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About the Author
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg served for 30 years as a university president. He is now president emeritus and university professor at the George Washington University, where he teaches courses on the university presidency in America. He is also an adviser to Korn/Ferry International, where he is helping to find the next generation of university leadership. In June 2008 Simon and Schuster will release his new book Big Man on Campus: A University President Speaks Out On Higher Education. B.A. Columbia, M.P.A. Harvard, J.D. Yale. Fifteen honorary degrees. A swell guy. But not much of a dancer.He will blog about issues torn from the headlines dealing with higher education. Contemporary topics of pressing, current concern. And some serious matters too.
About Brainstorm
Mark Bauerlein
Marc Bousquet
Laurie Fendrich
Dan Greenberg
John L. Jackson Jr.
Stan Katz
Michael Nelson, guest blogger
Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
Brainstorm Alumni
Marty Nemko, guest bloggerBob Zemsky
Recent Posts
Under Pressure | Comment [2]
Campus Polling Centers | Comment
Working by Degrees | Comment [12]
L'Shana Tova | Comment [2]
ROTC and Relativity | Comment [14]
Featured Articles By the Author
They Came, They Carved, They Created
In the later years of the 19th century through the early days of the 20th century, a group of Eastern European wood carvers immigrated to the United States and began to make furniture and decorative objects in their new world. Specializing in carved animal figures (many with European roots from areas that were heavily forested), these men made decorative elements for synagogues and cemeteries: lions, torah arks, memorial tablets, pediments and other such elements. And soon they began to create commercial items as well: cigar store figures, totems and carousel animals, ornate three-dimensional horses elaborately decorated with paint, lacquer, gilding, glass jewels — filled with detailing that beguiles the eye. I tell you all this because I visited a marvelous exhibition, “Gilded Lions and Jeweled Horses: The Synagogue to the Carousel,” that originated at the American Folk Art Museum in NY but is now on display in Cooperstown, NY at the Fenimore Art Museum. It is a treat to behold and enjoy.
For those of us who grew up in Brooklyn, there are many “authentic” pieces of culture found in the back streets of Coney Island, one of the greatest amusement centers ever designed: the long boardwalk, Steeplechase and its parachute jump, Nathan’s hot dogs and fries, amusements like the Cyclone, Ferris wheel, and bumper cars. But few us were aware of the “Coney Island Style” of woodcarving that filled studios on the back streets.
One of the most famous carvers working at the time was a man named Marcus Charles Illions, called by The New York Times “the Michelangelo of carousel carvers.” Apparently he was a horseman himself, riding in full Russian uniform up and down Ocean Parkway, the five-mile long thoroughfare connecting Coney Island, home of the workshop, to Prospect Park, the home of a carousel.
Along with a pantheon of horses champing at the bit, the exhibition has a display of intricate paper cuttings, many hand-painted with decorative motifs and calligraphic prose, often telling stories about families or organizations. Both the carvings and the cuttings grow out of a tradition that comes from the Hebrew saying, translated in the show as: “Be bold as a leopard, swift as an eagle, fleet as a deer, and strong as a lion, to do the will of the Father who is in Heaven.”
Only a few miles away from the museum is the Baseball Hall of Fame, where I couldn’t help but spend several hours mesmerized by the nostalgia of my youth. If you build it, they will come. There are mementos of the great and near-great presented in context of the sport, the era, and the location. But what struck me the most was not “the things” — but the people looking at them. Baseball truly is the national pastime, and people from all over the country were looking at images of their heroes. Young and old, inter-generations, people were “explaining” to their companions why one particular player, or one particular team, or one particular game was the most important of all. People shared stories of favorite seasons; of attending games with fathers, older brothers, boyhood friends; of eating hot dogs and more hot dogs. They spoke of watching batting practice before the game, of waiting around for autographs, of memorizing statistics — line-ups, RBIs, ERAs, most stolen bases, most bunts, Cy Young awardees, broken records, changing managers, all the bits and pieces of encyclopedic knowledge of folk-lore. It is a visit worth your time, a most pleasant summer activity, indeed.
Posted at 10:32:33 PM on July 15, 2008 | All postings by Stephen Joel TrachtenbergCommenting is closed for this article.