Monthly Archives: August 2014

Memorial Art Gallery — Worth the Trip (At Last)

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Well, we finally did it. We’d been trying for so long that it became a joke, but one thing or another continually interfered. But we finally got to the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester.
Quite a few years ago we had visited, when we lived a lot closer, but there’s always something new… not to mention the fact that what you’ve already seen warrants another look, for there’s always new depths to plumb.
Anyhow, one thing that was new (for us) is the outdoor Centennial Sculpture Park, where we wandered on a sunny summer’s morning while waiting for the doors to open. Now this is not a gathering of familiar features… no “Thinker” waiting for Dobie Gillis to drop by, no mounted general making the pigeons’ day. Most of the pieces here ask the viewer to bring his or her own imagination and interpretation. They also ask the viewer to be a little playful.
One large tree-shadowed space is dedicated to “Creation Myth,” an ensemble of limestone figures riffing on artistic creation. An artist examines her creation, whom she’s almost finished calling forth from the rock. (You can walk between them, and it doesn’t interfere.) A few steps away the artist again gives life to her creation, this time releasing him from the molds in which she’s made him.
Counterpointing these massive stone figures are tiny bronze figures – some mimicking the creative work shown in stone, some with their own agenda – indeed, they’re hiding all through the park.
We also got a charge out of “Two Lines Up Eccentric – Twelve Feet,” a mobile installation in which two long arms continually drift in the breeze. We wondered if they ever struck each other, but as long as we watched, they never did.
Once inside we started out at the several interconnected “Seeing America” galleries. The first and largest showcases early 19th century paintings by Hudson River School painters, for instance, including some of Letchworth, or of the Genesee River Valley. A silver creamer by Paul Revere glints almost in the shadow of a life-size symbolic figure in marble.
In the room of early 20th-century work we were both struck silent by a painting of a foggy day on one of Maine’s rocky beaches. We listened for the creak of an oarlock, the cries of the gulls, and the shwishhhhhhh of receding surf. Next to it I loved a vibrant abstract-cubist work of a small town gas station. Across the room I also loved the large, I’d-call-it-impressionist “Morning on the River” – underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
We just passed through two more “Seeing America” galleries, one on the late 20th century and one on images of Rochester. We also poked through an invitational biennial exhibit by half a dozen area artists – not really our thing (though I loved the stream installation), but we always want to broaden your horizons.
Since I regularly teach both World Civilizations and the Western Tradition, I made it a point to again investigate a gallery of artwork from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, plus a series of galleries of ancient art – Egyptian, Etruscan, Roman, Asian, Middle Eastern, Greek, and more. In this space we were treated by also being able to overhear rehearsal on the museum’s Baroque pipe organ.
We omitted a whole set of galleries on European art – plus decorative art – plus a Japanese special exhibit – plus more modern sculpture. But we were serene about the whole thing, since we’ve COMMITTED to come back in couple of months when Memorial Art Gallery hosts a traveling exhibition of original art from Little Golden Books. When we make that trip, we’ll catch them on the flip side.
It’s a little bit of a hike, but we’re privileged to have two great world universities in driving distance… Rochester (of which Memorial Art Gallery is a part), and Cornell. It would be a shame if inertia stopped us from taking advantage of both opportunities.

One-Room Schools — Revisited!

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Last week in this space we looked at one-room schools in our area. Once upon a time there were about 400 just in Steuben County alone. It seems hard to believe, but a number of these were in use up until at least 1961. By then their time had really passed, and there was a lot of pressure on hold-out communities to face the fact that we were in the second half of the twentieth century, when children required a different sort of education. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve been told that what finished off the last remaining few was a requirement for flush toilets, rather than outhouses. After that they tossed in the towel.

Like many things in days gone by, they’ve become cloaked with nostalgia. But the truth, of course, is that they had their plusses and their minuses, just like everything else. Some were great experiences, and some were just ghastly. Some were steppingstones, and some were dead ends. Here are some odds and ends about the one-room schools.

*First of all – they weren’t all one-room. Stephens Mills in Fremont had a two-room school. Pleasant Valley, near Hammondsport, had a lovely four-room school. So while most were a single room, perhaps calling them rural schools would be more accurate.

*Even out in the rural towns, multi-room graded schools already existed back in the 19th century. Howard is a good example of this.

*The population in New York keeps going up, but the number of schools districts has been going down for 150 years!  Mostly this is because better transportation (especially cars and buses) makes the little local one-room districts unnecessary.
Number of school districts in New York

1865        11,780
1900        11,000
1925          9,950
1960          1,292
1999             705

*How many rural schools (school districts) in selected towns?

Bath        24
Caton    11
Jasper     14
Wayne      5
Wayland 14

*In 1956, consolidation of 62 school districts formed the Corning-Painted Post School District.  Some students there still attended one-room schools until 1957, and in Bath until 1961. Until consolidation, scarcely half of the one-room students in the Corning area went on to high school, even though that option was available to them. That percentage shot up instantly with consolidation into larger elementary and junior-high schools.

*One-room schools are having a revival in our area.  Conservative Anabaptist (Amish or Mennonite) communities have their own schools.  Though operated like the schools of days gone by, they are private religious schools, rather than public schools.

*Bath Village had a one-room school for African American students on Howell Street until the schools were integrated in 1867.

*Here are some folks who went to one-room schools in Steuben County:

-Joe Paddock (Brundage [Cold Springs] School): veterinarian, president of Steuben County Historical Society

-Tom Watson (Campbell Red School House): president of IBM

-Benjamin Bennitt (Mount Washington School): lawyer, lieutenant colonel in the Civil War, Judge of Sessions

-W.W. Averell (Gulf School): West Point graduate, Civil War general, diplomat

*Here are some one-room schools still open to the public…

-Red School House, or Watson School (Campbell District 5), Watson Homestead… built 1839
-Babcock Hollow School (Bath District 11), Steuben County Historical Society (at Steuben County Fairgrounds)… built 1849
-Browntown School (Caton District 5), Corning-Painted Post Historical Society (at Patterson Inn Museum)… built 1878
-Northrup Hill School (Rathbone District 10), Middletown Historical Society… built 1853
-Hornby Forks School (Hornby District 11), Town of Hornby Museum… built 1876
-Cooktown School (originally built and operated privately for children of employees of Constant Cook), now Bath Head Start… built in the 1840s. I believe this is the oldest school building in our region still operated as a school. By the way, Mr. Cook also welcomed the African American children of Bath to attend his school.
-Slate Creek Road School (Town of Hartsville Museum)

Join Us at the Fair — in Our One-Room School

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What was life like in the “good old days” of one-room schools?

Nobody had a car.  Nobody had a bike.  The five-year-olds walked, and the teacher walked, unless she got a ride in a horse-drawn buggy.

Nobody got a hot lunch, unless they lived close enough to run home at noon.  Everybody else carried their cold lunch with them, or went without.  The teacher couldn’t get any coffee, unless she heated it on the wood stove.  There was no electricity, so they needed oil lamps on cloudy days.  They used outhouses out back.

Everybody sat in one big room, and they all had the same teacher.  She taught the five-year-olds to read, and she taught the teenagers to do algebra.  But most teenagers quit to go to work, especially the boys, even before they finished eighth grade. When it was time for haying, or berrying, school closed anyway so the children could be out to work.

The teacher prepared all the lessons, and graded all the papers.  She cleaned the school.  She had to lay the fire in the heating stove, and maybe chop the wood.  She probably had to board with the closest family, and if she got married, she usually had to quit.

Some students went on to become doctors and lawyers and generals and corporate presidents.  But one-room schools were dead ends for many others.  Even in the 1950s, scarcely half of the one-room students in the Corning area went on to high school, even though they had several options close at hand.

State law let people teach in one-room schools even if they were still teenagers and didn’t have much training.  Often they didn’t get “promoted” to bigger schools – teaching in one-room schools became a life sentence.  Some people loved it, but it could be rough. Many schools were very isolated. You might have to board with the family closest to school, but just because they were close didn’t mean they were nice.

Rhoda McConnell, teaching near Prattsburgh in the Civil War, wrote her soldier boy friend about how furious she was because one of the mothers had sent her two-year-old to school along with the older kids, so that Rhoda had to mind the child while teaching. If school board members were going out, it wasn’t unusual for them to summon teachers to their homes and require them to send the evening babysitting.

At Steuben Couny Historical Society, we dedicate a lot of time and energy to one-room schools. One entire shelf is filled with town-by-town binders, in which we try to identify all 400 Steuben County schools. If 400 seems like a lot, remember that the county’s big enough to be a state, and the schools had to be spotted within fairly reasonable walking distance.

Identifying schools is more challenging than it sounds. The last of them closed over half a century back, and memory plays tricks. Names were unofficial – it’s depressing how many “Red Schools” there were, and how many “White Schools.” It took us quite a while to figure out that Twelve Mile Creek School is NOT Twelve Mile Creek ROAD School – though they’re fairly close to each other. Sometimes a school was named for the nearest farmer, but over 150 years those names would change.

Each town had its own numbering system for its districts, but those also changed over a century and a half, and so did the number of schools. On top of that, a town might have, for instance, a District 2 School and a JOINT District 2 School. Joint districts straddled town lines, and had students from both municipalities.

Steuben County Historical Society operates the 1849 Bath District 11 School (Babcock Hollow), now on the grounds of Steuben County Fair. We like to have folks drop in during their fair visits, to get a feel for one-room school days. We’ve got our binders with us, so we may be able to share information and photos if you have a particular school you’re excited about. We also get excited, because a lot of times folks bring US information and photos.

Anyhow, please come see us while you’re at the fair!

Get a one-room school education, when you join us at the fair.

Get a one-room school education, when you join us at the fair.

Meet the Neighbors: Turkey Vultures, and Great Blue Herons

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A few weeks ago in this space we looked at the osprey and the bald eagle – two wonderful raptors with breathtaking wingspans, both of which are rapidly increasing their population in our area.
Three other common local birds also have such huge wingspans, but they’re very different from the eagle and osprey, and also from each other.
Turkey vultures are probably seen more often in our area than any other bird of prey… maybe more than all the others put together. They often form a wide V with their wings, then keep them steady as they float, glide, and drift on the thermal currents in the air. These are the same thermals lifting sailplanes from Dansville, Harris Hill, and Big Flats. Vultures scarcely ever flap their wings in flight, soaring just like those sleek lovely aircraft.
The comparison ends there. They’ve got naked heads and creepy faces, and they make ungainly lurches while on land. In the morning you’ll sometimes catch a whole treeful of them spreading out their wings so the sun can dry the dew. You feel like you’ve just crossed into the Twilight Zone.
Moreover they’re birds of prey only by courtesy. Vultures are part of nature’s clean-up crew, feasting on the dead. (They love roadkill.) From miles away their incredibly acute sense of smell detects carrion, even if only a few minutes old, and they zero in with a glide from all points of the compass. It may be gag-inducing, but where would we be without them?
When can you find them? All year round. Where can you find them? Everywhere. Curiously, they’ve congregated for many years in the northwest quadrant of Bath village, where you’ll often see two or three dozens in a kettle – a spiraling collection, circling upward on the thermals. You never seem to see them arrive, and yet they grow more numerous by the minute.
The turkey vulture has a six-foot wingspan… right at the top range for ospreys, and the bottom range for eagles.
We have two other birds with a wingspan almost reaching six foot, and one’s the great blue heron. A great blue (who seems more grey to me) is a wading bird that looks like it was put together from an Erector set. By an alien who’d heard about birds, but never actually seen one.
It stalks or strides or wades through shallow water and deep grass, often bending its long neck down and peering below. It may freeze for long minutes, waiting out its prey, then dart its spear-like beak to catch or spear a frog or fish.
These birds build large stick nests gathered close together in a rookery… a sort of arboreal apartment building for heron baby boomers. Of course they like this to be near water, and you can sometimes see these rookeries from I-86 rest stops along the Chemung or Susquehanna.
Great blue herons have long legs, long bodies, long necks, and long beaks. And broad wings with wide spans – 70 inches or so, comparable to the osprey.
So if you spot a bird with a really wide wingspan of six feet or so, here’s a little mini-field guide for our area.
White head and tail with dark body – bald eagle.
Crook in the wings – osprey.
Wings in a gentle upward vee – turkey vulture.
Broad wings, long trailing legs, neck folded back, probably flying low – great blue heron.
Flying in an organized flock, and probably honking to beat the band – Canada goose. But that’s another column, all its own.