March 2016

E E R F he wind

as t

Our Man at LIGO

Physicist Keith Thorne, of Wellsboro, Was Among the First to Hear the Sound of the Universe

By Alison Fromme Remembering the Bucktails Cure Cabin Fever in Corning Kevin McKreel Comes to the Deane Center

MARCH 2016 1

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Volume 11 Issue 3

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Our Man at LIGO

Mother Earth

By Alison Fromme Physicist Keith Thorne, of Wellsboro, was among the first to hear the sound of the universe.

By Gayle Morrow What a weasel.

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The Ould Sod

By Maggie Barnes

American born and bred, Kevin McKrell brings the sounds of Ireland to the Deane Center.

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6 The Old Bucktails

I’ll Drink to That

By Don Knaus Shooting sharp, they came out of these hills to save a nation.

By Maggie Barnes & Teresa Banik Capuzzo

And you can, too, as Corning’s Cabin Fever ushers out winter.

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Back of the Mountain

By Bernadette ChiaramonteBrown Night flight

16 Tottering-by-Gently

By Cornelius O’Donnell And a recipe that puts the lie to England’s food reputation.

Cover by Tucker Worthington; cover photo by Joe Giaime/LIGO.This page (from top): By Joe Giaime; courtesy of wikimedia.org; and © Annie Tempest 2016 www.tottering.com .

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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. Advertising Director Ryan Oswald D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Elizabeth Young, Editor Tucker Worthington, Cover Design Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Melissa Bravo, Patricia Brown Davis, Alison Fromme, Carrie Hagen, Holly Howell, Roger Kingsley, Don Knaus, Cindy Davis Meixel, Fred Metarko, David Milano, Gayle Morrow, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Roger Neumann, Gregg Rinkus, Linda Roller, Diane Seymour, Kathleen Thompson, Joyce M. Tice, Melinda L. Wentzel C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Mia Lisa Anderson, Melissa Bravo, Bernadette Chiaramonte-Brown, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Ann Kamzelski, Jan Keck, Nigel P. Kent, Roger Kingsley, Heather Mee, Ken Meyer, Suzan Richar, Tina Tolins, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold, Terry Wild

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SXS 6

Caltech/MIT/LIGO Lab

It’s all relative: An artist’s rendition (above) of two black holes colliding 1.3 billion years ago; (right) The LIGO (Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory) in Livingston, Louisiana, where the sound of that collision was heard last year, proving, 100 years after he proposed it, Albert Einstein’s theory about gravitational waves.

Our Man at

LIGO

Physicist Keith Thorne, of Wellsboro, Was Among the First to Hear the Sound of the Universe

By Alison Fromme

O

n September 14, 2015, Keith Thorne’s day began like any other. He awoke in his Livingston, Louisiana, house and ate his usual breakfast: half a grapefruit, cereal with bananas and almond milk, and coffee, black. He arrived at work about 8:30 a.m., expecting to settle into his usual routine in his usual workspace, which is situated between two giant, powerful lasers. At the right-angle nexus of those two lasers, which each stretch two and a half miles in two directions, Keith splits his time between the Control Room, where a dozen or so computers display graphs and numbers, and a smaller room, filled with racks of computer equipment connected by well-organized tangles of wires.

But before Keith could begin computer maintenance and software upgrades on that day, a colleague grabbed him with urgency, and said, “We may have a signal.”

Could it be real?

See Our Man on page 8

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Our Man continued from page 7

If it was, the great hopes of hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists would be realized. The $1.1 billion invested in the device would be justified. Albert Einstein’s 100-year-old prediction about gravitational waves and the very nature of our universe would be proven right. It would offer evidence of a mindboggling collision of two giant black holes, occurring 1.3 billion years ago. A collision that sent gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of space and time, reaching earth just that morning.

And if it wasn’t? Well then, it could be a fake signal, injected into the system as a test, or worse: by a hacker. Or, it could just be a fluke, an instrumental error perhaps, another small blip in the never-ending human quest for knowledge.

Never mind that most of us, citizens of the USA who had fronted taxpayer money for the device, were 8

Joe Giaime

The physicist at work: Keith Thorne at the LIGO facility in Livingston, Louisiana.

oblivious to this decades-long quest.

Never mind that most of us had never even heard of gravitational waves.

Never mind that most of us hadn’t even thought about gravity itself, that ever-present imperceptible but inescapable force that keeps us rooted to the ground, since high school science class. To the thousands of scientists working to prove or disprove Einstein’s predictions, this signal—if it was real—would change everything.

Just before 5 a.m., just a few hours before Keith arrived at work that day, automated systems triggered a notification system. A team of scientists monitoring the device’s data online in Germany saw something unusual, and then called the Livingston facility.

Around the world, other scientists working on the project saw the data on their screens. Transformed into an audible signal, it sounded like a brief low-to-high chirp. A visualization

of the information showed a black graph with a bright blue-to-greento-yellow up-swoop, like the tail of a cursive letter. Some scientists sat at their desks, whispering expletives.

Others emailed and texted colleagues with exclamations of amazement. But virtually all tempered their excitement with skepticism. A number of things might have caused the signal, and there was no reason to celebrate until they knew for sure, until every other possibility was ruled out.

A flurry of activity engulfed the Control Room. “Paranoia set in,” says Keith. “You can’t calibrate an instrument like this with the black hole in your pocket.”

Keith was stressed. As the software engineer and the leader of the group that handles electrical engineering, information technology at the high tech site, and networking, he couldn’t relish the news of the signal and its potential big picture scientific meaning.

Over the following days, weeks, and months, Keith furiously and painstakingly documented the exact state of the instrument at the time the signal came through, like what computer programs were running and who was logged into which computer.

He analyzed computer code line by line, he put on his cyber security hat and considered potentially malicious activity, and he responded to questioning from higher-ups. “I could have been a prime suspect,” he says, explaining that he would have known if someone had planted a fake signal. “I like to say it’s my graveyard and I should know where the dead bodies are.”

“Since we had a pre-arranged process to follow when a detection ‘candidate’ appears, we dug into the work,” says Joe Giaime, Keith’s boss and head of the facility. “Keith’s team is critical to the operation of the facility...Keith is a pro.

He promises what he can deliver, and he delivers what he promises.”

Worldwide, the project scientists soon agreed that the signal and its

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Our Man continued from page 9

scientific implications would remain a secret until they could say with certainty that this was the real deal.

If they had to mention it, they would recite a vague response about ongoing tests and analyses. At the Livingston facility, a documentary film crew on site from NOVA was sworn to secrecy. At home, Keith didn’t tell his wife anything.

Scientists have been looking for gravitational waves since Einstein’s prediction in 1915. That was the year he published his Theory of Relativity, a theory that changed our concept of the universe from static to dynamic.

Einstein posited that the universe morphed as matter changed into energy, and vice versa. But Einstein was conflicted about gravitational waves, alternately saying that they did and did not exist, and the search for gravitational waves has not been straightforward since then.

Keith joined the search for gravitational waves nearly ninety years later, in 2003, after years of his own personal trial and error to find his place in the science world. As a child of the sixties, Keith loved rockets and space exploration. He devoured science fiction books, and his parents—a father in industrial engineering sales and a mother who was a public health nurse—both encouraged his interest in learning. Becoming an astronaut was out of the question, since he wore glasses, so instead he followed his love of physics to the University of Michigan, and then began graduate studies at the University of Illinois, aiming for a PhD. But he hit a roadblock. After stumbling through his first major round of graduate exams, he left the program with a Masters Degree in 1980 and moved to California to work at Hughes Aircraft.

Still, his love of research wouldn’t rest, and he decided to try again, this time working towards his PhD at the University of Minnesota and

the famed Fermilab, the National Accelerator Laboratory outside of Chicago, the kind of place where physicists smash matter into the smallest pieces imaginable, to explore dark matter and learn what the world is really made of. By 1989, Keith had earned his PhD and married his sweetheart, Kathy, who he’d met at a science fiction convention.

But Keith’s successful run was coming to a close. A new and even more powerful particle accelerator was slated for construction in Texas, and Keith’s colleagues expected jobs there. It was too good to be true.

When Congress cut the project’s funding, physicists flocked back to the Fermilab. Keith found himself out of work by 1994.

While Keith had his eyes trained on the smallest fragments of our world, a different K. Thorne, known as Kip, chased Einstein’s elusive gravitational waves. A theoretical physicist at Caltech since 1967, Kip first developed mathematical insights for gravitational wave theory and then, in the mid-1980s, began work with Ronald Drever and Rainer Weiss on the technical plans for a giant instrument that could detect them. After decades of work, the instrument, known as LIGO, the Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory, was funded in 1992. The point, Kip said recently in an interview, is not just to record a gravitational wave for the first time.

The point is to open a new window into the universe and its secrets.

Ground was broken for two detectors, at opposite ends of the country, far enough apart to locate the signal, something like a pair of ears that can pinpoint the source of a sound. Each L-shaped detector housed two lasers, two and a half miles long, meeting in the middle at a right angle. Each laser beamed out and reflected back, perfectly in sync—unless some huge cosmic See Our Man on page 12

11

LIGO/Axel Mellinger LIGO

The top two plots (left) show data received at Livingston and Hanford, along with the predicted shapes for the waveform. These predicted waveforms show what two merging black holes should look like according to the equations of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, along with the instrument’s ever-present noise. Strain represents the fractional amount by which distances are distorted. (Above) The approximate location of the source of gravitational waves detected on September 14, 2015, by the twin LIGO facilities is shown on this sky map of the southern hemisphere. The colored lines represent different probabilities for where the signal originated: the purple line defines the region where the signal is predicted to have come from with a 90 percent confidence level; the inner yellow line defines the target region at a 10 percent confidence level.

Our Man continued from page 11

event emitted powerful gravitational waves, compressing and stretching space. Such a force would change the distance each laser travels, pushing them out of sync—by an infinitesimal, but measurable, amount, by just a tiny fraction of an atom. But only if the instrument worked. And only if Einstein was right.

At the time, Keith Thorne had not yet been pulled into gravitational wave research. Without work, he was lost and discouraged. But good fortune befell his wife, Kathy, a geographer.

Mansfield University called out of the blue with a proposition: a professorship.

She accepted, and Keith became the “trailing spouse,” following Kathy, now the breadwinner of the two, to Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. She built 12

a successful career, taught classes in mapping, and studied how people use maps, get lost, and finally find their way.

Keith cast around for ne w opportunities. He set up a computer consulting business. He made friends and loved the town. But his career frustration grew.

“It was Sam Finn at Penn State who in 2003 took a chance on this a-bitlong-in-the-tooth research physicist to join LIGO,” Keith says. His previous work at the Fermilab had been “third or fourth generation” experiments, he says. Initial groundbreaking observations had already been made, and he felt he was just working on fine-tuning measurements. Gravitational wave research was different. No one had ever directly observed gravitational waves

before. Here was a chance to be involved with something truly cutting edge. He spent the next five years commuting between Wellsboro and State College, at the very time the LIGO detectors, one in Livingston, Louisiana, and the other in Hanford, Washington, began collecting data that he, and other scientists around the world, could analyze.

By 2008, Kathy encountered health problems, and she had trouble keeping up with the demands of her position. She suggested that Keith start looking for a better job, and she retired from Mansfield University. Keith had intended to continue in basic research, and a job opportunity at LIGO turned up. But the interview process led away from hands-on research.

“Given the remote location of

the LIGO sites, it can be hard to retain non-scientist staff, especially electronics and computer people,” Keith explains. “The Livingston facility had had trouble keeping someone in the software engineer’s position. In fact, the position had been vacant for months when I was applying to be a staff scientist. What I did not know was that the heads of both observatories, who were familiar with my work, had thought I would be ideal for it and had been figuring out how to get me to take such a position.”

So the Thornes moved from the northern end of the Appalachians to the southern edge (though they’ve still hung onto their Wellsboro house) and arrived in Louisiana in 2008, now with Kathy as the “trailing spouse.” The adjustment was not easy. Hurricane Gustav had just hit, displaced residents occupied all the rental properties, and houses were wrecked by fallen trees. The couple searched for high ground, and then built a house in the middle of a treeless hay field. Bookshelves lined the walls, full of science fiction, mysteries, food policy nonfiction, and more. Kathy began organic farming, growing more than two dozen vegetable crops for friends and colleagues. Not long after moving in, lightning struck the house, scorching the electrical system.

Keith settled into his office at the center of the LIGO facility, which was scheduled for a major upgrade.

From 2010 until 2015, the device was shut down so that scientists could use what they had learned about the instrument during the first phase of the project to tweak it into perfection for the second phase.

To detect a change in distance 1/10,000th the width of a proton, without interference from a truck slamming on its brakes, or a power surge on overhead electrical lines, or the Gulf of Mexico’s tides, or the whoosh of Kathy’s bike as she rides the perimeter loop around the device, the lasers and mirrors are virtually isolated from earth itself. They are sealed in vacuum tubes, free of dust and debris, free from the vibrations of the earth. The lasers beam through the steel and concrete tunnels, into power boosters, until special mirrors beam them back. The mirrors are made of ultrapure glass, cylinders less than a foot in diameter and about four and a half inches thick, first manufactured by Corning, Inc. in Canton, New York—the same type of fused silica material used in the windshields of the space shuttle and space station—and then further polished and finished to exacting specifications.

According to Larry Sutton, Corning sales manager, “If you have ever looked through a regular drinking glass, what you are looking at is distorted pretty bad—with LIGO-grade fused silica, you could look through a part six feet thick and still read this text.”

The mirrors were hung by glass fibers and installed by people following “clean room” protocol: wearing gloves, See Our Man on page 14 13

Our Man continued from page 13

hats or hairnets, nose and mouth masks, smocks, and booties. The hanging mirrors are hooked up to pendulums that dampen any external movement.

And then, in early September 2015, after all the upgrades, the extra-special noise-cancelling materials, higherpower lasers, larger mirrors, and faster software, “Advanced LIGO” machine was up and running.

The official research run was not scheduled to begin quite yet. The data logbook had just been set up.

One top research scientist wanted to turn the machine off and make more adjustments. But the facility staff said the machine was ready.

Days later, the fateful signal registered. And after all the double checking and second guessing, after the cross checking between Washington and Louisiana, after all the data and the findings moved their way up through the hierarchy of scientific committees 14

in formal procession, the more than one thousand scientists, building on the trial and error of the past 100 years, were ready to make their announcement on February 11, 2016. The secret was revealed.

Gravitational waves had rippled toward earth, and passed through the LIGO detectors, stretching and compressing the instrument, just as the same waves rippled through all of our bodies, undetected. The signal is evidence of a massive event, 1.3 billion light years away, 1.3 billion years ago, a collision of two black holes, one twentynine times the mass of the sun, the other thirty-six times, circling each other until they collided into one, somewhere beyond the Southern Hemisphere. A collision so strong that it transformed a mass three times that of our sun into gravitational waves.

But the signal detection is evidence of even more. It’s evidence of a massive

Kathy Thorne

A great support network: Keith Thorne followed wife Kathy to Wellsboro for her job as a geography professor at Mansfield University. Fifteen years later she returned the favor, following him to Louisiana, where she started an organic farm and his team at LIGO waited out Albert Einstein’s prediction.

human collaboration on earth, and it’s evidence of billions of tasks completed by more than one thousand people, all seeking to understand the essence of space and time, the universe itself, and their place in it. And scientists say that this is just the beginning. More secrets are sure to reveal themselves with this tool’s help.

In c re a s e d d e m a n d s o n t h e instrument, now that it has proven its value, have kept Keith busy and on-call.

But he manages to spend weekends fixing Kathy’s tractor and building greenhouses and hoop houses for the farm. “It keeps me humble,” he says. “I should be more exuberant about this discovery, but it’s been slowly sinking in for months now. I talk about it calmly, but when I stop to think about it, it’s really quite amazing.”

Alison Fromme is an award-winning writer based in Ithaca, New York.

Kurt Bauschardt

Mother Earth

What a Weasel

“Y

By Gayle Morrow

ou weasel!” “ What a skunk!” and “Hey, ferretface” are not typically terms of endearment, at least not from a human perspective. It is undeniable that members of the mustelidae family have a few not-so-sought-after characteristics, but those very attributes are part and parcel of what makes these animals the most successful of the small carnivores. It’s hard not to feel a bit of grudging admiration for a critter—the Mustela rixosa, or least weasel—weighing less than half a pound that can kill something eight or ten times its own weight, even if that something is one of your chickens.

There are sixty-five species in the mustelidae family, including weasels, ermines, fishers, river otters, wolverines, badgers, minks, skunks, and ferrets.

They tend to be short-legged with longish, slender bodies, pointy faces, and cute rounded ears. The wolverine and the badger have stockier builds and, along with the river otter (the only family member with webbed feet and also the only one known as “the playboy of the wild”), are the larger species in the family. Most, except for otters, are prone to be nocturnal.

They are both terrestrial and semiaquatic; they live in burrows, hollow trees, dense vegetation, rock crevasses, farmlands, woodlands, and swamps.

They are mostly solitary and, except for skunks, which are understandably not too concerned with running across the occasional human, quite shy.

Earlier this winter I was lucky enough to see an ermine run across the road as I was driving home. Ermine always have a black-tipped tail; in its white winter phase it can be hard to tell an ermine from a long-tailed weasel, which also turns white in the northern range, but the ermine is quite a bit smaller. The least weasel also turns white in winter but does not have a black-tipped tail.

My only other really personal experience with weasels, the animal kind, that is, has been chicken-related.

We had lost a few hens over the course of a few days one summer—we found them dead in the coop with bite marks on their necks. Shortly after that, one of our cats left us two dead weasels— least weasels, I think—on the porch steps.

I felt bad for both the chickens and the weasels.

For some fun weasel facts, including the myth of glow-in-thedark mustela fur, visit mentalfloss.com and search for weasel.

Keystone Press Award-winning columnist Gayle Morrow is the former editor of the Wellsboro Gazette.

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flickr.com/Internet Archive Book Images The original sharpshooters: The Pennsylvania Bucktails held the line in the assault of Brockenbrough’s Confederate Brigade.

The Old Bucktails

Shooting Sharp, They Came Out of These Hills to Save a Nation

By Don Knaus

F

rom the time of Cain and Abel, warfare was essentially a managainst-man endeavor. Artillery and cannon changed that only a little.

During the Revolutionary War, we Americans beat the British because our riflemen were actually taking aim and choosing targets. And so it continued until the bombing of civilians in World War II. The Germans started blitzkrieg bombing of London as the Japanese were bombing Chinese civilian population centers. The British and American air power followed suit. Those

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acts turned the conflict into a war of wills. But, in trenches and foxholes, it was still a one-on-one competition more often than not. Korea and Viet Nam returned military campaigns back to a “who’s the best shot” kind of war— mostly. In every military encounter, experienced hunters excelled.

Why the short history lesson? Well, if I were going into a battle where good shooting would determine the outcome, I’d recruit good shots to come with me. I’d want guys who hunted to put food on the table. Deer hunters would

become sharpshooters just as they did in the Civil War. Grouse and pheasant hunters would become aerial gunners just as they did in World War II. And that’s exactly what Uncle Sam did.

The Civil War became the most devastating conflict in the annals of American history. It was a war where 618,000 men and boys died. The crack shots, the sharpshooters and snipers, were from northern Pennsylvania. They all hunted to put food on the table.

After Confederate General Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter,

President Lincoln called for volunteer troops to rise to the defense of the Union. Thomas Kane, an influential abolitionist who had been jailed for contempt of court—by his father, no less—began recruiting young men from the northern tier counties of Pennsylvania. Kane and his officers were able to recruit enough men to fill seven companies. (That’s about 700 men.) These men were professional hunters; farmers who supplemented the family larder by killing game; they were woods-wise lumberjacks and raftsmen.

These men were accustomed to living in the rugged mountainous areas of what had become known as the “Wildcat District.” The area included Tioga, Potter, Elk, McKean, Clearfield, and Cameron counties. Two companies mustered on The Green across from the courthouse in Wellsboro and legend has it that they had to prove their prowess with a rifle to be accepted into the companies. The citizenry of Tioga County gathered at The Green daily to witness the shooting exhibitions.

Prior to leaving for Harrisburg, the men adopted the tail of a whitetail deer as their regimental emblem. Deer tails were placed on each recruit’s kepi cap.

The regiment formed from these men became known as the Pennsylvania Bucktails. The men from Tioga and Potter Counties marched to Troy to await a rail ride to Harrisburg. Along the way, they picked up a company that had formed in Mansfield and a company formed in Lawrenceville, which included good shots from New York State. The men in the more western counties marched to Driftwood, Pennsylvania, and built log rafts to float down to Lock Haven on the Susquehanna. En route, a buck tail festooned the top of the mast on the lead log raft. At Lock Haven they picked up the railroad.

All Pennsylvania volunteers encamped at Camp Curtin, named for the Keystone State’s governor. Once at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, another See Bucktails on page 18

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Bucktails continued from page 17

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company from Northern Pennsylvania, a company from Chester County and a company from Perry County (then still a vast wilderness) joined Kane’s group to complete the required ten-company regiment, and became the 13th regiment—the Rifle Regiment—of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps. Activated as part of the federal army, they became the 42nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment, known to all as the Bucktail Regiment.

For the most part, these wild country men and boys had never been to “the big city.” They quickly became noted for their shameless carousing and constant fighting.

They earned their unofficial nickname, “The Wildcats” from Wildcat Country. Their behavior was so dreadful, the mayor of Harrisburg banned the 42nd Regiment from entering the city—the only time in history that an entire regiment was prohibited entrance to a U.S. city.

The regiment trained at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg until June 1861. All of the men had marched to war with their personal deer rifles resting on their shoulders. Nearly all of the soldiers of the 42nd contingent were able to “drive a tack” at fifty paces—with their own hunting rifles.

Nonetheless, these crack shots with their own weapons were forced by Army officials to ship home their trusted tack driver weapons. When they finally got the shabbily manufactured army-issue rifles, they raised a big stink.

The guns were grossly inaccurate smoothbore weapons.

They were, after all a rifle regiment. They even threatened to strike. The officers relented. Some men were allowed to get their personal rifles sent back. The few personal arms arrived in shipments that included spare buck tails.

Finally deployed and facing action, the 42nd was detached, along with the 5th regiment, to assist General Lew Wallace in the Cumberland, Maryland area. By then, they had been issued the latest in technical weaponry, extremely accurate, superfast Sharps Rifles. Upon their return from Maryland, they joined the balance of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps which had been mustered into service by the federal government and was now attached to the Army of the Potomac in and near Washington D.C. The Bucktails served with distinction in most of the major engagements of the Army of the Potomac. Often, these expert shots were assigned sniper duty with their Sharps. So accurate were the Bucktails that the term “Sharpshooter” was invented to describe the hunters from up north.

In May 1862, four companies of the Bucktails were detached from the regiment and sent to participate in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign against the legendary Stonewall Jackson. This detachment was engaged in the battles of Harrisonburg, Cross Keys, Catlett’s Station, 2nd Bull Run, and Chantilly. At Harrisonburg, a nail-driving Bucktail sniper-Sharpshooter was credited with killing See Bucktails on page 20

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Bucktails continued from page 18

Confederate General Turner Ashby.

The Bucktails fought at Dranesville; the Seven Days Battles of Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, New Market Crossroads, and Malvern Hill; Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and finally, Bethesda Church. The unit completed its service on May 31, 1864.

Those who did not reenlist in the 190th Pennsylvania were mustered out of service.

Reading the muster is like perusing a Who’s Who of the northern tier of the Keystone State. Familiar names flow like the waters in a favorite trout stream: Cole, Colegrove, Cady, Clark, Cleveland, Davis, Edgerton, Evans, Gee, Heyler, Hill, Huck, and Ives down to Walker and Webster. There were names of men that I’ve fished with or hunted with like Mike Smith, Fred Heyler Wally Moore, George Cook, Jim Patterson, and Tom Smith. No doubt some of these outdoor friends of mine—my fellow hunters, trappers, and fishermen—were great-grandsons of the like-named Bucktails. And there were guys I would have like to have fished with like George Derby, a fellow north woods hunter who became a major league baseball star after the Civil War. But most of all, I wish I could go fishing just one time with Sgt. George W. Sears.

Most of you know him as Nessmuk, the most renowned outdoor writer in America from the end of the Civil War until the 1890s. Yep. I would have loved fishing, camping at the mouth of a brookie stream, paddling a lightweight canoe with The Old Woodsman. But then, I would have loved meeting any one of those wildcat Bucktails, the original Sharpshooters.

Retired teacher, principal, coach, and lifelong sportsman Don Knaus is an awardwinning outdoor writer and author of Of Woods and Wild Things, a collection of short stories on hunting, fishing, and the outdoors.

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23

Coutesy of Kevin McKrell

Celtic echoes: The Kevin McKrell Band brings Kevin’s folk music to Wellsboro’s Deane Center.

The Ould Sod

American Born and Bred, Kevin McKrell Brings the Sounds of Ireland to the Deane Center

By Maggie Barnes

W

hen you are a songwriter, it is not easy to live in a place with names like Latham and Schenectady. Kevin McKrell, a resident of the Capital District of New York State, says there just isn’t any romance in names like that.

“Texas,” he says. “Texas has a lot of good names for songs.”

When your specialty is bluegrass, folk, and Celtic music, that need for a geographic muse is even greater.

“Irish music is folk music, same as 24

bluegrass is to America. It is the true local music that stems from the land and the people who live there. The stories are about leaving home and missing home.”

Kevin will bring that sound to the Deane Center on Saturday, March 26, at 7:30 for an evening of sing-a-longs and stories. While this may be the first time you have heard Kevin perform, any lover of Irish music has probably hummed along to some of his work.

Among the groups he has written for are The Kingston Trio, The Furey Brothers

and Davey Arthur, Seamus Kennedy, North Sea Gas, Hair of the Dog, Wood’s Tea Company, Bob Shane, and The Dublin City Ramblers.

When it comes to performing at legendary music festivals, Kevin has done all the biggies: Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Troy Music Hall, Berklee Performance Center, Proctors Theatre, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the Landmark Theater in Syracuse, the Milwaukee Irish Festival, the Great American Irish Festival, the

WELCOME TO Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, and the Winterhawk Bluegrass Festival.

As musicians go, Kevin came to his craft a bit late in life, starting to perform when he was twenty years old. “I played guitar and threw a few friends together. We played around the Catskills. That led to a job in Chicago.”

The next steps came fast, and Kevin was soon playing the first of many performances in the Emerald Isle itself.

You can hear the smile when he says, “And I haven’t done a lick of work since!”

Those intervening forty years have seen Irish music explode in global popularity. “When I began, Irish music was only played in true Irish pubs by Irish musicians. Now, pubs are like Chinese restaurants, every community seems to have one.”

In a nod to the origins of the music, Kevin stays away from Ireland’s native language. “I don’t speak Gaelic and I wouldn’t try to sing in it. That belongs to the true Irish.

I play the music, but I’m an American.”

But, he doesn’t think there is any loss of authenticity in his songs, not being a son of the ould sod. “Folk music is folk music. The themes and feelings of the songs are universal. Look at someone like Gordon Lightfoot. How many of his songs are about watching the plane you should have been on heading to your home? In past times, it would have been a sailing ship, but the longing for home, missing loved ones, pioneering new land—you can sing that feeling and make it work.”

His greatest thrill in music is to hear someone else perform something he wrote. “You can have a portrait that you did in your home and think it’s pretty good. When someone else comes in and says it’s good, it makes it even better.” It is an apt analogy, as he also happens to be an award-winning portrait artist. In that vein, he has had the ultimate compliment, as Ireland-based Celtic bands have recorded his stuff. He also makes frequent trips to play there himself.

Kevin considers himself a songwriter first, a guitar player second. “And I am a decent guitar player, not a picker. I know what a true picker is, and I’m not that good.”

His performances are largely audience participation with sing-a-longs and story telling that make the evening feel more like visiting a friend, and this will be his first visit to the Deane Center.

So warm-up your singing voice and plan to spend an evening with Kevin McKrell, a songwriter with a very American love of Irish music.

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Maggie Barnes works in health care marketing and is a resident of Waverly, New York. She is a 2015 recipient of the Keystone Press Award for her columns in Mountain Home.

25

&

DRINK © Annie Tempest 2016 www.tottering.com

FOOD

Tottering-by-Gently

And a Recipe That Puts the Lie to England’s Food Reputation

By Cornelius O’Donnell

I

wish I could take credit for that descriptive title, as it so describes yours truly passing through the supermarket aisles pushing one of those smaller carts and heading in the direction of the produce department.

I wasn’t always “tottering”—rather, I used to be tearing through the “trolley” traffic in a desperate effort to complete my shopping errand as quickly as possible. I now stop and smell—the basil—an aroma as pleasant to me as those of the roses that used to have good fragrance. (Where did the smells go?)

And my stop and go (carefully)—and sometimes tenuous walk—as I peruse the merchandise, can certainly be classified as “tottering.”

Tottering-by-Gently is actually the name of a cartoon strip that is written by a woman named Annie Tempest and appears on the last page of each week’s edition of the British glossy magazine Country Life. I have friends down near 26

Philadelphia who subscribe, and when I visit them I eagerly check out the work of this very funny lady.

In researching the author and her work, I find that Tottering is actually Annie’s name for the mythical landed gentry family that lives in the English countryside. In the cartoon, they have two grown children and grandchildren.

They enjoy country life and, well, enjoy a drink now and then, actually more now rather than then. One wag suggested that they were “dithery aristos.” So be it.

Catch up with the Totterings I went to the Tottering Web site and perused the goodies on offer. There are the usual tea towels and napkins and placemats printed with the cartoon characters. It reminded me of the “ye olde gift shoppes/tea room” one finds at the conclusion of most of the British National Trust “Stately Home” tours that

I took on visits to the English shires years ago.

I passed up the tea towels and such in the on-line offerings and opted to order the three paperback books of past cartoons. I get such a chuckle out of these gently silly, sometimes wry, but often thoughtful and right-on little panels.

And some of the drawings nicely depict interiors and countryside as well as the inhabitants.

I am rationing my reading—they are that enjoyable. I want to savor each one so perhaps these are best read one or two panels at a sitting. I am as hopelessly addicted to these as I was to Edith’s plights on Downton. Moreover, I need a regular shot of British humor (humour?) to pull me out of the “glooms” after Downton Abbey concluded. Besides, no less than the Duke of Devonshire claimed that Ms. Tempest’s drawings were causing so many subscribers to read Country Life from back to front.

You can also purchase the original drawings, and what a special gift that would be—especially when the subject of the cartoon was a characteristic of the honoree or even yourself.

One cartoon that I would have liked to send to a friend, a connoisseur of good wine, (if only it hadn’t cost over $200!), is divided into three panels. In all three Lady Daffy (I presume her full name is Daphne) has a guest, similarly plumptydumpty and with snow-white tresses. Both are well ensconced in one of those people-enveloping British sofas.

Despite their submerged condition amongst the downfilled cushions, they both clutch drinking glasses, and Daffy even wields the red wine bottle with her other hand. In panel one, our heroine says to the friend, “It’s true isn’t it (panel two) that wine improves with age (panel three) certainly the older I get, the more I like it.” You may not be howling with laughter, but I bet you are smiling along with me.

Another example: in a wide panel we see Lady Tottering at the front door of the ancestral home surrounded by a small mountain of plastic carrier bags of food from the market. Her husband, Lord Tottering (Dicky) stands in the open door casting a startled eye on the array. She explains, “I accidently went to the supermarket on an empty stomach.” Now you know a bit about why the “gently” in the title is so apt.

Downton Abby Fans Will Love This While Daffy and Dicky are in no way in the same league as Lord and Lady Grantham, according to Sir Roy Strong, former head of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Totterings “articulate the things which set us apart and which form our identity.” Another critic praised Ms. Tempest for capturing the essence of British humor. “Her observations are social rather than political. They are gentler and beautifully observed.”

The cartoons have appeared for eighteen years, weekly.

The artist is still based in Norfolk, England, works in a converted barn, and the place is surrounded by multiple gardens. Presumably that area is the inspiration for the mythical town of Tottering and the manor house. The three Tottering books would be perfect on a bedside table in a guest room or that book repository called the coffee table.

An English Dish from a Long-Ago Trip What do you think of when you hear the phrase “English Food?” I’ve been fortunate in my life to have made many trips to the British Isles and, despite British food’s undeserved reputation for blandness, overcooking, and “meat and two veg” sameness, I’ve enjoyed dining there. On my first trip there back in 1968, I clutched a copy of the popular England on $5 a Day guidebook. (I still have that hideously outdated book!) I wrote in my trip diary about the absolutely delicious homemade spaghetti dinner I had in a little restaurant near See Tottering by Gently on page 28 27

Tottering by Gently continued from page 27

Ne w & Im pr ov ed h Ve icl eL ist ing s!

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the Bayswater tube stop. There in the wide window fronting the street was an Italian (I presume) woman making pasta by hand. I dream of that place. In any case, there’s nothing like “pasta fatta in casa.”

Another gustatory highlight was in a pub just down the street where I had my first Scotch egg. There was a small platter of them on the back shelf of the bar. And it was there I also had my first shandy. A concoction of beer and lemonade that—to use an English expression—“went down a treat.” I just researched the area and, sure enough, The Swan is still in business and doing well, as it faces Hyde Park.

As my first trip to London was nearing its end I realized that I had a few traveler’s checks, and so I splurged and went to the then-fashionable Greenhouse restaurant in the tony Mayfair district. I loved the first course—a delicious soup that combined apple and chicken flavor—something I’d never had before. Here is the recipe, and I think it would be just right for the first day of spring. I went on line to find that the restaurant remains on Hays Mews, and still has great reviews—but even greater prices! Anyway, the chef gave me the recipe, and here it is. One note: I love the taste of green pepper but if it is a bit harsh to you, use all red (or yellow) peppers, or two red and two yellow, etc.

The Greenhouse Apple Soup 3 large yellow onions, finely diced 1 stick (1/4 lb.) unsalted butter 3 green peppers, seeded and minced 1 red bell pepper, seeded and minced 1 medium cucumber (seedless or regular), seeded and minced 5 Granny Smith apples, peeled, diced in small cubes 2-½ c. low-sodium beef broth 1 c. heavy cream Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste Fried bread croutons

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Soak the onions in a bowl of cold water for at least 30 minutes. This removes some of the “sting” of the raw onions.

Melt the butter in a 5-quart saucepan over low heat.

Pat the onions dry and add them to the pot along with the peppers, cucumbers and apples. Sauté until the vegetables soften—about 10 minutes. Add the broth and cream and simmer for 15 additional minutes. Taste and add salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls or mugs sprinkled with croutons. Serves about 8.

I hope this “goes down a treat” in your dining room.

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

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Courtesy of Corning’s Gaffer District

Cheers: revelers beat the winter blues at Corning’s Cabin Fever.

I’ll Drink to That

And You Can, Too, as Corning’s Cabin Fever Ushers Out Winter

By Maggie Barnes & Teresa Banik Capuzzo

N

o, it hasn’t been a severe winter. But the leaden skies and tart winds still urge us to trot from the car to the office, the office to the house in mind-numbing repetition. This claustrophobic state of Groundhog Day-like sameness has a name: cabin fever. But it also has a cure.

What a great time to be alive!

Corning’s thirteenth annual Cabin Fever wine and beer tasting event was born in the depths of winter twelve years ago, as a way to get outside, sample some of the areas best beers and wines, and reintroduce yourself to your social life.

Pip’s Boutique owner Sarah Files, whose shop will this year be hosting Victorianbourg Wine Estate from the south shore of Lake Ontario, says it’s what everyone is craving this time of year. “It doesn’t matter what the weather is. Snow, rain, wind, folks still come out. They wear funny hats and Mardi Gras beads and those glow necklaces are everywhere. People are ready to have fun. There is a group of ladies from Pennsylvania that always come up for the event. They stay at the Radisson and make a weekend of it.”

Joe and Tammy Carey, owners of

The Site Cyber Bar and Grill on Bridge Street, will be hosting Cider Creek Hard Cider, an artisanal craft cider maker from Canisteo, New York. The Site has been participating in the event since day one. Says Joe, “It always works. It’s a unique event and everybody seems to have a good time. It’s one night to give people an excuse to get out and enjoy the Corning area and enjoy some things they might not get to taste otherwise.”

Besides Cider Creek, The Site will be offering tastings on other craft beers, many of them local.

But it’s not all just beverages. Gaffer See Drink to That on page 32

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Drink to That continued from page 30

District businesses will be hosting an endless variety of other events and experiences. Corning’s Coluccio Family Band will play at Pure Design, says Jill Agosta, manager of Pure Design and Connor’s Mercantile. Besides hosting Rooster Hill Vineyards from Penn Yan and The Peanut Bar Sampling, Connor’s will also host Small Conversations, “a local high school band with quite a following,” says Jill.

“It’s a fun night, with a wonderful crowd of people who come through.”

This will be the first-ever Cabin Fever for the new 60 East Gallery on Market Street. Owner Mary O’Connor (with co-owner husband Patrick, whose work helps grace the gallery walls) will be hosting Atwater Estate Vineyards.

“I am planning an art-centric experience,” says Mary “super interactive. And really good food to serve with Atwater’s excellent wines.”

This year’s event will be held on Friday, March 11, from 5:00-8:00 p.m. The $15 price tag includes collectible wine and beer glasses and unlimited tastings throughout the Gaffer District. (All Cabin Fever participants must be twenty-one or older, and a legal photo I.D. is required.)

Market Street’s elegant wine store, Bottles & Corks, sponsors a Drink Responsibly Designated Driver Appreciation Program, which encourages the evening’s imbibing participants to designate a driver for the event. Select businesses will be offering them tokens of appreciation, including free non-alcoholic drinks, to reward them for abstaining.

“We’re very proud to sponsor the designated driver program again,” said Mary Beth Maxa, owner of Bottles & Corks. “We want people to know that they can enjoy themselves and have as much fun as they want, while still being responsible and promoting safety throughout the community.”

A complimentary shuttle will run between Market Street and Bridge Street, with bus stops in front of Lando’s and Tony R’s and at the Corner of Market and Wall Streets.

To be a Cabin Fever participant, just check in (beginning at 5 p.m.) at one of three check-in locations: The Information Center of Corning, the Radisson Hotel Corning, or Lando’s Hotel and Lounge. If you want to get your tickets in advance, stop in at the The Information Center of Corning on Market Street. For more information, or to reserve tickets, call (607) 962-8997 or visit www.gafferdistrict.com/cabinfever.

So bundle up in your best and head out. There are people out there who only know you as the plaid scarf with the Ugg boots.

Maggie Barnes works in health care marketing and is a resident of Waverly, New York. She is a 2015 recipient of the Keystone Press Award for her columns in Mountain Home.

32

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Š Edge of the Woods Photography

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

Night Flight

By Bernadette Chiaramonte-Brown

D

arkness was quickly approaching for the two of us as we anxiously awaited the approach of these shorteared owls. They flew over the ridge just like clockwork, hunting in the open fields, and, except for the quickly enveloping darkness, we were not disappointed. This photo is really not the best technical shot I have ever taken, but it is the first night owl shot I have ever gotten. He was the reason Linda Stager and I sat on Mill Hill Road in Lycoming County for hours. Thanks, Stephen Pinkerton, for the excellent directions to this magical place!

34

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