Monthly Archives: October 2015

A Hundred Quilts

There’s an impressive quilt show going on at Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport.

Why quilts, you might ask? Well, you might be interested to know that a very young Glenn Curtiss, fascinated by the process, once sat on his mother’s lap and pieced a quilt while she operated the treadle sewing machine. (Wish we had THAT quilt to see on exhibit!)

But more aptly, Curtiss Museum was originally founded to cover local history, as well as the pioneer aviator. It’s also the only real exhibit space in the central part of the county, so it’s the venue for many topics, which is part of the fun of the place. When I was director there I knew a Canadian couple who planned their visit every two years so that he could spend his time with the machinery, while she enjoyed the biennial embroidery show.

My wife is an enthusiast for all things needlearts, but I am no specialist in quilting. That being said, though, I know what I like, and enjoy visiting shows like this.

One of the quilts that really grabbed my eye was a large piece by Marie B. Peek of Bath, entitled “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish,” which she cheerfully confesses to having lifted from Dr. Seuss. (I especially like the barracuda that stretches over two blocks in the upper left.)

Besides just the fun of looking at all the varied fish, I was intrigued at her written description explaining that she had never been to the Caribbean, but enjoyed seeing pictures of the colorful fish in their sun-drenched habitat. This really resonated with me because back in the 1960s my parents used to take my sister and me to Audubon Society lectures in Providence. I’m still overwhelmed by the films of life on Caribbean reefs… and just like Ms. Peek, I’ve never been there.

Interestingly, at the other end of the room, and the other end of the spectrum, Marie Peek also created what was perhaps the next most visually arresting piece, “Carpenter’s Square”… an austere traditional design in blue, which just bursts from the sea of white onto which it’s been worked.

Also bright and vivid was “Billiards,” by Pat Clayton of Hammondsport – each block a large billiard ball in its own glorious color.

I’ve long known that Mary Shipp is a whiz with a needle, and I really enjoyed two of her small pieces… one a flock of goldfinches on a thistle, and one an elephant with her baby. We can’t help but be touched by such an image. Apart from us, elephants are about the only beings that spend years caring for their young. There’s real fellow-feeling there.

“Building Blocks,” by Wendy Baker of Dundee, bore 11 blocks with variations of traditional designs, and the quilt had very attractive October colors. Similarly muted was “Sprigs & Twigs,” by Fran Stoughton of Trumansburg. As a historian I was interested in the “Variation on Whig Rose” quilt by Maureen Johnson of Bath, but if you like a more modern, whimsical, and seasonal approach you should look up “The Ghastlies Family Reunion,” by Shirley Ann Fleet of Bath.

It may be Halloween season now, but Christmas season is coming up. Mary Ellen Westlake of Almond used Christmas fabric and traditional designs to create “Merry Christmas Quilt,” while Pat Clayton dedicated a block apiece to each of the “12 Days of Christmas.”

Liz Scott created a couple of quilts using a process I’d never seen or heard of before, ice dyeing. My wife tells me that you set dyes and ice cubes onto the fabric, and let nature take its course. It has a very ‘sixties feel. Also on the unusual side (and VERY interesting) were hand-hooked art pieces created by Diane Philips.

Just for fun I went around and did a count, and somebody else might get a slightly different figure, but I came up with exactly 100 pieces in this exhibit, which is a number worth seeing if you’re at all interested. The show runs through Saturday, November 1.

Fifty Milk Cans: The Story of Richard Storm

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Once upon a time, one of the most famous writers in America was Walter D. Edmonds. He was an Upstater, and his novels brought Upstate to a fascinated readership coast to coast. He’s mostly remembered for two books now: Drums along the Mohawk (which became a hit movie starring Henry Fonda) and The Matchlock Gun (which won the Newbery Medal for the year’s most distinguished contribution to children’s literature). He also won the National Book Award and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award.
The Matchlock Gun takes place at Guilderland in Albany County – suburban now, but very much frontier back in 1756, during the French and Indian War.
Edmonds tells a story that he says has been handed through two centuries by the family of ten year-old Edward van Alstyne and his mother Gertrude. With militia (including the boy’s father) in the field hunting a raiding party, Gertrude loads an obsolete Spanish matchlock gun brought over three generations earlier from the Netherlands, sets it up (the thing’s huge), and coaches Edward in how to use it.
That night she’s attacked, barely making it to the house with a crippling wound. As five attackers charge Edward lets loose with the matchlock gun, whose great shotgun-like blast kills three of the five attackers and wounds a fourth, driving the survivors off. The mother survived, but lost the use of one arm.
Coming out in 1941, just as we were sucked into the Second World War, Edward’s and Gertrude’s story probably struck a chord with frightened Americans who felt themselves under siege. But in 1974 Walter Edmonds published an altogether different children’s book. While The Matchlock Gun is set in a small tense compass, The Story of Richard Storm makes a rollicking romp through Upstate. William Sauts Bock illustrated the picture book.
Richard is one of the many children of old Mother Catskill, who sends her little thunderstorms out to play, racing around the mountains and the Hudson River Valley. Richard, on the other hand, won’t budge. He only sits at home, laying his plans while getting bigger and bigger.
And bigger. At last he sets off without a word to Mother, but heading WEST, rather than east. He pushes through Diamond Notch between West Kill and Hunter Mountains (in Greene County) and rampages into central New York.
From there it’s a short hop to Gilboa in Scoharie Countty, where Richard blasts lightning down the whole length of the reservoir, worrying the residents with this early start to the season. Next stop Otsego County, where Richard strips the trees along Charlotte Creek, blasts a poultry barn to flinders, tears down trees in Oneonta and even blows up a freight car.
He quickly tears across Unadilla Valley and the Butternut Creek before turning north across Oneida lake; by now he’s big enough to cover half a county. Exalted with himself, Richard kills a whole dairy herd and terrorizes picnickers before jumping Tug Hill into Black River Valley, on the edge of the Adirondacks.
But by now Richard Storm is even out of his own control – he’s become a tornado, capriciously wrecking houses and churches and yanking the cables from Snow Ridge ski slopes near Turin. In Port Leyden he turns a house around. Hawkinsville loses a pile of firewood, and Forestport Flats the good part of a pine plantation. He bowls fifty milk cans down the street in Remsen “in a clatter that has not yet been forgotten.” Richard rips the roof from a home in Olden Barneveld, then spins on up Deerfield Hill, from which he spies the target-rich environment of the Mohawk Valley… the river, the railroad, the Thruway, the Barge Canal, and even the City of Utica. But the twisting cloud continues to rise from the top of the hill, finally ending the career of a frustrated Richard Storm.
Walter Edmonds wrote some tremendous stuff, and this is definitely a minor work. But he clearly had fun with it and so, we imagine, did his grandchildren. Read it to young kids, especially if they know any of the territory. Get out a map, and follow Richard’s route. They’ll love seeing places that they know in the pages of a book. And what kid wouldn’t love to roll fifty milk cans down a village street?

“Paddle-to-the-Sea”

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PLEASE PUT ME BACK IN THE WATER
I AM PADDLE TO THE SEA

Anyone of any age, assuming his or her soul has any romance, has to be moved by the odyssey suggested by these words.

Western New York is a mighty big place, framed by the Great Lakes on the north and west, and rocky uplands along the Southern Tier, but decorated by Finger Lakes in between. We stand at a triple continental divide, with waters scarcely more than a few steps away from each other flowing to Chesapeake Bay, or the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or the Gulf of Mexico. One bog in Prattsburgh oozes its waters southward from the north end, and northward from the south end, thanks to the lay of the land.

Holling Clancy Holling (I didn’t name him) was an artist, illustrator, and museum professional who in the terrible war year of 1941 published Paddle-to-the Sea, a breathtakingly-illustrated fact book and story book.

A young Indian near Lake Nipigon above Lake Superior carves and paints a man in a canoe, etches the message into the hull, and sets his creation into a snowdrift. As snow melts, Paddle rides downhill into Lake Nipigon, beginning on a journey in which the current will carry him through the Great Lakes, and at last the sea.

Each right-hand page in this oversize book is a full-page color painting, with each left-hand page giving the text of the story, along with line or charcoal drawings illuminating much that Paddle meets on his way: the workings of a sawmill; the structure of a lake freighter. Here we also learn (with illustrations to prove it) that Lake Erie, which lies in a land of coal mines and steel mills, has the outline of a lump of coal. Ontario, on the other hand, lies in farming country – it’s shaped like a carrot.

It’s Paddle’s voyage through Lake Erie, then to and through Lake Ontario, that interest us most. Unfortunately the maps show us that he mostly hugged the Canadian shore after leaving Erie, Pennsylvania, although he did drift toward Rochester until someone picked him up and took him to Toronto, after which he makes his way down the lake and through the Thousand Islands. An elderly woman shelters him for the winter in Montreal before setting him sailing again on the St. Lawrence, bound at last for the sea.

But although we may feel that our two Great Lakes could be longer on shrift, Niagara Falls roars out through one glorious painting, casting up a rainbow. The next painting explodes from the page, drenching the reader as Paddle careens through a whirlpool on the Niagara River.

“Paddle-to-the-Sea” was named a 1942 Caldecott Honor book, joining three others as runners-up for “the most distinguished American picture book for children.” (The winner than year was “Make Way for Ducklings” – no disgrace to finish second in that case.) Twenty years later “Paddle” won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, deemed worthy to belong “on the same shelf” with Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.

Three other books (“Tree in the Trail,” “ Seabird,” and “Minn of the Mississippi”) are companions, and two of them won Newbery Honors… runners-up for each year’s “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” Your kids (and you) can learn a lot (even if it’s a little outdated now). But you and they can also enjoy some wonderful stories… and glimpse the connectedness of things… and lose yourself in lush, lavish artwork… some of it set right here in western New York.

Back to Genesee Country Village — and Back to the 19th Century

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We spent the first Saturday in October at Genesee Country Village and Museum. We’d been planning the day in Rochester anyway, and Joyce won tickets from WVIN – yahoo!

It was a chilly, breezy, overcast day. And we had a great time.

In case you’re not aware, Genesee Country Village is one of those places where historical homes and buildings have been gathered to create a faux village for living history… like Old Sturbridge Village, or the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown. You wander in and out of the buildings and along the streets, meeting docents in period costume.

For instance, we enjoyed visiting with the “storekeeper” in the Altay store, the more so since Altay is nearby, not far from Seneca Lake. We discussed the stock (much of it bulk), for which they have a good feel since along with the store came some of the store’s old ledgers. We also marveled to the fact that Altay was on the stagecoach route between Bath and Rochester – not really a straight path.

Also from someplace right close at hand was the Hamilton House, an 1870 Italianate mansion from Campbell. The village shows the progression of time from the late 18th century to the late 19th century. For instance, on this cloudy day the Altay store was so dark that we weren’t sure at first whether it was open. At Hamilton House they have –electricity! And good lighting!

So we could see and enjoy a case of stuffed songbirds (horrifying today, popular back then), an indoor croquet set, a quilt being worked on. We also admired the “up-to-date” kitchen, though I’ll confess that I hurried with eyes averted past the proudly-displayed hair wreath. Those things give me the creeps.

Next door at the contemporary Hyde House (originally from Friendship) we got to get a good feel for life in an octagon house. This was owned by a doctor until 1924, by which time he had laid on electricity. But our visit was a vivid demonstration of one of the virtues of the octagon house. By softening the corners, and by adding many windows at many anglers, the octagon house eliminates dark pockets within the home. Orson Squire Fowler, originally from Cohocton, designed or at least popularized the octagon house, touting among other things its health benefits in warding off what we’d call depression.

By the pre-1850 livery barn we visited with a couple of oxen, and throughout the village enjoyed meeting horses, sheep, and goats. The Fall Festival and Agricultural Fair were on, so we passed happily among demonstrations of cider making and corn hulling.

The oldest building in the village is the 1797 Nathaniel Rochester house, moved in from Dansville. The newest is the 1884 Davis Hall from South Butler in Wayne County. There are also two churches (Catholic and Methodist), the Trustees’ Building from the short-lived Shaker colony in Sonyea, and George Eastman’s childhood home… not to mention the print shop, the blacksmith shop, and many gardens.

Access to the historic village is through the toll house built around 1850 in Lima. Outside the toll house, circling the Great Meadow, are several railroad buildings (mostly repurposed as eating places, the carriage museum, and the John L. Wehle Gallery.

This is the home for traditional setpiece museum exhibits. The substantial art collection is dedicated mostly to Mr. Wehle’s collection of “sporting” art, to do with hunting, fishing, and wildlife. From a distance I smugly spotted elk and caribou paintings as the work of Carl Rungius (I learned about Rungius at Rockwell Museum).

I had expected to pretty much pass through a temporary exhibit on clothing in literature, but found myself immediately drawn in by a mounted mannequin wearing a cloak like that worn by the Headless Horseman in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” With label copy cueing us in on the story and the clothing, it was the entry to a delightful exhibit. Here were the March girls, dressed as described by Louisa May Alcott, and here the velvet suit popularized by Little Lord Fauntleroy. Sherlock Holmes lounged about in his dressing gown.

Most of the characters were represented by faceless mannequins, except for – the Invisible Man! There he stood in his smoking jacket contemptuously surveying Kemp, hands on hips (but there WERE no hands!), fez with dangling tassel perched atop his cocked head (but there was no head!). Bravo (or brava) to the curator(s) who created the Invisible Man. He alone was almost worth the trip.

Joyce really enjoyed the domestic arts competition in the Conference Center, while I was thrilled to visit the Civil War encampment and finally see (and handle!) the balloon “Intrepid,” an oversize copy of one of the observation balloons operated by Thaddeus Lowe during that war. Had weather been better they’d have raised the balloon on its tether, but I was quite happy with what I got to see, and with a good discussion about the aircraft’s operation.

Genesee Country Village was on my summer list – particularly the balloon, the art gallery, and the 19th-century baseball. Health problems ran us a little late. We didn’t get the baseball, but that’s just a good excuse to go back.