Mountain Home, December 2018

WISH YOU WERE HERE

The Penn Wells Turns 150 as One of America’s Finest Historic Hotels

By Carrie Hagen

Reindeer Land in Wellsboro Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Penn Yan Christkindl Opens in Mansfield

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Volume 13 Issue 12

5 Art, Paper, Scissors

Looking Good at 150

By Karey Solomon

The intricacies and artistries of Gail Stan’s work come to the Mountain Home Art Gallery.

By Carrie Hagen

The Penn Wells Hotel shines with its new historic honor.

14 There’s Nothing Like Live

By Dave Milano

The Wellsboro Community Concert Association celebrates 70 entertaining years.

18 Have You Herd?

By Gayle Morrow

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Wellsboro’s Christmas on Main Street, December 7-9, includes Rudolph’s friends.

Joy from The Olde Worlde

20 34th Annual Dickens of

By Gayle Morrow

a Christmas Schedule 24 Circle of Life

Mansfield’s St. James Episcopal Church hosts Christkindl Market.

By Maggie Barnes

The greatest gifts are the ones we don’t see coming.

31 Goodbye to Bong's

By Maggie Barnes

32 Versatile Vinifera

22

By Karey Solomon

It Takes A Village To Raise An Art Studio

Wine flour finds a niche in the Finger Lakes.

36 Cooking Up Some

By Nicole Landers

Christmas

Penn Yan residents Faith and Dexter Benedict discover the meaning of community.

By Cornelius O’Donnell

From ricers to recipes: presents for your favorite chef.

42 Back of the Mountain

By Ardath Wolcott Frozen reflections.

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Cover by Tucker Worthington. Cover photo courtesy Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge. This page (top) courtesy Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge, (second) courtesy St. James Episcopal Church; (bottom) Faith Benedict displays pieces in the new art studio, by Nicole Landers.

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w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Publisher George Bochetto, Esq. D i r e c t o r o f O pe r a t i o n s Gwen Button Managing Editor Gayle Morrow S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s Robin Ingerick, Richard Trotta Gallery Manager/ Circulation Director Michael Banik Accounting Amy Packard D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Tucker Worthington, Cover Design Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Mike Cutillo, Elaine Farkas, Alison Fromme, Carrie Hagen, Paul Heimel, Lisa Howeler, Don Knaus, Nicole Landers, Janet McCue, Dave Milano, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Peter Joffre Nye, Linda Roller, Diane C. Seymour, Karey Solomon, Beth Williams, Dave Wonderlich C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Bernadette Chiaramonte, Diane Cobourn, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Lisa Howeler, Jan Keck, Mike Kissinger, Nigel P. Kent, Roger Kingsley, Tim McBride, Heather Mee, Jody Shealer, Linda Stager, Mary Sweely, Sue Vogler, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold,

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D i s t r i b u t i o n T eam Layne Conrad, Grapevine Distribution, Gary Hill, Duane Meixel, Linda Roller, Alyssa Strausser T h e B ea g l e Cosmo (1996-2014) • Yogi (2004-2018) 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, 871/2 Main Street, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2018 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@ mountainhomemag.com, or call (570) 724-3838.

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Courtesy Gail Stan

Art, Paper, Scissors

The Intricacies and Artistries of Gail Stan’s Work Come to the Mountain Home Art Gallery

By Karey Solomon

A

cat with a self-satisfied smile sits tall among a collection of potted plants, impersonating a flower. Swans meet among the watery ripples they made as they paddled toward each other. A geometric design is enlivened by a host of tiny birds; another, on closer inspection, turns out to be composed of bees. Yet another is actually a vineyard with individually applied grapes. Gail Stan’s art is the medium of cut paper, used in unexpected ways to create exquisitely detailed designs.

Based in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, Gail began her career as a self-taught artist during a difficult time in her life. Around the time her son left home for college,

she also became the caregiver for both her husband, just diagnosed with dementia, and her father, who had become too frail to live on his own. Needing something creative to do, in part to cope, she recalled an article she’d seen years earlier on paper-cutting.

Then she saw a wooden design she liked and wondered whether she might do something similar with paper. She grabbed gift-wrap and scissors and began.

“It was totally absorbing and a form of renewal so I could go back and deal with the things I had to deal with,” she says now.

“I never had a set end goal in mind. It was more going out to the workroom and just whatever impulse came, I would follow it.

When you’re in the creative process, you’re so focused you’re not even aware of your surroundings, just grabbing stuff.

“It can get a little messy,” she admits.

As she worked on more pieces, she developed techniques and evolved new designs. Finding she disliked seeing folds in the finished work—“No matter what you do, you’ll still see traces,” she says—she’ll take a design she’s worked on, smooth it out, and cut the finished pattern with a precision knife from an unblemished piece of paper.

“The process is not straightforward,” she notes. “It’s usually a painful process with many revisions to get to the drawing I want.

See Paper on page 34 5

L ooking Good

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a t 150 The Penn Wells Hotel Shines with Its New Historic Honor

By Carrie Hagen

See Penn Wells on page 8

Courtesy Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge

W

ellsboro’s history echoes through the seventy pictures that line the Mary Wells Dining Room at the Penn Wells Hotel on Main Street. Like portals into stories lived generations ago, the black and white images entice visitors to step a little closer, look a little longer, and imagine the scenes outside of their frames. The snapshots capture and reveal episodes of Wellsboro life—parades celebrate the end of World Wars I and II, a movie star poses amidst schoolgirls, natural disasters devastate the land. People marry, stores open, and beauty queens smile. The hotel transports visitors into a 1920s setting rich in atmosphere, and it has received national recognition for its period architecture and décor. But it is the pictures on the dining room walls that contain characters and conflicts, the more dynamic story elements from the Penn Wells history.

Built in 1869, the Penn Wells Hotel is now on the eve of its 150th anniversary year.

And as its operators consider the historic building’s future, their thoughts are focused on storytelling.

“The photos connect people to family memories,” says Ellen Dunham Bryant. “They remind a lot of people that the building was here and operating when their ancestors were walking around.” A fourth generation member of the Dunham family, Ellen Bryant knows something of the tie between local residents and the history of the Penn Wells Hotel. Her roots on Main Street date to 1905, when her great-grandparents, Roy and Fannie Dunham, came to town to take stock in the grocery store that launched the family’s business interests for generations. (Today, John and Nancy Dunham, Ellen’s parents, and her sister, Ann Dunham Rawson, run Dunham’s Department Store.)

In 2009, Ellen, forty-eight, and her husband, Shawn, forty-seven, left their work as lawyers in the Washington, D.C., area and moved with their three children to Ellen’s

7

Penn Wells continued from page 7

hometown. Shawn is now the CEO and Ellen the president of the Wellsboro Hotel Company, a shareholding group that operates the Penn Wells Hotel, the Penn Wells Lodge, the Arcadia Theatre, and Café 1905 in Dunham’s Department Store. Under their watch, the Penn Wells was awarded entrance last year into Historic Hotels of America. This program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation promotes heritage tourism by recognizing “the finest hotels and resorts from across the nation.” The prestigious honor was unexpected, exciting, and sobering. “ The news gave me more of a responsibility to make sure we get our story right,” says Ellen. For the past eight years, the Bryants have maintained, renovated, and expanded the Wellsboro Hotel Company’s historic properties while concentrating on preservation. Entering into 2019, conversations about the Penn Wells Hotel are concentrated on narration. “ There are a lot of people in Wellsboro with deep roots,” says Shawn.

Many locals, however, don’t realize the full historical significance of the Penn

Wells, which functioned as “the town center for generations.” The upcoming sesquicentennial will be an occasion to showcase the hotel’s history through artifacts and the stories they tell. Guests have often identified pieces of their own family histories in archival documents featuring the Penn Wells. More than once, diners at the hotel’s acclaimed Sunday brunch have picked out relatives long gone in photos on the walls. And after one woman couldn’t place the location of a favorite picture featuring her great uncle holding a viola, someone thought the fireplace set behind the uncle looked familiar. A visit to the Penn Wells lobby solved the mystery.

Among Ellen’s possessions is a menu that she received in the mail some time ago. Crinkled and faded, it holds the dinner choices given to a newlywed couple in the Mary Wells Dining Room on August 4, 1943. “Our first meal together,” a hand has written in ink at the top. “Had good service,” the same cursive strokes read at the bottom. (One of the newlyweds had Broiled Choice Sirloin Steak, French fries, lemon pie, and pineapple juice for $1.65.)

Ellen’s favorite anecdote, though, is one

that disproved her working theory of the story behind a scene captured in one of the more popular dining room photos—that of actress Joan Crawford’s visit to Wellsboro and the Penn Wells Hotel in 1943. In it, the movie star is wearing a pantsuit and oversized sunglasses as she smiles faintly at a camera. Surrounding her are schoolaged kids, and one to Crawford’s left is wearing a drum. For years, the story Ellen had conjured was that a parade including some marching band members had hailed Crawford’s visit. One day in the recent past, a woman in her nineties hobbled through the lobby and into the dining room, where a younger woman led her to the picture of Joan Crawford. The old lady leaned forward, and looked at the picture of herself as a young girl holding the drum. She hadn’t been marching, and there was no parade, she said. She had just been walking home from school with a drum when she had her picture taken.

Photographs locate people and events in time and place, providing significant—if incomplete—historical context. The Penn Wells photographs (taken largely from Life See Penn Wells on page 10

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in Wellsboro by retired Mansfield University sociology professor Gale Largey), however, begin in 1880. The hotel building dates to 1869. As part of the Bryants’ mission to celebrate the historical significance of the Penn Wells, they want to engage visitors and locals in the hotel’s entire story.

Those who know their Penn Wells history can probably trace the bulk of their knowledge to 1925. That’s when a group of local business people—including Ellen’s great-grandfather, Roy Dunham—came together as the Wellsboro Hotel Company to save the property, this after a streak of mismanagement threatened its longevity.

After renovations, the Penn Wells opened to instant success in 1926. Since then, it has retained the atmosphere of the 1920s and remained under the ownership of the Wellsboro Hotel Company. Prior to 1925, the most significant event in the building’s history was a fire that destroyed the fourth floor in 1906. Nothing of note appears to stand out before that.

“1869 to 1905 is generally an era that’s kind of lost on people,” says Shawn.

But although its first thirty-six years seem to have passed without significance, an investigation into the hotel’s early life reveals details that sew the building’s legacy on Main Street even more deeply into the fabric of Wellsboro life.

• Since 1816, nothing but hospitality operations—be they taverns, hotels, or inns—have had a presence on the Penn Wells plot. In the mid 1860s, fire destroyed a building that had stood on the property for some time, and for at least two years the lot was abandoned. Horses pulled wagons and coaches past it along a wide but unpaved path on their way to and from the Green. Once a day, news came from Tioga via stagecoach. Growth in Wellsboro had been somewhat slow. It had been fifty-five years since Benjamin Wistar Morris, a downstate land agent of Pine Creek Company, had moved his family from Philadelphia into a rugged log cabin on land he named for his wife, Mary Wells. Companies had invested in the area’s timber industry, and pioneers had accepted generous incentives to settle the land, but the village was far from water or railroad and not easily accessible.

Lawyer and real estate developer A.P.

Cone purchased property that included the abandoned lot sometime between 1853 and 1869. In 1869, he spent $50,000 constructing a four-story brick building on the plot. Called the Cone House, it was hailed as the finest accommodation in the area and its surroundings. Rooms had no closets, no bathrooms, and most contained only one twin bed. Many had fireplaces.

Pennsylvania Governor William Stone, in his memoir Tale of a Plain Man, credits the Cone House with hosting a meeting that changed the course of his life. Upon his return to Tioga County after serving in the Civil War, he tried to settle into life as a farmer, work that he found “discouraging and disagreeable.” One night, he and some friends took a hayride into town and heard a professor from Mansfield State Normal School lecture on the importance of an education. The professor said that if anyone in the audience wanted to go to school but thought he was too poor, he should meet him at his room at the Cone House the following day. Stone said he was the only one who seemed to show up. After talking with the professor at the hotel, the future governor took a job as a janitor at Mansfield in exchange for the first part of his education there—a path that led to law and then politics.

Stone also remembered that the Cone House held the first public dinner ever served in Wellsboro. In 1871, the town celebrated the arrival of the railroad with a ceremony at the station. A band had practiced “for two weeks” to perform at the event, and New York’s Governor Horatio Seymour gave an address on a platform erected for the occasion. Afterwards, people convened at the Cone House for a dinner where “many men” tasted champagne for the first time.

• A.P. Cone, forty-nine, was a New Hampshire native and an established builder, having overseen the construction of, among other things, the first store in nearby Gaines Township. He had married well, taking Anna Bache, the youngest daughter of William Bache, Sr., one of Wellsboro’s earliest settlers and a merchant who opened the village’s first store, as his wife. Bache became the town’s postmaster in 1822, a position he held for twenty-three years until his death in 1845. (William Bache Jr., Anna Cone’s older brother, was

welcome to

the first president of the First National Bank of Wellsboro, and it is he for whom the Bache Auditorium was named.)

Several months before the construction of the Cone House, A.P. and Anna Cone had suffered a tragedy when their daughter, Hattie, aged twelve, had drowned in Dickinson Pond, along with her cousin of the same age. Fifteen years before, they had lost another daughter, Fanny, who died of illness at the age of four.

A.P. Cone died of fever in 1871, two years after opening the hotel that would keep his name alive over a century later.

• Dave Cox, a front desk attendant at the Penn Wells Hotel for almost twelve years, has painstakingly researched the owners, proprietors, and landlords who have overseen the building.

According to his research, a B.B. Holiday purchased the hotel around 1873. About two years later, a new owner named Joel Parkhurst changed its name to Parkhurst House. J.S. Coles leased the property in 1885, renaming it as the Coles House (also called Coles Hotel), a name that stayed when his brother W.R. Coles purchased the building in 1896.

After the 1906 fire that destroyed the fourth floor, says Shawn, the hotel’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. At various times, the community tried to restore its prominence, most notably in 1921 when Clark B. Richardson purchased it for $25,000 with the backing of investor Leonard Harrison (the same Leonard Harrison whose name graces the state park on the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon’s east side) and changed the name to the Wellsboro Inn. His plans foundered as well, and so the team of sixty-six investors came together in 1925 as the Wellsboro Hotel Company. The shareholders embarked on a plan to update the hotel in 150 days and rebrand it as the Penn Wells. Spending an amount estimated between $150,000 and $200,000, the team did just that—renovated the lighting, heating and ventilation systems; installed an elevator, first floor washrooms, new windows, tile floors; added a sprinkler system, a fifteen by fifteen marquee entrance, and stucco walls.

“Wellsboro has waited patiently for a place where she might be proud to have her guests … and not be ashamed to take our friends,” the Wellsboro Agitator wrote in October of 1925.

The hotel was an instant success, says Dave Cox, because of its location along the only two “concrete” roads: the Susquehanna Trail that led from Buffalo to Philadelphia and southwards, and the Roosevelt Highway (U.S. Route 6) connecting New York City to Chicago. As the newly named “Pennsylvania Grand Canyon” attracted tourists far and wide, news of the hotel’s hospitality and grandeur spread quickly.

“Nearly 100 people were turned away in one day,” says Cox. • Throughout the 1940s, the Penn Wells became a community gathering space where various societies held Saturday evening events and organized drives. During World War II, volunteers manned an observation deck on the hotel’s roof as authorities feared German bombers might target the Corning Glass Works due to the company’s war effort contributions. In 1946, Corning Glass Works held its annual banquet in the Mary Wells Dining Room, and, as a decorative backdrop, fashioned 1,438 light bulbs into a Christmas bulb flag, later featured in Life magazine. This See Penn Wells on page 12

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Courtesy Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge First feast: A 1943 newlywed couple leave their thoughts about their inaugural marital meal on their menu.

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one-of-a-kind work of art now hangs in the lobby.

Historic Hotels of America, says Ellen, particularly liked the Christmas bulb flag as a piece of Americana that showcases the Penn Wells’ connection to regional history.

• An anonymous guest nominated the hotel for admittance into the Historic Hotels of America program. The Bryants say the program was on their radar, but they wouldn’t have submitted the paperwork until satisfying each of their perfectionist observations about the property. To qualify for the application process, a property must be at least fifty years old, demonstrate its historic significance, and be designated by the Secretary of Interior as a National Historic Landmark or be listed in/eligible for listing in the National Register for Historic Places.

After reviewing the hotel’s history, program officials advised the Bryants on how they might promote and highlight that in the application. Ellen remembers the reaction of Tom Carleton, front desk manager for almost twenty-six years, when he heard their application had been approved. He still beams when asked about it.

“It was nice to get recognition for a real neat old place,” he says.

Because they also made some operational changes over the past year, the Bryants can’t be sure about whether the national recognition increased sales, although 2017 will go down in the

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Co-Sponsored by The Fifth Season, Xtreme Internet & Indigo Wireless books as a good year for the Penn Wells. What they have noticed is the community’s response to the bronze plaque stating the hotel’s designation as a national historic property.

“As soon as the plaque went up, it started catching people’s eyes,” Ellen smiles. “What we saw was the local pride in the designation. One person said, ‘Oh, it’s about time.’”

A copy of the 2017 directory for the Historic Hotels of America is in each guest room at the Penn Wells Hotel—a requirement of the program. Participation has granted the Wellsboro Hotel Company access to preservation associations and conferences that it hadn’t been aware of, and heritage-based travel programs that could bring new opportunities its way.

Plans for next year’s sesquicentennial commemoration include a permanent museum-quality installation in the lobby. That showcase will display artifacts which complement those already gathered into the aesthetic ambiance that is and has been the Penn Wells, and that contribute to the narrative of the setting’s 150 years. The newlyweds’ menu will be in it, as will letters and old postcards, archival materials that functioned, comments Ellen, “as texts and emails before texts and emails existed.”

Inspired and haunted by true stories, IRMA and Keystone Awardwinning writer Carrie Hagen is the author of We Is Got Him: The Kidnapping that Changed America. She lives in Philadelphia.

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Courtesy Dave Milano

There’s Nothing Like Live

The Wellsboro Community Concert Association Celebrates 70 Entertaining Years

I

t was the 1920s, the roaring ’20s, the decade of flappers, jazz, art deco, and change, change, change. America was moving fast, bolting breakneck into an undreamed-of future catalyzed by an extravagant profusion of miraculous firsts: the first television, the first frozen food, the first hearing aids, the first aerosol can, the first vacuum cleaner, the first talking movie, the first transatlantic telephone call (New York to London), and the first commercial airport (in Minneapolis-St. Paul).

The catalyst behind all those modern marvels was a simple manufacturing scheme with staggering consequences: mass production—standardized components, precision single-purpose manufacturing tools, and single-purpose factory jobs— all fed by a newly created electric power

14

By Dave Milano infrastructure. Epitomized by the Ford assembly line (which conspicuously reduced Model T production time from twelve hours to ninety minutes and the Model T price from $850 to $300), mass production processes abruptly traded custom-design for homogeneity, expensive for cheap, and scarcity for abundance.

America happily indulged, exuberantly reshaping itself into a gadget paradise. The consumer economy was born.

The whirlwind did not, of course, blow equally through all quarters. Notably outside the hubbub of new and newly affordable consumer goods sat a small but stalwart segment of American business unable to remold itself into a cut-rate, off-the-shelf product: the performing arts.

Live music, theater, and dance remained necessarily human scaled. Imbued with

unique, often extemporaneous creativity, ever dependent on individual aesthetic and individual skill, live performance resisted systematizing. In a time when nearly everything old and new was freshly and comfortably available at bargain prices, the performing arts, and for that matter all things necessarily handmade, remained decidedly upscale.

Music and the visual arts did manage to seize berths here and there on the industrial freight train—photography, moving pictures, and recorded music (on the radio and phonographs) became vastly more accessible—but the gains of increased quantity and easy availability were seen by many art and music lovers as offset by a distressing loss of richness. With abundance came homogeneity, and with homogeneity an alarming imperviousness

to change. Acceptable perhaps in cars and houses, but, in music, boring and antiseptic, especially in comparison to the vivacity of live performance. Recordings did capture a certain moment of course, but each time one listened to a piece of recorded music the experience was identical to the previous one.

Then, as if to punctuate the revolution, a strange new habit began to take hold: listening to music alone. What had by necessity always been a social activity was becoming distinctly unsocial.

Up until the invention of the phonograph, if you heard music, someone nearby was playing it. Shared musical experience was the sole paradigm. But suddenly one’s musical accomplice might be a mere mechanical device, and no other human but the listener would be within earshot.

In 1923, writer Orlo Williams lamented, “…if, on visiting a lady or gentleman, you found her or him solitary, listening to the music of his own gramophone, you would think it odd, would you not? You would endeavor to dissemble your surprise; you would look twice to see whether some other person were not hidden in some corner of the

room.”

The categorical understanding of music was changing, and for many it was a downhill slide. In contrast to the lingering memories of emotional resonance and social bonding associated with live music, mass-production music could feel aloof, cold, meager, and unsatisfying.

Underscoring the change, the gramophone promptly transformed another ages-old musical tradition by compelling musicians and composers to fit their work into its short-duration format. In 1925, for example, Stravinsky wrote his Serenade in A in four, three-minute movements, aggressively editing each to fit one side of a 78-rpm, ten-inch gramophone record.

For some, live performance retained its position as musical hallowed ground, but, in the new economy, live performance was becoming relatively more expensive with each passing year, and not just for consumers. Music promotion was becoming an ever more risky business. If ticket sales fell short, a concert promoter could lose big. Concert dates, in the age of economic enterprise, declined.

As disheartened music managers

watched their businesses dwindle, many wondered if they had reached the end of the line. But two Chicago-based promoters, Dema Harshbarger and Ward French, resolved to keep the business of concert promotion alive and well.

They devised a disarmingly simple plan to do it: Establish a nonprofit “concert membership association” through which they would sell yearly memberships in advance, and then book artists with the available funds. If successful, the plan would simultaneously avert the financial risks and make live performance accessible and affordable. Working with a very shoestring budget Harshbarger and French organized, in 1920, the first community concert association. The framework found some traction, predominantly in cities, but also in small towns where the demand for live music could hardly be met in any other way. The volunteer-driven, nonprofit structure of community concert groups kept costs to a minimum, and performing artists were happy to have venues willing and able to book them at reasonable rates.

Eight years later, in 1928, thenSee WCCA on page 16

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fledgling Columbia Broadcasting System in New York took up Harshbarger’s and French’s idea. Under the corporate banner of Community Concerts Inc., it brought together a significant number of the country’s major independent music bureaus.

At one point, according to their own published history, Community Concerts Inc. managed nearly two-thirds of the top concert artists in America. CCI sent paid representatives across the country to assist local groups in forming concert associations. In turn these local groups would sell membership subscriptions and choose performing artists whom they could afford from Columbia’s stable of management contracts. In exchange for a cut from the artist fees, Columbia arranged the contracts, paid the artists, and furnished publicity material and information for show programs. Columbia’s community concert associations expanded quickly throughout North America, even through the depression years. By 1950 there were over 1,000 active organizations.

Ward French worked with Community Concerts Inc. for many years, eventually becoming its president in 1948, but the relationship was, at least in its latter years, a rocky one.

French accused CCI of ignoring the rights of local associations and artists, and in 1954 the corporate board ousted him.

(The US government seemed to agree with French at the time, threatening CCI’s parent company, Columbia Artists Management Inc., with antitrust action.)

The legal battles did not seem to affect local organizations.

The Community Concert Association formed in the tiny country town of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, was emblematic.

Wellsboro joined the movement in 1948, the year Ward French became president of CCI. Their organization was propelled into existence in the typical way—by a small group of dedicated volunteers working within Columbia’s business model. There was Rosa Hamilton, a talented local voice teacher who had sung at Woodrow Wilson’s memorial service; pianist Mercedes Dunham, classically trained but with a soft spot for ragtime, who played the organ for silent films at Wellsboro’s Arcadia Theatre; Alma Webster, who without formal training learned and then taught piano (in addition to teaching in various oneroom school houses); Lyda Green, a pianist trained at Ithaca College of Music who memorized her favorites so thoroughly that after her hundredth birthday, when her eyes had long gone bad, could still play Chopin by heart. These Wellsboro ladies, tied together by the inevitable interdependencies of small-town life and, in particular, by a profound love of live music, in the settling years after World War II did not have to wonder for long why their little country locale might not enjoy some of the same artistic performances found in the bustling cultural crossroads of the big cities. In capable and determined style, Rosa, Mercedes, Alma, and Lyda did what many others across the country had done. They organized, arranged contracts with Columbia Concerts, and saw to it that quality music and dance—live and first class—would come reliably and affordably to their doorsteps.

From the very start, thanks to the sprightly efforts of the local coordinators, pent-up local demand for live music, and the booking power of Columbia Concerts, performances were See WCCA on page 40

16

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Courtesy Spruce Run Farm

Reindeer games: Prancer, shown here with his admirer, four-year-old Harleigh Patrick from Tamaqua, will help usher in the holidays during Christmas on Main Street.

Have You Herd?

Wellsboro’s Christmas on Main Street, December 7-9, Includes Rudolph’s Friends

By Gayle Morrow

I

f your holiday spirit needs a jump-start, consider cuddling a few hundred pounds of reindeer. They’ll be in Wellsboro on Saturday, December 8, for Christmas on Main Street, and they won’t mind.

“They’re a very calm animal,” says Cassandra Hoover. “They’re fairly friendly.”

She would know. She and her husband, David, operate Spruce Run Farm in Bloomsburg, where they raise—you guessed it—reindeer. Those reindeer work six to eight weeks a year, making personal appearances at festivals and other events, enhancing the guest list at private parties, and posing for photo ops at Spruce Run. And though they don’t pull a sleigh through the sky (well, who knows the whole story of what goes on Christmas Eve night, right?), the sight of them in their red halters, maybe standing in front of a seasonal backdrop of gifts and trees, is, well, fairly festive, even for the Scrooges among us.

How does a person get into raising reindeer and chauffeuring them about the countryside? Cassandra explains that

18

her mother-in-law, Nancy Crissman, ran a wildlife rehabilitation facility in the mid 1980s, which then morphed into a whitetail deer farm that Cassandra and Dave took over in 2011. After a saucy little girl informed the couple in no uncertain terms that the whitetail they had at an event was definitely not a reindeer, they spent three years on research, visited farms and breeders, and, ultimately, “just kind of fell into it.”

Reindeer, she continues, are herd animals and browsers like whitetails, but are typically larger. The “girls,” as she calls the females, run about 200 pounds; the “boys” are between 400 and 500 pounds. They stand between two and a half and three feet at the shoulder. Both girls and boys grow antlers; the boys drop theirs in the fall after breeding, while the girls carry theirs until spring, right before the little ones are born.

“They put all their nutrition into antlers,” she says, noting that, in the wild, that would be the nutrition for the babies.

In the winter, in their natural environment, which includes northern sections of Asia,

Europe, Siberia, and North America, they would be eating mostly lichen, she adds, so the stored nutrition would be critical.

“There are a lot of neat things about reindeer,” she adds.

In Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, however, there isn’t much in the way of lichen.

Willow is one of their favorites, and the Hoovers, of course, supplement their diet.

“We feed them well,” Cassandra says.

The Spruce Run Farm reindeer will be between the Methodist church and the Sherwin Williams store from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The Christmas on Main Street weekend begins Friday, December 7, and includes free trolley rides with Tony’s Trolley, music, wine tastings, displays throughout town of the historic Christmas bulb ornaments made here at the Corning Glass Factory during WW II, the opportunity to win a holiday gift basket, and brunch with Santa at the Penn Wells. For an up-to-date schedule see wellsborochristmasonmainstreet.com.

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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1 All Day Merchant Sales & Discounts Art Exhibits Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Dickens Photos Lobby, Deane Center 10:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Book Sale Green Free Library 3:00 pm – 8:00 pm Indoor Craft Show United Methodist Church 3:00 pm – 8:00 pm Indoor Craft Show, Food Wellsboro Senior Center 4:30 pm – 7:30 pm Dickens of a Dinner Trinity Lutheran Church

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of a

Christmas 7:15 pm “Miracle on 34th Street” Movie Arcadia Theatre 7:30 pm Dickens of a Concert St. Peter’s Catholic Church SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 All Day Area Merchants Sales & Discounts Art Exhibits Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center All Day Warming House Arcadia Theatre Parking Lot 8:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Craft Show Wellsboro Senior Center 9:00 am Wellsboro High School Dickens Choir Arcadia Theatre

9:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Craft Show United Methodist Church 9:00 am – 4:00 pm Model Train Show St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 9:00 am – 4:00 pm Street Vendors, Street Musicians 9:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Craft Show Firemen’s Annex 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Dickens Photos Lobby, Deane Center 9:30 am – 1:00pm Best Dressed Contest Registration Deane Center Lobby 9:15 am – 4:15 am Trolley Rides to Highland Chocolates First Citizens Parking Lot

9:30 am — 1:00 pm Best Dressed Contest Registration Deane Center Lobby 10:00 am- 2:00 pm Alternative Christmas Fair First Presbyterian Church 10:00 am – 2:00 pm Open House w/Refreshments Tussey-Mosher Funeral Home 10:00 am Victorian Stroll Deane Center 10:00 am – 3:00 pm Live Music & Refreshments United Methodist Church 10:00 am – 3:00 pm Open House and Wellsboro Chapter Daughters of American Revolution Tioga County Historical Society 10:00am – 4:00pm Indoor Book Sale Green Free Library

10:00 am – 4:00 pm Clara’s Court w/story time, crafts & Nutcracker Characters Lobby, Deane Center 10:30 am HG Productions, “ A Christmas Carol” Coolidge Theatre, Deane Center 10:30 am, 12:30 & 2:30 pm “Miracle on 34th Street” Movie Arcadia Theatre 11:00 am HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol” Warehouse Theatre, Deane Center 11:00 am – 2:00 pm Open House w/refreshments Green Free Library 11:00 am and Noon New Heights Dance Theatre to Perform “Nutcracker in Motion” Deane Center Main Street Window

12:30 pm “Miracle on 34th Street” Movie Arcadia Theatre 1:00 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol” Warehouse Theatre, Deane Center 1:00 pm New Heights Dance Theatre to Perform “Nutcracker in Motion” Deane Center Main Street Window 1:00 pm Best Dressed Contest Judging Deane Center Outdoor Stage 1:30 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol” Coolidge Theatre, Deane Center 2:00 pm Victorian Stroll Deane Center 2:00 pm & 3:00 pm New Heights Dance Theatre to Perform “Nutcracker in Motion” Deane Center Main Street Window 2:30 pm “Miracle on 34th Street” Movie Arcadia Theatre 3:00 pm Wellsboro Men’s Chorus Arcadia Theatre 3:20 pm Wellsboro Women’s Chorus Arcadia Theater

3:30 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol” Coolidge Theatre, Deane Center 3:40 pm Combined Chorus Sing-a-long Arcadia Theater 4:00 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol” Warehouse Theatre, Deane Center 4:00 pm Choral Evensong Service St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 5:00 pm Candlelight Walk for Peace Packer Park to the Green 5:30 pm Tree Lighting Ceremony The Green

MORE EVENTS Sponsored by The Wellsboro Area Chamber of Commerce, the Wellsboro Foundation, & Members: Wellsboro Winter Celebration February 15-18, 2018 Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally June 1-2, 2018 76th Annual PA State Laurel Festival June 9-16, 2018 Laurel Classic Mt. Bike Challenge September 8, 2018 35th Annual Dickens of a Christmas December 1, 2018

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 Art Exhibits Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center 2:30 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol” Black Box Theatre Schedule is tentative & subject to change. A finalized schedule & map of events, parking, ATM’s, and restroom facilities will be available online at www.wellsboropa.com and at local restaurants, motels, and shops.

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21

Courtesy St. James Episcopal Church

Joy From The Olde Worlde

Mansfield’s St. James Episcopal Church Hosts Christkindl Market

By Gayle Morrow

W

hat gives you joy? For KimMarie Craig, joy comes from an activity that is, well, perhaps not traditionally considered by everybody to be that much fun.

“For me, planning is the huge thing,” says the retired attorney with a grin. “I love to plan things.”

What she’s planning right now is joy— joy for the season, joy for her community and the folks in it, and joy for the event she hopes will bring it all together, that being the second annual St. James-Mansfield European Christmas Market, set for 22

December 7 and 8.

KimMarie, who was born in Blossburg, explains that she and her husband, Stan, moved back to Tioga County from San Diego a couple of years ago after she retired.

Stan, she continues, “always wanted to go to a European Christmas market, so we thought—let’s bring one here. It was his idea.”

Let the planning begin!

One of the first things they did last year was contact the organizers of the Mifflinburg Christmas, or Christkindl, Market. That event, begun in 1989, is

modeled on the 700-year-old European tradition of Christmas-time outdoor markets, and now, with over 100 vendors, bills itself as the oldest authentic Christkindl Market in the country. They got some good ideas, and applied them to Mansfield’s 2017 debut. For 2018, the six-member planning committee is bubbling over with plans and, in KimMarie’s words, “making the vision of the European Christmas Market come to life,” and building “a community event that is open to everybody.”

Vendors—there were twenty last year, and the hope is there will be more for this

welcome to event—will be under tents around the church and on Hoard Street, a portion of which will be closed to traffic. The church is providing tents to the first twenty vendors, and all vendors will be asked to decorate their tents in European style. Attendees will be able to vote on their favorite decorations. Outside, market-goers can expect to find a mostly—local sleighfull of browsing, shopping, eating, and drinking opportunities during the two-day event. Hidden Creek Vineyard and Winery will be on hand with seasonal glühwein.

Mill Street Treats will be there with their signature popcorn and roasted coffee. Get your Christmas sausage from Papa the Butcher.

There will be an assortment of sweet treat opportunities, including those from Highland Chocolates, Sweet Side Maple products, and Sam’s Kupcakes, offering what KimMarie describes as “phenomenal Christmas-holiday-flavored” cupcakes. Milky Way Farms is donating stollen, which is a German-style sweet yeast bread made with fruit and nuts.

Mack’s Chainsaw Art offers fun and unique seasonal wood crafts. HandiCrafts by Maureen include sand dollar ornaments and the popular doorstop ducks. There will be welded Christmas creations, wreaths, jewelry, and, of course, Christmas trees and handmade Christmas cards.

Inside, in the St. James parish hall, “you will be toasty and warm,” KimMarie continues, with European-themed Café Francais, an Eiffel Tower (sadly, the real one could not be had, so this is a model), Cub Scout Troop # 2106 selling hot chocolate and baked goods, soup, and a cozy story corner where volunteers will take turns reading holiday stories to the little ones. In the works, too, is a display of Nativity scenes, including some international models.

This is also where you can see, or, if you’re feeling creative, take part in, the first Gingerbread Creation Challenge. The creations have to be edible, KimMarie notes.

The parish hall will be the place where Stan is conducting, quite literally, the Polar Express. Stan will be in costume as the conductor from the beloved movie of the same name, and will run the “O”-gauge Polar Express train set up there.

“We’ll show the movie on a screen behind the train,” KimMarie adds.

The market opens at 3 p.m. on Friday, with the hope that folks will come around after work. At 7 p.m., Callanish, a Celtic band, plays in the sanctuary, where “it’s warm, and the acoustics are amazing,” KimMarie says. A tree lighting will follow.

Saturday includes a full day of opportunity to visit the vendors and explore the displays and activities in the parish hall. Photo opportunities with the jolly bearded one himself will be available both days. There will be music both days as well, including the Mansfield University Brass Quintet and, to close out the event on Saturday evening in the church, Lessons and Carols. That, explains KimMarie, is “an annual musical extravaganza” made possible by “a whole bunch of musicians who come and do a wonderful show.”

In anticipation of the 2019 event, KimMarie and her husband plan to visit the Mifflinburg Christmas Market this year, which takes place the weekend after the St. James-Mansfield affair. “We want to see what they do,” KimMarie says. “It’s a learning process.”

Plan on it.

Find out more at st-james-mansfield.diocpa.org.

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Courtesy Maggie Barnes

Lasting legacy: Rosalie Barnes (pictured with husband Stanley) leaves her family with memories of determination and a strong will.

Circle of Life

The Greatest Gifts Are the Ones We Don’t See Coming

By Maggie Barnes

“M

om? I need you do something for me.” I watched, barely able to draw a full breath, as my mother-in-law stared into my husband’s face with painful intensity. I could not fathom what he wanted to ask of her.

• “She normally looks better than this.”

That from Rosalie, my husband’s mother, upon her introduction of me to visiting relatives.

Yep, I normally look better than I do early on a Saturday morning when I am not expecting company and I’m tackling a pile of laundry that looks like the Grand Tetons and a kitchen floor that could only be described as crunchy.

You had to know Rosalie Barnes to be nodding your head in total acceptance of the way she presented me to her sister.

Just shy of seventy when I met her, Mom had a fierce countenance and set jaw that could frighten an IRS auditor. She was short on pleasantries. She expected things to be a certain way and, when they weren’t,

24

someone was going to hear about it. There was no gray with Mom. If she liked you, you could find a clue here and there to confirm it. If she didn’t like you, you knew it. Everybody knew it.

She was independent to a fault. Our daughter visited on a whim and found the eighty-five-year-old on her knees washing dishes in the bathtub. The sink faucet had been busted for a week, but she wasn’t planning to tell anyone. That self-reliant streak of hers was wound into every fiber of her being. I had taken her out to dinner after a summer storm; the resulting power outage had left her small village in darkness.

I was insisting she return to our house to stay over.

“Why?” she had snapped.

“You have no lights,” I reasoned.

“You think there’s a spot in my house that I don’t know after sixty years?” she reasoned right back.

She dragged her feet about leaving the restaurant, deciding on another trip to the salad bar, and lingering over a dinner roll like it was a rare wine. I agreed to head

towards her home, but stated without debate that if the power was still out, she was coming with me. On the road to her place, I watched in astonishment as every house, farm, and business we passed illuminated with the sudden return of power. Don’t throw “coincidence” at me.

Those electrons knew what was what.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, a mild-mannered lady turned up in her hospital room to talk to her about getting a wig.

“I don’t need a wig,” she said, jaw like granite.

“Mrs. Barnes, you have an aggressive treatment plan, I’m sorry, but your hair will fall out.” I swear to you, you could hear the gears in Mom’s head locking into immovable position.

“No.” Flustered, the wig lady left the room.

She didn’t lose one hair. Not. One. Hair.

Hers was a determination born of the Great Depression, a lifetime of work in See Gift on page 27

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Gift continued from page 24

the family business, and a steadfast devotion to her community.

So set in her ways was she, that when we got her some modern conveniences, she simply refused to acknowledge them. The cordless phone was left on the desk in the office while she went into the other room to check on the order. The microwave was used for storing her Tupperware. The copier/fax machine? Well, that wasn’t going to dish the local dirt like the ladies at the post office, so forget it.

But even she had to yield to the intractable march of time.

After my father-in-law died, she tried to keep the business going.

She insisted on living alone, a demand that forced us to develop a secret network of informants around her to let us know when she needed help. (I still smile when I think of the furtive phone calls.

Grown men whispering, “Don’t tell her I told you but…”)

• Eventually she came to live with us. Battling illness and denied her independence, she faded into some ethereal, unreachable place between life and death. She hadn’t spoken in days.

It was a Sunday, not long before Christmas, and the nurse had told us that we were getting near the end. We took turns tending to Mom, talking to her with the full knowledge that she was unresponsive and, despite her eyes often being opened, would not really see us. I understood what was happening and accepted it with the comfort of my faith and the knowledge that we did everything we could for her. If we could only have one more moment.

When I rounded the side of her bed, Mom’s eyes were open, and I could see that she tracked my movements.

“Hi Mom,” I whispered, “We’re here with you.”

She stirred, opened and closed her hands and lifted her arm.

Her mouth moved. Bright eyes and a little sound from her and I rocketed back up the stairs, calling for my husband.

“Bobby! She’s here! She knows! Hurry!”

When the sight of her only child came into view, Mom illuminated from somewhere deep inside. Her recognition of him was total. She raised her arms and enveloped him in the kind of hug only a mother could bestow.

It was early, not yet 6 a.m., and Bob hadn’t stopped to throw a shirt on. I watched them and was overwhelmed by a sense of the circle coming around on itself. When he was born, Bobby was placed in her arms, wet and naked and crying. And now, all these years later, she cradled her son against her chest, tears on bare skin.

Hovering his face within inches of hers, Bobby told his mother that all was well, that the family was strong, and she had made everything fine for us. There was nothing to worry about.

“Do one more thing for me, Mom,” he asked, brushing her hair from her forehead. “Go find Dad.” She passed nine hours later.

• Everything is in readiness for Christmas. The monster tree has been wrestled into place. The wrapping is done and the menu is set. I’m sure it will be a lovely holiday with much laughter and wonderful surprises under the tree. But no present will ever rival the one we were given on that frosty Sunday, when a loving mother and son gifted each other a sweet release to go on to what came next.

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Maggie Barnes has won several IRMAs and Keystone Press Awards.

She lives in Waverly, New York.

27

Nicole Landers

Fighting fire with fire: Faith and Dexter Benedict attribute their good luck to good neighbors.

It Takes a Village to Raise an Art Studio

Penn Yan Residents Faith and Dexter Benedict Discover the Meaning of Community

By Nicole Landers

E

nough time has now passed that Faith and Dexter Benedict feel ready to relive the details of that fateful morning of November 1, 2017, when a fierce fire ripped through the building housing their sculpture and pottery studios. The culprit? An electric kiln likely ignited a small leak in a propane heater, resulting in a fire estimated to have reached 1,900 degrees—even bronze statues were reduced to puddles. But, today, laughter fills the newly constructed studio as the couple sits with a visitor below a series of photographs chronicling forty years of Dexter’s bronze sculptures—all lost in the blaze. Faith shares a newspaper clipping showing the couple embracing in front of the burnt wreckage of what had been their creative sanctuary, Fire Works Foundry and Pottery. In the photo, each one is holding a piece of Faith’s pottery that was remarkably spared from the flames—and they are both smiling genuine, joyful smiles. How could they be?

They concur: “We were overwhelmed by the community response.”

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“Right from the moment this happened it was like being at somebody’s wake—the number of people that came, bringing us donuts and coffee,” Faith recalls. They describe the scene—friends and family gathered around the table, crying and being supportive, trying to sort it all out in their minds. But Dexter reiterates that it didn’t take long to realize their good fortune, as they invited friends into their home (just feet away from the smoldering remains) and settled into their own beds that night. At the same time, people in California were losing their homes, possessions, and even their lives to wildfires. The Benedicts began counting their blessings.

This positive trajectory continued at dawn the next morning when a Mennonite neighbor came by on his bike and told them he’d be back after milking his cows.

People brought food, equipment, skills, and helping hands. Critical to the effort was Leroy Hoover, a neighboring Mennonite barn builder specializing in dairy barns.

Leroy acted as project manager, organizing

volunteers and tirelessly donating his time, and the time of his crew, to reconstruct what is now a state-of-the-art sculpting, foundry, and pottery studio. The frame was finished by mid-November; in early January a crew arrived to raise the barn and install the roof. A stream of helpers carried an assortment of food across the snowy field to neighbor Ira Hoover’s barn. It was there that the hard work was rewarded with a shared feast.

“These kinds of things kept happening over and over again,” Dexter recounts.

T h e “o u t p o u r i n g f r o m t h e community,” as Faith describes it, helped the couple to stop dwelling on what they had lost and refocus on what they had.

“I never knew that so many people cared,” Faith says.

The couple moved to their Baker Road, Penn Yan, location in 1974, building their home in these protective woods, raising their family of three daughters, and growing their art careers. Over the last forty-four years, the two have been integral to the local art scene, both teaching in the

WILLIAMSPORT

welcome to Humanities Division at Keuka College and, later, Faith in the Penn Yan school system.

“We’re quietly working here,” she says. “People came out of the woodwork. We just kept getting cards. Sometimes there would be a check, sometimes not. It didn’t matter.” It turned out the money, so generously contributed by friends, family, neighbors, and anonymous donors, would become invaluable, because the insurance policy they held covered only personal items. The community continued to respond. The Arts Center of Yates County set up a Reconstruction and Scholarship Fund from which Faith purchased her new kiln. The money remaining will go on to help young local artists. ACYC organized a tool collection, providing the couple with what they needed to get started again.

The Penn Yan Art Guild collected funds for Faith to replace her lost art supplies. A grant of a few thousand dollars from CERF+, a national non-profit providing an “artist safety net,” went toward Dexter’s foundry. Linda Starkweather, a friend and Naples-based multi-media and performance artist, raised funds via two shows at Keuka College. The couple’s seventeen-year-old grandson started an online T-shirt drive, raising $1,200.

During a tour of the new facility, now equipped with underfloor heating and clad in fire resistant metal, Dexter provides some insight on his work. Some recent pieces, mostly commissioned, commemorate famous folk such as Benjamin Franklin and Hillary Clinton. Unlike many sculptors, Dexter also casts his own pieces in bronze. The first piece to be completed in the new building was of John Lincklaen, the founder of Cazenovia, New York. It was a more laborious process than usual, he says, as many of his custom-made tools were destroyed in the fire. He’d finish one step of the process, only to realize that before continuing, he had to create a tool.

“Keep your head down and keep working,” he says. He anticipates the piece he’s currently working on, William Seward and Harriett Tubman standing together, will go much faster. It’s the second attempt, as the first was lost in the fire.

From Dexter’s tool shop into Faith’s pottery studio there is a shift from the industrial and spacious to the serene and contained.

The lowered ceilings and natural light streaming through paned windows frame her soft-patterned pottery—both functional and beautiful. There are two potter’s wheels, and Faith describes her intention for the duo. “The studio is very much set up to be a teaching studio,” she says. “I’m taking a different approach and thinking more about community and sharing. Our Mennonite neighbors have been beyond generous. They live their faith outside of the church. They don’t spend a lot of time in buildings or in committees. They just do it.” She has scheduled studio time with Mennonite neighbors and their children, homeschool teachers, and small student groups. She hopes there will be continued interest over time.

“On November 1, we had a lot of bad luck, but we’ve been having a lot of good luck ever since,” Dexter reflects.

Call (315) 694-2771 or (315) 536-4755 to schedule a studio appointment. Also, see Faith’s work in the Arts Center of Yates County; see Dexter’s work at dexterbenedictsculptor.com.

Nicole Landers is a freelance writer in the Finger Lakes. Her interests include the arts, agriculture, nature, and community involvement.

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Maggie Barnes

Goodbye to Bong’s

A

young lady with her graduation day pearls. A silver anniversary tray for a loving couple. An emergency set of cuff links for an out-of-town speaker. And countless nervous guys with a ring and a question.

These are some of the important moments that have been enhanced by the presence of Bong’s Jewelry at 31 East Market Street in Corning. For 126 years, that same space has been operated by the same family, offering a full-service shop from the days of horse-drawn carriages to the age of the Internet.

But the first day of 2019 will find the door locked.

“To everything there is a season. It’s time,” says owner/ operator Jeff Bong.

For forty-three of those 126 years, he has been opening his door to generations of customers who have become friends, and supporting many charities in the town he loves.

“The jewelry industry has changed so much. Online shopping takes a lot of business. The market is flooded with products from China, Taiwan, and India. But, we like to use American-made,” Jeff explains. “And the young people today…” He pauses before continuing with a shrug, “They don’t cherish things the way our generation does. They want experiences. They would rather go zip lining in Costa Rica than buy a nice piece of jewelry.” Even that stalwart of gift giving, the wedding registry, has shifted from jewelry stores to home improvement centers.

So, Jeff plans to travel and devote more time to his family, especially the grandchildren.

“I’m the fourth generation of my family to call Market Street home. I suspect the last time I turn the key in the lock I will have a meltdown. Right now, I’m not emotional about it.” There is too much to do to get misty-eyed yet. Like liquidate a huge inventory, clean out the building—which he owns—and figure out what to do with the location. He plans a progressive sale that will take up much of the holiday shopping season.

But something truly special will leave the street when Bong’s closes for the last time—a simpler, more customer-focused way of doing business. That speaker who left his cuff links in England?

Jeff just loaned him a pair. He routinely sent a variety of pieces to relocated customers, just asking that they ship back the ones they didn’t want to keep. Buyer’s remorse after a couple of days?

Bring it back, no problem.

“I wanted to treat people right. It doesn’t always have to be about making a dollar.”

No, it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s about making something that is positively priceless. ~Maggie Barnes

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Karey Solomon

Grape grind: Hilary Niver-Johnson explains Gewurztraminer grapes are awaiting harvest at Saw Mill Creek Vineyards.

Versatile Vinifera

Wine Flour Finds a Niche in the Finger Lakes

By Karey Solomon

W

ine flour might be the superfood hidden in plain sight in the Finger Lakes. It’s glutenfree, high in protein, antioxidants, and minerals—and it also enhances the food it’s added to with a flavorful punch from the qualities of the various grape varieties from which it’s made. According to Hilary Niver-Johnson, proprietor of Finger Lakes Wine Flour, each pound contains 100 grams of protein and 150 grams of fiber.

And in shades of purple or gold, it’s also pretty. “People like changing the colors of their food,” she notes. But if they begin with the aesthetics, they’re likely to stay for the flavors, and maybe even the nutrition.

Starting as grape pomace, which is the 32

skins and seeds left over after grapes are pressed for wine, the first step in making wine flour is to separate the skins—which are 80 percent of the pomace—from the seeds. The skins are taken to a facility north of Geneva where they’re dehydrated using a passive solar process, then ground and sifted. There, Hilary has found ways to recycle old farm equipment and reinvigorate ancient techniques to create a nutritious product that’s given new life to traditional recipes as well as inspiring new tastes.

Her business—formally titled Sustainable Viticulture Systems—is, she says, the result of eight years of research, five years of production, and now three years of sales. There are currently more than

four dozen places where her flour is sold, in the Finger Lakes and beyond, as well as via her website.

Hilary works closely with six vineyards in the Hector area, taking pomace from their pressings of ten different varieties of European (vinifera) grapes. In her first three years, she produced 3,000 pounds of wine flour. Last year she tripled her production, to 9,000 pounds, and she expects to keep growing. Currently, she says, she has eleven concerns—six different red varietals, a red blend, and four white varietals.

She looks at the health of their grapes during the growing season, and stays in touch with growers to find out what grapes they’ll be pressing, and when, so she can

Mark Twain Country leave bins on site for her hauler to pick up when the pressing is complete.

The seeds may later be cold-pressed to extract grape-seed oil—Hilary plans to start on that project during this winter. Grape seeds are only 5 percent grape-seed oil, she notes, which means the woody pellets the press forms from the remainder can be burned in a pellet stove for winter fuel.

It seems that wine, like wood, can then warm you twice.

These are natural resources that are all too commonly wasted.

When Hilary was researching energy flow in vineyards for her senior thesis in environmental science and forestry, she realized the pomace can be something of a liability for many vineyards.

Because it’s too acidic to be returned to the soil before composting, and since it becomes available in mass quantities during a time when many vineyardists are too busy to compost it, she found growers who were delighted to find someone who would solve a problem for them by simply taking it away. Due to the different winemaking methods required for different grape varieties, she takes away three very different sorts of pomace. There are clusterpressings of white grapes, which tend to be separated from their skins and seeds moments after they’re harvested. Most red grapes are fermented on their skins for about ten days to extract the purple color and deeper flavors, so they’re pressed after the first stage of winemaking is complete. Gewurztraminer harvested later in the season is pressed with rice hulls, whose more solid bulk helps extract the juice. After the hulls and seeds are separated from this last sort of pomace, those are saved to be used in birdseed.

This zero-waste approach speaks to Hilary’s environmental science side, while the wine flour itself appeals to the healthconscious foodie who appreciates its taste. That may well be the case for wine flour’s customer base as well. Because wine flour is a supplement, not a flour to be substituted for other flours in recipes—a realization Hilary came to after her initial baking experiments turned out rock-hard biscuits—she recommends substituting grape flour for only one eighth of the total flour content. This works out to about two tablespoons of wine flour per cup of a recipe’s flour content. For the commercial bakeries purchasing her product in fifty-pound bags, as well as home chefs taking home a half-pound bag at a time, a little goes a long way.

When she attends events where she can showcase wine flour, she’ll bring wine flour cupcakes, truffles, and pasta for a culinary demonstration of the product’s possibilities.

At home, her favorite varieties are the wine flour made from pinot noir grapes, pleasant for its notes of bourbon and sour cherries, and Gewurztraminer, for the spicy tones that notch up chicken and other dishes needing a bit of zip. Wine flour can also be used to thicken soups. For recipes, check out flxgrapeflour. com. Hilary says she has more ideas that she hasn’t yet refined into recipes, like adding Gewurztraminer flour to a white-bean chili. She’s also begun a wine flour garden, using composted pomace as the principal fertilizer, and she sees the potential of a café showcasing wine flour in her future. Because, she says, “To me, wine flour is being able to drink our wine and eat it, too!”

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Karey Solomon is a freelance writer and admirer of waterfalls and the natural scenery of the Finger Lakes.

33

Paper continued from page 5

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And while my artwork resembles reality, it isn’t always lifelike. It’s filtered through my imagination.”

The finished work is not only a matter of that original design, well cut for the umpteenth time, but is also the reflection of the special acid-free papers she’s chosen, sometimes embellished with color and texture, backed with other papers for color, or accentuated with tiny motifs cut from other papers and carefully positioned. If it needs a mat to set it off, she’ll cut the mat, then have a frame built to the dimensions of the work.

And after doing this for some time, having departed from traditional Scherenschnitte, which is the symmetrical paper-cutting tradition originated centuries ago in Switzerland and Germany, she relates, “I finally got up the courage to go to the Guild of American Paper Cutters. I took a binder with photos of my work to find out whether what I was doing could be classified as paper cutting.

They assured me what I was doing was indeed paper-cutting.” Even better, they featured her art on the cover of the Guild’s magazine and invited her to exhibit at various venues, including at their national museum in Somerset, Pennsylvania.

Gail works in three distinct styles. She might cut a complex design from a single piece of paper, then mount it on a complementary backing. Or, she might back the design with a variety of other papers, some of them painted first, to create a stained glass effect. The third method is an assemblage of many individual pieces and techniques. Each work may be composed of several layers to create a whole, like a piece she made by putting together variously sized G clefs, cut from a variety of different papers, then fitting them together like a multi-level puzzle.

“It’s sort of evolved,” she says of her various processes. “It doesn’t always flow naturally. I labor rather intensely.”

She finds inspiration in landscapes, nature, and also in the tradition of molas, a Central American form of needlework combining bright colors with quilting and fine embroidery. “I have a couple of pieces in that sort of style,” she says, adding that quilts and quilting have not only enlivened her paper cutting, but more recently, paper cutting has inspired a new venture into quilting.

“It’s an exciting idea for me,” Gail says. “I can’t get away from one or the other—each of them seems to call me. But I think I’m going to have to labor more over quilting.”

As for the paper cutting, she says she enjoys continuing the tradition and hopes more people will be inspired to try it. “It’s something anybody could do,” Gail reflects. “There’s an absolute delight in taking something very simple like paper and scissors and starting with a little idea. It’s therapeutic and immersive and it can affect your whole life. When you’re creating something it can make your life richer—it affects your whole life when you can create things.”

A large selection of Gail’s work may be seen through December at the Mountain Home Art Gallery at 87½ Main Street, Wellsboro, open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Gail will also be demonstrating her techniques at the gallery from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. during Wellsboro’s Christmas on Main Street weekend on December 8.

Karey Solomon is a freelance writer and admirer of waterfalls and the natural scenery of the Finger Lakes.

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FOOD

Cooking Up Some Christmas From Ricers to Recipes: Presents for Your Favorite Chef

By Cornelius O’Donnell

H

ow I enjoy writing about gift ideas for those enthusiastic home cooks on a Christmas or Hanukah list. Where to begin? Start reading, and I hope you get an idea that’s just right. And, if it works out, there might be a dinner or two in it for you. And is there a nicer gift than sitting down to a meal with friends and family?

I Love My Ricer For more years than I care to count, I’ve picked up the autumn issues of food magazines or a newspaper’s food section and headed to the “please help me” page, where readers submit questions for the food gurus. Getting the lumps out of mashed potatoes used to be high on the list. Not so anymore, now that food writers stress the need for an interesting texture! Some sing the praise of rinsing the potatoes before cooking them in their skins and then incorporating the skins in the mash. Actually, that’s not a bad idea, because not only do you get that interesting texture via the lumps, but also the good vitamins that come with the skin. Me? I like mine silky smooth. Here’s a tool to make that happen. It’s been around the

36

kitchen since the end of the 1900s, yet few of my cooking buddies have one. It’s a bit ungainly, but brother does it work. It’s called a “ricer,” probably because the little bits it produces look a lot like rice—this before you add the butter and whip the pile into smooth submission. The ricer resembles a large can with tiny, sharp-edged holes punched on the bottom. It has a handle and an arm on the other side with a heavy, flat disk attached to it. Organize things so the disk faces down into the can. The cooked vegetable goes into the can. Press the handle and arm together over a bowl. You may have to do this a few potatoes at a time. I like the model with three different disks that give a fine to coarse output.

If you’ve had spaetzle, you’ll remember how good these little morsels tasted with pan gravy. Look up a recipe and include it with the gift of the ricer. You can also using the device to remove excess moisture from steamed spinach, or make a carrot, beet, or sweet potato puree. Boil or steam celery root (celeriac), then add that puree to the potatoes. I use a ratio of half spud and half celery root.

This is a great go-with when I’m having a hearty beef or pork roast.

Here's the Scoop Another useful tool that will actually fit in a stocking is a large, three-sided, perforated, heat-resistant plastic scoop. The one I use regularly is about fourteen inches long, with the name Joseph/Joseph stamped on it. How seasonal is that? I did a bit of online sleuthing and found it on the Wayfair site, in colors of grey, vibrant green, and a muted red, and priced under twelve bucks.

I’m enthusiastic about it because my range is several steps from the sink, and downright dangerous (think a large pot of pasta in bubbling water, a skillet with hot bits of stir fry, etc.). Insert scoop (maybe a few times) and remove drained food to a serving dish. To gift this gadget, nestle the scoop in a nice box with one or more packages of imported Italian pasta. You could add cheese and/or crusty bread.

The Big Cheese I’m thinking here of something I’d like to see under my tree and then in my kitchen—specifically a large chunk of the real stuff: parmigiana reggiano. This imported cheese is good for eating, but you could add a cheese board or a special knife that goes into the cheese block. Give it a twist and bite-sized cheese bits tumble around. Add The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan and you’ve got a knockout present. Tie the box with raffia, and add a head of garlic and a few bay leaves.

A Microplane By now so many dedicated cooks have one of these that I hesitate to mention it. But if you or your giftee are new to cooking, this is one item to treasure. Run a peeled clove of garlic over the surface and get the flavor without the chop-chop. These are great (as in grate) for adding chocolate to top the whipped cream or pudding. Nutmeg grater? You got it. One will imagine many clever uses.

A Bigger Cheese A product that has swept the country in just the past couple of years is one called the Instant Pot. It is a programable pressure cooker (without the jiggling and hissing and need to carefully regulate the stovetop-heat kind), but also a slow cooker, a rice cooker, and even a yogurt maker. It comes in several sizes—you choose the size that fits the family and/or kitchen. If it’s a gift, include a cookbook specifically authorized by the pot maker.

I like Coco Morante’s, and recipes from Amy + Jacky’s at pressurecookrecipes.com.

My mother’s solution to the chill of early winter was often a lentil soup. My grandmother was handicapped so she had a German-born live-in helper in her Bronx apartment. Amy + Jacky’s version is very close to Grammy’s. The latter served her soup with a topping of bratwurst cut on the diagonal and sauteed in butter until lightly browned. Why not throw a trim-the-tree party, using a big potful of soup as its centerpiece, adding good crusty bread and those ’wurst pieces—served separately. That way you please vegetarians and carnivores.

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See Gifts on page 38 37

Sausage Lentil Soup by Scott Teresi [CC BY-SA 2.0], from https://www.flickr.com/photos/scott-teresi/4198268635 Gifts continued from page 37

4 medium cloves garlic, crushed and diced (2 Tbsp.)

2 tsp. ground cumin 1 tsp. ground turmeric 1 tsp. dried thyme 1 tsp. kosher salt plus more to taste ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 c. dry brown lentils, rinsed in cold water 4 c. low-sodium vegetable broth 8 oz. (about 6 cups) baby spinach Hit saute button on Instant Pot. Add oil. When hot, add the onions, carrots, and celery. Saute, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic,

cumin, turmeric, thyme, salt, and pepper.

Cook, stirring constantly, for one minute.

Add the lentils and pour in the broth. Stir.

Place the lid on the Instant Pot and make sure the release valve is in the “sealing” position. Press the “manual” button and set the timer for 12 minutes. The Instant Pot will warm up for about 10 minutes and then start cooking. After the 12 minutes is up, quick release by tipping the release valve to “venting” (a little bit at a time at first).

Once venting is complete, remove the lid.

Stir in the spinach. Taste and add additional salt and pepper if desired. Serve. Keeps three days in the refrigerator and freezes well.

Finally, A Good Book It wouldn’t be Christmas for me without a book, or four, under the tree.

Here is a new one I’ve fallen for: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. This is just great! Check it out.

Warm holiday wishes to all of you and your families.

Chef, teacher, author, and award-winning columnist Cornelius O’Donnell lives in Horseheads, New York.

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www.hearthstonehomes.com 39

BUY • SELL • TRADE

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138 TRAIL ROAD MESHOPPEN

from 10396 SR 6, Laceyville (Mile Marker 297)

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WCCA continued from page 16

very top drawer. In its first year the Wellsboro Association hosted the world-renowned Russian song and dance troupe the Don Cossacks, the piano duo Whittemore and Lowe, and harpist Mildred Dillings. Things slowed not a bit in subsequent years with ballerina Marina Svetlova, the Vienna Boys Choir, the Manhattan Concert Orchestra, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony, and many others, each and all well-known, world-touring performers. Eager patrons piled into Wellsboro High School’s auditorium, often carpooling in from the countryside for the opportunity to see the remarkably posh, and decisively high-brow acts. Dr. Robert Bair, president of the Wellsboro Concert Association from 1957 to 1967, explains, “The Wellsboro Association organizers then were devotees of classical music, and the concert-going public seemed to appreciate it.” Buttoned-down, refined, and of course entirely first-rate classical music and dance were their mainstays. “The artists,” says Dr. Bair, “performed in tuxedos and evening gowns.”

Through the decades, as cultural habits and expectations evolved, Wellsboro’s Community Concert Association adapted their offerings to suit the shifting moods. Today’s concerts, seventy years and counting after the Association’s founding, are more diverse than in those early days, still with a yearly classical offering, but now comprised mostly of traditional and modern folk music, bluegrass, country, blues, and jazz. What has not changed, what could not change, is the Association’s engagement of the compelling linkage between human beings and live performance.

So what does the future hold for live music? Some say that our revolution, the technological one, is poised to deliver its ultimate coup de grâce. Some say that it has already happened, pointing out that more and more find satisfactory what fewer and fewer find insufficient, that rooms full of people now are happily engaged not with each other but with miniature devices delivering unlimited currents of cloned data. Certainly a quick scan of Community Concert audiences—gray heads clearly predominate—seems to lend evidence to the notion that the personal is overcoming the social when it comes to music performance. But it isn’t over yet, and Community Concert organizers everywhere are determined to continue the work of Harshbarger, French, and thousands of faithful volunteers across the country, affording everyone an opportunity to discover and rediscover live performance in all its vibrant, social glory.

And while the Wellsboro Community Concert Association observes its seventieth anniversary, let us take note that the Corning Civic Music Association this year turns an impressive ninety years old. Also entirely volunteer driven, the Corning Civic Music Association will celebrate its milestone year by bringing back for its 2018-2019 season some of the most popular acts to have graced their stage in years past.

Check out the Wellsboro Community Concert Association at wellsborocca.org, and the Corning Civic Music Association at corningcivicmusic.org.

IRMA Award-winning writer David Milano is a frequent contributor to Mountain Home.

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Open M, T, Th, F—8:30am-4:30pm; Wed—8:30am-8pm

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41

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

Frozen Reflections

By Ardath Wolcott

I

shot this around 8:00 in the morning in Corningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Denison Park. A heavy frost had laced the trees, and the pond doubled the notion that winter is on the way.

42

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