Tag Archives: Harris Hill

What to Do on a Summer’s Day

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Sometime summer seems endless, but we know too well that it isn’t so. But what DO you do (especially if you’ve got kids!)? On a hot day… a rainy day… or just any day? There are simple things to do, and they’re not too far away.

*Play miniature golf. It’s an American tradition, and no two courses are alike! Windmills, spouts, and bridges abound, not to mention crazy slopes, and it’s all in fun, and if you don’t take it too seriously, everybody has a good time. The course at Harris Hill Amusement Park has entertained players for many years – there are also courses at Corning, Watkins Glen, and Ithaca Sciencenter.
*Visit the comic-book store. I personally patronize Heroes Your Mom Threw Out in Elmira Heights, where Jared Aiosa loves kids as well as grownups. (And yes, at his shop I HAVE found comics that my Mom threw out!)
*Attend a summer service at Garret Memorial Chapel, on Keuka Bluff. It’s a lovely stone chapel, built almost a hundred years ago in memory of an only son who died too young. It’s a quiet place, set in the woods, with services only in summers. You may find that you’re growing quiet too, in the best sense of the word.
*Amble along the Erie Canal. Fairport is known as “the crown jewel of the Erie Canal” – the towpath is a fine place to stroll, with restaurants and other amenities on the route or just a few steps away. The same is true in Pittsford, and many another canal town. For a quieter, more rural stretch, start in Brockport. Check ’em all out. Now two centuries old, the Canal still welcomes visitors. Nathaniel Hawthorne liked it! Why shouldn’t you?
*Shop at The Windmill, on 14A between Penn Yan and Dundee: Saturdays only, April through November, with an occasional added day for holidays. Wander in and out amongst 175 shops and stands – it’s one of the largest open-air farm and craft markets in the state of New York.
*Get an ice cream! It just isn’t summer if you don’t make at least one stop at an ice cream stand. I use Emmie’s near Lake Salubria in Bath! And also Hokey-Pokey on Corning Northside. Honestly, there’s ice cream stands just about everywhere, and I’ve never found one that disappointed me. The closing of the ice cream stands is a sure sad sign of the end of summer. Get into the season while the getting’s good!
*Get a hot dog, and eat it “al fresco.” Central Hots in Elmira is a good place. Jim’s Texas Hots is a good place on Market Street in Corning.
*Take a walk on the waterfront. Watkins Glen in particular gives you lots of waterline to stroll on, lots of boats to look at, lots of birds to watch. You can also see the schooner True Love (used in the movie High Society, with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly).
*Listen to a concert in the park. Wow! LOTS of our communities have free evening concerts every week through the summer – I know for a fact you can find them in Bath, Hammondsport, Penn Yan, Watkins Glen… plenty of others too! Sometimes there’s a sort of ongoing theme, more likely there’s a different “sound” every week, from rock-and-roll to folk to country to “band music.” Somebody makes fried chicken, somebody sells lemonade, little kids run in and out… pick out the music you like, bring your lawn chair, chat with your friends, and enjoy the summer’s eve. Maybe stars will come out. Maybe you’ll see fireflies. “Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low, and the flickering shadows softly come and go; though the heart be weary, sad the day and long, still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song – comes Love’s old, sweet song.”

Dollhouses and Miniatures — at the National Soaring Museum

Have you been to the National Soaring Museum lately?

*If you haven’t been lately (or at all), think about a trip up Harris Hill to take a look. I think you’ll get some pleasant surprises.

*The annual dollhouse and miniatures show that used to sparkle up the winter at Curtiss Museum has migrated over to the Soaring Museum, and we stopped in to see it on a February Saturday.

*We’ve been regulars at the show, and even sometime exhibitors, since the 1995-96 season, so we encountered some old friends, as well as making some new acquaintances.

*Right in the lobby we found pieces from the late Marie Rockwell’s collection, such as a southwestern “adobe” house complete with cermaics and needlepoint carpets in Navajo-style designs… an exacting and delightful attention to detail.

*Most of us are accustomed to dollhouses for play, but miniaturists work for showing, rather than playing (though making and showing are forms of play themselves). Scott Hopkins’s camper is open on one side and the top for better viewing. It even includes an outhouse behind the camper.

*Sue McGoun created an amusing upstairs/downstairs house, where the downstairs hosts a pair of stereotypical 1950s parents in 1950s setting, while the upstairs is populated with, and furnished by, today’s 21st-century teenagers.

*Each item shines on its own merits. Stacy Clark’s instricate rosewood “chinoiserie” furniture (exhibited on its own) is inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Pam Burton’s Halloween House was created in a lengthy labor of love. Ron and Shirlee Cornwell created a large farmhouse, but it springs to the fore because of the outdoor Christmas display.

*Long-time area residents might recognize Fritz Meyers’s piece – a large-scale model of the Atlantic gas station in Big Flats, complete with double service bay and two pumps out front.

*Will Parker creates unusual eye-catching model train layouts, including an X-scale figure-8 with windmill and stone cottages – the more you study it, the more you find, and the more you lose yourself in Will’s little world.

*And that’s just (some of) what’s in the lobby! Downstairs there’s a large mansion by Joyce Merletti, and a “community” of three mansions and three cottages, from Marie Rockwell, Lillian Elwood, and Helen Keeton. Undergoing some work in the restoration shop, but accessible for viewing, is a fully-furnished four-story mansion with excellent sightlines through its chock-full interior.

*As if that weren’t enough, there’s a small but impressive collection of Eastern Orthodox icons “written” (that is, painted) by Joyce Merletti. And in the upstairs mezannine hallway are a half-dozen nature paintings by C. F. Lawrence. In “All But Forgotten,” a blue jay perches on a dilapidated “park bench,” surrounded by overgrown grasses and under an overcast sky.

*The female cardinal in “Fallen Silent” perches on an old bell, and even without touching it you can feel the rust on the bell.

*So why is all of this at the Soaring Museum? Is not completely new… NSM has a history (and a future) with quilt exhibits, for instance. The board and new director Trafford Doherty (like me, a former director at Curtiss) are looking forward to more changing exhibits with more variety, connecting the place more directly with the local community, on top of being what I believe is the only soaring museum in the western hemisphere. And more about THAT in a future blog!

Tanglewood Nature Center — Forty Years Naturally

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If we lived in Elmira or Big Flats, or even Corning, we’d go there more often. But even from Bath we make the pilgrimage now and then, as we did twice in the past month, to Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum.
These last two trips were “on task” behavior, as our son Joshua in Houston asked us to deliver two framed photos for Tanglewood’s nature photography contest. We dropped them off, and we dropped in for the announcement of winners — he got second place in a field of twenty, for his “Stone Walls and Wooden Bridges” photo of Stony Brook Park!
His other picture, “Thunder in the Air,” was a vertical image of Taughannock Falls. First-place winner was a fine color close-up of a red-tailed hawk eating a dead snake. The fact that I can write about this at once enthusiastically and off-handedly proves that I am indeed a nature enthusiast. To me, and I’m sure to the good folks at Tanglewood, this makes an ideal subject for a photo. Third place was Edward Cordes’ hummingbird darting among yellow blossoms — an image which also made the cover of the annual report.
Some of the images are still on exhibit at the museum, so if you stop by you might get to see one of our favorites, “Gathering in the Swamp.” With stunningly-lighted vegetation, this photographer captured a dozen or more Canada geese, with a great blue heron flapping past in the background. I liked Steve Brinthaupt’s large picture “Life Along the River,” showing a blue damselfly on a green leaf… it brought me back to my waterside childhood in Rhode Island. “Food Fight” by Matt Burroughs shows the colorful blur of a blue jay and a cardinal lacing into each other. Joyce was especially tickled by “The Trio,” with three white-tail deer displaying their black outer tails.
The museum also features two bird-watching stations (one overlooking a pond), plus small live mammals, birds, and reptiles. You can walk through a life-sized diorama showing the various habitats and wildlife found in the Chemung Valley area. Here the taxidermist’s art has been put to good use, so that you walk within reach of a white-tailed deer, gray squirrel, piletaed woodpecker, and more. Near a little hands-on area are mounted beavers and one of our relatively new neighbors, a coyote.
Outside there are over nine miles of trails, some on neighboring land in the hands of the Nature Conservancy. Hiking here one spring day I was delighted to come upon a hawthorn bush, with its elegant terrifying spikes. Down near the old Boyd’s Farm visitors’ center I used to find little piles of husks where squirrels or chipmunks had made themselves comfortable to tear through a pile of nuts or seeds.
Just a few minutes from Elmira, or the airport, or the mall, you can be wandering quiet farm-and-forest land atop Harris Hill. Tanglewood has been emphasizing the PACE of nature — Preservation, Awareness, Caring, and Education — for children and adults alike. “Naturally” they welcome donations and memberships. Tuesdays through Saturdays, except major holidays, they welcome visitors as well. Tanglewood Nature Center and Museum is one of our region’s hidden treasures.
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