Performing Arts No Matter Your Taste, There’S a Creative Expression in This Melting Pot That Will Cater to It

SPACES & PLACES: The 16-acre campus of Lincoln Center offers “a complete detachment from the hustle and bustle of the city, where you can just be immersed in a performance—ballet, opera, symphony, and others,” says Barbara Grossman Berger ’77, who cochairs the New York Metro Women and is a member of the Metro New York City Network Leadership Cabinet.

20 ROCHESTER REVIEW July–August 2018

RochRev_July2018.indb 20 7/30/18 4:31 PM INSIDE VIEW: “Part of what gives you that insider’s view of New York,” says fourth-generation New Yorker Noah Pizmony-Levy Drezner ’00, “is that you can actually step back to see it from afar and appreciate where we are.”

Show Us Your Town

There are lots of reasons New York draws 62.8 million visitors annually. But the 14,000 alumni who call themselves locals know the teeming city as much more than a tourist attraction.

By Robin L. Flanigan

Minutes after the ferry horn blares, Noah Pizmony- It’s one of 11 regional networks—and the second Levy Drezner ’00 nods toward his destination, largest—initially identified as part of a strategic ef- Governors Island, a national monument in the fort to build a stronger sense of connection among heart of New York Harbor. Rochester’s key constituencies. “This place is a hidden gem,” says the fourth-gen- Over three days, Pizmony-Levy Drezner and eration New Yorker, who goes to the island often other members of the Rochester community en- for concerts or just for a tranquil respite from the thusiastically offered an insider’s peek at a city cap- commotion of the city. “Tourists might come here, tured countless times in songs, books, and movies. but city people know about it more.” “Part of what gives you that insider’s view of New Pizmony-Levy Drezner, whose family has been in York,” Pizmony-Levy Drezner says minutes after New York City since the early 1900s, is well suited the ferry docks, “is that you can actually step back for pointing out places that have special resonance to see it from afar and appreciate where we are.” for locals. The associate professor of higher educa- And there is plenty to appreciate. tion is one of about 14,000 Rochester alumni who The way Barbara Grossman Berger ’77 sees it: live in the New York City metropolitan area, a re- “New York is the only place I know where it seems gion that includes small parts of New Jersey, Penn- like a little bit of the rest of the world is in it—and sylvania, and Connecticut. at the same time, the New York City culture is so He’s also cochair of the Metro New York Net- uniquely its own. The two don’t seem like they work Leadership Cabinet, an organization that should coexist, but they somehow do.”r helps alumni and other members of the region’s University community stay engaged through ac- Robin L. Flanigan is a freelance writer based in tivities, programs, and opportunities. Rochester.

SHANNON TAGGART FOR ROCHESTER REVIEW (OPPOSITE); ADOBE STOCK (ABOVE) July–August 2018 ROCHESTER REVIEW 21

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T P A 6 E E t 7 h E As 95 n k S 1s Park tor D 6 ia 94th St o r d t 6t t Blvd i s a v C S S t l e h t m University. r P n S e B tr E t a t Hudson River a r y l P 65 s a d L W ar th t B P e in k S S l n co y 57 S t t v l e a th s d n n S 1 t e Tu v w t Rockefeller t 3 S Stephen Givant ’81 K nn A d E S y Asto Jf el h a E 6 t a ria B t o 5 0th N University 1s w lvd 0 r 9 2 n 1 B th St i Franklin Lakes, New Jersey W St e e 4 ve t v 2n e S A d A v S h t e 495 t t A S vd Raised in Queens, Givant began his d 9 h l a t e y B 8 v E d n lis A 57 o r ve P t B e A a F h r o h lt a h oa e S rt e P e t t B v career as a corporate lawyer in New 5th St t v W 7 e O E dw o se e v v d N oo A 3 a R C K 6 r A 9 A och y 1 s t o k h h 3 8t 1 on r S k 6 4 25 Citi l t t r e Q t l e a 2 ue h h t York City and now serves as chief a v h P 1 e A g P P A nsb v S e S Field e lan d E o t t 9 Q n 5 ro P 2 3 B o e r financial and legal officer for an ART SCENE: Overlooking the Hudson River, the Cloisters—ank outpost14 of the d r i th S id n S t ge R t Av t 19 d d W E 4 d B w lv a 3 2 G y B 0 n vd 25 278 l Metropolitan Museum of Art that specializes in medieval European art—o t d Bl v r aerospace and defense firm based in d Vi l h rn 1 e l S W S e a d n i t t e th n g 3 v or n e n W 4 N K i W 2 th A d has a setting that can “take your breathF away,” says Stephen Givant ’81. 9 S Bryant t t northern New Jersey. W th t s S Ce e S St 1 v hn rd nt A o Park 3 J r 2 r Kissena le e D a USTA Billie Jean e Washington Park v R lt Ave l n B e e 25 oseve P Corridor Park owe e v A D Ro k Tanya Chanphanitpornkit ’15E n v k F y King Tennis Center o rs A A e r Av T G S v Madison a J ri t h th d u

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l ol o n v g la n S d d St r A B n e n Tu C College nne i B v i l e the Hudsony River in upper Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, feels like l k B W h k o d c y rden e s i ue Ave 495 son ve n o he is a private investor. nn a r n d d A a o R e a e h W r t u v r d V dwa 9 K h a retreat. “It’s just so peaceful,” says Stephen Givant ’81, “and the F 6 a A D 278 h F H o Queen 6t s a d r Mi e n R dtown Expy v Av G v B Tompkins e h l D r M F n ewel o e a Catherine Nguyen-Martinez ’08 o B J gardensJ take your breathn away.” The museum offers tours, concerts, tg C v ry B n h McCarren 6 o r n Square Park l d i A e m s i v e to 1 r d r ph s C y e h w r a S t e t G Park t C o d o r lv n Bronx, New York l 2 an C exhibitions, and a gift shop. u S o m M B B t m b 1 5 d t r mu us D St E e a ni r t H l n l p S ou P o P Born and raised in the Bronx, a st t k w 78 e D o s A r elan n e y ve t c t St H g w n e S East River a y u lo Q e St t P l u b C t t mb e Nguyen-Martinez is a second-genera- American Folk Art Museum t S i e e S P Park Y n G n e s rand St Jersey City h o e Av B c l t lv M e d Av r t lle e v d lio d tion New Yorker. She works in cancer Ch u S C A t t ran E 2 Lincoln Square h a r G a n o S m C te al e p er A b S o t t e t t v lit ek S r e A a e nd s n a y Wil A r Jersey City St G t ve M G research at Memorial Sloan Kettering “Everything is colorful and relatable” at the country’s premier col- a ra liam e f nd n pk a St sbu e T Medical Center M F L rg K etropolita n Br n Ave r io City Hall ay e w 8 Cancer Center. —Robin L. Flanigan Broad idg e n lection of work by self-taught folk artists, says E e s U Barbara Grossman 0 v h Park A t ke y P h Tp c o S n Berger ’77, who likes that she can wander through the entire muse- r n t io a d n e y M t U v a Ma R ve A S d r A d w y pe For more information on regional um withoutl losing the whole afternoon. “You can see the influence d r N nha Bro e o ie a D adway o f o FDR n C r r d ky a tt o ve n P G B A ckie Robinso networks, events, and volunteer of people’s cultures, not of a place where they were trained, on their Brooklyn Bridge an R g e Ja in pk Br n T S sh nio M t r i u U etr opportunities, visit Rochester.edu/ work.” The museum’s collection includes more than 7,000 artworks S D d Fl op er R g olit at FD e an A W ve alumni/regional-network. dating from the 18th century to the present. Admission is free. Also Le W e t A yrtle A Bridge S v M ve Liberty State Park g e Victory Field Battery r u Park W Ellis Park b s Woodhull o m o 22 ROCHESTER REVIEW July–August 2018 SHANNON TAGGART FOR ROCHESTER REVIEW a d Island i Medical Center Maria Hernandez Park h Myrtle Ave l Forest Park l a i v e W n B lv

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c Park Avenue Armory 643 Park Ave. Historic brick building on the outside, modern installation art on the inside. That’s what lures Tanya Chanphanitpornkit ’15E to the unconventional music, dance, and other work exhibited in this space built by the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard. “In a lot of museums, you usually look at art from one perspective,” she says, “but when it’s interactive, you feel like you have a voice in it, too.” Performing Arts No matter your taste, there’s a creative expression in this melting pot that will cater to it.

d Symphony Space 2537 Broadway This cultural destination is home to more than 600 music, dance, comedy, theater, film, and literary events each year. “It’s off the beaten path, easily accessible, and relatively inexpensive,” Givant says. Visi- tors can attend a taping of “Selected Shorts,” a public radio show and podcast, as well as annual music marathons and the annual “Blooms- day on Broadway” celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

e Lincoln Center 10 Lincoln Center Plaza With 11 resident arts organizations, Lincoln Center easily allows for a novel, first-rate experience. The 16-acre campus is “a complete detachment from the hustle and bustle of the city, where you can just be immersed in a performance—ballet, opera, symphony, and others,” says Grossman Berger. “And now that there is so much attention to public spaces in New York City, it’s just a beautiful place to be.” Catherine Nguyen-Martinez ’08, who played the trumpet during a performance here with her high school jazz band, adds that it is “a location where every culture can come together and enjoy something they have in common, which is the arts and music.”

f Tomi Jazz 239 E 53rd St., lower level Press a discreet buzzer for entrance into this cramped, dark, and shadowy Japanese whisky bar and music club with a speakeasy vibe. Without a stage, musicians play atop tables and among the listeners. “Think of everything that the Four Seasons does to coddle its cli- entele—then reverse it,” says Tony Graham ’81, who visits to hear good jazz and have rice balls and sake. “It’s a statement for the suited crowd to make that they can shrug off their corporate existence and relax in anonymous eccentricity.” Super Happy Hour, including food discounts and 40 percent off all glass drinks, runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Sunday to Friday. Central Park In every season there’s something special about being in this urban oasis designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed landscape ar- chitect who was also responsible for Rochester’s Genesee Valley, Highland, Seneca, and Maplewood parks.

A VIEW OF THEIR FAVORITE THINGS: New York is a city for people who love books, says Tanya Chanphanitpornkit ’15E (top); one-of-a-kind views of urban landscapes, says Noah Pizmony-Levy Drezner ’00 (near right); and gathering spaces and parks where the opportunities to watch people are endless, says Tony Graham ’81 (right).

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RochRev_July2018.indb 24 7/30/18 4:31 PM g The Ramble Graham likes to meander through the 38 acres of winding path- ways known as the Ramble because it reminds him of upstate New York hiking trails. “It’s a great place to go for self-reflection and to feel completely renewed,” he says. Located between 73rd and 78th streets, the spot was dubbed a “wild garden” by Olmsted and is home to some 230 bird species.

h Naumburg Bandshell An original feature of the park, the site—where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech and John Lennon’s eulogy was read—draws music fans to the oldest continuous free outdoor western classi- cal music concert series in the world. Concerts are “achingly beautiful” in a setting where birds and nature “add to the music,” says Chanphanitpornkit.

i Bethesda Fountain One of the largest fountains in New York, the gathering place is Gra- ham’s favorite spot in the park because he never knows what he’s going to encounter: “Where else can you see a guy skating around with a snake, a Pilates class, and a guitar player singing ’70s music, all at the same time?” The View Gain a different perspective on the buildings, people, and other scen- ery that make New York City vibrant.

j Governors Island From this 172-acre vantage point, the majesty and strength of the city are undeniable. “You see the power of the financial district, the im- portance of the shipping and oil industries, the beauty of the Brook- lyn Bridge, and a reminder of our promise of liberty and history as an immigrant nation in the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island,” says Pizmony-Levy Drezner, adding that the island is the best place from land for front views of the Statue of Liberty. “It is inspiring.” Admis- sion to the island is free for New York City residents.

k Studio Cafe 99 Gansevoort St. The Whitney Museum of American Art’s indoor/outdoor eighth- floor eatery provides sweeping views of the city and Hudson River. The Empire State Building towers to the east, the World Trade Cen- ter complex is in the distance to the south, “and just to the north,” says Pizmony-Levy Drezner, who takes in the view over wine with friends, “you can people-watch as visitors and city dwellers snake through the trees and trails of the High Line,” a popular park on a historic, elevated railroad line.

l Washington Square Park Forget the famed Washington Square Arch. On nice days in the win- ter, when the park’s fountain is dry, Chanphanitpornkit and other residents relax on its interior tiered ledges. “It’s calming,” she says. “There’s an expectation that New Yorkers are always on the go, go, go, but we take time to smell the roses more than tourists might think.” The green space, near New York University, also draws eccentric street performers. Says Graham: “The park attracts anything that attracts college kids, and that’s the offbeat.” Let’s Eat With no shortage of places to nosh, New York City can take your taste buds on a trip around the world without leaving the border.

SHANNON TAGGART FOR ROCHESTER REVIEW July–August 2018 ROCHESTER REVIEW 25

RochRev_July2018.indb 25 7/30/18 4:31 PM m Chelsea Market NETWORK CONNECTIONS 75 9th Ave. You may have to elbow your way up to one of the 35 vendors at this Like Sharing ‘an Inside Secret’ indoor food hall in the southern end of the Chelsea neighborhood. Being part of a regional network offers But “sometimes you’ve got to work through crowds for some of the best things in New York,” says Pizmony-Levy Drezner, who visits the ‘breadth and depth of activities and Dizengoff stand for hummus, shakshouka, and other Israeli classics. affiliation opportunities that are unmatched The food mecca—in the old Nabisco factory where Oreos were in- anywhere in the world.’ vented—also serves up Italian imported goods, local and humanely raised meats, chocolate fudge milkshakes, and more. Alumni build strong ties to each other and to Rochester through the Metro New York City Network Leadership Cabinet. The orga- n The Jeffrey Craft Beer & Bites nization, made up of volunteers, helps engage fellow graduates 311 E. 60th St. through activities, programs, and opportunities. This self-proclaimed dark-and-cozy neighborhood joint under the Barbara Grossman Berger ’77 had no expectations before Queensboro Bridge is unassuming but has built a reputation among attending her first New York Metro Women event in Manhattan locals for its morning-to-night offerings. Nguyen-Martinez comes in 2012. “I thought, ‘It’s a few hours of my life,’ ” she says. early for the espresso bar and late for a rotating menu of 30 hard-to- But those few hours—at a talk by former School of Arts & find international and local brews. “Every time I come I try some- Sciences Dean Joanna Olmsted on the experience of studying thing different,” she says. “And it’s not a typical modern bar. It has and working as a woman in science, technology, engineering, charm. I like that no one seems to know where it is.” Food arrives on and math careers—transformed both her relationships with artificial newsprint-lined metal trays. Insider tip: order a sandwich other alumni and her connection to the University. between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and a beer or well drink from a selected “I met people of all different ages and every imaginable walk menu is on the house. of life, and I remembered that it was the people I met that was what I loved about the University of Rochester,” says Grossman Berger, who now cochairs the group, which existed prior to the formation of the Metro New York City Network Leadership Cabinet. Such a network is particularly important in an increasingly impersonal digital age, she says. “The only way I know of to maintain a vibrant community is to keep people engaged with and connected to one another,” she says. “Social media is great for supplementing, but in the end, I sub- scribe to the theory that the most powerful of all human drives is personal connection.” New York City native and cabinet cochair Noah Pizmony-Levy Drezner ’00 says the University was the first place where someone outside of his family gave him the confidence, and made him feel safe, to be himself. The network gives him the opportunity to have “good, critical, tough conversations” with like-minded people who share a love for their alma mater and want to make it a better place by increas- KNOW YOUR SIGHTS: One of the skills of native New Yorkers is discovering locations that “no ing engagement—a target that he says is being met. one seems to know,” like Jeffrey Craft Beer & Bites, says Catherine Nguyen-Martinez ’08. “I’m extraordinarily committed to this institution, and I can’t stop giving back,” he says. o A La Mode Cabinet cochair Catherine Nguyen-Martinez ’08 got involved 360 E. 55th St. soon after graduation because she feels as if she shares “an “Everything today is so over the top, but this place is just old-fash- inside secret” with the alumni she meets and makes connections ioned fun,” Grossman Berger says of the charming parlor, which with, given that they all experienced the tunnel system, the cold makes homemade, small-batch ice cream in a nut-free, sesame-free, weather, and other memories created at Rochester. “We call New and egg-free factory. That doesn’t mean flavors stick only to classic York City our home, but that was our second home.” chocolate and vanilla. Options include “Partly Cloudy,” blue cot- Involved since its inception, cabinet cochair Stephen Givant ton-candy-flavored ice cream with miniature marshmallows. ’81 has remained highly committed to share as well, especially with those who may benefit from his expertise. The Literary Scene “I’m not just hanging around with people in my cohort,” he says. “It’s also an opportunity to interact with young people who If you think it would be easy to find great books in a city home to the have been through what I’ve been through. Many times they’re New York Times Book Review, you are correct. looking for advice. It’s a pay-it-forward kind of concept.” As one of those young alumni, Tanya Chanphanitpornkit ’15E p Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books is focused on building her career as a teacher of music. As a 34 Carmine St. relatively new resident of New York, networking with other Roughly the size of a double-wide trailer, Unoppressive Non-Im- Rochester alumni has been critical in making her feel more com- perialist Bargain Books is as quirky as its name. Titles line only two fortable in “that gap between academia and the real world.”

26 ROCHESTER REVIEW July–August 2018 SHANNON TAGGART FOR ROCHESTER REVIEW

RochRev_July2018.indb 26 7/30/18 4:31 PM At an on-campus Volunteers in Partnership Conference aisles, come from wholesalers, cost less than half the retail price, and last spring, she wound up sitting at a table with Pizmony-Levy reflect the taste of political activist owner Jim Drougas. “It’s a tiny Drezner, who took her around the room to make introductions. little hole in the wall in the West Village with used books and weird The people she met asked questions, shared stories, and gave titles, and it has stayed there even though the neighborhood has be- her a new perspective on what education means. come more exclusive,” Givant says. “You think all your learning in college is going to happen in four years, but you’re one of the alumni much longer than q Books Kinokuniya you’re a student,” Chanphanitpornkit says. “It’s a beautiful thing 1073 6th Ave. when you have people looking out for you and trying to help in “One of the coolest things about this city is the cultural unification, any way they can.” and this bookstore is the epitome of it,” Chanphanitpornkit says of For Tony Graham ’81, New York City can be an intimidating Kinokuniya as she walks past rows of manga, a cookbook dedicated place. Getting together with people who have common back- to rice ball recipes, and a craft kit for make-your-own origami sumo grounds offers “a sense of calmness in a city where the frenetic wrestlers. Across the street from Bryant Park, the three-story book- pace and seeming chaos can otherwise be overwhelming.” store offers some 20,000 titles in both English and Japanese. In ad- Graham appreciates the energy and passion younger alumni dition to CDs, DVDs, and toys, there’s a cafe that sells sushi, bubble have for staying connected with the University. They’re remind- tea, and mochi doughnuts, and a store on the lowest level that sells ers that previous classes, including his own, have left behind an handmade crafts from Japan. important legacy—one of continuity and deep impact. New York City is the perfect backdrop for maintaining that. r Strand Book Store “Our size and location,” says Graham, “gives us a breadth 828 Broadway and depth of activities and affiliation opportunities that are Arguably Manhattan’s most revered bookstore—the last vestige of unmatched anywhere in the world.” —Robin L. Flanigan “Book Row,” which once housed dozens of bookstores across six city blocks—the independent retailer boasts 18 miles of new, used, and rare books. What’s less well known is that it hosts book discussions, author interviews and signings, and other events with the Vulture In- siders Book Club. “These events are particularly geared toward popu- Waterbury Hartford lar culture novels,” says Chanphanitpornkit, “so it is fascinating to see New Haven the relevance and reflection of literature in modern-day book lovers.” Bridgeport Stamford Paterson Yonkers Bustling Boroughs Jersey City Newark New York Manhattan gets most of the attention, but equally deserving destina- Elizabeth tions await a short subway ride away.

s New York Botanical Garden 2900 Southern Blvd, Bronx Pizmony-Levy Drezner and Nguyen-Martinez both recommend a Philadelphia Metro New York City Network Region visit to the 250-acre New York Botanical Garden, a national historic landmark with more than one million living plants. For Pizmony-Levy Drezner, the lilac section reminds him of Highland Park’s Lilac Fes- tival. Nguyen-Martinez appreciates the specialty orchids and flow- ers, particularly “the Japanese blossoms when they’re in season.” A Metrow Ne York City Network world leader in plant research and conservation, the garden has both Centered on New York City, the regional network includes alumni, indoor and outdoor displays. parents, volunteers, and others living in a 23-county area. t New York Transit Museum 14,166 alumni 99 Schermerhorn St, Brooklyn 1,766 students What better place to celebrate the history of the city’s mass trans- portation system than in a decommissioned subway station from the 1,899 current parents 1930s? Pizmony-Levy Drezner enjoys visiting the museum’s vintage 738 volunteers fleet of 20 subway and elevated cars dating back to 1907. “You’re al- lowed to sit in them, and they have ads from the time period they’re Alumniy b School from,” he says. “It’s really well done and engaging for both kids and 8,761 School of Arts & Sciences adults.” Permanent exhibits include archival documents, video foot- age, and photography. 1,818 Simon Business School 1,306 Hajim School of Engineering u Rego Park & Applied Sciences Neighborhood in Queens 1,131 School of Medicine and Dentistry “If you want to see the melting pot of America in action, there’s no 1,103 Eastman School of Music better place to go,” says Graham, who used to work in the area. The neighborhood is full of shops, including national retailers and a di- 361 School of Nursing verse array of ethnic restaurants. “Take the subway and explore from 326 Warner School of Education there, and you’ll see 20 countries represented in the first square 124 Eastman Institute for Oral Health mile.”r

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RochRev_July2018.indb 28 7/30/18 4:31 PM Committed to Memory

How does memory shape our sense of who we are?

hat do we remember? And how do we forget? Complicated questions, their man- ifold answers are pursued by scholars, scientists, and artists. W “Memory studies are a burgeoning area of humanistic inquiry that encom- passes multiple fields,” says Joan Shelley Rubin, the Dexter Perkins Professor of History and the Ani and Mark Gabrellian Director of the Humanities Center. The center chose memory and forgetting as the annual theme for its programs over the past year, with guest lectures, workshops, art exhibitions, and internal and external faculty research fellows in residence. “It seemed an excellent way to achieve the Humanities Center’s goal of fostering collabo- ration and interdisciplinary exchange. Individual memories are such an integral part of our identities as people, and collective memories—entangled as they are with history and culture—shape the politics, society, and artistic expression of the present,” Rubin says. Jonathan Baldo, a professor of English at the Eastman School of Music, was a Bridging Fellow at the Humanities Center in the spring, working on a project about memory and forgetting in works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Baldo calls the study of memory “fundamental.” “It’s at the basis of nearly every field of intellectual inquiry,” he says. Here is a sample of the ways Rochester researchers are working with memory.

Interviews by Kathleen McGarvey Illustrations by John W. Tomac

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RochRev_July2018.indb 29 7/30/18 4:31 PM Telling stories Laura Smoller Professor of History Smoller studies the intersection of magic, science, and religion in medieval and Renaissance Europe. Memory can mean two things for a historian. Most historical studies that deal with memory are really about commemoration—of events, the memory attached to places, and the shifting memories of historical figures. But we also study memory in the sense that psychologists do: how our memories are distorted, how they shape our identities, and how stories shape our memories. When I was writing my book about Saint Vincent Fer- rer, I was reading miracle stories from his canonization trial. People testified about his life and the miracles he worked for them. I was struck by the way people were telling stories. I come from a Southern family, and my father hails from a long line of storytellers—front-porch storytellers. As kids, we knew how his stories went, and we’d say, “No, no! You forgot that part!” The testimony about Vincent Ferrer reminded me of my father’s stories. These people were telling stories they’d been shaping and polishing for years. I started reading psychological studies of autobi- ographical memory. The stories we tell about and to ourselves shape who we are and who we want to be. And autobiographic memory is pretty constructed and unre- liable. I started applying these ideas to medieval miracle stories, looking for cases where people were telling different versions of the same story. I was investigating what the storytelling tells us about how they’re constructing their memories and the way those memories are part of their identities. If you think about the beginnings of the modern historical profession, in the 19th century, memory was kind of the opposite of what historians were trying to do—in the words of German historian Leopold von Ranke, to get at the past “as it really was.” Memory wasn’t seen as pro- viding scientific truth about the past. In graduate school, my advisor taught us that if you could just get the right source, you’d have a transparent window onto the past. The idea that memories and the stories people tell are doing cultural work was part of the theoretical trend that came to history later than to literary studies. Now, when historical sources tell a story and differ in the details, instead of saying, “OK, let’s sort out which one is right,” we’re saying, “What does it mean that people were telling different stories?” It’s almost like the focal length of people understand what someone’s cognitive deficits are so that your lens changes, to look at the evidence we have and think about they can focus not on the deficit but on the parts of the brain that how it was made and what it means that it was made in that way. are still working well. When people lose memories of whole events, that can be devas- tating. But sometimes when people don’t remember the event, they still remember the closeness of the person they’re with. And then Remembering the closeness the event itself doesn’t matter so much. The loss a caregiving spouse experiences when a partner no longer Carol Podgorski interacts with them is often harder than the death of a spouse—just Associate Professor of Psychiatry, School of Medicine and Dentistry knowing that you’re with someone, but the intimacy and things that made you a couple are no longer there. Podgorski is the clinic director of the Medical Center’s Memory Care I tell people that we process behaviors with our heads and with our Program. hearts. And when the heart hurts, I try to move to the head. I don’t try When memory impairment enters a family, it knocks things off bal- to prevent people from hurting, but to help them understand things ance. My job is to help people restore that balance. I try to help in a different way, so that it doesn’t hurt all the time. And I teach

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RochRev_July2018.indb 30 7/30/18 4:31 PM people to be curious. If you’re curious about an illness or brain. It’s actually a very complex construct, memory. There are many a behavior, you’re not hurting about it. You’re standing different types, from short-term and working memory—holding onto outside it, trying to understand it. And that’s powerful. that phone number somebody just gave you—to longer-term mem- Everybody has their own memories that are most per- ories: your childhood, where you grew up. We have people working sistent. For some people, it’s music. You can give oth- across all those domains, trying to understand the basic neurophys- er people a blade of fresh grass, and it will trigger such iology of how neurons instantiate and solve memory problems. memories. Or a crunchy leaf during the fall. So many Neurons communicate with each other across synapses, and memories can be triggered by that one stimulus. we now understand that memories are changes, essentially, in the strength of communication across those synapses. The brain is changing itself structurally and functionally. Music’s power Short-term and long-term memory rely on different parts of the brain. We have circuits in the prefrontal cortex and in the parietal David Temperley cortex that hold onto short-term information over the course of sec- Professor of Music Theory, Eastman School of Music onds and minutes. And we have structures in the medial temporal lobe—the hippocampus—that are key in consolidating short-term and Temperley is a music theorist, cognitive scientist, and medium-term memories into long-term memory. Quite a lot of the composer. consolidation occurs while we’re sleeping. The hippocampal circuits When people talk about memory in a nontechnical way, I are busy all night long, while we’re sound asleep, reestablishing these think they usually mean what psychologists call “episodic longer, more durable connections, so that information is “locked in.” memory”—the memory of specific experiences in one’s We’ve gained exquisite knowledge of how memories are formed. past. It’s distinct from what’s called “semantic memory,” We have fundamental understanding of how memories are laid down which refers to more general knowledge of the world. My and the circuitry involved in it. And that’s allowing us to have in- main area of research is music psychology, and I’m in- sights into neurodevelopmental disorders, where memory forma- terested in the way that episodic memory figures into it. tion is an issue. Episodic memory plays a big role in musical emotion. If a piece of music makes us feel happy or sad, that’s often because we associate it with a specific time in the past Amplifying and erasing when we were feeling that emotion. Perhaps you heard it on the radio on your first date or were listening to it Kristin Doughty Associate Professor of Anthropology on the radio when you got a piece of bad news. It’s obvi- Doughty studies violence and collective memory, especially the ously very subjective; two people might have quite dif- Rwandan genocide of 1994. ferent emotional associations for the same piece. Music psychologists distinguish this “felt” emotion from “per- People remember events of the past as cultural memories—ones that ceived” emotion—the emotion that we perceive a piece are passed down and socially learned and transmitted, but also ones of music to express. The two are related, but they’re not that they remember in relation to how they understand who they are. the same thing. A piece we perceive as sad won’t neces- I began my work in Rwanda with an interest in understanding how sarily make us feel sad (though it might). Perceived emo- on earth people collectively put their lives back together in the wake tion, though also subjective, is more consistent across of violence. And that’s what brought me to think about questions of listeners than felt emotion. Partly for this reason, music collective memory. Rwanda put genocide suspects on trial in public, psychologists tend to focus more on perceived emotion. in grassroots courts. People were debating collective memory over A remarkable thing about our memory for music is that the course of several years, with complex consequences. it can often remain largely intact even when the rest of Collective memories sediment into recognizable narratives. And memory, both episodic and semantic, has greatly deteri- those narratives usually have good guys and bad guys and clear forms orated. This is very evident in elderly people with severe of causality. The Rwandan government has worked to solidify one cognitive deficits, such as Alzheimer’s and other forms particular narrative. They officially changed the name of the Rwan- of dementia. They may be unable to have a conversation dan genocide in the late 2000s to “the genocide against the Tutsi.” or even to recognize their family members. But when It was a move to solidify an ethnic genocide in which the victims you play them a favorite song—especially a favorite song were Tutsi. That’s not contested—but there were also victims who from their youth—they perk up and start singing along. weren’t Tutsi. Over time, the category of Hutu victim can be erased. This special power of music can be used therapeutically to help re- All collective memory has amnesia built into it. All memory am- vive other cognitive abilities, albeit temporarily. Once a piece of mu- plifies some things and erases others. The question is, what are the sic has brought people with Alzheimer’s out of their shells, they’re implications of those erasures? What is forgotten over time is an im- often more aware, responsive, and enthusiastic. portant part of the process of forming collective memory. And what falls out and what gets amplified is a function of politicization. I don’t mean party politics—I mean the politics of power dynamics: who is in A complex construct charge and who is more likely to amplify particular parts of the story? People pass on stories about the genocide in so many ways: at me- John Foxe morialization events, at museums, through art projects, and through Kilian J. and Caroline F. Schmitt Chair in Neuroscience school curricula. I’ve had people grab me by the hand and say, “This Foxe is the director of the Ernest J. Del Monte is where I was hiding,” or, “I don’t like to go to this place because Institute for Neuroscience. that’s where I last saw my family.” I don’t pretend that the way they Memory is one of the major areas we study in the neurosciences. It’s tell the story to me, as an ethnographer, is the same way they tell it to such a profound part of what makes people human. their family and friends, but it gives me a glimpse of how the mem- All thoughts, all actions are physical because they begin with the ory is passed on.

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RochRev_July2018.indb 31 7/30/18 4:31 PM reliability to immediate recollections. The benefits and Does memory divide or unite? drawbacks of hindsight and reinterpretation often play Jonathan Baldo a prominent role in those conversations. Professor of English, Humanities Department, Questions about remembering and forgetting perme- Eastman School of Music ate civic education, too. How should teachers address Baldo is a specialist in Shakespeare and early modern culture who citizens’ propensities to forget inconvenient truths and was a Bridging Fellow at the Humanities Center in the spring. turn misinformation into memory as they defend committed party-group positions? And, at a time when our Memory studies has become a large and growing part of the study cultural and civic identities increasingly are curated and of early modern English literature in general, and of Shakespeare in archived online, should we have a right to expect that particular. Shakespeare was born in 1564 into what appears to have past transgressions might be forgiven and forgotten and been a Catholic family, only 17 years after the beginning of the of- perhaps disappear completely when—to borrow a phrase ten-violent Edwardian Reformation, 11 years after the abrupt and sometimes used by politicians—our “thinking on an is- equally violent return of Catholicism under Queen Mary, and six sue evolves”? years after a sudden return of the nation to the Protestant faith under Elizabeth. Having been born a few years after many of the most violent and disruptive events of the Reformation, Shakespeare be- longs to what critic Marianne Hirsch calls a “generation after.” She’s Enacting memory referring to the experiences of people born a generation after a cul- Katherine Ciesinski tural trauma, who remember the events only through stories, imag- Professor of Voice, Eastman School of Music es, and behaviors they encounter growing up. Ciesinski is an opera singer who has performed at the I’m examining Shakespeare now as a “traumatist”: that is, as a dra- Paris and Metropolitan Operas, as well as at Covent matist who helps his audiences process traumatic memories and who Garden. also explores with his audiences various healthy, just, and productive For singers, memorizing is what we do—we perform from ways of recalling the past. His history plays ask whether memory di- memory. In terms of opera and recital performances, we vides rather than unites the English people. are out there with no physical separation between us and Interest in memory for early modernists surged in the 1990s. the audience. And those two periods—the 1990s and the 1590s, when Shake- Generally speaking, memorization is a very private speare was writing his history plays—both experienced technolog- process, one that’s not uniformly codified in our train- ical changes that altered how the culture as a whole remembered. ing. But each musician has to learn how to be a profi- In Shakespeare’s time, it was the proliferation of print. It was a new cient memorizer. We have a score, something tangible technology for remembering—or, in some people’s eyes, for attenu- that holds the basic information we’re responsible for, ating memory: if something was in print, you didn’t have to remem- and we have to enact that score. As a singer, I enact my ber it. It’s an old argument of Plato’s, that writing actually diminishes breath, my posture, my face, and my articulators: tongue, or impedes memory. And in our own time, there have been all the jaw, mouth, palate, and other physical structures. Those changes made by electronic forms of storage and retrieval. There’s things become part of how I memorize a piece. interesting work being done on the possible consequences of the fact Opera singers also work in different languages. You’re that now nothing disappears. memorizing the text you see on the page, but also the word-by-word meaning; the grammatical, syntactical meaning; and the emotional meaning. Staging rehears- Teaching historical memory als requires another distinct memorization process. You have to know where you are, what you’re doing, to whom Kevin Meuwissen you’re speaking, and other spatial and aural markers that Clinical Associate Professor of Teaching and Curriculum, Warner School of Education orient you and make you a believable stage character. An astute listener can easily tell when a performer has frozen in Meuwissen directs the Warner School’s teacher-preparation fear or is running the ticker tape of the music in front of their mind’s program. eye. One can sense that distance and an unnaturalness within a per- The act of remembering, individually and socially, is central to so- formance. But when the performer is fully working from memo- cial studies education—even if students and teachers don’t explicitly ry, audiences will feel that this singer truly inhabits the character discuss the nature and consequences of that act. I aim to help begin- and is spontaneously producing the character’s thoughts, emotions, ning teachers support young people in doing just that: considering and actions. It then becomes a compelling and viscerally exciting what people remember, how they remember it, why they remember performance. it that way, and what ends those memories serve. In the field of history education, the term “collective memory” represents resilient, predominant narratives and themes that are Mind and body perpetuated over time and serve a harmonizing function. But they can also be divisive, particularly when we examine who is repre- Alison Peterman Associate Professor of Philosophy sented and mythologized in—and who is omitted from—those nar- Peterman studies the philosophy of science and mind and was a ratives and themes. fellow at the Humanities Center in the spring. I ask teachers in my social studies education program to examine how kids conceptualize historical memory and its consequences. In Memory is such a common and important phenomenon, but still a one experiment, teachers and students look together at conflicting very mysterious one, so it’s not surprising that thinkers have long sources of evidence about a contested historical event, discussing been fascinated by it. One area of my research is 17th- and 18th-cen- how testimony taken several years after the event might compare in tury philosophers’ conceptions of the architecture of the mind. Many

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RochRev_July2018.indb 32 7/30/18 4:32 PM Now we’re at an exciting time in the history of philosophy as we’re starting to recover and study these wonderful thinkers. We’re bringing back into memory women and many other forgotten philosophers, with the aim of rethinking ossified narratives of the historical canon. Collecting memories Joanne Bernardi Professor of Japanese and Film and Media Studies Bernardi is a specialist in Japanese cinema and culture and material culture studies. I engage with memory through my research on silent films and ephemera—much of which is from the same period as early film, the beginning of the 20th century. People often talk about film as similar to dreams, as if through film you can see the thoughts of others. And I think there is something dreamlike about my experience when I go to a silent film festival, watching these films for 10 days and becoming immersed in their world. The films help me learn about the past. It’s a way of collecting knowledge and collecting people’s experiences, even if most of the films are fictional. The narratives are grounded in events, relationships, or circumstances that would have been familiar to people at the time. It’s the same with collecting objects: I’m really collecting other people’s memories. It concretizes other people’s thoughts, fantasies, and perceptions. That’s what I’m trying to investigate with my work on Japan—the “idea” of Japan that people had. Some of the objects I’m attracted to are really very mundane, like train schedules or guide books—although guide books are interesting for lots of reasons. Once you start thinking about these objects, what interests you becomes complicated because you realize just how much is involved in that object. Guide books, for instance, can tell you not only about how places have changed since the guides were written, but also about the people who created them and the people who used them—what they valued, what they wanted, how they viewed the world, and how they lived their lives. When people are dealing with historical objects and of these philosophers were trying to understand how we make infer- practices, they’re trying to put a puzzle together, learning about the ences or mental associations, and to characterize the difference be- past through the ways we can fit things together. It’s always going to tween different kinds of mental states, like beliefs, hopes, imaginings, have some kind of personal bias, but I try to see things from as many and memories. There was also lively interest in how mental states possible angles as I can. correspond to body and brain states, just as people are interested in that today, although instead of neurons, they talked about “impres- sions on the brain” and “movements of animal spirits.” Philosophers Mental space also discussed memory in connection with other philosophical questions. For example, John Locke, one of the most influential philoso- Ehsan Hoque Assistant Professor of Computer Science phers of the early modern period, argued that the continuity of your and Electrical and Computer Engineering memories is necessary for you to be a single person over time. And Hoque, the Asaro Biggar Family Fellow in Data Science, is a many people were interested in the connection between knowledge specialist in human-computer interaction. and memory: when do our memories justify our beliefs? Today, lots of philosophers, sometimes working alongside cognitive scientists, The conscious mind can only process 40 bits of information per sec- are still interested in questions like these. ond. It’s not a lot. Let’s say I’m speaking in front of an audience. My Recently, I have been studying the 19th-century philosopher Mary conscious mind is thinking about what I’m going to say next—and Shepherd. She has some fascinating ideas about how the mind works it’s getting overwhelmed. What am I going to do about my nonver- and how our perceptions and memories justify our beliefs, including bal actions? I don’t have space in my conscious mind to do anything some that anticipate later important developments in the philosophy with that. And so it goes to the subconscious mind, which can pro- of mind. She was widely read and respected in her time, but like a lot cess up to four million bits per second. of other women philosophers, she has been forgotten until recently. When you’re talking with people face to face, your nonverbal

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RochRev_July2018.indb 33 7/30/18 4:32 PM behavior is communicating most of the information—but it’s your subconscious mind that’s managing that, and you can’t control your subconscious mind the way you can your conscious mind. Can computers help make you more aware of what your subconscious mind is doing? I design algorithms that help people use their mental band- width more effectively, so that they can train themselves to think not just about what they’re going to say, but also about what’s happening with their hand gestures, their voice intonation, and so on. Computers can also help desensitize people to a fright- ening memory, so that at some point it doesn’t hurt any- more. Virtual reality can be a part of exposure therapy to help people with post-traumatic stress disorder and phobias. Human working memory is finite, and we can use computers to augment it. Google and other search engines have access to unlimited information. It’s liberating to be able to look up a wide variety of information with a few mouse clicks. It’s much more efficient than trying to remember it all. Now I can decide deliberately what information I want to remember. In most cases, I remember the trace or path toward the information rather than the information itself. The fact that we’re able to share how we retrieve information imposes more transparen- cy, objectivity, and repeatability on anything that we do.

Being present Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss Senior Associate, Medical Humanities and Bioethics Daiss oversees “Meet Me at the MAG,” an art museum program for people with dementia. The visual arts can elicit deep memories for people whose short-term memory has begun to diminish. One of the wonderful gifts of the visual arts is that they stand still and allow us to catch up with them. We’ve been offering “Meet Me at the MAG”—first monthly and now almost every Tuesday—at the Memo- rial Art Gallery since 2009. We partner with the Alzhei- mer’s Association and also provide programming for people who have moved to elder-care facilities. Specially trained docents, including some Rochester undergradu- ates, help people to be in the presence of the work of art. We simply ask, “What do you see?” We’re engaging people first in describing what they’re looking at, and then inviting any connections they might have. Narrative paintings—and occasionally sculpture—that can easily suggest connections with daily life tend to work best. There’s a The ice remembers still-life painting with a young woman in a kitchen. In front of her are fruits, vegetables, and an unplucked chicken. Participants share Vasilii Petrenko Associate Professor memories that range from recipes to plucking chickens. There’s ab - of Earth and Environmental Sciences solutely no right and no wrong response in these conversations. It’s Petrenko runs the University’s Ice Core Lab, studying ancient ice to really personal stories that we’re evoking in the presence of these learn about changing climate conditions. works of art. The memories can be quite concrete or might not make immedi- Glacial ice is a kind of memory of climate and the atmosphere. This ate sense to those of us who are listening. But we never challenge the memory is much better than human memory in some ways and much memory, because it’s making sense to the individual. worse in others. Extended periods of quiet are always welcome. And for people who The ice faithfully records the atmospheric composition and cli- are having challenges finding words, language isn’t the only way to be mactic conditions over very long periods of time. The oldest con- present with a work of art. Being present is of value in and of itself. tinuous ice cores we have right now go back about 800,000 years.

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RochRev_July2018.indb 34 7/30/18 4:32 PM They’re from interior Antarctica, and with them we can can anchor ourselves to them and spare ourselves the discomforts of very accurately reconstruct both the temperature at that change. I want my art to prompt what feels familiar, but I also want location in Antarctica over time, as well as what was in it to point to the fragility of that comfort. the atmosphere. I’m trying to use the familiar language of objects, putting the tangi- Things don’t get forgotten in the ice—while the ice ble into the service of a process that is not unlike remembering. Dis- is still there. But ice moves through the ice sheet, down parate parts are assembled along a singular line that may make sense from the very top, where it was deposited as snow, and to one, but of which others are ignorant. When a viewer can imagine slowly sinks down toward bedrock. Eventually it either the process being put to the making of something, their imaginings flows out to the margins, where it collapses into the sea as can be likened to the construction of memory. icebergs, or it melts very slowly at the base. It’s perfectly preserved while it’s there, and then it’s gone. We think there’s ice in interior Antarctica that goes Cultures of remembrance back more than 1.5 million years. The ice cores have excellent long-term memory, but it isn’t “high resolution” Bette London Professor of English because you might only get a couple of centimeters of London studies 19th- and 20th-century British writing and culture. ice per year. She was a Bridging Fellow at the Humanities Center last fall. Closer to the coast, ice cores have excellent short-term memory. Snowfall rates there are much higher, and the In Britain after World War I, an obsession with remembrance, snow transforms into a relatively large thickness of ice marked initially by a frenzy of war memorial construction and the for every year. It’s so thick you can even tell seasons apart launching of a minor culture industry in commemorative art and lit- and know what the conditions during them were like. erature, made “Lest we forget” a national watchword. But as scholars But because it snows so much, the ice flows faster and of memory and commemoration have demonstrated, remembrance you can fit fewer years into the same thickness of ice. So practices invariably negotiate a complex calculus between remem- there, the entire thickness of your ice core might show bering and forgetting, both in their own time and in the ways their only a couple thousand years. meanings are reinvented to speak to new historical circumstances As humans, we’ve evolved to store memories to help us and new constituencies of spectators and readers. learn and cope with what we encounter in the present. I I’ve been studying work often dismissed as ephemera—eclectic, think that’s a good analogy for ice cores, as well, because often privately published, memorial volumes, compiled by family they record the earth’s climate memory. It has recorded members of dead soldiers and published as posthumous tributes to some intervals that were at least a little bit warmer than loved ones. today, and we can try to understand why and what the They’re extraordinarily miscellaneous volumes. They’re trying to atmospheric composition was like. They can inform us produce something that will contain and sum up the soldier’s life— about our current climate trajectory and where we’re but there’s not really enough life to do it. They might include a re- likely to be headed. membrance from a sibling, or the parents, or a friend. There are often extracts from letters he wrote as a schoolboy, or from the front. Or a poem he wrote to his mother when he was seven years old. It’s as if somehow the only way to make sense of this loss was for them just to Between memory collect everything that they possibly could. It’s incredibly poignant. and nostalgia I’ve also investigated the fate of the “shot at dawn” soldiers, who were executed for cowardice, desertion, and other military offens- Allen Topolski es. They were excised from official casualty lists and excluded from Associate Professor of Art local war memorials and remembrance celebrations. Most of the ap- Topolski is a sculptor who examines nostalgia and proximately 300 soldiers executed were noncommissioned officers memory through material objects. or private soldiers. Their families didn’t receive pensions or other Most of my later teenage years were spent in frequent benefits. There was a lot of shame and silence. contact with my grandmother, whose dementia I came But the turn of the millennium brought a contentious campaign to understand in very subtle ways—I was often able to to secure posthumous pardons and recognition for the executed see the threads that bound her seemingly dissociated soldiers. Many of those who were executed experienced post-trau- ramblings. Objects and places were catalysts for stories matic stress disorder—then, it was called shell shock. Exonerating she relived in the telling. Her reality wasn’t bound to the them became a grassroots cause, and the stories of individual soldiers same moment as mine. But it was just as real. were taken up in the press. In 2006, the British government agreed I mostly come to memory through objects, which I see as remnant, to retroactively pardon all of the soldiers. Public opinion changed component, evidence, keepsake, memento, document, heirloom, or radically for people formerly seen as threatening and shameful. And souvenir—and I enjoy the investigation of the subtle differences be- the change came at a time when there was almost no one left with a tween them. living memory of the war. Desire differentiates between nostalgia and memory. Especially in The tradition of listing the names of all the dead, which has be- academia, I sometimes find myself needing to tread lightly between come typical of memorials, was something new after World War I. them. The former is all too often dismissed as emotional, with the And for those omitted, it was like being unnamed, unremembered. implication that it lacks intellectual rigor. We teach ourselves to It was a deliberate effort to erase memory. And so, 90 years after the generate the comforts that we think we need, and nostalgia is one war, their names were added. way to do that. With the campaign for restitution came this odd moment in Brit- Nostalgia is a longing for something from the past that is unat- ish culture when the most famous people who fought in the war tainable. It gets folded into our futures, and objects become recep- were these soldiers. To me, it’s a dramatic shift that illustrates how tacles for nostalgia because we think that they’re static and that we memory works and what it is that people choose to remember.r

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RochRev_July2018.indb 35 7/30/18 4:32 PM PPitchiitching PPoliticsolitics Former presidential speechwriter Curt Smith documents the twinned histories of baseball and the presidency. By Kathleen McGarvey

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RochRev_July2018.indb 36 7/30/18 4:32 PM BASEBALL BOOSTER: Franklin Roosevelt— pictured here in 1937, alongside manager and owner Connie Mack—threw out the first ball every year except one between 1933 and 1941. He relished trips to the ballpark and saw the game as critical to keeping up troop and civilian morale during World War II.

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RochRev_July2018.indb 37 7/30/18 4:32 PM PERFECT PITCH: Former Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson in 1937 holds the first ball ever pitched by a president—William Taft, in 1910—to open a major league game.

eorge Washington was known to throw a ball—for hours, reported one soldier under his command—with his aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War. Abraham Lincoln would join baseball games on the lawn of Blair House, which still stands across Pennsylvania Av- enue from the White House. “I remember how vividly he ran, how Glong were his strides, how far his coattails stuck out behind,” the home’s owner, Francis Preston Blair, recalled in a letter to his grandson. The story of baseball in the United States is intertwined with that of the presidency, says Curt Smith, a senior lecturer in English and the author of The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). He traces the points of connection from the colonial era to the present, devoting a chapter to each president since William Howard Taft, who in 1910 inaugurated the practice of the president throwing out a ceremonial first pitch. Growing up in small-town Caledonia, New York, Smith would sit on his front porch, poring over the presidential biographies and baseball entries in the family’s encyclopedia set. “I was enamored,” he says. “Fixated.” He followed his entrancements to their ends, becoming a speechwriter to Pres- ident George H. W. Bush and the person USA Today once dubbed the “voice of au- thority on baseball broadcasting.”

AP IMAGES (BASEBALL, EISENHOWER); LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (LINCOLN, NIXON); 38 ROCHESTER REVIEW July–August 2018 JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM (KENNEDY)

RochRev_July2018.indb 38 7/30/18 4:32 PM BIPARTISAN EFFORT: Dwight Eisenhower (above) throws out a ball to open the American League baseball season in April 1960. In 1961, John F. Kennedy (left) tosses the season’s first pitch at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. Home park for the Senators, it boasted a presidential box in its stands.

GRAND OLD GAME: A contemporary political cartoon (far left) depicts Abraham Lincoln winning the “national game” by defeating his three opponents in the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln played informal ballgames before and after becoming president. Richard Nixon (above) prepares to pitch at the Washington Senators’ opening game in 1969.

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RochRev_July2018.indb 39 7/30/18 4:32 PM READ MORE Around the Horn A newspaper columnist, former National Public Radio affiliate series host and presidential speechwriter, and one-time Saturday Evening Post senior editor, Curt Smith has written 17 books, including a range of pub- lications on baseball and on the presidency. Here are a few of his “hits.”

A Talk in the Park: Nine Decades of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth (Potomac Books, 2011) An oral history of baseball announcers, whose ability to entertain and report can forge an almost familial bond with listeners. The book brings together the voices of 116 baseball commen- tators to discuss players, ballparks, teams, and other aspects of the game.

Pull Up a Chair: The Vin HOME TEAM: Longtime Chicago White Sox fan Barack Obama delivers the first pitch of the Scully Story (Potomac Washington Nationals’ home opening baseball game, against the Philadelphia Phillies, in 2010. Books, 2010) The first biography of one of the Many politicians have been baseball fans, and Smith seized opportunities to talk about the sport’s most famous game with people such as President Richard Nixon and New York Governor Mario Cuomo, broadcasters, the book once widely viewed as a likely future president. takes its title from Scully’s Nixon was uncoordinated and not much of an athlete, but he had “an endearing ‘Walter famed on-air greeting. Mitty’ quality to him regarding baseball, which is true of many people,” Smith says. Cuomo, Smith published the book when the Dodgers’ by contrast, was a former center fielder in the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system. But each of announcer marked his 60th year of them saw strong links between politics and baseball. play-by-play broadcasting. Both pursuits are combative, Smith says they told him. “They require strategy and the use of all your resources—mental, physical, and often moral and spiritual. And neither pur- What Baseball Means suit is bereft of ego.” to Me: A Celebration of While the high stakes of the presidency are self-evident, for millions of Americans—Smith Our National Pastime included—the rewards and perils of the playing field are deeply felt, too. (Warner Books, 2002) After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis For this official wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt, asking whether the 1942 baseball season should go publication of the ahead as planned. Roosevelt gave his reply publicly, at a press conference: “I honestly feel National Baseball Hall that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going.” of Fame and Museum, The president had concluded that the game was crucial to morale, both for troops abroad Smith rounded up 172 essayists—including and on the home front. Smith writes: “Baseball’s cachet was so overwhelming that FDR did presidents, actors, athletes, and writers—to not consider obliging another sport . . . The priority here was the war, which baseball could reminisce about baseball. Their memories help win.” are augmented by more than 200 The game’s fortunes have since declined. In the 1960s, television networks broadcast five photographs. regular-season match-ups per week. Now the only people who watch “already love baseball. It doesn’t court casual fans,” Smith says. This “freefall” in popularity pains him, and he has Windows on the White pointed suggestions for baseball’s leaders on measures that he thinks would draw more peo- House: The Story of ple to the sport, including keeping the batter in the batter’s box, enforcing the strike zone, Presidential Libraries and eliminating pitchers’ delays. (Diamond Communica- But the pleasure of what he calls “this evocative sport” isn’t in the technicalities, and the tions, 2001) Smith book weaves together political and athletic anecdotes. “There are a lot of statistics includ- examines the origins and ed, because baseball has a lot of statistics,” he says. “But I hate the whole mania for analyt- purposes of presidential ics. I love stories.” libraries, beginning with So do many politicians—and baseball’s legendary broadcasters. “It’s known as the great- the first such institution, Rutherford B. est talking game,” says Smith. “You tell stories between pitches. Between innings. Between Hayes’s library, which opened in Fremont, batters. Between games in a series.” Ohio, in 1916. One of his own favorite stories is about the first President Bush. The captain of his college —Kathleen McGarvey team and a tireless spectator, he told Smith he loved the game from the first time he picked up a bat, at age five. “Baseball,” Bush said, “has everything.”r

40 ROCHESTER REVIEW July–August 2018 AP IMAGES

rr_July2018_Baseball.indd 40 7/31/18 12:06 PM SPORTS HISTORY: Babe Ruth presents to Yale baseball captain and future president George H. W. Bush the original manuscript of The Babe Ruth Story in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1948. The manuscript was placed in the Yale University Library.

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RochRev_July2018.indb 41 7/30/18 4:32 PM