August 2015

E E R F he wind

as t

T he BesT L iTTLe A r Ts Town in PennsyLvAniA Theater, music, and a new arts center adorn Wellsboro, the classic “Our Town”

By Brendan O’Meara

Director and actor Thomas Putnam

Sides Family Music Dirt Road Dears Wine Symposium of the Finger Lakes www.mountainhomemag.com

August 20151

This schedule brought to you by:

Indigo Soldiers + Sailors Memorial Hospital

Volume 10 Issue 8

The Best Little Arts Town in Pennsylvania

By Brendan O’Meara Theater, music, and a new arts center adorn the classic “Our Town.”

6 High Rollers

By Linda Roller Flat track roller derby heads for our hills.

12 Play On

By Linda Roller Robert M. Sides Family Music Centers center on service.

17 Cool Times

By Holly Howell The Wine Symposium of the Finger Lakes showcases the fruits of our terrific terroir.

24

Cover by Elizabeth Young; Cover photo by Elizabeth Young.

This page (from top): by Elizabeth Young; by Sarah Wagaman;

by Cindy Davis Meixel; and by Holly Howell.

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Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Publishers Dawn Bilder George Bochetto, Esq. D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Elizabeth Young, Editor Tucker Worthington, Cover Design Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Patricia Brown Davis, Alison Fromme, Holly Howell, Roger Kingsley, Don Knaus, Cindy Davis Meixel, Fred Metarko, David Milano, Gayle Morrow, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Roger Neumann, Gregg Rinkus, Linda Roller, Kathleen Thompson, Joyce M. Tice C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Mia Lisa Anderson, Bernadette Chiaramonte-Brown, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Ann Kamzelski, Nigel P. Kent, Ken Meyer, Tina Tolins, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold, Terry Wild S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s Brian Earle Michael Banik Linda Roller Administrative Assistant Amy Packard T h e B ea g l e Cosmo (1996-2014) Yogi (Assistant) ABOUT US: Mountain Home is the award-winning regional magazine of PA and NY with more than 100,000 readers. The magazine has been published monthly, since 2005, by Beagle Media, LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2010 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

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The players and the place: (Clockwise from top left) Deane Center for the Performing Arts Executive Director Kevin Connelly brought a four-point agenda to the center; actor and director Thomas Putnam celebrates twenty-five years for his HamiltonGibson Productions; the performance center a town built. (Facing page, left to right) Lowell Coolidge’s guidance of the Deane Center board helped create the black box theater, and his and his wife Lynne’s gift gave it a name; EMMF Maestro Stephen Gunzenhauser on the Green where, over ten years ago, his wife Shelly said, “What a wonderful place for a music festival!”

6

The Best Little Arts Town in Pennsylvania Theater, Music, and a New Arts Center Adorn the Classic “Our Town”

By Brendan O’Meara Photos by Elizabeth Young

A

beautiful young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, propane-flame blue eyes, clothed in shorts and a tank-top, flip-flops down Main Street where she is, for a moment, arrested by the sight of her favorite musical instrument. It harkens back to days spent after school, stiff-backed, her nimble fingers scurrying over eighty-eight sharps and flats.

There stands a piano, more colorful than the blue sky and its accompanying cotton-ball clouds, begging people to sit and play a few notes, maybe chopsticks, maybe something far more sophisticated.

Pianos, one with the inscription, “Without great solitude no serious work is possible,” line Wellsboro’s main drag, pianos painted by the theater group Hamilton-Gibson Productions (HG), founded by Thomas Putnam and now celebrating its twenty-fifth year.

See Best Little Arts Town on page 8

7

Best Little Arts Town continued from page 7

And in a town of barely more than 3,000 people, on a street lined by pianos, shops, and galleries, like the hub of a bicycle wheel, rests the Deane Center for the Performing Arts.

Here, in a tiny town burrowed into the tree-lined mountains, is showcased an arts culture every bit as vibrant as the biggest cities in the state.

And the woman—standing, not seated—lets the neural connection of muscle memory dance over the keys as Mozart’s “Fur Elise” sing from within.

Those notes drift into the nearby Deane Center, an intrepid paean to the arts. A million-dollar endowment handled by the trusted hands of lawyer Lowell Coolidge was the seed money that broke ground on Main Street, but the Deane Center, the hub for what could be one of the greatest little arts towns in the Keystone State, is just the next iteration of an evolution that began decades ago with another museum whose commitment to high culture echoed far into the future.

• Arthur Gmeiner, born just nineteen years after the end of the Civil War, was a businessman and fledgling painter, and like most artists opted for the steadier tack of a career that paid. He was, in a sense, a conformist.

Gmeiner, in a certain bout of manifest destiny, moved to Denver, Colorado, where he bought the Parks School of Business and trained thousands of students in the ways of industrial capitalism.

But Gmeiner always had that artistic itch, so when he sold the school and moved back to Wellsboro, his everlasting goal would stand as a tribute to the arts. (It’s impossible to entirely divorce his ego, as this was a way for him to display his art, too.)

But that parenthetical digression stands in stark contrast to the true meaning of the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center as stated by Gmeiner at the dedication on October 1, 1969:“I present it to you in sacred memory of my father, mother, a sister, and two brothers, all of them now departed. It is all yours. From here on, the benefits to be derived from it will be in your hands…”

Gmeiner had a vision and saw Wellsboro for what it could be: an artistic scene for residents and tourists alike.

With the help of his cousins, Ivah and Harold Deane (whose own largess to the town was still to come), Gmeiner’s eye was always toward the future, a future that would far outlive him.

Coolidge recounts, “He was a forward-looking guy, he had just bought some corporate bonds and ventures that wouldn’t mature for twenty years. He was in his nineties. He probably thought he’d live well past 100.”

As Coolidge sees it, the Deane Center, in many ways, is an extension of the Gmeiner separated by a distance easily covered in a few hundred strides.

The Deane Center, at last, opened in 2012 and it was, more or less, the new kid in school, muscling its way into See Best Little Arts Town on page 10

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Best Little Arts Town continued from page 8

the consciousness of Wellsborians and tourists alike. Four million dollars of privately raised money announces with a certain degree of authority who the new alpha dog in town ought to be.

But it was just outside the orbit of the already established art scene. What it needed was greater gravity to draw others to it. It was clear to Kevin Connelly, the new executive director of the Deane Center, that there was a disconnect.

“At first the Deane Center wanted to be another separate arts organization,” Connelly says, “doing its own theater, its own music. It became apparent there was a lack of communication between the organizations, I think, almost cannibalizing each other’s business.”

Connelly erased that confusion.

He brought his business background to the forefront of the Deane Center.

The North Star or guiding light was right in the name: Deane Center for the Performing Arts. A stroll through the Deane Center doesn’t just reveal the Lowell & Lynne Coolidge Theatre, the black box with its chameleon potential. It reveals the hub into which all the spokes could attach.

He ensured that the Deane Center would have a four-pronged attack.

One, it would host dance classes, music lessons, and vocal lessons. Second, it would produce or host performances like the History Comes Alive words of Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln.

Third, it would work with the Endless Mountain Music Festival (EMMF) and Hamilton-Gibson Productions to host their events. And fourth, it would offer space for public hearings, business meetings, baby showers, graduation parties, proms, and wedding receptions, as the black box theater is a blank canvas that can be decked out in any fashion.

“This place wouldn’t be here without the community, so it’s for the community,” Connelly says.

And with the EMMF entering its tenth year of existence, Wellsboro has proven that it’s not just a local commune for artistic expression, but a truly global 10

exposé for the best musical talent on the planet.

Standing at the center, or, more appropriately, at the podium of the EMMF is Stephen Gunzenhauser, a world-renowned conductor, who sought to bring the world’s best musicians to Tioga County.

“I’m just flattered,” Gunzenhauser says. “I think that Wellsboro, just being a beautiful town, every musician I’ve brought here has fallen in love with it.”

That includes a docket of musicians for this season’s ten-year celebration including cellist Gita Ladd (July 26 in Wellsboro), pianists Asiya Korepanova (July 29 and 31 in Wellsboro and Mansfield), Young-Ah Tak (August 3 in Wellsboro), Ching-Yun Hu (August 5), the clarinet-piano Shtrykov-Tanaka Duo (August 4 in Elmira), and harmonica sensation Corky Siegel (August 6 and 8 in Troy and Corning).

Visit YouTube and watch these musicians work and you soon realize what a privilege it is that Guzenhauser successfully recruited them to play in a tiny town far from the cultural meccas where they routinely perform.

He relates how in baseball a good ballplayer can fail seventy percent of the time and be considered a success. These musicians, at least musicians on their level, deliver perfect sound at a success rate of 90 to 100 percent.

“People have this intake of breath.

That was a great performance,” Gunzenhauser says. “It can’t be judged like a baseball team.”

Guzenhauser has worked with musicians from Ukraine, Switzerland, Serbia, Israel, Venezuela, Japan, Scotland, the U.S., and Canada, and Ching-Yun and Korepanova illustrate that global presence descending upon Tioga County. “ The f e s t i va l esta blished a reputation,” Gunzenhauser says. “Ninety percent of players are returning, because of the hospitality and the way in which they’re lauded in the community. You don’t get that everywhere. I want music to be fun. I need to ensure each concert

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See Best Little Arts Town on page 32 11

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Dear me: The jammers for the Dirt Road Dears and the Parlor City Tricks try to muscle their way through the pack.

High Rollers

Flat Track Roller Derby Heads for Our Hills

By Linda Roller

I

t’s tough and fast, with people named “Diesel Trix,” “Criminal,” and “Bad Panda.” There’re helmets, knee and elbow pads, EMTs on the premises—and lots of make-up. But don’t be fooled. This is not the hard livin’, bone crushin’ rollergirls of the 1970s. This is a sport that is skyrocketing in popularity in our area and in the country, and these ladies, Tioga County’s Dirt Road Dears, are warm ambassadors to the world of flattrack roller derby.

The current surge in women’s roller derby began in 2001-2002, and, a couple of years ago, says Coach Buck Snort, a group from Potter and Tioga counties

attended the North East Convention of flat track roller derby in Rhode Island.

There they mingled with thousands of people involved in the sport, including trainers who were largely from Team USA Roller Derby. From that trip, two skaters, one Non-Skating Official (NSO), and the coach received the training needed to come home and train the Dirt Road Dears. For the first season, without a rink, they played only on the road. But this year they call Mansfield University’s Kelchner Arena home. “A roller derby track,” explains Annette Miller, manager of Dirt Road Dears, “takes up a lot of room.”

The track is a simple oval inside

an oval. The inside oval is the track for the skaters, and the outside is for the referees (the “zebras”—who have their own colorful nicknames). One skater for each team is the jammer, the skater that earns points for her team by passing opposing skaters. The other four skaters on the team are blockers, and they both try to help their jammer through the “pack” and try to stop the other jammer.

It’s easy for the refs and the audience to spot the jammers, as they sport a large star on their helmets. Skaters are stopped, pushed out of bounds, and can end up flat on the floor as the pack rumbles. But the flat track style avoids the crushing against the boards and See High Rollers on page 14

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High Rollers continued from page 12

the possibility of mangling pile-ups common with rink roller derby. Most spectators are away from the action on a straightaway part of the track, but some people choose to sit by the edge of the outside track on the corners—the “crash seating.”

The action is fast and furious. Skaters pushed out must re-enter the oval behind all the other skaters. The penalty for trying to push back in is thirty seconds in the penalty box, also known as the “sin bin.” Grabbing, blocking below the thighs, back blows, and fighting will get a skater time in the sin bin, and seven trips to the bin ejects a player from not only the oval, but the arena. Each “jam” is at most two minutes in length, but the lead jammer can call time before that, and by calling time early keep the opposing jammer from scoring points for her team. As Diesel Trix says, “It’s the coolest sport ever!”

And just like the “soiled doves” of the Wild West, the roller derby “girls” all have hearts of pure gold. Every job is completely volunteer, and the skaters, referees, NSOs, managers, and coaches spend countless hours training, practicing, and raising money to hold the bouts. Even the EMTs donate their time. Many of the skaters and officials will travel hours to make certain that a club has enough people to hold the match. To skate for the team a woman must be able to do a lap in under thirteen seconds and twenty-seven laps in five minutes. It takes stamina, speed, and skills to make it.

Perhaps the best example of the camaraderie in this sport is the story of “Tuff Mama,” who skated for the Parlor City Tricks (Broome County) against the Dirt Road Dears. Her home team is the Lunachicks of Geneva, New York, and she was diagnosed with cancer last year. She skates every match she can, and the entire league supports her. Her parents were on the crash seats in Mansfield in July, cheering her on. And the announcer for the Dirt Road Dears noted every jam that she was in. Her parents say that the skating keeps her spirits up, as she received chemotherapy every day for a year.

For all the skaters, many of them young mothers, the entire family comes out, supports the team, and watches as Mom becomes a fearless, tough competitor. Then, everyone goes out to the after-party and enjoys the special bond that roller derby creates.

The last home bout for the Dirt Road Dears is August 15 at Kelchner Arena, Mansfield University. Doors open at 5 p.m., and the Dears will start hunting their next prey, the Lunachicks, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 from any Dirt Road Dear, or call Annette Miller at 570-376-4692 to reserve tickets ($12 at the door).

Mountain Home contributor Linda Roller is a bookseller, appraiser, and writer in Avis, Pennsylvania.

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A joyful noise: James Jenkins tunes a 1/8 bass, a beginner-sized instrument played by elementary school-age students.

Play On

Robert M. Sides Family Music Centers Center on Service

By Linda Roller

I

t all started with a piano tuner and an amazing commitment to service. When Bob Sides married Ellin Fletcher in 1931, he was marrying into a family of piano tuners. As his granddaughter Alysha Sides Greevy tells it, he was an accountant at the beginning of the Great Depression, when no one had money to count. But people who had pianos often had enough money to get them tuned. So Bob learned the skill of

piano tuning from his father-in-law and started tuning pianos in the Williamsport area, where his reputation for service brought a steady stream of customers in those dark times. When a traveling salesman stopped in at the Sides’ home and sold them on selling pianos out of their home, the tuning business gained a sideline. By then Bob repaired pianos as well, and thus began the Sides’ philosophy of servicing everything they sell.

It wasn’t long before they were selling some band instruments, too.

They moved out of the house to a Washington Boulevard storefront right after WWII. As the business grew, Bob’s son, Hugh “Pete” Sides, envisioned a store where not only pianos and band instruments were purchased, but where customers could buy orchestra instruments and audio equipment for performances and for the home. Beyond See Play On on page 19 17

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Play On continued from page 17

that, he instituted a rental program for pianos and band instruments, so more kids in school and people of more modest means could have an instrument to try, to learn the magic of making music.

For a company that prides itself on “servicing what they sell,” this explosion of instruments needed a skilled repair staff to repair a fleet of pianos and space to store instruments over the summer. They needed much more room, and by the mid 1980s they found and renovated their current location, an old warehouse with over 52,000 square feet on Mulberry Street.

It’s a huge complex, with several large showrooms, a recital hall, lesson rooms, and all the instruments and equipment people have come to expect. But as you walk up to the second floor, you enter the heart and soul of Robert M. Sides Family Music Centers.

The entire area looks like an antique workshop, with hardwood working benches filled with the hand tools of the trade—for the second floor is filled with all sorts of instruments in the process of being repaired, restored to use in a family home, in a working band, or in the various rental programs.

In the brass and woodwind area Ron Billman, Tom Morrison, Joel Wells, and John Waxmunsky are hard at work on horns and saxophones. These artisans are some of the best in the industry and make many a “beat-up brass” or “wounded wind” whole again. The repairs at Sides last and keep these instruments in good working order for rented instruments, for professional musicians, and for people that play for their own enjoyment.

Ron Billman, a band repair technician for over twentyfive years, tells the story of a Penn State University Blue Band sousaphone that somehow took a header over the bleachers. At PSU these large tuba-like horns are plated in silver. Ron got the dent out and saved a valuable band instrument to greet the Blue and White on another game day. The whole team agrees that the hardest instrument to repair is a saxophone, with its large number of valves.

They have been asked to repair instruments that have been neglected for a generation. They’ve even repaired bagpipes!

Around the corner, another workstation is surrounded with frets and strings, and it is there that Eric Bashore and James Jenkins are at work on stringed instruments. James is also a man with an incredible eye for color in finishing, and is sometimes called in to work with the finish on piano cases.

Just down the hall, the strings and hand tools give way to oscillators and electronic equipment. Dewey Corage and Bill Rinker work there, and much of their work revolves around designing sound systems for public spaces. The Little League complex, Bowman Field, as well as many schools and churches use these experts to “get the sound right” from

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Play On continued from page 19

the instrument or voice to the audience. This is in addition to the repair of all electronic instruments. And, of course, Bill Rinker repairs home organs.

But the first love for Pete Sides, and the crown jewel of the service at Robert M. Sides, is the piano. There, Bob Dincher, brother Christopher Dicher, and Chris’s son Luke are the men responsible for both cleaning and repairing pianos, but also the delicate job of tuning everything from the family piano to a Steinway for an international performer. Bob and Chris have been with Sides over twentyfive years. They started as piano movers, and then trained in tuning and piano repair, both at Sides and beyond the doors of the business at seminars and formal schooling.

But Bob says the best training was the “trial by fire,” as the Community Arts Center began to bring in national and international performers. They needed to prepare Steinway pianos for Vladimir Feltsman, Emmanuel Ax, Ronnie Milsap, and George Winston. And musicians on this level can hear when a note or a tone is not what they are looking for in a piano for performance. Alysha (who with brother Peter, Pete’s son, are the new generation at the helm) notes that pianists are at the mercy of the piano in front of them, since they cannot bring their pianos with them.

Working with professional musicians is not easy. As Franz Mohr, piano technician for Vladimir Horowitz, said, “Your primary job is to instill confidence in the artist.”

That confidence starts with the confidence and skill of the technician preparing that piano with the artist. And for that, Chris Dincher has a gift—the gift of being able to hear what the artist hears in a piano, and then to find a mechanical/ technical solution to a problem described in terms of the color of the notes. Bob says that it is this painstaking work with top artists that allow them to go into a person’s home and make a fine piano sound how the owner would like it to sound.

It’s not just tuning for this trio. They also do restorations, reconditions, and repairs on all kinds of pianos. The day of this visit, Bob was cleaning pianos. A piano can be a dark, quiet place, and all kinds of critters can make a home there. When they move a piano from a home, it is given a cleaning to remove all the debris. Alysha also explained that there are many things that they can do to make a piano perform better, but regular tuning is essential to maintain the convex shape of the soundboard in a piano.

The soundboard looks like a harp, and the convex shape is called the crown of the piano. If the instrument is not tuned, it can relax to the point where the shape is gone. At that point, a repair means a soundboard replacement. At the end of the day, for a restoration to be successful, the piano has to play correctly.

And then there are the Steinways. It’s probably one of the first things that you see at Robert M. Sides. One See Play On on page 23 21

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Grand finale: Eric Bashore puts finishing touches on a viola.

Play On continued from page 21

room is filled with Steinways that have been restored, dating from 1877 to the mid-twentieth century. And as talented as the instrument miracle workers at Sides are, they do not do a restoration on a Steinway. For that, the piano must go either to Hamburg, Germany or New York City for the installation of a factory soundboard and pinblock.

Steinway keeps records of every piano manufactured, and who bought it—going back to 1864. Using the genuine parts helps these magnificent pianos keep their investment value. As Pete Sides says, “You wouldn’t put a Corvette engine in a Ferrari,” and the same holds true about putting non-Steinway parts in a Steinway.

Six of these beautiful pianos were sent by Robert M. Sides to the Endless Mountain Music Festival, with a value of almost half a million dollars. Those pianos will be prepared for performances by the piano technicians at Sides, and instruments used in other performances may well be maintained by one of the fourteen people in charge of keeping everything from acoustic guitars to zithers ready to play. It is a team that has performed over 10,000 repairs of band and orchestra instruments alone, with over 250 years of experience. It’s a legacy of service that spans generations, and makes a glorious sound, indeed.

Mountain Home contributor Linda Roller is a bookseller, appraiser, and writer in Avis, Pennsylvania.

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&

DRINK

Holly Howell

FOOD

Supreme sipping: Last year’s Wine Symposium of the Finger Lakes was held at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. It graduates this year to downtown Geneva.

Cool Times

The Wine Symposium of the Finger Lakes Showcases the Fruits of Our Terrific Terroir

By Holly Howell

I

always keep lemons and limes on hand in my kitchen. I believe them to be better seasonings for food than even salt and pepper. Just a few drops of good citrus can really torque up the taste of any dish. Vegetable medleys, salsas, guacamole, salad dressings, cheese fondues, grilled

fish…you name it. A squeeze of the good stuff is like magic juice to food flavors.

It’s all about acidity. We taste acidity on the sides of our tongue, and it makes our mouth water, which allows us to better detect flavor in our food. Acidity is also a key ingredient in the wines that

we drink. Some wines have more than others. You will probably never see a wine market itself as “high in acid,” since that does not evoke images of haute cuisine. But you will see acidity described using words such as crisp, clean, bracing, bright, tart, tangy, mouthwatering, and refreshing. It’s hard to even say See Cool Times on page 27

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Cool Times continued from page 24

those words without drooling…

Ac i d i t y c o m e s n a t u r a l l y from the grape, and it tends to show itself quite well in cool climate wines. Since the grapes don’t reach the higher ripeness levels that those in hot climates are privy to, the lower sugars result in lower alcohol wines with a delightful tartness. This translates to awesome versatility at the dining table.

In t h e g r a n d s c h e m e o f things, the Finger Lakes region has earned a spot amongst the most important cool climate wine producing areas of the world. Sommeliers and wine professionals everywhere are touting the prowess of our wines at the table, and more and more restaurants are making room for New York wines on their list.

Riesling has become a standout, as have other crisp whites like Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Muscat. Add to that a growing list of dry rosés, and balanced reds like Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir, and you’ve got a pretty nice food-friendly package.

Enter the Wine Symposium of the Finger Lakes, an annual event that celebrates our “cool climate-ness.” This year’s event will take place on August 21st and 22nd in Geneva, New York.

It is a collaborative effort between the Geneva Growth and the Finger Lakes Wine Alliance, with support from the New York Wine and Culinary Center, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and the city of Geneva. Attendees include grape growers, winemakers, industry professionals, international experts, and wine enthusiasts from everywhere.

The Symposium is all about

celebrating the excellence of winemaking in the Finger Lakes, and much of it centers on food and wine pairing. Tickets to this year’s event will be sold à la carte, so you can choose between the Grand Tasting, Opening Session, Seminars, Winemaker’s Luncheon, or the Red, White, and Blues street fête—or you can choose them all ( www. winesymposiumfingerlakes.com) with The Big Ticket, for a 10% discount.

I attended this amazing gathering last year, and the seminars included a structured tasting on the principles behind food and wine pairing, followed by breakout seminars on coolclimate white, red, and sparkling wines. I have never been to such a “delicious” symposium!

Highlights included a luncheon of dishes prepared by Finger Lakes chefs paired with some of the region’s signature wines. In every pairing, it was that key element of acidity in the wine that brought each course to new heights.

A salmon- and chèvre-filled arancini was divine alongside a Knapp winery Dry Riesling 2013 (Cayuga Lake). With the wine, you could taste every herb and spice ingredient in the dish. And the food toned down the tartness of the wine to reveal the ripe fruit flavors of apple and peach. It was a total win-win.

A Cabernet-braised brisket with mushroom mocha demi and a black cherry beurre blanc was matched with a Chateau L a f a y e t t e Re n e a u C a b e r n e t Sauvignon 2010 (Seneca Lake).

That cool climate wine had enough tartness to highlight

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Cool Times continued from page 27

every ingredient of the dish, without overwhelming the more delicate flavors. In turn, the texture of the food erased the wine’s acidity to reveal a rich and complex red underneath.

Cool climate really kicked into high gear when a delightful finale of tea-stewed stone fruits with a lemon thyme tuille and some local Lively Run goat cheese was served with a Billsboro Winery Cabernet Franc 2012 (Seneca Lake). A dry red with dessert?

Oh yeah, baby. It was an explosion of fruit on the palate, as one of our most worshipped reds wowed the crowd with its versatility. The lemon and goat cheese acidity of the dish was just enough to balance that of the wine, and the slight bitterness of the tea easily tamed the dry tannins. It was best described as “a party in the mouth!”

Wine can truly be considered a condiment of sorts. It is something that we enjoy alongside our meals that can greatly enhance our culinary experience, blessed as it is with the ability to make what we eat taste better. And that is why I stock plenty of Finger Lakes wines alongside the lemons and limes in my pantry!

An additional part of each year’s Symposium is the Finger Lakes AVA Riesling Challenge. Riesling wines from all over the Finger Lakes are entered and judged blind by the winemakers alone. This competition is held a few months before the actual Symposium takes place. This year’s 2015 winners were just announced! “Best of Class” awards went to: Wagner Vineyards Dry Riesling 2013, Chateau Lafayette Reneau Dry Riesling 2014, Wagner Vineyards Semi-Dry Riesling 2012, Sheldrake Point Winery Luckystone Riesling 2014, and Sheldrake Point Winery Wild Ferment Riesling Ice Wine 2014. For all of the Gold Medal winners, you can visit http://winesymposiumfingerlakes.com/rieslingchallenge/competition-winners/. A Big Cheers to Cool Climate!

Holly Howell is a Certified Specialist of Wine (by the Society of Wine Educators) and a Certified Sommelier (by the Master Court of Sommeliers in England).

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we do at the Festival you walk away saying, ‘Damn, that was good.’”

Katy Frame, an actor who performed in A Streetcar Named Desire, Somewhere With You, and with her comedy band, says, “I think the people of Wellsboro are very lucky to have such a thriving art scene in their town. My experiences performing at the Deane Center with Street Car, Somewhere With You, and with my comedy band have all been terrific. The resources that the Deane Center provides to its performers is certainly comparable with any regional black box theater I’ve ever performed in.”

The catwalk of the Lowell & Lynne Coolidge Theatre is an interlocking grid of platforms where stagehands walk above the unsuspecting patrons below. The sophisticated sound system broadcasts from all angles, true surround sound, not simply blasted from the front.

And in the middle of it, down below, sits Thomas Putnam. Papers, a tablet, a coffee cup, a phone, all cover Putnam’s six-foot long table. He points a finger at an actor standing a few paces before him. In just a few weeks, The Addams Family musical takes the stage. Putnam’s long days feel longer as he draws closer to opening night.

Back in 1990 when Putnam founded HG, he noticed there was no troupe of sorts to bring arts on a community level to Wellsboro and beyond. Like any great entrepreneur, he started his own little company.

“People seemed to love it,” Putnam says. “They found meaning to be part of our mission, to provide a voice for people in the community, acted and produced by people in the community. Boy, I didn’t realize there was this much talent in this town.”

Putnam had taught English in southern Tioga County and saw he could provide a service that would scratch an artistic itch he felt the area wanted. And he wasn’t wrong.

Twenty-five years ago he produced The Miracle Worker and the musical The Yearling. HG performed its plays wherever it could find a room: elementary schools, churches, courthouses.

Putnam didn’t know if people would show up to the first performance, but they did and then the next year, more came. “Maybe we can continue this,” he said.

He’s thoroughly reminded of how unique and special his standing is in Wellsboro. When Putnam travels to conferences or festivals and he hands out his brochures, the people who look at them—peers—admire (enviously?) the sponsorships HG procures for its productions. These peers also admire the pure volume of plays HG puts on. With five to seven main-stage productions a year, five drama camps for kids, theater programs for seniors, four youth choirs, dueling pianos, et cetera, it’s a thriving enterprise.

In the early years, costumes were stuffed in boxes and people stored set pieces in their garages. The theater

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was, in a sense, scattered around Wellsboro. Now the fumes of paint heavily suffuse the air (ADDAMS EDUARDO, The Conquistador, Death by Cherrypit, 1492-1537, reads the tombstone prop leaning against the wall) of the Warehouse Theatre just behind the Deane Center. It’s all contained.

What Putnam has found most encouraging is the new blood that comes through HG. New people build sets, audition, and actors return as well. There’s a hunger in this little town for great art, or just art to fill some part of the soul, a part that craves story, structure, or an illumination of the human condition. It’s all there. It’s all here.

“There’s always some risk and mystery,” Putnam says. “The variety of people I can interact with each play, like Atticus Finch says, ‘You just have to crawl around in their skin for a while.’ The whole cast is empowered by crawling around in someone else’s skin.”

Twenty-five years of HamiltonGibson (and counting), ten years of the Endless Mountain Music Festival (and counting), and even a magazine like Mountain Home (ten years this fall), a publication (one of the few) committed to long form reporting and writing the true short story, illustrate the full breadth of artistic range Wellsboro offers.

All of this, the nearly four million dollars raised from private monies (led by the generous Harold and Ivah Deane endowment) to plant a cultural hub tucked into the mountains, the festivals, the plays, the word craft, all of it blossoms in an unassuming place—the greatest arts town in the Commonwealth.

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Mountain Home

Award-winning writer Brendan O’Meara is the author of Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year.

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B A C K O F T H E M O U N TA I N

In the Shade of the Old Maple Tree

By Roger Kingsley

I

’m behind the wheel of my Ford F-150, driving the road that connects East Troy to the State and County Parks of Mt. Pisgah in Bradford County. It’s one of those summer days that ranks a twelve on a one-to-ten scale. It’s one of those days when you can’t help but pucker moistened lips and whistle, hum, or sing Nat King Cole’s classic “Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer” tune. It’s farm country prior to entering the park boundaries, and the first farm you pass is the picturesque paradise of Providence Acres—aptly named by the Abma family for their deep devotion to the guidance of God. I can’t remember why I was driving that road to begin with, but I do remember this: my reaction when I saw the beef cattle on Providence Acres napping in the shade of that maple tree, and my extreme disappointment when I realized my camera equipment was at home several miles away. Holy cow!! This is “crazy!” What was I thinking as I hit the brakes and performed a K on that narrow country road? Seconds later I passed the cattle again…this time heading for the shortest route home, holding my breath and praying they would remain undisturbed in their peaceful, cool spot. A short while later I was back at the scene, and, to my surprise, the cows and their calves never budged while I was gone, nor did they make any attempt to move out while I photographed them. I was smiling when the photo session was over, because at that point I was happier than a napping Hereford under the shade of a maple tree on a lazy, hazy, crazy summer day.

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