Tag Archives: holiday

“At This Festive Season;” Gifts That Matter

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At Christmas time, which is also the end of most people’s tax year, many people turn their thoughts to giving… not just gifts to loved ones, but gifts to the community at large.
*If you have a church connection, a Christmas gift to the church might be fitting, or a gift to some church-connected helping agency, such as Catholic Charities, Mennonite Disaster Service, or United Methodist Committee on Relief.
*The Southern Tier Food Bank does outstanding work in helping provide for the hungry right here where we live. I give throughout the year. Milly’s Pantry in Penn Yan also does a tremendous job.
*Kiva Microfunds (or Kiva.org) provides a way to support microloans to emerging entrepreneurs around the world. About 80% of these loans go to women (and about 98% are repaid). Loans to women are one of the most effective ways to change lives and change communities, and we took steps a year or two back to do so through Kiva.
*I gave two gallons of blood before Addison’s Disease disqualified me at the age of 54. But right from the time they were infants we took our sons with us to the blood bank, and they both started giving as soon as they turned 18. BLOOD DONATIONS SAVE LIVES. What could you do that’s better than that? And at this time of year the need is especially great. Donors get over-busy, or catch a cold or flu, while snow and ice and sheer volume of traffic make for more road accidents, pushing demand up just when supply goes down. “At this festive season,” blood is needed even more. Check with the Red Cross. (Did you know that Clara Barton formed the first American Red Cross chapter in Dansville? Giving blood celebrates our local history!)
*When it’s cold, little animals die. The Finger Lakes SPCA in Bath, Chemung County SPCA near Elmira, and sister chapters all around bring them in, make them warm, and let them live. They could use your help.
*With the new administration in Washington, official assaults on the environment have risen. I have a long-standing membership with the National Audubon Society. Consider joining Audubon or one of the other big organizations fighting for our earth and our future: Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, Earthwatch, and more.
*Hate groups are celebrating Christmas by ramping up their activities. Think about supporting the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, American Civil Liberties Union, Anti-Defamation League, or another nationwide group fighting against bigotry.
*Imagine what it would be like being hospitalized over this season, or having hospitalized loved ones. Such services as Fisher House and Ronald McDonald House stay on the job, and always have too much job to do. Gifts help.
*Charles Dickens, who knew grinding childhood poverty first-hand, wrote, “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, remembering his life in a concentration camp, wrote, “When you’re cold, don’t expect sympathy from someone who’s warm.” We can all do better than that. Christmas isn’t the only time we give. But we rarely find a better reminder.
*(This blog first appeared in last year’s Christmas season, and has been lightly edited.)

Baby Boom Christmas — Do YOU Remember?

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Christmas is a lot of things to a lot of people, but for almost everyone Christmas includes nostalgia and memories. Sometimes they’re very profound, and sometimes silly and trivial… but even those can be heart-gripping.

Not too many of us actually remember the one-horse open sleigh days, but even memories from “modern times” can seem like another world. For instance, back in the Baby Boom of the 1950s and 1950s…

*You might have gone shopping at M. Cohn & Sons on Liberty Street in Bath, where “Kaynee Pigskin Parade Coordinates rate a rousing cheer” for scoring “another fashion goal with the boys!” These Coordinates were “ivy-neat,” and indeed the young lad in the ad looks like he belongs at Princeton, with jacket, flat cap, and knife-cut creases on his slacks.

*You might find a Dacron blouse and tweed skirt for $12.98 at Mary Kirkland Shoppe in Painted Post, and you might hope that they made you look as elegant as the ecstatic lady in the ad.

*To get the most from your new blouse and skirt you might need Spirella Foundations, custom-made for each individual, measurements taken in the privacy of your home by Mrs. Bertha Crippen of Bath. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, don’t worry about it. You probably weren’t there anyway.

*You might be getting a new hi-fi phonograph from W. T. Grant (in Bath and elsewhere), with four speeds, two speakers, and a hefty price tag of $49.95 (but with convenient terms and no down payment).

*You might be heading out to shop A&P for Holiday Foods and a Wide Selection of Festive Money-Savers, including Butterball and Blue Ribbon oven-ready turkeys at 36 cents a pound.

*You (or your mother) might be playing the Acme Cross-Out Game, with 3500 prizes worth $35,000! Mrs. Doris Doloisio of Cortland and Mrs. Elizabeth Anderson of Canandaigua each won mink stoles!

*If you saved up a hundred dollars in your Christmas Club account, you could make your Christmas “the merriest ever!”

*You could be financing your Christmas shopping by saving Triple-S Blue Stamps from Grand Union (turkeys 39 cents a pound), or with S&H Green Stamps from Cohn’s.

*You might be hoping for a Western Flyer bicycle from Western Auto… maybe accessorized with a Cadet speedometer advertised in “Boys Life.”

*You might be enjoying “the light refreshment” of soda (In glass bottles! Made with cane sugar!) from Pepsi-Cola Elmira Bottling Co., Inc.

*You might be shopping at Rockwell’s in Corning, or at Iszard’s in Elmira, or at Agway almost anywhere.

*You might be arranging special gifts for the milkman and the paper boy.

*You might be haunting the newsstand for “Archie’s Christmas Stocking,” or for the annual Christmas issues of Uncle Scrooge, Dennis the Menace, or Sugar and Spike.

*You might have ordered “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens from the Arrow Book Club, and you might be sweating out a delivery before school lets out.

*You might be hoping to start vacation early with a snow day, and guarantee a white Christmas. What do YOU remember?

Dollhouses and Miniatures — A Sign of Christmas

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Christmas comes, we are reliably informed, but once a year. And with it comes the annual holiday show of dollhouses, miniatures, and model trains at Curtiss Museum. I was there a week or so back, so now I’ve seen twenty shows in a row.

It all started back in the “old museum,” the former Hammondsport Academy on Lake and Main Streets. Someone decided that they should do something a little different and reach out to another audience. Someone came up with the thought of a dollhouse show, and some space was made, and a new holiday tradition was born.

In another building and another century, the show is bigger than it was both in numbers and in concept. Model trains have long been part of Christmas, and several very nice layouts are scattered through the exhibit space. One of them pretty much fills the cupola from Glenn Curtiss’s house.

A long-time favorite is a huge sawmill layout, taking pride of place in the lobby. Miniatures fit in with dollhouses and model trains, but they take a different tack. Miniaturists strive to recreate a scene… perhaps an imaginary one… and draw you into their world. Another miniature in the show is a working carousel. “Best of Show,” in my personal opinion, is Mickie Vollmer’s deliriously busy barnyard scene. (Joyce likes Mickie’s library best.) We also find miniature soldiers on exhibit.

The dollhouses run the gamut from light “art” pieces, designed for adults to admire, to massive carpenter-built playthings that have cheerfully survived the enthusiasms of generations of children. Some are commercial products, each rivetingly familiar to one generation of girls or another. There’s even a nineteenth-century Bliss house, one of the first mass-produced dollhouses.

Christmas to me is a blend of the comfortingly familiar on one hand, and the excitingly new on the other. Jim Sladish’s model train layout is an old friend, and so is a barn built by Dick Hamilton. Dick and Myrtle both passed away since last year’s show.

Something new calls out for attention right by the admissions desk. It’s a roadside diner, with cars in the parking lot, hot dogs on the grill, and customers at the counter.

I saw former Hammondsport art teacher Bob Magee at the show, and he showed me a special offering of his own. When Randy Kuhl was in Congress he asked Bob to create a large ornament for a White House Christmas tree representing all 435 House districts. Bob’s globe shows Glenn Curtiss, grapes, and glassblowers. He wrote the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which quickly unearthed it and lent it for the exhibit.

This special exhibit segues nicely into some of the museum’s permanent exhibits. A one-horse open sleigh is festively decorated, and the miniatures slide into a large selection of antique toys and dolls – not to mention that there are plenty of model airplanes, of course.

As far as I’m concerned, the miniatures show is an integral part of the holidays. Take a look, and see if you think so too.

Holiday Miniatures Show Returns to Curtiss Museum

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Twenty-four. The number of Christmas Eve. The number of days “until,” once December starts. The number of little windows on the Advent calendar, until the big one is opened.
Twenty-four. The number of miniatures shows at the Curtiss Museum, ushering in the holiday season. It’s part of our regional holiday. People who were not year born when the first show opened (in the “old” museum) can now bring their children.
That original show was a dollhouse show, but now the exhibit also includes models, miniatures, and antique toys and dolls.
Roll into the lobby, for instance, and you’re seized by Lanny Wensch’s large sawmill operation, circled (ovaled?) by a garden-scale railroad. To its left is Jim Sladish’s little Christmas village, with its two tracks of trains and Santa sleigh circling overhead. To the sawmill’s right is one of the late Carroll Burdick’s miniature carousels, music and all.
Each of these is operational; the trains run, the carousel circles, Santa’s sleigh flies, the sawmill equipment does its thing. They also show some of the range of this exhibit. The little stores and houses of the Christmas village are mostly available commercially, as of course are the trains. Likewise the sawmill’s big train and tiny engines are commercial products, but the sawmill and its setting are home-built. There’s also some repurposing. The burly millworkers started out in life as action figures of the “He-Man” type. The carousel, at the other end of the range, was largely constructed from scratch.
Range and variety are hallmarks of the show. Still in the lobby a case of large electric trains sits next to a case of paper dolls from the 1920s. A few steps away are a fleet of die-cast airplanes, and an enthralling n-gauge model railroad layout.
Out of the lobby into the main museum are case after case of dollhouses – some commercially made, some scratch-built, some assembled from kits, and some “kit-bashed” – using the kits as starting points, and going wild from there. Some are actually toys, others are works of artisanship, some are perpetual-motion hobbies, always improving but never quite finished. Many are homes, some are farms, some are stores.
And some are not true dollhouses. These are the room boxes, about the size of the proverbial breadbox. Room boxes are artisinal creations, usually in fact focusing on a single room, be it hat shop, colonial kitchen, or comfy living room.
Some of the doll houses and miniatures go back to the 19th century. Others were being finished just as the exhibit case was closed.
Running the gamut from mid-19th century to mid-20th century is a substantial exhibit of toys and dolls (see if you can find Donald Duck, and Charlie McCarthy). Our family exhibits a pressed-board toy store – a gift to my father, in the Great Depression. There are the inevitable war toys, the toy airplanes, the blocks and bowling pins. Take a look at Eva Stickler’s 19th-century doll collection. She cut material from her own dresses to make dresses for her dolls.
Of course you can always wander away to look at the airplanes, motorcycles, workshop, and other permanent museum features. But before you can do that, see if you can find:
*Will Parker’s crystal-laden railroad layout.
*Two cardstock cathedrals.
*Several dollhouses from Marie Rockwell’s collection.
*Miniatures made from toothpicks.
*Toy cars from famous movies and TV shows.
*Creations by Mickie Vollmer, who’s also operating the museum’s upcoming dollhouse and miniatures vendor show.
*A antique-Buick kiddie car, lent by Guy Bennett Jr.
*An original Studebaker sleigh – just waiting for Santa Claus!

Signs of the Season

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As we’re here at Christmas and holiday season, most of us remember holidays gone by… when the kids were little, or when WE were little. Maybe we always enjoyed visiting department stores that no longer exist. We enjoyed TV specials that no one bothers to show. We enjoyed family and friends who are no longer with us.
A lot of our Christmas “feeling” takes us back – “just like the ones I used to know.” But it seems to me that we also always want to say fresh… to explore new experiences, and maybe add them to our list of traditions as well. So herewith are some signs and experiences of the season. Some have already gone by for THIS season, so for heaven’s sake check before dashing through the snow. Print this off, and save it for an early start next year.
*Star over Bath. We moved into Bath village on New Year’s Eve of 1995. We’d never lived in the Southern Tier before, and after sunset we asked: what’s that up on the hill? We unpacked the binoculars, and verified what we’d suspected. A fine bright Christmas star shines over Bath each night, beaming brightly from Mossy Bank. What an elegant sign of Christmas.
*Community Christmas celebrations. Many of our towns and cities have special nights or weekends when they gather and enjoy the season. Yes, the merchants are trying to stimulate business. But the streets, parks, and squares are lighted and decorated. Bells ring, and carolers sing. Hot chocolate flows, library ladies read to kids, fire trucks give rides, and neighbors find each other in the dark. Try Sparkle of Christmas (Corning), Christmas in the Park (Hammondsport), Spirit of Christmas (Bath), Dickens of a Christmas (Wellsboro), Starshine (Penn Yan), A Touch of Christmas (Dundee)… they go ever on and on.
*Salvation Army bell ringers. It’s COLD out there! If it’s cold for us as we dart between car door and store door, how cold is it for those bell ringers standing there hour after hour? How cold is it for homeless kids, night after night? Pitch in, and pitch into the pot. Somebody needs the help. It might be somebody you know… if not this year, then maybe next.
*Menorah collection. Growing up in Rhode Island, we would often visit the shopping center at Garden City during Christmas season. With a little wheedling, our parents could be convinced to drive toward home through the surrounding urban/suburban neighborhoods to see the Christmas lights. Cruising comfortably along enjoying lights in the darkness, we especially enjoyed noticing those homes which instead of (or in addition to) Christmas lights had a lighted Menorah celebrating Chanukah. Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester exhibits the 200-piece Lewis menorah collection. Some are works of fine art, while others are crude pieces painstakingly formed in poverty, and perhaps in secrecy. Some are cheap commercial products. Some are whimsical, some are tiny, some are huge. As a general rule the collection is open for view without admission during business hours year-round, but check ahead, especially being aware to avoid services and Jewish holidays.
*A lane of Christmas trees. On Clara Barton Street in Dansville, between the Lutheran and Episcopal churches, community groups have decorated two rows of living Christmas trees that line a walkway between the two buildings. It’s like strolling your way through Christmas.
*A houseful of trees. Granger Homestead in Canandaigua hosts a Festival of Trees each year. The mansion is crammed with dozens of trees, from huge ones to tabletoppers, decorated traditionally or avant-garde. Anything goes, and you can pretty much guarantee the Christmas mood by the time you leave. Tioga County Historical Society in Owego has a similar O Tannenbaum event.
*Rooms full of toys. Tioga County Historical Society also has an annual toy exhibit, this year all toys that could have been found in or before 1914, to honor the society’s centennial. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport has its annual show of dollhouses, miniatures, antique dolls, and antique toys. The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester has a gigantic collection of playthings, all excitingly presented.
*City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style. Even if you’re not actually shopping, take some time to stroll the colorful streets, peeking in the windows to see the displays. Some of our favorites are Market Street in Corning, Main Street in Wellsboro (with its wreath-hung gaslights), Main Street in Canandaigua, the River Row in Owego, and Main Street in Penn Yan.
*Live it up at the library. Most of our libraries have kid-oriented activities and story times for the holidays, not to mention videos and books… ESPECIALLY books about Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and other aspects of the season that often get short shrift. Libraries are warm in the cold weather. They’re relaxed, they’re friendly, they welcome kids, and they don’t cost a dime.
*Something different. We’ve enjoyed Kwanzaa activities at Rochester Museum and Science Center… sometimes there are other ethnically-centered celebrations as well. Not to mention caroling Tesla coils, and a holiday laser show.
*Holy night. One place you can find the spirit of Christmas is church. We’ve attended festivals of lessons and carols in Horseheads and in Bath. Caroling trips. Living nativities. Midnight masses. Christmas Eve services. Every fellowship has its own traditions, and its own new ideas. The doors are open, the welcome’s warm, and just like the library, it doesn’t cost a dime.