September 2013

E E R F he wind

as t

THE TIME D R A Z I W

st, the . Tice, i n m u l Our crokable Joyce M d is rema s treasures an house erself one h gg Rinkus

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Volume 8 Issue 9

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The Time Wizard

Heart of the Mountain: Gifts that Keep on Giving

By Gregg Rinkus Our columnist, the remarkable Joyce M. Tice, houses treasures and is herself one.

By Patricia Davis

An impromptu writing workshop brings to life the imagination of a child and a very sad goldfish.

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Doin’ the TRY

By McKennaugh Kelley

A local family takes a stab at the annual TRYathlon at the Hills Creek State Park.

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National Geographic Storms the Rockwell

Country Living for Dummies

By Maggie Barns

The Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning hosts the final weeks of the acclaimed National Geographic Greatest Photographs of the American West exhibit.

Life in rural Twin Tiers brings surprises to these former city dwellers.

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A Composer’s Sanctuary

By Cindy Davis Meixel

A retired composer awaits inspiration in her Muncy Valley paradise.

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The Lunker: The Back Boater Delivers

34 Now, the When and If

By Fred Metarko

Phil to the rescue: a particularly bad fishing day is rescued by a good backboater.

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Yogamama Says: #Homer

By Kathleen Thompson

Forget Tweets, Texts, and Instagrams. The timeless themes of literature still trump all.

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By Shannon Hazlitt New Mountain Home contributor Shannon Hazlitt pens the story of the restoration of General George S. Patton’s boat—by her dad.

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Finger Lakes Wine Review: No Wining in Class

w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m

By Holly Howell

Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo

School is back in session, and our wine writer has a tasty vocabulary list for you.

Associate Publishers George Bochetto, Esq. Dawn Bilder Derek Witucki

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Smiling at the Stove: Area Chefs Spill the Beans

By Cornelius O’Donnell

Our friend in the kitchen investigates how the greatest local chefs found their culinary passion.

62

A Cow Tale

By Roger Kingsley

Plucky Clair was down and out, but help was on the way.

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September Mourn

D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Elizabeth Young, Editor Jennifer Heinser Cover Artist Tucker Worthington Advertising Director Meghan Elizabeth Lee Contributing Writers Angela Cannon-Crothers, Patricia Brown Davis, Jen Reed-Evans, Alison Fromme, Holly Howell, Roger Kingsley, Adam Mahonske, Cindy Davis Meixel, Fred Metarko, Dave Milano, Gayle Morrow, Tom Murphy, Cornelius O’Donnell, Roger Neumann, Gregg Rinkus, Linda Roller, Kathleen Thompson, Joyce M. Tice, Brad Wilson C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Mia Lisa Anderson, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Ann Kamzelski, Ken Meyer, Tina Tolins, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold S e n i o r S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e Brian Earle S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s David Grasso Linda Roller Jae Zugarek

By Sarah Wagaman

Moth wings, raindrops, and a macro lens.

Interns Sarah Thompson B ea g l e

and

Assistant to Cosmo & Yogi

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B ea g l e

Mountain Home is published monthly by Beagle Media, LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901.

Copyright © 2010 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

To advertise or subscribe e-mail info@mountainhomemag.com.

E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag.com. Call us at (570) 724-3838.

Each month copies of Mountain Home are available for free at hundreds of locations in Tioga, Potter, Bradford, Lycoming, Union, and Clinton counties in Pennsylvania; Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Yates, Seneca, Tioga, and Ontario counties in New York. Visit us at www.mountainhomemag.com. Or get Mountain Home at home.

For a one-year subscription to Mountain Home (12 issues), send $24.95, payable to Beagle Media LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, PA 16901.

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DOINGS ‘ROUND THE MOUNTAIN

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SEPTEMBER 2 013

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Woof & Wine West at Fulkerson Winery

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5576 State Route 14 Dundee, NY www.facebook.com/woofandwinewest

Last Day of Rockwell Museum’s National Geographic Exhibit 111 Cedar Street Corning, NY www.rockwellmuseum.org

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Last Day of Exhibit A’s Market & Manifest Exhibit 22 East Market Street Corning, NY www.exh-a.com

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Tioga Central Railroad’s Happy Hour Express

DOINGS ‘ROUND THE MOUNTAIN

WEDNESDAY

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THURSDAY

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FRIDAY

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West End Gallery’s Opening Reception

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Glenn H. Curtiss Museum’s Quilt Show 8419 State Route 54 Hammondsport, NY through November 4 www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org

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Tioga Central Railroad’s Happy Hour Express 9 Muck Road Wellsboro, PA www.tiogacentral.com

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Lou Damiani’s Exploring Wine: Gewürztraminer 4704 Route 414 Burdett, NY www.damianiwinecellars.com

SATURDAY Fourth Annual Dundee Scottish Festival

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Fall Wine, Beer, and Film Festival 8383 Gallagher Road Hammondsport, NY www.harvestandartists.com The Corning-Painted Post Civic Music Association feat. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra 1 Museum Way Corning, NY www.corningcivicmusic.org

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Once Upon a Lake Story Telling Festival 14403 West Lake Road Hammondsport, NY through September 21 www.onceuponalake.com

Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes Opening Season Concert feat. Thomas Bergeron & Eva Virsik 207 Clemens Center Parkway Elmira, NY www.osfl.org

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Harvest Music Festival 1 West Market Street, Corning, NY through September 21 www.gafferdistrict.com

Fabulous 1890s Weekend Smythe Park Mansfield, PA through September 28th www.1890sweekend.com The Beach Boys at the Williamsport Community Arts Center 220 West Fourth Street Williamsport, PA www.caclive.com

Wellsboro Wine & Art Tour Main Street Wellsboro, PA 570-724-1926

All Star Shananigans Dennison Parkway E Corning, NY www.allstarshenanigans.com Steuben County Farm City Day 5381 State Route 36 Canisteo, NY www.steubencountryfarmday.com

Bridget Bossart van Otterloo Breaking Spring

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Photos by Elizabeth Young

The Time Wizard Our columnist, the remarkable Joyce M. Tice, houses treasures and is one herself

By Gregg Rinkus

I

s there a local resident who has not heard of George Washington Sears (pen name, “Nessmuk”), Wellsboro’s most famous son, the 19th Century creator of American wilderness camping, poet and outdoor bard known as “the hook-and-bullet Thoreau”? Or how about 1970 Mansfield High School star Tom McMillen, Sports Illustrated cover boy, University of Maryland and NBA basketball star, Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Congressman, and successful businessman?

But did you know that a Wellsboro man founded Tombstone, Arizona? Ed Shiffelin was born into a prominent Tioga County family in 1847, became an Indian scout and prospector, and discovered silver in the Arizona Territory in 1877. Tombstone was laid out in 1879, named after Shiffelin’s first mining claim.

I was put in mind of local Pennsylvania and New York folks, famous and obscure, when I recently visited the remarkable Mansfield house, the old Neal home at 83 North Main St. next to the town library, that tireless Joyce M. Tice has transformed into The History Center on Main Street. Lots of towns have historians, professional and amateur, but Joyce, sixty-nine, may be the most ambitious chronicler of local lore in the United States. Mountain Home readers know her for the past seven years as the magazine’s popular “Looking Back” columnist, the obsessive fact-digger who chronicles local history like nobody else can, writing from the plainhewn 1858 farmhouse of her grandparent’s 113-acre farm in Sullivan Township. It’s a big claim, but so is Joyce’s Web site, www.joycetice.com, where she and her volunteer army have posted seventeen thousand—17,000!—pages of local history.

The site is humbly titled “Tri-Counties Geneology & History,” but it may well be the largest one-woman collection of local facts anywhere, especially per capita.

Joyce’s “Tri Counties” are Tioga and Bradford counties, Pennsylvania, and Chemung County, New York, the region she calls “my little corner of the world.” If you’re itching to read the amazing and mundane letters of the long-dead, know the census, tax rolls, historic theaters, churches, schools, politicians, photographers, and who is buried in each of the 800 cemeteries of the three counties straddling the New York-Pennsylvania border, look no further.

Joyce has stopped adding new material to her Internet

museum because the Web is a wild-west frontier and she’s tired of bandits. She has had thousands of historic items lifted from her site by Web trawlers who posted them on Find-a-Grave or Ancestry.com without permission or attribution. The Web site remains available, but “I’m not going to add anything new.”

The Web’s loss is Mansfield’s gain, for Joyce has turned her obsession from the virtual museum to the sprawling, two-story, yellow wood-frame house.

The History Center on Main Street is a solidly framed, tenroom “Sears Home” that Sears, Roebuck & Company began selling through their catalog in 1908. This house was built in 1917 by Dr. Leonard and Estella Husted Neal. “Don’t let the moniker ‘Sears Home’ fool you,” cautioned Tice. One look at the classically designed exterior, beautiful interior, and oak trim with age-earned patina, and it’s clear that the Neal home was definitely one of Sears’ high-end models. Tice bought the home in November 2011 for “about $180,000,” established a non-profit organization “to preserve and display the history of the area and the families of Mansfield, Pennsylvania and surrounding townships,” and began moving the current 3,000 cataloged items into the History Center, many from her barn on the family farm.

The moment you walk through the heavy front door of the History Center, you get the impression that this is not your grandfather’s museum.

“I know people are into the celebrity culture, but what I have here is a full collection of Gene Dewey,” she says proudly.

The majority of one first floor room is dedicated to the artifacts of Arthur E. “Gene” Dewey, a native son of Mainesburg and a 1951 Mansfield High School graduate who later attended the United States Military Academy and Princeton University. Dewey’s remarkable career included a post as an Assistant Secretary of State of Population, Refugees, and Migration appointed by President George W. Bush. In this position, he helped more than four million refugees created by the war in Afghanistan by convincing the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, to create an Afghan Conservation Corps modeled after FDR’s U.S. Civilian Conservation Corps.

Dewey retired in 2005 and lives in Washington, D.C. One room houses probably the most popular feature in the entire Center—a nearly complete collection of school See Time Wizard on page 10 9

Time Wizard continued from page 9

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yearbooks from Mansfield High School and Mansfield College. Kids love to recline on the floor, leaf through old yearbooks, and search for school-age pictures of their parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Discovering family members with almost unbelievable hair and clothing styles typically incites riotous laughter. Tice suggested if that’s what gets kids excited about history, then the room serves its purpose. Also housed in this room are many scrapbooks, including some dedicated to hometown sports legend Tom McMillen.

Joyce M. Tice, founder, director, and curator of the History Center, could not have accomplished her Herculean feats without serious help from many people.

The History Center was a labor of love, volunteers, and also money— money that flowed fittingly from the historic family farm that inspires Joyce’s work. “Gas is great,” she beamed, acknowledging that she plowed an energy windfall from her farm into the museum. The Betterment Organization of Mansfield (BOOM) contributed $18,000 to install a wheelchair lift on the porch. The museum already has twentyeight members—annual memberships range from $35 for an individual to $100 for a corporation—and relies on the energy of Joyce’s super-volunteer, Sally Wilson Smith.

Tice characterizes Smith as a “phenomenal organizer and highly proficient in PastPerfect museum software. Sally has become my right-hand person.” She also relies on a large number of unpaid volunteers, interns, and, last but not least, a 101-year-old local authorhistorian, Chester P. Baily, who she calls on to help separate historical wheat from the chaff. “Chester’s knowledge of local history is encyclopedic, and his willingness to help, unwavering,” Tice said gratefully.

A grand opening for the History Center is scheduled to coincide with Mansfield University’s Homecoming October 4–5. Tice hopes returning alumni and family will generate

substantial interest in her projects.

“Mansfield area people want to have a place that protects their family and community artifacts and history. But, to keep it viable long-term—now and when I’m gone—they must become involved by engaging in its activities, and through financial support,” she implored. And while Tice considers these projects her “life’s work,” she can’t do it alone.

To get additional flavor for what the History Center brings to Mansfield, view her Conversations with Dennis Miller presentations on YouTube, then visit Joyce in person—the real treasure waiting for you at the History Center.

The family farm and the 1858 Sullivan Township farmhouse, not far from Mainesburg, is where Tice’s story always begins. The only child of Leslie Tice, a TV repairman and cable-TV operator, and his wife Marcella, who doted on Joyce and answered the business phone, Joyce lived in Elmira until she was nine years old and her family moved to “the farm.” Her grandparents, farmers Lee and Mildred Tice, had purchased the family farm in 1917 from the son of the man who built the farmhouse in 1858, and had cleared the land and lived in a cabin on the property as early as the 1840s.

Her father always boasted that he was the first man born in the farmhouse, and wanted to be the first to die in the farmhouse. “If you want to die there, you’d better stop calling the ambulance,” a nurse friend quipped.

He died in a nursing home in his 80s—Tice’s mom also passed away in her 80s—but the family legacy on the farm remains unbroken.

If Tice is obsessed with accurate recordkeeping, she comes by it honestly. In 1966, she earned a degree in English Education from Mansfield State Teachers College and, in 1982, an MBA in Finance and Accounting from Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. She began her career as an English teacher, became

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Time Wizard continued from page 11

an accountant/financial analyst for large corporations and Cornell University, then finally spread her entrepreneurial wings and become a successful self-employed accounting systems consultant.

As with many people, “life” took her away from her roots.

But, her return was hastened by the purchase of the family farm in 1982. In 2002, Tice came full-circle when she left her home in Cortland County, New York, and returned full-time to her family’s farm.

The flames of Tice’s interest in history, especially genealogy, were kindled some twenty-two years ago after the death of her husband of twenty-two years—Stanley Schafranek, a Russian-born industrial electrician. Her father presented her with notebooks and school artifacts of her grandmother, Mildred Mudge. Tice never knew her grandmother. Her father was only four years old when his mother died. She also has letters written by both her grandmother and grandfather when they were courting, and still later when her grandfather was hospitalized for a serious infection. Tice knew that there had to be more.

This apparent void of information about the Mudge family was something that Tice felt compelled to fill, so she embarked on her first serious excursions into family genealogy. She gleaned information from her aging parents as well as Ellen Smith Jacobus, an elderly distant relative who had already completed much work on family lines. “She was immensely helpful and allowed me to use her research, which gave me a very good start,” Tice acknowledged with obvious appreciation.

Tice conducted research at the Binghamton Public Library where some books on New England history helped in her fact-finding. She drew on census records and genealogy books at Steele Memorial Library in Elmira, and eventually made good use of the genealogy room at the Syracuse Public Library. She also borrowed books from the New England Historical Genealogical Society in Boston, and even spent several evenings there while on a business trip. Slowly but surely, her dogged pursuit of facts began to pay off.

About the same time, a friend gave her some shareware genealogy software. Since her ancestry is local for several generations—as far back as the 1620s—at first she made surprisingly rapid progress. Eventually, though, “because the size of one’s ancestry doubles at every generation,” Tice noted, “the saturation of names, and the questionable accuracy of documented records increased the difficulty of fact-finding.”

According to Tice, most people who first encounter family history are surprised at the spider’s web of connections. “We don’t usually think of ourselves in the context of our families any further back than grandparents,” she explained. She considers lineage more as a “family fan” rather than a “family tree.” “Ancestry involves thousands of ‘families’ and surnames.”

According to Tice, “Thirty percent of Caucasian Americans See Time Wizard on page 14

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have royal ancestry, so I have been able to trace my royal lines back to the 400s.

On other lines, most people should be able to go back to the 1600s, perhaps as far back as the 1400s, but I am not convinced about the validity of some early sources [of information].”

Now, perhaps because she was so much closer to her family roots, her interest in genealogy and of local cultural history really began to flourish.

Tice began to amass large quantities of old photographs, postcards, yearbooks, diaries, census records, voter registration lists, tax records, cemetery records, obituaries, church records, family bibles, glassware, kitchen implements, button collections, license plates, tools, small and large farm implements, and about anything else you can think of that represents local history. Many of these records and artifacts date back to the early 1800s, some into the 1700s.

As one might expect from an English teacher turned accountant, Tice not only

appreciated the scholarly and historical significance of her growing collection, but also the need to accurately document everything. Forget pencil and paper; technology was the key. Because of her high level of computer literacy, crossreferencing databases and spreadsheets became her recordkeeping tools of choice.

Tice’s collections grew, and so did her reputation as someone to whom people could entrust their family history. Sometimes out-of-the-blue, total strangers would give her boxes full of important documents and objects.

Sometimes, she simply found them carefully stacked on her porch, or neatly deposited in her mailbox. Eventually, she relocated much of these materials to the family’s century-old barn, which, from 2003 through 2011, served as a private, unincorporated museum of local historical memorabilia.

Even before her 2002 homecoming to Sullivan Township, Tice launched

two other massive projects. In 1996, she created “Tri-Counties Genealogy and History” which has since evolved into an enormous online resource and research tool for the histories of Tioga, Bradford, and Chemung Counties—all places with interwoven historical ties, and to which Tice has ancestral roots.

Perhaps Tice’s other project is even closer to her heart: the “Sullivan-Rutland Genealogy Project” (SRGP), which she conceived in 1992. SRGP follows the ancestry and descendants of the residents of Sullivan and Rutland townships in Tioga County. Actually, this undertaking became the springboard for her TriCounties project. The two projects have separate yet interrelated online Web sites, and factor prominently in what is presented in the History Center.

Tice’s history-based projects are reminiscent of what American poet Edgar Lee Masters accomplished so beautifully in his 1915 classic, Spoon River Anthology. Masters created a series See Time Wizard on page 16

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Time Wizard continued from page 14

of compelling, free-verse monologues in which former citizens of a fictional Midwestern town speak touchingly from the grave of their thwarted hopes and dreams of their lives. Within those pages, 214 individual voices are heard—some in fewer than a dozen moving lines. Alternately plaintive, anguished, enigmatic, angry, and contemptuous, the voices of Spoon River, although distinctively small-town American, evoke themes of love, hope, disappointment, and despair that are universal in their resonance.

Yet The History Center represents real flesh-and-blood people in anything but a mythical town. Their stories are ordinary, more believable, and certainly more positive.

Joyce is flattered by the comparison. “I love the Spoon River Anthology,” she says.

What’s represented in The History Center is but a small percentage of Tice’s continually expanding collection. She estimates that 80-90 percent of her paper records (including photographs) have been transferred from the original barnmuseum, but only 5-10 percent of non-paper artifacts.

In my opinion, the contents of two co-joined rooms are what make the History Center so special. This is where Tice’s adeptness with technology and her great touch for the human story become most evident. For one’s viewing pleasure are six digital frames that, collectively, contain thousands of old pictures that slowly and automatically fade in and out, one picture after the other. Some of the themes include old pictures and postcards of Route 6, large letter postcards, yearbook pictures, stores and shops in Mansfield, 600 photos from the Roseville-Rutland area, and abundant pictures of average people. Some represent the 2,200 people who lived in Sullivan-Rutland Townships in 1900. According to Tice, photography was extraordinarily popular during that era, as evidenced by the fact that she has accumulated individual or family pictures depicting about 500 of those 2,200 residents.

As I gazed, almost pensively, at the images, I soon found myself only half-listening to Tice. I became mesmerized by these pictures, particularly people’s eyes—their deep, alluring eyes. It must be true that a person’s eyes are the windows to their soul. Because, fifty or even a hundred years from when these people were photographed, I could sense their emotions; they became almost palpable to me. Goosebumps coursed up and down my arms; not only for an instant and then gone; but for long, continuous periods, the likes of which I have never experienced. Looking into those eyes—those eyes reflecting the souls of long-departed family members, friends and neighbors—I felt my own eyes welling up. I’m not sure why. I turned to Joyce. I mentioned something but could not articulate my feelings well. It was the oddest experience.

I was moved in a way that I could not explain. For a very long moment, though, I became more understanding of those Spoon River voices.

Although Tice is hesitant to reveal what her favorite See Time Wizard on page 18

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exhibit is, my guess is that her collection of Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr. postcards ranks close to the top. These are not your everyday postcards; they’re referred to as exaggerated, noveltyfreak, or tall-tale postcards. Johnson’s altered-photography postcards were published between 1909 and 1923. A fine example is in the “How We Do Things” series, and shows a horse-drawn wagon of huge potatoes that dwarf the men perched atop them. The caption reads, “How we do things in Rutland, PA.” The postcards were printed with the specific town names where they were being sold; that’s why so many of Tice’s cards depict Pennsylvania and New York locales. Other subjects include giant fruits and vegetables, hunting, traveling and, oh, fishing. “What could possibly be a better subject for exaggeration postcards than fishing?” chuckled Tice.

Even with her multitude of irons in the fire, Tice has been hard at work developing a pictorial catalog of Johnson’s postcards. It should be published and available for purchase soon. To date, her collection stands at about 110 of the 130 or so known postcards that he produced. Her work will be the first of its kind on Johnson’s postcards.

The museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from noon to 3 p.m., and otherwise “open by appointment or we happen to be on site,” Tice says. Most days you’re liable to run into the curator herself. If you’re in town looking for a relative’s photograph, and you don’t want to page through every high school year book, Joyce can show you a wall of pictures in the basement—pictures of all 6,800 students who attended Mansfield High School from 1913-2012, pictures painstakingly culled by Tice from high school yearbook collections and rearranged by computer program in alphabetical order. If you’re a Girl Scout born in the 1990s, you’ll get a fascinating talk on what life was like for local girls born in the 1890s.

The second floor of the History Center has some interesting artifacts, too, not the least of which are two solid wood prosthetic legs, with attached feet, that Tice believes originated in the post-Civil War era. They came from the attic of a house a few doors down. In a nearby second-floor room are striking, colorful George and Martha Washington costumes—not authentic, but the Mansfield couple who wore them for years certainly were.

Tice is excited to share all of it, more excited than ever.

“This is our town’s attic,” she said. “People bring me family photos, keepsakes, things they never want forgotten, and I’m here for all of that. I’m interested in most anything, and I’ve got more room than ever,” she quipped. “But I don’t take large farm machinery.”

Nature writer Gregg Rinkus hails from Franklin, PA and is Regional Health, Safety and Environment(HSE) Manager for Penn E&R in Wellsboro.

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Heart of the Mountain

Gifts that Keep on Giving

By Patricia Brown Davis

I

t’s been said, “The best gifts and surprises come in small packages.” This was certainly true of an adventure begun three years ago, originally cloaked as a way to have an out-of-town, pre-teen granddaughter stay with me for a week in summer.

To sweeten the deal, it was suggested her best friend could come along, too.

Both had confided they loved writing and envisioned themselves becoming writers one day. And so we wrote.

They met others who enjoyed writing and the invitation the following year included more girls interested in writing. We met daily for a week writing fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and both poetry and prose. Some girls were local, others from Harrisburg, Williamsport, and Jersey Shore.

They surprised me at every turn: their humor was refreshing and unique when they put pen to paper. We all noted the year’s improvement.

One day we “shape-shifted”— pretended to be animals or objects and wrote a story as that character.

The next day they were asked to write a “wacky” weekly diary for one of these characters. One young lady, Pearl Patterson, age fourteen, from Jersey Shore produced the following: Diary of a Depressed Goldfish Monday: Today was a very boring day. A very boring day indeed. No one fed me. No one tapped on the outside of my house. The owners forgot about me. I swam in circles, squares, and, well, those are the only shapes I know. But, oh, well, tomorrow I will have forgotten about it, so it doesn’t really matter.

Tuesday: This morning I woke up and there were pebbles on the floor of my home and fake plastic plants bobbing up and down. There was obviously dark magic involved. They fed me today, and as I swallowed my meal, I saw the owner’s Photo of Frank Buttles 1866 MSNS graduation 20

offspring watching me. They were talking about how cute I was. I wanted to vomit.

Wednesday: Today I awoke to the sounds of voices. Excited voices. I hate those kinds of voices. It was my owners carrying a small, clear bag. Oh, God. I’ve heard other fish talk about this sort of thing before. They call it “The Introduction.” The owners dumped the contents of the bag into my house. MY house! Now I have a roommate. Oh, woe is me.

Thursday: My roommate is incredibly tiresome. He won’t stop staring at me. I learned a new shape: the triangle. I’ve decided that I don’t like it, though, so I continue to swim in squares. What am I doing with my life? I considered giving myself over to the cat today, but I’m too good for him. My roommate continues to stare at me.

Friday: My roommate still hasn’t moved. I think he might be dead. I have taken up a new hobby—weight lifting.

I’ve been moving the pebbles from one side of my home to the other. This annoys my owners immensely.

Saturday: My roommate is definitely dead. He floated to the roof and the cat ate him in the middle of the night. This cat is beginning to grow on me.

Sunday: I loathe my owners. They invited these little shorthaired things into my home. Apparently they call them children. They stuck their stumpy little paws into my home and tried to rip my fins off. They call the children by names. I wonder if I have a name. It’s probably something stupid like “Goldie” or “Sunshine.” I hate “Sunshine.”

Plans for next year may include moving this workshop to the Annual Fringe Festival in Wellsboro in June.

If so, we will be looking for interested young writers!

Patricia Brown Davis is a professional musician and memoirist seeking stories about the Wellsboro glass factory. Contact her at patd@mountainhomemag.com.

21

McKennaugh Kelley (3)

O U t d o Or s

(From left) Brennan, Dad, and Nevin.

Doing the TRY

By McKennaugh Kelley

I

am constantly getting updated reports on how far—and fast—they can go. “We are doing five-lap races now!” my brother Brennan says, beaming, “And I taught Nevin how to run. He got tired out before he could run around twice with me at first, but now he can almost beat me! Almost.”

I congratulate Brennan on his teaching, but I know that nine-year-old brother Nevin wasn’t exactly slow before his instruction, either. It took about everything I had to beat the little guy.

The two of them ask me to race with them. After much pleading and their sorrowful faces, I give in. Brennan whizzes by me, but at least I was able to get ahead of Nev. We stumble across the finish line—a board nailed into the ground and painted white—leaping onto the side of the trampoline to catch our breath. Or at least I need to catch 22

my breath. They’re asking me to watch them do another five-lap race. “You count,” Brennan tells me.

“One … Two … Three …” I like to tease them by counting very slow.

“Stop!”

They hear the “stop” and blast into action, too late to halt by the time they realize it wasn’t quite the signal they were waiting for. I laugh as I watch them tear around their track.

For the first four laps, Nevin is in the lead. Brennan has a trick up his sleeve, though. He’s intentionally letting Nev get ahead. In the final few seconds, Brennan uses his saved-up energy to scoot past his brother and become the winner. Nevin staggers in behind him, panting a little. Or maybe a lot. They tumble onto the side of the trampoline, glancing down at their new running sneakers.

“I wish I had more time to practice,” Brennan tells me. “I just hope I’m not last.”

I sort of wish he had more time to practice, too. But the Hills Creek TRYathlon is in a couple days. (Yes, it is really spelled TRYathlon, for anybody that decides they are brave enough to just try it!) Brennan, Nevin, and Dad have to run 3.1 miles, then row 1.75 miles in a kayak and, last of all, bike 8.0 miles. I’m not that worried about them running. Or biking, for that matter; they’re great bikers. Unfortunately, they’ve never even touched a kayak before, and I’m hoping that they won’t have problems.

They made the running track in our yard just a few days ago with the Neuton mower. You have to run around it thirteen times, if you See The TRY on page 24

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Outdoors

Biking eight miles is part of the Hills Creek TRYathlon.

The TRY continued from page 22

want to go a mile. Too bad we don’t have a pond and a kayak so that they can work on those skills.

The next few days skitter by.

Brennan and Nevin are excited and gearing up for their big moment.

Brennan has a bright yellow shirt to match his blazing yellow sneakers and Nev is even more color-coded. Red shirt, sneakers, shorts, red-striped helmet, red water-bottle holder. They both look pretty sharp.

The morning of the race, they are giddy with excitement and nervous, too. They pin their numbers to their shirts and skip to the starting point.

There’s a crowd of onlookers that we join. A little girl is holding an adorable Go Daddy! sign and for a moment I wish I had thought of making a sign to encourage my brothers and dad. Well, no time for that now. A person is already counting: “One…Two…Three…GO!” For a moment, Brennan and Nevin just sort of stand in their readyto-take-off pose. “Go!” I scream at them. “Go!” They go. Especially Nevin. He starts whizzing past everybody. Just 24

before he goes over the top of the hill and out of sight, Mom yells, “Pace yourself, Nev!” Seeing how fast he’s going, we both know that he will probably tire out long before the finish point of the run.

Everyone has to make it all the way around Hills Creek Lake, and, I’ll tell you, that as I looked out at it, it was far. Real far.

The first person makes it around in twenty-three minutes. As a few runners fly by and leap into the kayaks, I scan the hill for Brennan, Nevin, and Dad—especially Brennan and Dad, because I figure the nine-year-old can’t quite beat them, yet.

Then, boy, am I surprised! Nevin, in his bright red colors comes striding into view. He’s beaten over half the adults and he’s hardly even winded. He has made it in thirty minutes. “Nevin!” we scream. “Nevin!”

People start asking Mom, “How old is he?”

“He’s only nine!” she shrieks.

“Who is he to you?”

“He’s my son!” she says, very proudly. I have a feeling Brennan is on the trail somewhere regretting that he ever taught Nev anything. By the time

Nevin has ripped his running shoes off, stuck his swim shoes on (in case a kayak disaster happens) and gets his kayak into the water, Brennan comes into view…about exactly a minute and a half after Nev. “Brennan! Go!” we yell. He smiles at us as he dashes for his boat.

“What happened to Dad?!” I shout.

“I don’t know!” he laughs back.

“Is that your son, too?” someone asks Mom. “Yes!” “How old is this one?” they say, amazed.

“Twelve!”

“Have your boys trained for this?”

“No,” Mom says, “we just bought their running sneakers this week.” She makes it sound easy, not like she spent a dozen hours in Dick’s and enough money to buy a plane ticket to Hawaii for two pairs of shoes.

“Where’s their father?”

Mom and I only laugh.

Dad’s side of the story is that as soon as Nevin got into the woods, he couldn’t see him anymore. Brennan and Dad were running close together, and, See The TRY on page 26

Outdoors

25

Outdoors

then, eventually, Bren took off, too. Dad came around each corner expecting to find a panting, disappointed Nevin on a log. But around each corner, all logs were vacant. “Then I started hoping to find him tuckered out, so I could sit down and have an excuse to rest,” Dad says. As it turns out, nobody should have been looking for Nev—he was already across the finish line.

Once everyone is in the kayaks, however, things take just a slight turn for the worse. Never being in one before is taking its toll. Plus, later on, a man told us that the rented kayaks Nevin and Brennan were using were like, “paddling bathtubs!” Our family was (and is) clueless on which kayaks are good and which ones are bad.

In short, the boating takes a very long time for them, but you can’t expect too much from people who haven’t ever kayaked and are forced to paddle bathtubs, right?

Once ashore, they tackle biking. We walk up to the place of the final finish line and wait. Each time there is a biker rounding the corner, we strain our eyes to see if they are “ours.” Brennan comes in first of the three of them, as yellow as ever, happy and tired. He did it!

Not very long after, Nevin and Dad zoom in.

We wait for the race results and the winners to be called up to receive their prizes: a bottle of syrup and a jug of cider for first place, honey and cider for second, and cider for third.

“Males under eighteen, second place, Brennan Kelley,” the man announces.

Brennan later said that he was so shocked, he nearly fell off the bench. Then Nevin receives third place!

In high spirits, we head home that afternoon with two proud boys and a Daddy that is pleading for a nap.

The Hills Creek TRYathlon was a fun, exhausting, memorable day that I bet my brothers will tell to their kids someday. I hope you’re encouraged to try something new, whether it’s signing up for the TRYathlon this year or just running around your block in the morn.

What?! You think I should be in the TRYathlon this year? I, well, umm…I’ll think about it. If you want to give the TRY a try, go to www.stepoutdoors.org to register. It takes place on September 21 this year—so mark your calendars, people, and you won’t regret being part of this great event!

McKennaugh Kelley, age seventeen, is homeschooled in the backwoods of Pennsylvania.

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12/7/11

8:19 AM

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Outdoors

Visit the Woolrich Flagship store, located in the village where the company was founded over 181 years ago!

Take exit 116 o Route 220 proceed 3 miles north, following the signs 570-769-7401 www.woolrich.com

27

Country Living for Dummies

By Maggie Barns

“B

obby? Why does this look like this?”

I am sure the confusion was evident in my voice as I stood in the bathroom, staring into the tub. My husband joined me and we peered into a bathtub of iced tea-colored water. That may have been the first time I felt like a stranger in a strange land in our new home, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

We had been married for more than sixteen years, but had just bought our first home together in the region of the Twin Tiers of Southern New York and Northern Pennsylvania commonly referred to as “The Valley.” It was a unique house on a private dirt road— home to only three other families. And now us, town and city dwellers our whole lives, who were suddenly perched on a hillside with five acres of land and new-to-us inventions like a septic tank and a well.

This returns us to the scene in the 28

bathroom. Accustomed to water the color of…well, water, I was unprepared for the sight of a murky bath and even more unwilling to submerge myself in a bowl that looked like a dirty martini. My husband, a highly capable individual who had just closed out a successful thirty-six-year career as an emergency manager, had a befuddled look on his face that mirrored mine.

“Maybe because it rained?” he offered. I could feel my eyebrows huddle together in the middle of my forehead as I thought. I turned back around to face the sink, filled a plastic cup from the faucet and stuck my nose into the glass. The same odd mix of water and brown met my sight. Tilting the cup so Bob could see it, I queried, “Is it going to do this every time it rains?” He had no reply.

It does. Every time we get an appreciable rainfall, the well water dons its tan. Our highly domesticated cats

even back away from the water dish that looks like the remnants of dishwater. I have been reassured many times that there is nothing wrong with the water: it is just “roiled.” Oh, that clears it up.

My mind, that is. Nothing clears the water but time.

For our first Christmas here my sister bestowed upon us a book with a title she felt compelled to apologize for—Country Living for Dummies. We were not offended, but relieved. A place to go for answers! All of which returns us to the bathroom on a night when the water was bath quality. As I stepped out of it and was toweling myself, my beloved appeared, carrying a plastic bucket and offering a wordless smile.

He proceeded to scoop water from the tub with the bucket, walk across the bedroom out onto the upper deck and heave the contents of the bucket over the railing. Returning to the See Country Living on page 30

Carl Wycoff

L i f e

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Life

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You are a candidate for MAKOplasty® if you have osteoarthritis in only part of the knee, usually characterized by activity-related pain on either the inner or outer side of the knee.

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29

Life Country Living continued from page 28

bathroom, he scooped again, gave me the same small smile and headed for the deck, being careful to not drip water on the newly-installed carpet. A moment later came the sound of two-and-a-half gallons of liquid hitting the ground.

I leaned against the bathroom vanity and said nothing, mostly because I couldn’t remember if it was sleep walkers you weren’t supposed to disturb or relocation-traumatized husbands who had clearly dropped a log or two from their mental woodpile.

On his fourth trip, the level of water in the tub dropping steadily, I risked a question.

“Babe? What in the name of sanity are you doing?”

Still scooping, he related that the Country Living for Dummies book specifically states that you should not empty the tub into the septic tank. When I followed that with the inevitable “Why not?” he paused, bent

over the tub, bucket in mid-scoop.

“I don’t know. But it’s in the book.”

The book has been very helpful, but the biggest repository of knowledge about living here is stored in the calendar, where the days and weeks have strung together like charms on a chain, each link carrying its own story.

We are learning by living and working here, making discoveries and mistakes, new rules and old promises.

We are two years into this adventure and, while we still qualify as “country living dummies,” we no longer drain the bathtub with a bucket. We have survived the thunderstorms and winter attacks that seem to vibrate the seventeen-foot windows in the living room. We have experienced that never-ending time known as “mud season” when nothing we own is clean—ever. We now know that we understood loose examples of “quiet” and “dark” before coming here, where you can literally hear your own heartbeat and see, not only darkness,

but the complete absence of light.

As always, the challenges stand out—trying to get some sort of technology into a house that has never known cable or Internet service.

Accepting that people who move to a private road with four houses are probably not looking to get chummy with the new neighbors. Modernizing a home that looked like something out of a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie.

But the truth is, even with the challenges, or maybe because of them, we count this time as one of the happiest of our lives. You haven’t seen two people who wanted to be in the same house this much since the 2000 presidential election.

Most importantly, we are learning that, sometimes, the best dreams to come true are ones you didn’t even know you had.

First-time contributor Maggie Barnes works in health care marketing and is a resident of Waverly, New York.

LIFE IS COMPLICATED

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...your weekend getaway shouldn’t be.

(800) 358-9900 | www.VacationPA.com/getaway | visitorinfo@williamsport.org |

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B i ll t o w n Natalia, the composer, outside one of her homes at Keystone Mountain Park.

The idyllic pond at the private, year-round resort tucked into the Endless Mountains..

A Composer’s Sanctuary Story and photos by Cindy Davis Meixel

H

er music has played in the St a t e De p a r t m e n t , t h e National Gallery of Art, and in churches and music halls throughout the world, but this composer’s venue of choice is on a mountain in Muncy Valley. It is here that she finds sanctuary for a deeply spiritual life and inspiration for her art form.

As Natalia Raigorodsky Parris drives around the property she has spent decades restoring, she points to treasured flora and calls each by name—the larch, juniper, rhododendron, quaking aspen, chestnut oak, ginkgo, dawn redwood, and deciduous magnolia.

Her eyes alight with joy as she pauses to appreciate each.

She is equally pleased with glimpses of resident wildlife. The deer stop munching on greenery to view passersby, but return quickly to their carefree pursuits. “We don’t allow hunting here and they know they’re safe,” she whispers. Red-winged blackbirds perch on cattails at the park’s pond. “My husband loved them. He would sit and watch them for hours.”

Natalia first acquired two lots here in 1964. She’d visited the area, along with other professionals from Washington D.C., on a bus trip promoting pastoral Pennsylvania properties situated near the quaint and cultured resort village of Eagles Mere. She fell in love with what she saw and, through the years, added more acreage, including land from a bankrupt development initially planned for a ski resort. In 1978, after receiving an inheritance from her father, a wealthy petroleum engineer, Natalia and local craftsmen began restoration work on what is now called Keystone Mountain Park. An 1848 barn and stone house received the first renewals.

“I’ve spent all of my father’s inheritance here and I’m not sorry about it one bit,” she says. “It’s been such a wonderful unfoldment.”

To preserve the land for future generations, she set most of her acreage into a conservation easement with the Natural Lands Trust in 1982 and established a trust for the park in 1997.

The composer has attended to the property with the same devotion given

to her creative work. She has written nearly 155 compositions including secular chamber works and sacred solos and organ preludes used in churches in the United States, Canada, and Central America.

All of her works are neatly organized in cupboards in her writing studio. “I’m like the old woman in the shoe, but instead of too many children, I have too many compositions,” she laughs.

Her three-minute choral work, “Psalm 23,” is her most-often-performed composition. “The Promise of Peace,” a forty-minute choral work set in five parts, depicting events in the life of Jesus Christ, was premiered by the Opera Theatre of Washington in 1981.

Utilizing the words from Alice Duer Miller’s poem, “The White Cliffs,” she created a forty-five-minute chamber piece with the same title and dedicated it to the people of England and their heroic efforts during World War II. “Deliverance, A Celebration of Freedom,” a sacred anthem inspired

by Estonia’s Singing Revolution, was See A Composer’s Sanctuary on page 32 31

BILLTOWN A Composer’s Sanctuary continued from page 31

written in 1991. Natalia was moved by television footage of Estonian citizens singing hymns and patriotic songs in six-part harmony, the mass singing demonstrations that led to restoration of their country’s independence.

“These are monumental events of our lives that I wanted to celebrate,” she says, noting that “Deliverance” is dedicated to “all people seeking freedom everywhere.”

The composer attributes all her creations to a willingness to listen to God’s guidance.

A native of Oklahoma, Natalia grew up in the Texas countryside and composed her first musical piece at the age of eight. Her parents surrounded her with classical music and, with the onset of World War II, sent her East for schooling at the Oak Grove School in Maine. She graduated cum laude from both Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, in 1946, and Barnard College in 1952, married, had two sons, and went on to attain her master’s degree in composition and music history from American University in 1963, the same year she completed her first symphony—“Symphony No. 1.” Since 1990, the eighteen-minute composition has been performed by the Chattanooga Symphony, the Washington Civic Symphony, and the Williamsport Symphony Orchestra.

Before settling into Muncy Valley, she was active in the D.C. arts scene, working in arts broadcasting and as a newspaper music critic, serving on arts boards, and composing her work.

Her life nowadays is more simple and quiet, and she prefers it that way.

She enjoys sharing the scenic beauty of the nearly seventy-acre Keystone Mountain Park with others. The park offers overnight accommodations in the historic stone house and a more modern guest lodge. The barn and chapel (designed by Natalia) are available for retreats, weddings, and family reunions. Open year-round, the property offers a variety of seasonal activities from hiking and fishing to cross country skiing and sledding.

“It’s been a spiritual oasis for quite a few people,” Natalia says. Still, she would like to see more activity at the park and knows the time to sell is drawing near.

“I can’t believe I first came here almost fifty years ago—it seems like yesterday to me!” she says.

With the riches of nature and music filling her days, the composer is content to wait for the next spark of inspiration, the next melody, the next note of guidance.

A native of Wellsboro, Cindy Davis Meixel is pleased to see that Natalia Raigorodsky’s works include a children’s composition set to the words of Eugene Field’s “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” poem. A fountain statue of Wynken, Blynken, and Nod sits in the center of Wellsboro’s town square, The Green.

32

BILLTOWN

33

Arts & Leisure

F

ifteen days, and the cowboy disappears into the west.

If a fading sunset best captures the elegiac romance of the American West, now is the best of times to experience the iconic exhibit at the Rockwell Museum of Western Art in Corning, National Geographic Greatest Photographs of the American West.

The exhibit is epic, fitting for the West, spanning the work of eighty-three National Geographic photographers across some 125 years and featuring notables such as William Henry Jackson and Ansel Adams.

Opened in October 2012 at ten museums, including

Haying, Nebraska, 2004 34

the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Rockwell, the exhibit represents the first time a photography exhibition of such magnitude reached so many venues simultaneously.

The exhibit closes in Corning Sept. 15. Saddle up.

If by chance you can’t make it, National Geographic Books released National Geographic Greatest Photographs of the American West: Capturing 125 Years of Majesty, Spirit and Adventure (National Geographic Books; ISBN 9781-4262-0956-1; paperback; $30), the official companion volume to the exhibition.

Jim Richardson/National Geographic Stock

National Geographic Storms the Rockwell

William Albert Allard/National Geographic Stock

Nevada Cowboy Brian Morris, 1970

See National Geographic on page 35 36

Joel Sartore/National Geographic Stock

Rodeo, Nebraska, 1998

Jeff Kroeze/National Geographic Stock

Tehachapi Wind Farm, California, 2008

See National Geographic on page 38

WELCOME TO

WELLSBORO

The Lunker

The Back Boater Delivers

T

By Fred Metarko

o check out the lake a few days prior to the next tournament, Jr. Fye and I launched on Cowanesque Lake. His boat was in for repairs so he was happy to join me. We tried many spots and all types of lures with no luck—just one little nibble.

We met a fisherman and his wife at the launch. “Are there any fish in this lake?” he asked. “We fished here for two days and never had a bite.”

“Sure, there are all kinds,” we answered, “bass, muskie, perch, bluegill, and walleye.”

“A guy told me it was a great fishery. We drove 150 miles to get here—wait till I see him,” he said as they loaded the boat.

Another guy said, “We fished for hours without a fish in the boat, not even a panfish.” We told them we didn’t get anything either. It was just one of those days when you do a lot of fishing and no catching, At the Friday night drawing, Philip Bruce was drawn to be my back boater for Saturday morning. I said, “I hope you know where the fish are, because Jr. and I didn’t find them Wednesday, and the place I usually go to is hit hard every day.”

“I have a spot we can try which shouldn’t be crowded,” he replied.

Saturday morning while waiting for take-off, another competitor was edging toward my favorite spot. I knew he would stay on it most of the day. I said, “Okay, Philip, you said you know a place where they are, in deep water next to a weed line. Guide us to it.”

As soon as we were out of the no-wake zone we were on plane and headed down the lake. “This is it—pull straight ahead,” he directed.

He was right. After a few casts, we knew the smallmouths were there. Another boat a short distance ahead of us moved on and we had the area all to ourselves. I had two fish in the live well within ninety minutes. We fished slowly through the area a few times. It’s always good to stay in an area when you keep getting bites.

The day was warm with a few gusts, which helped us keep cool. We found out that everyone was having a hard day finding fish, at least legal ones to put in the live well. Philip had two keepers along with a few short ones. I ended with three of legal length in the boat (which is 12-¼ inches for our club) plus some short ones to throw back. A couple nice ones came un-hooked before they made it into the net.

At the weigh-in we realized how tough the day was. With three smallmouths I came in at first place and had the lunker.

Weighing in two fish Philip ended up in sixth place. There were a few zeros and some single fish were weighed in.

The back boater can make a difference in a tournament’s outcome. Philip saved the day and put us on the fish.

Thanks, Phil.

Fred Metarko, The Lunker, is a member of the Tioga County Bass Anglers (www.tiogacountybassanglers. com).

37

Michael Nichols/National Geographic Stock

38

Bruce Dale/National Geographic Stock

Monument Valley, Utah, 2001

Northern Spotted Owl, California, 2009

39

Arts & Leisure

Yogamama Says

#Homer

By Kathleen Thompson

I

don’t read anymore. I Text. I Tweet.

I Instagram. I Facebook. And I am getting stupider by the year.

In order to halt this decline, I have decided to start reading more.

Reading as in “books”—not e-zines, blogs, or Web sites. It is my goal to read at least one book a month. Which seems a pretty lame goal considering I used to read a book per week.

As a former literature major, my reading used to go something like this: ingest a 300–400 page novel in a week, write a ten-page paper about it, rinse, repeat, semester after semester, until graduation. I used to be a reading machine back then. I could process novels and plays into ten page papers faster than Oscar Mayer could process a pen of pigs into hot dogs.

And the stuff I read back then? It was sick. Before I was even old enough to order a beer in a bar, I had read all of Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, and a sampling of most of the literary heavyhitters. I had memorized sonnets, scanned miles of meter, and could identify a zeitgeist from a zeugma at twenty yards.

But now? Now I deal mostly in hashtags and hotspots, not Homer.

What really pains me about this is that, back then, I was too green for that stuff. Too young, too stupid. What did I know about sex, power and death—the timeless themes of world literature? I could barely merge my VW bug onto the turnpike, yet I was expected to follow Leopold Bloom around Dublin for a thousand pages?

Now that I am ripe and ready for the timeless classics, I don’t seem to have the stamina for them, or the attention span, or something. I wonder if my pathetic Tweeted-out brain could still negotiate iambic pentameter? Could I get back into shape for Shakespeare, for Proust?

I think I did it all backwards.

Maybe the books I am reading now, 40

popular fiction and non-fiction, are the ones I should have been reading back then, and it’s only now that I should be picking up the Shakespeare and the Proust?

Back then, I would have been ashamed to be seen reading the books I am reading now. I used to be really snobby about books. I sneered at the “Bestseller List.”

But even though I am reading bestsellers now (and really loving them), I am still very, very picky. I won’t read just anything and I won’t read something just because it made some list. I make a lot of demands of my literature and will toss with impunity any book that doesn’t exhibit artistry and sophistication.

Homer ruined me. Shakespeare spoiled me. I now expect structure and voice and poetry and beautifully articulated ideas in every book I choose to spend hours with. I want to be lured down the rabbit hole and live contentedly in that book’s world for a very long time.

I care about character development and pacing and poetry. And I especially care about those delicious silences between the words and the way when things are left

out that make all the difference.

And while it is true that I may have been too young to read the classics when I did, they undeniably shaped my brain.

I find myself unconsciously filtering everything I read now through the lens of those refined literary sensibilities I learned in my “childhood.”

Now, when I find a modern writer I love, I know that I love that writer because he or she reworks those ancient themes and brings them to life in my world, as I live it, so that I can see a new way to live.

So maybe I don’t have to go back and read everything again. Maybe all those books weren’t lost on me after all.

Maybe the great writers of the present just keep re-writing Hamlet over and over again, only instead of a doublet and pantaloons, he now sports jeans and a t-shirt and sips lattes in a Wi-Fi hotspot while texting on his smart phone about sex, power, and death.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga in Mansfield, PA. Contact her at 570-660-5873, at www.yogamansfield.com, or e-mail yogamama@mountainhomemag.com.

Arts & Leisure

Located on the DownTown Historic Square Just minutes from the scenic Pennsylvania Grand Canyon and the beautiful Pine Creek Rails to Trails hike & bike riverside trail!

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Friday, September 27 at 8 PM 3 performances Saturday, September 28 3:00, 5:00 and 7:30 All performances are at Mansfield High School in conjunction with Mansfield’s 1890’s weekend.

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www.hamiltongibson.org • 570-724-2079

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Arts & Leisure

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F i n g e r

la k e s

Now, the When and If Story and photos by Shannon Hazlitt

G

eneral George Patton realized his dream of becoming a famous war hero in World

War II. But he had another ambition—to sail around the world.

In 1 9 3 8 , Pa t t o n h i re d t h e prominent yacht designer John Alden

to create a stunning and seaworthy vessel.

Patton survived the war and is best known for leading the 3rd U.S. Army in a successful sweep across France in 1944. But he died in a car accident in 1945 before returning home.

Patton’s schooner, the When and

If, lives on and she’s now being lovingly restored by Doug Hazlitt, Finger Lakes native and co-owner of Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards.

Doug Hazlitt is my father and a great sailor who’s raced on Seneca Lake and sailed from Maine to the See When and If on page 45 43

WELCOME TO

44

KEUKA LAKE

Finger Lakes When and If continued from page 43

Caribbean.

The name When and If came from Patton’s desire to sail around the world when and if he returned from World War II alive. The name is still painted in gold letters on the side of the sixtythree-foot schooner.

When Doug Hazlitt stands at the base of the wooden schooner out of the water, it is easy to see how the vessel was a good fit for Patton.

The part of the boat that would normally be covered by water, painted a pealing yet rich red, is over nine feet tall. It could keep the boat steady in almost any storm, Hazlitt said.

He first saw the schooner in the early 2000s when he traveled to Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, to help with the launch of another classic schooner.

He’d read in a favorite book of Alden designs that the When and If was built to withstand rough sea conditions, originally weighing 84,640 tons with a double-planked hull of cedar and mahogany. “She is very robust and sea-kindly,” Hazlitt said.

“She was obviously designed for offshore cruising.”

At the time, Hazlitt didn’t think he’d ever get the chance to sail the When and If out of the harbor. Ten years later, he was pleasantly surprised when he discovered her for sale online at a remarkably good price.

Hazlitt had recently sold another Alden schooner called Malabar X he’d restored for three years and owned for seven. He missed owning a traditional wooden yacht. And so he bought When and If in May 2012.

It was amazing how much of the When and If was original and in good shape, he said, including about seventy percent of her planking. But a lot was also in desperate need of repair.

Cody Cook of Watkins Glen is helping with the boat’s restoration and remembers going with Hazlitt to first

Doug Hazlitt restoring the When and If.

survey the boat in early May 2012.

When he opened the steering-gear box, he found a mushroom the size of his palm growing inside.

Justin Armstrong, a former Ithaca resident also helping with the restoration, knew right away the transom needed help. “It was both rotten and misshapen,” he said.

Armstrong developed a computer program that simplified boat designing, so he drew up a new transom guided

by Alden’s designs.

Keeping the When and If as original as possible is something Hazlitt stresses. “It is really important to keep her heritage alive,” he says.

Many have contributed to the When and If ’s legacy.

After Patton’s death, his wife Beatrice Ayer inherited the When and If. She sailed it with her children in Manchester Harbor. When Beatrice passed away in 1953, she willed the boat to her brother Frederick Ayer.

In 1972, Ayer’s son Fredrick Ayer Jr. donated her to the Landmark School for Dyslexic Children in Manchester.

(Patton himself was dyslexic.)

Ayer family members still

fondly remember the When and If, said Virginia Jones, a native of Martha’s Vineyard and member of the Association of Yachting Historians.

An Ayer descendent named Anne Brownell often visited the schooner in Martha’s Vineyard.

“She used to kayak out to the When and If frequently just to give her a loving pat,” Jones said.

The Landmark School created a semester-at-sea program for students with the When and If called the Watermark Program. It lasted until 1993 and gave students a chance to sail in the Chesapeake and Puerto Rico.

“It was without question one of the most positive programs the school had,” said current Landmark Headmaster Bob Broudo.

In 1990, a November gale pulled The When and If from her mooring and her port side smashed into rocks.

The wreck came after the Landmark School discussed selling the boat to Jim Mairs, an editor for W.W. Norton. An insurance agent declared the schooner a complete loss, but Mairs still wanted her.

When and If continued on page 47

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When and If continued from page 45 Mairs teamed up with the boat building firm Gannon and Benjamin. Together, they spent two and a half years repairing the ship.

After the renovation, Mairs and his wife Gina Webster sailed When and If primarily between Vineyard Haven and Maine.

Candy Ruitenberg and her husband Paul purchased the When and If in 2007, originally to use her as a “movable guesthouse.” But the ship became much more.

“All of the kids loved the boat,” said Candy, a mother of three and cardiac nurse in New Jersey, “We had some fantastic family vacations and so many good memories.”

The When and If spent most summers in the Vineyard and winters in the Caribbean while the Ruitenbergs owned her.

Ginny Jones helped the Ruitenbergs organize fundraisers for non-profit organizations such as Hospice of Martha’s Vineyard and Sail Martha’s Vineyard, a program that teaches Island locals to sail for free.

“The When and If ’s decks are a good size to get wheelchairs on board,” Candy said.

Candy put the When and If up for sale in 2010.

Although giving up the When and If was hard, Candy said she is thankful for all the hard work Hazlitt is putting into restoring her.

The restoration will hopefully be complete by September.

New teak, a light-colored tropical hardwood that resists rot, must be laid on the aft deck. Then the deckhouses will be reinstalled and finally the hull must be painted Hazlitt’s favorite traditional schooner colors—red, white, and black.

After the restoration, Hazlitt plans to charter the When and If for extended cruises in the Northeast and possibly even the Mediterranean. But, he also always keeps Patton’s dream in mind.

He wants to continue the educations of my siblings Megan, thirteen, and Patrick, fourteen, while traveling the world or creating a documentary about circumnavigating as Patton would have using traditional methods.

“It is a really fantastic opportunity,” Hazlitt said.

“There are no boundaries in terms of where she’s going to go.”

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First-time Mountain Home contributor Shannon Hazlitt enjoys sailing and studying Magazine Journalism at Syracuse University.

47

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No Wining in Class

By Holly Howell

I

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n the spirit of the season, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to go back to school for wine. Winespeak can get pretty highfalutin. Not to mention that half the world’s wines are completely unpronounceable to anyone who isn’t French. So here is a small glossary of some of the most often used terms in the wine world, and, where needed, how to correctly pronounce them: Vintage (VIN-tedge) is the date the wine was “born.” It is the year the grapes were harvested and it will appear right on the front label of the wine. (Sometimes there will be no date, which usually means it is non-vintage or NV, signifying that the wine is a blend of several years’ fruit combined).

Viticulture (VIT-i-kuhl-cher) and viniculture (VIN-i-kuhl-cher) are big words you can use to impress people when you are talking about grapegrowing and wine-making (respectively).

A wine appellation (app-uh-LAYshun) is a geographically designated wine region, like the Barossa of Australia, the Stellenbosch of South Africa, the Napa Valley of California, or the Finger Lakes of New York State.

An oenophile (EE-no-file) is a person who likes wine, and likes to think they know more about drinking it than most other people.

They often prefer to be called a connoisseur when in mixed company.

A sommelier (soh-mel-YEA) is someone who actually does know more about wine than other people, because they have successfully attained an international certification that involves extensive tasting, restaurant experience, research, and memorization. They like to pronounce French words around other people. A lot.

A tastevin (tahst-VAHN) is a small, very shallow silver wine cup that sommeliers wear around their necks so that they can “quality-control” your

wine before you drink it. Yeah, right.

A corked wine refers to a wine which is flawed. This flaw is caused by a bacteria called tri-chloroanisole (TCA) that lives in natural cork. If the wine cork is not processed properly, the TCA can create off-flavors, making the wine taste like a wet piece of cardboard lying on your basement floor. Not tasty. You should take or send the wine back.

A Stelvin closure is the more sophisticated phrase for a screw cap. It does NOT indicate that the wine is cheap. It does indicate that the winemaker wants to prevent any bottles from becoming corked.

A cork-pull, corkscrew, screwpull, wing-pull, flynut, boomerang, rabbit, waiter’s friend, ah-so, and Waring Electric Pro are all just tools that help you get the cork out of the wine bottle, some easier than others.

Nebuchadnezzar (Neb-uh-kenEZZ-er). This one is just fun to say. It means a really, really big bottle that holds twenty times the amount of a regular bottle. I like the whole idea of it, too.

A chateau is what you call a fancy house in the region of Bordeaux, France.

Riserva, Reserva, Reserve. These all mean that the wine has been aged an additional time in oak barrels.

Except in America, where it just means that they will charge you more for it.

Gutsabfüllung (GOOTS-ab-fewlung). A German word that means the wine was bottled right at the same estate that is named on the bottle.

In other words, the harder and more impressive way of saying estate-bottled.

Tannin (TAN-in) is the stuff in wine that makes your mouth dry out.

The acidity is the stuff in wine that makes your mouth water.

Palate (PAL-it) refers to your mouth, specifically your own personal set of taste buds. Palates are like snowflakes: no two are exactly alike.

The aroma of a wine is the smell that comes from the grape from which it is made. The bouquet of a wine is the smell that comes from the wine itself (created during the wine-making process). The nose of the wine = aroma plus bouquet.

The legs of a wine are the droplets, or “tears” that roll down the inside of the glass after the wine has been swirled. Fast-moving legs indicate a lighter, crisper wine. Slower-moving legs can indicate a fuller-bodied dry wine, or sometimes a sweet wine.

A dry wine has a very low level of residual sugar (rs, in wine speak), meaning it does not taste sweet.

A sweet wine has higher levels of residual sugar, meaning it will probably sell better than the dry one.

Dessert wines have a very high level of residual sugar, meaning they can be delicious. And often expensive!

Stickies are the dessert wines of Australia, named for the condition in which they leave your glasses, table, and hands.

To decant a wine, you pour it from the bottle into another container (like a

decanter) to remove sediment from an older wine, or to get some oxygen into a younger wine that needs to behave.

Robert M. Parker, Jr. is one of the most respected wine critics in the world.

Pouilly-Fumé (POO-ee fooMAY) is a white wine made from sauvignon blanc in the Loire Valley; Pouilly-Fuissé (POO-ee foo-SAY) is a white wine made from chardonnay in Burgundy. Those silly French!

Austere is a descriptor for a young wine that is not overly expressive of fruit, but more linear and introverted (just like austere people). Unlike the people, austere wines are still fun to have for dinner. Wines like Chablis and Sancerre will even sing with the right foods.

Mineral flavors are often found in those austere wines. Hints of chalk, flint, slate, and wet rock can signal that the grapevine magically transferred a taste of the actual vineyard into your glass. Rieslings are great at this.

Jammy wines are the opposite of austere. They are so overtly juicy and fruit-laden that you can practically

drizzle them on your peanut butter sandwich. Red Zinfandel from California and Bossy Shiraz from Australia are two top contenders.

Floral wines conjure up visions of honeysuckle, roses, violets, jasmine, and lilacs. Viognier and Gewürztraminer are like your flower garden in a glass.

Herbal is used to describe wines that have a bit of a “green” flavor.

It is not unheard of to find a note of dill in your Cabernet Franc, or a hint of mint in your Merlot. And they say that Sauvignon Blanc can smell like a yard of freshly cut grass.

And finally, last but not least, the word complexity. This is an indication to you that the wine has a lot going on as far as flavor. A complex wine will need a minimum of thirty words to fully describe. At least five of the words have to be difficult to pronounce.

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

Opening Season Concert Saturday, September 21, 2013 7:30 pm

The Clemens Center, Elmira Guest Artists Thomas Bergeron, Trumpet Eva Virsik, Piano

Of The Southern Finger Lakes Debussy – Prelude to The Afternoon of the Faun Perry – Trumpet Concerto Perry – The Beloved Rouge Perry – Russian Dance from Mr. Mark Twain Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 2 (Little Russian)

Toshiyuki Shimada Music Director & Conductor

Tickets: Clemens Center Box Office 607-734-8191 or OSFL.org Adults: $45, $35, $15 Students: $8 (Processing and facility maintenance fees apply)

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Drink

Master Chef Fritz Sonnenschmidt (right) and Michael Lanahan, Chef/Owner of The Cellar.

Smiling at the Stove: Area Chefs Spill the Beans

By Cornelius O'Donnell

T

hanks to the overabundance of television time given over to glorifying chefs, I imagine many young people are increasingly drawn to this career. I’ve worked around the cooking world for many, many years

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and my advice is “prepare to work and work hard.” What goes into being a chef ? Long hours, knife skills, buying prowess, and knowledge of nutrition are just a few of the things a good chef must know. And you’d better enjoy

meeting, greeting, and being charming to people. Doesn’t sound so easy, does it?

In the old days you’d be hired as an apprentice and you were most definitely not called “chef ” until you had trained in all aspects of the cooking business,

Isabelle Palatin

&

Photo courtesy of Michael Lanahan

Foo d

Food & Drink

starting with the Beetle Bailey job—peeling spuds.

Then, depending on the size of the operation, peeling off to a stint as perhaps a salad maker or “sides” maker, working up to Sous Chef directly under the Numero Uno. I asked some of the best and brightest food people around, “What was the defining moment when you realized you wanted to make a career out of cooking or supervising cooks?”

A Place of One’s Own Jamie Fry grew up in the restaurant business, namely the celebrated Turkey Ranch at Trout Run. And to hone his skills he decided to go to Baltimore and the professional chef ’s school there. When I asked him what was the moment when he decided to spend his life as a chef he answered without delay. He and his wife and another couple decided to splurge and went to the very popular Rudys’ 2900 restaurant on Baltimore Pike in Finksburg. By the time dinner was over Jamie knew what he wanted to do, namely precisely what Chef Rudy Speckamp did at that restaurant.

Jamie told me that it was a combination of the setting, the service, and the menu that made up his mind to open an upscale yet friendly eating establishment. And there you have it, Mansfield’s Wren’s Nest.

Rudys’ was actually the work of two Rudys: Speckamp is a certified Master Chef whose specialty was using local ingredients (way before the current craze); his partner was Rudi Paul, who ran the front of the house. Chef Speckamp specialized in game dishes and Jamie fondly remembers the defining dish for him—venison with mushrooms.

Sadly, Rudys’ 2900 closed in 2005. Speckamp is now teaching at the Culinary Institute of America and hopefully encouraging other young chefs to follow in his footsteps.

“I love to see happy faces.”

Chris Jarreau, the Director of Catering and Special Events at the Penn Wells Hotel in Wellsboro, was working for a law firm in her native Mississippi when, aided by her reputation as a darn good home cook, as was her mother, she was asked if she’d cater a function for the firm. “I was thrilled to see all the happy faces at the event and that did it for me. I soon began a catering business—you know, weddings and such.” She hasn’t picked up a steno pad since. “It’s personally so satisfying for me to see that people appreciate my work and I find that folks come up to me and thank me for a wonderful party that I’ve done several years ago.”

Over the years she has only veered once from the hospitality business and that was to help a friend See Spill the Beans on page 55

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Food & Drink Spill the Beans continued from page 53

in Asheville who had an infant/baby clothing business.

Chris said “I realized that wasn’t for me.”

“I’ve Always Cooked” Kevin Hillman remembers cooking when he was barely high enough to stir the contents of a pot. “I was cooking when I was six or seven,” he says, so it was natural for him to keep on peeling, chopping, stirring, sautéing and all of that when he matured. But he is especially adept at supervising a kitchen—something he did for many years at the Ponderosa in Riverside, New York. Kevin is now the proud owner of the popular Fran’s Landing just outside Addison, New York. He is doing what he loves, overseeing every aspect of the restaurant from the menu to the cooking and serving staff and, last year, the conversion of an outbuilding to a party center. And Kevin is enjoying an extensive catering business. Imagine planning and producing a picnic for 1,000, as Kevin did last month!

The E-Z Bake Oven Chef Michael Lanahan the chef/owner of the chic The Cellar restaurant on Market Street in Corning cites his Italian grandmother as his inspiration to become a chef.

“She babysat me at her home and I watched carefully as she made meatballs and sauce, braciole—everything. And there were fruit trees in the backyard and I remember helping pick the fruit and then preparing dishes—from pies to preserves. My grandfather had a vegetable garden and using fresh vegetables was what we did, so all of these cooking elements just stuck with me and pointed me in the direction that my life has taken.”

About that E-Z Bake Oven: “my sister received one of these as a present, but I used it more than she did.”

So Many Inspirations Chef Suzanne Stack of Suzanne’s Fine Regional Cuisine up in Lodi on Seneca Lake’s East side—as with so many chefs—cites her mother, her “best friend,” as the source of her passion for cooking.

But as we talked she listed many other factors that made her the outstanding chef she is today. The major one turned out to be when she discovered the James Beard Foundation’s special dinners, featuring outstanding chefs from all over the U.S. and abroad.

Suzanne, then living in New Jersey, attended as many dinners at the Beard house as possible and realized that she wanted to cook professionally. Then she got involved. She particularly remembers assisting a chef and his wife from Madrid (a many-houred day) and still treasures a thank you note from them.

See Spill the Beans on page 57

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Spill the Beans continued from page 55

She was in New York City every week, attending classes at the French Culinary Institute and then participating in the de Gustibus cooking classes at Macy’s.

I loved her story about the time husband Bob took her to the very famous Per Se restaurant in Manhattan as a treat. “I was trembling as we walked in,” she confided, “and it did not disappoint.”

My Turn In a convoluted way, my paternal grandmother influenced me. Let me explain. It was the depression and my parents were fortunate to have kept their jobs albeit at reduced salaries. So they moved in with grandma. Due to a medical condition, grandma Catherine was unable to cook so she had a German-born nurse/housekeeper, who knew her way around a schnitzel and a strudel. My mother carefully made notes on the dishes Berta made; after all, they were my father’s favorite things, and among the favorites were potato pancakes.

I take you now to grandma’s New York City kitchen with Berta at the stove turning out those pancakes and passing the applesauce. According to family lore, my normally 110-pound mother had twenty-seven—count ’em—twenty-seven pancakes. A few hours later Yours Truly was born. No wonder I love potatoes and any kind of pancake. And I got my start cooking by grating potatoes (and knuckles) and flipping pancakes of all kinds when mama cooked for papa and the other brats...err, I mean she cooked brats for the younger kids…oh, never mind.

Here’s a favorite recipe I’ve made countless times all over the country when I demonstrated Cor ning consumer products. It is always a hit, and considering that zucchini may still be growing in local gardens as you read this, I ditched the potatoes. I promise you will love these, but you’d have to be very hungry to eat twenty-seven of them.

Zucchini Pancakes Have fun with this recipe. Make small pancakes and serve them as finger food with drinks, or make them a bit larger (like IHOP-size) and serve them as a luncheon dish, topped with lower-fat sour cream and chives or with a good tomato sauce, jarred or, preferably, homemade.

Restaurants For listing information please email Dawn Bilder at dawnb@ mountainhomemag.com or call (570) 724-3838. Bon appetit!

1/2 pound zucchini (unpeeled) 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 2 tablespoons mayonnaise (lower fat is fine) 2 tablespoons grated onion 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (preferably imported Parmigiano Reggiano) 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon crumbled dried oregano (preferably Mediterranean) Salt and pepper to taste Butter for frying, maybe a little oil Preheat the oven to a low 200-degrees. Grate the zucchini in a food processor or on the coarse side of a four-sided grater. Mound the zucchini onto a paper towel or clean tea towel and squeeze to remove some of the moisture.

Combine all of the ingredients except the butter and mix well— u s e y o u r h a n d s i f y o u l i k e .

Melt some butter and maybe a tablespoon of light olive oil to cover the bottom of an 8 1/2-inch skillet.

Ladle the batter into the skillet to make silver-dollar sized pancakes (or larger if you prefer). When the pancakes are nicely browned on one side (lift to check), flip them over and brown the second side. Place the cooked pancakes on an oven-safe platter to keep warm until all the batter is used.

This makes four to six servings unless you invite a guest who is channeling my mother. In that case you can double—or even triple—the recipe.

Chef, teacher, and author Cornelius O'Donnell lives in Elmira, New York.

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Stone & Timber home nestles in a forest of hemlocks. Featuring open living room/dining/ kitchen with private master bdrm/bath. Second level has an open loft area & 2 bdrms. Full basement is finished with a family/office area with gas stone fireplace and a ¾ bathroom with a claw foot tub. Private hot tub, several out buildings, organic garden & fruit trees all on 10 wooded acres.

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3 bdrm, 2 bath cottage or full time residence across form Hills Creek State park. Great location with 1000’s of acres of State Game Lands.

Park is perfect for boating, fishing, swimming, hiking etc.

Charleston MH-123959 $159,900

Custom Cape Cod with many updates. Gorgeous kitchen with quartz counter tops and oak hardwood floors, first floor bdrm & bath, upstairs 2 additional bdrms & baths plus full basement could be finished. Handcrafted shelving & cabinets in livng room surround gas fireplace. Over garage are 2 storage rooms that cold easily be turned into living space. Call to make an appointment.

Middlebury MH-123974 $259,999

Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated

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FIRST

18 North Main St, Mansfield, PA 16933 • 570-662-2200

www.twintiersrealty.com

WOW! One-Of-A-Kind!

Elegant country estate home on 4.8 acres on paved road. 5 BR suites each with its own BA. Hardwood floors, open floor plan, high ceilings, & many other unique features. Attached fully furnished 2 car garage. Essentially a brand new home!

Only $459,900 M124299

Incredible Views!

This nearly 5,000 sq ft timber frame post & beam home offers 5 BR, 3 BA, open living room with vaulted ceiling, hickory kitchen, large master suite with balcony, hardwood floors, large deck, & more. Walk out basement has 2nd kitchen, & ¾ bath. 24+ acres near State land.

Just $429,000 M124159

Each Office Independently Owned & Operated

Wm. P. Connolly Real Estate Co.

mountainvalleyrealtyllc.com

Victoria Costanzo, Broker/Owner, 570-439-0821

Christina VanDergrift, 570-419-7185 • Michele Sargent, 570-549-2407 Kristy Hartman, 570-439-9186 • Jill Fidurko, 570-439-6375

570-723-8484, OFFICE ROUTE 6 just one mile west of the Wellsboro Diner in beautiful Wellsboro, Pa. 16901

Serving all of TIOGA, POTTER, BRADFORD, & NORTHERN LYCOMING Counties in Pa.

www.connollyrealestate.com 570-324-3000

Country home minutes from get-a-way destinations In a country paradise, off Rt. 287 near Oregon Hill, is this 2000 sq. ft., 2-story, 3 bdrm, 2 bath home on 1 landscaped acre with country views to be enjoyed from the large wrap-around deck and all-glass sun porch with propane fireplace.

Home has ample space with separate family, living, and dining rooms, a brand new kitchen, a laundry room, and a finished, walkout basement.

Energy-efficient windows and newer siding and roof make this low maintenance home the find of the year for a permanent or vacation residence.

HOME #1303

Just reduced to $184,900

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Licensed in NY and PA Kim Buchanan Ronald Gilbert (607) 857-6125 (607) 483-2241 215 West Church St. Elmira, NY 14901

For the Best in the Business Call 607-733-2700

Where Creativity Meets exCellenCe in real estate

23 East Avenue, Wellsboro, PA www.flynnco.com — (570) 326-2600 Kathy Doty – (570) 404-1900 Suzeahn Hunt – (607) 857-9749

This lovely 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home is ready to move into. Featuring fresh paint, some new carpet, family room with wood insert, basement den and a detached 2 car garage. The yard is level and the home is an easy walk to Wellsboro, PA amenities. The front porch adds to additional entertaining. Please call today for a tour! REDUCED TO $164,900 MLS #123730

430 Criss Road, Gillett, Pa Great small farm with over 3500 Sq Ft of finished living area. This large custom built ranch has very large rooms. Living room 17x38 Master Bedroom is 19x24 2 full baths on main floor with 3 additional finished rooms in the walk out basement plus 1/2 bath. The 51 acres includes woods, fields, large pond and pole barn plus additional building for all your equipment. Full deck the length of the 66’ home. A must see home. MLS 124343 Ronald E. Gilbert, (607) 483-2241

$398,500

Price Reduced

NY/PA The best of both States!

This 4000+ sq. ft. home with 102 acres in NY and 56 acres in PA. This home has a beautiful view from every window and way too many extras to list. Must see this one of a kind home with 158 acres of land. MLS 124233

212 W. Main St - Knoxville, PA Victorian home w/ 4 BR, 3 BA and hot tub room w/ skylight, spacious rooms, ornate oak woodwork, large foyer, oak staircase, fireplace in living room, 2nd staircase from kitchen, large rear deck, front wrap around porch, walk up attic, 2-car garage, large backyard. MLS 123606

1545 Kilgore Rd - Gillett, PA Beautiful 3 bedroom, 2 bath log home on 3.17 acres with 100% OGM rights.

Horse barn, shed, generator, pond, and tree house are just some of the extras.

MLS 123395

Erin, NY Farm with house, 3 large barns, pond and 88 acres with 100% OGM to convey with no current lease. This was a working beef farm with mix of pasture/ hay fields and woods. Beautiful hilltop views on a peaceful dead end road.

MLS 232538

Kim Buchanan 607-857-6125

Kim Buchanan, (607) 857-6125

$649,000

$318,000

Price Reduced

Kim Buchanan, (607) 857-6125

Magnificent 3,065 sqft 4 BR residence on over 3.6 acres in a desirable location within 3 miles from Wellsboro and easy access to major commuting routes. Features unique varieties of exotic natural stone, 5” Brazilian cherry floors, 5’ wide staircase and hallways, 8” crown molding.

Master suite features bath w/floor to ceiling travertine, radiant heat floors, Kohler jetted soaking tub. Spacious working/entertaining kitchen with up to date style and amenities.

Front porch relaxation leads to beautiful views. $349,500 MLS #122218

$139,900

$510,000

AWESOME VIEW FROM THIS RUSTIC CONTEMPORARY home on 10+ acres - partially wooded, offering seclusion w/access (just off Rte 49). Excellent hunting, ATV and snowmobile from the house (miles of open ATV roads), beamed ceiling w/ stone fireplace in LR, Master BR on 2nd floor. Room for a horse or two.

MTHDLM 124366 $169,000

IMMACULATE, SECLUDED 3 BR RANCH on 5 wooded acres close to Charles Cole Hospital.

Beautiful kitchen, master suite w/garden tub, fireplace, open floor plan; full, Superior Walls walkout basement w/full kitchen and 1 BR apartment.

Excellent snowmobile/4-wheel access; fully furnished, ready to move in.

MTHDLM 124234 $159,900

DECEPTIVELY UNIQUE, this immaculate, upgraded 3 BR ranch in the Boro of Coudersport sits on 2.5 acres with Mill Creek frontage - a rare find! New ceramic tile counters in the kitchen and baths, large (finished inside) party garage with 1/2 bath & kitchen area, offering seclusion with access. Definitely worth a look!

MTHDLM 122165 $114,900

OUTSTANDING 4 BR COUNTRY HOME offering family room w/stone fireplace and flagstone floor; vaulted ceiling in living room, large master suite, huge attached garage w/kitchen and laundry room, great outbuildings, close to State Land, walk to Pine Creek, 4-wheel and snowmobile from home.

MTHDLM 122993 $219,000

Price Reduced

Gillett/Wellsburg Large 3 bed 2 bath home on over 1 acre of private back yard. Spacious Living room with gas fireplace Close to NY Boarder just out of Wellsburg.

MLS 124055 Ronald Gilbert, (607) 483-2241

Ronald Gilbert, (607) 483-2241

This very special place, tucked back in a 10-acre wooded setting, is a welcome retreat. Timber frame and stone construction anchor this home to its surroundings. From custom tile work to built-in cabinetry this home offers unique features in every room! Gardens, deck, covered porch; so much to see! $215,000

Very well maintained home just a few miles from downtown Coudersport and hospital.

Home features 3 bedrooms, updated bathroom, open kitchen and living room, beautiful private patio area, and a 2 car garage. $114,900

$159,500

5631 Thompson Hill Rd - Gillett, PA Great starter or retirement home. This 3 bedroom home with a detached 2 car garage sits on about 1.2 acre lot. Large living room features a wood burning brick fireplace. MLS 124344 Ronald Gilbert, (607) 483-2241

$39,900

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107 Main Street Wellsboro, Pa. 16922

570-723-1600 www.wellsboroparealestate.com

West Main St., Elkland This beautiful home contains all the modern upgrades and still holds its original characteristics. The kitchen is upgraded and has a six burner stainless steel stove, double oven and granite countertops.

REF#10727 $319,000

FIRST

Scott Bastian, Broker 18 North Main St, Mansfield, PA 16933 • 570-662-2200 mansfieldremax@yahoo.com • www.twintiersrealty.com

Serving Tioga, Bradford, & Potter Counties, and Surrounding Areas LAND

LAND

CHATHAM TWP

JACKSON TWP

6.85 Acres - $75,000 10.16 Acres - $49,900

26.45 Acres - $76,900 29.10 Acres - $89,900

1.50 Acres - $32,900

12.80 Acres - $59,900

WELLSBORO BORO

Hunting, Fishing, & Outdoor Recreation Awaits! Spacious 7 BR home on Armenia Mountain. Plenty of room for all of your family & friends to stay and enjoy the beautiful mountain air & peaceful country atmosphere.

2-car garage & storage shed. Borders state game lands. Just $184,900 M124288

Joan Miller

570-439-4313

Cat Ostrom-Rush

PINE TWP

2.36 Acres - $34,000 CLYMER TWP

6.33 Acres - $27,500

Dick Pino

570-404-0852

570-447-8861

We have over 250 listings!

Wynnette Richardson

WELLS TWP

Many Extras! Situated at the edge of town, this 3 BR 2 BA home features covered deck, in ground pool, extensive landscaping, fountains, detached 2-story 1-car garage, stocked pond, playhouse, & woodshed. 4+ acres with a large portion wooded. Public sewer available.

Only $239,900 M124276

Kim Case

570-404-0794

570-439-1841

Chris Gilbert 570-404-1268

COVINGTON TWP

21.62 Acres - $94,900 WARD TWP

245.19 Acres - $750,570

Gwen Heyler 570-854-8528

Lois Mays

570-404-1340

www.twintiersrealty.com Check Them All Out Online!

Each Office Independently Owned & Operated

Adrien Dubuisson

M a r k e t P la c e

A Cow Tale

By Roger Kingsley

O

ne summer evening several years ago, my brother Ronnie and I were letting our dairy herd out to pasture after the evening milking. Just before exiting the barn, a first-calf heifer in estrus mounted one of our best cows and knocked her to the floor. Springcroft Marvelous Clair was her registered name, and a Holstein classifier had recently scored her ninety points. Surprised by the aggressive heifer, Clair tried to escape the encounter, but she was forced to her belly causing both hind legs to shoot straight back from her body. In a frantic attempt to stand up, the panic-stricken cow crawled out the door and halfway across the barnyard, while Ronnie and I desperately tried to stop her. Exhausted from the episode, Clair laid in the dirt panting as the rest of the herd curiously gathered around. After several minutes of rest she managed to stand, but it was obvious she was hurting.

The next morning Clair was standing in the barnyard amongst the rest of the herd chewing her cud.

Everything about her appeared to be 62

normal. With feeding and bedding completed, I opened the gate and the cows marched in. Clair headed straight to her stall, but she stumbled crossing the gutter and went down. We were stunned. A few minutes later, though, she was on her feet and eating. After milking we prepared a comfortable bed in a box stall, led Clair in, and with a veterinarian’s advice administered some medicine to ease the pain from her injuries. At milking time that evening, Clair could not get up. She was still hurting. We coupled three milker hoses together to reach the pipeline and milked her on her side. Administering more medicine, we left her for the night hoping she would show improvement by morning, but, at dawn’s early light, we realized that was wishful thinking.

The days went by, then a week passed, and Clair still could not stand.

We kept fresh feed and water in front of her, gave her medicine, propped her leg up with a bale of hay to milk her, and rolled her over twice a day to improve circulation. Ten days went by and Clair was still down. At that point,

her appetite began to taper off and her milk production dropped to such a low that we only milked her once a day.

At the end of two weeks, her appetite was worse, and her eyes were sunken.

Ronnie and I and my Dad stood by her side and made a heartbreaking decision.

Clair’s prognosis was not good. After two weeks time we knew we had to let go.

With deep sorrow, I went to the phone and dialed the number of the man who specializes in trucking away crippled cows. I remember the conversation like it was yesterday. It was early on a Friday morning. The man said he had not received any other calls that morning to truck animals from other farms. He said he really couldn’t afford to put his truck on the road to our place for one cow, but if another call came in for an injured animal, he’d be there. He would call back at nine o’clock. Shortly after nine I checked the phone messages. There was one from the trucker, “ Roger, no other calls came in, so I’ll plan on picking your cow up first thing Monday morning.”

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I couldn’t help but wonder though what Clair’s condition would be like come Monday. Her condition was getting progressively worse each day.

It was sad to think that in two weeks time she had gone from producing over one hundred pounds of milk per day to barely enough to cream your coffee. That evening, as my brother and I made preparations to milk Clair, the unbelievable happened. As we opened the gate to her box stall, Clair made a lunge. Instantly Ronnie and I were at her side each grabbing a hindquarter with all our strength to steady her.

We couldn’t believe it...she was up.

She was actually standing up! Several minutes later we had the milker unit on her, and it sure felt good to attach it in the normal position. What a happy moment it was.

The next morning Clair’s appearance didn’t show much improvement. But, a little coaxing and she stood up as easily as she had the night before. With a fresh bucket of silage in front of her, Clair

nibbled, but her appetite just wasn’t there. Something was wrong. I laid my head against her ribcage and listened for stomach movement. It was silent. A few quick snaps with my finger against her side and between the ribs revealed the telltale inflated inner tube type echo that meant she had an LDA, Left-side Displaced Abomasum. Clair’s ordeal wasn’t over yet.

The surgical procedure to attach this fourth stomach chamber to her lower belly would surely set her back more.

Because of her weakened condition, trucking her to the vet clinic would be too risky, so we made arrangements to do the surgery in the barn.

Fortunately the procedure was successful and soon Clair was upright and alert. A short while after the operation, Clair was eating. As the days and weeks went by, Clair grew stronger and her appetite became more aggressive. We were soon back to milking her twice a day and before long she was standing in her usual stall.

Thirty days later, Clair was back to milking over one hundred pounds per day, and at the end of her 305-day lactation, she had produced a whooping 30,454 pounds of milk with 1293 pounds of fat. That equates to a 4.2% butterfat test. On top of that, a Holstein classifier raised her score to ninety-one points. What a recovery for a cow whose days were once numbered.

Those who work with dairy animals are well aware that cows can make you laugh, they can make you cry, and they can make you mad. They can be predictable, unpredictable, truly amazing, and most rewarding. They can test your patience, too. Clair’s ordeal taught us to have plenty of patience with our cows—a lesson we never forgot.

A hunter, photographer, and writer, Roger Kingsley’s articles and photos have appeared in Deer & Deer Hunting, and Pennsylvania Game News, among others.

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Here Comes the Sun

By Gayle Morrow

incent Van Gogh produced a whole series of sunflower paintings after he left Holland. According to one account, he began painting Helianthus annuus as decoration for the bedroom walls of his friend Paul Gauguin.

I don’t know how Gauguin and his boudoir benefited from that artistic creativity, but for the rest of us, Van Gogh’s work provides a glimpse of sun and summer no matter what the calendar says.

Sunflowers are native to the Americas (the seeds were taken to Europe in the 16th century). My Fedco seed catalog tells me that sunflower remains a few thousand years old were found in Mexico’s Tabasco region.

Fedco sells about 13,000 packets of sunflower seeds annually, and offers almost twenty varieties, from the traditional Mammoth Grey Stripe to less-familiar types like Schnittgold and Vanilla Ice. Sunflowers prefer a fertile, moist, well-drained soil that is slightly acidic to somewhat alkaline (a pH of 6.0 to 7.5). That being said, I have a few volunteers that are growing—maybe not thriving, but growing—in what looks to me like about a teaspoon of dirt that is probably very acidic. I will definitely be saving those hardy seeds for next year.

One of the most interesting things about sunflowers is their ability to extract various toxins from the 64

soil and to neutralize toxins and bacteria from water. This process is called phytoremediation, from the Greek phyto, for plant, and the Latin remedium, meaning to restore balance.

Other “hyperaccumulators”—those plants with the same ability—include mustard, Alpine pennycress, hemp, and pigweed.

Of course we know about how tasty sunflower seeds are, but the rest of the plant has its uses, too. The leaves can be cattle feed, and the fibrous stems can be used as kindling and in paper production. In some varieties, the oil extracted from the seeds has a higher level of monounsaturated fats than olive oil. Some folks have experimented with making sunflower latex as a nonallergic alternative to rubber.

The Seed Savers Exchange catalog suggests sowing sunflower seeds outside after the last frost; Fedco says the seeds can also be started inside three to four weeks before the last frost, then transplanted. I’ve never grown them inside, but maybe some of the miniature varieties might adapt to a sunny window by the woodstove. The largest plants make great natural screens or windbreaks. Native peoples used sunflowers on the north side of their gardens as the fourth sister—squash, beans, and corn are the other three.

Gayle Morrow, former editor of The Wellsboro Gazette, cooks locally, and organically, at the West End Market Café.

Gayle recently won a Keystone State Press Award for her columns.

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B a c k o f t h e M ou n ta i n

September Mourn

By Sarah Wagaman

“Stepping out of my house just after the rain,” says Wellsboro photographer Sarah Wagaman, “I found this luna moth wing on my sidewalk. It screamed for my macro lens. And I love how the raindrops simply magnify the fibers in the wing.”

66

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THE BEST ORTHOPEDIC CARE FROM HEAD TO TOE.

If you have a sprain, a tear, a rip, a pull, a break or a cartilage breakdown, Susquehanna Health is the place to go for the most comprehensive care in the area. We’ll get you in quickly and our care team will connect you with the most appropriate doctor.

Our nationally recognized orthopedic surgeons and sports medicine specialists are experts at everything from advanced surgery, to concussions, to managing chronic pain. If you should need joint surgery, you can look forward to recovery in the region’s most advanced rehab center, featuring a dedicated floor complete with private rooms, therapists and a custom gym. You’ll experience a culture of wellness that’s comfortable, reassuring and, above all, healing.

For a referral, call (570) 321-2020.

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