a beautiful book a beautiful article in time magazine talking about how we're all remembering or history in that we didn't just arrive it being great there are a lot of thing to contribute to it and i just thought this is a good thing for us to perhaps discuss and so on thank you to open it with lanny talking about his article because it was really wonderful i tried to talk about the idea   social media it's been a little harder to retain the collective memory the things that bind us as a quarter and that we tend to kind of live in the present we're very connected in the present and i can read the job but but it's difficult to go back and really talk about what's important in our past that holds us together and that's true in princeton as to a national i think it's very true and surely and i just look around and i think of you know they talk about immigration and important for us to know so i'm hoping that we can share some of these experiences and have people to do with another about how they got here and why they can through america  why america is great and why we should remember them and live is our no that you meet all kinds of people in your wonderful position as a or mayor and how thrilling that was be because you are in a position where you can ask and see tell me about this or you can mention it to a teacher who you know is that little broke or subpar growth in the high school and saying you're teaching history or i would if you founded are you pulling out stories from children over storytelling alone is such an incredible situation that we should have more stories i totally agree and it's something that binds us together as a community because we do have this quite good memory or collective history in the stories we choose to tell and share with one another that helps define who we are and i think a different periods there's different stories that are compelling for different reasons one of the things that that's happened politically over the past year is the recognition of that with us from jackson neighborhood is an historic district and as part of that process of recognizing that neighborhood we had hundreds of residents some of them who had moved away but came back for the hearings to tell us their stories to make sure that when in the record and you know when you create a historic district it's about the buildings but it's also about the people who live there and about the stories it's a bit amazing there are you have to work to attain that memory yes otherwise you get into collapse or forget it how many times have you talked to people and said well you know  and that's where you went and then of course now our public library with its new amazing second floor renovation is pretty wonderful and jose has a home room of princeton history so that you can go there and say well now who was surely set of you when she was teaching at the high school or was she not teaching no she wasn't she was a guidance counselor and you can just straighten think things out but i do would like very much if through this program we can encourage people to talk more about their experiences their families to their children to their neighbors to as we see it connecting with others because it's fascinating  d there's such an nervous mix now of nationalities and people and we haven't always had that we've had people when i first arrived people from the italian background pretty much leave them where whole area and they we knew sort of where they live because the curtains were so beautiful but otherwise you know your thought too much more and then of course the african american with this really area which relates thanks to so many things that are going on you've just done the whole book about the history of this is diana what i'm are doing calling everybody and saying hey would you like to do a little stitching here and there and tell the history and all of a sudden we have this book and it's just wonderful and as a picture of what the fish market used to look like and what someone remembers nassau street which is quite different than it is today and but you know that promotes more chatting and telling us more about what we are able to do telling our memories and their neighborhood they're not always something mental either i mean there's half of it as a positive memory power other things are difficult  that history you know if you don't load you can take it for granted that people will remember and this cautionary tales that and what worries me so much about today is that people are losing track of that they are also well and they're without smartphones  and what's going on in the afternoon and this i mean we mentioned it to use one of the things that wasn't mentioned was when they had the whole holocaust i mean the stories are coming we have a wonderful neighbor who did a whole piece on her family and how they got out it's an amazing book it's just amazing and it's just they were in the trade what numbered car usually to be on and where and well but it think it's i think it's history is often complicated and it's the story we tell looking back on the past and drawing the lessons that we're ready to draw and that we're going to draw on and how we see something and i think there's i think one of us looking on the positive side i think there's more i feel like there's more of a openness to seeing things in their complicated nature and to not make everybody a hero and to it's a good point to grapple with some difficult things in our past and reexamine people in rooms we used to see one way but you know not not everybody has a sparkling past and i think it's important for us to recognize problems that we've had in the men in how they were dealt with and interact in with with the results of those numbers which are impacting us today and beautiful thing contagious jailers doing it and harvard is doing it and christian has been here doing it and one of the one of the i want to things that i thought was interesting was that you know we talk about collective memory i think that there can be different how how do we have these different groups in our own community knowing different stories and not sharing them and i i do think it's a positive step that we start telling one another the stories and i think we can better get at the truth and have a better understanding of where we are today and i'm so glad you're saying this it's just it really is important and they're all i mean the reason a political situation is such is that people really didn't then to determine whatever it was that they were willing to listen to others and and here we are and i i i think we could do a better job and i think we do pretty much you know this listening to your talk i'm thinking about two houses that are quite close to us now one would somewhere and plus he was a california and is now known in history as the liberator of california because he led the american forces against an estimate mexicans and spanish as well just at the town of stockton california is named after  assassinated so it's things like that are and that was all new to me i did not know me and i took it as governor and this is in our in the in the eight hundred sixty s at the time of national crisis and then and he was an important person i was a much money however and it's not really old you can't say that's an old bill must've been a close call but it's there and as you say i've been unaware of this ex streets has a history with i live on elaine's or when you mention holden and that whole area and then i was just someone recently whose family owned a whole i mean huge gave all the money for lawrenceville school as were each neighborhood did something we made it a banner about their community but they they did name their streets and found out why in our streets down  it's it's it's it's wide open and there's so much more we could be doing so i'm crossing my fingers that all goes well but you both have been great to come and i hope that   i can't believe it i mean this is wonderful so let's just keep on it and say to everyone please tell me a little bit more about you and your family and how they died here and talk to your grandchildren or write i mean it in this day everything gets a raised but if you took out a pen and you wrote some of it to your grandchildren that would be great too let's do our best thank you very much for joining us it's been lit mayor li society and our subject is public memory and we both feel that it's really wonderful for this community to have such a broad interest in public memory we all know that technology comes in and it really takes over but it's one and the groups that give us so much information and if he did her dissertation here in princeton on this very subject so i'm hoping to tell us a little bit about how she did hers and then later on we're going to talk about the local right so public memory is was the field that or i continue to be interested in this field but particularly when i was doing my undergraduate research at princeton it was something that fascinated me and the way that i generally explain it to people is we have this notion of historiography which is taking everything that historians have written about a particular subject over time the professionals and what they think about a narrative so you know world war two everything that everyone's ever written about world war two that's the historiography of world war two and public memory is like the historiography of everyday people and what they know about their own past and i think that you know not to knock historians in the academy but in terms of the power of history to dictate things about our own lives and the decisions that we make and the ways that  s and policy impact our lives and articulated through history that generally sems out of public memory it doesn't really matter what the professionals say about the narrative people will always go off of what they think about the narrative so it's always really important as a historian working in a community to get a sense for what the public memory is and public memory can be articulated through any kinds of media you know through history organizations like the historical society of princeton exhibitions you know t v series historical plaques conversations that people have about their also say the arts council you know there are so many ways that it can happen it's not just a textbook and that's what's so exciting about it is it can it can have these really engaging media so yes the particular work that i did was about public memory at world fairs in the eighteenth and i know in the nineteenth and twentieth centur fundamental exposition until it all go i do i go into all of those world's fairs most of the time what we hear about them is oh the corliss steam engine and all of these innovations that were unveiled at these world's fairs it's oftentimes a subjective of historians who study the history of science but we often forget that most of the world's fairs that we held in the united states were organized around historical anniversaries so the one hundredth anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence or the four hundredth anniversary of columbus discovering america in the case of chicago so i was very interested in how those narratives were being deployed and you know twenty five million people came to the chicago world's fair is just one of these incredible shared experiences for americans in the way that people remember them even seventy years later in oral histories i thought it was so important to understand what people were being told about these narratives at these fairs so oh  world's fair experience or world's fair memory to share they were so exciting and especially if we go as far back as eight hundred seventy six you know this would be a once in a lifetime experience to see incredible things that on a day to day basis wherever you lived in the hundred centuries you wouldn't even have even heard of they were you know no television no radio it was a spectacle that is beyond anything that i think we can conceive of twenty first century american i agree i totally agree and i think it's exciting now that we're living in the twenty first century changes yes and what people not just huge things but little things that are happening in her community to live here but really they lived in denmark and have here that came from denmark over here they brought such and such it and invention i mean i think all of these stories are going to be so invaluable and i'm looking forward to having more and more of them being told and time this is really society and even your wonderful brew sure it talks about education which of course this is part of and it talks about comfort stations and community so the three i mean i just said tipper sure is wonderful and all three are very key part of our community and where we are today when my children are all excited because lo land was am right and they want to tell you all yes damon so for dinner we played the drums i said oh you did did anything and that's one of the things where you know what we try to do is set the second that happened we started a file on jamie inches fell in the historical society because well another new important individual coming out of prince and who you want to document because who knows fifty years from now someone might be interested in that so you know there's always that question of when does history start and you know history is always because i mean that was published you know maybe two months ago of the various writers ray and and all the people came to michael and said i'm with the guys school with her and went to the middle school with her and this is what she did and she was it plain the and but this woman went on and she was just remarkable in getting doing covers of the new yorker and it was traditions it earning enough money that she bought a farm in cooperstown and has t airplanes and she's wow law and the interest in her flying was just wonderful she said well it's really like playing the piano and flying is like playing the piano and she said yes because you're up there and you're doing  the pedals from the plane or the pedal so that you have a piano book you know stories like this are on the here absolutely absolutely so i'm so eager that you're able to help us and gather more every day that that's what we're here to do you keep in touch and then this is what wonderful business of collecting memory and if we can just talk it out and we'll be on campus and off campus and one of the things i love most about our community is having a community versity with true started to bring that tearing down together and we can do that and there is kids who are here on campus and the says can be passed on and so i can say oh yes when i was in the class of so and so and it's just wonderful you your perfect example just perfect example i remind you all of my memory is our princeton based well i approve and that's why we're doing this program and we're going to follow through and have our collective memory program come on and we hope you'll be part of it later on as it has on new things that are going on in your world and it's see i'm just through and to have this opportunity to spread the word because you really understand what public memory is and we're going to have even more of it here in princeton oh absolutely that's that's our mission in a nutshell so we seek to do that and and we do think that public memory is and having taken his on to the dentist the first time she ever left i mean these are just amazing so at any rate we're going to talk more about that and other thing that in the meantime you're going to come in and help was introduce this new