Mountain Home, February 2020

M O U N T A I N

HOME Pennsylvania & the New York Finger Lakes

Our Man in the Quantum

EwE FasR ind the

Visionary Artist Tucker Worthington Painted Stony Fork Creek and Designed 167 Mountain Home Covers Before His Energy Returned to the Universe. A Love Story.

By Michael Capuzzo

Love, Set, Match in South Williamsport The Textured Art of Paul Bozzo Glass—and Puzzles!—in Corning FEBRUARY 2020

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Volume 15 Issue 2

6 Our Man in the Quantum

By Michael Capuzzo

Visionary artist Tucker Worthington painted Stony Fork Creek and designed 167 Mountain Home covers before his energy returned to the universe: a love story.

10 Tennis, Anyone?

By Karey Solomon

Beat the mid-winter doldrums with love, set, match in South Williamsport.

15 Bacalles Glass

By Karey Solomon

17 Art Imitates the Fabric

of Life

Paul Bozzo creates art from the textures around him.

By Ashley Ensminger

18 Back of the Mountain

By Bernadette Chiaramonte

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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 Joseph Campbell, Robin Ingerick, Richard Trotta Circulation Director Michael Banik Accounting Amy Packard Cover Design Gwen Button

Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Mike Cutillo, Ann E. Duckett, Melissa Farenish, Elaine Farkas, Carrie Hagen, Lisa Howeler, Don Knaus, Nicole Landers, Janet McCue, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Linda Roller, Karey Solomon, Beth Williams 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, Lisa Howeler, Jan Keck, Nigel P. Kent, Roger Kingsley, Jonathan Mack, Peter Rutt, Linda Stager, Mary Sweely, Sue Vogler, Sarah Wagaman, Ardath Wolcott D i s t r i b u t i o n T eam Layne Conrad, Grapevine Distribution, Duane Meixel, Linda Roller, Phil Waber

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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, 39 Water Street, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2020 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

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AWARDS: Mountain Home has won over 100 international and statewide journalism awards from the International Regional Magazine Association and the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association for excellence in writing, photography, and design.

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DISTRIBUTION: Mountain Home is available “Free as the Wind” at hundreds of locations in Tioga, Potter, Bradford, Lycoming, Union, and Clinton counties in PA and Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Yates, Seneca, Tioga, and Ontario counties in NY. SUBSCRIPTIONS: For a one-year subscription (12 issues), send $24.95, payable to Beagle Media LLC, 39 Water Street, Wellsboro, PA 16901 or visit www.mountainhomemag.com.

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Our Man in the Quantum Visionary Artist Tucker Worthington Painted Stony Fork Creek and Designed 167 Mountain Home Covers Before His Energy Returned to the Universe: A Love Story

By Michael Capuzzo for his sixty-eight years, a man jangling to a private jazz beat, Coltrane, it turned out. Within minutes, some new force raced between the three of us as he showed us his theater posters and his oil paintings that hung in museums from Philly to Kansas City. He said we had entered “the quantum” together, which he explained powered the universe but could be seen rippling the waters of Stony Fork Creek. His name was Amos (Tucker) Worthington III, the town was Wellsboro, and this was the day our home in the mountains became the headquarters of Mountain Home, a magazine, “Free as the Wind.”

See Tucker on page 8

Courtesy Brad Lint

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ne day in fall 2005 my wife Teresa Banik Capuzzo and I were quietly working in our house that looked across a creek to the village surrounded by mountains, wondering how we could publish a magazine in a town of 3,000 people when newspapers like The Philadelphia Inquirer, in whose newsroom we met, were slowly dying. We were wondering in particular how to design and lay out a full-color magazine when we’d spent our careers as writers.

We heard a bang on the stairs and a tall, white-haired man with the bright joyful eyes of a slightly mad artist bounded into the room. This stranger pulsed with crazy, limitless energy

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Tucker continued from page 7

Teresa and I started publishing Mountain Home monthly right then, with Tucker as our art director. He designed all the stories and many ads for years and every Mountain Home cover but one (in 2015 when he had hip surgery) from our first issue in December 2005 until November 2019, before that crazy, limitless energy returned to the universe, as he would have put it. Tucker Worthington died on January 8 at age 82. We three did 167 magazine covers together. This is a love story.

It was a tough sort of love. Tucker liked to shout. I did, too, one of many things he taught me. Tucker believed that conflict was the mother’s milk of creativity. Our graphic artist refused to simply design covers to reflect our stories like graphic artists subserviently do the world over. He wanted better headlines to match his art! He wanted cleverer words!

Stories with oomph! Sharper ideas! Our artist was a wordsmith, too, and he taught we writers to be artists, too, so we could push him to be better. He showed us the elegant beauties of Claude Garamond’s sixteenth century typeface from Paris, especially when paired with something light and modern from twentieth century Minnesota, and that red was the color that convinced the mind it was real.

He changed our life. He shouted about politics. As our staff grew, nobody in our “newsroom,” a small parlor with one oak table really, agreed about anything. But that was the surrounding gloom that allowed us to see the bright fire we were tending together.

In a divided world, Tucker saw it as the journalism of what we all have in common.

He said if we threw our passion into the universe, the universe would deliver. “If we can do justice to the high culture in our region, the plays and museums, and also to the fishermen and the hunters,” he said, “we’ll be in the quantum.” Tucker insisted we changed his life, too, gave him a new perspective and some peace by showing him what a story really was. He liked our “business model,” Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Prize speech hanging above the oak table. Faulkner said the writer “must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities 8

and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed—love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man.”

After midnight, with just the three of us on deadline in the old house, Tucker shouted at the computer. He didn’t understand the new design apps, and refused to read the manuals. He expected to navigate by intuition, by the light of his heart. We read the manuals for him.

It was two in the morning, he was in his seventies, and we worried about his heart.

That night and every night he designed beautiful things. The beauty he created was the face of the magazine: it touched people and drew them in.

Mary Myers, in her nineties, walked down Main Street with the loveliest typewritten reminiscences of sailing Keuka Lake with her late husband. Dave Casella, long disabled, wrote a brilliant hunting column from old memories and lost love, the source of the bullet in his pocket he swore might end his misery someday. Like Roy Kain, “The Mountain Man” who led his “green party” in authentic Daniel Boone regalia into the wilderness, Dave won awards as one of the finest writers in the state. Chili and beer and guitars filled the “newsroom” late at night; a Presbyterian pastor hung out saying the room had better spirit than the church.

Tucker painted the noble craggy faces of the Webbers, Bob and Dottie, who lived nineteenth century-style in a log cabin over Pine Creek powered by nothing but love of life—“we live to live.” The magazine grew exponentially. Tucker’s cover designs piled up awards and recognition nationally and internationally.

One of our readers hurried onto our porch this summer looking for a dozen back issues, months in 2006 and 2007 when she’d been ill. She had saved every issue, every cover, for fourteen years; when I asked her why she looked at me like I’d

gone bat-crazy. “Because I have to give them to my grandchildren!” That wouldn’t have happened, Mountain Home wouldn’t have happened, without Tucker.

Our artist believed in God, but he saw the living presence in the waters of Stony Fork. “The moment I stepped into that creek, it was like stepping into church,” he said. “It was really profound. I could see how everything is connected. Everything influences everything else. I could just sail into the interior of the thing.” Tucker called it the Quantum. Einstein, who helped discover quantum mechanics, was repulsed by it. He couldn’t understand why or how, no scientist can say why or how to this day, that when a physicist measured a particle that particle instantly changed and somehow communicated the matching change to another particle no matter how far apart in the universe they were. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.” Tucker was comfortable with spooky things. He figured it had something to do with how love works.

In October, he couldn’t sit in front of his computer. Son Kylan, a talented artist in from Japan, helped finish the cover with him, a scene of Lakewood Vineyards set in the golden landscape of the Finger Lakes in autumn. Mountain Home was a family affair. Son Andy, a talented artist, helped his dad design the magazine during the early years. Grandchildren Charlotte, Noah, and cousin Jordyn dressed as Victorian newsboys and girls and handed out the magazine at the Dickens of a Christmas festival. Daughter-in-law Jennifer sold ads. In November, Tucker fought through pain to design his last cover by himself, the Vietnam heroism of Lt. John Hummel. He was pleased to help tell that story, an inspiring story, a mighty story that people needed to know, what a man John Hummel is, he said. We visited Tucker before Christmas. Sitting up in bed, his eyes flickered with limitless energy and joy.

“It’s important that Mountain Home continue,” Amos (Tucker) Worthington III said.

Love and art: Tucker won two prestigious Wyeth illustration awards in Philadelphia for his paintings. He just painted the things he loved, like the people and landscape of Tioga County and jazz artists that reminded him of his hero John Coltrane.

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Courtesy Maria Weisser

Tennis, Anyone?

Beat the Mid-Winter Doldrums with Love, Set, Match in South Williamsport

By Karey Solomon

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very game begins with love.” The quote is from a poster Karen Hooker hung where she can see it every day. Titled “Life Lessons from Tennis,” it celebrates second chances, new opportunities, and learning—all part of the sport for those who play.

Ten years ago, Karen, now co-owner with her husband, Andrew, of the Central Pennsylvania Tennis Center (840 US-15, South Williamsport) bought rackets and balls for her kids, hoping to encourage them to play outside more.

“I always loved watching tennis and thought it would be a fun, family sport,” she says. “But I’m the one who totally fell in love with it. Tennis became my exercise and social life, and a challenge that keeps me coming back for more.”

The quest to improve her skills took her to what was then the West Branch Tennis Club to play and practice. Because the courts are indoors—the only indoor courts within a seventy-five-mile radius—players can always have racket in hand, regardless of the weather.

Gentle heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer makes the venue comfortable for lobbing year-round.

On Karen’s part, she loved it so much she and Andrew bought it in early 2019, renaming it to emphasize its location and inclusiveness. The Hookers expanded the leagues and clinics, made membership optional, made the courts available to more people, and saw enthusiasm for tennis grow.

“I’m passionate about tennis!” she declares. “I wanted to keep tennis alive in our area, and we felt we could give our heart and soul to this.”

“Tennis is a game for all ages, and as you age it’s particularly great for maintaining strength and flexibility,” says Margery Hoffman, who teaches youth tennis at Wellsboro’s summer Parks and Recreation programs. “It’s good for your heart and weight management—just a super sport for staying young. And there’s strategy involved so it’s good for your mind, too.”

Margery began playing tennis at ten, then competed on her high school team and

in varsity tennis at Purdue University. Life took over, but she rediscovered the game after a quarter-century hiatus when she retired nine years ago. During that break, the sport had evolved, with lighter rackets upping the pace of the game. These days, she’ll reserve a court online and drive down to the Tennis Center with three other people for a few hours of fast-paced play. “It’s a real resource,” she says of the facility.

“It’s a classic sport that has gotten fasterpaced and harder hitting,” confirms Maria Weisser, operations manager at the Tennis Center. “Tennis has evolved into a higher level.” At the same time, she emphasizes, the Center serves a variety of needs for frequent players, long-time enthusiasts, and those who are new to the game.

“There’s a lot going on, whether you’re a first-time beginner or advanced-level player,” Maria says. “Unlike sports like football, you can play tennis lifelong, whether you’re 5 or 105. It’s a mental game, a physical game, it supports your emotional and physical health.

And there’s social support in the tennis See Tennis on page 13

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welcome to Tennis continued from page 10

“family” in the great tennis community in this area.”

“Tennis has introduced me to so many great people,” Margery notes. “When we moved to Wellsboro five years ago, we knew no one and tennis was instant community for us.” The social aspect of tennis is appreciated by everyone who talks about it. Players might be serious about tennis, but they also laugh a lot, cheer each others’ excellent moves, socialize after their game, perhaps relaxing on the mezzanine overlooking the courts to watch other groups play.

The Tennis Center has also become the home court for Bucknell University’s tennis team. Karen encourages everyone to come and watch the team.

“It’s inspiring,” she says. “It’s not professional tennis but some of them—I wonder how far they can go. They make me wish I’d started when I was just a kid!” Kids learn more than strategy and agility from tennis—they also learn the usefulness of mistakes, the virtue of perseverance, sportsmanship, and self-confidence.

“Parents are so thankful I’m teaching their children a skill that gets them off the couch and doesn’t involve batteries,” Margery says.

“I enjoy the young children so much! They’re natural movers, and they develop good hand-eye coordination that will apply to any sport. Learning tennis helps in decision-making and increases their intellectual capacity.”

Among new programming Karen and Andrew initiated were two tennis day camps—one each in July and August. They were thrilled with the response. Sixty-six students filled the camps to capacity.

“We want to grow youth tennis—and the way tennis is going to grow is through kids,” she says. For instance, Olivia Dorner, daughter of tennis pro John Dorner and a staff mainstay, has become a rising light among the area’s younger players.

Adults find they’re getting a whole-body workout on the courts, but they’re having such a good time it doesn’t feel at all like “work,” Karen notes. She’s found herself also enjoying 5K races with a friend who likes to run. And Margery, on a recent trip to Yosemite National Park, enjoyed snowshoeing without difficulty while many others around her were finding the exercise rough going.

“They say tennis players live longer,” notes Maria. “We get a lot of women who played in high school, then started working and raising a family, and now they’re jumping back into tennis after stepping away for a few years. They’re blooming and flourishing! It keeps you young and healthy and your mind alert.”

Karen, who is also the assistant tennis coach at Williamsport High School, explains why that may be the case. “I tell people this and I feel it completely—when I’m on a tennis court I’m just me. I’m not being a mom, a wife, or a daughter, or a sister; I don’t have to think about other responsibilities. I just let everything else fade away and focus on the ball and the people on the court with me. When I could—finally—make the ball do what I wanted (for the most part), it gave me such a feeling of success! I don’t think I’ll ever feel tired of working on my game. It’s a challenge, and when you meet that challenge, it’s so satisfying. You can work really hard and feel like you’ve hit a plateau when you’re not advancing any more—and you push on and then you do advance.”

Find the Central PA Tennis Center on Facebook, at centralpatenniscenter.com, or by calling (570) 326-2828. To find out more about the summer tennis program for kids in Wellsboro, contact Margery at margery.hoffman1@gmail.com.

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

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Karey Solomon

B

Bacalles Glass

acalles Glass at 10 West Market Street is a puzzling shop. Which is to say, Zaharo Emerson, daughter of George Bacalles, who opened the store in 1967, has a lot of puzzles for sale, this due to the influence of her late aunt, Tilly. The proprietress of a former Hallmark store a few doors down, Tilly once confided she sold a lot of puzzles.

A long-time appreciator of puzzles herself, Zaharo tucked that information away. She took over where her aunt left off in 2011, when her aunt retired at ninety-five, then took Aunt Tilly’s advice and began stocking puzzles. Now, though the store has “glass” in its name, many simply refer to it as “The Puzzle Shop.”

Already a connoisseur of the jigaw, she’s tried many of the puzzles on display, often having one in progress to work at during quieter times of the day. “It’s terrible…how I’ve suffered!” she jokes. In the process, she’s learned a lot about puzzles, stocking mostly those made by Springbok because their colors are brighter and their construction superior to those of other manufacturers. They come in various levels of complexity and difficulty, from thirty-six-pieces to delight a youngster to the large 100-piece “Puzzles to Remember” series of antique images intended both for children and older folks with dementia. There are puzzles with 350, 500, even 2,000 pieces, puzzles for long rainy days or group puzzle gatherings. An easy puzzle is often set out at a table for visiting children.

She notes Springbok hosts an annual puzzle contest, inviting photographers to send in colorful and potentially puzzle-worthy pictures.

Zaharo has been urging people she knows to send them a good photo of Corning so more puzzle aficianados will be drawn, piece by piece, to her favorite city.

Back when her father opened the store, his merchandise was mostly American/artisan-made glass. Today, with fewer domestic glass factories, she’s had to search harder for these gems. The search has taken her to artisans in rural nooks of Pennsylvania and New England, where she’s found treasures like glass animals, hand-crafted personal care items, jewelry, and pottery. On the glass side, some of her most popular items are the collections of paperweights, particularly the clear glass ones in which a pale jellyfish seems to hang suspended. Glass animals of a size to fit comfortably in the hand and other small glass items including tree ornaments and suncatchers—like the other items in the shop—are all affordable gifts or small indulgences for the purchaser. Puzzled? Call (607) 962-3339. ~ Karey Solomon

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Courtesy Paul Bozzo

Stellar cellar: (clockwise, from left) Paul Bozzo presents one of his colorful works; a newborn piece of dried plaster; the same newborn piece once color has been added; a past display at The Native Bagel in Wellsboro.

Art Imitates the Fabric of Life Paul Bozzo Creates Art from the Textures around Him

By Ashley Ensminger

E

ach morning after breakfast, artist Paul Bozzo heads downstairs in his Mansfield home to work in his cellar studio. Within these walls are tables covered in projects, bottles of paints and glue, frames and tools, doilies, brushes, and tubs of plaster. At first glance, it seems like artisan chaos. But this studio is where Paul creates his unique and widely coveted textured paintings. These are the same textured paintings that line the walls of Mansfield’s Night and Day Coffee Café and Sylvania’s Settlement House.

“I like to make stuff,” Paul says. “I’ve just always been busy with my hands.” He began his work with textured paintings just after graduating from Mansfield University with a bachelor’s of science in art education

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in 1971. He did a lot of ceramics work during college, but after graduation did not have access to a kiln to dry and harden his creations. When he and his wife, Marianne, purchased a new home around that time, he was tasked with plastering the wall around their new stove. He realized he could create different textures and designs within the plaster. This project inspired a new avenue of creativity, and he began obtaining paneling samples from Arnot Building Supply, using the backs of these samples to create his earliest textured paintings.

Shortly after college graduation, Paul also began his career as an art teacher for Warren L. Miller Elementary School in Mansfield, where he taught for thirty-one years. For several years he also supervised

student art teachers from MU. So, throughout his educational career, he had the opportunity to work with students from kindergarten to graduate level. As a student supervisor he was also able to learn from and network with others, making meaningful connections with fellow artists and teachers in the surrounding area.

“I was a weekend painter while I was teaching,” Paul recalls. As his textured paintings became more popular, he received a lot of requests for newborn baby projects.

These are paintings specially made for newborns with their names, sometimes using baby blocks, Legos, and similar objects and textures.

“It’s an exercise in color and design,” he explains. “Most of the paintings have

three layers of color, which is how I get some of the more unusual colors.” He describes how he uses such items as children’s toys, stamps, rulers, puzzle pieces, doilies, plants, and assorted other objects to produce unique textures in his paintings. He also makes all of his own frames to keep supply costs down, which makes his work even more unique.

To make textured paintings, Paul begins by cutting boards of Masonite to the desired size, then sanding and rounding the edges.

He uses latex primer on the boards, and then spreads plaster onto it, about one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch thick. Next, he uses texture “markers” to imprint on the plaster, using plenty of water on each design before pressing it. He uses many items for these designs, and seems to get more and more creative with these objects. One of his favorites is a doily, “but I try to make them not look like doilies,” he continues, pointing out several examples that produced distinctly unique results each time.

The next step is to allow the plaster to dry for about fortyeight hours. Then he lightly sands the surface before sealing and painting. The painting process includes layering rich hues that complement his carefully selected textures, followed by the backing, glossing, and framing process. These textured paintings have become his most popular works.

In 2007, Paul joined the Grand Canyon Photography Club in Wellsboro, where he fostered his love for the art of photography.

He considers the club’s monthly meeting a sort of “digital dark room,” where he has learned many editing techniques and possibilities. His primary focus has been nature photography, and he has developed a love of hiking, where he finds many of his subjects—streams, trails, and forest landscapes. One of his goals is to photograph all of the streams in the surrounding area.

“Stony Fork Creek is a favorite subject of mine,” he notes.

“I learned how to capture moving water down Stony Fork.” Paul’s photography has been displayed in Wellsboro at the Native Bagel and at the Gmeiner Art and Culture Center. He has also offered textured painting workshops at the Gmeiner, and his work will be highlighted there again in 2021 in the atrium gallery.

Today, Paul is able to work as a full time artist in his cellar studio, as well as finding inspiration and subject matter on local trails. He expresses his gratitude for the immense support of his wife, Marianne, saying, “She really helps make that possible.”

Paul’s work is available for sale at Night and Day on Main Street in Mansfield, through Facebook, and at Settlement House on Route 6 in Sylvania. His recent efforts have been focused on preparing for the grand re-opening of Settlement House in midFebruary. (It had been closed for remodeling.) He will also have an exhibit at The Butternut Gallery and Second Story Bookstore in Montrose this summer.

Although his work is frequently highlighted in art shows and galleries in the surrounding area, Paul also enjoys creating individualized projects for community members, friends, former students, and out-of-towners. He has even fulfilled artwork requests for folks as far away as California. You can see his complete portfolio at bozzoart.blogspot.com. He also provides tutorials at youtube.com/user/bozzo16933.

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Ashley Ensminger is a freelance writer, university recruiter, and organizer of Open Mic Night for Writers in Mansfield. She lives in Wellsboro.

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

Photo Op(ossum)

By Bernadette Chiaramonte

W

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