Two representatives from KSC have been awarded fellowships to the first European Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization at the Royal Holloway campus, Egham, Surrey in England, this summer: Dr. Nona Fienberg, who will be moving from her current position as  dean of Arts & Humanities in June to teach in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Department, and Economics Professor Patrick Dolenc. This intensive, two-week residential program is designed to broaden the background of postgraduates in Holocaust studies, early career academics, and educators in relevant fields. The curriculum consists of courses, lectures, and seminars taught by leading scholars on such themes as the history of Jews and Judaism in Europe, Holocaust history, the Holocaust in literature and film, and the Holocaust and modern thought.

About 10 years ago, while he was developing a course at University of Illinois Chicago, Michael Antonucci, associate professor of English and American studies, stumbled upon an old and dusty copy of Frank J. Basloe’s I Grew Up With Basketball: Twenty Years of Barnstorming with Cage Greats of Yesterday, then long out of print. Basloe (1887–1966) was born in Hungary and immigrated as a child with his family to the United States in the late 19th century.

“It’s a great American coming-of-age tale in which a Jewish immigrant becomes (in his words) ‘a toned American’ through the new game called basketball,” explained Dr. Antonucci. “From this perspective, the text gives scholars and students a great snapshot of the US in the early 20th century. Trains, cities, towns, games, work, and the hustle are present throughout the text.” Realizing that the book had real value for his work in American studies at KSC, Dr. Antonucci tried using a pdf copy of I Grew Up With Basketball as a text it in his class. Obviously, that was far from an ideal solution, so he proposed that the University of Nebraska Press reprint the book, for which he wrote a new introduction.
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Only it wasn’t really the “campus” at the time, and it was even several years before there would be a Keene Normal School, let alone a Keene State College. Anyway, on July 18, 1885, the Barnum, Bailey, and Hutchinson Circus was in Nashua. It’s next stop was Keene, to provide the locals with the biggest entertainment event of the year.

Unfortunately, Albert, a huge bull Indian elephant (second in size only to Barnum’s fabled Jumbo), got in a tiff with another elephant. When elephant-trainer John McCormack stepped in to break up the fight, Albert knocked McCormack down and pinned him to the ground with his massive head. Then Albert bolted from the scene, onto the circus grounds, and could have caused considerable damage, were it not for the brave intervention of Prof. Astingstall, “the celebrated keeper and trainer who faced and subdued the brute in his mad rush.”

The circus doctor examined McCormack and found no broken bones, so everyone thought the trainer would recover, but he died of internal injuries during the train ride to Keene. By the time the train reached Keene, the circus owners decided that Albert was too great a risk, and needed to be put down.
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