 years, then traveled in Europe for nearly a year 00:01:30 Aunt, Cyril Miles, was artist in Detroit - very supportive & influential 00:03:21 While writing dissertation taught part-time at Wayne State (in Detroit); first tenure track teaching job was at U of Wisconsin in Stevens Point (3 yrs) 00:03:46 Sought teaching position that was better aligned with areas of expertise (African, preColumbian & Oceanic art); began teaching at Skidmore fall 1984 00:04:10 Interest in Africa stemmed in part from Aunt’s interest in textiles; also, African American studies programs were beginning to be formed on campuses, so it was a viable field 00:05:00 Loved working with Africans, their kindness & receptivity; still many connections 00:05:45 Dissertation: why identical patterns found in different parts of Africa? Ans: Trade & people “taking in these textiles and making them their own … assigning meaning” 00:07:28 Spring 1984 interviewed at College Art Association and then on Skidmore campus 00:08:36 Was hired at Skidmore because of expertise in Africa - replaced previous professor 00:09:34 African art was often combined w/ other areas, “wastebasket definition of art history” 00:10:05 Also taught Western art history survey & even Native American art - stretched too far 00:11:02 African art no longer part of Skidmore art history curriculum 00:11:25 When arrived at Skidmore, Art History & Studio Art were one department 00:12:00 Split b/c different disciplines. Art History akin to Humanities, Anthropology, Religion 00:13:52 The issues dealt with, and the questions explored, were very different from Studio art 00:15:12 Tang Museum a high point; involved with planning committee, later exhibitions, etc. 00:15:30 Committee members visited museums on other campuses, asked questions about exhibition space, storage space, staffing requirements; 00:17:01 Another consideration - what art in Tang collection? How the space would be used? 00:18:25 Instrumental in getting African materials added to Tang collection and in Tang shows 00:18:50 Supported student curated exhibitions of African art, visited Peabody Museum (Boston) with students to negotiate borrowing pieces 00:20:35 Curated exhibition of African Art and the Environment with Tang director John Weber 00:24:01 Served on many committees, including Curriculum (chaired 3 years) & UWW 00:24:39 Enjoyed working with UWW students; especially loved teaching seminar connected to African Art and the Environment exhibition; students more mature, interested, willing to work 00:26:50 Taught classes in Africa through Parsons School of Design. Became better at French �00:28:19 Led Textile Society of America tour to Ghana to study textiles 00:28:56 Skidmore always supportive, paid for travel to present papers, do research, etc. 00:29:52 Some particularly supportive individuals to note: Phyllis Roth, Sue Bender, 00:30:10 For example, Aronson and a colleague received Getty grant for project/book on Nigerian photographer, and Skidmore provided funds for travel to Nigeria during Aronson’s sabbatical 00:31:20 Retired 2016, now writing book about anarchist grandmother, involves much research 00:32:45 Will give paper related to African textiles at conference this spring 00:33:46 Also volunteers at Saratoga Springs Public Library’s used book store 00:34:48 African textiles is a unique field, a non-Western field; a non-Western course requirement was added to the curriculum, so got non-art students; I enjoyed teaching that perspective to them 00:36:10 There was a point when some on campus wanted to eliminate the non-Western requirement, questioned the terminology, whether there were really two viable categories 00:37:17 “I always felt that it was a way to allow students to broaden their understanding of the world and of themselves within the world, to be seen that other cultures handle things very differently than we do.” 00:38:27 Skidmore has a growing number of students from non-Western backgrounds; Taught some students from African countries who hadn’t had a course on African art 00:38:50 Some awkwardness in being Western White woman teaching non-Western topics; eg. when teaching about Native American Ghost Dance, a messy classroom conversation arose 00:39:53 When Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr. spoke at Skidmore, he noted “You don’t have to be African or Black to teach African art.” 00:40:33 Indiana U had an African Studies program & an African American Studies program; it was mostly White people in African program and Black people in African American program. 00:42:00 “I’ve always felt very fortunate to be at Skidmore” because Skidmore is so supportive of faculty. Even in retirement, funding the retiree program that enable faculty to continue to connect and learn 00:42:56 END � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e975fe5264ed50b12f8096004398c929.pdf c677e01541c2f4186b9ba11dde258a70 PDF Text Text Interview with Lisa Aronson by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, NY, November 7, 2022. LYNNE GELBER: It’s November 7th, 2022, and I’m here with Lisa Aronson and Sue Bender. This is Lynne Gelber. And welcome, Lisa, to the project, and I’d like you to start off by telling us a little bit about your growing up years. LISA ARONSON: Woah, ok, growing up years. Well, I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on the west side of the city, in 1946. LG: Which city did you say? LA: Detroit, Michigan. Lived in Detroit until I went to college, undergraduate school, at Wayne State University in Detroit. Majored in Art History. And then I went on to do graduate work at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. In between that time I went to New York City and lived there for two years, just getting one job after another and enjoying the city. LG: What impelled you to go to the City? Just to get a job, or …? LA: I always was attracted to New York City because it just seemed so bustling and so … there was, you know, you feel like you’re a puppet, you know, being held up by strings. And, I just wanted some independence from Detroit. I wanted to get away from family, including my aunt, who was a very influential person in my life but with whom I needed to get some distance. So I went to New York and got some jobs there, working … LG: Your aunt was? LA: My aunt was an artist in Detroit. Cyril Miles. She sort of took me under her wing and supported me and really, I think, influenced me to go into Art History, so that was, it was a very viable course for me. �LG: But she was an artist, not an art historian? LA: She was an artist, not an art historian, no. And, I used to live at their house, in fact, and when she passed, sadly, at the age of 75, I inherited a lot of the art that she had collected. I have that in my house, so it feels like she’s got a very strong presence in my house. But I needed to get away, and I went to New York and took a job in publishing and the sorts of things that undergraduates get in New York before they go on to graduate school. And then after two years there I went, did a, close to a year, hitch-hiking through Europe, like every young person back then. And I applied to graduate school and got in and then the rest was doing graduate work. I got to Bloomington in 19… let’s see now, when would it be, 70 … um, no, 81. It was 81 … when I got to Bloomington. LG: And did you come directly from Bloomington … LA: No, I’m sorry, it was ’71. It was ’71. I’m getting confused here. Yeah. LG: And did you come directly from Bloomington to Skidmore? LA: No. I, while writing my dissertation I was in Detroit teaching part time at Wayne State University and then I got my first job, teaching job, tenure track job, at University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point, and I was there for three years, but knew I didn’t want to stay there forever. The job was not tailored well enough to my areas of expertise, and so I applied for the Skidmore job and I was hired, and that was … LG: And what were your areas of expertise? LA: African, pre-Columbian, and Oceanic. But mainly African, and that’s where I did my field work. Yup. LG: How come you went to Africa? �LA: Ah that’s a good question. I think my aunt, again, was very influential in sending me there. She was very interested in African art and in African textiles in particular, or just textiles, throughout the world. And, I knew I wanted to do something with textiles and I knew Africa was a good place to do it. The other influence was the African American movement, way back in the early ’70s. And people were beginning to study African art and African American studies and schools were beginning to open up programs in that area, so I knew it was a viable profession and I probably could get a job in the field. And I did. So, that was, I think that was my foray into Africa, and I loved it, being there. It just opened up so many windows for me. LG: Like what? LA: Ah, well, I loved being, working with African people in general. And I know that’s very simplistic to state it that way, but there is something about the African … state of mind and the ambiance and the kindness and the receptivity that I really gravitated towards, and I have maintained a lot of connections with people in Africa. Most particularly in Nigeria where I did my field work. And so I feel very close to things having to do with Africa. LG: And what special things were you doing in Nigeria? LA: Well, I went initially to — for my dissertation, it was my PhD. work — to do a study of African textiles in a particular area. I had noted in my research, library research, that there were patterns on textiles from one area of Nigeria that seemed identical to patterns and textiles in another area, and I wanted to know why. And I basically solved the problem, I figured out that there was a long and enduring pattern of trade of textiles coming in, not only from other parts of Africa into the delta, but from Europe. And it, there was a real receptivity to, for these people, to things coming from abroad, coming �from elsewhere, and taking in these textiles and making them their own. And that was really the essence of my research, was to see how people take things in and take ownership of them by renaming them and assigning meaning to them that has to do with their own culture. LG: So what made you decide to come to Skidmore? And when? LA: Well, I applied in 1984. It was a job that was advertised. I don’t, I can’t say that I was particularly seeking out Skidmore, I mean, you know, the nature of the beast in academia is you go where the jobs are. And so I applied and was fortunate to get the job. LG: Um, did you interview on campus? LA: Yes, in those days we interviewed on campus. First of all, I interviewed at College Art Association, which is the annual organization for art … artists and art historians. I interviewed with Penny Jolly, and with … I think Robert Carter was there in that interview. And also Joan Siegfried. I remember her. And then they called me to … unusual, I received a letter in the mail that I was invited to come to campus, they didn’t call me. Those were the days when [laughs] things were done differently than they are now. And as I came to campus, Penny was not here at that point. She was on sabbatical. So I met Jim Kettlewell and other people in the department, and did the interview and got the job. LA: So you arrived on campus, what year? LA: It would have been in the spring of ’84, in 1984. So I started teaching in 1984. LG: In the fall of ’84? LA: Yeah. �LG: And so you were hired because of your African teaching? LA: That’s right. LG: Is this something that the department didn’t have yet? LA: The department had long time, had long had African as an area, as a subject in their courses, in their curriculum. You might recall that there was someone in the department prior to me, Montêquin was his name … deMontêquin? I may not have the exact name, yeah. And there was a bit of a faux pas with him. He had gone to, he had taken students to Spain and they jumped over a wall at the Alhambra, and they got … do you remember this incident? [laughs] LA: So he was out. LG: That was during the 4:1:4 — it was a January term. LA: Yes, that’s right, it was a January term thing. So, fortunately for me, he lost the job and so they hired me. Now he taught African. He also taught Islamic art and he taught preColumbian art. Which is to say that in those days, our field was, the field of African was often wedded with other areas. My thesis advisor, Roy Sieber, always referred to it as the wastebasket definition of art history; you know, whatever doesn’t fit within the normal Western paradigm, and Asian paradigms, goes there. So, I really had to teach a tall order. And, also, they were asking me to teach a survey of art history, which is a Western survey. So, I felt like I was all over the place. LG: And did you add anything about Africa when you were teaching the survey course? LA: Umm, no. The course was strictly Western art, as I recall. Maybe at some point we sort of introduced a little bit of African, but I don’t think so. I don’t think so. It was strictly a Western survey. And then at some point I even took on the subject of Native American �art, and I taught that. So I was covering a lot of bases. And I have to say to some degree that was to my detriment. I was stretched too far, too wide, and needing to be more focused on my own areas of expertise. And the people that they’ve hired in the department since then were more focused on Africa and maybe African American. But I’m sad to say that Africa is now out of the curriculum. They did not rehire when the last person left. So, it’s the end of that era. LG: Now there, umm, was the department separate, the Art History department separate when you came? LA: Mmn mn, we were all one department. I met with, I remember having dinner at the interview with the then chair of the whole department, who was a Studio person whose name is escaping me for the moment. Um, and, of course I would meet the Art History faculty but it was part of the larger department at that point. And I don’t remember at what point we split from Studio. It was sometime in the late ’80s, early ’90s that we split. LG: What can you tell about that, what brought that about? LA: Well, Art History is a very different discipline than Studio Art, and we always felt that we were closer to the Humanities, we always felt that we were closer to, in some cases, to Anthropology, Religion, and not to Studio Art. The act of making art is a very different thing from studying about the history and whatever around art traditions throughout the world. So, it made sense. I think we had a review, one year, of the whole department and it was strongly urged that we split, and so we decided to do that. LG: Was that review part of the Middle States review, or was that … LA: Could have been Middle States, um there’s another body that does a review, and I’m forgetting the name of it, it mostly is concerned with Studio, but Art History, because we were part of the department, was included in it. So … um, I can’t even remember what organization was reviewing us at that point, but I know that when I went up for tenure … �for, yeah, for tenure, we were still a whole department, and then a few years later we split. LG: So what was gained by splitting, or what was lost by splitting? LA: Well it’s always comfortable to have a larger department as your umbrella, that you’re under a larger umbrella of faculty who take care of you, and we’d always felt like we were taken care of. But, to be honest, we felt that being our own discipline and having control of just our discipline seemed to make more sense, in terms of the kinds of conversations we have. You know, did we really want to be hearing a lot of discourse about how beginning drawing should be taught, and what should, how the basic curriculum of Studio should be laid out. Those aren’t the issues that we deal with, and the questions and subject matter that we address as art historians is much more akin to other humanities areas. I always felt much more connected to Africanists in Anthropology or pre-Columbian in Anthropology. Penny’s work was very much wedded to… LG: Penny Jolly LA: Penny Jolly, to literature and religion and classics and so those were our, that was our family, and not studio art. So… LG: What were the high points of your career at Skidmore? LA: Well, um, high points … there were many high points, like it’s hard to pick out one, but I will say, speaking of the Tang, the Tang became kind of a haven for me. I loved working with the people of the Tang, I loved doing things at the Tang. I was involved in the Tang project from the time of its inception on paper; I was on the committee. I was traveling to various campuses throughout the northeast with other faculty from the college, none of them Studio, as you might recall. LG: Who? �LA: I remember Terry Diggory was on that committee, and I don’t remember who the other ones were, but we went to Bates, we went to Dartmouth and we went to Wellesley and looked at, and also, the other college in Vermont, umm … LG: Bennington? SB: Middlebury. LA: Middlebury. Middlebury, right. And looked at their museums to get an idea of what we want. And so that really got me interested in the museum at a very early stage. And, then when it got built I was so excited about the possibility of doing projects with the Tang. LG: Let me interrupt one second before you get to the project, because I’m interested in that, but … what qualities were you particularly interested in bringing into the Tang as it was being built, and conceived of? LA: Well, we were thinking of very practical things, like what kind of storage space do we need, how much exhibition do we need? What would the staffing look like? Every museum that we looked at, you know they had a certain number of staff members and we needed to know how that worked and how it didn’t work, so we were constantly asking those questions. Um, we were not dealing with the design of the museum, per se … it was, that was taking place on sort of a different level, but we were interested in the mechanics and the collection itself. Do we want to go out and purchase items for the Tang or do we allow gifts to be given to the Tang? I mean there were many, many questions about the collection. What do we do with the existing collection that we have at Skidmore, which, prior to the Tang, was housed, when I first came, it was housed in a house behind the President’s house on … SB: On Broadway? �LA: On Broadway, yeah. And I remember going in and seeing the pre-Columbian … LG: The garage. LA: Yeah! And then it moved to a building where Charlie, the new director of the Tang, the first director of the Tang, Charlie … SB: Stainback. LA: Stainback, thank you for that. Where he was housed, there was a house at the edge of the campus, … anyway, the collection was there, and then it moved to the Tang. And so what happens with that collection and how valuable is it in relation to what else could be done at the Tang? So, those were the questions that we had to ask. [Clears throat] Sorry, my voice is getting raspy. LG: What kinds of things did you want to come to the Tang? What kinds of things did come? LA: Well I was always interested in seeing African material be added to the Tang, and I did, I was instrumental in seeing that happen. LG: In shows or in the collection? LA: Both. We wanted stuff in the collection and we wanted to start exhibiting African art. So, I was, I’m very proud to say this, but I was the first faculty member to curate, to oversee a student curated exhibition at the Tang, and it was an exhibition of African art, and it was based on a collection , well actually I did it, I had done it prior, if you recall, in the student center, in Case Center there was a room that was an art gallery, and I had curated an exhibit of African art there, based on a collection owned by a colleague of mine who did work in Nigeria and had quite an elaborate collection of African art. And students curated that collection. So that kind of gave me the taste for what I could do with African art, and what the students could … which, I found that to be a very exciting way to teach �about African art, was to be able to work with objects. And then when the Tang opened I proposed that we do an exhibition and we borrowed pieces from various collections and also used what we had in the Tang. I remember taking the students who were in the class who were helping to curate; it was a seminar that I taught. We drove to Boston and went to Monni Adams, who was working then at the, volunteering at the Peabody Museum, and she had quite a collection of African art that we ended up borrowing. And the students got to see somebody who owns it, the negotiations you go through to get the objects, and then seeing the objects in the museum and working with them. Very exciting for the students, and for me. LG: Other highlights in your career at Skidmore that …? LA: Well the other one was the, my curating the exhibition of African Art and the Environment with John Weber and that was, to me, an incredible experience. LG: And John’s position was? LA: He was the director of the Tang after Charlie Stainback. I believe he was next after Charlie. And he had proposed, we together came up with this idea, of doing an exhibition on contemporary African art, because so much of the collection is focused on traditional objects, and we wanted to, sort of, bring Africa to the 21st century. So we were going to do a contemporary … and my original idea was to do an exhibition on body arts and things related to the body, including dress, and the whole gamut of themes. But then we went to Senegal, the Tang paid for us to go to Senegal to attend LG: [inaudible] LA: To the Dak’Art, the… what did you ask? LG: Who is the we? �LA: John and I. LG: Ok. LA: John and I went to Senegal to attend the Dak’Art, it’s a play on Dakar and Art, and it’s a triennial, they have it every three years, or a biennial, they have it every two years, excuse me. And it is focused strictly on African, on contemporary African art, and we went to see what’s going on in the field. And as we went around and looked I said, “You know, body art is not as interesting to me as the environment. I think that’s what we need to focus on.” And he said, “Yes! Let’s do it!” So that’s how that all started. And we came up with a wonderful array of objects and artworks, we brought the artists to campus, we wrote a catalog together, and it was very successful. And it traveled. This show traveled. It went to Middlebury and it went to the campus in Virginia, um … the Commonwealth, is it the…? SB: VCU? LA: VCU in Virginia, yeah. Virginia Commonwealth. And then of course it was here at the Tang. I would say those are highlights. LG: Challenges? LA: Well, the challenges are dealing with faculty [laughs] in your department and around, abroad. I mean, you know, we’re not family in departments, we’re just colleagues, and we don’t always see eye to eye on things, and one had to struggle with different perspectives and different ways of viewing things. So that was always a challenge for me. And I always say now that I’m retired that I don’t miss the grading — grading is another challenge that we all had to do — and I don’t miss the committee work and the department dynamics. I don’t miss. Yeah. LG: Were you part of any of the college committees? �LA: Yeah. It seems like I was always on a committee [laughs]. I can’t remember … let’s see, I was on the Curriculum Committee for three years in a row, that was … I chaired the Curriculum Committee for three years in a row. That was … that was quite a challenge. And this was when people were changing their curricula because of the writing component that had been added to our curriculum. Umm, I was on umm, the UWW Committee, I recall. To be honest with you, I’m drawing a blank on the others that I was on. LG: Did you work with any UWW students? LA: Yes, I did. I had some. And those projects were very fruitful. I enjoyed working with them, and oh, in addition I taught a seminar through the Special Programs, I guess it was still UWW at that point, and that was really a high point — teaching that seminar. And actually it was a seminar … LG: The seminar was for? LA: It was for the Masters Program through Special Programs. And it was a seminar having to do with African Art and the Environment, and it was wedded to the exhibition. And it was fabulous. I loved doing that. I loved working with these mature students. There were challenges with it — they had to write a thesis within the space of a week, which seemed ridiculous, but that’s how it went. But to have the show there, and too, we actually had an artist come and talk and do, she did an installation, Nnenna Okore came and did installation art in the Schick Art Gallery, and so the students got to meet her, and … that was really a highlight for me. I loved it. LG: That Master of Arts Program began with an intensive series of meetings and … LA: Yeah, and lectures. �LG: Lectures. And then they went out on their own. LA: Right. Well, they, I don’t know, in this case, … Yeah, they didn’t write the thesis during that first week, but they had to come up with an idea and a prospectus and I know it was a challenge for them, when you think about it. But we read some fascinating texts and … I felt like I was teaching in a way that I didn’t experience so much with my ordinary classes. There’s something extra special about a more adult, more interested, if you will, body of students. Um, mature, more mature, and more willing to do the work without complaining. [laughs]. LG: Did you go with students to Africa? LA: No. I did not. I went to Africa and taught classes in Africa, but not with Skidmore students. Although one of the Skidmore students did go on her own to the program, was in the program that I was teaching in. LG: And which program was that? LA: This was a program initiated through RISD, I’m sorry, um, what’s the art school in New York City, um, … LG: Parsons? LA: Parsons School of Design, yes, thank you. Parsons School of Design, in collaboration with Jerry Vogel, who was once married to Susan Vogel who’s a big name in the field of African art. She was the curator, chief curator of African Art at the Met, and Jerry was very, very involved in Africa in many, many ways, and he created this program and worked with the Parsons School of Design, and I taught in that program for three different summers. It required me to become a better French speaker than I ever had been. A lot of translating going from local language, Baoulé, to French, French to �English, and having to talk to the students about what was going on. So I taught in that program quite a bit, and so I’ve done programs in Africa. I also led a tour through the Textile Society of America to Ghana to study textiles. LG: And who was on that tour? LA: Well this was organized by the Textile Society of America so there were a number of people from the organization, members, who came. And some colleagues of mine from different parts of the country. It had nothing to do with Skidmore, per se. LG: What kind of support did you get from the Skidmore administration for you? For the African component of the program? LA: Uh, I don’t feel that I got support for the African program in particular. I always got support from the college for whatever I did, and I’ve always been grateful to Skidmore for the kind of support that we’ve gotten through the years. Being paid for travel to do papers and whatever. But for the African program, per se, I mean there really was no African program, and I was it. Along with Gerry Erchak and then Sónia Silva, we were it, and then Hedi Jaouad. We were the Africanists. We didn’t have an African Studies program then. There is one program now, although it’s not necessarily Africa focused, I think it’s more African American focused. So, no support at large, but never in need of support. The college always was behind me to help me with my projects. LG: Anybody in particular? LA: Well, Phyllis Roth was very, very sympathetic to our needs, and you, working with her — Sue Bender I’m talking to. Um, my last large publication was this book I co-authored with a colleague of mine on a Nigerian photographer who was active in the 1890s. And this was a big project. We received a Getty Grant to do the project, and then together proceeded to look at collections and go to Africa. We were supposed to go together but, the reason that she didn’t come with me, there were some health issues she had, and �Nigeria wasn’t safe at that moment and so we decided not to go then, but then I went during my sabbatical and the college gave me money to go twice during that sabbatical. And it was absolutely critical for this book because we hadn’t yet gotten the African voice on the meanings of these photographs that had been generated in the late ’90s, 1890s. And so the college was very, very supportive with that. And, um, yeah. LG: Ok, so I think you talked about the major challenges and the major high points of your career. When did you retire? LA: I retired six years ago — I think it’s 2005, wait, 2006, no, I cannot exactly remember. It’s back then [laughs]. It’s about six years ago. 2016… oh, sorry, my mind is like mush. [laughs] LG: And what have you been doing since, Lisa? LA: Since then, well the book came out after I retired, so we still had research work to do on it for another year, so … and then, I got involved in a project about my grandmother. I decided I wanted to write a book about her because she was an anarchist, and she dedicated her life to being an anarchist, to the anarchist movement. And I’m working on that now. I’m writing it now. I gave a talk on the subject to the retirees — you might have been there to hear that, and you too. It’s been a really fun project, though challenging in its own way because I don’t regard myself as an expert on anarchism. I don’t regard myself as an expert on the Russian revolution — I’ve had to do a lot of reading and a lot of research for this. But it’s turning out to be a really fun project. I’m also giving a paper this spring that is on my field, related to my field of African textiles, in honor of a, it’s like a Festschrift panel at a conference to honor a colleague of mine who has retired. LG: And where is that? LA: That will be, it’s the Midwest Art History Conference, and it’s going to be in Minneapolis … I’m sorry, no, um, hmm, where is it going to be? I think Minneapolis is where it is. �LG: You’ve also been very involved with the library in town? LA: Yes, I’m doing a lot of volunteer work — was doing too much when I first retired. I was working at the, volunteering at the … Treasures Thrift Shop and decided I didn’t want to sort through used clothing anymore, decided it wasn’t for me, so I switched to the library and was taking on a lot at the library but now I’ve cut it down to just working on afternoon a week. LG: Doing? LA: I work in the used bookstore, and I work the cash register and help out in any way that Jeff needs help. It’s been really rewarding to work there because a lot of my colleagues and friends come in. I like to be able to help people who are looking for one type of book or another. I feel like I’m really serving the community by doing it. I also was working, and this was another volunteer job that I gave up, but I was doing, teaching English as a Second Language through the library. And that, combined with working in the bookstore, felt like too much. And when I started working on the project about my grandmother I decided to stop doing the ESL. And, so that’s where I am now. LG: Lisa, Susan just reminded us that, your field was quite unique. You want to talk a little bit about that? LA: Um, meaning that it was a non-Western field. LG: Yeah. LA: Alright. And of course at some point, not when I first arrived, but at some point the non Western requirement was factored in to the curriculum, and I fit that category. So I would get a lot of students who were taking this course to fulfill their non-Western requirement, you weren’t necessarily getting students who wanted to take African Art, but, that said, I �enjoyed teaching the non-Western area and I felt like it made sense to be providing that kind of other cultural experience. Constantly thinking of how we do things in the west and how it differs in Africa. Also, what were the relationships between the West and Africa. The history of colonialism, the history of trade, and the like. And so I felt that it was a very rich kind of way to deal with the material. I know that there were people on campus who had a problem with the non-Western requirement and there was a point at which they tried to eliminate it from the curriculum. LG: Do you know why? LA: Well they were arguing, and to me this seemed crazy, is that they could see in their mind that some areas within the Western world seemed as marginalized as maybe Africa was, and that, why would Africa be the … what does it mean to be “non-Western.” Questioning that, they had a problem with that terminology. I thought it was very astute of Steve Hoffman at some point during a faculty meeting in which this whole issue of the non-Western was discussed to point out that people in Asia and other parts of the nonWestern world, are the … in Asia and India and that whole part of the world, use the term “non-Western.” So it is used. But, people were challenging whether it was appropriate to be making a divide between Western and non-Western, as if these are really two viable categories. I always felt that it was a way to allow students to broaden their understanding of the world and of themselves within the world, to be seen that other cultures handle things very differently than we do. So, that was … LG: I think we all share that. From the different disciplines that we come from. LA: Right. But you can see where maybe somebody who focuses on the West but deals with marginal issues within the Western context could argue that there is a kind of cultural “other” within their purview. I mean, I don’t know, it became a very contested issue and I wasn’t comfortable with it. I don’t think the non-Western is, I think it still exists in the curriculum. It is, and it’s here and it should be. And it is, I mean when you hear about �people from other parts of the world referring to us they refer to us as the Westerners versus the non-Westerners, so it’s in their heads as well. LG: We’ve had a growing number of students from non-Western backgrounds. LA: Yes, we do. And I would get a lot of African students who had never had a course in African art — loved being educated about their own cultures, in, more broadly speaking, of course, it’s not just from what country they come from but from many other parts of Africa. That said, teaching non-Western subjects sometimes brought up awkwardness in the classroom, with students maybe feeling that you weren’t, I remember there was a particular issue with a Native American course that I was teaching where I was not being tough enough on the Ghost Dance, that I should have given it a more … nuanced representation, and something that was owned by the Plains Indians rather than something that was in response to the introduction of Christianity. I’ll just say it, put it that way. It created a really messy conversation in the classroom. And, so you can’t, I found that sometimes I couldn’t be … here I am, a Western White woman talking about Africa, talking about Native Americans, and I think some students perceived that as being — it just isn’t right to them. I remember when, who came … Gates came from Harvard, came to speak at Skidmore, and he said very openly, “You don’t have to be African or Black to teach African art.” He said that. And that’s the politics of it. And that’s what some students expect — they expect you to be of their culture or their culture area, broadly speaking, and that always kind of unnerved me a little bit. LG: Good. This has been a really interesting post-script, this hour. This conversation. Thank you for adding to it. LA: I remember in graduate school there was an African American program and there was an African program, African Studies. African American Studies and African Studies. And all of the African Americans were in the African American Studies program and we White people were in the African program, and … I just noticed that, observed that, as a reality. You know, it’s not something that African Americans are necessarily drawn to. �They want to know about their own culture, even though Africa is sort of at the roots of their own culture. And, um, I kind of saw these trends as I moved along in the field. [coughs] Excuse me, I’m losing my voice. Um, an African friend of mine, Nigerian friend of mine in the last ten years was involved with a, her church had a African fashion show, and people came out wearing African clothing, but, she offered to come out to be part of it and they didn’t want her to be part of it because they are African Americans, they wanted to own Africa in their way. So this is just another kind of an issue that one deals with. LG: Lisa is there anything else that we should be covering? That comes to mind? LA: Umm, I can’t really think of anything other than, I … that, and I’ll end it on a really positive note, that I’ve always felt very fortunate to be at Skidmore. I’ve always felt that Skidmore is supportive of what faculty do, and as you compare, and I mean, you know, financially and academically and whatever, … and that’s something that I think about a lot. I mean, even now we have the retiree program, the funding that enables faculty to continue to do things after the fact. So, I very much appreciate that. LG: Good. Well thank you! LA: You’re welcome SB: It’s been fun. LA: Sorry that my voice gave out. LG: Do you want me to get you some water or something? LA: No, I’m good. �� 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 Lisa Aronson Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY 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.) 42:56 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit January 29, 2024 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 Lisa Aronson 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 Lisa Aronson joined Skidmore’s Art History faculty in 1986. In this interview she traces her academic journey to Skidmore and reflects on the influences that led her to specialize in the study if African textiles. While at Skidmore, Aronson experienced Art History’s establishment as a department separate from Studio Art and participated in planning for the Tang Museum. She reflects here on the challenges and opportunities for teaching a non-western subject at Skidmore, including the unique opportunities created by Tang Museum programming. After her retirement in 2015, Aronson has continued her research and writing and has volunteered with a variety of community organizations. Language A language of the resource English (en) Subject The topic of the resource Retiree Oral History Project Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Oral History Art Department art history Charles Stainback John Weber Non-Western Requirement Phyllis Roth Skidmore Art Collections Tang Museum UWW https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/9534a0f26186987f52f37bd90cec75f0.JPG 8163c5de0429967e395497e7caf1648a https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/455843183ad46b015a69d5207137ec7d.mp3 685e3c4f64179e380e1e7c26a076b200 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/cd50e1083b7b86078f53e55d88fa4a4f.pdf 37ca0204ae59b643be97a37f55a10682 PDF Text Text Interview with Judy Halstead by Sue Bender & Leslie Meechem (recording tech), Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, October 17, 2025. SUE BENDER: This is Sue Bender interviewing Judy Halstead for the Skidmore Retiree Oral History Project. It's October 17, 2025 and we are in the Scribner Library on the Skidmore campus. Welcome, Judy. Glad to have you with us. JUDY HALSTEAD: Thank you, Sue. SB: Just for starters, could you just begin by telling us, if you would, when and where you were born and briefly describe your childhood? JH: Sure. They're sort of different questions. I was actually born in North Tonawanda, New York, but we left there when I was two, so I don't have any memory. It doesn't have anything to do with how I grew up, really. Then we moved to Schenectady, not a very good part of town. My dad was a janitor at the main plant in GE. Neither of my parents really went to college. One of my parents was definitely an orphan and the other one had, had one of her parents die young. They were married the day after my mother turned 18. I was born three years later. Anyway, then we moved to the village of Scotia, which was a delightful place. I really loved living in the village of Scotia. I played outside, played outside. I was a pretty freerange kid, played out, wandered around, played kick ball in the dead end. Then we moved, trying to do increasingly better schools, although I think Scotia was good, to the Glenville area, but it was Burnt Hills school district, and I had a dog by then. My dog and I really wandered around. I played with my dog a lot. We wandered around in the woods and one of the things we did a lot of was follow streams. One of the first days I was there, this actually could or could not turn up later, but I followed a stream a very, very long ways, till after dark, and we had not lived there very long, so that was kind of interesting. I think playing outside was most of it. Oh, I measured the stream behind my house for about at least a year. I have to find the records. I think I might still have them in the basement, about how deep the stream behind my house was, about once a month for a couple of years. SB: A scientist already. So, could you talk a little bit about your educational journey? JH: So, never got too far, graduating from Burnt Hills, never got too far from here. I went to SUNY Binghamton, raised more than half of the money for that myself, working both during summers and, two or three jobs sometimes, working at SUNY Binghamton. Then I went to RPI, graduate school at RPI, in physical chemistry. It was very unusual for there to be a woman there. There were hardly any women. There was one woman who was a year older than I. Well, she was a year ahead of me in class. She was actually three years older than I. At RPI, but it was pretty unusual to have women, I think even more so in physical chemistry than the other areas. Page 1 of 11 �So working in the lab, I didn't know things that I would be later teaching my students routinely in the labs and making sure that they knew clockwise is lockwise and all kinds of things about the physical world that, I used to take my soldering home in my purse because I didn't like it when the guys in lab made fun of me when I was soldering things. So, the physical chemistry is applications of physics and math to chemical systems. I was interested in small molecules and atoms, vacuum systems, electronic equipment to use to measure the spectroscopy and other factors dealing with reactions happening in gas phases. I actually ended up doing more with atoms, even than small molecules. That was pretty much my PhD work. Then I worked at the health department at long range transport of pollutants. SB: So how did you find your way to Skidmore? JH: Just a quick addition there in between after working at the Health Department, completely different stuff. It was still gas phase, but it was solids, long range transport of pollutants. I'd always been interested in teaching and there was an opening at Russell Sage. I worked at Russell Sage for two years and then I took a visiting assistant professorship at Williams for three years. Then I applied for the job at Skidmore. At the time that I was at Williams, I was married to my boy’s dad, who had started a company in Troy and had at least 30 or 40 employees and the employees had mortgages and things and I didn't think I could wander too far away if I wanted David to ever see his dad. So, I saw the job opening at Skidmore and I applied for it. When I applied for the Williams job, that was the only job I applied for. When I applied for the Skidmore job, it was absolutely the only job I applied for. If I hadn't been hired by January 15, I had applications ready for Ithaca College and Connecticut College, but I was hired by Skidmore. SB: And what year was that? Do you remember? JH: Yes, of course. I remember a lot of things. I was interviewed on December 2, 1986 and I started at Skidmore in August and/or September of '87. SB: So describe the position that you took at Skidmore and the work that you did. JH: I arrived, starting to set up my research lab in August 1987. Classes started in September 1987. I was a physical chemist. I taught Physical Chemistry 1, Physical Chemistry 2. There's labs with physical chemistry. I taught general chemistry. I also taught a Liberal Studies IV course, and I also had undergraduate research students. I'll tell you a little bit about both of those experiences. I had already worked at two small, liberal arts colleges at this point; Russell Sage for two years and Williams for three years. I thought that a lot of things that I brought to my own life and to Skidmore were really from, primarily from Williams. A lot of people, including me, thought that for many years. Thinking about this interview a little bit, I realize that there was a lot of things I was already doing. Undergraduate research for example, when I was at Russell Sage. I'm not 100% sure where I had the idea of what Page 2 of 11 �undergraduate research was or how I formed a very firm idea about that. Williams certainly had influence, but it wasn't always Williams. But I came to Skidmore with a pretty firm idea of what sort of institution I wanted to be at, a little curious about to what extent that was going to work for Skidmore because it was the only job I applied for. My husband at the time had a business in Troy, but he did agree to move to Saratoga, which was very important to me because he was out of town. When I was at Williams, I was commuting from Troy to Williams and that didn't work very well. It actually worked really well, but I didn't want to do it again, not for a tenure track position. Some of the things, just a quick little summary of some of the things that I envisioned for what I wanted in my life and what I envisioned for Skidmore's life were a strong student/faculty collaborative undergraduate research program, which included some very specific things. Rigor within physical chemistry and general chemistry was particularly interesting and I also taught analytical chemistry. In fact, in my first 27 years, I taught 27 different courses. Also, I had a very definite interest in environmental science, which I had come to understand recently, really what I needed to be interested in and knowledgeable about was environmental studies and I was starting to understand the difference between environmental studies and environmental science, and that a lot of other people didn't understand those things. Then I wanted Skidmore to have more, especially at that point, in the way of undergraduate, student/faculty collaborative undergraduate research, including and most especially full-time for students during the summers. One of the reasons that I wasn't trying to set up a lab during the summer was, I already had summer research students at Williams that were funded. I had a grant from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund that I got when I was at Williams, but grants, typically with the permission of both institutions, are transferrable. A lot of the equipment that I was bought at that grant that I was using at Williams was transferrable, so Williams' people signed off on all of that. But I had students for the summer at Williams, and also, the Skidmore daycare center opened the first day of classes or the day before the first day of classes or something like that, in '87. I hadn't even thought that a place could not have a childcare center honestly, because Williams had had a very old childcare center at that point. I'm not sure how old. My first year at Williams, my older child was born, and my first year at Skidmore, my second child was born. Anyway, they're wonderful. Tearful. Moving on. So, I was moving equipment into Skidmore and also moving our house from Troy to Saratoga Springs. So I worked with my students up to, I don't know, the first or second week of August and then I had a couple of weeks where I was moving things from Troy, I'm actually not remembering moving the house that much, but I'm remembering moving the lab. Maybe we got somebody to move us. That would be great. But my son and I would wake up in Troy and I would take him to daycare and I'd work with my Williams students. Then my Williams students would, in August, put things in my Subaru. Then I would pick David up at daycare around 3:00 or 3:30 and then we would drive to Skidmore and unload things and set up my lab. I already had gotten keys to my lab and keys to my office and I already knew where the chemistry department kept carts that I could move equipment on. But some of this was very heavy equipment and I Page 3 of 11 �had to move it from my car onto the cart and then from the cart onto the lab benches in my lab. There was absolutely nobody in Dana Science Center except my two-year-old, David, and me, and David Domozych. So, David Domozych was highly valued. I showed up maybe three times and knew that I could find David Domozych upstairs and we all moved my stuff into my lab. David, my son, was two. I had an ion chromatograph, which is pretty routine now, but was a bigger deal in '87. One of his early words as a two-year old was chromatograph. So, I discovered pretty early, there was a kind of a vibe during the interviews that there was hopefulness that this vision I had for someplace that I would work was consistent with what somebody, somewhere at Skidmore wanted. I didn't entirely get, it wasn't entirely clear that it was that many people in my department. Maybe Paul Walter, Vasantha Narisimahn had done a little bit, some undergraduate research, particularly during the academic year, but nobody'd ever done any research during the summer. Nobody had ever applied for grants. But I think that I started to really get the big picture better when I met David Porter [then Skidmore’s President] because David Porter definitely had this interdisciplinary vision, but also a very clear vision of what student/faculty collaborative research was going to mean for people in the natural sciences nationally in the coming years; at there was, everybody in the natural sciences in at least a three-year position, and that was one of the reasons I was a three-year position is, they weren't, Williams didn't think that they could really expect somebody to be doing really good quality research in less than three years. So they were hiring visiting professors at three-year shots. Everybody was doing undergraduate research with the expectation of publishing in the same sort of journal you would publish in at a university, which really requires a summer experience. That was the very beginning, the late '70s, early '80s, middle '80s was the beginning of an organization named Council on Undergraduate Research, which Stuart Crampton in physics at Williams was very instrumental in. Probably one of the other really big instrumental people, maybe more so probably, was a guy named Jerry Mohrig at Carleton, who was David Porter's next-door neighbor, I think. He was certainly his neighbor. I think he might have been his next-door neighbor. So David Porter was a musician and classics professor, but he had all kinds of visions for Skidmore. We all really liked David Porter a lot. But this vision of very rigorous, but truly collaborative research with students, but during the school year, keeping it going, but for the students to really understand the depth of what they were doing, that they had to be working summers. I came with a grant a year later. Ray Giguere came with a grant. Ray Giguere also already had, was the second person that had the kind of experience that I had already had in chemistry. David Domozych was already here. In '87-‘88, David Domozych and I, with the help or the guidance, or maybe they were doing it more, of somebody in the administration, and I'm not sure who it was, I think it might have been David Seligman, wrote a grant, Keck Foundation maybe, I'm not sure, for a student/faculty collaborative research to be funded by the college. So I had my ASC, PRF money. Ray had some external grant, but the college began to give grants for summer research to other people. I think that David Porter had an awful lot to do with that. I think David Porter also had a lot to do with just the nurturing of interdisciplinarity within the college. So, we had LS [Liberal Studies] I, II, III, and IV Page 4 of 11 �back then. At my interview, I was told that at some point, I was going to be expected to teach a LS IV course, which was, I can't remember exactly what the title was, but had something to do with sciences. It was supposed to be some sort of link between other disciplines and the sciences. At Williams, I was teaching a very upper-level quantum mechanics class, but I was also teaching an environmental science class. More importantly, there was a guy by the name of Tom Jorling, which you guys might never have heard of, but he had a bachelor's undergraduate degree in biology and a law degree, and he had worked quite a bit at different governmental positions as a lawyer, politician, administrator person. Then he worked, for several years, as a tenure track faculty member who got tenure at Williams in environmental studies. Then, I think it was Jimmy Carter who appointed him in a position at EPA and he was back to working in the government. Then he was back at Williams as a distinguished professor of environmental studies at Williams. When I was there, Tom Jorling was chair of environmental studies. I would go to environmental studies meetings that I didn't understand what they were completely. I linked it with science, environmental science because I'd been actually teaching an environmental science course collaboratively with somebody at Russell Sage already. And I was teaching an environmental science course at Williams. But I go to meetings and it's pretty dominated by philosophers, English professors, economists, and Tom Jorling, who's a lawyer. Well, one of the dominant scientists in the group was a guy by the name of Bill Moomaw, who was spending a few years at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, where he started a PhD program in environmental studies. That's who I was replacing. That's why I wasn't seeing a presence from chemistry. And there was one biologist and one geologist that were involved. I started going to Tom Jorling's course, which I think actually had the symbol ES100, and it was very law, politics, economics. I'm sure that's the first time I ever heard about the tragedy of the commons, would have been in Tom Jorling's course, sometime before '87. So spring of '87, I guess, while I was still at Williams, I wrote my Liberal Studies IV proposal based on partly what I was teaching in environmental science and partly what Tom Jorling was teaching in environmental studies. It flew through curriculum committee, which I'd been hearing about for many years, because that wasn't really typical. So when I came in, I already had that approved and I probably taught it that year. But I gave it the title of my environmental science course, which was “the environment and the physical sciences”. Students were very happy with it, but I didn't get great enrollment the first year or two. Then somebody in the administration said, "Course is great. You just need to change the title." The title of the book I was using was Environmental Concerns in Perspective. So, I changed the title to “Environmental Concerns in Perspective”. Environmental Concerns in Perspective has been full ever since, probably still is because ES100 has that title still, I think. Then John Thomas asked me if I'd be interested in teaching a course on Loughberry Lake, if I'm not getting too ahead of you. So, John Thomas and I invented what was really the first, before ES100, ES100 was my LS IV course. SB: ES meaning environmental studies? Page 5 of 11 �JH: Yeah, thank you very much, Sue. ES meaning environmental studies. So, we started an ES105 class, leaving space for something that might happen eventually below ES105, but that was primarily on the chemistry and geology of Loughberry Lake, the drinking water supply for Saratoga Springs. But we also had people from the city talking to us about its role in the life of the city and a little bit about politics and economics, but it was largely chemistry and geology. And then at some point, the students in my LS IV class asked for some sort of program that was environmental studies, so I started writing a proposal for the environmental studies major with Ken Johnson, the other senior person in the geology department. It actually went to the faculty floor while I was on pre-tenure sabbatical, but Ken and I met a lot about it and rewrote things a lot. Around, it was passed around '90, maybe '91, for the environmental studies minor. The first student that graduated with an environmental studies minor was a chemistry major by the name of Cheryl Silbert, who married another Skidmore alum Schnitzer, and Cheryl Silbert-Schnitzer has been a full professor at Stone Hill for quite a while. A really long time, actually. Then the self-determined majors started getting flooded by students who wanted to be environmental studies majors. I had a very significant teaching load. There were 105 kids in general chemistry. I just wasn't up, for a while, in trying to make an environmental studies major. I'm sure that some of you realize that to have a major, you also have to get it through the New York State Board of Regents. It's not just the faculty floor. So, I really wasn't up for that for a while, but the self-determined majors committee was really leaning on me for years to get an environmental studies major. At some point, there was an absolutely spectacular woman hired, really initially as a faculty spouse, late '90sish, Karen Kellogg. She was initially hired in biology. She was more interested in environmental studies. I was overwhelmingly swamped with environmental studies stuff. Also, Roy Ginsberg and I applied for a Department of Education grant for international affairs and environmental studies issues across the curriculum and I was managing that for a couple of years, also. I didn't have a teaching load reduction for being director of environmental studies for many, many years. I still had more teaching load than some of my male colleagues. So, Karen was a really big help. With Karen's help, we got out the proposal for the environmental studies major in, I think about 2001, roughly. Of course, it's environmental studies and sciences now. So, I continued to have undergraduate research all along the way. I was doing that initial lab I set up was gas phase kinetics and spectroscopy. Mostly all hand-built glass vacuum work, all entirely hand-built electronics that I designed. None of the chemistry majors were particularly interested in that, but some of the physics majors were sometimes. One summer, to be able to spend the money, I got other grants. I got two other grants, big, substantial grants just for my research, not counting the college student/faculty collaborative research one or the environmental studies student/faculty collaborative research one. So, one summer, I hired RPI students because I needed to spend the money and I needed to get work done and our chemistry students weren't really that interested. But I was having massive numbers of students come to me that wanted to do environmental fieldwork, which I'd done a little bit of. Not even counting the time that I Page 6 of 11 �took the measurements in the stream in the back of my yard, I had also done a little bit of fieldwork in other ways. So, for several years, I was doing both, but with the teaching load I had, I was a single parent. By '91 or '92, I was a single parent. It was actually easier, in my case, to be a single parent than to not be a single parent. The younger one had a lot of health problems. So, there was a variety of reasons why it was easier for me to supervise my environmental science students. I went out in the field with them. I learned, there's a lot of different reasons I knew how to do fieldwork, but I'd learned how to do the fieldwork. I'd learned how to treat samples when we got back to the lab, but I wasn't building equipment from scratch. I wasn't having to repair and maintain equipment that had all been electronics and vacuum gas work that was all built from scratch, either. Also, somewhere along the line, I'd have to think harder than I am right now about the date, the college started the Skidmore Analytical Instrumentation Lab (SAIL) and we hired Lisa Quimby. Anybody know Lisa Quimby? You guys don't know about Lisa Quimby? Well, initially, there was a big grant that I was not one of the ones that wrote, thank you. Appreciate that, that was great. The chemistry department, but there were some people in the social sciences that used it some and there were some other people in the natural sciences that used it some, too. When I use the word science, I'm using the word science that I understand natural science to be, and if you would like to give that whatever interpretation you would like, that's fine. I understand, lots of people could have long conversations on that, but I'm using the word science and the sciences as natural sciences. So, the SAIL lab, we got all sorts of analytical instrumentation. I was able to use a lot of the instrumentation I'd got for analyzing samples from my gas, that I took from my gas phase apparatus into analyzing liquids. Gradually, my research evolved from being gas phase kinetics and spectroscopy (where I got publications with student co-authors, but it was a really time-consuming and difficult process) to supervising students that were doing fieldwork. There's a little while in between there that we also were doing basic analytical chemistry research. Analytical chemistry is the science of how much of what is where basically. Almost everybody could use their own analytical chemist; physicians, lawyers, everybody. How much of what is where is a really important question. I also taught analytical chemistry in the long list of courses I taught. So, I had some basic analytical chemistry equipment in my research lab. I shut down the vacuum stuff. Lisa and other people started using some of my equipment. Some of my research students were using more of the SAIL equipment. If the students needed to have the mode that an instrument was changed in changed or they hadn't, I pretty much would train the students on the instruments. But if there was an issue, something needed to be changed, then Lisa Quimby is, was, and still is director of the, an employee of the college, a staff that's director of the Skidmore Analytical Instrumentation Lab, SAIL. Eventually, as I trained groups of students, they could go out into the field themselves. So that was great. I could actually accomplish something in my office. I had that transition. I had a bunch of papers on Journal of Chemical Education, including some that were pretty hard core physical chemistry, some that were about undergraduate research and how institutions can nurture undergraduate research. One that's kind of a basic quantum mechanics thing. But the last paper I published was about Page 7 of 11 �the relationship between 13 water chemistry variables in seven or eight different streams that are tributaries of the Kayaderosseras and land use patterns. I don't know anything about how to measure land use patterns, but again, the College is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary. We had the GIS lab. A few of my students had taken GIS courses and were really good at it and could determine, sometimes with the professional's help a little bit, but generally from the courses that they had had, determine what the land use pattern was for the areas that we were doing our water sampling. SB: So all of your fieldwork was centered on water, right? JH: All of my fieldwork after I left the Health Department was centered on water, yeah. Which I was also a white-water paddler and a flat-water paddler and, for a while, a white-water instructor, American Canoe Association certified white water instructor. So really fond of water. SB: Well, Judy, in 2023, there was a symposium honoring you and your colleague, Ray Giguere. JH: That was really awesome. That was pretty cool. SB: Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of the symposium? JH: Sure. I'm just now thinking maybe that is one tiny silver lining on the cloud of COVID because we didn't have, when I actually retired June 1, 2020. So I taught that last semester, including a general chemistry lab that first COVID semester. I divided it up. I was in phased retirement, I'm sorry. I'll get back to your question, Sue, if that's okay. Just give me a minute or two here. It works into the genesis of that symposium. My general chemistry lab, I divided into three sections; the East Coast, the West Coast, and the middle. Because general chemistry lab met from 8:00 to 9:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I could not reasonably expect that California students were going to get up at 5:00 in the morning to come to a remote Zoom general chemistry lab. So I did everything three times that last half of that semester. But I retired June 2020, so there wasn't really, chemistry and environmental studies have been working together and have this awesome retirement party. I was really looking forward to it. Sometimes you can end up with two or three or more retirement parties, depending on the circumstances. I really wanted those retirement parties. Time passes. Oh, well. What happened? And then, I assume it was Juan Navea and/or Karen Kellogg's idea. I really have no idea. Probably Juan and then he talked to Karen or talked to somebody. Then, a couple of years after I retired, I have a hard time saying that I retired because I tend to say, "I graduated," rather than, "I retired." But a couple of years after I retired, Ray Giguere also retired. Ray and I were really, Vasantha Narasimhan had done a little bit of undergraduate research, but in terms of this idea, the students really need to be working 40 hours a week for at least 10 weeks during the summer really started that with Ray and I. Then you really, they have enough depth of understanding of what they're doing to be able to continue to do things for 10 hours a week during the school year and actually accomplish something, but it's very hard for them to get to that point without that. Page 8 of 11 �Because of the pandemic, it was seen that Ray and I were graduating or retiring or summarizing our careers somehow at around the same time. We both kept in touch with a lot of students. I probably didn't have as many students as he did. I'd had an awful lot of students that took ES100 from me. I didn't say, when I was saying that environmental studies program got approved as a minor that eventually, a core course for it was the LS IV course, but we had to un-LS IV it because there was waiting lists just from the ES students, but that became ES100. So, I taught a lot of students from ES100, but physical chemistry tends to not be that big a class. Analytical chemistry tends to not be that big a class. I taught environmental studies junior seminar and a few other things, but they tend to not be really huge classes, whereas, Ray was teaching organic chemistry, which is a much bigger class. But between the students that we had in classes and students that we had in our research program, we both had stayed in touch with a lot of students, and Juan and other people in the department were aware of that and they just wrote all these students and said, "Let's do this." It was really amazing. We had really, I'd have to look back and consult Juan or look at my notes or something, 60 or more students that came for the weekend. We had student presentations. We had presentations by other people on Friday, but student presentations all day on Saturday. The student presentations were awesome. They were all about the work that they were doing at that point in time in their careers. One person had been e-mailing me and emailing me and just couldn't get through to me, but he was one of my very first students and he was e-mailing me, Sue could probably appreciate this, maybe. He was e-mailing me at halstead@scott@skidmore.edu. Scott was a computer that was unplugged a very long time ago, so he wasn't getting through to me. He's at NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology, which I still sometimes think of as the National Bureau of Standards. But the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which he was great. Everybody was great. But they all tied their work back to things that they had done at Skidmore. That was really a terrific event. SB: I can imagine. JH: Yeah. SB: What have you been doing since you graduated from Skidmore? JH: Since I graduated from Skidmore? Do you have a minute for me to tell you something else interdisciplinary I think was important about Skidmore? SB: Sure. JH: So when the Scribner seminars started, I couldn't do my LS IV course, which a lot of people would, because my LS IV course was ES100 and was taught by a lot of people. So, I had to come up with something else. So, I did this course, and we all know by now that I really like water. So, I did a course that was Water: Society, Science, and the Arts. It would change from year to year. It really worked best if I had something else to tie it to that was within the college. Page 9 of 11 �So, the first one, which was awesome, it was so great, was Caroline Anderson was directing the play, Enemy of the People by Ibsen. We also went to, my class and I also went to a whole bunch of, oh, God. I can't think of his name. There was a Travolta movie about water pollution problem in Woburn, Massachusetts. I can't think of it, and Erin Brokovich, and there's all these other movies, too, but mainly the sort of scaffolding for that class was Caroline Anderson's working with her students presenting An Enemy of the People. My students were very familiar with the play before we saw the play. Then we had, it happens in a little town. There's a water pollution episode. There's the mayor and the doctor, and people have different opinions on it. My students became, chose to be different characters in the town that weren't in the play. They met a couple times with Caroline's students. Caroline must have directed that because I would have no idea how to do that, and had interaction between the characters that were in the play and the characters that were not in the play. And then all of their writing assignments were letters to the editor. And another, I'll just tell you about one other one. Another one was the 400th year that Hudson sailed up the Hudson the Tang had the exhibit on the Hudson River School and Ian Berry and Tom Lewis put together this book. The people who have chapters in that, who have little essays in that book were asked to comment on, to present an essay that somehow interacted with a particular piece of art. The piece of art that I had was Seneca Ray Stoddard's picture of Lake Tear of the Clouds, which is often thought of as the source of the Hudson. But, of course, now we know, I'm sure Sue knows that the source of the Hudson is the entire Hudson watershed, not just Lake Tear of the Clouds. So, my essay was about that. I had this one little story, which I'll tell you in a second, that Tom Lewis really wanted me to put in the beginning. I felt like it logically belonged someplace else, because I talked about the amount of flow of the Hudson as you came down the watershed, as all the tributaries came into the harbor. So, I wanted this little story to go in the flow as appropriate. Tom Lewis kept saying, "It's up to you, but I think the story should be moved up earlier." But it was, when I was nine and we had first moved to Scotia-Glenville, my dog and I followed the stream. I went to a stream, which I followed a stream. Then I get to a point where I got across Route 50, not too far from Mayfair Center, if you know where that is. I'm like, "What would my mother think about me and my dog crossing it?" There's no light here or anything. I'm nine years old and I just moved here, but we crossed it, and then all the different things that we found as we followed that stream. That's in that, but that tributary, that's a tributary of the Indian, which is a tributary of the Mohawk, which is a tributary of the Hudson. So that's in there, too. Oh, okay. I've been trying to paddle since I retired. SB: But I have one follow-up question about that. I believe I saw something on the Skidmore website that you did a dialog with an artist whose work was in the Hudson show. JH: Yes. I only vaguely remember that. That's true. SB: Okay. Page 10 of 11 �JH: I took my students. I had two or three different classes that I took kayaking on the upper Hudson also and I took some students to visit dams. They didn't enjoy the dams as much as they did Enemy of the People or the Tang. I don't understand that. My husband and I both really like dams. It's one of the things we have in common. SB: Okay. So anything else, looking back on your Skidmore career, that you'd like to touch on? JH: No, I'm willing to go on to retirement now. SB: Okay. JH: Yeah. I'm not doing white water paddling, sadly, because I really have a lot of arthritis. The hiking that I'm doing is not as aggressive, but I'm still doing more modest hikes. I got here in time today after biking. So hiking, biking. Both of my children, but especially the younger one that lives in Maine, really wanted me to move to Maine for quite a few years. I really love the Adirondacks. I think somebody one time said something about my spreading my love of the outdoors to other students and faculty and I hope that's true, but I do really love the outdoors. People think Maine's so great, but not like the Adirondacks. I really love the Adirondacks and the Saratoga area, but we did end up getting a condo in Maine and we have a threeand-a-half-year-old granddaughter and a six-month-old grandson, so we're spending maybe a third of the time there. Oh, I can't believe I left out another thing I've done is, I've spent a lot of time being involved in the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, where I was a secretary for four and a half years. My husband, Johnathan Fieinberg and Dick Wilkinson and I spent an enormous amount of time over about five years redoing policy for the congregation. My husband and I are also somewhat involved in the Unitarian Universalist congregation first parish in Portland now, but hopefully more. The three-year-old, I think an important point you could make a conclusion on if you like is that our three-year-old granddaughter has now been canoeing with me three times this summer. SB: Thank you very much, Judy. This is delightful, to hear your recollections of your time at Skidmore. JH: It's delightful to see all of you. Page 11 of 11 � 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 Sue Bender & Leslie Meechem Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Judy Halstead Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, NY 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.) 42:23 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sue Bender 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 Judy Halstead Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 17, 2025 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 After receiving her PhD in physical chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Judy Halstead taught at Russell Sage and Williams Colleges before joining Skidmore’s Chemistry Department in 1986.  In addition to teaching general and analytical chemistry within her department, Halstead was an active participant in interdisciplinary programs.  In this interview she recalls her pivotal work for two major College initiatives: the development of Environmental Studies and the Summer Collaborative Research Program.  Both of these undertakings have had a lasting effect at the College and on our students, as attested to by the alumni symposium held in her honor upon her retirement in 2020. Halstead also reflects on some of the obstacles faced by women in the STEM disciplines. 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 https://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a923b00f26b6f564bc83709ed9c9544b.mp3 10c95f65ffe6b95e3f41c671e997edd5 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e2af96bf5c5073b90755905544a10109.pdf 8c5febcb1ce7050a6375360fbdcc7176 https://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/afc03a513e8697a564128d181f733777.JPG a120c4dd75c572ce33b284cf12077da5 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 Minnie Bolster 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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/75b50472638edab424f60a2387bc2bd7.mp3 07eedea7b240474d9fd28570fe429400 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d1f3968a9fe8600daf696c97d7868306.JPG 9ad306c62624df2f85d30d1268e8d45a 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 Eileen McAdam, Sound and Story Project of the Hudson Valle Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Minnie Bolster Location The location of the interview The Cube, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 45 minutes Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. J. Dym Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 4/8/2015 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 Minnie Bolster Interview Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 18, 2014 community member oral history Saratogian https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/33a9c1282b5735ef4c8d41b1f4ace17b.JPG e0c26cba99a47eb0fe48eeba38394c39 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 Don McCormack 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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/f76b79377ef4c3712df693ad448373a7.mp3 93976de11c07153791ae3c90fcbac015 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d4b815a6eea3e67face4fb62ac1a4f2f.pdf c24dfb564ca69a677c8b870d58413e85 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/566fbb6e717d9acdb9725d5c1ed45894.pdf 202e3da57fd8ab1f2b24a4b992b9d54c 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 Don McCormack, Director, Special Programs (Years) 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 Don McCormack 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 Don McCormack, held a variety of roles at Skidmore from 1970-2005 (Faculty in the Government Department, Director of the University Without Walls program, Dean of Special Programs). In this interview he talks about the spirit of campus in the 1970’s with large gatherings of students, faculty, community members and visitors at his house and the Tin & Lint bar; University Without Walls, including teaching in the Great Meadow Correctional Facility; and starting Skidmore’s Jazz Institute. Boys Choir of Harlem Jazz Institute Tint & Lint Bar UWW https://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b60aed25c1e4cb0100600aefb1d59eb7.mp3 f2bc5e394b5acd6558f3c6d38293eb04 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/356976c19250c15ad9003f38d71d9dc2.pdf 0eb03c23bcd0aec067380702d8fdb668 https://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/33c7d009b97b5a3241993e0f2f33d99e.JPG 7a3db360e4cd4c7ad1eb4f22671ee017 https://ssmp.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://ssmp.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://ssmp.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 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b16443279a49e7f060c00d805f6b5edc.JPG 915df209902a5a488580fcc456f7fed6 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/f4fd64738121906af6fbf8db0e9205fe.mp3 784607b8fab70a9814dbdfc7f4935e0a 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 Audio 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 Jane (Yana) Kjaer Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 2, 2015 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rebecca Zosia Stern '16 Date Available Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available. November 18, 2015 Date Created Date of creation of the resource. November 18, 2015 Date Copyrighted Date of copyright. 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 oral history https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0b605e252036c0049649cf6a4c0ef2b8.JPG e753342d458650785ea6f8926a6798dc https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/ca6a4d9dfc07c140ee6ed078e2a592ef.JPG 8a8f17f09d4658663b10f167ae14f6fb https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/fb1241129c669b22f2a7d924ac5443ea.JPG e2f60117cbe419b05d3a500e312e5abb https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/5c4c78c61c2c9e343b5e96a199d89443.JPG c190fa99dae4b22998658b25eaa7112c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/ce9cb99396c64b44eaed85a3936761ad.JPG f2a6edde32f783965bb0c920e1108101 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/20138709dbf62451c51445a0a97029fc.JPG 6e16004d4d66f35759cba6831427495c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e8f0f96a296deb3b44747d3f0b75e8d7.JPG 3fca34d4d22314f17f2ae71c779275c0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1eebef3b4323cc987eead3b935411dbe.JPG 44727b02968c6fe494ebe272c400be95 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1479f2f5e083e47458930f23cddcb3cb.JPG 58c1766f63c23c90c92672ed6c161932 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/6b399c963c276d0e2a0cc59df8a0806f.JPG 090fc428931222c81cc1872e7f4dd4a0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/3c363ec054ea4d73f8167ddae8614a35.JPG f9507585527c6a8715fd923cba73c3f7 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/ee4d83a2688a1b880afc6548a172c09d.JPG fe52e7bbf823c34c4b62438d95187cc5 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/0c3c802564316fc516cc1582b6c6eac7.JPG be947eebb4c42f0f81f3001bcf6e5ba6 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/f84a98f1d7334392e7e440a55adf5513.JPG fdf44a3a08e59ce141cb5c0e82c2d634 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4f5b69e6d0e4fb8d999c019fe28c2695.JPG 3556190e5a50393a4c64a3adffe3fb72 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8945dea06ae110a9e4635067ae928a83.JPG 26dd6bfc3085fa13abe7e8d6648c22a6 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/f1f1838f5fed612261c2f7bdacdd605c.JPG c2d0fec4035e07b68f4d5835a62b0378 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d8e7e5275c2186548dcf4e34f68e7f8f.JPG 8bba99cd40224ea277fb9f8cb12403f9 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/6f3b533ac04e877804cc5728a4d138ec.JPG e28fe34bf04cb1ce08adf68f423e901b https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b79c8d7b3083a4637f23f6eb71dd262e.JPG a8e949968711a2088a24be6f0a0e829e https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b5a91ed223eb9e480bebb2c75969228e.JPG db78acb6a0f7c81e1fa50a023d7f712a https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/604883fddf3652a254eb39097e90862d.JPG adb5b180bbd990458e6406abaf66452c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/87157a98706d7ca812502aeaa67083cb.JPG 71e0345e346816b9597eb79e358e8c9f https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/19127d2c09a55096d4c6cb81f698c27a.JPG 48a4c2ae96fa03a71d136fb0757b9acb https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/13a444a1e61a75a4e85188595aa8e788.JPG de5e721c04d8b9b6865bebbf18b4b53b https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/40d671e693b0a4f1d5dde3730db0df8b.JPG 852e99c6ba7c8e60c5676910cc68d750 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 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 Sixty Years Young Class Photos Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 2014 - November 2015 Description An account of the resource Photographs of students and faculty in Archival Storytelling preparing the archive, taping an interview with Lois Celeste, and learning the principles of audio recording with Nat Cabrera, '17, who worked as a student assistant in LIB 113. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Dym, Jordana https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/fe55a79c8f42bfb4147ab46bec293719.jpg 3892ed4cb7fadc8eb842f81403a63782 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a5bc8fa925a5404b7be3b2455f6ad96b.mp3 d294d057639fafc339d4d5649f18d3b9 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4f8b3e4295aa36c07243430a9bd3c904.pdf dd3529f20b52d5fc0dbeab23ede068a3 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/132c41f4eadfd750431f9aa3b3737cc1.pdf 993a57633e53706747d531993d6554ac 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 Mateo Bolado Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Kenneth Klotz Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Mateo Bolado Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 1/11/19 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 Ken Klotz Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 25, 2019 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Springs Memory Project Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource This is an oral history of Ken Klotz for the Saratoga Springs Memory Project. Ken is a former faculty member of Skidmore College, Ex-Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Former Finance Commissioner, and Former Chair of the Saratoga Democratic Committee. In this one hour interview, we hear about Ken's childhood all the way to his time as the Mayor of Saratoga Springs and everything in between. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mateo Bolado, '23 Subject The topic of the resource An Oral History of Ken Klotz. Date Created Date of creation of the resource. October 25th 2019 Democratic Party Local Politics oral history Saratoga Springs Saratoga Springs Politics Skidmore College Skidmore faculty Yale https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/57d08e4ad6cb7545ba35b102bfb00734.jpg 132511ed2d207cc2661dc8fca6bce113 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4ac22e1dc72aa54d332218874d5a56b3.mp4 14382406027d8f68e4a8495dc6adcabc https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/9e4fc6a346942127c16d3bffd5febb6e.pdf 1dc29cea790eb1479789ea644f4de798 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b21e4254d348eadaee87971336d82f0c.pdf a80176cf039b0bd061cacc92885cbaa7 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 Samantha Murphy Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joe Levy Location The location of the interview Lucy Scribner Library, Saratoga Springs N.Y Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Samantha Murphy Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit Nov. 1, 2019 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 Joseph Levy Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 26, 2019 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Samantha Murphy, '23 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Joseph Levy 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 Joesph Levy, a photographer who moved to Saratoga in the 70's. He is known for is photography at the Saratoga Race Track, and also ran for state senate with the Green Party. Levy has made an impact on the arts community in Saratoga and is keeping the Green party alive for future generations. In this interview, you will learn about his life growing up, his life in Saratoga and his work in politics. Arts Photographer Green Party Hyde Collection Photographer Photography Saratoga Arts Saratoga Arts Workshop Saratoga County Saratoga County Green Party Saratoga County Politics Saratoga Race Course St Yaddow Track Photographer https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/c485d466be1911234fdd757f0ed649ad.JPG bfb0857ea1b315fd2856f8694ae7d93d https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/470b3872bfe55b90577607eaef10e976.mp3 4b5b7c922d44c1e9dbffc058a87b253d https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/7c2b15b09f5d782bda2bb4de5f805e9e.pdf 9c1b3529981116e1270b4e5d2426d626 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e593cd5557125fccb070c8e3d94b1faf.JPG b290b262f63003580268a9e5e61aa808 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. Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Elizabeth Picken Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Elizabeth Picken '21 Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tod Pardon 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 Tod Pardon Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 26, 2019 Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Elizabeth Picken, '21 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Tod Pardon https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e7ad604f0fc9e002b1faa0fb64f263ac.PNG 334ef39a8edd5185d9a119c963ffaa59 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/680ad92cfa87e616d488d64ea389bcf7.m4a ecee0cda3372d05855e4a0c59faab43c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a4f16589f926600d058b57da8a98e300.m4a d60872ccc9a9381adf6050f7577f8607 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/39183178a3c1f9a885a5ed8039ff953d.pdf 603231a0fae1559ae0790a6caaec5b67 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/54b4cc436010b61a9831032305cd47d0.pdf 5fc7a4ac249337de8b2743c393faffd9 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 Cooper Murphy, Skidmore Senior Memory Project Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lou Schneider Location The location of the interview Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, NY, 12866 and Saratoga Senior Center 5 Williams St, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 (Zoom) Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Cooper Murphy Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 18/11/2020 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.) 00:55:17 and 00:23:48 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound First Transcription of Lou Schneider CM: Today is 10/26/2020 time is 12:55 pm I am the interviewer CM would you like to introduce yourself. Lou Schneider: My name is Lou Schneider, I am 89 born 4/17/1931. What else can I say? CM: That’s about it. Okay so are you okay with this information being stored or shared through the public domain and in Skidmore Saratoga memorial project. LS: No problem. CM: Okay, and let's get started shall we. Okay, first question is, where did you live as a kid. LS: Wander what I’m sorry louder. CM: Where did you live as a kid. LS: Brooklyn, New York. That's where I was born. CM: And what was your family like LS: Well family. I'm the first generation in the United States. My father came from Lithuania, my mother from Poland. CM: Did you have any siblings. LS: I have a younger sister three years younger than me. CM: Did you guys go to the same school LS: Yes, Lafayette high school in Brooklyn New York CM: And how're classes for that. LS: Alone one what. I'm sorry. CM: Sorry, did you have of what we're teachers like back then. LS: I still didn't catch the question, I'm sorry. CM: It's perfectly fine. What were teachers like back at your middle school? LS: What was it like CM: Yeah. LS: Well, I'm being born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Is uh my stomping ground was Coney Island spent a lot of time, they're. Doing a lot of things. As I was growing up at the age of eight. We used to play had some friends. We used to play chess Pinochle and hearts. CM: And did any of those become hobbies that you did in the future. LS: Hobbies? CM: Hobbies. Yeah. What were your hobbies? LS: Yeah, the only the only hobby. I really had was reading. I enjoy, you know, books, a lot of reading. And just living the good life in Brooklyn, New York, and stomping ground in Coney Island. CM: Sounds fun. Did you have a specific genre that you really liked…Or a topic? LS: Or what? CM: Book. Did you have a topic of a book that you really liked to read about LS: No, I read on. Anything I can get my hands on. But I gravitated more towards mysteries than anything else. CM: Cool. Did you have a favorite type of music as a kid? LS: Did I have a what CM: Did you have a favorite type of music like a type of band or LS: Type of anything. No, really. Enjoyed own music. Yeah. Gravitated a little towards jazz, but that's about it. CM: Did you have a favorite holiday? LS: Favorite what CM: Holiday LS: Any day. I didn't have to go to school with was a holiday to me. CM: That's fair enough. LS: I was not. I was not one of the best students available at the time as growing up as I got older, I want. I want to see college. I got a degree in chemical engineering. So just settle down a bit. CM: Uh, did you have any pets as a kid? LS: Did you ask your question. CM: Yeah, sorry, it looks like our connections, a bit iffy. But, um, Yes. I said, did you have any pets as a kid. LS: No. No, I'll no pets went up by. Those in Brooklyn and a three bed in a three-bedroom apartment. She used to sleep in the bedroom with my folks. I used to sleep in a roll away cot in the living room. Which made it interesting. CM: So you mentioned how you went to community college and we've talked about your. Elementary School. But do you know, do you remember where you went to high school. LS: Yes, Lafayette High School in Brooklyn New York, and I admit though I really weren’t a good student never took any interest in it until I grew up. CM: And I know that you're a veteran. Can you tell me which war he fought in if not wars? LS: Korea I was very fortunate during the Korean War. I was stationed in Washington, DC. I work for the Army prosthetics research lab we did research on different types of materials artificial limbs. And it was interesting. So the work with amputees almost all my life at the time. CM: Uh, did you ever see any combat. During your time there? LS: None at all, no. CM: So you have worked with amputees and just make sure I'm getting this right. And you developed different materials for prosthetics and stuff like this. LS: Right. CM: This might be a very specific question, but did you ever have a specific type of, I guess, limb that you were more of an expert about making a prosthetic about? LS: No, not really. CM: Just all over everywhere? Nice. LS: Yeah. CM: How long did you serve for LS: Well, actually I was in for two years spent a year and a half and Walter Reed as I send a prosthetic sweet. I was… CM: I'm sorry you cut out on my end. Could you say that again? LS: I said, well, I lived off base with my wife. So, All I had to do is come in for inspections every Wednesday and that's about it. I did my work at the prosthetic research lab, you know, work on with different types of materials. Developing them for the prosthetic. Was I was in a medical or even though I was a chemical engineer that was what the army did. CM: That's pretty interesting. And you mentioned that you were married. When did you get married? LS: Married in 1953. We were married now 67 years. CM: Congratulations. LS: Thank you. Maybe you should congratulate her instead. Both: (laugh) CM: Um, so did you have any kids well during those two years. Or was after you. You uh left the war. LS: Oh yeah I have three children. My daughter, the oldest was born in Walter Reed. In December, just before I got out of the army. I got out in February, and the other two my oldest son was born in Newton Massachusetts and the younger one was born in Nassau County, West Burry. CM: Did you move around a lot while being in the army or after the army? LS: No didn't move, but it's spent a year and a half at Walter Reed so. Which was to me. Very good. Good adventure. Really enjoyed that. CM: Do you have any fond memories of the time one years in our watery? LS: But that's, that's hard to say. I enjoy it almost every day live door post was married at the time. So it was interesting working at Walter Reed. The only thing that actually really bothered me. Was these burns. You know, little kids getting burned or something. And you had to treat them so. That that hurt more than anything else, amputees didn't bother me. CM: So you worked with all ages? LS: Pardon? CM: You worked with all age groups. Not just like older people you worked with even children as well. LS: Oh, no. We work with anyone that had a problem as an amputee. You know, we would then with the prosthesis. Get the right match. In fact, any of these soldiers that used to have a hook. We gave an actual. Hand and we had gloves that fit over it. That was just look like skin. And we would color it to the person's coloring, you know if you put one hand up and you have one hand down the one that's up is like a different color was the blood rushes down to the other one. Was interesting is interesting matching it up. CM: Very, fascinating actually. So you said that after you left you still worked on prosthetics? LS: What were you saying? CM: I was saying that after you left the army, you still worked with prosthetics. Correct. LS: No. When I left the army. As a chemical engineer worked in the chemical fields were mainly in plastic companies. My forte was plastics at the time. CM: Uh. oh. Okay, so were. You said what you were born in 1989 was that? LS: No born 1931 CM: Someone gave me the wrong information. CM: You are alive during World War II? Correct? LS: Was I what I'm sorry. CM: You were alive during World War II? Correct? LS: No. I was alive during the World War II, yes. CM: But never fought? LS: Well I was born in 1931. WWII was 41-42 era later. I never got involved with that. Just did the Korean situation. CM: Got it. Uh, you were around when the TV became a thing in the microwave as well. Do you remember that at all impacting your life, those technological developments? LS: Really No really, you know, I was too young. And I think at that time. CM: Uh, did you ever have a favorite president? LS: any have what? CM: I'm sorry. I'll repeat that again. Did you ever have a favorite president when you're alive, like someone you really rooted for LS: Well, when I was born, FDR was president and he's really only one that I grew up with. And of course, it was Truman and Eisenhower. They came later. CM: Let's see. So did you ever go on any trips like family trips, when after, you know, Vietnam, or even? My bad after the Korean War? Or even with your family back when you were younger. LS: Oh yeah, we used to go. Spent a lot of time in the Long Beach and Long Island. We used to rent a little a house there that it was that was good memories at that time. Oh, you're on the beach. He. Well, Everybody takes care you and it was enjoyable. CM: Sounds like a nice community. LS: Yeah, yeah, we can. We try to do things as a family, my father. Is from Lithuania. So I'm first generation. My mother's from Poland. So in fact, at that time I used to speak a lot of Yiddish and some Hebrew, not much anymore. As I was growing up, they learned English with me. So we always spoke English so happy today they became fluent in that time. My father live to 97 CM: And you mentioned that you speak Hebrew? Can I ask what religion you believe in if any at all? LS: Sorry, I didn't catch that. CM: I was just asking what religion you would consider yourself. LS: Oh. Jewish I’m Jewish. CM: Cool. LS: Yeah Hebrew would be the religion really CM: Yeah……..So you got any grandkids now or still just your kids? LS: Well, I got eight grandchildren and one great-grandson. Five girls and three boys the grandchildren and the great is a little boy. Who is now three CM: Do you ever have. Like big family gatherings where everybody comes back together. LS: Yeah, we used to lay back, but not anymore. It's…You know with scattered all over the United States. One sons in Massachusetts, one sons in New Hampshire in North Carolina my daughter is in Michigan so it gets a little difficult to have a family reunion. But thank God for the technology we can have it on their computer like zoom and everything. CM: Did you ever have a favorite sports team or growing up. LS: The what CM: A favorite sports teams. LS: Oh yeah, New York Mets. We were strong Mets fans. Living on Long Island. We used to go to as many games as we could. My wife and I, she's a strong Mets fan and even stronger than me. CM: Do you feel like you've bonded even more because the Mets. LS: Yeah CM: Kid your kids also decide to follow the Mets, or do they have their own sports teams. LS: No it’s a Mets. Always the Mets. CM: Always the Mets. LS: Otherwise, I came my wife, but I think she married me because I was a Mets fan. CM: Uh, did your wife work for living as well or? LS: Yeah, when we lived in Long Island. She used to be the airport manager with Bennington airport in Bennington, Vermont, and she enjoyed that. In fact, I have a private pilot's license and I used to have Brendan, I own the Cessna 150 so comes, you know, weekends I go flying and every once in a while. My wife being a weather person had to report the weather. She asked me to go up and see how high the clouds are so I take the plane and go 6000 feet. Oh it was interesting. Oh, I have a pilot's license. I did a lot of things. Growing up Just…. CM: Sorry, it looks like you froze there for the last second. You said you did a lot of things growing up to do stay anything after that. LS: Well, it's, every day was really an adventure. Got a pilot's license. I'd love flying. You know, private pilots, but whatever I can do, I do. In my younger days. CM: So, how did you meet your wife? LS: I was at that time was going to City College of New York and she was the Brooklyn College and we had a party. So that's when we met but didn't really get together with her until she found out that I had a car she stuck around. CM: Have you have any. What was that, sorry. You seem to freeze these LS: I was gonna say she thought I was crazy. Once I used to tell her I had my socks painted on my feet because anytime I took a bath is something watch the socks at the same time. I thought that she would just leave but never happened. CM: When did you get married, then? LS: 53. Married 67 years. In fact, October 24 was the 67th year CM: Nice. LS: Yeah, it's been a long time I was 20 years old at the time. CM: Let's see. Did you, uh. Did you ever take your grandchildren on a vacations as well or was that more just the occasional visit LS: Yeah, we used to go a lot to Gilbert Lake State Park. That was a in Otsego County New York, we have family gatherings there we rented a couple of cabins. But then as the kids got older, you know, they went their way. We went our way. So this is what happens. I got eight grandchildren and one great. CM: Hmm. So you worked at a plastic factory. You mentioned before, or at least some form of a plant, um, was there a specific product that you were making or just all variety of plastics. LS: It was plastics. Lot of work In a chemical plant. We had vinyl chloride, we may polyvinyl chloride. Plasticizes. A long time ago. CM: Is there a specific year at least that you can think of that stands out in your mind like. Whether that was a specific event. I'm not let's hold on let me rephrase that a bit better. Do you remember a global event that you can recall from whatever year you can, I guess? Think of like something that really impacted you? LS: Well, the only thing I can remember is I got a chemical burn and I was six weeks in bandages. So I went up as I was a plant manager at the time in this place to come to me and we've had some problems with one of the filters and as I turned away the gasket blow when they hit me in the back. I ended up in bandages for six weeks. But there's no scarring or anything. Thank God for that. CM: Thank goodness. Was that the worst injury that ever happened, or did you see worse at the plant. LS: That's the what. I'm sorry. CM: Was that the worst injury that happened at the plant. Or… LS: No, it was a work injury. CM: Yeah, I was there anything else. Did you see any other injuries at the plant that may have been just as bad or worse? LS: No, that was, that was the worst one. I used to run the plastic plant also. So I did a lot of experimental work and PepsiCola and PepsiCala bottles and we'd make different type of plastics and every once in a while, a bottle would just rupture. I do remember one point that when I was in a pilot plant. A gasket on one of the reactor just blew and just drove me across the room didn't get hurt or anything was just wild thing like slow motion when you request the room, but unfortunately, I used to take a lot of chances. CM: Uh, so going back to your college years. Do you remember a class that I guess inspired you to go into Chemical Engineering or was it just something that happened? LS: What was interesting because when I signed up. I signed up to be an accountant and at the last minute. And I said, no, I'm going to go into chemical engineering. I like the instructor guy was a Dr. Newman, he dismantle the German planes set to the war, very interesting guy. Unfortunately, he stuttered. So he would look. Write on the blackboard what his right hand and have an eraser in his left hand and as he's writing. He's erasing oh yeah to be quick with him. But hey, he's my one of my outstanding. Versus the other one was a doctor Kalani which we just talked about different types of materials. You know, you, you're bringing up memories that I haven't thought of and years. CM: Did you have a lot of friends in college, or was it more just going there for the work LS: Well, I went to college after. When I was stationed Walter Reed and I got out of the Army and I went back to college on the GI Bill. So gave me up to refinish shopping and get my degree. Was I had interrupted getting the degree to go as I was drafted so. But then I finished up. CM: Uh, What were your feelings. Once you find out you're being drafted? LS: Always my feelings of being drafted? Wasn't too happy about it. I don't leave home. I had to go. Well, you know, that's life. CM: Did you make any good friends while being in the army? LS: Yeah, I had, I had a good friend. But you know when I got out. He didn't live in the same part of the country that I lived in, and we just, you know, we lost contact its unfortunate but… very unfortunate. Know also blame myself on that because I never took the time to reconnect with any of these people, you know, just busy at home and it's more…(Internet issues) CM: So when you finally were able to be home. Did you do anything for, I guess? Did you continue your reading hobby or did you delve into other hobbies? LS: Oh, The time when I got out of the Army. I had, I was married, and I had a daughter was born December 30 and uh Walter Reed. So there was really not too much time to do anything. Just trying to survive at that point. And though we moved back and we live in a small apartment that too far from the folks area. It was nice. Then went out on my own and Got a degree in started to work for our first company I worked for was Dewy and Allyn chemical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. CM: Did you just freeze or are you still there. Up. You're moving again. Sorry you froze for that you mentioned you worked at Cambridge and then I couldn't the picture. Stop moving and sound stop going through. LS: Yeah Well, it worked for the company called Dewy and Allyn chemical company. And they plastics were really was my forte. I really enjoyed. You know, trying to develop them and whatever. CM: So have the Mets brought you back for any. Baseball games or have you been kind of off the baseball trail for a while. Hold on a second, it appears that a connections a bit unsecure. So let's, I'm just gonna wait for that to settle down, be a bit before I ask any more questions. LS: Okay. I’m at your beck and call. CM: Thank you very much. Let's see, it looks like it's starting to settle down….. Okay. So going back to the Mets. Have you guys been to a recent game or I guess in recent years games? Or have you guys really just been able to watch from a distance at this point? LS: I'm sorry I didn't catch that? CM: Uh, have you been to have you been back to watch the Mets? Like, have you been there in person at all? In recent years, or have it has it had to be more at a TV viewpoint at a radio? LS: Five years ago was. We used to live in Bennington, Vermont. Right now I live in Saratoga Springs live in a 55 and over community. CM: And how'd you end up in Saratoga Springs from Bennington, Vermont. LS: Well, lived in Bennington Vermont first. And we used to come over to Saratoga Springs all the time. So we decided when I had the opportunity CM: To move here. LS: Now, I like Saratoga Springs. Yeah. CM: Did you guys come for the horse racing or just for everything. LS: No. Just, just because we like Saratoga Springs much better than Bennington, Vermont, but more things going on here. And then, my wife never liked Bennington, Vermont CM: Would you say Bennington, Vermont. Was your least favorite place to live. LS: I like Bennington, Vermont, and in fact I've, you know, I've lived in a many places. It's like anything else. And you can live in a big city or a small town, you can vegetate or be active and I enjoyed being active. I enjoy politics so. CM: What so you were a big follower politics throughout the years? LS: My what? CM: I was asking you said that you were very big follower of politics throughout the years? Yes? LS: Yeah, well I enjoy politics enjoy getting involved with the in Bennington and when I was in Saratoga Springs. I got involved with the politics in Saratoga Springs. LS: It just makes life interesting CM: Did you run for anything or was it just more support? LS: Than I will. I'm sorry? CM: Did you run for anything in Saratoga? Was it just more for support? LS: No, I Was a Housing, Commissioner, at one point. Well, five years. I didn't get that much involved. I say, mainly in the background. Now, it was a housing commissioner about 5 years. CM: Did you get into politics anywhere else, or was it just more Saratoga that you really were more involved with? LS: It really was just Saratoga. Somewhat involved in Burlington, Vermont, but It was just a different atmosphere. CM: Where you work in Bennington, Vermont. (Computer issues) LS: When? CM: When I'm sorry continue what you were saying before, I didn't realize you were still going. LS: I'm sorry I didn't catch that. CM: I didn't mean to interrupt you. I thought you. The screen froze again there for a second. So I thought you finished but uh what I asked. Afterwards, was Where did you work. When you were in Burlington, Vermont, or were you retired then. LS: Oh, I worked in a hooskicfalls. Short for company called oh Mitsui. Which made the different types of chemicals and plastics. CM: Did you know what the plastics were used for? Was it just general purpose? LS: General purpose. CM: Did you have a favorite company you worked for or were they all kind of just the same? LS: You know that's a very interesting question. I enjoyed working for a company called Dewy and Allyn chemical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In fact, that's one of the first companies. I really enjoyed working for me to companies, otherwise I would not have worked there. CM: Did you ever travel throughout the country, or did you mainly stay on the east coast. LS: Oh no I travel, I used to go to Japan once a year business movement. Mitsui when I worked for them. Of course we had a plant in Osaka. So once a year I used to go to Japan is to go to Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka. It was nice. CM: Did you ever take your family with you, or was it just you that went LS: Yeah, I always took my wife with me. CM: Did you have a fun time in Tokyo. I was asking, did she have a fun time in Japan. LS: Yeah, I had a great time in Japan. Yeah, I love the people there. I was very involved with them. When I worked for a company called Mitsui. Mitsui was in Japan was in Osaka. So I used to go there once a year. CM: Did you travel anywhere else around the world.. Sorry. LS: What do you say born? CM: Sorry? LS: And it was nice going. Yeah, I used to take the wife with me, so she traveled almost everywhere that I went, you know, any, any business trip I went I took her. CM: Did you travel and… What was that LS: That really kept me out of trouble taking the wife. CM: A. Is there anywhere else around the world that you traveled LS: Any what CM: I was asking, Did you travel anywhere else around the world. You mentioned Japan did you like go to England? LS: Japan. I had, I had a client in Sweden used to go to Sweden once a year. Was in Belgium. And my son. When he was working. He was working for… he lived in Germany. Frankfurt, Germany, so I used to go visit him. Oh, my wife and I used to visit him. That's when we were able to travel. CM: Did any of your kids decide to follow in your footsteps and get a chemical engineering degree. LS: Yeah, my youngest son is a chemical engineer my oldest son is a industrial engineer. So they both went into engineering, and my one of my grandson's an engineer also worked for Lockheed Martin. I told I wish one of them became a doctor or something so we can have in the family. And work they all became engineers. CM: So you mentioned that your kids live all around the world. One lives in Germany, you've mentioned where the. Do you know where the rest of your kids are currently stationed? LS: My kids are now? CM: Yeah. LS: Yeah, my daughter, which is the oldest is in Michigan. My oldest son is in Littleton Mass and my youngest son is in North Carolina Greensboro, North Carolina. So all scattered also and they all did much better than I had so very happy about that. CM: Do you have a funny story from when you were having to I guess. Take care of your kids or an event that really sticks out in your mind. From the time when you saw them grow up. LS: Well, the only thing that sticks in my mind now. Is one we were watching my grandson, and in our apartment, and my son and I was there and he had a dirty diaper. So we go over Bennington together. My wife back to haven't cleaned him up. As my son said we took crap from no one Let's see. CM: Did you do any volunteer work throughout your life or was it mainly just working at the chemical plant. LS: Mainly chemical engineering CM: Uh, this might be one that I don't know if you have ever been here. Have you ever gone to Disney World, or have your kids ever dragged you to it to it. LS: Sorry? CM: Sorry you froze. Again, I didn't realize you were still talking. Um, I asked. CM: Did you kids ever drag you to like Disney World. LS: We went to Disney World only once. When I took all the kids that was way back Way back. We enjoyed it. We rented a house out there and spent about a week on Disney. CM: Did you ever enjoy going to see movies and stuff Like that. LS: Ever what I'm sorry. CM: Did you ever go to see movies through your life or some point or even like Broadway. Shows or just shows in general. LS: Yeah, we used to go to some we go, Broadway, show. Unfortunately, we can always afford the top tier in a balcony. Never New York I assure, but we took in as many shows as we could.LS: My wife was a folk singer. So she works. She's worked with some group in New York City. CM: Did you get to meet any famous people doing that? LS: Famous people? Yeah, the only people I met was my wife. Both (laugh). Yeah, we met… can't think of his name….Earl, Ray James. Met him on a plane. Can’t think of his name, unfortunately. CM: It happens. Uh, so you used to live in Brooklyn? Then when you got older, you got drafted, then you went. Back to sorry I'm forgetting the name. It is. LS: Whose name. CM: Does you're trying to member my make sure I'm making sure I'm keeping track of the places. What was not Waltz, it's a. Walter reed that was it. You went used to live in Walter reed and then you went t Cambridge and then Bennington? LS: Yes. CM: Okay, just making sure I'm keeping track of everywhere. You've gone in that timeframe. Did you ever take any road trips anywhere? LS: Any road trips CM: Yeah, like a long times in the car. Going from place to place. LS: No, never. Whenever we whenever we travel, we either went by plane or by Bus, but never car. CM: Did you ever have to. LS: No that’s not true. No because we got married. We took a trip down to Florida by car I drove down there. CM: Did you enjoy your time in Florida when you went LS: Pardon CM: I asked, how was your time in Florida? LS: How much time in Florida? CM: How was the trip to Florida? LS: It was good. Those were the days when I can you know drive a car those distances wife also drove. We also had a camping trailer that I used to lug behind my car. So we did a lot of camping used to camp up in Canada. That was nice. CM: Was Canada your favorite place to camp. LS: Montreal we camped up there. CM: Did you ever take your kids camping. LS: You look frozen. CM: I think You're right, I think it looks like our screen, stop being frozen. Did you ever take your kids camping? LS: Well, yeah, we always took the kids, my daughter never liked it. But she wasn't we're not going to leave home. It was not an outdoors person. Boys loved it, of course. CM: Did you ever have a running with wild animals well camping? LS: Never have a what? Sorry. CM: Did you ever run into like wild animals? When camping like deer or moose? LS: No, I never saw any of those things. CM: You ever go fishing while Camping LS: No. I don't, I don't really fish. I went once with my son and equal fish those sunfish wanted to take it home for show and tell. Wouldn’t last anyway. CM: Did you kids ever try and…..Continue saying. No, no, no, it our connection keeps freezing up so I you freeze up and I think you're done. So I tried to ask another question but continue what you were saying. LS: I didn't catch it. I'm sorry. CM: I was just saying it seems that our screens. Keep freezing. So I assumed you finished what you were saying. But continue what you were just saying a second ago. LS: I'm finished CM: Okay. I was going to ask, have your kids ever tried sneaking like something bizarre into the show and tell classes? LS: Not really. Not really nothing bizarre. Everything was nice and calm when we went CM: Did all your kids go the same school or did you send them different places. LS: Now what? I'm sorry. CM: It's okay. Did you send your kids to different schools or did they all start in the same place? LS: Actually they wanted different schools, my daughter went was in Brooklyn, New York, she went to No, no, she was in Walter Reed. So they all wanted different schools. I know that. What schools. I don't remember. CM: That's perfectly fine. Uh, did you back in your high school years, get into any high school quote on quote shenanigans. LS: And I want. I'm sorry. CM: Did you ever get into any mischief and high school LS: No, no. CM: Okay. LS: Went to Lafayette high school, Brooklyn graduated from there and went to ccny CM: Okay, that should be about wrapping up our interview time LS: Pardon? CM: I was saying that that should be wrapping up our interview time it is 150 we started at a 1250 so it's it's been an hour. Thank you for talking with me. LS: Okay. CM: Do you have any questions or anything. LS: No, I want to thank you CM: Thank you so much for spending your time. LS: very interesting. Yeah. CM: Now. Okay. Uh, I'll stop the recording now. Let's make sure I can do that these tech things don't always go well. Second Transcription of Lou Schneider CM: Today is 11/18/2020. I am the interviewer CM and to view it in Luke Snyder, would you like to introduce yourself? Lou Schneider: Pardon? Cooper Murphy: Would you like to introduce yourself? LS: I’m Lou Schneider. CM: So, Lou. Are you find with this recording being used in our project at Skidmore, and possibly be accessed by the public domain. LS: Of course. CM: Okay, so let's get started. So you talked about how a you're in the Korean War for two years. Correct? LS: Well, I was actually during the Korean War situation. I was stationed in Washington, DC. I worked for the Army prosthetics research lab where we did research and development on different type of materials for prosthesis, which was a very interesting job. CM: So what would you say would be the timeframe from. When you first joined to when it finally ended. LS: Well, I wanted 53 to 5519 CM: Okay, so can you kind of walk me through the experience from day getting drafted to basically what happened next to when you were allowed to go home. LS: (clears throat) Well, I was drafted, but I was also married at the time. And because I guess because I was married and being a chemical engineer they station me and Washington DC, Walter Reed Army Medical hospital which I worked for the prosthetics Research Lab, which was good duty. CM: Okay, so you got drafted, you got brought to the prosthetics research lab. And were you given any training and then sent over as well, or did you ever actually go to Korea? LS: No, I had no training at all. You know, was I have a degree in chemical engineering. So they figured smart enough anyway. CM: Sorry, just writing down some stuff. Okay, so you got you had the medical not the medical the chemical engineering degree and you're just flown over. Did you have you ever saw in combat, as you told me before. They never made you do like a boot camp or anything like that. Correct. LS: Oh yeah, oh yeah, we had a go eight weeks of infantry training and then eight weeks of medical training. Was I was assigned to the Medical Corps. CM: Okay, so when would you say you actually got to go over to be stationed in Korea was that between 54-55 LS: Pardon again. CM: Sorry, what was the actual part where you got to go over to Korea was that between like 54 and 55 or was you LS: 53 and 55 CM: You fine. OK. Cool, cool. How many patients would you say you saw a day over at a in Korea? LS: You mean and Walter Reed work they're willing to read amputees. And research and development on different type of materials and now we're actually our test students as I would call them. We work with about eight different amputees that lost limbs that we're not the same, you know, arms, two legs. It was interesting work. CM: Okay. That's your wrap up that little segment. So, uh, what's the war ended did you, uh, did you remember the experience of finding out when people discovered the double helix? Just curious? LS: Not really, no. CM: Yeah, I figured. I just want to see that for myself. I'm a bio major. Okay. So, Uh, sent after the Korean War ended. You were alive during you know the whole space race. Correct. LS: Well, when the Korean War ended, and I got discharged from the army. I actually went back to school. And went back for my masters, but I never completed it. Married at the time had a kid, you know, it's very, very difficult. So how to actually find a job, which I did. I worked for a company called doing Dewy and Allyn chemical company as an engineer, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. CM: Uh, yeah, I remember that actually from last time. So going quickly back to the space race and everything. Do you remember like all those events like Sputnik and everything like that, and if so, how did that make you feel during that time period? LS: Sputnik? CM: Yeah, when the Satellite went up LS: Russia put the spacecraft. I really didn't think much about it at the time. Yeah, I figured that you know I’ve government knew what they were doing it. We're going to put up something also and I was not involved with it so didn't really care too much. CM: What about when you heard about someone was able to go on the moon? LS: That was interesting. I mean, that was the first to me to first have space travel to go to various places the various planets. It was exciting space is very exciting the space station was also very exciting. CM: I bet, especially since I was the first of any of its kind. LS: Yeah. So after the space race. Do you remember anything as well of like when the Cold War was starting to become more of a thing? Like for instance Cuban Missile Crisis. How did that affect you at all during one that was? LS: Not really. Not at all. CM: Just curious. OK, so moving on from that you mentioned that you got married a what time again did you actually get married at LS: Like what I'm what CM: What year did you get married again. LS: 1954 CM: Okay, and where did you say the wedding was LS: Wedding was in Brooklyn, New York. CM: Do you remember where you went for your honeymoon. LS: Well, I was in the army at the time and I had a week off so we stopped off in Rahway, New Jersey. The first night was it was raining and then we ended up in Atlantic City. And then, of course, I had a week before I was had to go back to Walter Reed. In fact, my daughter was born in Walter Reed in 1954. The fact, December 30 1954 CM: Okay. So you mentioned before and unfortunately wasn't able to get this down to my notes. You said that your favorite place was either New port, a Walter Reed? LS: Was what? CM: You mentioned that you moved around a lot in your life, last time when we talked, and you mentioned that either your favorite place was Walter Reed or Newport, do you remember which one was LS: Walter Reed. Fact, though I was stationed there for a year and a half, and the prosthetics Research Lab, which was to me very interesting work, you know, working with these amputees. They were our test specimens on the materials that we developed and we work with about eight amputees. They were fun group. CM: Do you remember any of the uh I guess. Patients you had like anything specific about them. Besides, you know, I'm being amputees’. LS: Well, there's one thing that always sticks out on my mind. We had a nurse that lost part of her nose. And she came in to be fitted for plastic nose, but we come back every week because there was a stain on the on the nose. She smoked so what we did is we gave her a dozen noses and said, go home and do what want. In fact, we had one amputate that lost his left arm, and he built his friend that he can swim beat him in one lap and no water in the pool at Walter Reed and we fitted him with a fin. So yeah, I'll tell you, we had a lot of fun. They were a fun group they didn't feel sorry for themselves. I said, this is it. And we'll do the best we can. CM: So, if you don't mind? Actually, could you give me like a walkthrough figure daily I guess life back when used to live and watery? LS: Well, I was married at the time. So we live off post and of course, I had a car so how do. (cough) Excuse me, actually I was assigned to Walter Reed, but I worked in a place called Forest Glen. That's where the prosthesis was. Every day we had a call for an inspection. At seven o'clock in the morning. That was about it. Was just a routine. My daughter was born and Walter Reed 1954 December 30 CM: And when you got home here. What do you normally do when you got back to your house? LS: In Washington, DC. CM: Yes. LS: Was it. No, just nothing just stayed with the wife, and we went to various places. I love this Smithsonian Institute. So we used to go there pretty often but till being in the army. I think we got a stipend of 250- $280 a month and we had to make that thing last I remember that she's we saved up so we could buy, one egg roll. CM: A fan of egg rolls? Are you a fan of egg rolls? LS: Oh yeah, I like, first of all, I like Asian food. CM: Can you remember where you tasted the best Asian food? LS: Where, what I'm sorry. CM: Can you remember where you test my bad, tasted the best Asian food. LS: Best Asian foods that actually were testing best for when I used to go to Japan. It's not the same. It's, it's, it's different. CM: Okay, so after working with amputees’ and everything you said you worked at a chemical plants. Correct? LS: Of work where CM: I'm sorry had you worked at multiple different chemical plants. LS: Work for a company first company was Dewy and Allyn Chemical Company, which was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And then I took a job than on Long Island and I worked for a company called Rubber Corporation of America, mainly in plastics. Plastics was my forte. That's what I've always studied CM: Yeah. You mentioned that that's a quite a bit. And it's very interesting, too. But I want to ask, did you ever remember having to witness the implement of the stationary computers. Business computers into the workplace, like those giant machines on the wall that you plug in numbers to. LS: Oh, no. In fact, the first time I work with computers is when I left the army. When I went to work for Rubber Cooperation of America. They gave me a computer take home so CM: Cool. Did you like using a computer. LS: Yeah. Haven't been without one since. CM: Especially in this time I'm betting? LS: My wife has the laptop, of course, but I use the one stationary here in my office at home. CM: Yeah, I have a stationary too LS: I like it CM: Oh, let's see. So you mentioned. Actually, speaking of your wife and family and everything. You mentioned that you like to go camping, in Montreal. Correct? LS: Yeah, we had a camping trailer had a 16 foot. Uh what was it called I can't think of the name, but we used to do a lot of camping up and down the East Coast spent time of Florida Hollywood, Florida. I remember that, But I enjoy camping up in Canada. In those days you had no problems getting through into Canada. Long time ago. CM: Yeah. I've been to Canada. A couple times real nice up there, but I was gonna ask. Did you just like start camping out of a whim, or did you use to go camping before he had you got with your family and everything. LS: Oh yeah, when I was growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I belong to the Boy Scouts. So we always camp. And I just continue doing that. I enjoyed it. But my daughter never did. CM: So you were a boy scout when you're younger? LS: pardon CM: You were a boy scout when you were younger? LS: Oh, yeah. LS: Did a lot of things when I was younger. Some foolish some not CM: You got any stories from the Boy Scouts or was it just kind of a normal experience as you would say LS: Normal experience. You know, you read about what they what was going on with the abuse. We never had that in Brooklyn, New York. CM: Be my guess. I'll pause the recording. (Time passes for the phone call) Yeah, sorry about that. That's new. I'm definitely gonna have to talk to my phone provider about that one. LS: Interesting, though. CM: I know. so, uh, speaking of what is there anything about your life that you'd like to share discuss just anything that you thought you wanted to share from last time that you didn't get to? LS: I don’t know, growing up in Brooklyn, New York was an adventure because Coney Island was my stomping ground used to go there pretty often. And uh but that's really, that's about it. I enjoyed living in Brooklyn. My wife still has family there. So we go back occasionally, spent a lot of time in Coney Island. In fact, and Coney Island we were up on the subway, which is the L and we watch Luna Park burn when that the big fire. CM; Oh, yeah, yeah. LS: Then I think Trump put up his building or whatever. CM: So when I'm not actually I don't have to remember the date that have Luna Park apart burned do you? LS: What date. CM: The date when a Luna Park burn. LS: Don't even know how had to be in be in the early 50sif I am not mistaken. CM: I'll look it up later I was just curious if you knew off the top of your head. LS: No, I don't. CM: That’s probably fine. Well, I guess we've reached the last question, unless you have anything else you want to say before then? LS: That everything that CM: So if you had to give advice to, I guess, the current generation, what would it be if you don't have any that's fine. Just curious what you? CM: Great advice. LS: Have a sense of humor. CM: That is a good one….What do you think it's important to have a sense of humor? LS: What if you if you what? CM: Sorry, I was asking, why do you think it is important to have a sense of humor? LS: Oh, You can't be serious soul, your life and the lifetime. You got to find humor in everything. I think that levels you offer keeps you know basic. You know, if you don't have a sense of humor. I mean, like to be very boring. CM: Indeed, Okay. Actually, I did have one question. Did you ever go camping with your parents. LS: My friends? CM: Your friends or your parents? LS: No. First of all, my father came from Lithuania and my mother from Poland, so of course they do that, you know, they were of the older generation. No, we went most camping I did was with friends. When I was in a boy scouts or, when we got older and I had a family. We have a 16 foot trailer camper that we used to use. I Love that daughters and never did. But I did that the boys did of course. So we used to camp all the way up. Used to go to Hollywood, Florida. We camped up in, as I said in Canada. Those were the days when you get into Canada pretty easily, which you can't anymore. CM: Okay, well that's all the questions I had so unless there's anything again, you can think of that you want to add that would basically wrap it up. LS: I can't think of anything at this point. I think you did a good job. CM: Thank you. I hope my teacher thinks that too. LS: I hope so. CM: Okay, I'm gonna stop the recording. Now then. Okay. 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 Lou Schneider Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 26, 2020 November 18, 2020 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Saratoga Senior Memory Project Description An account of the resource An 89-year-old Koren war vet from Brooklyn describes his life history. From his time in Brooklyn as a kid. His experience as a medical core in Korea, and then finally his life after with his family as a chemical engineer. This interview was conducted as part of the Saratoga Springs Senior Center project “Preserving Our Past”. Language A language of the resource English (en) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cooper Murphy Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cooper Murphy Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Skidmore College Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio recording Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History 1950's camping Chemical engineer Korean War Medical Core oral history fall 2020 saratoga senior center https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b962768874556c2de708c2ba9dc8265e.m4a d46b84b2b2df6cadbe13ffa146eaf136 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/79930eb0c641e7ba0a8c8b2fda1ade4c.pdf fdc46015e6acd5e2f16a50df38aec497 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/59213eb0ac9ef7a29e199eb939664ceb.pdf ba2ebbf2c35e87925a93188eb2000991 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 Justin Rizzi Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Johann Miller Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (Zoom), and Milton, NY (Zoom) Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Justin Rizzi 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.) 56:44 Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 06/11/2020 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 Johann Miller Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Justin Rizzi Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 26, 2020 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 In this interview, recording by a student in the Fall 2020 oral history class, as part of the project titled "Preserving Our Past," Capital Region resident Johann Miller describes her life, from leaving her childhood home at 18 to attending Woodstock with her future husband. Language A language of the resource English (en) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Justin Rizzi Johann Miller Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Date Created Date of creation of the resource. December 4, 2020 fall 2020 oral history oral history fall 2020 saratoga senior center https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/92637a302d763b7aca4b34756fca4fb4.png b5c1ab1a581c3576b1cbdc4963900a41 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/de5dfa3e5054ca3d727696343078fc4c.mp3 49469dba0c1a4932facb2fef9a1febf2 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4f734966b92b1f0d61fad28ac159e5c4.pdf 56077aba05c538b94d503f382d438d1c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/115566a603ddb65e7b7cc090ce97d2be.pdf 8e09d0a66766973b790704c32d9f6634 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 Sophia Spelman Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Sophia Spelman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Herta Spencer Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (via Zoom) & Saratoga Springs, NY (via Zoom) Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:09:54 Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 13/11/2020 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 Herta Spencer Language A language of the resource English (en) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Herta Spencer Sophia Spelman Lois Celeste Nursing Home Staff Member Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sophia Spelman Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 27, 2020 Description An account of the resource This interview was conducted by a student in Skidmore College’s oral history class and is part of the Saratoga Senior Center project, “Preserving Our Past.” Herta Spencer—originally from Austria—has lived in New York City, New Jersey, Switzerland, Connecticut, and the Capital Region of New York State. In this interview she recounts fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria, attending college and medical school, and working as a psychiatrist during the mid-twentieth century. Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Skidmore Saratoga Memory Project Date Created Date of creation of the resource. November 29, 2020 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e7dab351090afd4678110ac7287e69ad.png 990aabf62c6437ee549ffd5f2ae37fee https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/01100df398b2011ea8e43869e406baae.mp3 a5a1638e222e2326e0efba87ed8c63e7 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/741e4635f544d36741ea40d4b40558c2.pdf d53727555a1b57c903bd2591255e9ac0 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/caf3ce928db5a10ace0bf5ab9740b8bb.pdf bc3acdd8895bea076fef2cbacbd2ec7b 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 Isabel M.R. Long Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lauren Roberts Location The location of the interview Saratoga County History Office Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Isabel M.R. Long Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 07/12/2019 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Isabel Long: My name is Isabel Long. Today is October 28th, it is approximately 2:35pm. I am in the Saratoga County History Office. I am here with Lauren Roberts and we've here to talk for the Saratoga Memory Project. Lauren, could you introduce yourself, please? Lauren Roberts: Yeah. My name is Lauren Roberts, and I am the Saratoga County Historian, and I am also a Skidmore alum. IL: Wonderful, thank you. So, just to get things going, what's your earliest memory of Saratoga Springs? LR: Hmmm. Well I grew up about an hour away from Saratoga Springs, so when I was young, we used to come to Saratoga to go to the racetrack and to shop downtown. I was born in 1982, so my memories would be probably from the early 90s of coming, coming to Saratoga. But that's primarily why we would come over here. I grew up in a pretty rural town, so Saratoga would have been one of the closest malls to shop in. But also, my family always went to the race track in the summer time, so we would come for that. IL: Could you describe where you grew up? LR: Sure! I grew up in the village of Northville, actually, let me say, I grew up in the town of North Hampton because I'm actually outside the village. But for all intents and purposes we all it, Northville, which is in Fulton County. And, ah, small town. I grew up in a – I grew up on several acres of land that used to be an old farm, the Simpson farm, which probably started in the late 1700s, so. I lived in a modern house that was built on the farm, but there were a lot of remnants in the woods around that you could tell that it used to be farm land. We had apple trees from the old orchard in our yard and I had a neighbor who was about the same age as I was and we would go in the woods and find old milk pails, and barbed wire fences, and pieces of ceramic in the old stream bed. So, it was a good place for someone who had a budding interest in local history, and I'm pretty sure that's why I was interested in local history. But also, the story of the great Sacandaga Lake was of interest to me because Northville sits on the Great Sacandaga lake and the lake was a man-made lake. It was flooded in 1930. They put a dam in, the Continental Dam to be able to control the flow of the Hudson River downstream, and to prevent flooding. So there were a lot of hamlets that were flooded out in order to do this and I became interested in that because in the fall, when the water levels went down, you could find lots of different artifacts along the shores of the beach: places we would hang out or go swimming, things like that. (3:25) And I went to a very small school. The name of the school is Northville Central School. It was K through twelve in one building. I graduated with about 60 kids in my graduating class. So, but I had a great, what I thought was, you know, a great elementary school and high school experience. I had some really great teachers. I grew up in a really – You know a lot of people will look on small town life as pretty nostalgic, and it has its pros and cons, but I had a pretty good, I had, what I consider, a really good time growing up in a small, rural town. IL: (4:10) Thank you. So, could you elaborate on what you mean by pros and cons. LR: I would say, you know– When you choose to live in a small town you know there are sacrifices that you have to make. I live in a small town now, so I would say commuting, to work, but maybe when I was younger some of the pros and cons is no public transportation. We rode our bikes everywhere. I lived outside of the village so, it was a couple miles to ride to school. No cellphones then, so, you know, we could use the pay-phone to have your mom come and pick you up in the village. (4:47) And you know, maybe there would be less programing offered in the school. Rather than having to play one sport, were people where cut for the team, you really needed all of your friends to go out for the team so you had enough people just to field a full team. I can remember, you know, kind of recruiting people for our sports teams so that we had enough people to fill the roaster. And, you know, I did everything I could. I was in the chorus, and I was in the band, and I was in drama, and I played all the sports. So, you really needed a lot of participation. (5:27) Most of the kids I went to school with I knew from the time I was probably pre-school age. And we grew up, you know, we were like a family. I don't want to make it sound perfect, you know, but that's – you know, it was pretty great, and we spent a lot of time outdoors, you know. We were in the southern Adirondacks there so, you know we lived on a lake. We did a lot of swimming. A lot of my friends – we had boats, beaches, a lot of four-wheelers, snowmobiles. We spent a lot of time hiking. We had trails- miles and miles of trails behind our houses that, you know, even before we were sixteen and had our licensees, we had different kinds of off-road vehicles. But we spent a lot of time outside. And like, you know we didn't have – yeah, we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have a lot of electronics, but I don't even think – I don't think I had cable until I was maybe a junior or senior in high school. We just had, like, the local channels. But it didn't matter, I was busy enough. I didn't have time for that anyway. And, you know, you can still see the way small towns pull together when you have, let's say, like a family has a tragedy like a house fire or someone passes away unexpectedly, and they don't have enough money for the funeral. You know, spaghetti dinners, and basket raffles, and all that kind of stuff the community seems to pull together for, so. Some of those things that I'd say are maybe cliché about small towns were really true about Northville. IL: Thank you. Could you help me understand how your trips to Saratoga fit into that for you. (7:15) LR: So we were about– in Northville, were about 45 minutes to an hour away from either Glens Falls or Saratoga. So doctor’s appointments, like I said like malls, things like that, those were kind of nearby. We played sports – we actually played Spa Catholic because we were a small school and they were a small school, so we would come over here. We played against them in softball, sometimes soccer I think too. So, you know, they weren't like major trips, they would just be – I think when you live in a rural area an hour trip is par for the course. You need to get, to get anywhere that has what you need, it's about an hour. IL: So, em, thank you. Help me understand the role the races played in your life at that point. (8:11) LR: Oh, it was just an entertainment kind of thing. My father's family came from Corinth, which was nearby, and my grandfather and some of his brothers used to really like horses. So, my father would go to the races, and we would go too. We were always backyard people, which is where you bring your own picnic and you sit on the picnic tables. You know, we weren't sitting in the club house but we were walking up to the fence in the paddock watching the horses be saddled before the races, that kind of thing. So, it was just sort of something we enjoyed. IL: Wonderful. So, thinking about, kind of, the next step for you. So, you – coming to Skidmore. Were you the first person in your family to go to college? Or – LR: Nope, both my parents went to college. My dad was actually an RPI engineer. And actually, I didn’t start out at Skidmore. When I was a senior in college [high school], I had planned to apply to several small liberal arts schools. I knew that's where I wanted to go. I applied to St. Lawrence University and they got back to me first because I applied early admit, and they offered me one of their presidential scholarships. And if I accepted their scholarship, I need to agree that I would not apply to any other schools. So, I decided to accept their scholarship, so I didn't apply, I didn't finish my application to Skidmore. So, I ended up, Freshman year I went to St. Lawrence, and it just wasn't a fit for me. There wasn't any one thing in particular except that – I should say I went with the intention of studying anthropology. That was what I wanted to major in. And I liked anthropology, but during that year I was kind of looking around at other programs and I heard about American Studies, which they didn't have at St. Lawrence, and Skidmore did have. And it was a– I thought it was a really intriguing program, and some of the other things, ah, St. Lawrence had a really big sports program, and I didn't play sports, so it wasn't something that was beneficial to me. The other thing I am really interested in is musical theater. I've been involved in musical theater my whole life. We have a – Sacandaga Musical Theater which is our home town musical theater company that I've been kind of a director for a long time, so St. Lawrence didn't really have that and Skidmore did have Cabaret Troupe which was a student run organization, which I really liked. Because I knew I wasn't going to have a career in musical theater, but I still wanted to be involved in it. So, I decided to apply to transfer to Skidmore, and I was accepted. So, I finished the year out at St. Lawrence, and then I started my sophomore year at Skidmore. Started out living in Moore [Hall], which is the old dorm that was downtown. And, my first week at Skidmore was when 9/11 happened. (11:33). So, I can still remember I was in Spanish class, in, ah, Tisch. I think it was Tisch. The first plane hit right before we went into class. And at that point we all thought it was an accident. And then when we left Spanish class, there was kind of like a little lounge area, and all the teachers were watching on TV, and at that point the second plane had hit and they knew it was no longer an accident. And I was on my way to one of my first Anthro classes with Professor [Gerry] Erchak, and we went in, and sat down, and everyone was kind of in shock, and he just said go home. And, ah, it was, ah, a shocking, you know it was shocking for everyone. I was kind of in a group of transfer students cause they put all of the transfer students in Moore for our first semester. I am not really sure why. Hm. But there were some transfer students from New York City who were obviously much more affected because they had family members very close to the city. And that afternoon, the president of Skidmore at the time was Jamie Studley, and they called a meeting on the green and I can remember – it was a beautiful day. Warm, sunny, and, you know just trying to figure out how to cope with what had happened and what was still unfolding that day. You know, it was really kind of – it was a terrible way to start my Skidmore experience, but at the same time watching students come together and comfort each other and not really knowing where we'd go from here and how our country was going to change because of this attack you know it was, um, maybe it was a little bit easier to have a community around you that, you know, we were all trying to figure it out together. (13:37) IL: That's sounds wonderful to have that Skidmore community in place. Thinking about that community, how would you define it during your time at Skidmore? Was this moment of 9/11 kind of one of those definitive pieces that you think exemplifies what it means to be part of the Skidmore community? (13:54) LR: I would say, you know, people coming together and thinking about larger context is a way to describe Skidmore. I guess I haven't really thought about my cumulative Skidmore experience. You know that's definitely one of the times that's like a picture in my memory, that I remember being at Skidmore. But there are lots of others also. I think like any time you have like a national traumatic event like that you remember where you were, what you were doing when that happened, and how you felt. But I don't know that it really– that it defined my whole experience there. Maybe it was a good starting point to know how the college was going to be able to bring people together to be able to react to, you know, a common grieving experience. But, you know, overall, my Skidmore experience was, was great. I had a lot of really great professors that I knew on an individual level. That I, you know, I think a lot of college students don't have that. Trying to remember – I had several professors where I actually visited their houses which is kind of a unique, or somewhat unique thing, for I would think, a college student to be able to go to their professor's home. To be welcomed, individually. You know, small class sizes. I was able to – One of the really cool things that Skidmore did was they offered – I was a work study student, and they offered a program where you could work for a local non-profit and Skidmore would pay you to work there. So, um, I – go ahead. IL: Sorry, could you define work-studies as you understand it. Just for the record. LR: So, I believe certain students are eligible to be able to work for– to pay for part of their education. So, they had programs where you could choose a nonprofit and then you would turn in your hours to Skidmore, and Skidmore paid you to work there. So, I choose to work at Saratoga Springs Historical Society, which is now called Saratoga Springs History Museum, which is at the casino at Congress Park. And of course, I lived in Moore for my first semester, so I could walk to the casino. And, ah, I was an intern there, and it was really great to be able to make a lot of connections downtown in the local history community. I was able to work with Jamie Parillo who was the director there, but also, they had a curator and they had someone who administered the Bolster Collection which is an important Saratoga Springs photography collection. So, I worked in the photograph collection, I cleaned exhibits, I helped send out mailings to the volunteers, to the membership list. I worked at their holiday gala, helping. I did research and wrote a panel for one of their exhibits. I got a lot of experience working at a small museum and knowing what it's like to have to wear the many hats that you do if you work for a nonprofit or a small museum, public historian. Ah, so, you know, I thought that, that was a really great thing. It really benefited the community and it benefited me as a student being able to get this experience and figure out what its really going to be like. Because I do think, you know, Skidmore – I don’t know if you still have this terminology, but what we called the Skidmore bubble, you know where people – it's a, it's different than reality when you are at Skidmore because there are really grand ideas. It's a really conducive place to think outside the box and then sometimes when you graduate and you go into nonprofits or small businesses, it’s not always, it doesn't always line up with the grand idea that you think you are going to be able to do. So, having that real-world experience and being, having Skidmore being able to pay for it, because the museum would never have been able to pay you to work. I thought that was a really great thing to do. Trying to think – I ah, after I left Moore, I was there for one semester then I moved to Scribner Village in a drama house. Actually, Cabaret Troupe had their own house. I don't know if they still do it this way but club could live together. You could apply for a house, like environmental – I don't know, I'm trying to think what the other clubs are. IL: Could you, um, explain what Scribner Village are. I am a bit confused. LR: So, Scribner was the old houses, I think they are all torn down now, but on the side of campus that was kind of on the Clinton Avenue side, I don't know if there is any left, but they were apartments, kind of like the ones, I can't remember what they are called now, Northwoods or something like that. IL: Oh, yes, uhm. LR: It was like that but way older and, like, not anywhere near as nice as those apartments. I mean it was like moldy and our pipes would freeze. They, ah, I mean it's a good thing they tore them down, it was not good. But, at the time you could apply to live in a house, especially if you had a common interest like a club. So, at that point I was involved in Cabaret Troupe which was the student-run musical theater organization. So, I lived with a bunch of kids that were in Cab Troup, and that was a lot of fun. Because we spent a lot of time at the theater, and Cab Troup didn't really have a home, I’m not sure if they do now, but we would use the Dance Theater as a performance space because we did a full musical in the fall semester and a full musical in the spring semester. Once I got, I think my junior and senior years the spring musical had to be in Falstaff’s. I think we did two shows there, maybe just one show. Because the dance theater – there wasn't enough – there was never enough performance space on campus. That was before you had Zankel. IL: Yeah. So, thinking about shifts then with Skidmore, I know you were there at a time of change for the president. You'd mentioned President Studley before; it's President Glotzbach's last year, so could you talk about that? Was that something that was, um, part of the campus consciousness at all? LR: I remember going to the ceremony when Glotzbach was inducted. But I don't know that really a – I can't remember anything specifically about it or, I don't remember being either concerned or excited about a change in presidency. I would guess that for your average student, things like who your roommate is going to be the next semester or am I going to change my major, or who's my advisor going to be, you know, those, what I'd say local level kind of changes matter much more in my consciousness than who the president of the univ– of the college was. IL: So then thinking about more local consciousness, could you talk about how you, what your relationship with the town was as a student, cause you were talking about living in Moore, and that is not something today Skidmore students experience. Could you expand? LR: Yeah, ah, I mean I – let me think. So, I didn't like living in Moore because you were far away from the rest of the campus. It was like one lone building in the middle of downtown. And especially because we were transfer students, um, you didn't really get the on-campus experience. You weren't, ah, you weren't really, you know like things that happened – There was a bus. There was a bus that ran at certain time that brought you back and forth. But I have a car there, but parking in Moore, there were like literally ten parking spaces and then you had to park on the street., which was hard to get a parking spot. So, it was not convenient to live in Moore even though I had a car. I would have much rather lived on campus because that was where all the events were happening. The one nice thing about being at Moore was because I worked for the Casino I could walk down there. But it was kind of tough not being on campus, especially as a transfer student. I transferred in my sophomore year. So, it was kind of like starting over. And they did kind of group us in with the freshmen a lot because we did have to do orientation and we did have to take out, not sure what you call it now, but LS1, LS2, do you have that? IL: No. LR: Liberal Studies one, it was like a freshman program that you had to take. They made us take it too as transfer students. So, ah, you know, I loved the community, but I think as far as being acclimated and being enveloped into the college community it was tough to be in Moore. So, I was only down there for one semester. But, you know, I think that the community, because I worked in the community, you know, I was able to form relationships with people that were downtown. The woman who was in charge of the Bolster collection at the time I was working at the casino, her name is MaryAnne Fitzgerald, she was a UWW– what's it called, yeah, University Without Walls? Do you still call it that? IL: Um, – can you elaborate? LR: There was a program for mostly adult students. Yeah, I'm thinking that's what it was called. IL: I think that was, but I'm not sure we have that anymore. LR: Okay. She was able to get her degree though Skidmore as an adult. So, she was a Skidmore alum and she had gone through the American studies program, but much later in her life. And she now serves as Saratoga Springs city historian. So, I work with her all the time now, but I was introduced to her as a Skidmore student and she was a Skidmore alum, so, you know I thought that the connection between Skidmore and the community was a good one. IL: Fantastic. Could you talk about what it was like to then go downtown once you were on campus and removed from that more. LR: Um, I was still downtown a lot. My, my junior and senior years, I worked for– I worked at the library. I was a student supervisor; I spent a lot more time on campus then and because I was working at the library. And I still – I had a job at home. I only lived an hour away. Working for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. There was a camp ground on the lake, so I would actually drive home on the weekends as soon as the camp ground opened and work. But, I, I still went downtown all the time. I mean I had a lot of friends who lived Downtown. Cause once you get into upper classmen; they were all moving off campus and living in apartments downtown. So, I spent a lot of time downtown still. And I always loved downtown, um, you know, all the restaurants and shopping, and uh, trying to think. I think my sophomore year there was like a Skidmore community chorus, I don't know if they still do that, but it was members of Skidmore– Skidmore students and members of the community singing together in a chorus. We did that. IL: So then could you talk about how your relationship has changed with Skidmore now that you have graduated. LR: Sure. So, you know, I feel very grateful to Skidmore, I feel like I really got a great education there. I went on to get my masters right after I left Skidmore. I went to U Albany and got my master’s in public history and I started working right way for an archeologist. So I graduated in, May of '04, and in August I got a job working for Curtain Archeology, and the, the two owners of the company, Ed Curtain used to, he would teach – he wasn’t a professor there but he would teach archeology, I think, at Skidmore, and his partner Carry Nelson was a Skidmore alum. I actually got the job, well, I knew about the job because it came through the Skidmore career network, I don't know what you call it now, but I was able to get the notice that they were looking for a researcher. So, and my, I should say, I graduated with a dual degree in anthropology and American studies, so it was pretty awesome that I was able to get a job in my field right away after graduation cause when you get a degree in something like anthropology, the first thing people want to say is [effecting voice] you will never get a job in that! Why are you studying anthropology? Why aren't you in Business? Why aren't you a nurse? Why aren't you a teacher? [drops voice] But that wasn't what I wanted to do. So, I do feel lucky that I was able to find a job right away, in my field, and that job was in Saratoga Springs. They worked, it was cultural resource management, or CRM, so they worked mostly for developers who need to comply with New York State regulation in doing archeological surveys before developers or companies were allowed to build on, you know, mostly develop large sites. So. So I was able to get the job there, and um, I worked there for five years, and in the course of working there I spent a lot of time coming to this office. The Saratoga County Historian’s office, because of their collection here. I needed historic maps and census records, and things like that that weren't always online, so I spent several trips here. I got to be friends with the county historian, and then when this position came open, I left the archeology world to become a historian. And I’ve actually, I've been here for ten years. And I also feel lucky to have this job. It is a great job. And, you know, I've had a lot of interaction with Skidmore since I’ve graduated. I went back to see several of the Cabaret Troupe performances because by the time I was a senior, I was president of the organization. I had a lot of underclassmen that I was friends with and I continued to back. I've seen performances there. I still go back to the library. As an alumni you can use the library, so I still use the library. Any time that any of the professors have asked me to come back and speak about my role in public history, my career, any of that. I've spoken to American Studies classes, and history classes. I served on a panel about public history last year, ah, and actually I was able to get some help through Jordana [Dym] when I was making a documentary on the history of the Great Sacandaga Lake where I had some material – original material – that I was borrowing that Skidmore had the right equipment to be able to scan at a high resolution which I needed for the documentary, and they were able to use an intern to scan all those documents and return the originals to us. They were able to keep a digital copy of the information and I got one for my office and one for the regulating district who allowed me to use the documents. So, I mean I think, I think Skidmore is great for the community. I also serve on, what is sometimes called the Round Table, but is kind of a collaborative historical group that includes Skidmore and the museums in Saratoga Springs and Brookside, which is the county historical society, and my office. And we talk about where collections should go. I did a um – we all worked on a mapping exhibit together in 2015. 2015 was the centennial anniversary of Saratoga Springs becoming a city. We did a mapping through the hundred– through the centennial, I guess. [laugh] I can't remember what it was called but we all used different maps from our collections. And we, ah, were able to put up an exhibit at the casino showing the history of Saratoga Springs through mapping. And it was the Skidmore class that actually put it all together and we just gave our input. IL: Seems like there are a lot of joys in being the county historian. Can you speak to any of the challenges of practicing history in this area? LR: Absolutely. Funding. Funding is always an issue for historians because you are always competing with all the other departments in government. And everyone's always trying to keep the costs down, not raise taxes, um, so you're always scrambling for funding, for getting grants, things like that. We're lucky here in Saratoga county that our elected officials are very supportive of history. We use history as part of our economic tourism base. People are drawn here because we have a significant history, one that's well known. And not just the mineral waters, but there's the racetrack, and Saratoga Battlefield. There are lots of different kind of important events that centered around this area. So, I would say, you know, staffing. It would be great to have a bigger staff so that, you know, there's so much work that could be done here in the collections, in historical preservation, research, writing. There's lots to be done and not enough hours in the day to get it all done. So, you know, I think there's always going to be challenges but I think it's, um, I don't want to say easier, but – I think there's more support for the history community now than there has been in the past. And I think that's a good thing. We are moving in the right direction. IL: [33:53] Fantastic. So, um, one of the things I've understood about Saratoga in general is there has been kind of a historical – a movement for historical preservation. Is that something you feel is still ongoing? You said there's a lot of funding available, or a lot of interest in funding history at least. So, how – could you help me understand how that feeds into the tourism industry. LR: Sure. You know there's a lot of different groups that provide different kinds of historically experiences. Whether you're looking for a cemetery tour, or whether you are looking for genealogical information to find one of your ancestors, historic tours of the race track, visiting a museum. We have lots of different options here, and they all bring in tourist dollars. If they visit the museum, they're going to eat in town. If they're coming to the track, they're going to stay overnight in one of our hotels. If we are interested in our history, you know, people are going to come and see how did you preserve this building, how were you able to fund restoring this cemetery? And then people are more interested in passing on important history to you because they know, or they believe, you will be more able to care for that collection forever, in perpetuity. When you take something on, they want to know that you are going to be open and accessible to the public, and that you are going to continue on caring for the collection. I think the county has done a really good job. There are also several communities and towns and cities in Saratoga county that have historic preservation commissions. They all might call it something different. Historic buildings and structures committee, I think Saratoga Springs is called the Design Review Commission. [cough] Excuse me. So, you know, there are– even in the governments, there are plans and committees in place that are interested in preserving the history so that we don't just wipe out our pasts and start from scratch. And I think that's important. IL: Thank you. Um, so what have – you’ve been talking about your recent project with the Sacandaga Lake. Have there– is there anything you've found while being your time as county historian that you’ve found particularly exciting and that are, kind of, hidden pieces of this history? LR: I mean, I find something interesting every day. I love looking through old documents, you never know what you are going to find. Some of the interesting projects I've worked on – I mean, I think definitely that the Great Sacandaga Lake Project is nearest and dearest to my heart because that's where I grew up. I think that that story really needed to be told, and we told it from the perspective of the people who had to move. Whose land was claimed by eminent domain and they had to leave their homes. So, I think I'm probably most proud of that documentary which hopefully will be on PBS next year. [laughs] IL: Oh, congrats! LR: Thanks. So, there’s lots of other good projects I’ve worked on. I give a presentation about the county– the Homestead which is the Saratoga county Tuberculosis hospital that I think had a lot of myths around it, thank you, internet. And, um, [laughs from both] we were actually able to put together a really good collection. We had some good donations come from that because, you know, when you get the truth out about something – and it’s not always easy to do because a lot of times people don’t want their history debunked. They want to believe what they have always been told in the past. There’s always more clarity to be added to those stories. And we continue to do that, right? I mean this is not the defining moment of history. From twenty years from now there’s going to be more information to add to those stories also. So, I am not of the mind that you just are able to say well that's not true, this is the real story. There'll always be interpretation connected to the past. But you know a couple different county institutions that are able to get information out about – the other is the county court poor house. That's really important to our past and the way we treated people who didn't have the money or the means, or maybe the ethnicity that we valued at different points during our history. Right now, I'm actually co-hosting a podcast with a New York State Historian called "A New York Minute in History." I was actually at WAMC studio's today recording our script for that. That's Northeast Public Radio. So, you know, there's lots of different projects. And even here, just looking through documentation, I keep finding lots of really interesting cases all the time. And I get hundreds of inquires a year with people looking, either at their house histories, their property histories, a farm, genealogy absolutely. There's tons of questions about genealogy. Quaker history, all those different kinds of things like that. You know, there are small gems everyday that you are able to help people find or add to the collection, so. There is no typical day. It's different all the time, and I really like that and the county has given me a lot of support with being about to choose which direction I'm going day-to-day. And of course, 2020, we've got some pretty important anniversaries coming up including the centennial anniversary of the nineteenth amendment and women getting the right to vote. It's also the seventy-fifth anniversary of end of World War Two. We still have some WWII veterans alive here. Few, but some of them. But being able to celebrate that and their generation is really important too. IL: [40:40] So, thank you, that's very illuminative of your interaction I think with the broader county history. Can you talk about your interaction with Saratoga as a private citizen? So, do you go into town still, often? Do you– is it a less frequent thing, are you more over here in Ballston Spa, or with your family? How's that kind of evolved for you as time's gone on? LR: You mean Saratoga Springs, the city? IL: I mean, kind of generally I guess, yes. LR: Hmm, yeah, I still go to Saratoga Springs all the time. It's a great community. I am in Ballston Spa a lot, because that's where my office is. I still go back to Skidmore, and I still visit the track. Yeah, I mean Saratoga Springs is a great place, and I’m still very involved in some collaborative groups up there. As far as historic preservation, we actually have an oral history group that's lead up by Laurie Weese of the Saratoga Springs public library. She works in their Saratoga Room, which is their local history room. We're actually working on some collaborative oral history group projects, including digitizing what we already have in our collections, and hopefully soon, phase two will be adding more oral histories. So, yeah, absolutely, I'm still there all the time. IL: So, of course, this is part of an oral history, so that living memory. It's a very valuable part of how we understand things. Do you feel that the con– How– Let me rephrase that. How continuation of memory – How has that factored into your experience? LR: I'm not sure what you mean. IL: So the fact that there's institutions that have been set up to preserve memory, but then also working with people to capture, whether oral histories and thinking about sustaining these institutions as you were talking about having a place for people to deposit their histories. So that sort of continuation. LR: So, do I think it's important to continue capturing oral histories? IL: Mmm, more, how have you personally engaged with preserving memory beyond, ah, physical paper records? LR: So, yeah, I've done a few oral histories, and I do think they're important to take. I actually am working on a project right now. I have someone in my family, my grandfather, was one of five brothers form the same family who served in World War Two, and when I was at Skidmore, two of those brothers were still alive. And I took a class from Professor [David] Eyman, in History, about WWII, and my final paper was about these five brothers and their rolls in WWII. And I have their oral histories that I did when I was a Skidmore student that I have digitized and added to the collection here because they lived in Saratoga County. So, I think it's really important. We did lots of oral interviews for the film, The Great Sacandaga Lake. And we did both people who had their own memories and then we also did historians in the area who had collected information from other people. And then we also had some modern programs that are going on today, like invasive species stewards, people who check for water quality, things like that. So, you know I think it's really important to capture that, digitize it. And, you know, obviously you have to take– [paused] Marian Fitzgerald who’s the city historian always says we have to call them oral narratives, rather than oral histories because you're talking about someone's memory. You're not talking about a fact, a published fact of history, and sometimes they get it wrong. And I'm sure there are somethings in here that I'm getting wrong, but it’s what– it’s my narrative. So, that being said, I don't think it takes away from what those memories are and the including bias that you are getting as part of that interview– I think it changes, for instance, what pieces of the interview you include in the film or you'll include in whatever piece you're putting together. But I don't think that by any means that takes away from what those memories are. In fact, I think it adds more to what they believe was happening at the time, what their perception of that history is, or what it has become. Evolved. Because a lot of times, you know, we were asking people – we were asking someone who was in their nineties to remember what it was like when she was five years old. ... IL: So then to circle back a bit. So, one thing I am interested on hearing your perspective on is Cabaret Troupe. So, they've been struggling recently to have the number of members to make musicals. LR: Really. IL: Yeah. So, this is one of these on-going stories on the Skidmore campus. So, can you talk about what Cabaret Troupe was during your time. LR: Yeah, mmm. Cab Troupe– Cab Troupe was student run, which was different than the department. So, we didn't get credit for what we did. We always had to fight for performance space, we had to fight for a budget. And it was a ton of work. But there was really no other place to perform musicals because the department never did musicals, they did straight plays. And– but we pulled in, we had a lot of people, that– department kids that were also in Cab Troupe, and we usually had an orchestra that was taken from Skidmore's orchestra. [IL: Yeah.] A pit band, I should say, from the orchestra. So, we had other people that were not just musical theater geeks. But it was a ton of work that you didn't get credit for, but we did it because we loved doing it. And we – you know, we had to hire people for sound, and [laughs] and set construction. But I'm surprised to hear that because we always had a huge group of people. IL: So then could you elaborate on the relationships with the departments. So you said you had people from the orchestra and the theater, so this was kind of outside of the department, and just students who came in, or was this partly department, I’m going to say– not told to do, but the departments would kind of express support for. LR: I would say it was pretty separate because we were completely student run. We did have some, you know fighting for performance space was really tough because the dance theater– I mean, the dance department at Skidmore was really big, and they were, there were always other groups that wanted to be able to perform at the dance theater and we always ended up getting into conflicts with other groups because, I'm sure you know to put on a musical you need a lot of rehearsal time. And you have a set- [phone rings in background] Sorry. I'm going to wait till it’s over. IL: Okay. LR: So, we need a lot of rehearsals time there, and it was tough to fight for, and that's why I think my senior year we ended up coming to the compromise that we would have one musical at the dance theater and one at Falstaff’s. Because Falstaff’s was not an ideal performing space. In fact, in I think my senior year the heat broke there, and it was broken while we were rehearsing. We had to wear like hats and gloves and coats inside the building. It took forever to get the part they needed. Definitely less than ideal and we couldn't fit a lot of people in there. And we used to sell out most of our performances in the dance theater. So, I don't think the departments were against us, but it was difficult, we really had to work at being able to find our way and find support. I don't want to say there was anybody that wasn't supportive, and we did have help from the theater department at times. But we were really kind of our own entity. IL: Thank you. Um, so thinking then about, your experience with the American Studies Department. It seems like it was very formative for you. Could you talk more about what the program was while you were at Skidmore? LR: Yeah. I liked the interdisciplinary approach because I had a lot of different interests. And I think that probably goes back to growing up in a small school where you had to be involved in everything, to make it work, to have enough kids to participate or make a go of it. So, I had already said I was interested in anthropology. That's kind of how I started out my freshman year. So, I already had some classes in anthro, and then when I started with American Studies, I took an intro class with Professor Greg Pfitzer, and I just, I fell in love with the class. I thought it was just great. there were so many different aspects to it, and the idea that you could take classes in the history department, or women's studies, or English and have them count towards your American studies degree, I thought was a really innovative approach. And there were some students in my class that had – I can't remember what it was called – where you – self determined major. So, you know, it was, kind of Skidmore's idea that you didn't have to fit your studies into a box and have a single degree that said this is what I know how to do. But that you could in cooperate all these different pieces to fit into the puzzle of, you know, how you could be a well-rounded researcher. Because you know that's something that is very interdisciplinary. So, I just, I really liked the classes. We had a lot of decades classes. I don't know if they still do that, but I had one on the 1930s which was kind of like our methods class. I took one on the 1950s. And then senior year, the class that everybody wanted to take was the seminar on the 1960s with Professor Pfitzer. It just, you know – really understanding in our country where we came from. And when I was– when I was little, elementary school, I think probably fifth grade and seventh grade, my parents decided we were going to take these road trips. It used to be you had two weeks off at Easter instead of one week off for President's week and then one week for Easter, we had two weeks off at the same– put together. And, um, the first time we had a minivan. And I have a brother who’s two years older than me and my parents drove us across country, over two weeks, in the minivan. And we got to see all of these American history sites first hand. Things like the Indianapolis speedway, the St. Louis Arch, and the museum of westward expansion. Mount Rushmore, Custard's Last stand, intertwined, like, with Americana. Like the Corn Palace which is a building made completely out of corn. So, you know, there were all of these things. we did like a northern route the first time we went, and two years later we kind of like a southern route that include like Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico. And I really think that those trips and seeing what the country was like in all the different areas, ah was, really helped form what I was interested in as history goes. And I think taking those decades classes of, you know, what the country was going through, not just east coast, the whole country at different times. I think that was really formative in helping me figure out, you know, what is America? How did we get here? What is important about our past? How we place value on different things we've done, accomplished. Or maybe things we haven't done, or things that we want to sweep under the rug and not talk about. So, so I think American studies helps you explore that and come to terms with being an American and studying our past and, you know, I just– it was really a perfect, a really perfect fit for me. IL: That sounds amazing. Um, before we're get to the end here, is there anything we haven't discussed that you'd like to bring up? LR: Not that I can think of. I'll probably think of it you know ten minutes after. IL: Of course, of course. LR: That's how it works. [laughter] No, I think that's it. IL: Then is, ah, I'd like to just kind of reflect for a moment on, sort of, your journey, and it seems that Skidmore offered you a place to have a different way of thinking about things. How do you think that's a, kind of, been something that you've taken with you? LR: Hmm. I mean I think Skidmore really allows you to think not within a certain constructed box. And, you know, the idea of being interdisciplinary is something everyone can benefit from. And I think that's kind of been a theme through my life. You know, I'm thinking my senior seminar in American Studies, I dealt with reenactors, so, um, and kind of the bad rap they get, but also what they do to push historical study, historical interpretation. You know, places like colonial Williamsburg, or you know, or just pop-up reenactments, Civil War reenactments, things like that. And I think that probably reflects my interest in history with my love of performance, musical theater. So, I think– And that's something that I continue today. I'm still am– I co-direct drama club for my kids at school and I'm in musical theater all the time. But I also am still interested in local history– history on a local level, stories that haven't been told. So I think, you know it just allows you to develop those skills that– Here's Skidmore that’s like a really, I'd say, well-funded institution. They've got a lot of equipment and resources at their finger tips. They allowed me to work for a small museum that didn't have any of that. You got to see both sides of how that kind of works. And I'm somewhere in the middle, I guess, today. Cause I do– I'm employed the government, but I, you know I do a historian's job. So, I guess maybe it gave me confidence that it can be done. You can find a middle-ground, and you can pull from different areas of your interest, and um, and your talents to be able to make whatever that journey is that you're on to try– to make it work, to make it successful, and accomplish whatever it is you set out to do. IL: Thank you. I've just one quick thing you've mentioned, and I'd just like to elaborate on quickly. You mentioned that you co-direct for your children's elementary school. Could you help me understand what your kind of being a parent in the community is like? LR: Sure, so I actually live in Edinburgh, which is a tiny little town on the Great Sacandaga Lake. It's within Saratoga County, but it's ten minutes from where I grew up. So, my kids, I have a nine-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, and my kids go to a very small school, only pre-K through six, and my son has like nine kids in his grade, and my daughter does too. So, I am able to help co-direct their drama club that was started just a few years ago in their elementary school. So, it's just kind of giving back to the community, letting the kids have the same kind of opportunity I did when I was little, to be able to perform. And hopefully instill a love of theater in them too. IL: Wonderful. Thank you very much and thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me. It's been really wonderful talking with you Lauren. LR: You're welcome, thank you. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MP3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 58:41 Bit Rate/Frequency Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio) 44.1 kHz Time Summary A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview 00:00:00 Header 00:00:51 " used to come to Saratoga to go to the racetrack" 00:01:28 Grew up in Northville 00:02:40 budding interest in local history from exploring as a child 00:02:46 Great Sacandaga Lake 00:03:23 School growing up 00:04:12 Life in a small town 00:07:13 Trips around the area 00:08:10 Races at 00:08:56 going to college, first St. Lawrence, then transferring to Skidmore 00:10:41 musical theater 00:11:30 Experiencing 9/11 at Skidmore College 00:13:52 Reflection on the Skidmore community. 00:15:52 Work-studies 00:17:36 " and knowing what it's like to have to wear the many hats that you do if you work for a nonprofit or a small museum, public historian" 00:19:02 old Scribner village 00:20:09 Cabaret Troupe 00:21:12 Glotzbach's induction was not especially significant to the students 00:22:11 Living in Moore away from campus in town with other transfer students. 00:24:33 University Without Walls 00:25:35 Work 00:26:45 Community Chorus 00:27:03 Post-grad 00:31:21 The Round Table discussions in Saratoga county about history. 00:32:22 Funding of history in the area. 00:34:22 Historical tourism in Saratoga. 00:38:18 Practice of history 00:40:58 Still come to Saratoga Springs and Skidmore, as well as being part of a historic preservation group. 00:41:32 "Collaborative oral history group projects" between the Saratoga Library and the county. 00:42:44 "I've done a couple oral histories" as an interviewer. How she personally is engaging with oral history, including oral histories done as a Skidmore student. 00:45:36 Defining Cabaret Troupe her time at Skidmore. 00:47:34 Departments and Cabaret Troupe "pretty separate." Eventually compromising on fighting for space by using Falstaff's. 00:49:36 Liked the "interdisciplinary approach" of American Studies. 00:50:41 Self-determined major "Skidmore's idea that you didn't have to fit your studies into a box." 00:51:16 "Decades classes" on each decade of US history. 00:51:45 Family road trips when she was little, seeing sites of American history and American. "seeing what the country was like in all the different areas." Shaped her interest in history. 00:53:54 American studies "helps you come to terms with being an American and studying our past." 00:55:00 "Skidmore allows you to think not within a certain constructed box." 00:55:27 Senior seminar in American studies "dealt with reenactors." 00:56:08 "I co-direct drama club for my kids' at school," and her application of things she was involved in at Skidmore in her life now. 00:56:36 Experience while at Skidmore prepared her for job today and reflecting on the journey. 00:57:40 Being a parent in her community and doing drama for her children's school. 00:58:41 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 Lauren Roberts 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 Eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Isabel Long, '21 Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lauren Roberts https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/cc8038814c5e62f770f4bac5413ef3b5.JPG 2869b9d9a3cf0e65dda9587598353851 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8b70ad1e4a064010f854d607b987498d.mp3 fb50e97167f893d59365fdaeccc83337 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1844591779534a0324bb2be123a09160.pdf 6211e04b033deb7d8269c8be1de3bbee https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/bafa16de22996c19723c641191f07468.JPG 7a1b9774eb6b3f32579317e95e22375e https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/7abc3a4b940ddbc03035eb0a01548878.JPG c788632722d7d840f347bdd10a00362c https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1ce586bc5b14dd64b75ad8ee5ec35d6a.JPG 598bc109b6c1b08b410fe9a408ddc908 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/615b531a4fb466502ffabc4c9fa8b6ca.JPG 45606424bc352d16ceb8fb8208e1fe89 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/25ba143b7c301ecb415263c0b7f2725e.pdf c1ece65511f6074dfa0abd8411e9b7c6 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/bcdaafd5f24bb7942cca1ccb8a0c5acf.pdf f7f539e4f9e1f79d4e8ffa36d77a3327 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/a3ff99faf8ea448fa30520c4cf4777f8.pdf 2828f0342526d891a429ae8368be35dd https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/6d9743a03fda2099f8d2aa847a31db64.mp3 b5c2561388de58e1571c03021a19b19b https://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/748554e93a20a2c92cf3b21a9dfba295.png 4913b70da521bd9c0072cdee7b2152ec 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 Dora Daley https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4dd06166e4e45cf7afed7dbb313f5a76.mp3 27d5f2ba820b87c7eb64ee444859a8af https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/bfb881fa70c9843716140ed8b872531c.mp3 86ef23ce24c783fa402d5fcd4d31bab9 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/d9eb2795d37e727f80b23ec32338b447.pdf 47e25a35b5e2dea45a1d84dd936edbb1 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1d3049984c6f7c8be345c4f28661637b.pdf 44d424a573dddf552f141de620f16d61 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/10cfb0c43b48723d4dc861b03c41508f.pdf 7570344b29b17da9f088284b63e9b1b9 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4e0a60a9553c61ed801200073a0cecb8.pdf bef3040bab495d4811821378145c0b54 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 James Eason, Lois Celeste Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dora Daley Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Zoom meeting Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:12:84 Location The location of the interview Skidmore College (Zoom), Saratoga Springs (Zoom) Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Attached Time Summary A summary of an interview given for different time stamps throughout the interview Attached Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. James Eason Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 11/18/20 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 Dora Daley Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource October 30, 2020 November 14, 2020 Language A language of the resource English Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource James Eason Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource James Eason Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Mp4 Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Abstract A summary of the resource. This is a interview with Dora Daley through the Saratoga Springs Senior Center about her life spanning from childhood to recent years. Description An account of the resource Dora Daley is a lifetime resident of Saratoga County. In this interview, she describes how In her youth she worked at a newspaper and as a young adult she worked at the paper mill in Mechanicsville. She left work to raise her children. Dora has then surrounded herself with a large, close, and caring family. oral history fall 2020 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/e6112c467fd6d6fc0070e0c782d4708c.jpg ff4143e60812cce296b351aa308e9ee4 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/cb72d792baa4ce68ba7d8653fb31517d.wav a85dbe1e772cf2ef62d752aebd9f3fce 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 Blackhurst, Kelly Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Scribner Library, DocLab Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Dym, Jordana Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 07/10/2017 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 Kelly Blackhurst, '14 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 Kelly is currently the interim head field hockey coach at Denison University. She was a managament and business major. Language A language of the resource eng https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/1d3b00a42690890337d0c233ffc2261b.jpg 28fae9c3f949ea33590ed3370f1f9625 https://ssmp.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://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/82676819845cedcc39bf08fe914f6bcc.mp3 237c9119e026eab284c9906ad36a128f 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. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Mopsik, Jerome Mopsik, Emily Location The location of the interview Skidmore College, Scribner Library, DocLab 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 Emily and Jerome Mopsik (2007 and 2006) 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 Alumni Oral History Project Language A language of the resource eng https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/4a696fa9e7d8091291cc5b0f17a55ece.jpg 0b1a271aa15ea6e7640b7210f8e52221 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/083c43768d6b0471e14b8b6cfe7cab8a.mp3 5178aa558a7baa964e9b5a5259be9ecc https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/235e628838ef9c872ea98d4f21e9a76c.pdf 0fbc3df74bf344cf48cada071e507b30 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Terry Diggory Years at Skidmore: 1977 - 2010 Interviewer: Lynne Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: September 10, 2019 00:00:00 Header 00:00:35 Born outside Philadelphia, after 5th grade moved to Long Island through high school. College at Yale and graduate work at Oxford University. 00:01:10 Oxford schedule faster than US graduate programs, therefore started first tenure track teaching job (Skidmore fall 1977), at relatively early age, 26. 00:02:12 Had visited Saratoga Springs as a teenager and “liked the people that I met in interviewing” at the Modern Language Association in NYC. 00:02:32 “a big MLA … the face-off between M. H. Abrams and Hillis Miller … famous event.” 00:02:52 Taught modern poetry [specialty] and “Western Literature: The Classical Period.” 00:03:25 Interest in classical literature from broader interest in literature and in languages. Major at Yale: History, Arts and Letters program. Took Greek, Latin, and other classics courses. 00:04:36 Favorite courses to teach? Different over time. E.g. modern poetry and contemporary poetry. “…joke … everybody I was teaching in contemporary poetry was now dead.” 00:05:15 “Enjoyed the Classical World course … got me involved in…the Classical Studies Ecclesia … a group of people in various departments who were interested in classical studies.” 00:05:53 Included Tom Lewis (English department), Helga Doblin (was teaching classical languages at that time) Penny Jolly (Art History), Darnell Rucker (philosophy) 00:07:00 Highly involved in “the further development of interdisciplinary courses in the Liberal Studies program.” Taught in both Liberal Studies 1 & Liberal Studies 3. 00:07:46 Liberal Studies 3 was the humanities-based division "but all … Liberal Studies divisions looked out from their base to embrace some sort of interdisciplinary work.” 00:08:04 Taught Liberal Studies 3 course on the New York School painters and poets — “interdisciplinary in terms of the arts.” Also team-taught course on Darwinism in Liberal Studies 4, the science-based division. 00:08:42 Chaired Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, (CEPP), “…at the time when the faculty instituted the Liberal Studies program … I’d long had an interdisciplinary interest, and … Skidmore had a culture that was very open to interdisciplinary work.” 00:09:30 Resistance to Liberal Studies? Some simply resistance to change, some departments felt stretched, staff-time wise. “So, it was an interesting political shift in that sense.” 00:10:35 “And many departments really did strongly invest in Liberal Studies … placing themselves in the broader context of service to the college and to all students…” 00:11:15 Also twice English department chair, frequently on department Personnel committee, plus some ad hoc committees including a Presidential Search Committee. 00:13:30 The Presidential Search Committee that hired President Glotzbach. 00:14:08 1970s many big, risky changes for Skidmore “I came at a time when I think a lot of people at the Institution felt that that was at a low point. It very quickly picked up after that, but, because I was new, I didn’t really sense that as a low point because for me it was all new and exciting.” �00:15:29 Low points? Tensions surrounding controversial personnel decisions. “I valued the collegiality, the friendship, that I had with people who were on different sides of those issues.” 00:17:00 Also on the Dean of Faculty search committee that appointed Phyllis Roth. 00:17:14 Tang Museum planning group. “…commitment to making… the mission of the museum … interdisciplinary … That was a spirit that I was very much on board with.” 00:18:20 Toured other college museums and interviewed people about programs there. 00:18:58 Interviewed architects, brought Antoine Predock to Lyrical Ballad bookstore. 00:21:47 Also special: Liberal Studies program and the learning for both students and faculty. 00:23:40 Liberal Studies 1 “a team-taught course drawing on faculty from all different departments. … The faculty teaching in the course would share lectures.” 00:24:49 “Students would meet twice a week for the large lecture and then twice a week in seminar to discuss the reading and connect that to the presentation in the lecture.” 00:25:11 Occasionally featured a guest lecturer with a particular expertise. 00:25:30 David Porter was a regular guest, delivering a piano performance and lecture on creativity and human expression; playing music and being playful. 00:26:43 Retired in 2010, age 59, because college offered early retirement as a cost saving measure during recovery from the great recession. 00:28:19 Involved in and convener for Skidmore’s Retiree Initiative Planning Group. 00:29:14 A coordinator with the Saratoga Immigration Coalition (immigration support). 00:30:12 Service component - recruiting volunteers for English Language Learning programs or drivers to appointments. 00:31:20 Also legislative advocacy work at state and national level. Eg. “Drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants … speaking to the transportation need.” 00:32:41 “Phyllis was really devoted to the institution, … it seemed like she never slept! …She was up in the wee hours of the morning working on her email.” 00:33:15 “That devotion to the college and the sense that our best interests as a faculty were being closely looked after, I think was really important.” 00:33:29 “And she had a sense of vision. She was certainly engaged in the nascent ideas for … the Tang museum.” 00:33:58 “She was thinking about the full arc of faculty careers and so was very interested in developing retirement programs.” 00:34:20 “Phyllis … interdisciplinary mindset … so I think she was very interested in supporting all the divisions of the college.” 00:34:58 The Ren (Renaissance) Group, “an informal group of faculty who gathered to talk across the lines of the humanities and the sciences.” 00:35:35 “I think Phyllis, having been involved in those conversations, was in a very good position as Dean to not only listen to but also to speak for, let’s say, the sciences, as well as the humanities, in developing programs at the college.” 00:36:02 Faculty dining space… “many iterations of that.” 00:37:01 Faculty social culture change “…small village … everybody knew each other.” 00:37:46 Also, “fewer courses were offered during the lunch hour … gave a time when faculty were available to come together.” 00:38:39 "Later… scrambling to eat a bag lunch in my office … made all the more important efforts such as Phyllis’ to develop a dedicated place that was all about faculty coming together.” 00:39:15 Different now. “Of course small villages have their disadvantages as well as their advantages … but … something lost in … bigger institution where people don’t know each other.” �00:39:45 “That even changed in terms of operations like purchasing … with the growth of the college has come a more formal institutionalization.” 00:40:38 Growth in student body, faculty, administration, and “the mode of administration.” 00:41:21 Some nostalgia for the laid back, interpersonal approach 00:42:29 Moseley Lecturer (1992-3). Presented research on Grace Hartigan’s collaborative work with New York School poets, done in conjunction with an exhibit in Schick Art Gallery. 00:45:15 “The flexibility, the willingness on the part of many offices to pitch in to that project … how lucky I was to be part of an institution where that kind of collaboration was possible.” 00:45:56 “The core of the show was a particular series of paintings that Grace Hartigan had done where she had actually written text by the poet Frank O’Hara into the paintings, but … only one of those paintings was in a public collection.” 00:46:53 Skidmore art professor Harry Gaugh suggested contacting Hartigan directly for locations. “…in some cases the person on her list no longer had the painting and I had to do some further detective work.” 00:49:54 “It was interesting … seeing this one set of work by this one artist … in a very different setting … the context in which we first saw them is always part of my memory.” 00:50:31 END � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/bc7ac2d0f9fba423300a6d08360b0f74.pdf 39bd3e5eb57ee4670f03ac8339575ff4 PDF Text Text Interview with Terry Diggory by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, September 10, 2019. LYNNE GELBER: Good morning, Terry. This is Lynne Gelber. It is September … TERRY DIGGORY: Tenth. LG: Tenth, 2019, and I am with Terry Diggory and this is the Oral History Project for Retirees. So, would you like to tell us when, or where you grew up and what brought you to Skidmore? TD: Oh, that’s going way back! [Laughs] LG: Well, that puts it in context. TD: I was born outside Philadelphia, spent time there until, through the fifth grade, and then my parents divorced and I moved with my mother and sister to Long Island. Went through high school on Long Island, and went off to college, and after graduate … LG: Where? TD: I went to college at Yale and then did graduate work at Oxford University. And that put me on a fast track because they have a different graduate system so I spent less time in graduate school than would have been typical if I had spent time in America. Which meant that I ended up at Skidmore, my first tenure track teaching job, at a relatively early age. I was 26 when I started teaching at Skidmore. It was the … LG: And you started when? TD: In 1977, fall of ’77. LG: Ok. Did you have other posts before Skidmore? TD: Um, I taught for two years at Yale while I was completing the graduate work, the dissertation, at Oxford, mostly because I couldn’t afford to stay in England much … much longer. �LG: So what brought you to Skidmore? TD: Well, it was a job offer, it was the best job offer in prospect. I already knew … we had visited Saratoga Springs when I was a teenager so I knew something about the area. I liked the people that I met in interviewing and it looked like a good place to start. LG: You interviewed at the MLA? TD: Yes. Yup. LG: In? TD: New York City. It was a big MLA because it was the face-off between M. H. Abrams and Hillis Miller. LG: Oh yes! TD: Famous event. LG: Ok, so, when you came to Skidmore, what were you teaching? TD: Well I was brought here to teach modern poetry, that was my specialty, but … LG: Is that what your dissertation was on? TD: Yes. But, because of the nature of, well Skidmore as a college and our department, of course I taught in a variety of areas. I also had an interest in classical literature so I taught what was then our “Western Literature, the Classical Period” course. LG: Where did your interest in classical literature come from? TD: Well, a broader interest in literature and also an interest in languages. So when I was in college … I hadn’t studied Greek and Latin previously but when I was in college I took both Greek and Latin. In fact I, I was not an English major in college; I was a major in what Yale called the History, Arts and Letters program. And I ended up taking, I took some English courses but �most of my courses were not in English, in fact, and they included courses in the classics. LG: Hmm, interesting. So, who was the department chair at the time, when you came? TD: Well, Bud Foulke was the chair but actually the year that I was hired Bud was on leave and Ralph Ciancio was acting chair at that time. So Bud came back to the chairmanship in the first year that I was actually teaching. LG: What were your favorite courses to teach? TD: That’s tough. Do you mean in terms of my entire career? Because there were different … different courses developed over time. I certainly liked modern poetry and contemporary poetry, although we had a joke about the fact that the longer we waited the more outdated the contemporary poets and contemporary poetry became until finally I realized that everybody I was teaching in contemporary poetry was now dead. And so those two courses. I very much enjoyed the Classical World course that I taught as well. And in fact that got me involved in one of the first interdisciplinary programs that I was connected with at Skidmore and that is the Classical Studies Ecclesia, we called ourselves, at first; it was just a group of people, there was no Classics department at that time, it was just a group of people in various departments who were interested in classical studies. LG: Who made up that, the Classical Ecclesia? TD: Well, Tom Lewis in my department, was a big supporter of that. Helga Doblin was central because she was actually the person who was teaching classical languages at that time. Even though, again, in her case, that wasn’t really what she was brought for but that was a strong interest of hers. And there were people in Art History … oh, I’m trying to think who … let’s see, oh, Penny Jolly, when she came, early on, I believe she was involved in that. People in, of course, philosophy. So … LG: Darnell? TD: Yeah, Darnell. LG: Darnell Rucker �TD: Right. LG: Good. So what other courses besides those did you really enjoy teaching? TD: Well, as the college evolved, one of the big developments that I really embraced was the further development of interdisciplinary courses in the Liberal Studies program. And, that became a big investment of my time and I really enjoyed teaching in both Liberal Studies 1, the introductory course that for a while all first year students were required to take, and then also in the Liberal Studies 3 division. And, again, kind of like … LG: Was Liberal Studies 3 division-wide? TD: It was sort of the humanities-based division but all of them, all those Liberal Studies divisions looked out from their base to embrace some sort of interdisciplinary work. So the course that I taught in that division was on the New York School painters and poets. So in that case it was interdisciplinary in terms of the arts, but I also taught in Liberal Studies 4, which was the science-based division, and I taught, team-taught, actually, a course in Darwinism as part of that. LG: Ok, the Liberal Studies program - when did that start? TD: Um, early ‘80s. And I was the chair of the, of CEPP, the curriculum planning committee, at the time when the faculty instituted the Liberal Studies program. So in that sense, even before the courses were created, I already had an investment in it. But, as I said, about my undergraduate work, I’d long had an interdisciplinary interest. And I had a sense, too, that already, because of my work in Classical Studies and so on, that Skidmore had a culture that was very open to interdisciplinary work. LG: Did you have any resistance to that? TD: Oh sure, yeah, yeah. LG: Which consisted of what? TD: Well, of course, in some cases there’s simply resistance to change. You �know, “this is different. We don’t like it. We like what we’re doing now and we want to keep it that way.” So there was that kind of resistance. There was resistance on the part of departments who felt, in terms of their staffing restrictions, that they were already stretched to offer the courses that they needed to staff their major requirements, let’s say. Um, and they didn’t feel that they could, what they saw as, quote, “giving up staff time” to teaching a course which they regarded as being outside of the department. So, it was an interesting political shift in that sense, in that, I think, to the extent, and many departments really did strongly invest in Liberal Studies, but they were, by doing that, they were placing themselves in the broader context of service to the college and to all students rather than saying “We’re here for our particular discipline.” And I think that affected what was already here in the spirit of interdisciplinary work, but I think that it had a broader effect as the Liberal Studies program took root. LG: In addition to the Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, CEPP, were you on other committees that were significant to you? TD: Yes, especially in my department. CEPP was the major committee that I had several stints on at the college level, with the exception of some ad hoc committees like Presidential Search Committee and things like that, which are obviously important but not a standing committee. But given the fact that the English department is a large department, we have a pretty complex committee structure internally. So, for instance, I, in addition to being department chair at two different occasions, LG: When was the first time? TD: When I was department chair? LG: Yeah, do you know the date? TD: Um, I’m very bad on dates. [laughs] LG: Ok. TD: We could look that up. But, of course the department chair involved me in personnel work, but we also have our own Personnel Committee within the department and when I wasn’t chairing the department, and the chair exofficio sits on the Personnel committee, I was frequently serving on the �department Personnel committee. And that’s one reason why … some people are surprised when I tell them that I never served on CAPT, the College Appointments Promotion and Tenure committee, which is certainly, and rightly so, considered a major if not the major committee for the college. But the reason is simply that, in my case, that I didn’t serve on CAPT was that I was doing so much personnel work at the level of my department that I felt that, you know that’s where, that part of my energy was being channelled and I didn’t have the extra resources, personally, to commit myself to CAPT. LG: You mentioned presidential search. Which president search ended up with you on it? TD: Um, I was on the search committee that brought the current president, President Glotzbach, here. LG: Ok. And your role was just as a member of the? TD: Yeah, yeah, yup. LG: What was the lowest point for you, as a faculty person or as a member of the Skidmore community? TD: Umm, … that’s hard to say because I don’t really think of a lot of low points. Interestingly, even before I started at Skidmore, when we … we moved to Saratoga the summer before I started and we had a house right near the race track but also right next door to the Dean of Students, who was Claire Olds at the time. And I was just getting to know more about the college and I remember talking with Claire, kind of over the garden fence, and this was in August and she said, “Well, things are looking pretty good. It looks like we are going to make our class for this year.” And this was still, at the time, during the 1970s when Skidmore had gone through a lot of changes, risky things like building the new campus, going co-ed, and it was struggling to attract students. So, I came at a time when I think a lot of people at the institution felt that that was at a low point. It very quickly picked up after that, but, because I was new, I didn’t really sense that as a low point because for me it was all new and exciting. TD: I think the low points probably, … again, involved some personnel decisions, �some hiring decisions that were controversial. Some tenure promotion decisions that were controversial. I don’t regret my role in those decisions, but they were always personally difficult because of the tensions that were a part of that, and, you know I valued the collegiality, the friendship, that I had with people who were on different sides of those issues and, you know, you always wonder, “So, am I gonna lose some friends because of these issues?” And I have to say that on the whole I’m very grateful that despite those controversies, that I felt that I was able to maintain friendships with people who were on the other side of the controversy. But it was tough-going through those times. LG: That’s remarkable … umm, what can I say,… ambassadorial work. Were there other committees outside of the department that you served on or other functions that you had while you were here? TD: Well, I was also on the Dean of Faculty search committee that resulted in the appointment of Phyllis Roth. I was on the planning group for the Tang Museum, and that was a really exciting time. I mean to me … LG: Tell us a little bit about that. TD: Well to me, in the time that I served at Skidmore, having the Tang Museum develop here was certainly a real high point. Again, it also speaks, of course, to the interdisciplinary interests of the college, because, right from the beginning of the concept of the Tang there was a real commitment to making this not simply an adjunct of the art department — it was certainly going to feature the arts — but the mission of the museum was very early on determined to be interdisciplinary. So, again, that was a spirit that I was very much on board with. LG: Did you meet with the architects? TD: Yes, we met with the architects. We also did, the first step, actually, other than, you know, just planning meetings, was doing some touring to other college museums to see how they were set up physically, to interview people about programs there. So I remember we visited Colby College, Williams College, Dartmouth, umm, and those were very interesting experiences. And then we did, also, interview the architects. In fact, I think I may have been one of the first Skidmore people to meet the eventually appointed architect, Antoine Predock, when he first came to campus. He came, this was before �he had been selected, but he wanted to get to know more about Skidmore and he came during the summer and, interestingly, one of the first things that he wanted to do was to go … he said, “Is there a good local bookstore?” So we went down to Lyrical Ballad bookstore, in downtown Saratoga Springs, and he just bought a lot of books about area history, Saratoga history and the history of upstate New York and so on. And it turns out that what he was doing with these, he went back to his studio and he used the materials from these books to develop a kind of conceptual sense of the spirit of the community. And, so again, it wasn’t in terms of practical design, but it was almost a visual collage that would symbolize to him something that he would then translate into the design of the museum. And he was very committed, I think, both in terms of his own theory of architecture, but also because he was an architect who had been primarily associated with the west and the southwest, and he was conscious that this would be a commission for him in the northeast, and he … LG: Was he aware of the climate and the snow? TD: Yes. Yes … yes he was. And he wanted to really show us that he understood who we were as an institution and what this region was all about. And I think that was the factor, really, that got him the commission to design the museum. Because, unlike some of the other architects, who basically came in and said, “I’m a famous architect. You’ll have one of my buildings and you’ll be lucky to have it,” what Predock said was, you know, “This is not about me. This is about Skidmore. I want to make sure that the building that we build is really going to be integrated with the overall mission of the college.” And that was, that was very persuasive. And I think that’s what we got. LG: I’m glad you talked about that. Other special moments that you can recall? TD: Well, again the special moments, not so much the committees but the special moments would be going back to the Liberal Studies program and what, especially Liberal Studies 1 meant for those who were involved in it. And again I think for the college as a whole, in terms of faculty development. I mean, obviously the goal was to introduce students to liberal arts education, but in the course of doing that, I think the faculty learned from each other a great deal. And again, there was resistance. You know, some faculty felt, “this is a real stretch for me.” But of course, one of the things that we learned from each other was a broader range of pedagogical strategies. And �the Liberal Studies 1 faculty would meet on a weekly basis and talk about what the topic was for that week, what approach we might take to dealing with the material in our seminars, and then of course there would be the large group lectures and we would be exposed to our colleagues lecturing, which, again, was not something that would normally have been available to us. So that was a real highlight, to me, for the college. LG: Do you want to mention how the Liberal Studies 1 was structured? TD: Sure. LG: For those who aren’t familiar with it? TD: Sure. It was a team-taught course drawing on faculty from all different departments and because every student, every first-year student, was required to take it, we had to have a lot of sections. And there were sections, about 15 students per section, and a faculty member was assigned to the section but then the faculty teaching in the course would share lectures. So, actually because we didn’t have a lecture space at that time, big enough to fit the entire class, we divided up, at one point we actually did three lectures — we did the same lecture three different times. Then we got it down to two times and we, the last space I think we used was the theater, and students would meet twice a week … LG: Palamountain? TD: Palamountain Hall, right. Students would meet twice a week for the large lecture and then twice a week in seminar to discuss the reading and connect that to the presentation in the lecture. LG: And who gave the lectures? TD: It was mostly the faculty who were also teaching seminars, but occasionally, if we felt that a particular expertise was needed that wasn’t already represented by the faculty teaching the seminars, we would ask for a guest lecturer to come in, from another department. LG: Who were some of the guests? Do you remember? TD: Umm, well … �LG: Was David Porter one of them? TD: Yes, David Porter loved to give a presentation … there was a section … LG: He played piano, right? TD: That’s right, there was a section about, it was about creativity, basically, and human expression, and he loved giving a presentation that he thought of as about play, and by that he meant both, you know, playing a musical instrument, but also being playful. And, so, yeah, he would often do the prepared piano — a la John Cage — and show what could be done with that. And he was, of course, a wonderful lecturer as well as a performer, and that was a very special guest appearance that we relied on. He did that a number of years. LG: Ok. Umm, tell us what you’ve been doing since you retired, and when, exactly, did you retire? TD: I retired in 2010, which was early retirement, by most standards, but that was during the period of the, or at least the recovery from the great recession, and Skidmore had offered early retirement packages because they were trying to offload some of the more … senior members off the payroll, as a cost saving measure. And I had not been thinking, frankly, of retiring at that time. Although, you know, I was beginning to look at when retirement might come, say three or five years in the future. LG: How old were you? TD: Well, I was actually 58 when I made the decision and then 59 by the time I retired. So anyhow I decided to take the early retirement package. LG: And that was what, that package? TD: It was a salary plus enhancement, that is, you got a portion of salary on top of your regular salary so you … LG: As opposed to phased retirement. TD: Yes, that’s right. It wasn’t … I went cold turkey. Right, I simply quit teaching �at that point. although I did not stop, cut ties with the college. And one of the things that I had already begun to become involved in was an evolving retiree group, which hadn’t existed at the college. But my colleague Phyllis Roth had been very interested in this as Dean, and when she retired, just a little bit before me, a fund developed in her honor which was designed to fund retiree activities of some sort. And out of that grew what we now call the Retiree Initiative Planning Group. And I’ve continued with that and serve as the convener for that group. So that’s been one of the things that I’ve been doing since retirement. LG: What are some of the other things? TD: Well the main preoccupation right now, since the last presidential election in 2016, … immigration has come into the foreground of national debate, and I became involved, initially through the church that my wife and I attend in Saratoga Springs, in immigration support work in the community. And a number of faith communities and one civic organization, Saratoga Unites, came together to form what we call the Saratoga Immigration Coalition, and I’m one of the coordinators for that. And we do a whole range of support activities, advocacy activities, for … LG: What kind of support activities? TD: We work with local service providers like the Saratoga County EOC, the Economic Opportunity Council, in recruiting, let’s say, volunteers for English Language Learning programs that they offer. We also collaborate with them in a transportation program, because a number of immigrants in our area, especially if they are undocumented, cannot drive, and yet they have children in the school system, they need to get to school appointments, they need to get to grocery stores, they need to get to medical appointments. So we have a cadre of volunteer drivers so that somebody can request, through the staff member for the Saratoga EOC, a ride at a certain time coming up next week, and we will get a volunteer driver to take them to that appointment. So that’s one, that’s the service component. But we’ve also been involved in advocacy work, both at the state and, to some extent, also at the national level in terms of legislation. We were … our coalition was a regional partner in the local, recent effort to get drivers licenses for which undocumented immigrants in New York State would be qualified. So again, that was speaking to the transportation need. �Susan Bender: Terry, I’m going to … this is Susan Bender, I’m going to insert my voice for a minute. I’m just the tech person, but, reflecting back on your interview and what you’ve been talking about, you mentioned that you served on the search committee that ultimately ended with Phyllis Roth’s appointment as Dean. I wonder if you could reflect back on Phyllis’ Deanship and talk a little bit about her contributions to the college in the years that she was here. TD: Well Phyllis was really devoted to the institution, so … she was notorious for, it seemed like she never slept! You would look at the, when she would send out emails you would look at the time stamp on it, and you could see that she was up in the wee hours of the morning working on her email. So, I think just that devotion to the college and the sense that, our best interests as a faculty were being closely looked after, I think was really important. And she had a sense of vision, she was certainly engaged in the nascent ideas for the museum, for the Tang museum. I’ve already mentioned the fact that she was thinking about the full arc of faculty careers and so was very interested in developing retirement programs. And I think she, although of course there’s always suspicion when somebody comes out of the faculty into an administrative position like that, is she going to play favorites? Is she going to…, you know, favor, in the case of Phyllis, the humanities over other divisions of the college? And Phyllis, and I know this personally because of other informal projects that I was involved with Phyllis in, that she, again, embodied that interdisciplinary mindset that I’ve already spoken about, so I think she was very interested in supporting all the divisions of the college. TD: The informal project that Phyllis and I participated in together was another interesting manifestation of the interdisciplinary work, or the interdisciplinary spirit of the college. We called it the Ren group, which didn’t stand for the bird but stood for Renaissance, and the idea that, you know, the renaissance person was somebody like Leonardo da Vinci, who was an artist, a scientist, all disciplines wrapped up in one, and it was just an informal group of faculty who got together especially to talk across the lines of the humanities and the sciences. And I think Phyllis, having been involved in those conversations, was in a very good position as Dean to not only listen to but also to speak for, let’s say, the sciences, as well as the humanities, in developing programs at the college. LG: As a support for that initiative of getting faculty to talk to one another, were you involved in her decision to create a faculty dining space? �TD: Well yes, and of course there are many iterations of that, but I wasn’t involved directly in the planning but I was certainly aware of her interest in developing that. And, you know that’s come and gone, alas. I mean the, each iteration of that plan has come and gone. LG: It was started first in Falstaff’s. TD: That’s right, yeah. LG: Because the students were no longer using it. TD: Yeah. Well actually, early on I think there was a version of it in the Surrey, and then it really took off in Falstaff’s and then for a while it was over in Case Center. TD: Yeah, yeah. That’s been something, that’s also an interesting topic to talk about, and that is faculty social culture. I mean in the time that I’ve been at the college that’s changed quite a bit. We were, when I first came here Skidmore was a small village, and everybody knew each other. The Dean of the Faculty at that time, Eric Weller, was very conscious, also, as Phyllis was later, of promoting the social life. He would always have a big faculty party at his house. I also remember, kind of nostalgically, that, I think, actually, fewer courses were offered, and so the registrar was able to actually kind of schedule a lunch hour into the schedule of courses. So that, maybe … I’m not sure if no courses, but fewer courses were offered during the lunch hour and there was a time, that gave a time when faculty were available to come together. Right. And we would come together in the Spa and you would just show up at a table, and so that wasn’t formally a faculty/staff club or anything like that, but it was just a time when faculty could just sit down and, you know, chat with each other over lunch. And I remember, later on, both because of the pressures that had accumulated on my shoulders but I think also just part of the changing culture of the college that I ended up, for the most part, scrambling to eat a bag lunch in my office, you know, in between meetings or in between classes or something like that. And so I think that made all the more important efforts such as Phyllis’ to develop a dedicated place that was all about faculty coming together, yeah. And, you know, we are a different institution now, we’re not the small village. And of course small villages have their disadvantages as well as their advantages, you know. There’s always that sense that somebody’s �looking over your shoulder and, you know gossip abounds. But, and now there’s not that kind of hothouse atmosphere, but I think there is something lost in the sense of a bigger institution where people don’t know each other. But that even changed in terms of operations like purchasing. I mean I remember early on at Skidmore if you needed supplies for the department office, basically the department chair or the secretary would go out to a local store, you know, buy a bunch of pencils and then walk into the business office and present the receipt and get reimbursed, and that was the purchasing procedure. And of course now you have multiple forms that you have to fill out and you have to go through authorized suppliers and so on, so with the growth of the college has come a more formal institutionalization. LG: When you say growth of the college are you referring to the student body or the administration or the faculty? TD: Well overall. Yeah, the student body has grown, faculty has grown, but also certainly the administration and the mode of administration has changed as well. So, it’s gotten more, you know, obviously some would say more professional, you know, we follow best practices for tracking finances and business measures and so on, which, I’m sure, is certainly to the good in terms of the financial security of the college. But, again I’m still kind of nostalgic for the laid-back, kind of slap-dash approach of doing things. LG: The interpersonal relationships? TD: Yeah, absolutely! Yeah. Because you, … yeah, and that was a personal relationship. I mean, when you walked into the business office, you knew the person that was processing your reimbursement. Or you knew who to call … you know, something … a problem was coming up you’d say, “Oh, well, so and so,” you wouldn’t even think of it in terms of the office, I mean now that’s what you say, “Well, I have to call Facilities about this,” but in those days it was all personal, “Oh, I have to call so and so, she’ll know how to fix this,” [laughs]. SB: Rose Verro. TD: Yeah, right [laughs]. Yeah, absolutely. LG: Are there other things that you want to include in this interview? �TD: Um, no, I think we’ve covered a lot. Umm … LG: Anything that sticks out in your mind? TD: Well, a moment that, you know, personally sticks out in my mind that I’m very grateful for, and again illustrates the collaborative nature of the college, is the opportunity that was presented to me — I was named the Moseley Lecturer one year, and I had been working, the research that I had been doing was, again growing out of my Liberal Studies course on the New York School poets and painters, and I had been researching a particular artist named Grace Hartigan, who worked with poets like Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, people now known as the New York School poets, and I had gotten interested in the possibility of doing a show of her work, and so when the invitation to deliver the Moseley Lecture came I asked if I could use that as the occasion for not only giving the lecture but also doing a show at the Schick Art Gallery. And of course that required the agreement and full collaboration of the art gallery. At that time David Miller was the director of the gallery and he really embraced the idea. So again here’s this, there was no sense of guarding turf, but …you know, this English professor wanted to put on a show in the art gallery, that was fine with him, and we worked it out and he invested a lot of his own effort. LG: When was this? TD: Again I’m bad at dates. Early nineties? [laughs]. And so that required the full collaboration of the art department, but also, because the dates when the show could be done and also the dates we brought Grace Hartigan to visit the college, at that time in connection with the show, but I think the Moseley Lecture had been typically delivered in the fall, but we could only do it in the spring, and so I think my doing that threw off the Moseley calendar, because then it got shifted to the spring, but again the college administration said, “Ok, so we can do this.” So the flexibility, the willingness on the part of many offices to pitch in to that project, it was certainly a highlight for me. And to me it also illustrated how lucky I was to be part of an institution where that kind of collaboration was possible. LG: So the art department was responsible for bringing her work, for guarding them? �TD: Well the art gallery, yes, oh yeah. They brought, it had become a fascinating project for me because the core of the show was a particular series of paintings that Grace Hartigan had done where she had actually written text by the poet Frank O’Hara into the paintings, but the challenge was that only one of those paintings was in a public collection. So, my wife and I went on a cross country tour tracking down where these paintings were and then we had to negotiate with each of the private collectors to bring them to this show. So, you know that, the background there, that was quite an experience in and of itself, going around. LG: Tell me about that a little bit more. Whom did you meet? TD: Well, again, first of all, to start with the idea of collaborating at Skidmore, the first person, when I began my interest in this series of paintings, the first person I actually talked to about it was Harry Gaugh, who was a member of the Skidmore art department and had worked in that period. He had written a book on Frantz Kline, written a book on de Kooning. And I explained to him this problem, so I’m trying … “Harry do you have any ideas how I could begin finding these paintings?” And he said, “Well, why don’t you just write to Grace Hartigan?” [laughs] The artist! [laughs]. You know because he had, again through his own research, had been involved in that world, I think he had met Grace Hartigan. And he said, you know, start with the source. And that was already something that I had learned from my PhD dissertation, which was about WB Yeats and American Poets and my supervisor at that time said, “Write to American Poets and just ask them,” you know, what their relationship to the poetry of WB Yeats was, and how, what they think the influence might have been. So the idea of just going straight to the source was already in my background. So I wrote to Grace Hartigan. Luckily she was very open to the possibility of my working on this project so she was able to give me a list, to the extent that she was aware of where the paintings were, of who had them. It was somewhat out of date, so I … I could work from that list, but in some cases the person on her list no longer had the painting, and I had to do some further detective work. And so we would then get in touch with the individuals and say, “Can we come and photograph the painting?” And so it was interesting, again, seeing this one set of work by this one artist, how these works had ended up in a very different setting. So one work was in a home in the lower Hudson Valley belonging to an art historian. It was an old Victorian house and the painting was up on this dark stairway and she … you know, it wasn’t an especially lavish home, she was an academic and didn’t have a big income, but really �treasured the painting. And then another place we went was a home in Grosse Pointe Michigan. Somebody who was a high-time art collector, and so that was, again, a very different setting, with track lighting for all of the paintings and a big setup for displaying the collection. So we saw the work in very different settings, and of course for me, now, when I see those paintings, their original … the context in which we first saw them is always part of my memory. LG: Good! Well, I think we’re just about out of time. I really appreciate … I thought there were some very interesting ideas that you gave us and I want to thank you again … TD: Thank you. LG: … for spending an hour with us. TD: 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 Terry Diggory Location The location of the interview 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.) 50:30 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit March 29, 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 Terry Diggory Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource September 10, 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 After earning his D. Phil. at Oxford, Terry Diggory was born outside began teaching at Skidmore in the Fall of 1977, offering courses in poetry and the Classical World. He participated programs at the College, broadly including the Classical Studies Ecclesia and the Liberal Studies program. One of the poets in his Liberal Studies course on the New York School, Grace Hartigan, was the subject of his Mosely Lecture in which he connected her poetry and painting. As the College embarked on its program of interdisciplinary teaching leaning, Terry chaired the Committee on Educational Policies and Planning (CEPP) as well as the Curriculum Committee. He also served as English Department chair. Other committees included the search that brought Phil Glotzbach to the College, the search that ultimately led to the appointment of Phyllis Roth as Dean of the College, and the group that planned the Tang Teaching Museum. Since retirement in 2010, Terry has been the convener of the Skidmore Retiree Initiative Planning Group and has also been a leader in the Saratoga Immigration Coalition. 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 Antoine Predock CEPP English Department Eric Weller Liberal Studies Phillip Glotzbach Phyllis Roth Tang Museum https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/16ecd78fc9516e4d0c85b53eb64bbf40.JPG 3a83fca92bde985991b9b61647beabb3 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. 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 20 Million Complex Proposed at Saratoga Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource September 13, 1972 Description An account of the resource Preliminary proposal for a development project in downtown Saratoga Springs is estimated to cost 20 million; proposal includes civil center and a 200 room hotel. The project is dependent on downtown merchants who would be willing to remodel or become part of the downtown mall-like center. Language A language of the resource english Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource N/A Date Created Date of creation of the resource. June 26, 2018 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8d0b9143230256c97c3fbed06a4f374d.jpg ed01d954424e8d184307e264db8d3ce3 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/c02ab030e3e9195f9e23127654e2546b.m4a 0bf25d81fb7629f9a9820e3562df5a9b https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/657f7b7b3ddb54cc266c51baa3734da1.pdf 3dc664538e36423b499fe2e46c9356c6 PDF Text Text Interviewee: Larry Ries Years at Skidmore: 1979 - 2004 Interviewer: Lynn Gelber Location of Interview: Saratoga Springs, NY Date of Interview: September 24, 2019 00:00:00 Header 00:00:30 Grew up poor, one of 9 children, in Kentucky; attended a Catholic high school in Wisconsin and graduated top of the class — “gave me a new lease on life.” 00:02:01 After HS, worked 2 years as migrant farm laborer, then attended a small Catholic college in Conesus, NY for 2 years until ran out of money, then moved home and finished English degree at Thomas Moore College in northern KY. 00:03:24 Next was awarded a teaching fellowship at Southern Illinois University; earned Masters in English. Then taught for 2 years in Italy at an international high school. 00:03:59 Returned to US and earned Doctorate in English at Southern Illinois University. 00:04:15 Family moved to Albany, where Ries taught English for 7 years at SUNY Albany, and then was an administrator for 2; wife worked reviewing doctoral programs for the NYS Ed dept. 00:05:25 During time at Albany wrote Wolf Masks, a book on contemporary British poetry. Despite publishing, didn’t get tenure, so after working administration, took advising position in 1979 in Skidmore’s prison program. Joe Bruchac was running it at that time. 00:06:00 Program at Great Meadows Correctional Facility was part of the University Without Walls (UWW), an external degree program originally funded by the Ford Foundation. 00:07:20 Originally the program offered both inmates and guards opportunity for 4-year degree. 00:08:12 Also was an on-campus element for paroled men who had done well in the program. 00:08:48 Combination of inmates & guards in same classes led to problems, so dropped guards. 00:09:18 Ries was also a lecturer on campus in the English department. 00:09:30 Ries led prison program from 1980 to 1985, then became Assistant Director of UWW. 00:10:23 Next became Director of the Skidmore Masters Program, another external degree program, though it did include an on-campus element. Ideal was 15 students; sometimes had 25. 00:13:07 Promoted to Skidmore grads and in Adirondack region (b/c few opportunities there). 00:15:03 Many factors led to end of program, including “a changing of the culture,” less focus on external programs, more on campus. Also, remote learning became more common; less need. 00:16:56 Loved teaching Liberals Studies 1 because of the wide range of reading and the opportunity to be educated and then to learn how to transfer that to students. 00:17:45 Working in the prison could sometimes be traumatic, being locked in with tough men. 00:19:30 Still, the men loved many teachers - eg. Betty Balevic, Helga Doblin — “they revered [Helga Doblin] because they never had good discipline before, they only had bad discipline so when someone did that for their betterment, they recognized that and they appreciated that.” 00:22:26 Once while Ries was teaching Death of a Salesman, “we were acting it out and …[one student] says, “But Pop don’t you understand, I’m a failure! I’m a failure!” and all the guys �started crying because it was their life all of a sudden you know, this sense of being a failure … it was such a moving moment.” 00:23:19 A difficult moment: when Skidmore financial support of prison teaching faculty wasn’t as strong as it could have been, considering Skidmore got PELL, TAP and HEOP money for it. 00:26:04 Recruited faculty by personal invitation and word of mouth from other faculty. 00:26:49 Even science courses were taught, although not with labs. 00:27:33 Received grant to bring computers into the prison; 1st program in NY to do that. 00:28:14 Some problems with faculty incl. inappropriate dress; not submitting grades on time. 00:31:40 Special experiences in the Masters program included working with elderly students, including Frank Crone, who did a thesis in religious studies and later funded a scholarship. 00:34:30 Students worked with a faculty advisor aligned with their area of study. 00:34:50 Sometimes hard for adult students who had other obligations, eg. a troubled child. 00:36:44 During initial on-campus seminar, students met with faculty advisor to design their program, which sometimes involved independent study credits, other times students would take classes at schools near them and apply transfer credits toward their Skidmore master’s degree. 00:38:06 Also added some evening classes for local students in the master’s program. 00:38:30 Different experiences than daytime classes, eg. taught “Growing Up In America” to seven women and one man; the man had been seeking his birth mother and found her during the course, and they “mothered” him and “it just worked beautifully as part of the course.” 00:39:31 The night courses allowed the students to “come and have actual discussions rather than work totally on their own and … that’s a better form of education usually than doing something completely independently.” 00:40:08 Enjoyed career at Skidmore, felt fortunate to have different positions and head a number of committees, “which gave me work with the wider community.” 00:40:35 One challenging one was the Benefits Committee, with which Ries had worked for a year to present recommendations that were challenged in one meeting; fortunately, President David Porter backed Ries up and it worked out. 00:43:15 One last memory from the prison program, interviewing one potential student, Robert Chambers, who “was just horrible, just terrible, and we rejected him and he sued the college, on the grounds of discrimination,” Fortunately, Chambers got transferred so suit declared moot. 00:45:23 END � https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/fee65f9b6fb5bf9c3d8f1b3988a1ebb9.pdf 286d3ac9ad4b8869290b650a97e7ff47 PDF Text Text Interview with Larry Reis by Lynne Gelber, Skidmore College Retiree Oral History Project, Saratoga Springs, New York, September 24, 2019. LYNNE GELBER: Good Morning, this is Lynne Gelber interviewing Larry Reis, with technical assistance of Sue Bender. It is September 24th, 2019. So Good Morning Larry, nice to see you. LARRY REIS: Good Morning Lynne, good morning Sue. SUE BENDER: Good Morning Larry LG: Let’s start off by telling us a little bit where you grew up LR: Oh wow (chuckles) I grew up in Kentucky, one of nine children to a German Catholic family, South of the Ohio river not too far from Cincinnati, and we were very poor and when I was 12 years old I got sent to a Catholic seminary up in Wisconsin where I went for four years of high school, which kind of changed my life. LG: How did it change your life? LR: I got an education I was always in trouble as a child and I kinda found out for the first time that I was smart (chuckles) never knew that before, the nuns weren’t very good in the school where I was LG: In Kentucky? LR: In Kentucky, and so I graduated first in my class up there, so it just gave me a new lease on life LG: Was that a different culture? Going to Wisconsin? LR: (laughs) Totally, they made fun of me all the time LG: Because of your accent? LR: Because of my accent, the teachers made me stand up in class and pronounce words that they laughed at when I pronounced them, so it was a weird experience, but it was a good one overall �LG: So where did you continue your education? Did you do that right away? LR: Uh no, I became a migrant worker for two years because after high school, I couldn’t go back home. My father was an abusive alcoholic father who shouldn’t have had any kids, but he had nine and so it wasn’t a good environment. We had a two-bedroom house for eleven people um so I just started working whatever work I could get. So I picked potatoes, picked grapes, you know for $2 before I started going to college. LG: So how did you decide to go to college? LR: (laughs) I didn’t want to pick apples and grapes for the rest of my life um so I um started out in Western, NY. I was out picking the depth of potatoes, and grapes in south of Rochester. There was a little community college down there at the time, a Catholic college called St. Michael’s. I don’t think it’s there any more in Canesus, NY and I went two years there, ran out of money, went home and finished up at Thomas Moore College in Northern Kentucky, a very good, little private college in Northern Kentucky. LG: And from there, where did you go? LR: I went to Southern Illinois University, I got an assistantship - had no money still LG: What did you major in, in college? LR: English, um went to SIU, Southern Illinois University and had a teaching fellowship so I taught two courses and um, got my Masters in two years and then went to Italy to teach for two years, went to Rome and taught in Rome at an International High School for two years and then came back to Southern Illinois. In the meantime, I’d gotten married and had a child in Italy and then came back and got my Doctorate degree at Southern Illinois University in English LG: And what brought you to Skidmore? �LR: Well, I started as an Assistant Professor at SUNY Albany and I was there for 9 years LG: Did you get that job through the MLA? LR: Uh yes, actually it was because of the MLA. I was late that year and they couldn’t go to MLA because Albany got snowed in and that year, (that was the year they got a 30-inch snowfall and the airports were closed) and so they didn’t do their interviews at MLA that year, so they did them later, and I was in the market so they invited me to Albany. So I came up, they offered me a job in the English department and I taught there.- It was a terribly political place at the time. It was just horrible and my wife was reviewing doctoral programs at that time for State Ed and they took away the doctoral program in English at SUNY Albany (laughs) and that put me in a terribly awkward position so they didn’t give me tenure the year my book came out. Then they took me in administration though for two years. LG: What was your book on? LR: Contemporary British Poetry, Wolf Masks was the name of it. So, they did take me in administration for two years, but it just left a bad taste. So I wanted to get out of there and since my wife was working still in Albany at State Ed, we wanted to stay in the area because she had her career fully started and uh so Skidmore had a job opening for an advisor in the prison program and in ‘79 I came up and interviewed and was offered that job. LG: With whom did you interview? LR: Who? LG: Yes LR: Don McCormack, Bob VanMeter, and Joe Bruchac. LG: Okay, and Who was the? That was under the Office of Special Programs, right? �LR: Yes, uh huh when Mark Gelber was Dean LG: Okay and what was Don McCormack’s position at that point? LR: He was head of UWW LG: So, this was part of the University without Walls? LR: University without Walls and Joe Bruchac was running the prison program at that time, so I was hired to work under Joe Bruchac. SB: Larry, could you explain the prison program for folks that might not know about it? LR: Okay, as part of the University Without Walls, which was an external degree program originally funded by the Ford Foundation. Before I got here they had started a program at Great Meadows correctional facility which is in Comstock, New York and it was set up to offer inmates and guards at that time a four-year degree. And when it began they had guards and inmates in the same classrooms and Skidmore faculty would go up there five nights a week to teach a three hour class. One night they would teach one class for three hours and I don’t know how it was before I got here but once I got involved, we had five faculty members going up there five nights a week. It was a big group of faculty offering classes up there and it’s 45 miles away so it was a good trek for anybody to go up there to teach. And in addition to that program, which graduated quite a few students, there was an on-campus element of the program where men who had good records inside the prison and who had done well in the program up there would be paroled to Skidmore campus and they would live on Skidmore campus and complete their education here, and there were quite a few. When I first arrived, there were five men on campus at that time. LG: Was there a problem with the guards being in the same classroom as the �inmates? LR: Yes, so it was a big problem. It turned out that many of the inmates were brighter than some of the guards (laughs) and that caused quite a conflict and that program fell apart quite quickly so by the time I got here, it was only open to inmates LG: Alright, did you have other positions at Skidmore? LR: I was a lecturer in the English department as well LG: Okay, how long were you with the University without Walls? LR: The second year, they made me head of the prison program and I think I did that for five years and then… LG: And what years were those? Do you remember? LR: Well, I came in ’79 so I think in ’80 - ’81 I became head until ’85 I believe then in ’85, I became the Assistant Director of University Without Walls under Bob VanMeter. Don McCormack moved up to be Dean of Special Programs. Bob VanMeter moved up and they made me the Assistant Director, so I got out of jail finally (laughs) after 7 years and so um, then I stayed in that position until whenever we started the masters’ program and I’m not sure what year that was when we started the master’s program because I became the first Director of the masters’ program. LG: Explain a little bit that masters’ program please. LR: Okay, the masters’ program was built on the model of the University Without Walls, which was an external degree program for adult students. And for many years, there had been talk of doing a masters’ program at Skidmore and finally, it was put together by a faculty committee, of which Phyllis Roth was a member, plus a whole host of other people LG: Was Phyllis Dean of the Faculty at that point? �LR: Yes, uh-huh and they put it together, went through all the faculty channels, etc. through State Ed and it became a program. The difference from UWW is that we did have an on-campus element of it. When students began their program, they had to come to Skidmore for a week and take a week-long graduate seminar and I always thought of that as kind of a bar-raising element to see if students could actually do the kind of work that we were going to ask them to do. And they had a research paper to do as an element of that seminar and it was a good way to find out if they had the basic skills that you need to do graduate research. And we washed out maybe 30% of the students at that seminar. In other words, if they couldn’t do that kind of work, there was no way they were going to do it independently afterwards. LG: On average, how many students then would be in a seminar? LR: In the early years, we were almost (laughs) we were almost too successful. We had 20, 25 a couple of times. We wanted to have 15. We thought 15 was the ideal size but there was always pressure for enrollment around here and so if we got 25 (laughs), we would keep 25 and try to make it, but we did really well I know in the early years. I know after a while, they had more trouble filling those seminars. LG: Why was that do you think? LR: I don’t know, I don’t know um, I know we did a lot of advertising. I used to send letters out to alumni of Skidmore. I would send out letters because I thought some of them would like to get a masters’ degree from Skidmore and we did, we got quite a bit. Our first graduate of the masters’ program was someone who had graduated as an undergraduate from Skidmore. And we also advertised…. LG: Do you remember who that was? LR: Katie..oh, I can’t remember her last name, I think it was Katie (laughs) and she �worked with Jeff Segrave and sports psychology was what she was doing, her program. And we advertised extensively throughout the Adirondacks also because people up there didn’t have access to graduate programs, and we were successful in bringing people who had degrees but didn’t have any graduate degrees LG: And these were primarily liberal arts? LR: Yes, they had to be interdisciplinary liberal arts programs…I always thought the program was quite successful I thought especially it served women, the women who got dumped by their husbands after graduate school (laughs) after they worked to put their husbands through graduate school you know, and then the husbands would split. They got their careers started and then these women were left, they had gone to college, but they had nothing else. We had quite a few of them coming back to get their degrees so they could launch their own careers and I thought that was a great use of the program. LG: So, was it low enrollment that made the program disappear? LR: I think it was a whole lot of things including changing of the culture here at the college LG: Can you explain that a little bit? LR: I get this more second hand because I wasn’t here any longer LG: What year did you retire? LR: I retired, well, in 2000, I went on a phased retirement and I retired fully in 2004 and they had four or five directors after me of the masters’ program, but people told me that the college became more inward as time went on instead of out, just the way that UWW collapsed and the masters hung on for a few more years but then that… and the faculty seemed more inward centered I would say, rather than the external programs weren’t as important and maybe, there was a lot of competition in these areas too. When we �started UWW, we were one of the few programs that offered that kind of education and the same with the masters’ program when we started that. We were an exception and I think that as time went on more and more people especially with online learning could do it in a whole host of ways. You could go to SUNY Albany and do most of your work as an external student, so people didn’t need this kind of learning as much anymore either. So I think there are a lot of factors engaged in that plus money (laughs) which is a whole ‘nother issue. LG: what do you think were some of the outstanding moments for you in your career at Skidmore? LR: I enjoyed teaching in Liberal Studies, the original liberal studies program. I taught every semester in LS 1 and I just thought that was a terrific program. I felt that it educated me as well and it helped me learn in a way to transfer that to students and I just loved that. I thought that was terrific, I loved the wide range of reading. If I was a student (chuckles), I would have taken a course like that if they had had it when I was around, so that was it. Working in the prison program is traumatic, you go up there everyday like I did for five, years - six years and hear those bars clank behind you and you’re in there with men, many of them. Comstock is like… LG: A maximum security? LR: It’s a maxi max you know, it’s one of the worst prisons in New York state where Silent Sam was kept, people like that um, and it’s filled with hardened criminals and these are not nice men I mean they (chuckles), they are tough and there are times when you feel your life threatened. One time they had to sedate a man because I told him he had to take a Sociology course and he said I’m not gonna take one of those nigger courses. His father was killed in the New Jersey riots in the black riots and his father was killed there. He �was a big, huge stevedore, he worked on the docks. His arms were that big! And Danny, he told (me), —he was (laughs) an Irish guy with a high-pitched voice —and I said, “Danny, if you wanna get a degree, you gotta do your social sciences requirement.” And he’s like, “Mr. Reis, I’m not gonna do that,” and I said, “Well you don’t have to get a degree, that’s your choice but if you want the degree..” and he just went off, he went crazy, and then they came down and put a needle in him right away, because I don’t think anybody could have handled him if he really got going, and there were things like that, and you know, it was always tricky having women going into that environment. It was always….most of the time, it worked well. I mean Betty Balevic was such a trooper, she was such a… she went up there from Schenectady every semester LG: She was in the Business Department? LR: Yes LG: And what did she teach? LR: She taught Business Management and Betty would go up there every semester and she had to drive from Schenectady up there, which was a long way and the students loved her. Helga Doblin would go up there and the students loved her, they needed good discipline LG: What did Helga teach? LR: She taught Latin and Greek up there and one time (chuckles) I was up there, we have a little office and I see Helga marching down the corridor *boom,boom,boom*, the only way that Helga could do it and I rush out and I said, “Helga what’s wrong?” and she says, “I gave a man a bathroom pass,” it was like high school, they had a pass you know, and only one could leave at a time because with three-hour courses so everybody had to get out the door. And she says, “He’s been gone ten minutes!” and I said, “Oh, you �want me to go and check on him?” “No, I do that!” (chuckles) and she walks, I would never walk into a bathroom in a maximum-security prison. Helga marches in and then a minute later, she has this guy by the ear and she’s brining him back, “You come back to class!” and she brings him back. This guy was a triple murderer (chuckles) and they revered her because they never had good discipline before, they only had bad discipline so when someone did that for their betterment, they recognized that and they appreciated that so she was special that way so.... But the prison, working in the prison was a special time for me here. I think it took its toll over six years, it was very exhausting work and it was night-time work in addition to day-time work, plus I taught a course up there once every other semester. LG: In? LR: In Literature LG: In Poetry? LR: No, well I did teach poetry courses, but I tried to do the general literature you know, poetry, drama, and fiction LG: Was it an Introduction to American Lit or something like that? LR: It was kind of a hybrid course like an Introduction to Lit, but I remember teaching “Death of a Salesman” one time, and we were acting it out and the guys were playing the different roles and one (chuckles) one of the guys was playing Biff, the oldest son of Willy Loman and he says, “But Pop don’t you understand, I’m a failure! I’m a failure!” and all the guys started crying because it was their life all of a sudden you know, this sense of being a failure I mean, it was such a moving moment. I was tearing up but I didn’t want to (laughs) show them that. I was being moved but also the boy there. So it was really great moments like that. LG: What were the most difficult moments? �LR: (long pause) I think the sense that at times, as a prison program we were cut loose on our own and didn’t get the kind of support that we wanted LG: From the Faculty or from the Administration? LR: Both, both and Rick Rosenfeld was my assistant in the program for a while and when we taught up there we would get paid a stipend. We didn’t get paid much, I mean to begin with, I don’t think we ever got paid equivalent to what the faculty got paid so you know, we weren’t paid really well, so when we taught we would get paid $1500 or something like that back in those days and then Don decided that he didn’t think that we should get paid anymore that we should just do it as part of our regular work. So Rick and I decided to go on strike (laughs) and we said, “Well, okay then we’re just not gonna teach anymore in that case!” Why would we do that? You know you work all day doing administrative work, and then you gotta prepare a class and then you gotta go up and teach three hours and you gotta travel an hour to get there and an hour to get home, and you’re just dead! Why would you do that? So they backed off of that, but that kinda thing, I mean, that was kinda..and UWW was turning $100,000 back to the college every year in surplus money LG: And the money was coming from? LR: The prison program LG: State money? Or Federal money? LR: Well, they got Pell and TAP right, every student got a Pell and a TAP grant plus a HEOP grant so there were three sources of funding coming in for every student and you know, we paid our faculty, but there was a huge surplus every year, and we turned that all back to the college, so when they didn’t want to pay us (chuckles), that was like a slap in the face like that’s what I felt maybe when you say difficult, those kinds of things it’s like for �me it would have been a no brainer to say this staff is important in what they’re doing and we got all this money, let’s support them as well as we can, and that didn’t happen all the time. LG: How did you recruit faculty? LR: Personally, I went around and sat in people’s offices all the time and said listen, I got this program (chuckles) I’m trying to run and it’s exciting and I got a lot of faculty that do it, and I think you’d really enjoy doing it. Phyllis (Roth) did it for a semester. LG: Teaching? LR: I forget what she taught. Her field whatever, you know, area of literature she taught you know, but it was mainly personal salesmanship and I think word of mouth from other faculty. Faculty who did it, had good experiences, who talked to other people. LG: Were there any general science courses? LR: Yes, Dick Lindeman taught every semester, taught Geology all the time, who else did we have? LG: Figured field trips would be a problem LR: (laughs) Yeah, a big problem, but Ken Johnson taught up there also. We had a number of people who taught science courses up there. There was no lab, although, when he taught Geology, he would take a lot of samples up and everything but there is technically no lab. They wouldn’t let us do that, and we got a grant finally to bring computers into the prison. We were the first program in New York State to do that. There’s a grant from a foundation in New York City that Special Programs still gets $20,000 a year from them, and I think it goes towards the Jazz Institute and things like that now, but they supported us for many years with money that allowed us to put computers in the prison. That was a real step forward. �LG: Alright, are there any other moments or interactions with faculty that come to mind? Or Administration? LR: Um, I remember I had difficulties at time with faculty. I had a female faculty who refused to wear a bra in the prison (chuckles) and I said, I can’t let you go in anymore. I said that’s cruel and unusual to the men in there and she finally changed but it was so obvious you know, and one of our faculty members with the guys that came out of prison, she would seek them out for sexual activity… stuff is always difficult (chuckles) you know. You’re dealing with adults first of all, who really can do whatever they want, and yet you know it’s not in the best interest of the people that kind of thing. Our last payment to the faculty was always dependent on them handing in their grades, their final grades, and we had some guy in Economics who didn’t stay here and he simply refused to hand in his grades. This was when I was assistant director. Ken Klotz was then directing the prison program at that time, and I don’t know why he was doing this, but he wanted to be paid and Ken said, “Well, let’s pay him and maybe he’ll…” I said, “No, if he’s not gonna do it with good will now, he’s certainly not gonna do it with good will after he gets his money.” And I had a talk with the guy and I said, “This is their money that’s paid for their education and they deserve their grades. If you’re angry at the administrators or something, you can’t hold their grades (chuckles), cause they’ve earned that and they deserve that and they’ve paid for that with their TAP and Pell money.” And Mehmet got real angry with me one time too. Mehmet and I are close friends. LG: Mehmet Odekon in Economics? LR: Yeah in Economics, and Mehmet wanted me to take off that rule about holding the grades until you pay. He said because we’re professionals! And I said, “I know you’re professional but Mehmet, we still have problems with �getting grades out of people. This is the only hold I have to get the grades.” And he stormed out of my office and Mehmet didn’t talk to me for a year after that. We’re very close friends now (chuckles) but he thought I was just being stupid and a hard ass or something and he was a faculty and I was an administrator and he wasn’t gonna take that from an administrator, but that kind of interaction happened a lot. LG: I wanna go back to the Masters program and ask what were the most fruitful experiences in that program? LR: There were so many. We had an older gentleman, he died last year in fact, it was in his nineties, but Frank Crone was his name and he was a donor to the college. He sat on fifteen boards and he wanted to do a program in Religious Studies. He was an old, Jewish gentleman, who wanted to…he had a firm belief that if people could (chuckles) only understand that Christianity and Judaism are really the same thing, that they grew out of the same seed, and he actually wrote a book about this later on, about the book of James, which was one of the apocryphal gospels and he worked with Sheldon Solomon, whom he finally had a blow up with, and Joel Smith was his faculty advisor LG: In Philosophy? LR: Right, in Philosophy and Religion LG: And Sheldon in Psychology? LR: Yes, and Sheldon in Psychology and this guy did a wonderful program and then he funded a scholarship program for the Masters program afterwards and we named it after him. The Crone Scholarship so that was really nice to happen LG: And he got his degree? LR: And he got his degree, and he didn’t need it for anything. This was just pure, he needed guidance in how to approach the subject he wanted to do �LG: And what subject did he want to do? Do you remember? LR: It was just called Religious Studies, I think. You know, it was the overall Master of Liberal Arts in Religious Studies LG: And there was a final paper that they had to write, a thesis? LR: Yes, that’s what he did his paper on, Christianity and Judaism being the same thing. He worked with Phil West also a lot at that time.. He was in English, passed away my goodness, ten or fifteen years ago now, Phil. LG: Okay, any other interesting theses that came out of that? LR: Let me think back, that’s a long way to think back (laughs) There were so many good students and they worked really closely with the faculty which was really good. Every student had their faculty advisor from a department in which they worked. It was just exemplary the way it worked when it worked well. Like all external programs, I think there are times when it doesn’t work at all for a student. The student can’t get through his or her own motivation. I had a student who called me one time and said she had an adopted child from Russia and the child was psychotic, that it been in one of those orphanages. She said sorry, I just can’t find time to do any studies, I’ve got to take care of this child and I said, you really need to take time for yourself, don’t worry about your studies, you got more important things to do. There was this old, Jewish woman who came into the program, she was from Florida. And Rose must have been between 65 and 70 when she came to the program. She was the sweetest woman in the world. She volunteered for everything down there. If any committee or any social work unit needed help, Rose was there. She couldn’t do academic work and she came, and she did our seminar and I looked at her paper and it was just terrible. It broke my heart, but I made the phone call and I talked to her for about an hour and I told her how much I admired her that she didn’t need a degree to do all the �good work that she was doing, that she ought to continue doing everything she’s doing, and just forget about(chuckles) getting a masters degree, and it went well, much better than I thought it was going . I thought I was gonna wind up with this woman crying on the phone, but she finally thought that was the best advice. LG: Larry, it occurs to me, we haven’t said how that program works. There’s the initial seminar and then what? LR: Okay, and at that time they meet with a faculty adviser to set up kind of an ideal program so, if you want to do religious studies, you might take a course in the Bible etc. and then it was up to the student to find the resources for those courses now, one of the major resources is simply, go to a university near where you live and take a course and then have it transferred into Skidmore LG: And that would mean just presenting the transcript? LR: A transcript, official transcript. The second thing would be to do an independent study with a Skidmore faculty member. In other words, if there is material you wouldn’t find in a normal course, the faculty member would help you put that material together into a special course, an independent study, I’m sure the same way undergraduates do at times here LG: And the faculty would be reimbursed for that? LR: Yes, as well as for mentoring the student as the advisor. And the third thing we did, we started after a while, was to start evening classes on campus for local students cause we always have a cadre of maybe 30 students in the program who were roughly from the Albany, Saratoga area and so one night a week we would have a course in which students could come on campus and study. I remember teaching that course one time. I taught a course called Growing Up in America, and I had seven women and one man, and �the man was a man who taught in the music department at the time. He was a classical guitarist and during the course of that course, he was looking for his birth mother and he found her during the course and we were reading all this Growing up in America with “Huckleberry Finn” and all that literature we were reading at that time and the seven women just mothered him like (laughs) he was a lost child and he would come in and tell us where he was in this search and it just worked beautifully as part of the course. LG: And the purpose of that evening course was to build a sense of belonging? LR: Well, it had to fit into their individual programs first of all but it came from a place where they could come and have actual discussions rather than work totally on their own and as all of us know, that’s a better form of education usually than doing something completely independently LG: Is there anything else about your experience at Skidmore that you would like to share? LR: I had a very good career at Skidmore, I enjoyed myself immensely. I always felt like there was a lot of work to do and I was fortunate to be able to have over my career, four or five different positions and I also headed a number of committees while I was here also, which gave me work with the wider community LG: What committees? LR: Benefits committee, what else would I be on? Benefits stuck out because that’s the year we totally redid benefits for retirement at one point and working in the Karl Broekhuisen era and Steve Harren era was quite a challenge (chuckles) when you’re working with money, but we did and that was good LG: And who was president at the time? �LR: David Porter was president because I remember an incident when we had worked a year and we brought out these recommendations LG: On benefits? LR: On benefits and it went to Financial Policy and Planning committee and Karl changed it in one meeting after our year’s work and two faculty members came to tell me this and I was so angry, I kicked him out of my office. I called David Porter and I said, “You asked me to chair this committee and I said I did, and we did this” David intervened, and it got changed back. I was so angry at that time with what Carl did. LG: Do you want to share what the changes were? LR: I forget what they were LG: It was important at the time? LR: It important at the time. It was like the number of years of service you needed, the strange combination of years of service and age before you could retire and get benefits, medical benefits and you’re like tiptoeing through crocodiles working through all this. Pat Lee won’t talk to me either at that time, because we were giving benefits to families and she argued with me that it should only be the faculty members themselves and no one else and I said but our sense of community is different than that but it was that kind of thing so to work a year and try to come out with something then have it changed in a two hour meeting was like Oh” LG: So the impetus was mostly financial? LR: Of course, yeah LG: Anything else you wanna share with us? LR: No, one good thing as an interesting story is that, do you remember the preppy murderer in NYC, strangled a girl having sex in Central Park? His name was Robert Chambers, he applied to our program up at Comstock and I was �assistant director at that time, I wasn’t in charge of the program, but Don McCormack, he was dean at the time, he said, “I want you to go up and interview this guy because it’s gonna be a kind of a touchy interview,” so I went up and interviewed him and it was just, he was just horrible, just terrible, and we rejected him and he sued the college, on the grounds of discrimination, because we would let all these Blacks and Hispanics in the program, and he was like good White boy and he wasn’t gonna sit and take this. So for many weeks, I had to meet with the college lawyers about this cause I was being sued personally as well as the college being sued, and it was just about to go before the judge and he got in trouble and got transferred out and the judge declared his suit moot cause he wasn’t there anyway so we just dodged a bullet on that one (laughs), but that was a big case at the time, little anecdote but kind of interesting LG: Good, well I wanna thank you very much for taking your time to share all these reminiscences with us LR: Thank you, it was interesting LG: The walk down memory lane? LR: Well, you know, the memory isn’t always real accurate all the time so it’s kind of fun to go back and think about things like that LG: Okay, thanks LR: Thank you LG: It’s been a pleasure � 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 Larry Ries Location The location of the interview 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.) 45:24 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Susan Bender Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit March 29, 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 Larry Ries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource September 24, 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 Larry Ries came to Skidmore in 1979 after teaching and working in the administration for 9 years at SUNY-Albany. His initial job was as an advisor in the University Without Walls prison program at Great Meadows Correctional Facility. He later became Assistant Director of UWW and then the first Director of the Skidmore’s Masters’ program, which was based on the UWW experience but required an interdisciplinary approach to study. He also taught as a lecturer in the English Department and Liberal Studies I, required of all first year-students at Skidmore. In this interview he describes his circuitous route to obtaining his PhD and provides vivid accounts of his experiences in many roles at Skidmore. 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 Cornstock Correctional Facility David Porter Interdisciplinary Collaboration MALS Phyllis Roth UWW https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/06132d52f1ef8948f343635358135e71.jpg 36c9d3ab01003ff6012b70309c498154 https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/27655ae9ba2744505e7cebfc0dbef633.m4a 1ff80bafbf9bb7e23e2f2c298e81d8b5 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 Eberhardt, Sophia Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Woodworth, Marc Location The location of the interview Saratoga Springs, New York Skidmore College, Palamountain Hall Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp3 Record Contributor Individual who prepared the item and/or edited it. Eberhardt, Sophia Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound [SE] What was an av-average week at Skidmore? [00:00:06.418] [MW] I don't know, I was thinking about being here in the very early 80s, oh, I arrived in fall of 1980, and, what I was thinking first about was how much Saratoga's different, which may not pertain exactly to your Skidmore question, but, um, I remember my freshman suitemates and I went downtown and found a really, kind of seedy, backroom pool hall, and we used to like to play pool there once a week and it seemed to me, that that represents the kind of Saratoga that's no longer here. You know, it wasn't entirely upscale bourgeois at that point, it was still a little bit seedy in some places there were a lot of buildings that were unoccupied, there were a lot of storefronts without stores in them, um, I think there were, maybe, more, maybe this is a fantasy, but more, artistic people who, you know, could afford to live in Saratoga, rather than wealthy people, as there are now who can afford to live in Saratoga, so it feels like the, the, the feel of the town is considerably different. [00:01:13.403] Um, a normal week in town would also have meant, in those days, for me, taking the bus to Moore Hall, which was our dorm on Union Avenue, uh, [it] was the last dormitory that Skidmore kept from the old campus which was still in place, and was still, um, a place where sophomores, juniors, and seniors would live, so, I do remember the first year I lived there, taking the bus around twilight in the winter and feeling, you know I was kind of isolated and far away from campus, so it felt sometimes a little bit, uh, like you were out of the mix of your normal, collegiate life, which was both good and also a little strange, sometimes, [inaudible], um, so that was part of the week, definitely, going back and forth on the bus that I remember. [00:02:06.524] It was also, I think, the dorm that I would say, [had] a more bohemian element, that the college lived in, so there were a lot of, uh, artist types there, and, uh, people who thought of it as a little bit of a different place to live, on, on campus, so there was quite a cast of characters there, and, it had its own dining hall, so, um, of course there was still a dining hall on campus here, but it had- it retained its old dining hall which was Skidmore's old dining hall, so, um, the denisons of that particular dormitory would, you know, gather in that dining hall, I remember an interesting cast of characters, a guy named Clark who would always take, uh, the effervescence, or the carbonation, out of his sodas, so he would spend a lot of time filling up soda, uh, filling up glasses of soda and then with his spoon, uh, clinking, the spoon, around through the ice and getting the effervescence to get away so he could drink it [00:03:07.929] Um, there were quite a few people who were, you know, notably eccentric, and it was also, it must be said, at that time, um, quite a drug center I would think. You know, Skidmore didn't, I mean, Saratoga didn't necessarily have a lot of, uh, a lot of industry at that time, but I think there were a number of young people who were selling elicit drugs out of, out of Moore Hall in those days, um, there were some international students, I remember, who, you know, seemingly have a very lucrative full time job it seemed, outside of their studies, in those, in those days. And that seemed to be a little bit based in Moore Hall, so, uh, that was, you know that wasn't, that wasn't part of my week, because I was, I was on an abstinence plan, and I never took drugs of any kind, um, my mother, wisely, made me very [afraid?] of all that stuff, but there were others, probably, who did, so, [there would be?], there would be a little bit of, uh, that kind of element going on down there. But it was, you know, it was still almost the 70s, it was early 80s, and, I guess there was still some of that permissiveness, not that the college would've permitted it, I don't suppose, but it seemed, I think, a little looser now -- then -- than it does now, probably, in all manner of things, and maybe, maybe students weren't, weren't quite so, um, overseen, I guess, in a way. So that's not really much of a schedule of a week but a scan of reassociation. [00:04:37.098] [SE] Do you feel like the students who were on Skidmore's campus then reflected the community in the -- like, in the Saratoga public more, um, and does that correlate to how Skidmore students are with correlation to the public now? [00:04:53.924] [MW] Ya that's a good question, um, it's a little hard for me to remember. I don't feel, that at least, I and my group of friends had a lot to do with Saratoga, I mean, despite going to play pool in the pool hall or, uh, going downtown. When I arrived at Skidmore the drinking age was 18, so people did go to bars and certain ones were Skidmore identified, I would guess, so we, we -- uh, I guess we socialized downtown, maybe, you know, maybe earlier than some Skidmore students do now, but I don't remember having a lot of interactions with townspeople outside of, you know, people who worked at the bank, or bartended, or served food. So I don't know if that's different, I mean, you have a better sense of what it's like now, but it's not your interview, we don't have to talk about that [laugh]. Um, but it, it feels to me that the campus and the people on the campus are more intergrated and perhaps a little more welcome and also welcoming to the people of the town now than they were then, [it] seems still pretty separate, um, I think it was, it would have been, of course, quite a while since the school became co-ed, so it was, you know, no longer thought of as a women's college, but there were still many more women at the college than men, I think it was still 3 or 4 to one ratio, maybe, at that time. And, I think the town still, probably, certainley people who had been here for a while still thought of it as, as -- as a rather posh school for wealthy young women and maybe that made them feel that it was still a separate entity from them, um. And, certainly there were still, you know, kids of means who went to the college and kids who drove very fancy cars, the likes of which I certainley didn't have or wouldn't have seen, and, I think, you know, in this town that wasn't booming economically at that point there was still probably a perception that this was a place for the wealthy to go to school and that probably retained something of a divide in there, before. [00:07:01.722] [SE] Um, so, since you weren't really involved with, like, the Saratoga public when you were here, what factors made you decide to come here and teach and live here? [MW] Hm, well I suppose that had to do largely with wanting to come back and work with Robert and Peg Boyers on Salmagundi Magazine, so uh, that, that became, kinda, my family when I was here as an undergraduate and they became my family in a way, I was very close to them. As a student I worked on the magazine, um, and spent a lot of time in what I aspired to, which was kind of their adult world of being intellectuals and loving arts and writers, um, so for me, Skidmore represented, uh, that world very strongly, and it was something that I was powerfully drawn to because I was here. And when I came back I came back initially, in a way that maybe, wasn't necessarily, going to seem permanent, but, Bob and Peg were on sabatical. I had a reason to want to -- nothing criminal -- but I had a reason I wanted to leave where I was and do something else and, um, and there was this opportunity to come back and, and help on the magazine while they were gone, and teach a few courses, so I came back for those reasons, and it wasn't, I don't think, at all because I didn't enjoy Saratoga when I was here as an undergraduate, um, I did I loved the town and I loved walking in the town, I love the architecture, um, I loved, actually, some of the sense that the grandness of the town had become compromised, because people couldn't keep up the houses anymore and there were numbers of houses on North Broadway which seemed unoccupied, weren't used in the summer even, and weren't kept up, and that was true all over town. So it's still, it kind of had a, had a bit of, um, degenerated charm, in some way, which I liked in a, uh -- and the town had a lot of, uh, a lot of charm for me in that way so I, I always loved being here even if I didn't feel, you know, like I did all that much with people in town off campus. [00:09:22.806] Um, but, so coming back was not dictated by the fact that Saratoga is Saratoga but it certainly helped that it was an interesting town, um, and when I -- when I was here as an undergraduate I didn't have anything to do with Caffe Lena, but by the time I came back I was much more involved I guess with folk music and contemporary singer-songwriter music was something I cared a lot about in Boston and Cambridge when I was in grad school before I came back, and by, so by the time back, Caffe Lena was really on the map for me, almost immidiately when I got back here, and I spent a lot of time at Caffe Lena. One of my classmates at Skidmore was, at that point, running Caffe Lena, in the early 90s, and I, I came back in 1990, and I spent a lot of time at the Caffe, playing and hanging out, and sometimes helping and doing things there, um. I remember when Ani DiFranco, which may not be a musician you know or might be, was sending her first tapes around, and Barbara ?Harris?, who was the manager at the Caffe at that time, opened the tape and, I guess I came in later that day or that night and she said "Oh, I want you to listen to this, it's really different and I think it's something we should consider," and it seemed very out of the box for the Caffe, I mean, it was identifiably singer-songwriter, acoustic-based music, which was their bread and butter, but it was sharp and it was, you know, irreverent, and it was political and it was edgy, um, in terms of its sexual content, um, all things like that. [00:11:05.066] So it wasn't a given for Caffe Lena, which, you know, probably hadn't had that much edge in that way, and we listened to it together and thought "Wow this is great," so Barbara invited Ani to come and play, um, at the Caffe, and I got to open that show, which was terrifically fun, small crowd the first time, maybe 14 people, 20 people, I don't know, and she was just a knock out. So that's to say, um, there was a lot going on, still, artistically, in town, that I started to discover when I came back in the early 90s, and for me Caffe Lena was really central to that. And at that time, and I guess that's a good way to, sort of, answer, not so much how students interacted with town in my day, but how they did in the 90s at least, there were a number of students who were actively, um, involved in Caffe Lena either as volunteers or as musicians who played regularly or came to open mics, um, and so my students who became friends, uh, during that period would spend a lot of time at Caffe Lena too, so there was a real connection there, uh, for the students who liked that kind of music and wanted to involve themselves. So that was a really great bridge to town, I think, for a lot of people, and I believe, even though I didn't have that experience as an undergraduate, since the 60s that's been a really strong bridge between town and campus for people who like that world. [00:12:26.977] [SE] Do you feel like that's something that, like, music especially, is something that Skidmore values, and maybe how -- it's more of like how, what are some of the values of Skidmore that you have seen change, and that you hope to not change, and maybe some things that you hope to change, but, I know that music here is such, is such a scene and obviously that is reflected in the town as well and at SPAC and... [00:12:56.207] [MW] No, that's a, that's a good point, um, I'm trying to think back to undergraduate days in the music scene and, I think it was strong, I definitely knew a number of musicians and [had] a couple of bands of certain kinds that weren't particularly formal, I guess, but we did play, played out a little bit and there were certainly students who had musical inclinations and the culture was strong and certainly classical music culture at the college was strong then as well. There were, I think, already, no -- yea, maybe Filene, there were Filene scholars already, at that point, so some friends were gifted classical pianists, what have you. Um, and then certainly when I came back in the 90s there seemed to be, maybe, more musicians somehow, I don't know if that's true or quantifiable, and ever since there's been a great string of musicians, bands, individuals, singers, who have found that really important, so yea, I think the college has a definite, um, element that, that's highly musical, and not everyone, I suppose, finds their way to Caffe Lena, but, uh, those who do find that connection pretty strong, and -- I'm trying to think of some more stories of those early days, well, and um, Garrett ?Duten? who now is, I think his last name is Duten, who is the person behind G-Love and Special Sauce, went to Skidmore, which, uh, many people know, but uh I remember when he was in my class, probably in the earlier mid-90s, can't quite remember, um, he's played a lot at Caffe Lena, so he would go down there and, and do open mics, and maybe even had a show or two, I'm not sure, as a student I'm not positive about that, [00:14:47.061] and the [?apocrable?], maybe it's true, [mumble] but maybe [?a powerful?] story was that he told his parents that he really wanted to make a go at being a musician and they supported it with the provisal that if he didn't, within a year, sort of establish himself as a musician, um, he could go back to college and they would support his education, but if he took more than a year and then wanted to go back later, um, maybe they wouldn't, so, within a year, sounds too neat chronologically, but maybe it's true, he had a Columbia Records contract, and that was that [laugh], so there were some, certainly some gifted musicians who played there and, and people whos names you don't know, um, haven't had careers in music or were really talented, it was, it was a good scene, and uh, there was a lot of cross-over between how Lively Lucys on campus in those days and the people who were involved with Caffe Lena, um, Barbara Harris, the manager of the Caffe, whom I spoke of earlier, and I did some cross-over productions, so we'd bring shows to campus. I think when Ani got too big for the Caffe we had some Skidmore shows with her. We brought, uh, a singer-songwriter named Shawn Colvin, who was, um, just on the heels of winning her first grammy when she came to Skidmore for a performance that we, we had here, and those were, kind of, cross, um, promoted, as it were setup by the Caffe and the college and Lively Lucy's, so there was a lot of, uh, a lot of musical culture that was going back and forth at that time, in that way too. [00:16:23.973] [SE] Do you remember any notable performances either than Ani DiFranco? [00:16:29.566] [MW] Um, at the college, um, well I loved the Shawn Colvin show, that was terrific, and, um, and the thing I loved most about that night, perhaps, was that, um, I invited a young woman named Mary Lou Lord to open the show for her, and she was somebody I knew from Cambridge, Mass, and she was a street singer, she played in the subways and in Harvard Square and she was a terrific [00:16:54.073] um, singer-songwriter, and, at a time when the consolation of music meant a lot to me is to go listen to her play in Harvard Square in the subways, just sit there for a couple of hours and she introduced me to a lot of musicians and thier songs, she's a real advocate of great songs, and a great chooser of songs to cover, um, and I just loved her and her work and she was, uh, a close friend of Shawn Colvin, as it turned out and they became friendly, I don't know how Shawn and she found one another. Anyways, so that was a great thing because she got to open the show for Shawn, it was a big sold out house at, um, at u, JKB, and she just won the Grammy, Shawn had, so there was a lot of buzz about the show and it was really packed and exciting, it was a really great show. That was a wonderful show. And then, there's a, there's a New Hampshire singer-songwriter, um, who died a couple of years ago, sadly and prematurely named Bill Morrissey, and he had a show at the dance theater that Lena and Lively Lucy's put on together and I remember that he had a great Irish fiddler named Johny Cunningham who's played with a lot of Celtic bands and it just a terrific musician and Bill himself is a very gifted, kind of literary singer-songwriter, um, who actually had a novel published by Knopf, or [?book of great editors?] who's very literate, interesting singer-songwriter, and I, I love that show, he was very, he was very wry, very great on stage, and that was the show that, that I met my wife at actually, so she came to that show and we met there, and that was the first time we had met one another, which was exciting, of course, so that was a memorable show, and I got to introduce Bill that night and, I don't know, I said something modestly funny, and for some reason Billboard Magazine was convering that show and so they ended up writing a really good live review of the show and they also included the thing that I said, which was supposedly funny in the introduction, which is, you know, kind of weird for this little show at Skidmore, would end up in Billboard, and weirdly a quote from me would end up in a Billboard article, so, I, I remember both of those shows pretty well. [00:19:17.595] Um, and we had a lot of good Lively Lucy's shows and um, I, I guess, it's, what is it now, is it Earth Fest? What do we call it? Something like that... [SE] Earth Day. [MW] Earth Day, sorry. Um, so, it seemed, before that became quite as full-blown as it has been for the last decade or so, it used to be kind of a Lively Lucy's, outdoor, spring music day, um, and I think it evolved to include more facets as it has now, but there were lots of really good events, musical events, around that as well. [00:19:49.084] So, and then that, I guess it was more folk-based then, too, it was more of a singer-songwriter and folk-based show than it necessarily is now, and it was some really beautiful April days just out on the green listening to really good music, um, [?that was a piece?] of those days, musically too. [00:20:07.714] [SE] Do you feel like, as a music writer, you've been able to, you know, excel in this environment? Or do you ever feel like you should be living somewhere else? [00:20:21.757] [MW] No I actually, I've never thought, I've never thought that, but now that you mention it, I suppose, because it's a place that is welcoming for music and has a lot of students interested in music, it's been possible for me to imagine courses and to, uh, figure out a way to include in my teaching life, um, the study of music, in, in a way that I certainly didn't when I first came here. I mean, I would teach classes in writing about the arts and we would include some musical writing as well, that was there from the beginning, but then to feel able to design and offer courses that have to do primarly with music and music writing, um, has probably something to do with the fact that musical culture here, um, which is more of a teaching than writing myself, but, um, but, but I think being around so much music and finding it possible to see so many good things that had been used, like SPAC for bigger shows, or Caffe Lena for smaller shows, has been necessarily something that's kept my head wrapped around music a lot, and maybe that wouldn't happen in a different place as much. [00:21:36.331] Um, and maybe the fact that we're pretty approximate to Boston or New York is - a chance to go see music in those places - is possibly significant, but, but you know that's a good question to think about and to think about how the writing of mu-, about music is place-based, I've never really thought of that before. [00:21:58.238] [SE] Um, you just mentioned how you took a course in writing about arts, and I guess, on a broader term, how have the courses offered at Skidmore changed and hopefully have gotten better? Are there any courses... [MW] [speaking over SE] Ya that was a course actually I taught, not took, but, um, just, that was a class that I used to teach a lot for first-year students who took a writing class in English, as they still do, called 105, um, I don't know, I found I because I have a kind of independent, not independent, but kind of hybrid position because I'm editing Salmagundi and serving in that capacity and also teaching as lecturer I'm not teaching as much as people who are full-time faculty, um, I found that the English department, and more broadly the college and MDOCS, has been very open to my proposing different things to do, which, I think, is a hallmark of Skidmore, you know, the ability of the institution to, uh, use the energy and, and interest of its faculty to come up with things that might increase the opportunities for students to do different things and find a way to make that happen. [00:23:18.981] So, that's always seemed to be a hallmark of the institution, is, you know, "this sounds like an interesting idea, how could we limit that instead of saying 'no that's not in the curriculum' or, um, 'we don't have that kind of course, so, I guess we shouldn't have that kind of course.'" People tend to, if it's a good idea, try to make it happen, and I think that has added, I'm just speaking from my own personal experience but I'm sure that's true for any number of faculty who proposed new courses and figure out how to, you know, implement what they, what they really love to teach in the classroom, I think, um, that's probably something that creates a lot of good energy around what we offer students. Is it different than what happened in the old days? I'm not sure if it was more rigid then or not, I don't know. Um, but, I've always appreciated the openness to ideas and the openness to encouragement of new things that [inaudible] the academic life that I've experienced here, at least. [00:24:17.210] [SE] Ya, that's great. Um, kind of to direct it back to something you said much earlier, you said that you were living at Moore house... [MW] Moore Hall. [SE] Moore Hall, Moore Hall, um, were you here when the campus got switched to... [00:24:30.793] [MW] No, that had happened probably, what, 72... so it was probably about eight, eight or ten years before the switch was happening, I don't know when it was completed. So that was, like, the last dorm, and they kept that dorm for quite a long time and people lived there, I'm not sure, they just tore it down this year, as, um, as they've started to put up condos on that, on that spot, um, and it was a, you know, terribly ugly, but endearingly ugly, building [laughter from SE] that was made of pink, um, rock-like material that was supposed to age to gray, an elegant gray, but it never did, so it was known as the "Pink Palace" and, you know, it-it was kind of a, I don't know what it was -- a 1960's, kind of, failed cubist design that looked very different from anything on Union Avenue, that's for sure. [00:25:20.402] And it had no trace of Victoriana about it, whatsoever, so um, so no I didn't experience that switch, and, you know it was interesting though to be part of that vestigial campus that was downtown because, you know, I also, I also loved the fact, when I wasn't taking the bus that we would walk to campus, which was a significant, a significant walk, a 20-25 minute walk, and just to be part of town in that way and really experience the architecture of the beautiful, old buildings that, that lined all of the streets, and to feel like Saratoga had a deep history, and it had, uh, a sense of place that wasn't fully dependent on the college, though the college was part of that sense of place, seemed to be really important, and, and, you know, it provided a kind of depth to your experience here, I guess, as a, as a student or as a person that is not insignificant. [00:26:13.189] I mean there are so many wonderful colleges within a very short reach of here, um, and some of them are in, you know, tiny towns essentially out in the middle of the country and, I think we have a special, uh, a special reality here because of the town's deep history and what's available to us, maybe the most notable aspect of that is the architecture which we can see and experience and walk past each day, and that gives us that sense, but then the more you start to understand the town as a whole and its history and what's gone on here and how it was first an Indian -- Native American healing place and then became, also, a healing spring for white settlers, um, and established itself in that way, that long history is not what you have everywhere. [00:27:08.412] [SE] Yea... [MW] So... [SE] Yea. Um, so I guess to wrap it up, how do you define your relatinoship with that Saratoga history that you were just talking about and also just Saratoga today and especially Skidmore College. [00:27:26.818] [MW] Hmm, um, I don't know, I find [that] because I grew up in an area of Massachusetts, um, I grew up in Carlisle but my friend was from Concord, the next over, which has itself a very rich history and was, you know, obsessed with the American Revolution when I was a boy and I went to high school in a town where Thoreau and Emerson wrote and were buried, that, it's sort of unthinkable to me to live in a place that I don't know the history or care about it, so for me, understanding upstate New York history, which I didn't know that much about, coming from Massachusetts, and starting to look into the Native American history around here and how this land was contested by the Mohicans and the Mohawks, the Iroquois and the Algonquian, different peoples, and how the Dutch influenced the area -- that's become something I've really spent a lot of time reading about and thinking about and that I'm deeply interested in. [00:28:30.077] So, so for me part of, part of being a Saratogian is, is really having a sense of the importance of that past and the detail of that past as much as I can and that makes the place, for me, livable, in some way, I mean that's really important to me, is to-is to have a sense of place of -- a place's history, and, you know, there's a lot more to learn, I don't know anything like all I could but what I do know has made this place feel rich and feel very much like home or a home, um, in a way that it wouldn't if it didn't have history. [00:29:08.296] And Skidmore's sort of impossible to think of in any objective way outside of my own experience because it's been home for so long, you know, aside from, um, six years when I was at graduate school , you know, I've lived here since I was eighteen years old and it's inextricable from every development that's -- that I could imagine for myself I suppose. Um, and, it's really where I, you know, as a-as a place, as, Skidmore, as a place where I lucked into a relationship with some of the smartest people I've ever met who are incredibly good-hearted and incredibly brilliant, um, in the English department, in Salmagundi-at Salmagundi, uh, Magazine, at the development of my love of literature which I came to Skidmore with, but which changed and deepened when I was here, uh, and continues to do that and to talk, you know, in these offices with Robert and Peg and our student assistants and other colleagues in the department about work that we love and to communicate with some of my favorite authors who I happen also to be friends and contributors to our magazine seems like a really extraordinarily rich way to live and to me that's completely inextricable from Skidmore and from living in Saratoga. [00:30:35.810] [SE] Yea, that's great, that you so much. [MW] You're welcome, thanks. 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 Marc Woodworth Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Spring 2018 February 21st, 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 professor and alumni Marc Woodworth. He discusses his time as a student on campus versus as a professor, and life as a Saratogian in general. Language A language of the resource ENG Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Eberhardt, Sophia '19 1980s 1990s Caffe Lena downtown campus Lively Lucy's Moore Hall music public history Salmagundi Skidmore faculty https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8997234c864fa71e2191e1dc562931bf.jpg bc6829bbf1e05e79a767ba7c5c33257a 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. 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 Public History Class Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Spring 2019 Nursing public history https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/182032eb5e97f1dcbd7e173a63593474.jpg 2a5e2d65c0f01e2e157008103ea2d881 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. 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 Public History Class Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Spring 2019 Nursing public history https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/8258415beb5efd1acf54e8b37347b0ae.jpg e9122a719692b39490b10f122664fba8 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. 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 Public History Class Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Spring 2019 Nursing public history https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/071db233394566ef40b34338b6fd93bb.jpg 4098179cc94af1c9d6a61aa128169868 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. 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 Compassionate Hands Exhibit Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Spring 2019 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Scope Magazine Nursing public history https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/daf751948e1d097767a5ec451ecc5953.jpg 043b9f62a8a4aad22bbb6ed73824c65a https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/05e4d29b23c0ba2dc6d9830aeea3570a.mp3 ff6259f1759f07125b156f82e3fb96ba https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/516384fac4f44cf011fcd7a2c54514c9.pdf e3b75bf026f6bac65ff10bfd8ca91372 PDF Text Text 00:00:00.000 Jd: Are we recording? Okay. Kris: Ready? Okay. 00:00:04.322 Kris: Hi! My name is umm Kris Leggiero and I've been here, I am the SGA accountant at Skidmore for 17 years. Jd: Umm my question is, cause I know you are from long Island and then you came here, but before we get into the transition, what was your favorite childhood memory in long Island? 00:00:25.000 Kris: Okay. My favorite childhood memory on Long Island, uh does it have to be in Long Island, or, cause I did, you know I did, umm , I grew up also, you know, I lived in Brooklyn for a short period in time and for, I think more of my memories come from Brooklyn actually, which is really interesting. I just remember cause when we, when we lived in Brooklyn, It was, we lived in an apartment building. I grew up with my four sisters in a one bedroom. So by the time we moved to long island, it was a little bit different, and we had a house and you know everyone had their own bedroom so It was a little bit different growing up, but being in a room with my four sisters with these beds lined up one after the other, and, it, those are the memories that really stick in my head, because we were so bonded because we spent that much time, you know together in that room, whether it was fighting or laughing, or whatever, being silly. Or jumping from, this is a really good memory because I just remember it so vividly. We would jump from bed to bed to bed and go back. And we all, we all waited for my parents to come in and yell at us. [00:01:35.000] And they never did, I guess they figured we were, you know having so much fun and we were staying out of their hair. So, they, were like just let them do. It's funny because there are so many memories, but those are the ones that stick in my mind. Just the four of us in that room, late at night, probably staying up later than we should have been and just laughing and bonding and til this day we are just so close. [00:02:00.368] And I think it’s because of those moments of being so close back then. Jd: It's so interesting that you say that because a lot of times when you speak about your accent and you refer to it as your long island accent but then your memories are just from Brooklyn. Kris: Yes? Long Island I guess, you know, I moved to Long Island when I was in fourth grade and umm, but I guess. we were kind of, well my sisters were older and we just started going our own ways. And Long Island, I think my biggest memories of Long Island which is you know, I don’t know, it was just more of like when I was older and able to go out. And going to the different clubs and having fun with friends, and that period of my time as opposed to, but the �memories that I love the most are when I was younger and that's why I kind of go back to Brooklyn. [00:02:57.752] Jd: Those were the foundations. I wanted to know what influenced you to move to Saratoga. Kris: Oh! That's a good question. If you ever been to Long Island, there's a lot that influenced me. (laughing). So actually, what really happen so my children were not in school yet and a good friend of mine who I grew up with, I knew since oh my gosh, we were probably nine or ten years old, knew her through school and till this day we are best friends, [00:03:34.487], umm she went to school up here. By the time, she was in grad school, I guess and moved up here. I was already, I was married, I had kids, she was you know still in her path. I would come and visit her. I always use to come up. The funny thing is about is, she lived in Albany. The funny thing is, when they say you know you're from Long Island, and you may appreciate it this, I am not really sure, but when they say you know you are from Long Island when you think that Westchester is upstate, well that is so true. [00:04:05.000] because I never realized there was something to up North. I use to come visit her in Albany, and it was nice whatever. One weekend she says, "Let's go to Saratoga" and I'm like, "What is Saratoga?" (Laughing) So we came up actually for the big race, the Travers race, and we came up and I was like oh my goodness why did you not bring me here. It was just a beautiful town, everything I was looking for, and I love simple, I love being simple. At the time it was just a very simple [00:04:50.000] quiet town, fell in love with it. Ended up getting in touch with the builder, had a house built very quickly, before my kids got into school, and just moved up. And love it. I feel like I am on vacation every single day. Jd: Till this day? Kris: Till this day and I've been up here since '93. Over, way over 20 years, just absolutely love it. Jd: That leads me to my next question. What surprised you the most about Saratoga, what made you love it so much? (Laughing) Kris: So, what really surprised me about Saratoga, again that's a really good question again because this is another vivid memory. I was, I was probably on my first couple weeks here, and I am on Broadway, [00:05:32.608] and grab a cup of coffee, just kind of getting use to the town and seeing what stores are there. That was just about the time where bigger stores were popping up like Eddy Bauerer, Anne Taylor and all that section was not even there, and those hotels were not even here. And I grab my cup of coffee and I am walking through town and you know, just kind of minding my own business, and every �person, I am not joking, every person I pass was like "good morning, good morning" and I am looking around, are they talking to me. I was just not use to that. People are just umm, you know. people are just really friendly and they stop to talk to you. That, and on Long Island everything is just rush, rush, rush, people aggravated, traffic and then moving up here and just like living and it’s a funny thing, I was talking to someone just yesterday and she was making fun of my walk actually because I walk to slow, but that never was like that. As soon as I moved up here, I'm like that’s it, I am not rushing around anymore. I am just taking my time. That moment in town when people were saying hello to me, and I figured someone was behind me (laughing) [00:06:55.870], that they were talking to someone else. It's a great town, it’s an absolutely fabulous town. Jd: That's why I came to Skidmore, and financial aid, but when I came to visit everyone was so nice and saying hi all the time. It is so different in New York City. You don't say hi to anyone, you barely make eye contact. Kris: It is so different. It’s like this is the way I want to live. This is the way, you know, I knew in my core, that’s who I was because I love talking to people and I love being friendly, but down in Long Island. They will look at you with three heads, they are not going, you know, there like, "What do you want?" [00:07:37.333] Jd: It's almost suspicious when people are too nice in New York City. Kris: Yes, exactly. Jd: What was one thing that New York City had that Saratoga didn’t? Kris: Long Island? Something that Long island had? Jd: or Brooklyn Kris: Well, I have to go back to Long Island, so the thing that Long Island had that Saratoga does not have, and something that I wish it had, ugh the beaches. Without a doubt, without a doubt. I grew up ten minutes from the ocean. We use to ride our bikes down there and spend my whole summers there. The lakes are lovely, I will not go in a lake. But they are lovely. But the beach I so miss, but I do go back just for that. Jd: Are there beaches by here? Kris: You know, it will take me about three and a half hours to get to Jones beach on Long Island, but I guess Massachusetts. Everything is still probably around three hours away. �Jd: Nothing around here Kris: No lovely lakes, that’s about it, but it doesn’t compare. (laughing)You can’t jump in the waves in a lake.[00:09:02.705] Jd: You kind of just stay in the lake. Kris: Its beautiful to look like at, its serene, but it’s not the same, not the same. And bagels and pizza. Have to throw those in. Jd: Pizza is a big one. Kris: Yes, very big. Jd: And I feel like even when I go back now, it’s hard to find a good New York City Pizza because I don’t know where the good spots are anymore. Kris: I know, yeah that’s true. Yeah that’s true. Jd: So I wanted to transition into now your life at Saratoga and Skidmore, but more towards club life and the transitions in the seventeen years you’ve been here, Going towards your life, what’s your favorite part about it?[00:09:55.328] Kris: Favorite part about my job. Well. so, there's two favorite parts if I may. I've been doing bookkeeping, accounting, financial work since I've been 18 years old, and I love it! I absolutely love it. Umm, but I did work for an accounting firm, small accounting firm and I loved my work, but I am a people person, so it was very difficult for me. So, when this job became available I interviewed for it, and got the job. [00:10:40.870] I was able to do my love, the accounting that I love. I'm a little bit of a nerd. But then to be with the students and I have to say, working with students, and working with, you know, I consider you adults, but you know what I am saying, when I say adult, right two different things. The students here are amazing, they are motivating, they, and still seventeen years later I am still in awe of the students here. And, but they give me that you know, that motivation, seriously to do things in life. Like, everything that they can, like I can’t and I say this to everybody because I amazed at everything that you guys do. The clubs, and keeping up your grades, and working, and just like being these beautiful people. I was walking across campus the other day, again here we go again, the students, like three students, didn’t even know, it was early in the morning, I was heading over to a meeting and their just like, "good morning," and I am like, "really." These students are so nice too, and I am sure there are a few that are trouble makers, but for the most part the children are amazing. [00:12:05.870] And I am very fortunate, and every day I come to work and say "I �love what I do, I love my job." After 17 years, and it's because of you, it seriously is. Jd: It is so interesting, this conversation keeps coming up this week. I keep on talking to people about how amazing the students at Skidmore are and of course I am thinking about the pants that people wear because there are so amazing. Just looking at people's pants, especially in the fall or in the spring, I’m just like, because they are always so subtle, a lot of Skidmore students are always subtle but always doing a lot with their work [00:12:46.710]. So many interesting things too. It’s insane, like the art students, the students with computer science, like animation, like I just realized this week that that’s a whole sector of a course, that someone can specialize in animation. I’m just like, what, that’s awesome, that people are gaining these skills here, like that’s such an interdisciplinary space. Kris: You do, the students do so much, and they do everything so well. Even the fashion show, it’s like all the time you spend on that, that blows my mind because I work and I go home and I am like on the coach. [00:13:32.312] (Laughing) I'm done, but it’s so amazing. It keeps me young, it keeps me motivated. Like constantly striving, I can’t imagine if I worked in the CPA office, I couldn’t imagine where I'll be. I will probably be ten years older than I am. Just being here and the energy from the students. I feel so grateful on that end that I get to stay young and refreshed. I am very challenged in some areas like technology, but the students help me so when I go out in the real world, my world, I look pretty smart. (Laughing) Thanks you too. Jd: So my next question is, no actually, I am going to transition to somewhere else. What has been your favorite memory with a student at Skidmore? Kris: A student? Oh wow. That is so hard because I’ve met so many incredible students and bonded with so many incredible students. I think, I don’t know a specific memory here, because there is so many. But I think my, I think, when students graduate and we still have that connection, and I am still invited to weddings, and baby showers, [00:15:19.648] a specific memory, I have a student who calls me, I think almost every week and he graduated six years ago. And it’s you know, those things, those are just, those to me, mean so much. It will be very hard for to pick a specific memory for here. Jd: I think that answered it perfectly. Shifting over to clubs, umm, how have the clubs shifted over the years, if they have? Kris: I don’t know if there's been a big shift, what I see, it’s very typical, very consistent. The clubs that are really active, tend to remain active year after year after year. There may be a few clubs that have been active, that all of a �sudden, we have to have that conversation like "what’s going on," "how’s the membership, how’s the eboard working" because we can tell. We can tell the clubs that have been so active, and the ones that have been active all of a sudden are kind of. I think it’s very consistent about the clubs that are created each year or chartered each year and then the other clubs that have been chartered and kind of the eboned flow. You have that interest for one year or two years and then it declines and then the club gets sunsetted because there is no interest. All of a sudden, two years later, "Hey, there is this kind of a club, I am interested." [00:17:19.263] I think it is very consistent in that way. I know the clubs that are active, consistently are active. The ones that we kind of know, that have the eboned flow and we expect it. You know, we expect it. I personally, on my end, what I do, I don’t see any major shifts in clubs. It is interested to see the ideas on the clubs that are created and the interest, you each year and some clubs where the interest it’s like, "Woah we can’t do that," so I think it’s all consistent how it ah plays out. Jd: Do you have a favorite event you like to go to? Kris: Well every year I try to go to an event I have never been before so I go to the circus club or I go to an acapella event. One of my favorites, and not because you are sitting in front of me, this happened a long time ago, it’s the fashion show. I love, and maybe it's because I know all the work you put into it, but then again, I love fashion. So it’s something that I am passionate about. [00:19:06.847] But, the other events I love going to, I love going to the culture dinners, love whether it be Hillel, Hayat, I love those dinners. I love the performance, the food. It expands my world. I also love going to sporting, I love watching the men’s hockey team. Love it. And I've been to the alpine ski races, absolutely love that as well. Jd: And those are a little bit further? Kris: Yes, I'll go up to gore mountain which is about an hour away. I’ve been there a couple of times, absolutely love those too, but I do try to go to, I've been to Comfiest. And. I’ve been to the outing club, they have the film screening I've done that. So, I try to spread it out, things I haven’t been to, Fun day? I'll show up if I have to. [00:20:20.870] No, I love fun day but, Jd: It can be a little hectic sometimes. Kris: I pop in, I pop in, say hello early enough and then I am usually out of there. Jd: A little bit pf a personal question, I really want to know the answer to. How has student fashion shifted since you've been here? �Kris: Oh! How has student fashion shifted? You know and this is amazing, and I do, I watch student fashion. I love seeing what the students wear. [00:21:00.870] I can’t mimic it, but I may throw in something a little age appropriate for myself every now and then. What I see is like the different styles from when I Jd: They are coming back. Kris: They are coming back! and I love it. One year I saw leg warmers and I’m like, "Wait that’s the 80's" Umm, I’ve seen the wide, the bell bottom pants. I love, and I am like oh gosh, I should have saved all those clothes. [00:21:32.190] Jd: There are a few pieces I took from my mom, she was going to throw them out. I was like no these are going to come back. I am going to keep these. Kris: As I go through my closet, I am like why did I give it up. But you know, but here is something I am very impressed by. I have been on other college campuses, most people in their Pajamas. Not at Skidmore. (Laughing) you know and its, students just love to, whether they mean to or not, they look great, and of course I miss my little hall way downstairs, like a little fashion, cause that’s you know, I love to dress uniquely. i know quite a few students who do. As a matter of fact, I ran into a student the other day and she was wearing these animal print booties and I am like oh my god. I have those booties, I am so cool. I think its Diane. I have the same booties as her, I wouldn’t wear them here, but that was so cool to me. Jd: Seeing the fashion here, is just, is incredible to see what people wear and how they put it together. And everyone has such a different style. Kris: Exactly, sometimes the same. There’s this joke, everyone at Skidmore dresses the same which is so true because me and tory have come in with the same outfit and we will take a picture. And it’s like, and again, and here is how the students inspire me. Because I am like, I love your headband. I’m like, "That might look good on me: so I go out and I’m like, let me try it. Here is my work, this is what I do day in and day out. It is just so amazing that I can take so much more away from this beautiful campus that we are on. And that’s why every day I am so grateful for my job, for what I do here, cause I love what I do, I love working with the students, I love bonding with the students, I love what I learn from students. And it’s like, sometimes, alright I am too happy. [00:24:29.375] Jd: I think that was a perfect ending to our interview. Usually for interviewing I have to let you speak, and we are so interactive, I have to stop my thoughts all the time and I want to say mmhmm. And I think I did a few in here. �Kris: But that’s okay because when we are interacting that brings out different, you know, thoughts in my head. I am like oh yeah, that’s what interviewing and talking is about Jd: Is there anything you like to mentioned that you feel like we haven’t covered or any last final thoughts? Kris: about what in particular? Jd: About anything Skidmore/Saratoga Community Kris: You know, again, I just feel very grateful. In my little world, I feel very grateful. Obviously, we are not without struggles, but I also see those struggles being addressed. And I am grateful for that as well because I’ve also seen in the past where they weren’t. I am glad to see that we are getting to a place where we are more conscious and moving ahead. That is great to see on this campus. The college itself, the students remain to be amazing. The one thing I have noticed about students though from when I first started there wasn’t a passion for a stance and now I feel like students, all group of students when they have a passion they are going for it. And that to me, and seriously, for years and years and years, we've talked about. "Why isn’t there passion" on campus like why isn’t everyone like, you know. Then all of sudden there, boom, and it’s become this snowball effect and that’s great. That’s part of the college experience, tis not only academic. Its finding your spirit, its finding your voice. [00:26:50.870] Its really important as well and I am so glad that a lot of students have found their voice and are pushing us forward. Jd: I think a lot of that also has to do with the growth of social media, where we are constantly connecting with people who might not have the same views as us. Makes us even more passionate about what we believe in. "Wait, but I believe this and I want to speak about this" and I think it triggers conversations in ways where before may have been closed into a space that not everyone had access to. Kris: That is true. That is very true, and it’s also learning, I think it’s a hard thing to do, but learning to appreciate someone else’s opinion and learning to respect someone else's opinion and respecting their opinion. [00:27:40.870] I think that’s such a hard thing, because you are like "No, you're wrong." Jd: And as soon as you hear something that you don’t agree with you want to respond, but the trick is to listen. I need to understand someone else’s point to be able to articulate mine. �Kris: And respect, that’s your perspective, that’s your view, that’s great, In my mind your wrong (laughing) [00:27:59.925] But I am not going to say that. So yeah, that’s the shift I see in students, just that compassion and passion and speaking up and moving forward. It is great to see. Jd: Thank you for allowing me to interview you and have this conversation. I really enjoyed it. Kris: Me too. Me too! That was great. � 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. Location The location of the interview 3rd Floor of Case, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Add in subscription here Record Creation Date Day/Month/Year of record creation/edit 08/03/2018 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 Kris Leggiero Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource The date you did the interview. 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 Two to three sentences about the interview. Language A language of the resource Eng. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource De La Cruz, Jamerly, '18 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/73f81792702f0f44bfd7cf3f8c8e972a.png dbf3b6f6a9a28a1436e42dd4d594ce12 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 Old Iron Spring, Ballston Spa, NY Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Unknown 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. Old Iron Spring - Ballston Spa - balneology - mineral water URL https://brookside.pastperfectonline.com/photo/E348B04B-11B8-4BDB-979C-070251333680 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 Old Iron Spring, Ballston Spa, NY 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. Brookside Museum, Saratoga County Historical Society URL: https://brookside.pastperfectonline.com/photo/E348B04B-11B8-4BDB-979C-070251333680 Description An account of the resource Ballston Spa, NY, where the Old Iron Spring is still working, was originally more popular than Saratoga Springs as a place for tourists to visit and take the waters in the 19th Century. But the opening of Gideon Putam's Tavern and Guesthouse helped shift spa tourists to Saratoga Springs. https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/176f6f4b0a5598cf2c99e3de51d472e9.png d8ba8c6ccffab8452282868bb257c38c 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 photograph, portrait 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. Dr. Simon Baruch - hydrotherapy - balneology - public bathhouse advocate - Simon Baruch Research Institute of Balneology - rehabilitation - health - wellness URL https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101408600-img 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 Dr. Simon Baruch (1840-1921) 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. U.S. National Library of Medicine URL: https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101408600-img Description An account of the resource Dr. Simon Baruch was an influential advocate of hydrotherapy as treatment for various illnesses such as arthritis and injury. He worked in Saratoga Springs for many years and wanted to build a spa facilities that could compete with those in Europe. Abstract A summary of the resource. Dr. Baruch is an expert on hydrotherapy and supporter of greater use of water treatments at Saratoga Springs. https://ssmp.skidmore.edu/files/original/b8635fbb44cbc252d3fb91da0aff93ec.png e525d60ef4bc58f82716fa2def6203c2 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 Map 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. Bike - Mountain biking - Trails - Health - Saratoga - Map - Wellness - Queensbury URL https://recreation.queensbury.net/assets/pdf_files/QPR.MtnBikeTrailsMAP.pdf 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 Gurney Lane Mountain Bike Trails 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. Queensbury Parks and Recreation Description An account of the resource Map of mountain biking trails located at Gurney Lane Mountain