A Coudersport woman wins a $100 prize from Mountain Home. Our intrepid reporter drives for days to knock on Clancy Prevost’s door. Look for our new real estate guide available for free wherever you find Mountain Home.
Cover Story
6 The Reluctant Hero By William A. Kovalcik Jr. & Michael Capuzzo
In August 2001, Wellsboro’s Clancy Prevost saved the nation from a planned al Qaeda attack. This month, the terrorist he fingered goes on trial for his life, and Clancy hopes to get his own life back.
10 Katrina’s Hard Stuff By Michael Capuzzo
When the hurricane hit, Tioga County’s Laura Rose felt a calling during a CNN broadcast – and she’s still answering it, helping the poor and uprooted in Mississippi while she faces her own trials.
Reading Nature
13 A Walk in the Woods By Tom Murphy
The Pennsylvania forest is a kind of Braille, and a book can help you read it, says our new columnist, the acclaimed Mansfield University teacher of nature writing.
Cooking Bachelor Style
14 What’s a Bachelor to Do? By Terry Miller
With ham, cabbage and a hungry girlfriend, that is. Our guy-cooking columnist, whose fantasies center on the stove but are not limited to it, shows how to whip up a late-winter classic.
Chef’s Special
15 Start with Coffee-Rubbed Steaks By Teresa Banik Capuzzo
Chef James Fry of The Wren’s Nest brings dining grace to Mansfield in a historic old house, and this tantalizer to your recipe box.
The Big List
16 Meet Cayuga Lake Winemakers
Or Sullivan County beer brewers. Or go Wellsboro square dancing, to a Williamsport trout show, to the Irish Rovers in Elmira. Take in radiant Rachmaninov, buttery pancakes, pro hockey, parenting tips and more.
Onstage Off the Wall
18 Dream an Impossible Dream By Larry Biddison
Don’t miss Man of La Mancha, the timeless tale of the knight who never gives up, says our restless critic, Professor Biddison. Mansfield U.’s departments of Theatre and Music are combining to put on a really big show.
19 The Music Woman By William A. Kovalcik Jr.
The tireless Margarita Sarch of the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra brings to Wellsboro a plan to teach strings in the public schools.
Nose to the Wind
20 Howling on Hungry Hollow Road By David Casella
Our outdoors columnist hears the music of the elusive coyote, and can’t pull the trigger.
Land Rover
23 Pennsylvania Wild Words By Rod Cochran
When hunters and hikers, pols and bird-watchers stalk the same wilds for play, property or braggin’ rights, the only winner is the land hustler Snidely Buckstory, our columnist’s alter ego.
House Calls
24 Getting Stronger Every Day By Dr. Herbert R. Roberts
Dr. Roberts of the Tioga OB/GYN Center in Wellsboro pays a visit and tells us how to improve bone health when faced with osteoporosis.
Awakenings
27 A Call to the Heart By Rev. Bob Greer
Our new columnist on matters of the spirit reveals the dramatic events in the world, and in his own soul, that inspired him to the ministry.
Shop Around the Corner
29 The Beer Meister By Jennifer Worthington
Steve’s Beverage is a 12-by-12 foot room with 456 beers from around the world and the one-of-a-kind Steve Saunders, who’ll get you any brew from anywhere.
Ask Gary
30 When It Rains, It Pours in Your Basement By Gary Ranck
Our obsessively detailed Mr. Fix-It columnist describes the right way to dry up the cellar or lay down a tile floor.
A Night on the Town in Towanda & Wysox
Be the first to contact us with the right answers to this month’s Mountain Home trivia contest, and you’ll win dinner for two and a night at the newly opened Riverstone Inn in Wysox, plus two tickets to a movie at the historic Keystone Theatre in Towanda.
Masthead photo Bob Krist Courtesy PA route 6 Association
By MICHAEL CAPUZZO
Our exclusive interview with Clancy Prevost
Clancy Prevost was a hero on the basketball court at Wellsboro High School in the 1950s, and piloted jumbo jets for Northwest Airlines for 23 years, a heroic achievement on many radar screens. But when he became a hero for all America in August 2001, besting al Qaeda, suddenly Katie Couric wanted to interview him on NBC’s Today Show Dateline called. And CBS’s 60 Minutes, too. And Clancy said no, no, no.
won’t read about how the death of his beloved brother John Prevost changed his life. (Nor will you get the scoop that Clancy’s father, the highly respected Wellsboro doctor, John Prevost, delivered the editor of this magazine, my wife Teresa Banik Capuzzo, at Soldier’s & Sailors Memorial Hospital).
Clancy repeatedly told Bill he was no hero, but Bill and I begged to disagree – and we think you will, too. The tale of an extraordinary man begins on page 5.
Coudersport woman wins Mountain Home prize
When Mountain Home asked for an interview, Clancy said no, too, on the phone and by email. The day we got the final, no-way-I’m-doing this email, assistant editor William A. Kovalcik Jr. and I drove for days – to a location we’ve agreed not to disclose – knocked on Clancy’s door and politely asked again. Actually, he didn’t answer the door and we felt foolish. What if he’d left town? Or would say no? We returned two hours later and knocked again. This time he answered the door, filling it with his skeptical 6-foot-4 frame. Said Clancy’s wife, Sheila Prevost: “Clancy, those boys drove all the way from Wellsboro, how could you say no?” Replied Clancy: “I didn’t.” Actually he said no half a dozen more times that afternoon before he finally said yes.
The result is Bill’s riveting account of Clancy’s inspiring life and heroic deed. You can expect to hear Clancy’s name in the news again this month. On March 6, in a federal courtroom in Alexandria Virginia, when admitted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui faces a jury and the likely death penalty, Clancy will be the government’s first witness. But you’re not likely to read as moving and personal an account of his adventures anywhere else. You
Look for our new real estate guide
Starting this month, the publishers of Mountain Home are coming out with a second free publication you’ll find sitting near your Mountain Home every month at the more than 450 retail outlets that carry our magazine. It’s called Real Estate: The Guide to Northern Pennsylvania, and it’s the largest real estate guide of homes for sale in the seven-county region, with a circulation of 15,000 in Tioga, Bradford, Potter, Lycoming and Potter counties, for starters. Check out the new real estate book’s web site, too, to find additional photos of local homes for sale. Go to www.npennrealestate.com. If you or yours are looking for a house, our real estate guide is the place to find one. Mountain Home will continue to carry lots of real estate advertising, as well – along with our regular features on homes and home life.
As soon as the February edition of Mountain Home hit the streets, readers began calling and emailing us to win the $100 prize offered by our columnist, Rod Cochran, to the well-read reader who could first guess the answer to Rod’s literary quiz. One of those readers said he was practically accosted by a thin man who jumped out of a burgundy car on a quiet night in the Cowanesque Valley to hand him a copy of Mountain Home. That was my father-in-law, Ron Patt, a former Wellsboro High School pitching star who you will meet pitching our magazine all over seven counties with the line, “History, mystery, real estate and romance – it’s all in the magazine of northern PA.” Anyway, the fellow Ron accosted was delighted to receive the magazine, went home, read the column and called up right away with an answer to the quiz. But he wasn’t fast enough. The winner is Christine Herzig of Coudersport. Her correct answer is that the characters of Jacob and Rachel are from the Bible (Genesis 29), and Julie and Mac are characters from Rod’s own novel, Bear Hollow Congratulations, Christine!
History Correction
Our story on the “old stone house” in Tioga County (January issue) contained several mistakes we regret. Thanks to Sam Leonard of Sarasota, Florida, a reader of Mountain Home and a descendant
of the home’s builders, we can publish this correction for the historical record. Writes Sam: “I was just mailed your wonderful article on the home built by my Great Grandfather James N. Leonard and his Brother George Washington Leonard . . . The article says that James N. was a Civil War soldier and a miner in California. He was not. He was a farmer. The facts are that it was his Uncle James B. Leonard (Brother of James N. and George’s Father, Justus) that was in California and was a soldier in California at the time the Civil War was being fought in the east. He was also a prospector. He was a widower and he did try and get James N. and his wife Kate to go to California. Kate said no. James B. returned to Tioga and helped James N. and George W. finance the building of the stone house. I have a copy of his Army discharge at San Francisco . . . Also our Leonard family is not connected to the forge operators from Plymouth, Mass. We descend from a Justus Leonard (1758-1840) and his wife Catherine Aylesworth (1757-1840) of Stephentown, NY. Thank you for the article and I hope you will publish a correction to the family history for the benefit of future generations.”
Go Relay for Life!
Last year, Wellsboro won national recognition as the town of 3,000 folks that raised more than $77,000 for a cure for cancer, and showed indomitable spirit along the way. This year’s Relay for Life is set for July 14 and 15 at the Wellsboro High School track and football field, but the borough needs more volunteers to reach its ambitious goal of more than 40 participating teams. Currently 28 teams are registered. To join in or get more information, attend the March 8 meeting at 6:30 p.m. at the Wellsboro High School Instruction Room, or contact Steve (sbesse@laurelhs.org) or Dawn Besse (dawnb@cnbankpa.com).
ChristineHerzig
CLANCY PREVOST: THE RELUCTANT HERO
A Modern Resurrection Tale
By WILLIAM A. KOVALCIK JR. and MICHAEL CAPUZZO
It’s August 2001. The operatives of al Qaeda are fanning across the United States unseen, plotting an attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the World Trade Center in New York.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan decent, lands in Minneapolis with the most audacious of assignments: to destroy the White House. A portly, genial man, posing as a businessman from London, he takes a hotel room in Eagan, Minnesota. In six months in the United States he has already bought knives and flight-training videos and inquired about buying a cropdusting company, but no one in the government has raised red flags.
Converse sneakers, the retired Northwest Airlines pilot Clancy Prevost of Wellsboro, PA.
Basically I need to know if you can help to achieve my “goal” my dream… In a sense, to be able to pilot one of these Big Bird, even if I am not a real professional pilot….I am sure that you can do something. After all we are in AMERICA, and everything is possible.
On August 13th, the peak of the Minnesota summer, a driver delivers Moussaoui to school. He has enrolled in the prestigious Pan Am Flight Academy, saying in his application he harbors a passionate American dream. He wants to fly one of the “Big Bird(s).” He pays his $8,300 tuition in cash, $100 bills.
At 68 years old, Prevost stands an imposing 6-4 with blue eyes and a pilot’s easy grace. But he is the unlikeliest of heroes. He is a recovering alcoholic, a diabetic, a survivor of brain surgery. Along with the tumor, the doctors took out part of his brain, and he will never be able to fly again. Divorced three times, Clancy has spent his life seeking a fragile peace, and is terrified of the idea of being a hero – the only peace he knows is built on the recovering alcoholic’s conviction that he must control nothing but himself, quite unlike the hero’s objective to save the world. Clancy is fond of quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” As he sits down to instruct Moussaoui on the control panel of the 747, he is determined not to judge, not to challenge or change what the universe offers him. Just to watch. Just to be.
—email from Zacarias Moussaoui seeking admission to flight school
of the Boeing, including severe weather, complex system failures,
Mercersburg Academy, and Lafayette College. Clancy became a star basketball player at Wellsboro
engine malfunctions, and other emergencies. Moussaoui is slightly overweight, timid, with a baseball cap and growth of beard. But the big bird can be flown with a finger’s touch, and Clancy is expert at giving students the confidence to do it.
Clancy likes Moussaoui immediately, and takes him to lunch, drawing stares from the other instructors. He calls his genial new student “Zac.”
High School, and at 15 kissed his first girl – Sheilah Young, now his wife Sheilah Prevost. But even then Clancy felt the long shadow of his older brother, suspecting that Sheilah liked John better, because “Who wouldn’t?”
Standing in his way are only two things: Learning to master the controls of a 500-passenger, Boeing 747-400, the world’s fastest subsonic jetliner; And the man he has hired to teach him, wearing khakis, a polo shirt and red
A moment of clarity. Every recovering alcoholic must have one of these to get well, and to live. They strive for the genuine life, to be open, less willful, accepting. And to listen.
Moussaoui’s first lessons are in the classroom, the “ground school” of operating the 875,000-pound jet at Mach .855. Clancy operates the PowerPoint and lectures; Moussaoui listens, receiving oneon-one instruction. Later will come the ride in the multimilliondollar 747-400 simulator, which realistically mimics the flight deck
Clancy was born Clarence Worrell Prevost II in 1937, the second son of a doctor and an Irish mother, to a life of prominence and private schools – a life others envied. His father was the highly respected Wellsboro physician John Prevost. It was a seemingly idyllic life in a small town, with Mom and Dad, sister Sally, and brothers John, Lou, and Jim. The son and grandson of doctors, Clancy was expected to be a physician as well. Exceptionally bright, creative, independent, and mischievous, Clancy rebelled against his father’s strict authority.
Clancy doted especially on his brother John. John, two years older than Clancy, was a legendary scholar, leader, and athlete at Wellsboro High School,
Blessed with physical and intellectual gifts, Clancy shied as a young man from his older brother’s leading role. Instead, he became a “devilish” prankster, he says. “I was doing things for all the wrong reasons.” Such as the time he left an anonymous note for a disliked gym teacher, suggesting that something be inserted forcibly into the teacher’s rectum. To avoid punishment for the entire class, Clancy confessed and his punishment was a closed fist to the jaw. “He beat the shit out of me, and I knew I couldn’t swing back.”
When Clancy speaks of his brother John, a certain reverence fills his face, and his eyes dance. “My brother John was my hero. He raised me. Any truth in life that I got, I got from John.” John was two years older, and by all accounts was a beloved figure of leadership, athletic prowess, compassion, and good looks. The Alpha male that girls swooned over. While John was more a mentor than a rival, there were times that the two competed. Clancy recalls that he and his brother, both teenagers, engaged in
one particularly brutal fight that raged for about three hours, to the horror of the housekeeper, while Mom and Dad were away. Furniture toppled, glass broke, and in the end the two were on equal footing. Mutual respect was established.
In 1960, as a naval aviator, John Prevost died in a plane crash near the Philippines. The plane went into Subic Bay and John’s body was never recovered. Clancy was devastated by the loss, which he says he feels daily, often quoting a poem he wrote to honor John, “My Brother Died Today:”
My Brother died today. It was forty years ago, but he dies everyday.
When he lived, because he was so ordinary, we could all be ourselves. When he died, my mother started dying faster.
My Brother died today. Today I’m going to try not to try to compensate.
Clancy went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, was admitted to the law school of the University of Pittsburgh and decided to go to “get away from my father.” It was in law school that he became a man, according to Clancy. His wife was pregnant, his father had stopped talking to him, and his wife began to miscarry. Without Dr. Prevost to advise him, he rushed his wife to the hospital and told the doctor in no uncertain terms to save the baby. John was born, and according to Clancy, “He’s just like my brother.”
With a new baby to support, Clancy needed income, so he quit law school. Besides, “I lost interest in law school once I saw I could do it.” He joined the Navy, as had his father and brother before him, and became a pilot and legal officer. During the Vietnam War he was a hurricane chaser in the Caribbean, piloting a specially equipped plane into the face of storms to gather data.
After the Navy he became a pilot for Northwest Airlines, flying jumbo jets all over the world, until surgery for a brain tumor forced him to surrender his pilot’s license in January of 1992. Piloting a jet airliner is a skill normally held in high esteem, but Clancy shrugs it off in his self-deprecating humility.
“Flying is easy. Life is hard.”
Two years after his flying career ended, Clancy went into rehab and stopped drinking in 1994. His wife describes him as a “high bottom drunk.” He never reached rock bottom. He just needed to stop drinking. There were times during that period in the late 90’s that Clancy felt distraught. “I couldn’t live with alcohol, and I couldn’t live without it.” Suicidal ideation entered his mind, which seems hard to fathom given his current ebullient countenance, relaxed manner, and satisfaction with life and whatever it has to offer him.
Clancy now regularly attends AA meetings. AA is a spiritual program, and Clancy is a spiritual man, but not in the traditional manner. He no longer attends the Catholic Church of his youth, that he describes as a “magic show,” but instead believes that “the Universe is God.” While many at AA meetings are repeating the mantra “Let go. Let God,” his guiding principal is “Good is God.”
Airlines. Captain Prevost says, “This is your last chance.” She recalls, “That was very flattering.”
By 1998 Sheilah had moved back to Wellsboro to live in her family home. Clancy lived two doors up, and worked as a flight instructor in Minnesota. The tumor was behind him, and so was the drinking.
All during his trials, Clancy says he felt a 50-year unrequited love for the first girl he kissed, the former Sheilah Young. They didn’t see each other between 1960 and approximately 1973, when Sheilah, then married to Eaton Gibson (who was, ironically, a crew-mate of John Prevost’s in the Navy) was walking through Fort Lauderdale Airport. Suddenly she heard a booming voice, “I’d recognize those legs anywhere.” It was Clancy. They had coffee, and caught up –Clancy, too, was married at the time – then it was time for Sheilah to fly home to Syracuse. Clancy said, “Come to Chicago with me.” He proposed dinner there. He even offered to get her her own room. Sheilah replied, “There are some things that Eaton will not let me do.”
Moments before takeoff on Sheilah’s Eastern Airlines flight, the pilot came to her seat and announced that he had “a message from Captain Prevost of Northwest
Their long-anticipated meeting took place at the Radnor Hotel, a swanky establishment on Philadelphia’s Main Line, managed and partly owned by Clancy’s brother, Lou. When Sheilah walked into the lobby, the stage was set. Clancy was standing in waiting, and Lou and others were present to witness the big event. It was like Bogey and Bacall. He swept her into his arms and gave her a passionate kiss that lasted for . . . minutes . . . maybe hours. “We both knew,” he says.
They eloped on July 15, 2000, in Sun Valley, Idaho, because according to Sheilah, Clancy said, “What are we waiting for?”
To this day, Clancy, an unabashed romantic, interprets many of the meaningful events of his life through Sheilah. He is incredulous that he was once a
teenager knocking on that door to ask Sheilah Young to listen to records, and now they are man and wife in the same house. He is certain that had he agreed, at Penn, to go out with a visiting Sheilah one night rather than staying in his room to study for an exam, they would have married and his life would have been different. With the emotion of a poet he recalls the sweet joy of his first kiss and says, “How many guys get to relive that moment every day?”
Clancy says he felt a clarity he had never known. He had the woman he always wanted, had beaten alcohol, brain surgery, the pain of divorce, weathered the loss of his beloved brother, and survived a restless and difficult youth.
After their brief marriage ceremony in Sun Valley, Sheilah suggested they visit Hemingway’s grave nearby. Sheilah, currently working as a nonprofit consultant, is an accomplished writer and student of the short story. “I love Hemingway,” she says. In Hemingway one finds manly examples of grace under pressure; in Clancy Prevost, too, one finds them. Now retired from piloting thunderous jets with hundreds of passengers, Clancy Prevost must have figured those days of being responsible for many lives were behind him. How was he to know what was coming?
It didn’t take Clancy Prevost long to become suspicious of Zacarias Moussaoui. He had him in ground school for less than two days total. During the first day, it became clear that both teacher and student were wasting their time. “He had no frame of reference, and asked stupid questions.” Unsure what to do with his failing student, Clancy, ever the nice guy, ended a session and invited Zac to lunch. “I liked Zac. He was genial. As a recovering alcoholic, I can’t hate anyone.”
Although Moussaoui clearly wasn’t pilot material, Clancy went
Sheilahand Clancy
along with the joke on the first day thinking that maybe he was like those guys who went to baseball fantasy camp, so they could rub shoulders with the big leaguers. Moussaoui said he wanted to fly from London to JFK in New York, another apparent fantasy. Or was it?
The straw that broke the camel’s back came on the second day when Moussaoui snapped “I am nothing” in response to the question, “Are you Muslim?” Clancy gave him the rest of the day off, and started alerting managers to the potential problems under their collective noses. The business office didn’t seem to care. After all, he was a paid student. Clancy exclaimed,
agent and an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent in the hotel where he stayed when teaching at the flight school. In less than twenty minutes, Clancy told agents all he knew, including a detailed description of Zac’s driver and the Subaru that picked him up every day. Two days later, Clancy’s bosses told him a simulator class was cancelled. “What happened to Zac?” Clancy asked. “They led him away,” he was told. And that was it.
Moussaoui was arrested for immigration violations initially, and then later indicted for conspiracy to commit terrorism. He has since admitted that he was
Subsequent investigation has made public Moussaoui’s initial email to Matthew Tierney at the flight academy, asking for admission. The message is so odd that it is inconceivable that immediate red flags were not raised.
Hello, Mrs. Matt, I am Mrs. Zacarias. Basically I need to know if you can help to achieve my “goal” my dream. I would like to fly in a “professional” like manners one of the big airliners. The level I would like to achieve is to be able to takeoff and land, to handle communication with ATC [air-traffic control]… In a sense, to be able to pilot one of these Big Bird, even if I am not a real professional pilot….I am sure that you can do something. After all we are in AMERICA, and everything is possible.
ClancyandsisterSallywiththeirparentsJohnandJule
“You’ll care when there’s a hijacking.”
Clancy had trained pilots for Middle Eastern airlines before, but Moussaoui was different. “That’s when I got the idea: Wait a minute, Middle Eastern businessman? What are we doing here? Muslim? Wait a minute. Do we know what we’re doing?”
Clancy jumped up and down in his red converse sneakers yelling to his supervisors, “What are we doing here,” until someone paid attention and called the FBI. His wife Sheilah explained “Once he gets on something, he’s on it!”
Finally, Clancy’s warnings were heard – his bosses told him the FBI wanted to speak with him. That afternoon, Prevost met with an FBI
part of a conspiracy to target the White House sometime after 9/11, and he boasted in open court, “I am al Qaeda.” When Moussaoui was arrested, he had in his possession two knives, binoculars, flight manuals for the 747-400, a flight simulator computer program, fighting gloves, and shin guards.
After September 11th, authorities would learn Moussaoui had trained at an al Qaeda-affiliated camp in Afghanistan, and had trained at the same Norman, Oklahoma, flight school attended by Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (who piloted planes into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, respectively). Moussaoui purchased flight deck videos from the Ohio Pilot Store, just as Atta had. Moussaoui received money from Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, who also wired money to Atta.
A month after turning in Moussaoui, Clancy first heard an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center and thought, “Oh yeah, well, a Cessna got lost in the fog and crashed into the Trade Center. And then I turn on the TV and it’s no Cessna. You see this airplane banking in, and I said, ‘Shit, that’s an Airbus or a five-seven (Boeing 757).’ And bam! I saw the second one.” An awful realization dawned on him. “Oh. I get it. It explained everything in a split second.”
Moussaoui got closer than many imagined to becoming a weapon of mass destruction. None of the four hijackers who piloted the planes on September 11th had flown an airliner before. Learning the touch of autopilot dials in a simulator had been enough.
Moussaoui became the government’s only indictment tied to the events of September 11th. Although Moussaoui has pleaded guilty, the government seeks the death penalty, so a jury must decide. The first day of testimony is March 6th, and the first witness will be Clancy Prevost, who is eager to testify and get on with his life.
A year after he blew the whistle on Zacarias Moussaoui, Clancy’s father died. As is often the case with such strong personalities, the willful son of a willful father had struggled with his relationship with his dad for much of his life. But when he entered AA and learned to relinquish judgment and control, Clancy began a new relationship with his father. He was convinced his father knew that he loved him. But when Dr. John Prevost was laid to rest, his second son became upset that some of the younger funeral-goers were showing disrespect to his dad’s legacy. Recovering alcoholics are obligated to make amends to anyone they had once hurt, but this was different. This was something between father and son alone.
Approaching Rev. Bob Greer, Clancy politely demanded a chance to speak, and his chance was granted. He stood and said this: “When I was depressed my best friend said that to get out of it, I should help somebody else. My Dad helped someone every day of his life.” Then Clancy Prevost sat down and held hands with the first girl he ever kissed.
Love, Faith and a Lesson in God’s Hard Stuff
By MICHAEL CAPUZZO
It began on a day no different than any other. Laura Rose, 50, was watching CNN over breakfast when the first images of children suffering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina beamed into her kitchen and straight into her heart. Her five children were all grown, dogs and cats had the run of the house now. Tom, 57, was getting ready for work, in his 18th year with Osram Sylvania in the Wellsboro plant.
Laura sat sipping coffee and trying to pretend the homeless and hungry children were just a TV show when suddenly “something
“These are people I’ll remember forever.”
overwhelming swept over me.” She told Tom, “I’ve got to go down there.”
Tom shrugged; he knows there’s not much else to do when Laura’s heart expands and takes over. She’d taught Sunday school eighteen years at First Presbyterian Church, volunteered in the child development center. Feelings for children poured out of Laura from some inexhaustible source. He just mumbled something like, “it’s okay by me,” but he signaled the way couples do who’ve been together a long time that he was behind her 100 percent. Which was a good thing, since nobody else was – not one soul.
All Laura wanted to do was get on a bus to Biloxi, Mississippi, and go down there for as long as she could, give freely of everything she had. But nobody wanted what
made a lot of money in September.” So Laura, who oversees Tupperware parties in much of northern and central Pennsylvania, called in the troops, the twenty Tupperware hostesses under her
Laura had to give. Not the Red Cross, not the Salvation Army, not the Presbyterian disaster aid group. She applied to all of them over the internet, twice, but heard nothing. On the TV officials were telling volunteers to stay away from Mississippi and Louisiana, just send money. She called a friend in Stony Fork who gave her the name of a “Salvation Army man in Philadelphia who puts together disaster teams from the whole state of Pennsylvania,” said Laura. At his urging, she pre-registered for a Salvation Army disaster training class in Milton, the first Saturday in October. Then the Salvation Army man called and said the class had been cancelled “for lack of interest,” and “they’re not going to send you out.”
Laura was sulking and fuming and watching CNN all at the same time that evening when she saw “three college boys in their early 20s who got in their cars, went to the Astrodome and started loading people up and taking them out.” She thought, “If those boys can do it, so can I.” That’s when she decided to just go, alone. “I figured if I can’t hook up with the Salvation Army, I’ll just knock on church doors until I find a place to put my bedroll down.”
She’d set aside money for the trip, enough money to buy her the whole month of October in Mississippi. “I knew I couldn’t afford to go in October unless I
command. “I called every single person that ever had a party and said, “It’s time!”
The troops almost tripled their best sales totals ever. “I personally sold right here in Wellsboro $6,000 in Tupperware products in September,” Laura says proudly, “and the group did about $10,000.”
Now, as if she had passed some invisible threshold, things began to happen to Laura. She checked the Presbyterian Disaster Aid web site one more time. There was a new article posted, “If you want to go on your own, call this person.” Ed Gross of Virginia took his first call from anywhere in the United States from Laura Rose of Wellsboro. He gave her a contact at the Pastor’s Resource Council in Gulfport, Mississippi. Next thing she knew she was sitting in a bus for the 40hour ride to Biloxi. She arrived in steaming Biloxi on little sleep, and spent the night in the Naval Seabee Base in Gulfport, sleeping with 2,000 other people in a room longer than four football fields.
The next morning they took her to Pass Christian, the small Mississippi Gulf-front town previously destroyed in 1969 by Hurricane Camille, a place that has suffered as much hurricane tragedy as any place in American history. There on the steaming sandy beach was God’s Katrina Kitchen, run by Greg Porter, a
restaurant owner in Evansville, Indiana. Drawn south by his own call, Porter had set up a small cart with a stove in the median of beachfront Highway 90 to flip burgers for the highway department; now Laura stared in wonder at a tent city that would serve as many as 1,500 meals a day, dispense clothes, provide daily religious services. The sign said, “From many churches, but one God.”
Laura had cooked for large batches of people at functions, and at Donna’s restaurant in Corning, which her stepmother owns. Now she cooked for an army of 900 to 1,500 people a day – local residents, volunteers, Amish folks, police, prisoners. She ran the kitchen at times and cooked and cooked: meatloaf, burgers, full breakfasts, chicken and biscuits, taco night, roasts, hams, turkeys, Friday night catfish with hush puppies and fries.
“I learned to make sausage and gravy, and grits – I’m a northern girl, we don’t do grits. I learned from my friend “Mo Suga,” whose name was Waymon Scarberry, a restaurateur from Grenada, Mississippi, how to make fabulous grits. I learned it’s not a recipe, it’s a heart thing, you feel it. You just have to make sure to cook with butter and milk.” The days passed in a sleepless blur of long hours and fast friends and donated foods –butter, milk, meat – appearing just when you needed them as if guided by some unseen hand; days of sweat and toil to repair the wounds of the greatest natural disaster in American history. “I met a young mother with her nine-year-old son and mother who climbed to the roof of their house and when the water covered that they climbed a tree and lived in the tree for several days. These are people I’ll remember forever.”
Nor will she soon forget this: Four days after she boarded the bus to Biloxi, Tom was fired from Osram Sylvania. The blow hit him hard. The job had been a joy. He had discovered a talent for computers, engineering, process work at the Wellsboro plant, grown steadily, made a real contribution to the company. But business was down, and projections were lower. Several other employees followed him out the door that day. “I packed eighteen years in a box and just walked on out of there,” he says, sounding incredulous. “It was raining when I walked out of the plant with my box and it kept raining for eight days.”
He couldn’t bring himself to tell Laura. Not that night or the next or the next. “I didn’t want to worry her with it while she was down there.” So he kept it inside for those eight days as the rain fell and mushrooms bloomed in the backyard. He kept to himself, sleeping little, not watching television or reading, hardly leaving the house. “I just had my chocolate Labs, they became quite a help because I had somebody to talk to. I was angry, afraid. I’m not ready to retire. We still have a lot of bills to pay.”
“I thought he was acting pretty strange,” Laura says. “I’d tell him I rented a car and went to New Orleans and he’d say, ‘why did you do that?’ He was worried about the money.”
Finally he had to tell her. There was silence, and when he heard her say, softly, “Oh, no,” he started crying over the phone. But they talked for a while, and Laura sounded hopeful. “If you look around down here you see all this devastation and our problems are very small. We’ll get through this somehow.”
She thought Katrina was a good lesson in dealing with hard stuff. After three weeks of volunteering, she came home to Wellsboro. She and Tom got married again, renewing their vows on their 25th anniversary. “The kids threw the party for us,” she says. After the wedding, Laura said, “Now that we’re married we get to go on a honeymoon, right? I know just the place on the Gulf of Mexico, with sandy beaches,” she said.
Tom recalls his answer was “something like ‘I dunno,’ or ‘okay.’ ”
Tom put all of his camping gear in his Ford F-150, and within days they were sleeping in a 14-foot-square cabin tent on the beach in Pass Christian, Mississippi, right behind God’s Katrina Kitchen. Laura went back to
cooking around the clock. Tom assembled a huge walkin refrigerator, and helped repair the temporary electric lines buried in the sand connecting the kitchen to the rest of the city.
Still, nothing seemed to lift his gloom. “I had all this worry and uncertainty. One day I was walking by one of the tables in the food tent and picked up a pamphlet, Where is God? It said, you may be having all these troubles and wonder where is God? Well, God may be working upstream, because you don’t know God’s plan for you. And I thought, whoosh, it’s just gone, no more worry, it’s God’s plan, I have no more worry. Every time worry creeps in, I think of that pamphlet in Mississippi.”
After two weeks in Pass Christian, Tom and Laura drove home to Wellsboro. On the way down, they had stopped in Nashville to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame and Ryman Auditorium, “the mother church of country music,” Tom says. They saw Charlie Daniels perform. On the way home, they stopped in Loganville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, to visit Laura’s younger sister, Kaymi, 48. Kaymi and Cliff, a Delta Airlines pilot, their children grown, were preparing to downsize, buy a smaller place in the Georgia mountains they’d always dreamed about. Then the cancer hit, fourth-stage by the time Kaymi discovered it at the end of August. She was dying of lung cancer that had spread to the brain and bones. Cliff couldn’t be with his wife all the time she was dying. The pilot had to keep working for the insurance, leaving for two, three, and four-day periods. Tom and Laura stayed for two weeks doing what they could to help. Laura knew she was seeing her sister for the last time; Kaymi passed away January 3rd.
Back in Wellsboro, bearing up under so much of God’s hard stuff, Laura is planning a third trip to Biloxi this month to help Katrina’s victims, brimming with a stubborn optimism. Tom says Mississippi changed him. No, he’s not planning to return anytime soon. “I’ve got to find a job. I’ve got plenty of work left in me, and I know it’ll work out. I can feel God’s working for me somewhere upstream.”
On her journey to help Katrina’s victims, Laura Rose didn’t go to Mississippi alone. She went with the blessing, the prayers – and more than $2,000 in cash contributions – from the First Presbyterian Church in Wellsboro and friends in the church. Nor did she return to the church on Main Street empty-handed – she brought 52 copies of the book, God is in the Hard Stuff: A Special Gift for Those Affected by Hurricane Katrina by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz (Barbour Publishing, 2005) The Rev. Dr. Bob Greer recently distributed the book to parishioners. Its short chapters on suffering, healing and grief include the following wisdoms:
“For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand.”
– Anselm of Canterbury
God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you…let God be God in you.”
– Meister Eckhart.
“There must always be a struggle between father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.”
– Samuel Johnson
“Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but taking hold of God’s willingness.”
– Phillips Brooks
“Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
– Winston Churchill to a group of students as Hitler was threatening to overrun England and Western Europe
The whole point of this life Is the healing of the heart’s eye through which God is seen.”
– St. Augustine
promised me, Lord, that if I followed You, You would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed You most, have You not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, My child, is when I carried you.”
– from “Footprints in the Sand,”
Author anonymous
“In His will is our peace.”
– Dante Alighieri
“This son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. he was lost, but now he is found.”
– Luke 15:24
“Marriage isn’t a battle that someone is supposed to win.”
– Anonymous
“You are the light of the world Like a city on a mountain, Glowing in the night for all to see.”
– Matthew 5:14
A Walk in the Woods with a Forensic Naturalist
A Review of Reading the Forested Landscape by Tom Wessels, Countryman Press, 1997
During my walk in the woods the other day, with the leaves and underbrush gone for the winter and the snow covering the ground, what I noticed most were the trees, dark against the white. But more than the living trees, what grabbed my attention were the fallen trunks and stumps that broke the vertical line of the forest. I stopped to look closely at one stump that had become little more than a barkless column with a jagged top. It might seem impossible to know what kind of tree it had been, but I knew where to look for a possible answer: Tom Wessels’ book, Reading the Forested Landscape, still in print and available online and elsewhere.
Each chapter of the book begins with an etching of a forest landscape that presents some problem and from this etched landscape
Wessels draws a story that focuses on a particular kind of knowledge. In one chapter, for example, he explores why medium-sized trees might be missing from a forest. After eliminating disease and blowdowns based on clues in the forest, he settles on either logging or fire as the cause of the problem. Through a process of forest forensics, which he explains as he goes, he concludes that fire killed the missing trees. He finishes the chapter discussing the history of fire and forests, describing how Native Americans used controlled burns to manage the pre-colonial forest.
not simply about identifying patterns, it is about seeing the stories. He notes that “sometimes these stories are difficult to read; through time nature’s editing becomes bolder and parts of the tale are lost.”
Part of the thrill is solving the mystery. Although the book’s subtitle is “A Natural History of New England,” Wessels explains that these mysteries appear in any North American woodland, and the landscapes he describes are easily recognizable to anyone in the wooded mountains of northern Pennsylvania.
entertainment the way an amusement park is. In such a place everything the user needs to know is immediately apparent: one pays here, sits there, and then the event happens and ends on schedule. The forest, on the other hand, is full of surprises, and the surprises are not spoiled by knowing more about what is going on: they get better. Time spent in the forest not only stretches the body, it also stretches the mind and gets us not just outside but outside ourselves.
Wessels’ book is a good read that also reveals clues to events hidden in our landscape. Home from the walk, I got the book out and looked for stumps rotted from the inside out. It may be an American chestnut; Wessels gave me more evidence to search for to be sure it is not an oak. The game is afoot.
This combination of information and narrative makes the book both useful for identifying natural occurrences and fun to read. For Wessels, reading the landscape is
Part of what makes time spent in the forests of the Endless Mountains so appealing is that the landscape was not designed for our
Tom Murphy teaches nature writing at Mansfield University.
Cabbage Patch Cooking for You and Your Doll
The cabbage is a somewhat curious food. Bred from a leafy wild plant found in the Mediterranean region around 100 A.D., the cabbage head is the only part of the plant that is normally eaten.
Cabbage is often prepared by boiling, usually as part of soups or stews. But for me, nothing hits the palate the way a ham and cabbage combination does.
I first discovered this bachelor’s delight just before my fourth
girlfriend, Camilla, left me for a job overseas as a gorilla guide in the Congo. The move left me on all fours, but I eventually recovered. Before Camilla went ape she used to tell me how her grandmother would boil ham and cabbage on cold winter nights in the mid 1950’s, and how much she enjoyed it.
It’s a dish that stands to this day, for one or two at dinner. And it’s a dish you don’t have to have a degree in cooking to prepare.
One word of caution concerning ham and cabbage. If you have your girlfriend – or hope-to-be girlfriend – over for this dish, casually place one Beano tablet on the table just above her fork before eating. You can explain to her that it’s a mineral supplement to help fortify the dietary fibers contained in cabbage.
She’ll love you for it. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you ingested one yourself. Cabbage has been known to ruin a romantic evening. Trust me. I cook and communicate through experience.
Ham and cabbage plus Beano equal a night of delicious food that will
have her back to sample next month’s recipe.
Bachelor Ham Bachelor Bachelor & Cabbage & Cabbage
1-1 ½ lb. ham (approximately)
2-3 pound head of cabbage (approximately), quartered
Again, simplicity is what we’re all about here. Haul out your crock-pot and fill with four or five cups of water. Drop in the ham. Set the heat on 3 or 4. Pull a couple layers of leaves off the cabbage and discard. Wash what’s left. With a large knife, cut it in half. Next, cut each half in half again and drop into crock-pot. That’s all you do! Put the cover on and leave it alone for six or seven hours. When the ham falls apart and the cabbage is tender, it’s done!
Let’s ham it up!
Terry Miller’s inventive bachelor cooking advice is online at www.cookingbachelorstyle.com.
Chef ’s Special
James & Christina Fry Bring New Life – and Elegant Dining – to the Wren’s Nest
By TERESA BANIK CAPUZZO
When James and Christina Fry got married, Mansfield seemed the obvious place to live. Every day, Christina headed north on Route 15 to teach at Williamson High School. James, with a degree from Baltimore’s International Culinary College under his belt, would head south on the same road, over Bloss Mountain, to work at the family’s Turkey Ranch Restaurant. But every day their commutes brought them first to the intersection on Route 6 where a beautiful old gabled house crowned the soft hill in front of them. Day after day they were greeted by it, and over the years, while James stretched himself creatively by catering on the side, they told each other what a perfect restaurant it would make.
rooms. The Fry’s had purchased a house with a name, and that name – The Wren’s Nest – became the name of their new restaurant.
James knows well the rhythms of the restaurant business. At eight he was already up on a stool, cooking at the grill of the Turkey Ranch Restaurant, which was opened in 1939 by James’s grandfather and great-uncle. The restaurant was as much home as home was. So when he ended up virtually living at The Wren’s Nest, he and Christina sold their home and moved the family –which includes Ethan, 8, and Ellianna, 4 – upstairs. With play spaces located over the restaurant’s kitchens, there is nary a hint that a household is going on overhead.
The house was built in 1854 for Joseph B. Morris (the brother of Wellsboro founder Benjamin Wistar Morris) from a popular pattern book of the day, The Architecture of Country Houses; Including
So when a “For Sale” sign went up in front of the rambling old house, they made an appointment to take a look. On Valentine’s Day, 2003, it became theirs. Renovations were underway by the summer, and on January 28, 2004, a date James reels off without thinking, they opened the doors on four elegant dining
Designs for Cottages, Farm-Houses, and Villas, written by one of the foremost landscape architects of the day, A. J. Downing. His “Design III: Symmetrical Bracketed Cottage” was adapted by Morris, and the house, remodeled in 1898 and again in 1942, stayed in the hands of Morris’s descendants until it came into the loving hands of the Fry’s. With it came Joseph Morris’s copy of the 1852 edition of The Architecture of Country Houses, with Joseph Morris Mansfield Pa inscribed in flowing ink on the title page. Morris’s wife, Sarah, was the secretary of the Civil War auxiliary, and working from home, wrote their newsletter, The Wren’s Nest. The exact order of events is uncertain, but it is speculated that the house’s name derives from that publication.
that Christina calls “a work in progress,” and which is quite clearly a labor of love. It is an elegant yet entirely relaxed setting for James’s inventive yet completely accessible menu.
The Wren’s Nest 102 W. Wellsboro St. Mansfield, PA 570-662-1093
The old woodwork was still intact when the Fry’s bought the building, including pocket doors and a massive central staircase. Christina Fry did the interior design herself, and the muted tones of moss, ochre, and raspberry that she picked for the walls and the textiles resonate with the old burnished wood and the jewel-toned tiles that encircle the fireplaces. And they have just added a bar in this house
Here is a recipe from Chef
Coffee Rub Steaks
1 Tbsp Salt
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp black pepper
1 ½ tsp finely ground coffee
½ tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
4 favorite steaks
Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl. Rub mixture on both sides of meat and let set for an hour. Drizzle a little oil into a hot skillet, then place meat into skillet. Cook to desired temperature. If you like well done steaks, brown both sides of steak and then place in 350-degree oven (5 to 10 minutes depending on thickness) so that the steaks will not become charred.
Theworldfamous IrishRoverswillbemakingtwo stopsintheareainhonorofSt. Patrick’sDay:March12atthe ClemensCenterinElmiraand March14withtheCelticTenors attheCommunityArtsCenter inWilliamsport.Theband, whichcelebratedits40th anniversaryoftouringand recordinginAugust2005, soaredtothetopofthepop chartsin1968withtheir signaturesong The Unicorn, whichhassoldoveramillion copies.Theirholidayparody song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, wasahitin 1982.TheBandtoursworldwide withoriginalmembersGeorge Millar,JoeMillar,andWilcil McDowell.TheirlatestCD, entitled 40 Years A-Rovin,’ is currentlyavailablefromRover Records.
14 “Coping with Parenthood,” class for expectant parents, Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital, Wellsboro, 7:00 p.m. Free. 570-723-0375. www.laurelhs.org
28 “Baby Care,” class for expectant parents, Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital, Wellsboro, 7:00 p.m. 570-7230375. www.laurelhs.org
MUSIC
10 Chris La Vancher & Ken Bonfield, guitar concert, Ten West Espresso, Mansfield, 7:30 p.m. $2/$1. 570-6622979.
11 Rebecca Dodson-Webster & Irena Portenko, French
horn and piano concert, Mansfield University Meet the Performer Series, Steadman Hall, 6:30 p.m. $15. www.mansfield.edu
12 Dinner and Concert, Black Swan Café, 13 Wellsboro St., Mansfield, four course meal plus bus trip to Clemens Center to see the Irish Rovers. $48. Call for reservations. 570-662-7226.
12 The Irish Rovers, concert, The Clemens Center, Elmira, 7:30 p.m., tickets: $35/$18. 607-734-8191. www.clemenscenter.com
12 Acoustic Jam Session, bluegrass music, Wellsboro Community Center. 2 p.m. 570-724-0300 or 570-7247572. www.canyoncountrybluegrass.com
14 The Irish Rovers & The Celtic Tenors, concert, Community Arts Center, Williamsport, 7:30 p.m., tickets: $27.50/ $22.50/$17.50. 570-326-2424. www.pct.edu/commarts
16 “This is Your Anthem Tour,” Christian Rock Concert, featuring Superchick, KJ-52, and Seventh Day Slumber. Church of the New Covenant, Mansfield, 7 p.m. $15. Information: 570-662-3311. Tickets: 800-965-9324.
18 Ten Tenors, concert, Community Arts Center, Williamsport, 7:30. Tickets: $40/$32.50/$25. 570-3262424. www.pct.edu/commarts
19 “Radiant Rachmaninov,” The Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes, Clemens Center, Elmira. 4 p.m. Tickets: adult $25, student $5. 607-734-8191.
21 Spring Symphony Concert, Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, Community Arts Center, Williamsport, 7:30. Tickets: $38.50/$32.50/$28.50/$12.50. 570-326-2424. www.pct.edu/commarts
25 The Songwriters Roundtable, Potter County Fine Arts Council and the Genesee Environmental Center present The Now or Never Club at the Genesee Environmental Center. Dinner 5 p.m., show 7 p.m. Adults $10, students $5. Information and directions to GEC: 800-445-0094. www.songwritersroundtable.com
26 Andre Rammon, cellist. Wellsboro Community Concert Association, St Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2:30 p.m. 570-724-5225.
Every Wed. Open Mic, Meansville Asylum, Old Freight Depot, 1 Washington, Towanda.
SPORTS
3 Elmira Jackals Hockey vs. Muskegon, First Arena, Elmira, 7:05. 607-734-7825 ext.3287. www.jackalshockey.com
4 Elmira Jackals Hockey vs. Adirondack, First Arena, Elmira, 7:05. 607-734-7825 ext.3287.
5 Elmira Jackals Hockey vs. Richmond, First Arena, Elmira, 4:05. 607-734-7825 ext.3287.
T8 Elmira Jackals Hockey vs. Rockford, First Arena, Elmira, 7:05. 607-734-7825 ext.3287.
15 Elmira Jackals Hockey vs. Richmond, First Arena, Elmira, 7:05. 607-734-7825 ext.3287.
24 Elmira Jackals Hockey vs. Adirondack, First Arena, Elmira, 7:05. 607-734-7825 ext.3287.
THEATER
3 &4 The Will Rogers Follies, musical, The Clemens Center, Elmira. 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $62.50/$45.00/$25.00. 607-734-8191. www.clemenscenter.com
7 Sesame Street Live, Community Arts Center, Williamsport, 7:00 p.m. Tickets: adults $18.75/$15.75/$13.25, children $16.75/ $13.75/$11.25. Also March 8, 3:30 p.m. 570-326-2424. www.pct.edu/commarts
20 Comedy Club 4, Mandeville Hall, The Clemens Center, Elmira. 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $18.50/$16.00 in advance. 607-734-8191. www.pct.edu/commarts
17 St. Patrick’s Day Dinner, First Presbyterian Church. Corned beef & cabbage, dessert, & beverage. 5-7 p.m. 12 & older $10, 5-11 $6, 4 & under free. Benefits Camp Krislund. 570-724-3431
18 Meet the Winemakers, Cayuga Lake Wine Trail, wine topics every ½ hr., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free. www.cayugawinetrail.com
25-26 Cruisin’ the Tropics Weekend, Seneca Lake Wine Trail, Sat. & Sun 12-5 p.m. $25 per person. www.senecalakewine.com
WORKSHOPS
11 Decorative Painting Class, Sullivan Council on the Arts, Sullivan Terrace, Dushore, 9 a.m. $19. 570-928-8927. www.sullivanarts.org
12 Beer Making Demonstration, Sullivan Council on the Arts, Sullivan Terrace, Dushore, 1 p.m. $10, 570-928-8927. www.sullivanarts.org
18 Introduction to Organic Gardening, Sullivan Council on the Arts, Sullivan Terrace, Dushore, 1 pm. $10, 570-928-8927. www.sullivanarts.org
MARCH MUSIC MADNESS
Like neither lamb nor lion, March arrives with as much brilliance and bluster as any theatre-goer could desire. To my delight, Don Quixote’s “Impossible Dream” will again soar to the rafters of Straughn auditorium as it did nearly a quarter century ago, when my son played Sancho, the adoring servant of the Knight of the Woeful Countenance. In recent years, Mansfield University’s Departments of Theatre and Music have joined forces to produce some pretty big shows, such as Amadeus, Phantom, Oklahoma, and last year’s big hit, The Music Man.This season’s production of Man of La Mancha should prove to be one of the biggest and most exciting yet.
University’s spectacular spring musical. Directed and designed by Michael Crum, with musical direction by Sheryl Monkelien, the award winning play features an enormous set, a huge cast, a live orchestra, unforgettable songs, and impossible dreams. In Straughn Auditorium
March 2, 3, & 4 at 8 p.m. and March 5 at 2 p.m. Or, if you’re in California
in June, catch it there when Crum directs it again! (Adults $10, Seniors/Children $7.50, MU Students $2.) Information at 570662-4712 and www.mansfield.music.edu
On Straughn Stage. Don’t miss Man of La Mancha, Mansfield
In Alignment On the Wall. “Venus and Mars” will be perfectly aligned from March 5 to 26, as Rita and Steve Bower exhibit mixed
media at Wellsboro’s Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center on Main Street. Open daily 2-5. Don’t miss the reception on Sunday, March 5, with the artists’ gallery talk at 3 p.m.
On the Arcadia Boards Schoolhouse Rock Live! is Wellsboro High School’s annual spring musical, featuring songs like “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill” plus many more from the award-winning 1970’s Saturday morning cartoon series. See the play at the Arcadia Theatre in Wellsboro March 9-11. You can buy tickets at the door for the 7:30 p.m. performances.
In the Chancel. As winter officially becomes spring, an eager crowd will gather at St. Paul’s Church at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 26, to hear virtuoso cellist Andrew Rammon in the fourth concert of the Wellsboro Community Concert Association’s 58th season. A favorite of those who heard him perform with the
Grammy-nominated Eaken Trio at the Gmeiner in 2004, Rammon will offer a program with a South American/Spanish side, including tangos and other South American dances. Admission is by subscription or by individual tickets at the door (Adults $20, Students $10). Information at 570-724-5225 and www.WellsboroCCA.or g
On top of the Cake in April: 250 Candles for Amadeus! The 100+ voices of the Mansfield University Festival Chorus will present Mozart’s C Minor Mass on April 8 and 9 in Steadman Theatre. Community members will sing alongside MU music majors under the direction of Dr. Peggy Dettwiler. Call her at 570-662-4721 for information.
Larry Biddison, professor emeritus of literature at Mansfield University, sometimes acts in and directs HamiltonGibson Productions.
Pull Out the Fiddle and Rosin Up the Bow
By WILLIAM KOVALCIK JR
Margarita Sarch, full of life and energy, is aching to bring the gift of string music to the children of Tioga County, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Her latest project is an attempt to bring a musical program into the schools, instructing children in the violin, viola, cello, and string bass. Public school programs in string music are not uncommon, and Wellsboro had such a program in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, when Lee Kopenhaver was the teacher. Mrs. Sarch would like to return to those days, when little fingers aspired to the greatness of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart.
She began her quest to bring strings to the schools in December of 2005, when she appeared at the Wellsboro School Board meeting, daughter Serena, friend Bailey Olson, and violins all in tow. An impressive performance demonstrated to the Board what young children can do if trained in classical music.
“Studying music benefits children in so many ways,” says Mrs. Sarch, citing improved test scores and academic performance if music is included in the curriculum. Besides the obvious artistic gift of music, children who study classical works and methods learn discipline that will benefit them the rest of their lives, she says.
According to the American String Teachers Association, only one in five children in America has access to string music instruction in the public school. The ASTA would like to increase this number, and has outlined an action plan that includes holding school in-service sessions with band directors and administrators to assist them in creating string programs, working with the music industry to provide low cost instrument loans, and obtaining grants to underwrite the cost of starting new school programs. Children often learn string instruments through private lessons, an option that can be costprohibitive for some families. If the public school were to offer
these programs, string music would be available to a wider cross-section of children.
Mrs. Sarch lives in Wellsboro with her husband, Kenneth Sarch, and their three children, Serena, 10, Gabriel, 8, and Daniel, 5. A member of the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra, she also performs with her husband as the Sapphire Duo. The couple left Virginia ten years ago to come to Wellsboro when Mr. Sarch took a position at Mansfield University, allowing Mrs. Sarch the opportunity to stay home and raise their children.
Last year Mrs. Sarch formed a symphony orchestra in Wellsboro, which now has fifty members from elementary students to adults. The orchestra is sponsored by Wellsboro Parks and Recreation, and has played at the Laurel Festival. Mrs. Sarch is also the resident director of the Endless Mountain Music Festival, which will bring internationally acclaimed classical musicians to Tioga County this summer for nine straight days of performances.
A passion for music seemed foretold for Mrs. Sarch, who was born Margot Mezvinsky in Berkeley, California on December 16, 1962, sharing a birthday with Beethoven. The family moved to Iowa and then on to Mclean Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC, when her father was elected to Congress. She began her musical training at her mother’s encouragement at age five, when she began the Suzuki method to learn the violin. She continued her musical education in public school and was playing in the school orchestra in the fourth grade. She took lessons from a member of the National Orchestra, Samuel Levy, and attended the prestigious Interlochen Music Camp in Michigan.
Mrs. Sarch matriculated to Sarah Lawrence College, where she majored in Liberal Arts. But she continued to play and study music, including a year overseas at the
Paris Conservatory. Her French violin teacher encouraged her to be a musician, and she took that advice. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence, did post graduate work in Montpelier, France, and then attended Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, where she earned two master’s degrees –music education and performance – and met her husband, Mansfield University music professor Dr. Kenneth Sarch, also a strings virtuoso. After college she taught strings in the Fairfax, Virginia, public school system, and continued orchestral performances and conducting.
When her husband received a Fulbright award in 2003 to establish a youth symphony in Bolivia, the family moved to Santa Cruz. While they were there, Mrs. Sarch established a separate youth symphony. She brought back more than sunny memories from those six months. The pronunciation of
Margot in Spanish is “Margoat,” so she adopted the name Margarita, and, back in the States, the name stuck.
But back home she met her most formidable challenge yet: breast cancer. She has a message, for women in particular, which she delivers with characteristic energy and passion: “Just go for it! Just do it!”
And one of the things Margarita is putting her passion behind is the strings program. She is optimistic that a string music program will be in place in the elementary schools by the fall of 2006, and that it will expand from there to the middle and high schools. She has offered her services to the Wellsboro School District to assist them in creating the program, and has approached both the Northern and Southern Tioga School Districts to encourage their participation in the program. And she is willing to help teach string music in the schools.
She is hopeful that people will get behind the initiative. This energetic and artistic woman believes that everyone should use their talents to assist the community in which they live. And she has put all her energy into doing exactly that.
Local violinist AndreaTsao
SerinaSarch,MargaritaSarch andBaileyOlson
In Like a Lion, Out Like a Coyote:
In Praise of March’s Moon
Howlers
On one crisp winter night, while camped during bear season along the Hungry Hollow Road in Potter County, our whole party was lounging around the fire. Light snow had fallen and it was a full moon. From somewhere off in one of the distant hollows we were serenaded by the song that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. On a lonely night, miles from anywhere, deep in the forest of Pennsylvania, coyotes talking back and forth, maybe about the moon. It was an eerie yet beautiful sound and my first time hearing it here in Pennsylvania. The other time came in the big valley at French Asylum, near Wysox, where the Susquehanna makes one of it big U-turns. I was able to enjoy a whole evening of three different groups of coyotes echoing their calls back and forth below Wysox Rocks. But I didn’t catch a glimpse of them any more than I did Marie Antoinette.
For all the years I’ve spent in the woods, that’s about it for my encounters with the mysterious coyote. I have seen tracks and scat more than I can recall, but these animals are reclusive, secretive and downright stealthy. I have hunted in areas where I know the population of coyotes is healthy, but rarely saw a ghost of them.
is more accurately: “In like a raging bull and out like a scud missile attack.” March is still very much winter where we live, make no mistake about it. But hunting coyotes is one of life’s small compensations for March.
Although the coyote can be hunted throughout the year with a few limitations during the regular deer season, February and March are the most popular time for many sportsmen’s clubs and other organizations to hold organized Coyote “hunts” with entry fees and time limits and prizes for the most, biggest, etc. I’m not much for these organized “eradications,” which seldom work in killing off loads of coyotes, but provide plenty of fodder for debate.
But March . . . well this difficult, changeable month might provide a determined hunter with a rare sighting of this difficult, inconstant prey. My favorite outdoor humorist, Pat McManus, once wrote, “God created the month of March lest eternity prove to be too short.” He was right about this as he was most things. Typically March is the longest, most unpredictable month weather-wise, a quiet time in the woods, often the grayest time of the year to boot. Although the saying goes “In like a lion out like a lamb,” in northern Pennsylvania it
No other animal in Pennsylvania, absent Homo sapiens, is as controversial. Walk into a gathering of outdoorsmen and make a loud, definitive statement on coyotes and you may wish you’d opined on presidential politics instead, or the Middle East. A fury inevitably breaks out: Are coyotes hurting the deer population? Are coyotes helping the deer population? Did the game commission import coyotes for dark, nefarious purposes? Can we get rid of all coyotes? Do coyotes hunt in packs or alone? Will coyotes attack our children? The list goes on and on.
The controversy is typically centered on their impact on the deer herd. Some will rant that coyotes are bloodthirsty mongrels eating the deer herd out from under us. The truth is less apocalyptic. In the early 1940s the first coyotes were reported in Pennsylvania – the first confirmed kill was right in Tioga County – but it wasn’t until the 1960s that they became a more common sight. Coyotes migrated here from the
Adirondacks of New York, having come south out of Canada. I should say they returned here, as they were once common among our local fauna. They are related to, but are a different animal than, their western cousins, larger and hardier, with a variety of colorations. Some believe that they are a hybrid crossbreed with the red wolf. Right now estimates of the coyote population in Pennsylvania are at 20,000. Coyotes weigh in at anywhere from 25-50 pounds. They are not strictly carnivorous, being more opportunistic omnivores. They will kill deer, although it will more than likely be the weak or sick ones of the herd. They are just as apt to eat mice, moles, and other small game, and just as often, nuts, berries, and apples. They are known to fancy pets as well, with domestic cats being one of their favorites. Unfortunately they are prone to take the easiest meal available, which can even mean a road kill in hard times, but it also often means sheep. A coyote is a bane to a sheep farmer, as a herd will provide him with easy and abundant food. They are not pack animals, although they can be seen hunting in family groups, usually a mother and one- to two-year-old pups. Coyotes will stick to a specific range or hunting territory, up to 20,000 acres. They are known to kill any other canine in the area including foxes and domestic dogs if they are loose. There is some debate over whether or not coyotes mate for life. Some believe they do, others that they stay with mates for several years. I have read both theories. One thing is certain: coyotes are adaptable, diverse, and proven to cohabitate with humans quite effectively.
I have respect for those who have the skill to trap them and the
patience to hunt them. Hunting typically is done at night with an electronic caller and a shotgun. And trapping them is a science of trial and error not mastered by many. Although this is typically a nocturnal sport since (did I forget to mention?) coyotes are primarily nocturnal hunters.
So prepare yourself for long cold nights where all that howls is the wind, with wind chills below zero and a nominal return for pelts in a very low-priced fur market, about $15 for a prime coyote pelt.
Another of life’s compensations for March is cinnamon rolls and coffee. I well remember, over just such a feast at a Wellsboro bakery some years ago, the late Arnie Hayden of Wellsboro, the former Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist, insisting that coyotes were here to stay. I believe he was right about that. I say we embrace them as part of our biodiversity. With the comeback of the bobcat, the presence of coyotes, and the abundance of black bears – as well as over 60 species of mammals living in Pennsylvania – we truly have a magnificent heritage of wildlife to maintain and enjoy.
On one crisp buck season morning while sitting in a hedge row just south of Roseville, right at sunup, I had an impressive-looking coyote walk right through the field in front of me. I followed him in my scope until he reached the opposite hill. He stopped in an opening, directly across from me, right in my cross hairs. He turned and stared right at me. I never have had a desire to kill them and that occasion was no different. He trotted on over the hill to another destiny.
The Buck Goes ’Round and ’Round – And Doesn’t Stop Anywhere
This month’s column is part fact and part fiction, an experimental kind of writing enjoying some success on Oprah lately. Please note that the excerpts taken from the cited newspaper articles are factual while the Snidely Buckstory response to them is fiction.
First, the facts:
A fascinating clash of outdoor cultures occurred in the January 18th and February 1st editions of Coudersport’s saucy Potter Leader In “Public Meeting to Discuss ‘The Wilds’ Packs the House,” Mike Krempasky, Deputy Director of Policy for the State Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and Governor Rendell’s PA Wilds coordinator was challenged by attendee Cathy Fox: “The state has ruined hunting for Potter County,” she asserted. “You have completely failed to address the issue of hunting in your plans.”
This seemed like a legitimate concern to me, “ruined hunting” meaning the poor deer hunting hereabouts and elsewhere, a hotbutton issue alienating DCNR’s Game Commission and its biggest customer base – hunters. During an election year, no less.
Mr. Krempasky dissed Mrs. Fox and his audience, saying “We didn’t come here to talk about deer management. Hunting has changed over the last 20-30 years. If you look at the outdoor recreational activities (my emphasis) – hunting is not one of them. Kayaking, hiking, bird watching, etc., are all activities that encompass more than anyone hunting.”
Uh-oh, I thought. He’s stereotyping. Unfavorably pitting declining hunters against other vigorous recreational types. He’s fanning flames he was probably supposed to snuff out. The deer have gone but the controversy about their disappearance won’t go away.
It didn’t, either.
Fast forward two weeks and we find one rather influential hunter’s response. In an opinion piece titled “Fighting Words,” Greg Levengood, Chairman of the United Sportsmen of PA, wrote that he “was absolutely appalled at the derogatory comments made about hunting” by DCNR’s Deputy Director of Policy. He couldn’t “believe the locals didn’t storm the stage and send a strong message back to (Gov.) Rendell about where he can deposit his PA Wilds Initiative.”
fishing, ATVing, birdwatching, stargazing. Like Gov. Rendell they are enamored of elk and deer and want several nearby to spotlight, photograph, fatten or eat. Next, the fiction:
I showed the Potter Leader clippings to my buddies at the diner, suggested that the stereotypes identified by Messrs. Krempasky and Levengood were being replaced by their blends.
He must think quite a pile has already been deposited: “Mr. Krempasky is trying to shovel some liberal manure about hunting no longer being a viable recreational activity…”
Those are fighting words, alright, and, another stereotype. “Liberal” kayakers and birdwatchers versus “traditional” hunters and fishermen. However, Mr. Levengood might have offended the same audience as Mr. Krempasky as he accused them of being “sold a bill of goods by ‘Uncle Eddy’ and his environment friends.” Someone ought to remind the worthy Chairman that the Potter County folks were there to protect the values he chastised them for abandoning.
I am concerned about these divisions in our outdoor culture, especially the stereotypes. I have benefited from the PA Wilds Initiative, selling more books and property than ever before, and am hoping the Initiative doesn’t sputter after the election. Also, I haven’t dealt with too many stereotypes: most of my customers are a greedy blend. They want it all – hunting,
“No so,” claimed Snidely Buckstory, owner of Close The Deal Land Office, LLC. “Had ‘em at my counter this morning, both types.”
Now Snidely is a throwback to the snake oil days. He buys, makes, and sells his own stuff. The lawyer in our group, the one who set up his LLC, swears that when the government passes a Truth In Bending law, Snidely will be out of business.
Snidely continued. “Both saw my ad in the Mountain Home, that 10 acres of high ground next to state land. First in was this hunter named Clint, wore an NRA ballcap and a suspicious disposition.
How’s the hunting on this property? he asks.
Good, I said. Small game aplenty, turkey, bear, coyote, elk…
I mean the hunting
Oh, I said, you mean deer hunting? Well, the morning paper says a trucker saw one cross Rt. 6 last night.
Where on Rt. 6?
Potato City.
That’s 20 miles!
Yeah, I agreed. But he makes a big circle.
The deer?
No, the trucker.
See ya, he says, and stomps out.
The lawyer in our group groaned.
“I told you he was suspicious,” countered Snidely. He continued. “Next this bright-eyed couple about my grandkids age comes in. She’s a pretty thing with binoculars hanging from her neck. He’s a husky lad wearing one of those front packs with a sleeping baby in it. The baby’s bundled inside a downy sleeper with feathered ear tufts on its head – a little hoot owl I guess. Their names were Rachel and Ross; I didn’t hear the baby’s name. You know my hearing is bad. Rachel started the conversation. Are there hiking, biking, ATV trails on this land? she asks.
Miles and miles, I said, if you count state land.
Any Starbucks? asked Ross.
A sky full at Cherry Springs, I said. Sadly, only one buck. He crossed Rt. 6 at Potato City last night. They looked a little confused. Then Ross asked the big question. Any birds?
Now you fellows know I’m hard of hearing. I looked outside and it was overcast. Clouds, I observed, they block the sun.
Rachel squeals, They block the sun, Ross!
Ross asks me, Really, they block the sun?
Sure do, I said.
Where do we sign? asks Ross.”
Snidely leans back and grins. Our lawyer friend groans again. “Don’t you just love these wilds?” observes Snidely.
Gaining Strength
How to Win the Fight Against Osteoporosis
A visit from Herbert R. Roberts, MD,
Obstetrician/Gynecologist, Tioga OB/GYN Center
Dear Dr. Roberts: I’ve recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis. How was it caused and what can I do to improve my bone health?
Dear Reader: Osteoporosis is a bone disease commonly associated with aging. In the United States, 20 million women have this silent problem, as people are generally not diagnosed with osteoporosis until a fracture occurs. One of the classic symptoms of osteoporosis is diminished height, as small spinal fractures occur in the vertebrae and the bones become compacted. Continued fractures can result in a hump on the back, which correspondingly alters the front of the body, diminishing lung capacity. And it can also cause the loss of teeth. Bone loss is diagnosed with either a bone densitometry (or dexa) machine or with an ultrasound device used in the physician’s office.
There are several risk factors for osteoporosis, many of which can be controlled. Those that can’t be controlled are sex, age, and race. Women are at higher risk than men, and older women are more at risk than younger women. Asian and Hispanic women are more at risk than are Caucasians, and Caucasian women are in turn more prone to osteoporosis than black women. Additional risk factors are poor health and dementia.
But there are many contributing factors to osteoporosis that can be controlled: an exceptionally low body weight, estrogen deficiency, a low-calcium diet, alcoholism, smoking, hyperthyroidism, a sedentary lifestyle, and certain medications. Calcium is key, but is
effective only when vitamin D is present, which helps the body absorb and use it. A typical adult requires 1,200 to 1,500 mg of calcium per day, along with 400-800 units of vitamin D.
Who should be tested for osteoporosis? Women who are not taking hormone replacement therapy; anyone with one or more risk factors, is post menopausal, and under age 65; anyone over age 65; and anyone considering treatment which will have an impact on bone mineral density should be tested for osteoporosis.
Treatment of osteoporosis requires replacement of minerals in the bones. BIS phosphonates have long-lasting results, and continue to work after the medication is no longer taken. Bone density is enhanced to a greater extent when the BIS phosphonates are taken in conjunction with calcium. These medications can help improve bone density and strength, while eliminating some of the symptoms of menopause.
Rebuilding the bone structure takes time. After all, it took years for the osteoporosis to develop, so it takes time to replace the bone mineral. But, with patience and perseverance, osteoporosis can be defeated and bones can be rebuilt and strengthened.
House Calls may be a thing of the past, but not in Mountain Home. Write us with a medical question at House Calls, Mountain Home, 39 Water St., Wellsboro, PA 16901, and one of the region’s prominent medical experts will drop in to answer your question.
Win Dinner for Two and a Night at the RiverStone Inn, And Two Tickets to the Movies at the Keystone
A dwarf from what classic movie used to hang out in Canton, Bradford County, when Hollywood swells flocked to the small village’s mineral springs in the 1940s? That’s an easy one for true local film buffs – The Wizard of Oz. You may find the “Daunting Dozen” questions on this page equally difficult, or a snap.
In any event, it’s worth a try: the first person to contact the Mountain Home offices with the correct answers to all twelve movie trivia questions will win “A Night on the Town” – dinner for two at the RiverStone Inn’s Wildfire Grille & Tap Room in Wysox, two tickets to the movies at the historic Keystone Theatre in Towanda, and a room for two at the RiverStone.
The winner will be the first person to deliver the correct answers to our offices at 39 Water St., Wellsboro or email them to mthome@ptd.net (There are only two other rules: Answers must be hand-written or typed, and you must be 18 or over to win.) If nobody answers all twelve questions correctly, the winner will be the person who has the most correct answers by March 12th
The Keystone Theatre is a grand old place to see a movie, and was a brand new place to see an opera, as Hale’s Opera House, in 1886. Right over the river and down the street from the Keystone, The RiverStone Inn sits on Rt. 6 in Wysox.
The RiverStone is the spectacular renovation of the old Willamston Inn by Larry and Bob Fulmer, who also own the Comfort Inn in Wysox and the Fulmer Brothers Tire Service in Wysox and Sayre. The new name was inspired by a stone wall in the lobby. Now stone walls and lovely wood amble through the sprawling restaurant, which manages to be both large and cozy. There’s a lively sports-style bar with oak walls and flat-screen TVs. The sixteen rooms feature high-speed Internet access and other amenities. One of the best features of the RiverStone Inn is its lively mood. Behind the warm, stylishly designed spaces, it’s a bustling place-to-meet, where businessmen, office workers on lunch hour, tourists and locals mingle easily. Surprisingly for such a locally well-known place, the RiverStone feels like a hideaway to be discovered – eight months into its new life, the inn and restaurant have no web site and no brochure with room prices. It’s just a place you have to know about – and if you don’t, it’s worth a trip to find out.
The Wildfire Grille & Tap Room features a wide-ranging appetizer, sandwich and salad menu including “Kickin’ Chicken Wings” with six sauces, a Tropical Chicken Salad, four types of Italian flatbread panini, a Prime Rib Dip sandwich and New York-style Reuben. There’s every imaginable traditional entrée – Black Angus steaks, ribs, surf and turf, chicken, seafood, pasta – with emphasis on large and hearty. The 12-ounce Prime Rib, for instance, or the “Monster Fish . . . a huge 10 oz. batter-dipt haddock fillet.”
The Night on the Town Movie Quiz Contest
Also Known As “Kovalcik’s Daunting Dozen”
1. What was the first movie starring and directed by Orson Welles?
A. The Stranger
B. Citizen Kane
C. The Magnificent Ambersons
D. Star Wars
2. In National Lampoon’s Vacation what does Clark (Chevy Chase) tie to the roof of the family station wagon?
3. In Jaws, what was the first victim doing when attacked?
4. Who wrote the story that the movie Brokeback Mountain was based on?
5. What was the name of the character John Travolta played in the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever?
A. Vinnie Barbarino
B. Anthony Biscotti
C. Sal Mineo
D. Tony Manero
6. What was the name of the possessed hotel in the movie The Shining ?
7. In The Godfather, who “sleeps with the fishes?”
8. In Dumb and Dumber, what was the name of Harry’s parakeet that was killed and sold by Lloyd to a blind boy?
9. In what country is the movie Casablanca set?
10. In the movie The Natural, what actor played the manager of the New York Knights?
11. What famous actor directed the 1971 movie Play Misty for Me?
12. Which movie, directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon, won the Oscar for best picture in 1960?
A. Some Like it Hot
B. The Wizard of Oz
C. The Apartment
D. Double Indemnity
A Pastor’s Conversions to Christ, the Church and the World
By REV. DR. Robert K Greer
My story today is about my personal conversions to God, and to the world, as a young and restless man.
I am not often comfortable talking about how my testimony of Christ has acted in my own life, the story of my doubt and my faith, but perhaps this will be helpful for some to hear.
I grew up in a simple home where God was honored. The Bible was regularly read and our lives were centered on the church. As a youth I attended scout and church camps, but my commitment to Christ happened in the summer before I became a senior in high school. That summer I read the novel The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas (1943). Although I had not seen the movie, I had this unexplained desire to read the book that my mother had purchased through her book club. At the end as I tearfully read about Marcellus and Diana boldly confessing their faith in Christ before the mad emperor Caligula, and being condemned to death in the arena, I had to ask myself: would I be willing to do the same for the Christ that I claimed to love? It was during that summer that I felt I was being called to the ministry.
Maybe I was influenced by what was happening in our church. My dad was on session and the church was going through some difficult times because our pastor had engaged in some improper behavior. He had to leave our church. But as he was leaving many of the church’s members were also leaving.
To go into the ministry one would have to go to college and to seminary. You had to have some smarts. No one ever confused me, a C student, with being a good student. Also, college cost money. No one in our knowable family had gone to college. College was considered an experience and expense that was beyond our class and condition of life.
My senior year I was motivated to
study like I had never studied before. I finished the year with all A’s and I was number one in all of my classes, but my high school ranking was still far from the top. The only college I applied to was Westminster, and I was accepted. My church and many friends who were delighted that I was committed to becoming a minister helped me financially. But the school’s fundamentalist conservatism was a shock to me – their notion of a Christian was one who didn’t question authority or the faith.
Evidently, ministers of the Word should not question! The session of my home church felt it could not recommend me to Presbytery. This apparent rejection by the church provoked me in turn to reject the church. The leaders of the church also didn’t think much of the civil rights movement of the time. Their condemnation of Martin Luther King only confirmed in my mind that the church was a lost cause. I no longer wanted to be a minister, or have anything to do with the church. In President Kennedy’s Peace Corps, I saw a new opportunity to serve the world and help others without being a missionary. I made plans to go join.
My parents were horrified. What about all the money I had accepted from the church and friends who wanted to help me? A professor at the seminary, a friend of my dad’s, counseled me that my inquiring mind would be at home in the seminary, and convinced me to give it a one-year trial.
Admitted to Pittsburgh Seminary at the last minute, I wasn’t certain about how Christ would touch my inward calling to do something to make the world a more just and better place. I believed faith is proved by action. To my surprise I loved seminary. In late August I traveled with a number of Presby-
terian ministers to take part in the march on Washington. I heard Dr. Martin Luther King speak from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial about his dream. I was traveling with ministers. These people felt like I felt. Each year of Seminary, I was involved in civil rights action in Washington, D.C.; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and in Selma, Alabama. This was the church in the world showing Christ’s concern for the persecuted, the weary and troubled. This is the church I could gladly commit to serving.
Finally I was converted back to the church. I learned early on that the church, like most Christians, labors
with divided opinions. It doesn’t enjoy the certainty that I foolishly felt I was privileged to enjoy when I was young and restless. Being a Christian and a minister in today’s world means learning how to stand in another person’s skin and to respect other people’s opinions. I’m still learning to do that.
A good friend of mine once commented, “God must really care for you, because there’s no way you would have gotten Anne as your wife without God’s help.” I know that is very true. God has blessed me in this work that I labored to discover. God has blessed Anne and me with an abundant life, and the joy of children who share with us the quest expressed in the prayer we all pray so often, “I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Rev. Greer is the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Wellsboro.
By Willy O’Kovalcik
St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, is an Irish feast day named after the patron saint of Ireland, who lived from 386 to 461 A.D.
St. Patrick’s Day is a legal holiday in Ireland, Montserrat, Newfoundland, and Labrador.
The five biggest parades are held in Dublin, New York, Manchester, Montreal, and Boston.
The Chicago River is dyed green for the celebration. Boulder Colorado has the shortest parade – one city block.
The Guinness Beer Company is leading the fight to have St. Patrick’s Day declared a national holiday throughout Canada.
St. Patrick is said to have raised people from the dead, and to have driven all the snakes out of Ireland.
St. Patrick used the shamrock to represent the trinity because of its three leaves.
Kissing the Blarney Stone is said to give the kisser persuasive eloquence.
The traditional green associated with Ireland stands for nature.
Poteen is an Irish distilled spirit made from potatoes.
The 19th century term “paddy wagon” comes from the proclivity of drunken Irishmen to all claim the name Paddy when arrested and thrown in the police wagon.
Shop Around The Corner
Steve’s Beverage Center
By JENNIFER WORTHINGTON
Address: 397 Tioga Street, Wellsboro, PA
Phone: 570-724-3282
Owner: Steve Saunders
The shop: You step into a 12x24 room, lined with 426 beer bottles from around the world and lit by a wall of neon beer signs. A Budweiser girl in a western miniskirt stands off to the side greeting customers. She’s a poster. The silver-haired guy smiling from behind the counter is Steve Saunders. He’s real. He’s the owner.
The Beer: If Steve doesn’t have it, he can get it. In addition to the 426 beers in stock, Steve has a library of another 300 beers you can special order to arrive within two weeks. In fact, the recently requested B.B. Burgerbrau, brewed in the Czech Republic, has just arrived – straight from Pittsburgh on the Pabst wagon. Steve loves the beer.
The people: A man in his forties bounces in singing an old tune he just heard on the radio. He pays for his Rolling Rock and heads
out the door singing. Moments later a middle-aged woman walks in and orders a case of Foster’s. Steve greets her by her first name and asks about her new grandchild. Steve loves the people.
Personal history: Born in Morris, Steve knew from the eighth grade exactly what he
wanted to be when he grew up – an insurance salesman. Which he became when he graduated from the University of Buffalo, acquiring a few small businesses along the way. Upon retiring from the insurance business in the late 80’s he sold all his businesses except the beer distributorship, which someone else ran for him. After about a year of retirement, Steve’s wife suggested that he run the beer distributorship, since he’s the type of guy who has energy that doesn’t retire well.
Other interests: Steve and his wife operate a 408-acre Palomino horse farm together near Mansfield, and have another farm in Sperry, Oklahoma. When he isn’t working around the clock, Steve can be found enjoying a bit of fly-fishing or archery hunting. Steve and his wife are spontaneous, and have been known to take off to Las Vegas on the spur of the moment or fly across the world to another country for the weekend, discovering different beers, visiting new places, and enjoying life.
Drain, Drain, Go Away . . .
Ridding Your Ridding Your Ridding Your Ridding Your Ridding Your Basement of Water Basement of
Water Basement of Water Basement of Water Basement of Water
Once and For All Once and For All Once and For All Once and For All and For All
Dear Gary,
Our house is set on a full foundation, in an area that has a lot of moisture. When the house was built in the early fifties, the builders installed a French drain around the perimeter of the entire basement. Every time there is a thaw, or during a heavy rain, we get water in the basement.
Dear Wet Basement,
What would you suggest to easily and affordably fix the problem? –Wet Basement in Stony Fork
First look and see if you have eave troughs and downspouts. If you don’t, you should call a seamless gutter company and get the job done. If you have them already, make sure they are working properly and draining water away from the foundation of the house. If the above steps don’t solve the problem, the next step is unfortunately neither simple nor inexpensive.
Hire an excavator to remove the backfill dirt from around the
perimeter of the house, down to the footers. Then clean the walls that are exposed and apply two coats of parging, or concrete plastering. Follow that with a foundation coating or a product like Thoroseal, Comproco, etc. from the footers to the finish grade. Check the perimeter drains to make sure that none are clogged, crushed, or broken (flush water from a garden hose through the drains), replacing anything that is damaged. Cover the draintile with geotextile cloth, and backfill a few feet deep with washed 2B gravel. Then backfill with clean fill and topsoil to grade. Make sure the drainage empties away from the house to a drainage ditch or French drain.
Thanks for asking.
Dear Gary,
My son would like to install ceramic tile on his kitchen floor. The house is built on a concrete slab and has vinyl composition tile presently in the kitchen. What preparation needs to be done to lay the ceramic floor tile? Can we lay the tile directly on the vinyl? If so, what type of adhesive should we use? –Helpful Dad
Dear Helpful,
Unfortunately, you shouldn’t install the ceramic tile over the vinyl. So
the first thing you have to do is remove the vinyl tile. Rent an electric floor scraper for the job, and try to get all the glue off as well. It may take a lot of elbow grease, but it will give you better results. Next do the layout, so you end up with equal cuts on both ends of the floor. Use a latex-based thin-set concrete adhesive, available at your favorite home store, and a notched trowel designed for ceramic tile application. Lay the tile and let set over night. Spread grout over the face and into the joints of the tile with a sponge, trowel, or squeegee, pulled on a diagonal to the tile. Get a clean bucket of water and a sponge. Squeeze the sponge out to avoid getting a lot of water on the surface and into the joints of the tile. Clean as much of the grout off the face of the tile as you can and avoid removing grout from the joints. After the grout dries a little, you should see a haze on the face of the tile. Buff this off with a clean terry cloth towel, as much as needed to remove the haze. Note: If you are laying tile over a wood substrate, you should install a hardibacker or durarock board first (it’s available in ½” and ¼” thicknesses) and then lay tile as above.
Thanks for writing!
Gary Ranck is a carpenter and an estimator/project manager for Priset Construction in Wellsboro, Pa. Send your construction or home maintenance questions to Ask Gary at mthome@ptd.net.
New England style features found in this off road Salt Box home offering 1964 sq. ft., 3BR, 2 baths, 2 heat sources, fireplace, central air, Pegged Oak floors downstairs, Antique Pine floors upstairs, 56 x 23 pole barn/garage, 40 x 20 shed, orchard,
