I’ve visited Ives Run Recreation Area on Hammond Lake just northeast of Wellsboro for years. It is my go-to place for resetting my daily life. This day, I was surprised to see they had planted whole fields with wildflowers! Not only were the black-eyed Susans breathtaking, but when the yellow petals fell away, the granivorous (seed-eating) songbirds like the goldfinch enjoyed the nutritious seed heads throughout the autumn and winter. Those US Army Corps of Engineers folks made a nirvana for me and them!

“The Art of a Good Life” by Cindy Davis Meixel. For three decades, Paul Bozzo taught students to stretch their artistic limits—now he’s reinventing himself.

This issue also features An Ode to Mansfield, Creating Champions in Geneva, and Volunteering to Take the Heat in NY.

Our September 2026 issue was made possible with the support of the follow advertisers:

Full Page Advertisers: Black Creek Enterprises, Commonwealth University-Mansfield, Guthrie, LECOM Event Center, and Wellsboro Equipment

Two-Thirds Page Advertiser: Corning’s Gaffer District

Half-Page Advertisers: C&N, Centralus Health, Famous Brands, Hoover Clothing Store, Kennedy Valve, Plum Point Lodge, and Rynone Kitchen and Bath

One-Third Page Advertisers: Endless Mountain Music Festival and Otto Bookstore

Quarter-Page Advertisers: Abma’s Heating and Cooling, Barber’s Firearms, Bradley Farms, Carpenter’s Shop, Draper’s Honey, Hamilton Gibson, Hoover Hardware, Lakewood Vineyards, Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge, Skeeter’s Pit BBQ, and Wolfe’s General Store

Eighth-Page Advertisers: AJ’s Hair & Makeup, Bradford County Tourism and Promotion Agency, Classic Tile Imports, Cobwebs to Crystals, CS Sports, Denney Electric Supply, Eddie’s Restaurant, Emerge Healing Arts and Spa, Endless Mountains Brace and Mobility, Erlacher Glass Shop, From the Farm, Hamilton Gibson, Horseheads Mill Street Market, Liberty Book Shop, Mossy Edge Waterscapes, Mountain Valley Realty, MVR Vacation Rentals, Nessmuk’s Sporting Goods, Patterson Farms, Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, Pop’s Culture Shoppe, Seneca Lodge, Short’s Oil and Propane, Superior Paint and Epoxy, Threadbare Farm Market, Troy Sale Barn, Troy Vet Clinic, Watkins Glen Chamber of Commerce, and Wooly Minded

Twelfth-Page Advertisers: Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center, Gold Key Equipment & Service, Morris Chair Shop, and Pag-Omar Farms Market

Twenty-Fourth-Page Advertisers: C&J Portage & Boilers, Dunkin Donuts, Jon’s Hydraulics, and Kings Coal

Please let them know you’ve seen their ad in our issue! We know they appreciate it as much as we do.

You can read this issue online here at Substack now, visit https://issuu.com/mountainhome/docs/mountain_home_september_2026 to see it in its full form, or download it here:

September 2026

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White tents give a festival atmosphere at the Hellstrom Boathouse on Blue Heron Lane, just east of Geneva, for the Challenge on the Canal. Inside the boathouse, flanked by folks moving rowing shells to the dock, two young women hug. One asks, “How are you doing out in the big world?”

This race on October 25, 2025, the last of the season for the Hobart and William Smith Colleges, brings alums back to see former teammates and cheer them on. The boathouse, on the Cayuga-Seneca Canal, is shared by Hobart men’s college and William Smith women’s college, known collectively as the Colleges of Geneva. One side of the supersized garage space holds the Statesmen’s equipment and the other holds the Herons’.

The two teams also share Paul Bugenhagen as director of rowing. He coached the Statesmen to twelve consecutive Liberty League Championships since being hired as their head coach in 2011, and became the William Smith head coach, too, in 2020. He’d previously led Bucknell to championship status. His coaching is now solely focused on the Herons. And he’s getting results. He calls the process of developing a championship team “climbing the mountain.”

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“Building a team is so much fun. Getting to see them lean into who they’re becoming is really enjoyable,” he explains. “Life at the top of the mountain doesn’t suck, but it’s not as interesting.” The Herons just finished second in the Head of the Charles in Boston, the program’s best.

Paul heads to the coach launch, a motorized boat designed to keep pace with racing shells while minimizing disruptive wakes on the water. “This is a sport that doesn’t like high winds,” Paul explains. “So, the canal is golden.” It provides more than six miles of ideal conditions for the teams, ensuring more regular practices. When the conditions are right, they also train on Seneca Lake.

As they head east and downstream, a bald eagle soars toward them. A blue heron soon follows. Obviously, these are signs. The rowers pass, heading to where they’ll wait their turn for the 4.4 K course that finishes in front of the boathouse where the crowd awaits.

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Geneva sits at the north tip top of Seneca Lake. The 170-acre residential campus is stunning for its location and Jacobean Gothic architecture. It owes its existence and location to John Henry Hobart, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, who passed through in 1818 and thought it would be a good spot for a college. The residents helped raise money to build Geneva Hall in 1822, which is still in use as a dormitory.

William Smith, a wealthy local who’d been influenced by pioneering suffragists, took up the cause of higher education for women. Hobart tried to convince him to donate to his college, which ironically (because she’d been admitted as a prank) had produced the first woman to earn a medical degree, Elizabeth Blackwell, who in 1849 graduated first in her class.

But William Smith held firm to his mission to educate women comprehensively, not just vocationally—to teach them to climb their mountains. In 1906, he turned over a sizeable endowment to Hobart’s trustees to create a college for women, as part of Hobart, that would be nondenominational, have a separate campus, but share the faculty, administration, and library. William Smith College officially opened its doors in 1908. This relationship continued until 1943 when William Smith became an equal independent college.

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In 1982, the modern rowing program began, and William Smith achieved varsity status in the late 1990s. When Paul first started working there, the big, beautiful boathouse didn’t exist. “We had four portapotties and a barn,” he laughs. They had to ERG (do indoor training) on campus. But now the boathouse, renovated in 2022, hosts fans who cheer the Herons on to win all five events in which they compete at this year’s Challenge on the Canal.

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The season starts up again in March, and 2026 has been a highwater spring, with debris from the lake floating in the canal. They’ve had to repair boats. As Paul says, “Every spring brings its own adventures,” and one of the rowers adds, “The blizzard!” They laugh.

Before they get on the water today, at 5 p.m. April 23, Paul discusses the weekend schedule, which includes away races and exams. He’ll proctor exams, but the students need to arrange things with their professors. He says if they have an early Monday exam to try to reschedule it, but reminds them, “If you have to get up and take an 8 a.m. exam Monday, you’ve done harder things.”

They’ve had four races already and currently rank number one in the Liberty League. This is a recovery day. They should work on relaxation but not lose their edge. Today Cheyenne Muldowney sits beside him, a junior who normally has the first seat in the Varsity 8. She raced twice this spring before injuring her back. Her rowing season is over, so she’s learning about coaching. They head to the lake to avoid debris and because, as Paul says, the conditions are “not oceanic.” It’s a rare day with no wind and temps in the low sixties.

On the megaphone, Paul instructs, “Make this more about the lat and elbow. Not pressure on the fingers, biceps. Sending the boat, sending the boat.” As they glide across the water below the Belhurst Castle, it could be a scene in a film. Then he turns to Cheyenne and says, “So much of coaching is about testing assumptions.”

During a break, when the women sing “Happy Birthday” to a teammate, Cheyenne says what she likes best about rowing is “the person it made me into.” She’d done soccer and horseback riding, but rowing was different. “I had to learn to be coachable.” Tuning into each other and the boat is the difference between a good team and a great team.

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The Herons made it further up the mountain this season. They were number one in the Liberty League, with the Varsity 8—made up of Lizzy Whitney, Linnea Darius, Kate Abdalla, Raya Schwartz, Alessandra Gialanella, Aubrey Ryan, Eden Grim, Leah Wiebe, and Meghan Bartholomay—being named crew of the year, and Head Coach Paul Bugenhagen and Assistant Coach Callista Crisonino earning Coaching Staff of the Year honors. William Smith also earned bronze medals at the New York State Championships, finishing behind two Division I programs, and placed sixth at the National Invitational Rowing Championships in a field featuring fourteen nationally ranked crews.

What’s next? One change is that Linnea Darius, who graduated in June, will be the new assistant coach. She’d coached high school rowers in DC but hadn’t planned on getting back into it. “As a biology major, I was thinking about finding a position doing research but didn’t have any solid plans post-graduation,” she says. Then Paul talked to her about the team’s growth during the past few years and how their visions for the team were aligned.

^{Your Moment of Zen: The William Smith Herons training on Seneca Lake with Coach Paul Bugenhagen. (Lilace Mellin Guignard)}

After lots of conversations and hard thinking, she ultimately decided she “couldn’t imagine my life without the sport of rowing.”

“I thought about all of the communication, leadership, and organizational skills that I could learn from coaching…with Paul as a mentor and boss,” Linnea continues. “Being a collegiate athlete at William Smith changed my life and made me the confidant, capable woman that I am today. I took the job because I wanted to continue to grow personally with the team and be a part of a program that fosters a community of hard working, dedicated, and supportive women.

And students don’t have to have been rowers in high school to participate. Students can sign up for the Learn to Row class and be taught the basics. Some are even invited to join the team. For those who already row, there’s a recruiting survey that rising juniors and seniors who row can fill out. Go to @heron_rowing on Instagram and click the link in their bio. Or visit hwsathletics.com/sports/womens-crew.

“Rowing is an incredibly unique sport that requires teamwork and an immense amount of physical fitness and mental toughness,” explains Linnea. “There were times when Paul had more belief in our success than we did in ourselves. It is rare to find a coach who is so invested in a team, not just for a result in a race, but for the continuous improvement of each athlete.”

In this way, Paul helps continue William Smith’s vision and prepares women to be champions in their own lives.

Anyone who’s ever lit a match—or taken a deep breath this summer—knows how quickly a fire can leap from offering warmth, food, and fun into potential disaster. Fortunately, thanks to Benjamin Franklin, most of the time the day can be saved with a 911 call. In honor of National Firefighter Appreciation Month, a.k.a. September, we’re peeking behind the scenes and finding multiple reasons to thank our local first responders.

When we were still Colonials, we learned this the hard way. Several years after a ship fire spread to a wharf, taking out several warehouses and nearby homes, the famous Philadelphia printer co-organized the first group of volunteer fire fighters in Philadelphia in December 1736. Officially called the “Union Fire Company,” the twenty-six firemen, who met monthly to study firefighting techniques, were nicknamed “The Bucket Brigade” for the wood and leather pails each member brought with them.

Even today, more than two-thirds of the nation’s firefighters are volunteers. We might think paid firefighters spend their time between calls inventing chili recipes, sliding down the fire pole, and drinking stale coffee, but they’ve got a plethora of responsibilities from fire safety inspections and educating the public to inventory, maintenance, administrative work, and in-service training.

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Tiff Ho worked in three fire companies in the greater Ithaca area, including as a paid firefighter in the City of Ithaca, then as fire chief in the nearby hamlet of Varna. She first volunteered when she was a PhD student at Cornell University. When she realized she didn’t want to be a scientist, she ended those studies with a Master’s degree, considered other career options, and turned to being a firefighter full-time.

“I thought that would be pretty fun,” she says, then plunged into another round of preparatory classes.

Paid firefighters have to take a civil service test, then do weekly “tours.”

“Typically, you work two ten-hour days, then two fourteen-hour nights, then you have two days off,” Tiff says. Each tour includes at least one training, work on truck maintenance, daily truck equipment checks, teaching fire safety, and, oh yeah, fighting fires.

“You’re encouraged to stay in shape, so all the [municipal] fire stations have a gym,” Tiff adds.

Volunteers have those same responsibilities (minus the chili and the gym). Whether at home or at work, they’ve committed to dropping whatever they’re doing to attend an emergency whenever needed. Often they’re alerted by a unique cell phone ring tone—like the “Iamresponding”[note: you have to say this like it’s all one word] app used by the Hector-based VLH Fire Company. First responders immediately know the nature of the emergency, who else is responding, where they are, and what equipment is needed.

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Training is on-going. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years, and I’ve got sixteen hours of training so far this year,” says VLH Fire Chief Mike Hicks, who holds the area record for the most emergency responses.

The range of emergencies might be as simple as a wind-felled tree blocking a road or a “lift-assist” (fallen person needs help getting up but is otherwise okay), or a more complex one like a motor vehicle accident with spilled gasoline and injuries, or a disaster requiring the help of every available person and fire company in a fifty-mile radius, like the epic fire in the village of Ovid in January 2025 that destroyed a supermarket, five other businesses, and the eleven apartments above them.

That fire raged through an extremely cold night, testing the limits of area water systems and showcasing the common problem shared with the earliest firefighters—how to get water to a blaze. Eighteenth-century municipal water ran through an assemblage of hollowed-out logs and clay and lead pipes, much as the ancient Romans engineered more than two millennia earlier. At intervals, these were drilled through and stoppered with wood bungs, called “fire plugs,” a phrase still used as a synonym for fire hydrants.

Which are actually very different. Philadelphia engineer Frederick Graff in 1801 designed a sturdy, above-ground cast-iron hydrant that didn’t involve the emergency excavation of a street. Several decades later, Seneca Falls inventor Birdsill Holly invented a “dry barrel” hydrant that could be used in below-freezing temperatures. Many regional municipalities—even those across the country and internationally—use hydrants manufactured locally at Elmira’s Kennedy Valve.

After the proven usefulness of those nineteenth-century bucket brigades, volunteer companies were formed in other municipalities. Early firefighters had a unique problem transporting firefighters and equipment—the horses pulling the equipment have an inbred panic response to fire. For reasons maybe unknown to humans, the calming presence of Dalmatians soothed the horses, so the spotted dogs were often seen as firehouse mascots.

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However they arrive, firefighters are greeted with relief by neighbors in distress. “We take a lot of pride in helping,” Mike says. “If a firefighter is thanked, it means a lot.”

All those years ago, Mike was asked, “You live here and you’re not a fireman?” He immediately joined up. And discovered, “The brotherhood in the fire service is unbelievable. We’ll help each other with anything from construction to bail money.” He recently asked that question of two others, now training to be firefighters.

“Typically you go through a basic eighty-eight-hour course in exterior firefighting and hazmat. The next level, interior firefighting operations, adds another fifty hours. To drive the trucks will take a twenty-four-hour class in truck safety, and there’s another twenty-four-hour class in using the fire pumps. Tonight we have five guys out taking a course in water rescue. Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) is about 120 hours of training.”

Appreciation doesn’t end with September. October—when many start burning wood to keep the house warm—is National Fire Prevention Month. Many companies use this time to recruit more firefighters. Your help is needed. Offer.

When my wife Teresa Banik Capuzzo and I moved to her hometown of Wellsboro and started Mountain Home magazine in 2005, we had no idea what our “mom-and-pop” magazine would become in your hands. We met at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Teresa was Philadelphia magazine’s restaurant critic, and I was a New York Times bestselling author who’d written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Sports Illustrated, but the talent of the writers and artists in the Twin Tiers and beyond awed and humbled us.

Since 2007, when Mountain Home won our first batch of Keystone Awards from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, we’ve won 176 awards for the best journalism in the state including eleven for our work in 2025. The magazine is “Free as the Wind” because your talent is the spring flood. A big thank you to:

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Karin Knaus, whose August story about Tropical Storm Debby’s devastation of Westfield, “A Flood of Love and Hope,” won first place in the News Feature category, chosen for its “timeliness, thoroughness, and the writer’s enterprise and initiative in explaining the event.”

Karey Solomon, who won first place in the Lifestyle/Entertainment Beat for a collection of stories covering our art beat including covers about Elmira’s Arnot Art Museum and Finger Lakes painter Gina Pfleegor.

Maggie Barnes, for once again putting readers and judges in stitches and bringing home first place in the Column category for her column Glory Hill Diaries.

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Our Managing Editor Gayle Morrow, who brought home honorable mention in the Column category for her Mother Earth musings, and also took first place in Business or Consumer Story for the June cover, “The Forest and the Trees,” on the rebuilding of Cummings Lumber after their fire.

Our Associate Editor Lilace Guignard, who took an honorable mention in Business and Consumer Story for the July cover story “On the Waterfront” that took us on a tour of good food with great views across our Pennsylvania-New York borderlands. She also took honorable mention in Sports/Outdoor Column for her outdoor column, Nessmuking About, and first place for feature story for “Going Off Script,” her February cover story on marriages that got their start on stage at the Tioga County, Pennsylvania, community theater Hamilton-Gibson.

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David O’Reilly, our former colleague at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he traveled the world as religion writer and met two Popes and the Dalai Lama, who took second place for feature stories with his in-depth investigation into the marvelous Tiffany windows and art in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Wellsboro. His story “The Lost Trail of Tiffany” even resulted in a Tiffany expert coming from Florida to tour the sanctuary with him.

Special thanks to our photographers. Our goal is to cover the good, the true, and the beautiful. We simply couldn’t carry that water without the talents of Curt Weinhold, who won first place in feature photo for his Pennsylvania Lumber Museum photo “Sleigh Bells and Train Whistles,” and Bernadette Chiaramonte, whose photo of the Wellsboro Jailhouse Elm, “Sentry of Centuries,” in the January Back of the Mountain took honorable mention. Farewell fair elm. And thank you dear Mountain Home readers for twenty years of sharing and supporting our talented writers and artists in these pages.

Fashion icon Tommy Hilfiger didn’t go to college, but in 1977 the Elmira native got an education—a painful one—about the business of fashion. After a promising start, his new chain of clothing stores, called People’s Place, plunged into bankruptcy. He was twenty-five.

Now seventy-five, Tommy was back in the blue-collar manufacturing town of his youth because he wants aspiring young fashion entrepreneurs to avoid his mistakes.

To that end, in 2021, he lent his name to the creation of the Tommy Hilfiger Fashion Business School at Elmira College. Here, students learn not design but marketing and merchandising—essential knowledge, he insists, for anyone aspiring to a management career in the apparel industry. Five years later he was back to open a new Tommy Hilfiger-inspired store—one like no other. Situated on the ground floor of the EC Campus Center, it features clothing and merchandise targeted to student tastes and budgets. The name—Tommy Hilfiger Fashion Business School People’s Place—is a nod to the original People’s Place, but this version aims to provide a hands-on learning experience for students in the college’s thriving fashion business program.

“You can only learn so much in a classroom,” Tommy explains. “Giving students first-hand experience on the selling floor, getting to know the product, understanding the needs of the consumer, and having an overall understanding of fashion is the goal.”

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Tommy’s now fabled career began in the fall of 1969, when, at eighteen and a high school senior, he and his friend Larry Stemerman played hooky to tour some hip clothing shops in Elmira and neighboring towns.

“Why don’t we open a store?” Larry wondered afterward, and soon they had rented a cavernous empty basement at the local Midtown Plaza and called it People’s Place. (Rent was fifty dollars a month.) They painted the walls black, Tommy hung jeans from the ceiling, and on December 1, their opening day, they sold out their entire inventory. Within a few weeks they were grossing five hundred dollars a day.

One store led to another, and by the mid-seventies People’s Place was a thriving chain in towns and cities across upstate New York. But when tie-dye and bell-bottoms fell out of fashion, the boys overstocked on the disco “glam and glitter” look then trending in New York City. Alas, glam didn’t fly in upstate New York, and Tommy and his pals found themselves stuck with merchandise they couldn’t sell and debts they couldn’t pay. (See Mountain Home, September 2022 for more on Tommy’s story.)

“A business that over-expands usually takes a tumble,” Tommy says during an April interview at Elmira College. He’s wearing an open-collared shirt and a navy zip-up sweater under a dark blazer. His close-fitting slacks are stylish, just like those dress sneakers. Yes, Tommy knows what looks good. But an eye for style, he insists, is not enough to sustain a fashion career.

“It was one of the best learning experiences of my career,” he says of the early failure. “It forced me to focus on the business mechanics of running a fashion business…I call it my MBA.”

The lesson taught him well. Global retail sales of Tommy Hilfiger products now exceed $9 billion annually, and he and his wife, Dee Ocleppo, own a sprawling waterfront mansion on Palm Beach’s “billionaire row.”

In the lobby of the Campus Center, dozens of students, faculty, and administrators applaud his arrival. From the podium, board of trustees’ chair George Winner Jr. jokes that he’s probably the only person in the room who was a customer of the original People’s Place. Retiring Elmira College president Charles “Chuck” Lindsay hails the new store as “the latest innovation” in the college’s commitment to career-oriented “experiential learning.” Then Tommy steps to the podium.

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“Elmira is where the journey began,” he tells the crowd. “I opened People’s Place six blocks from here and sold bell-bottom jeans. I had a dream of building my own brand, and people thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. But I had a dream, and I manifested it.” The new store will be a “living classroom where students are going to experience and learn every aspect of the business.”

Then it’s over to the store itself, where he takes giant scissors to a ribbon stretched across the door, and—nearly five decades after his bankruptcy—declares this People’s Place “open for business.”

Working at the store “was pretty fun,” says David Lee, twenty-one, who graduated in May. “If I saw somebody in the hall, I’d start dancing to get their attention and then invite them to check out the room and show them around.”

Call it fun, or call it marketing.

Tommy’s sister, Betsy, who lives close by and is keeper of much of his early memorabilia, has even loaned the original bronze cash register from the first People’s Place. And taped to a wall nearby are facsimiles of the first store’s earliest advertising. “A Wonderful Selection for Guys and Chicks: BELL BOTTOMS. LEATHER GOODS,” reads one. “Every Body wants to get into OUR PANTS,” reads another.

Betsy introduces her big brother to Dion Browne (See Mountain Home, May 2025 for Dion’s mural work), an Elmira artist and public muralist who’s come bearing a gift: he’s made a red and white rectangle of stained glass reminiscent of the famous Tommy Hilfiger brand logo, superimposed with four human silhouettes in black—the original logo of People’s Place.

“Even before I came to Elmira, I was a big, big fan,” Dion, thirty-six, explains. So, when he started to learn glassmaking about two years ago, he’d decided to make this piece in tribute to their shared Elmira connection—never expecting he’d get to present it in person.

“I put one logo on top of the other. Past and present,” he says.

“I love it!” Tommy exclaims as he takes it in hand. “It’s got to go in the store.” he says. He sets it high on a shelf behind the counter.

“The fact that he was genuinely interested in the art was a treat,” Dion says afterwards.

The new store will only sell Tommy Hilfiger goods. “But we went with what we thought students wanted and could afford,” says David—items like polos, hats, t-shirts, duffel bags, and backpacks. As classes resume this fall, fashion business students will choose a manager and fill other leadership roles, then dive deeper into marketing and merchandising strategies.

“It’s all up to them,” says Alison Wolfe, professor of marketing and management and director of the Tommy Hilfiger Fashion Business School program. “They’ll be making decisions related to marketing, inventory, forecasting, budgeting, and learning profit and loss responsibility.”

It’s the kind of training that might have helped Tommy avoid some of his early mistakes.

“I’m a huge proponent of what they’re doing,” says Blake Seidel, brand manager for Christine A. Moore Millinery in New York. “They’re blending academic experience with actual store experience, and that’s really important.” Founded in 1994, the company’s rise to the top of fine American hatmaking—all handmade at their loft in Manhattan, with many selling for a thousand dollars or more—is due in equal measure, says Blake, to his wife’s dazzling designs and the firm’s shrewd marketing. (See Mountain Home, July 2024, for more on Christine.)

The two are receptive, he says, to Alison’s recent invitation to talk with fashion business students about the role of merchandising and marketing.

The fashion business school offers three areas of concentration. As part of their pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in business administration, students can undertake a concentration in fashion marketing, fashion merchandising, or a mix of both. “Fashion merchandising involves forecasting, planning, purchasing, getting the right products in the right quantities at the right time and place,” Alison explains. “You’re dealing with pricing, finance, and budgeting.

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“With fashion marketing you’re dealing with brand strategy, advertising, social media, event planning, engaging with customers, [learning] how to stimulate demand. Marketing has to be the eyes and ears for the customer on the latest fashion trends.” The fashion business program has close ties to the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, which offers graduate degrees, Alison continues, and field trips to FIT and leading fashion companies in New York are a regular part of the school’s hands-on learning approach.

Elmira College has a student population of about 800. It doesn’t share enrollment figures for individual schools and programs, but officials say the Hilfiger Fashion Business School is flourishing. “I’m seeing the kind of enthusiasm I’d hoped for,” Tommy says.

Still, choosing which track is best can be a challenge for young undergrads. “At age eighteen, nineteen, you don’t know,” Alison says. “So, we have a ‘fashion business generalist’ track that allows our students to do a potpourri in both courses. I personally think that’s the best. The generalist is a happy place.”

As is the People’s Place.

In 2012, I came out of retirement in a suburb of Boston to fill a brief emergency dean’s position at [then] Mansfield University. This is a story not only about why I’m still in Tioga County fourteen years later, but about how this amazing area has changed my life.

I’m eighty-three now, having lived and worked in five different states and travelled through forty-nine. Our family always settled in suburbs as my academic career took me to six different colleges. But the day I drove up Route 15 from Williamsport to Mansfield for my first day of work at MU should have told me something special was up. That drive is among the half dozen of the most beautiful I’ve taken in my lifetime. And when I came down Bloss Mountain and turned into Mansfield’s beautiful little valley, it took my breath away.

The very next “something special” was finding out, within two weeks, how good a college MU was. Not only did the system pay its faculty decently, the faculty attitude toward students was strikingly better than it was at the more highly rated colleges I had served. Put simply, the faculty at MU cared more about how their graduates used the degree they earned, and frequently brought alums back to campus to counsel current students on the work world they would soon enter with their particular major.

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In short order I found a church—St. James Episcopal in Mansfield—that opened its arms to newcomers. Then a member of that same church invited me to a Lions Club meeting as a potential member if I ever moved to Mansfield, and I learned how active Lions were in town in accordance with their international motto: We Serve.

My temporary job at MU changed to continual in the first year, and I was still going home to Massachusetts every other weekend, where my wife was an established family therapist. When she died in 2014 of pulmonary fibrosis, I unhesitatingly sold our house and moved to Mansfield. In the years since, I willingly became more involved in the community. But perhaps the biggest mystery of that involvement concerns Smythe Park at the center of town.

I knew early on that MU had a highly rated music department, in a region that loved its arts and music, with an assortment of annual festivals. But no music was being performed in beautiful Smythe Park. So, without any musical talent of my own, I set out to change that, with the initial sponsorship of the university, my church, and the Lions Club. Now in its twelfth year, Smythe hosts a free concert every summer featuring performances by regional or national artists representing varying types of music. 2026 brought outstanding bluegrass bands to Smythe.

But above and beyond all these welcome activities in my life, I need to talk about the people of this area, and Mansfield in particular.

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Before I came here, I had a stereotypical vision of rural life in America: that everyone knew everyone’s business, that schools and doctors didn’t compare to our suburban schools and doctors, that there was a scarcity of jobs and of activities—aside from hunting and fishing, which I did not do.

Of course, I could not have been more wrong, and very happy now to have been wrong. In this town of 3,500, I have been welcomed into a world where people respect each other’s differences and privacy; where the schools and teachers are impressive, as are my doctors; where the opportunities to be self-employed and creative in finding work are obvious; and a world in which strong, versatile women are particularly present, two of whom run Mansfield’s remarkable History Center and the impressive Partners In Progress, a widely influential nonprofit dedicated to mainstreaming disabled children and adults into respectable work. In short, the creativity, ingenuity, and work ethic of people in this area have amazed me—and in a strange and wonderful way have drawn those qualities out in me.

And the proverbial frosting on the cake is my falling in love with one of those remarkable women. We had both just lost the loves of our lives after long marriages, and hardly hoped for an encore. But we found each other in the same church and the same Lions Club. Moreover, she loved the idea of free concerts in Smythe Park and helped to get it off the ground by paying her son to make a stage that she and I have now donated to Mansfield, with the only condition that it be available for the annual free concerts.

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The town’s enthusiastic acceptance of that donated stage highlights another aspect of Mansfield—good town leaders (thank you Kathy, Melissa, and borough council) that have a realistic vision of energizing the town’s economic life, and reconnecting with the university in various activities.

There is not a dull moment in this area, compared to the constant sameness of America’s suburbs, where, without the PTA and school athletics, families are ships in the night waiting for the next job transfer.

Yes, you could argue that things don’t change much out here, too. But the changes that do occur here seem to be much more a matter of choice and individual energy, and appreciated as such.

Thank you, Mansfield (and Sylvia) for all you have given me, and drawn out of me, these past fourteen years. I am, in the best sense, in your hands.

“I feel like a kid again!”

Paul Bozzo is rediscovering his love of ceramics. It was his first passion when studying art in college nearly sixty years ago. The debossing imprints in his popular textured paintings first showed up in his ceramics when he began classes at Mansfield State College in the late ’60s. “Instead of just a nice smooth pot, I was trying to make art. That’s where I got into making textures,” he explains.

He is also trying his hand at poetry, pairing words with his photographs, and sharing the brief bursts of inspiration on his Facebook page. This has become a daily practice since April Fool’s Day, which he jokes, “seems fitting.”

The Mansfield resident and retired elementary school art teacher set another goal for himself at the start of 2026: Create eighty works of art in eighty days to commemorate his eightieth birthday. He tackled the assignment within the first eighty days of the year, well before his May birthday.

These creative challenges are a way of proving something to himself: “Hey, you gotta be proud about some things.” They’re also a way to cope with the loss of his wife of fifty-four years, Marianne, who died in November 2023.

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“I made a commitment that I had to leave the house twice a day,” Paul shares, his voice cracking with emotion. “One had to involve other people. The other one could be hiking, photographing, that kind of stuff. I’ve been pretty darn good with that. It was my way of coping. I could’ve been reclusive here in the house, but boy, am I glad I’ve been reaching out. The people I’ve met and gotten to know, it’s just an amazing thing.”

Being social was “tough at the beginning,” he says, since Marianne “was the social one” and he tended toward the shy side, but he’s thankful he pushed himself “out there.”

Paul has been buoyed by a circle of community support that includes fellow artists who have uplifted him with inspiration and cheered on his efforts.

“It’s been fun watching him evolving, opening up and changing with his art style. He’s exploring and trying new things. He’s always challenging himself,” says stained-glass artist Lydia Brennan, who first met “Mr. Bozzo” when he taught art to two of her children. “Our mediums are so different, but we’re learning from each other. We have different strengths and different areas of growth, but we can put our heads together and come up with something.”

Paul plans to take a stained-glass class with Lydia and display his ceramics at her new shop—Meitheal: A Creative Gathering. Opened in August in the former Cole’s Pharmacy at Mansfield’s main intersection, Meitheal is catty-corner to two other venues where Paul sells his works—Night & Day Coffee Cafe and Crossroads Collective.

His textured paintings, photographs, and digital collages are also promoted on Facebook, where his page has nearly 2,500 followers. “Facebook has been a neat thing,” he notes. “For me, it’s mostly three-tiered: my high school friends, my everyday friends, and my former students. That’s why I have such a big following—all the kids.” He estimates he knew 4,500 youngsters from his thirty-one years teaching at Mansfield’s Warren L. Miller Elementary School.

An Artist in the Making

Paul’s childhood was spent in Port Allegany where the “quiet kid” was “either building with Lincoln Logs or American Bricks, a precursor to Legos, but they didn’t hook together. I built and rebuilt, designed and redesigned to solve various building challenges with those bricks. I think that was early training for my art explorations. When I got to fourth grade, I found myself sketching or drawing in my tablets or on paper every day.”

Influenced by Walter Cronkite’s You Are There radio and TV series, he found himself “drawing a lot of airplanes and Army tanks, but then I got into squirrely things like underground caverns; maybe they’d be stockpiled with something or the other. One year, I was building my own Army, Navy, and Air Force with sketching. I was also fascinated by an Erector set one of my teachers had. I guess I was always some kind of maker or builder.”

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Another structure—giant sandstone boulders, known to Port Allegany residents as The Rocks, beckoned exploration.

“We had a treasure up in the hills, and probably third to sixth grades, most summers, we’d hike up there two or three times a week,” he recalls. “The Rocks were formations, outcroppings probably pushed there by the glaciers. One was as big as a house. Another one, we called Bird Rock, had an exquisite carving of a bird. As kids, it was just awesome. Once we got close, there was this natural spring, and on a hot summer day, you had all the fresh, cold water you wanted. We’d split up and play ‘Cowboys & Indians,’ of course. There was also an ice cave; you could go all the way through it. It was cool in there. The biggest rock had a cave that went back quite a ways, and that was called Deadman’s Cave. It was such a fixture of the community that in second grade the teacher in the school did an all-day excursion up and back.

“My goal at the age of seventy was to get back to The Rocks,” he adds. After two attempts with high school buddies, he achieved that, and found it is now on private property.

Paul says he’s still in contact with friends from his youth. “We all go to the reunions still, and we all say how lucky we were to grow up in a small town like that,” he reflects.

One big challenge during his teen years was an athletic injury that landed him in a full-body cast for a couple months. Early in his sophomore year, he hurt his back playing in a football game, but x-rays of the injury were not properly diagnosed. Months later in gym class, while twisting to toss a volleyball, he “heard a pop.” A vertebrae connection had been broken, requiring spinal fusion surgery in the fall of his junior year. He received home tutoring in his full-body cast.

“I never got to play football again, and that was my favorite thing,” he laments. “I was able to compete in track and basketball in my senior year. Sports were kinda big. They kept a lot of us involved in school.”

Education and Romance

His next pivot related to college. Although interested in the arts, Paul was unaware of the possibility of being an artist. “I didn’t even know what an artist was,” he says. “I can’t remember any art teachers discussing any artists.”

His father and grandfather were engineers in the glass industry which, at the time, was thriving in Port Allegany due to the area being rich in sandstone.

“I was interested in going into the arts, but my father, the engineer, didn’t think that was a good course, so the compromise was that I went to Carnegie Tech to become an architect,” he says. “My heart wasn’t in that, and I didn’t quite last two years before I was a drop-out.” (Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh became Carnegie Mellon in 1967, one year after Paul left.)

He was working at Dresser-Clark in Olean, New York, when he met his future wife, Marianne Seefeldt. Although she had been a grade behind him in Port Allegany, he hadn’t taken notice of her until they were hanging out with hometown kids at an Olean bowling alley. “I got a crush on her,” he shares, still blushing.

When the time arrived to ask her father for her hand in marriage, patriarch Hellmut stated, “Well, I think you both should have the same education.” Paul adds, “My father-in-law was a very practical man.”

With the directive to go to college, Paul transferred his Carnegie credits and enrolled in the first class of art education majors at Mansfield State College, where Marianne was studying secondary education with an emphasis in German. (She had emigrated from Germany to the U.S. with her parents when she was five years old.) She graduated in 1969, and they married that summer. She began teaching German and English at Liberty High School, where she continued to work for thirty-four years.

Paul found immense guidance and inspiration at Mansfield State College, and fondly recalls the support of Dr. Stephen Bencetic, art department chairman.

“Dr. Bencetic said, ‘This isn’t some cool artist stuff, this is serious business being an art teacher,’” Paul chuckles, referencing the culture of the times. “I wasn’t a free spirit. I was just a regular guy. Actually, my best subject in school was math.”

Other art professor inspirations: “Dale Witherow was the real social professor; he tried to bring you out of yourself. Stanley Zuchowski was my teacher in ceramics my first year there. He was just a big leprechaun; he was inspirational himself. Mr. Frombach was in the mix, too. His attention to detail got my attention.” (In Mansfield, Paul resides in the former home of the late Ernest Frombach, so they are also connected in that way.)

Love What You Do…Until

Graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1971, Paul started his career at the elementary school that fall. “I thought I’d teach in a high school and do ‘real’ art, but the first job available was the elementary school,” he says. “Jack Novak was the principal when I started, and he was such a good guy. I just kinda fell into it, and then I found out I really enjoyed being with the kids. A lot of kids, they might not like reading, writing, and arithmetic, but they wanted to go to the art room if you had some interesting things for them, and that I had.”

Among key memories of his elementary teaching days: “Good ol’ Mitchell,” Paul beams. “The first time he came to the art room, he took a real liking to me. As soon as his teacher got him to the door, he’d come running in. A little, tiny, first-grader. He was always so glad to be there.”

What kept Paul at the elementary school for his entire career? “I just enjoyed my days,” he says.

But, less support from administration combined with another spinal cord injury ushered in his choice to retire.

“About year twenty-nine [of teaching], I broke my neck,” Paul says. On a family vacation in Canada, he was helping teach a young girl how to dive into a pool by first demonstrating an “egg roll,” but he hit his head on the pool floor, cracked vertebrae, and pinched a nerve. He returned home, wearing a halo brace.

“I broke it in August, so I missed the first couple of months of school that year, and I thought, ‘Oh, gee, I could like retirement.’”

Two years later, in 2002, he retired at age fifty-six.

Once a Teacher…

The ripple effect of being an educator continues, though, with Paul regularly hearing from former students, especially due to the ease of social media connections. He also encounters many on his local rounds. “There was one boy who never spoke in elementary school. I don’t think I ever heard his voice, one of those real quiet kids,” he shares. “He came up to me in Walmart not too long ago, introduced himself, and we talked for a bit. That was really nice.”

Collective community recognition has also occurred, including the naming of Paul Bozzo Field in the 1990s, acknowledging his years of volunteering for Mansfield Little League and serving as league commissioner. (The field is next door to the elementary school.)

More recently, the Mansfield Foundation announced the establishment of the Paul and Marianne Bozzo Endowed Scholarship Fund. Honoring the couple’s years of community service and dedication as educators who impacted generations of students, the scholarship will support graduating seniors from North Penn-Mansfield or North Penn-Liberty high schools.

Paul was unaware that his wife had been discussing the scholarship idea with the foundation and some friends prior to her death. The effort, originally intended to feature just his name, continued forward with her name included. He learned of the surprise at a foundation reception in May, timed as part of his eightieth birthday celebrations. In attendance were his daughter, son, two granddaughters, and Marianne’s sister and brother, along with other family and friends.

Pleased that the scholarship is a legacy for himself and Marianne that “will live on together,” Paul hopes the award “will help a young person make everything work,” as they piece together funds for their college education and consider their next steps.

…Always a Student

In the pursuit of knowledge, Paul could be a poster child for lifelong learning and exploring.

Although photography was an interest early on (he traded two of his old sweaters for his Carnegie Tech roommate’s camera), he didn’t fully delve into the medium until retirement, when he joined the Grand Canyon Photography Club, a group that meets monthly at the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in Wellsboro.

“I joined with my little digital point-and-shoot and half the members had DSLRs, the real stuff,” he laughs. “I like to say the photo club taught me a lot of things, mostly how to buy expensive equipment!”

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Learning digital photo editing has added, literally, layers to his artwork, enabling him to combine his photographs with his textured paintings.

“I used to say I was a one-trick pony, with just my kind of painting, but then with the photo club and photo manipulation, I started calling myself a two-trick pony,” he jokes.

After taking three recent poetry workshops with Judith Sornberger, a Mansfield University professor emerita of English and women’s studies, he also began adding words to his digital compositions when she started a “poetry challenge” earlier this year.

“I’ve really enjoyed branching out,” Paul says. “It’s a ‘what are you going to do now’ kind of thing.”

Some days, he’s hiking to a waterfall to capture photographs with friends or fishing with his son. Other days, he’s indoors, teaching a private painting lesson or working on a commissioned piece.

Ever the explorer, he also enjoys reading science fiction, particularly speculative fiction and time travel. “I like all the possibilities,” he says.

When asked if his love of science fiction shows up in his artwork, he says he doesn’t think so, but then, he pauses to consider the possibilities. To some, his stamped circles and star-like features could be compared to galaxies.

For certain, rediscovering his love of ceramics has brought him full circle.

When Martha Campbell, associate professor of art at what is now Commonwealth University-Mansfield, asked for some volunteer assistance this summer in prepping the ceramics room for fall 2026 classes, Paul says, “You can see how high I jumped when I heard that!”

Making pottery to fill the kiln was part of his assignment. He started with hand-building some pieces, and then took a turn on the wheel, something he hadn’t tried in fifty-six years.

“Martha laughed herself silly at my first attempt,” he shares. “The wheel is not an easy skill. But all of a sudden, it just came back, that feel.”

Paul and Martha will be busy crafting and curating artwork for a two-person exhibit at Wellsboro’s Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in May 2027. He will display paintings, photography, and ceramics. She will share oil paintings, photography, multi-media sculpture, and ceramics.

“He’s having a lot of fun,” Martha says. “He’s like a little child in a sandbox!”

Have you ever dreamed of running away with the circus? Performing wondrous feats of coordination, sailing through the air with the greatest of ease, learning from masters? What if you didn’t have to run away to do that? In Ithaca, in an old, converted newspaper factory, there is a place where the circus has stopped running and has found a permanent home. That place is Circus Culture, a school that teaches the circus arts in an inclusive space where creativity can blossom.

Circus Culture was started by local circus educator and advocate, Amy Cohen, and is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Like lots of kids, Amy was fascinated by the circus, and she was able to spend her childhood summers building her skills with seasoned professionals in the Hudson Valley. She pursued a degree in arts management at Ithaca College and, as a student in 2004, started a Circus Club there, which continues to be active today. In the great tradition of circus, Amy then traveled and learned from master performers.

When she decided she wanted to open a circus school, Ithaca seemed like a natural location, having a diverse arts scene, open-mindedness, and her own connection to Ithaca College. She took a leap of faith and started a crowdfunding campaign. It quickly raised $25,000, demonstrating that there was definitely local interest in this global art. Amy was able to procure a soaring, two-story space in Press Bay Alley—a converted newspaper factory with “bones” strong enough to handle the rigging necessary for practicing aerial skills. And since Circus Culture is located downtown—116 West Green Street—it is easy for local students to walk or take public transportation there.

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Audiences who have the opportunity to watch Circus Culture’s aerial students in a public performance are amazed by the athleticism and showmanship of the young circusers. They climb up two-story ribbons of fabric, swing from ropes, spin with a suspended hoop, and literally stand on each other’s shoulders.

There is an extraordinary level of trust necessary for these acts to succeed.

This is most evident between the performers and their teachers, who make sure that all of the equipment is hooked up correctly. Properly setting circus rigging for aerial acts is akin to packing a parachute—no room for error.

Then, the students have to trust themselves to accomplish all the moves, something that only comes with repeated practice and having faith in your body’s abilities.

Finally, there is a level of trust between the performers and the audience. The audience trusts that they will see something amazing without anyone getting hurt, and the performers trust that the audience will appreciate their artistry. Those layers of trust allow the circus performers to push the envelope on human potential. Watching the students complete a difficult routine, it is clear to see the exhilaration they are feeling.

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What is also clear is the camaraderie between the performers and their teachers. There is such a sense of community, of shared experiences and shared joy, of the daring necessary to push your body to the extreme and to trust that it can take you there.

Circus has always been outside the mainstream, a kind of counterculture counterpoint to the mundane. There is a history in circus of the exploitation of people of color and people with disabilities, but, at its best, “circus is a gathering of the others,” a place where unique individuals can feel embraced as part of a community that celebrates diversity. The name Circus Culture captures this sense of existing in a space outside of the everyday. What the teachers and students have created is a mutli-disciplinary, multi-generational, cross-cultural community where everyone feels welcome and people trust that they will be taken care of while they take risks.

Circus Culture offers group classes, individual instruction, open practice times, and camps and workshops for children and adults. They have even hosted bachelorette parties. No experience or level of physical strength is necessary to begin building circus skills. Most students start from scratch learning aerial work, juggling, tumbling, wire walking, unicycling, acrobatics, hula hooping, handstands, and clowning, all from a crew of twenty dedicated teachers. Circus is a form of non-linear learning, so there is no particular progression that students have to follow, although they must take a basics course to begin learning safety. Drop-in practice costs start at twenty bucks, and most classes cost $190, with financial aid available for those who need it.

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Those who are curious about the circus arts, but live too far away to take classes, could consider escaping to Ithaca for a four-day extravaganza of circus events during Labor Day weekend. The Hupstate Circus Festival is a series of performances, workshops, and community events throughout Ithaca, featuring internationally acclaimed performers of the circus arts. It is the only international circus festival in the United States. Amy organized it, and as a natural extension of Circus Culture, the Hupstate Circus Festival continues the tradition of circus as an ephemeral art form with performers traveling to a new location, setting up, creating a spectacle for a delighted audience, and then quietly slipping away. The festival is an accessible world-class artistic opportunity for all of the performers and for the audience members. The majority of performances are free and family-friendly, while some of the evening performances with mature themes require tickets. To see the schedule of events and purchase tickets, see hupstatecircus.org. As Amy says, just come, and see acts that defy both gravity and expectations.

See the current class schedule at circusculture.org. You may discover that you, too, are capable of wondrous feats.

I caught a green heron catching a bluegill for dinner one summer day at Hills Creek State Park. The green heron is one of my favorite birds. At just seventeen inches tall, this stealthy bird comes dressed in superhero garb: rusty-red and greenish-blue-grey feathers with bright yellow legs, eyes, and bill. Although it doesn’t wear a cape, it does have lightning-fast reflexes and pinpoint accuracy—just like my favorite superhero. Let’s just say, here’s one hero who catches dinner instead of villains.

When I think I have the rhythm, the sequence of moves, I try to relax my arms like I’d heard Coach tell his varsity rowing team during practice. Then I forget to keep pressing the oar left into the oar ring, and my form (if you can call it that) falls apart. I watch the pink t-shirt in front of me and listen to Coach’s voice through the megaphone, now aimed at me: “Sit tall. Don’t lean back.”

When I pull forward with my feet, which are strapped in, the girl behind me says, “Sit like you are showing your necklace to someone.” My shoulders go back, my chest goes out. There’s lots to think about. Breathe when the coxswain says breathe. Push when she says push. Don’t put the blade in the water till pink does. Then drop hands when bending my legs, getting ready to push off again.

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The rhythm returns. My eyes bore a hole between pink’s shoulder blades. I’m aware of the other seven William Smith rowers and coxswain like I’m aware of my appendages. Closest I’ve ever come to feeling this in tune with others was racing tandem canoes. Now I’m borg-melded with these young women, all between eighteen and twenty-two. It feels like I’ve dropped at least a decade.

Then Coach has us pick up the pace. The coxswain in the stern yells our times. The sixty-degree April air glides across my skin like the rowing eight glides across the water. This is why people say rowing is addictive.

“You’re doing it, Lilace,” Coach says. “There we go!”

While researching a story for the September issue about the William Smith College rowing team, I found myself in the fourth seat of the school’s varsity eight, not by accident but by luck. The luck was that their coach is Paul Bugenhagen, and when I asked if I could get in a boat, he took me very seriously. I expected that they’d pull out a single or double when we got back to the boat house and set me in the canal. When he asked the eight to stop and had a rower switch places with me, I worried the students, who were in the middle of their racing schedule and starting exams that weekend, would be annoyed that their practice would take longer. But they cheered.

“Baller practice,” one young woman called when we reached the dock at the Hellstrom Boathouse just outside Geneva on the Cayuga-Seneca Canal. The rowers joked that if I wanted to get another degree, they’d love to have me on the team. I asked Paul where regular people can go to learn to row. Because having finally taken the step at fifty-eight to try something I’d always wanted to do, I wasn’t going to stop. Surely in the Finger Lakes, there had to be something. (No way I’m going back to school.)

“I think there are some places in Rochester,” Paul said.

That’s how I found myself talking to Tim Giarrusso (above) in the Rochester Community Inclusive Rowing boathouse on Black Creek. Their site (rochestercomunityinclusiverowing.org) and philosophy had come up in a search: “Making rowing inclusive + accessible changes lives.” When I’d reached out via the online form, Tim called within minutes. “What type of experience are you looking for?” he asked.

After I told him about my only time rowing, he explained that what RCIR offers is sculling, in which each rower has two oars (whereas in the eight we’d each had one). Looking around at all the boats in the clean and bright facility, I had to wonder who paid for all of this. Especially since RCIR makes it clear that “No one pays and no one gets paid.”

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When he and Dennis Fronheiser co-founded the nonprofit in 2011, they started fundraising by promoting it as “the first inclusive, adaptive, ADA compliant sculling center in the country.” They focused on removing the financial stigma and reaching populations that can benefit in a multitude of ways from the activity. In 2019 the building was up, and they were collecting a stable of adaptive boats that are wider and flatter, with pontoons on the side that act like training wheels. They now own about twenty and are debt free, funded completely by private donors.

Much of what they do grew out of taking veterans on the water and hearing how much it helped with PTSD. Cancer patients and survivors, as well as amputees and folks with other special needs, are among those they help. Having their own space where they can curate a noncompetitive and supportive environment is important. “The vibe is different here,” Tim says.

Their approach to teaching is focusing on the hands because that’s where the oars connect the person with the water. The connection with water is key in that, as the book The Blue Mind documents and Tim believes, it lowers cortisol and stress hormones while increasing feel-good hormones. Certainly, the movement is meditative. No matter who they are working with, they get them on the water within an hour.

Soon I’m out on the creek in a single scull with Tim in his boat behind me. The most confusing thing for me about rowing is that we face backward. Tim acts like my coxswain, teaching me to steer and turn, and watching out for hazards. Soon we reach the wider Genesee River. I am setting my own pace, working on technique, and listening to Tim’s voice. The noise in my head shuts off.

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We come in early due to a nasty-looking rain cloud and distant thunder. After we wipe down and store everything, Tim tells me how he got into this. His daughter had wanted to row in ninth grade, so he took sculling lessons with her. The ways that deepened their relationship is one reason anyone under eighteen must have a parent with them, and involved. No volunteer is ever alone with a teenager.

One boy was rowing at his school, and his coach came to Tim asking if he’d work with the kid to get him rowing straight. This eighth grader had been born missing his leg below the knee. His mother watched from the dock the very first day as her son started rowing in a straight line. “She asked me, ‘What did you do?’ and I said I told him not to move his head.” Tim shakes his over the way people see that someone is different and after that stop really seeing them. The young man still rows. Now in high school, he’s competing in states.

Tim, whose background is in organizational behavior and adult learning theory, says RCIR defines adaptive very broadly. “To us it means we will adapt to you with whatever you come with.” His approach is as accommodating as water. “However people show up is where we’re going to start.” And then, because I’m not just a writer on a story but also a new student, he asks, “How do you feel now versus when you showed up?”

The answer: Relaxed and happy. Both to have been rowing on the water again, and to know that there are people like Tim and the RCIR volunteers creating opportunities to share this version of nirvana with as many people as possible.

“The Green Hornet Strikes Again” by Josh Allen. As Wellsboro’s Comic Con brings superheroes to town, we recover the lost story of the super hero and the high school kid who changed comics and the town forever.

This issue also features Tag You’re It in Liberty, Life Is but a Dream on the Finger Lakes, and How Sweet It Is at the Honeybee Embassy.

Our August 2026 issue was made possible with the support of the follow advertisers:

Full Page Advertisers: Black Creek Enterprises, Endless Mountain Music Festival, Guthrie, and Wellsboro Equipment

Half-Page Advertisers: Famous Brands, Hoover Clothing Store, Plum Point Lodge, Superior Paint and Epoxy, and UPMC Susquehanna

Quarter-Page Advertisers: Abma’s Heating and Cooling, Barber’s Firearms, Bradley Farms, Carpenter’s Shop, Corning’s Gaffer District, Draper’s Honey, Hamilton Gibson, Hoover Hardware, Lakewood Vineyards, Lycoming County Historical Society - Thomas T. Taber Museum, Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge, Tioga County Fair, and Wolfe’s General Store

Eighth-Page Advertisers: AJ’s Hair & Makeup, Bradford County Tourism and Promotion Agency, Cobwebs to Crystals, Denney Electric Supply, Eddie’s Restaurant, Emerge Healing Arts and Spa, Endless Mountains Brace and Mobility, Ferenbaugh Campground, Horseheads Mill Street Market, Liberty Book Shop, Mossy Edge Waterscapes, Mountain Valley Realty, MVR Vacation Rentals, Nessmuk’s Sporting Goods, Patterson Farms, Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, Pop’s Culture Shoppe, Rico’s Pizza, Seneca Lodge, Short’s Oil and Propane, Threadbare Farm Market, Troy Sale Barn, Troy Vet Clinic, and Warren Real Estate

Twelfth-Page Advertisers: Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center, Gold Key Equipment & Service, and Morris Chair Shop

Twenty-Fourth-Page Advertisers: C&J Portage & Boilers, Dunkin Donuts, Jon’s Hydraulics, and Kings Coal

Please let them know you’ve seen their ad in our issue! We know they appreciate it as much as we do.

Looking to upgrade your house or business and don’t know who to find that can update your floors, walls, or countertops? Contact Vic over at Superior Paint and Epoxy in Westfield. He’s got a special going on that if you mention you saw his ad in any of our issues, you’ll get 15% off your project.

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From chariots to Formula 1, what is it about racing that people love? Decades ago, racing enthusiasts cheered as cars thundered around the Lycoming County fairgrounds track in Hughesville. Close to ninety years ago, one of those screams of excitement came from a five-year-old named Jack Smith.

“I don’t care about football or baseball or what have you. I mean, I’ll watch it on occasion with the family,” he says. “My sports outlet is auto racing.”

Jack (no relation to this writer) is one of those sports spectators who went from being a passive viewer to a full-fledged participant.

“I think we [the racing team he worked with] were up to Wellsville, New York, and we had a fast time in the qualifying. We won our heat to get you into the feature, and we won the feature, and we got eighty dollars,” Jack says with a laugh.

His first race, though, was in 1939 at that Hughesville race track. He loved it as a five-year-old, and “I’m never going to quit loving it,” he says.

Like county fairs all over the country, the Lycoming County fair’s origins were agriculture in nature. A “farmer’s club” had been formed, according to LycomingFair.net, and in 1870 “held its first exhibition in which area people could exhibit their livestock, grains, fruits, vegetables, canned goods, and handicrafts.” This took place at the southern end of the borough of Hughesville.

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Eventually the club became known as the Lycoming County Fair Association. In 1930, the members bought fifty acres of land which became the fairgrounds today.

Jack says his whole family was involved with the fair and the fairgrounds.

“My dad was on the board prior to me, and did a lot of labor maintaining buildings and that type of thing,” he recalls.

His dad exhibited poultry at the fair.

“My first job was driving a wheelbarrow and cleaning chicken coops when the fair was over, and cleaning out the manure,” Jack says with a laugh.

His mother served as the “poultry superintendent” for twenty-seven years and it was her job to find qualified persons to judge the competition.

At the same time this was happening, the fairgrounds began to feature car racing.

These early races were sanctioned by the AAA—the American Automobile Association. Many of the biggest names in American auto racing appeared at Hughesville in those days, including Ted Horn, Tommy B, Jimmy Bryan, Johnny Parsons, Lee Wallard, and Joey Chitwood.

And Jack remembers seeing drivers Ted Horn and Joey Chitwood race.

“Ted Horn—he was very, very popular and a very capable [driver],” Jack says. “The other driver was a protégé of Ted Horn and his name was Tommy Hinnershitz.”

According to the Eastern Motorsports Press Association, Tommy Hinnershitz, from Oley, Pennsylvania, was “one of the most-exciting, most-popular and most-successful Sprint Car drivers of all-time…he was a farmer by occupation but he raced because it was fun, he could make a little money doing so and he was very good at it.”

The type of car they used was made by Hiram Hillegass, a car designer who built the “tube car.” It was “made it out of chromoly tubing,” Jack says, and “was more aerodynamic.” The tubing was hollow but strong; Hillegass used techniques developed in World War II’s aircraft/defense industry.

One of the other drivers Jack remembers was one he regarded as a peer. Bobby Grim, born in 1924, was a championship driver. In 1959, he was named Rookie of the Year for the Indianapolis 500.

“Bobby Grim…was a good friend of mine,” Jack says. Bobby invited him to races where Jack served as part of the crew. “Anytime I was in Indianapolis, if I flew through Indianapolis, I would call and Bob or his wife, Betty, would come pick me up and take me to their house, so it was even better and fun.”

In fact, thanks to Bobby, Jack served on two pit crews at the Indianapolis 500—in 1969 and in 1970.

“I helped change engines and I would [do a] quick change the gears in the rear of the car,” he says.

And, thanks to his job with the Muncy-based Sprout Waldron (The company, now part of Andritz, a biofuel company, manufactured pellets for animal feed from ground vegetable matter.), Jack was able to travel and pursue his race car hobby, though, he says, “Bear in mind, I had to take a month off from Sproul Waldron.”

But, good things end, and eventually racing at the Lycoming Fair had to end, too.

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“[Officials] had strung this wire between two telephone posts,” he says. This acted as the guard rail for the track but cars would get caught in the wire and damaged.

The neighbors near the dirt track were not happy.

“The houses on Broadway and Second Street were within a yard length of the track. There was so damn much dust, everybody raised hell about it,” Jack says. “Plus, the dirt just made it difficult, especially when drivers had the open cockpit.”

This contributed to the end of car racing in Lycoming County, right after the end of World War II.

“It just couldn’t go on anymore,” Jack says.

Jack’s days of working on the pit crew have passed, but he is still very busy. He has been married to his wife, Dorothy, for over fifty years. They have one son and daughter-in-law and two granddaughters who live nearby.

When not working or spending time in the racing world, he loves to do woodwork—cabinets, tables, and shelves.

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He’s also involved with the preservation of the Lycoming County fairgrounds.

“Well, I was on the board for a number of years and then I was president for about five of that tenure,” he says.

Though the echoes of car racing are gone from the eastern end of Lycoming, they still live in Jack’s heart and he still keeps his involvement with the fair.

“And I’m still doing things for the fair, and I refuse to take money for it,” he says at the ripe old age of ninety-one.

My horse and I were on a neighborhood ramble one really hot afternoon—he was eating grass, and I was in charge of the lead line. It had been several days without rain, and his favorite potholes were dry, so we decided to go through the old strippings to the big water hole—a pit that has, over the years since the mining stopped, morphed into something pond-like. I don’t know how deep it is, and I haven’t swum in it, but Smoke likes to get his toes wet at the shore while he’s enjoying a long slurp. This day, the surface was alive with little blue dragonflies. Flitting, I guess, is maybe the best verb to describe their movement. And magical. There must be something there for them to eat, which means the water is supporting insect life, which means…I’m not sure, but I believe it’s a good thing.

According to the pictures in my National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, these particular dragonflies could be Doubleday’s bluets or Circumpolar bluets (what fun names, right?) or might actually be Short-stalked damselflies. Damselflies and dragonflies both belong to the Odonata order of insects. The two are similar—both with those crinkley, gossamer wings, big eyes, and spectacular flying maneuvers. Dragonflies usually have stockier bodies, while damselflies typically have stick-like bodies. There are other similarities and differences, but unless you convince one to land on you and hold still, it’s kind of hard to do a close inspection.

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I have had the experience, though, of having a dragonfly hover, Harrier-like, at eye level (compound for them, just two for me), and could see—yup—that’s big, that’s a dragonfly.

It’s very cool when they do that.

Both dragonflies and damselflies have four wings. They can fly in six different directions—up, down, forward, backward, side-to-side. Dragonflies at rest usually hold their wings open, perpendicular to their bodies. Most damselflies hold their wings close and parallel to their bodies at rest. Both are carnivorous predators.

Another day, closer to evening but still warm, Smoke and I were in a nearby yard—again, he was eating grass and I was minding the lead line. I saw one dragonfly, then another, and another, and then a swirl of them, almost choreographed, circling each other, moving in unison. I’d never seen anything like it.

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What do you call a group of dragonflies flying around and around? Surely not a flock.

Nope. Some suggestions I saw: a flight, a shimmer, a skimmer, a cluster, a swarm, a cloud, a dopping, and a sparkle. I like that last one. A less fanciful name, although one probably more descriptive of what was happening with this particular gathering of insects, is a “low altitude static storm.” It’s basically just a bunch of bugs getting together to eat other bugs.

Still magical. Especially when those other bugs are mosquitos.

Dragonflies and damselflies like water. The fourth sentence in the Wikipedia listing for dragonflies says “Loss of wetland habitat threatens dragonfly populations around the world.” You could probably substitute the name of just about any living thing for dragonfly, and the statement would hold true. Around the world.

As a faithful reader of Mountain Home, you’ve been introduced to many of the wonders of the Twin Tiers and Finger Lakes through our stories and advertisers. Each month we hear from people who have designed outings around them. Now thanks to the Top of the Mountain Sweepstakes you have the chance to win either the Finger Lakes Escape in Watkins Glen or the Highland Fling in Wellsboro. And all you have to do is subscribe for free to mountainhome.substack.com (paid subscriptions will also count). Every subscriber you refer through our Substack will earn you an additional entry!

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Every season has its own magic in the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. Whether it’s tubing or paddling on the Pine Creek, walking among the changing leaves, taking in the laurel as it makes the hills blush, or enjoying our cozy restaurants and fireplaces after snowshoeing, an overnight in Wellsboro is a restorative getaway. The Highland Fling package features a night at the historic Penn Wells Hotel right on Main Street, where the old-world charm makes you feel instantly at home. Two fireplaces and an outdoor courtyard for food and drinks makes the Penn Wells a great spot year-round. You will also get a tour for two on the famous Tony’s Trolley, boarding right outside the hotel doors. A delicious dinner for two awaits you at the Steak House where great food and service are family traditions continued by Christina and Geoff Coffee. After lunch at Beck’s Bistro, grab a scoop of something sweet at the Main Street Creamery. A gift card can be used toward a movie at the historic Arcadia Theatre, snack or beverage break at Café 1905, or a dinner at the Penn Wells Hotel restaurant.

Our Finger Lakes Escape is equally charming. A night at the luxurious Harbor Hotel right on Seneca Lake will give you time to leisurely explore many businesses we’ve highlighted in our pages. The hotel is right by the Seneca Harbor Park Pier, where you will board the Seneca Legacy for a cruise up Seneca Lake with dinner for two. Learn about the past, present, and future of the area while getting a different view. In warm weather, kayak rentals are also available at the pier. Go wild shopping at Famous Brands downtown with the included gift card. The hotel is a short walk from the Watkins Glen State Park where the gorge and waterfalls (and many steps) will leave you breathless. Near the south entrance of the park sits the Seneca Lodge, a rustic Adirondack-style resort, which also has its own craft brewery and where you will enjoy dinner for two. Since 1948, it has been a landmark for vacationers, sportsmen, and racing enthusiasts.

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We are grateful to these businesses for providing these prizes worth thousands of dollars so that we can thank YOU, our readers. The whole thing wraps up with a grand drawing on Saturday, September 12, at the Deane Center for the Performing Arts right here in Wellsboro. But you need to subscribe by midnight September 10. You can refer as many friends as you want, and each referral will garner you one additional entry into the sweepstakes. Almost all of our articles have a “refer a friend” button on them, and you can even refer right from the bottom of our emailed articles. See the official rules on our homepage or visit mountainhome.substack.com/p/totm-sweeps-rules for full details.

When you join Mountain Home’s digital porch, you will get the best local stories, community updates, and sweepstakes news delivered straight to your inbox. Don’t miss out on this fun. Head over, type in your email, and let us get ready to celebrate together this September!

Imagine it’s the winter of 1954-55 at Wellsboro High School. In the gymnasium. An overflow crowd is watching in near silence as, on the court, players move to line up for a free throw. The player wearing Number 8, the team’s star 6’ 5” center, is lying on the floor. On a breakaway pass from a teammate, he was dribbling down court for an easy basket when he was slammed from behind, knocked down, and fouled hard.

A teammate helps Number 8 up to his feet. The crowd cheers and claps.

The tall center is a confident, fun-loving player. He hobbles to the free throw line and nods to the referee. He’s fine. He’s gonna play. He’ll take the shot. The referee tosses him the ball.

Wellsboro has a narrow lead, and it doesn’t feel like a secure victory, but rather like holding something delicate and fragile in shaking hands, a glass filled to the brim. They can’t afford to spill a single drop.

Number 8 dribbles twice. He looks to the basket. Looks to his coach. Looks to his teammates. Looks to the crowd. Looks to the girls in the crowd. One of them waves at him. He smiles, lines the shot, and throws the ball.

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“Way to go, Clancy!” the coach shouts as the crowd erupts. Clancy Prevost makes both shots, the game continues, and Wellsboro’s basketball team goes on to secure its first victory as the Wellsboro Hornets. Which, according to Clancy’s brother, Lou, is a part of local hidden history. He says, “You know, my brother was the one who named them the Wellsboro Hornets.”

But the Wellsboro Hornets who have played an estimated 10,000 basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and other games these last seventy years weren’t named for the common insect, according to Lou, a Wellsboroan who moved back to his hometown after a long career as a Philadelphia hotelier and now serves on the borough council.

They were named for a superhero, the Green Hornet.

In Wellsboro High School’s 1955 yearbook, The Nessmuk, the basketball team is referred to as “Wellsboro’s Green Hornets.” The year prior, they’re just called the Wellsboro Varsity Basketball Team. This would line up with what Lou says Clancy told him—that during his junior year the task was brought to the students to select a name and mascot for their sports teams. According to Lou, Clancy had suggested the Hornets, and, due to his and fellow students’ admiration for the old radio show and comic book superhero, The Green Hornet, Clancy’s suggestion won the vote.

We’ve written a lot at Mountain Home about local legend Clancy Prevost. The U.S. Navy and Northwest Airlines jumbo-jet pilot became an American hero when he helped the FBI catch al-Qaeda’s so-called “19th hijacker” before he could implement his alleged intention: fly into the White House on September 11, 2001.

But now in August, as Julian and Anja Stam of Wellsboro’s Pop’s Culture Shoppe bring nationally known comic book artists, writers, and a horde of superheroes to town for the fifth annual Wellsboro Comic Con, we couldn’t resist resurrecting the lost tale of how the Green Hornet captured Wellsboro’s imagination in the 1950s and changed comic books forever.

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The Green Hornet was the alter ego of Britt Reid, a wealthy newspaper publisher who fights crime disguised as a vigilante. With his billionaire-by-day-crimefighter-by-night persona, weaponized car the Black Beauty, and Hornet’s Sting ultrasonic weapon, he helped lay the foundation that characters like Batman and Iron Man built upon later.
But in our quest for a comic book hero, we discovered a twin tale—the real-life Navy pilot, reluctant hero, crime-preventing Clancy Prevost and the fictional, vigilante superhero, crime-fighting Britt Reid.

Real Life Green Hornet

Clancy Prevost was born on October 2, 1937, in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and was named after his grandfather Clarence Worrell Prevost. When Clancy was ten, he and his family moved to Wellsboro, where he was raised by his parents, Dr. John Prevost and Julianne Cawley Prevost, alongside his siblings: John, the aforementioned Lou, Jim, and Sally.

Clancy was a bit of a troublemaker. Lou recalls that one time during his own younger years, he got ahold of some cherry bombs. He threw them into the courthouse, causing the janitor to have a panic attack in response to the noise. When Judge Webb called Lou’s father, saying his son had disrupted the courthouse in such a manner, Doc said, “Clancy’s in Philadelphia.”

Lou shared all kinds of stories just like that one, each featuring his brother. He talked for an hour or so, laughing the whole time. More specifics could be shared, but Lou asked to keep some details within the interview.

When asked whether it was fun to reminisce or painful to remember his brother, Lou admits “Clancy was my mother’s favorite,” but says he’s happy to remember him. That it makes him smile, laugh, and feel nostalgic. It seems clear how Clancy continues to inspire his brother today and how his misadventures continue to entertain.

One funny example comes from Lou’s personal book, Grandpa’s Stories.

Clancy was babysitting his younger brother, and in his own words, Lou recounts, “Clancy played centerfield in baseball. One summer afternoon after a rainstorm at Packer Field ball diamond, he and his friends decided to dry out the infield by pouring gasoline on the dirt and burning it.” Lou laughs but didn’t slow his storytelling because he hadn’t even gotten to the memorable part yet. Clancy and his friends had forgotten the gas can in the middle of the huge fire on the field. Realizing that they would lose the $5 deposit they had paid for the can, Clancy volunteered to sprint through the fire and kick it out of the field. They watched as the gas can flew out, and soon after Clancy came running, having caught on fire. He jumped on a bicycle and rode to his dad’s office, where everyone who saw him started screaming as a flaming Clancy rushed by. Thankfully, he was quickly attended to, though he had to be wrapped in bandages for a week. When it was finally time to remove them and they took the last of the bandages off his face, he jumped and shouted, “Boo!” shocking everyone in the room. Their dad started yelling at him, but Lou says that really everyone was happy and relieved that Clancy had no scars and could still see.

Maybe not the best babysitter.

Clancy was “a bit competitive” and, alongside his older brother, John, a great athlete. He really looked up to John, Lou says, and they walked somewhat similar life paths. They both attended Mercersburg Academy, like their father, and they both served in the Navy, also like their father. Clancy dropped out of law school to join the Navy and flew hurricane hunter planes. He was honorably discharged with the rank of lieutenant and continued his career as a civilian pilot for Northwest Airlines. John served as a Navy pilot on the USS Oriskany. Sadly, he died in 1960 on a training mission in the Philippines. Clancy described the loss of his brother as something he felt every day.

Though he didn’t let it interrupt his distinguished flying career as a Northwest Airlines pilot of DC-10s and 747s, Clancy was a recovering alcoholic and member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He didn’t like people trying to control him or others, and he often positioned himself against authority. Though he valued independence, he benefitted from attending AA meetings, and strongly believed in giving people second chances. He stayed sober for the final sixteen years of his life. During that time, he gave many speeches at AA conventions, gaining a far-reaching reputation and helping a lot of people get better by hearing his story. Lou says he was a great speaker, and that he often had an impact on people that could inspire them to change for the better. One person even told Lou that his brother was, “an icon for every alcoholic in America.”

In 1993, Clancy’s twenty-five year flying career came to an end after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Even after making a full recovery, he was unable to pilot for Northwest Airlines, but they asked him to continue working as a flight instructor. It was while working in this capacity that Clancy’s suspicions led to the federal custody of Zacarias Moussaoui, a man who, following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, admitted to having ties to al-Qaeda and pleaded guilty to multiple charges related to conspiracy to commit terrorism and plans to use weapons of mass destruction. Clancy’s intuition prevented unknown amounts of damage and loss of life, as Moussaoui never enacted what he planned to do. But the US government awarded Clancy $5 million for alerting federal officials to Moussaoui. (Read “Clancy Prevost: The Reluctant Hero,” March 2006.)

Though Clancy might protest the framing, both he and Britt made a difference by the lives they led. Lou says that when people called his brother a hero, Clancy would respond by quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” Clancy wouldn’t mention his heroics. His obituary in December 2010 reads, “The Airline Pilots Association International and the United States Department of State, both recognized Prevost for his heroism.”

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Fictional Green Hornet

The year before Clancy was born, the Green Hornet made his debut as the protagonist of Detroit WXYZ’s radio drama of the same name. It was broadcast from 1936-1952, with a small break. Created by George Trendle and Fran Striker, the series follows Britt Reid and Kato, his valet, as they use their combined skills and positions to fight crime. Like many heroes, the Green Hornet has a secret identity—and a day job. When he’s not fighting crime as a masked vigilante, Britt Reid works as the owner and publisher of the Daily Sentinel. The earliest radio broadcasts were aired live; regular recordings weren’t made until 1939. One of the earliest recordings available is from May 5, 1938. Following its iconic theme song, “Flight of the Bumblebee,” with the sound of a buzzing bee added in, it begins with the narrator establishing the premise:

The Green Hornet is a copyrighted feature of fictitious characters and events in which the principal character is Britt Reid, manager of the Sentinel newspaper. Only Kato, his faithful Japanese valet, knows the dual role the young millionaire plays to strike at lawbreakers within the law who cannot be reached through the court. Though innocent of major crimes, the Green Hornet is hunted by everyone. The cry of both police and underworld is, ‘Dead or alive, get the Green Hornet!’

Since its original debut, the character’s popularity and success has spawned many iterations and stories. In 1940, Universal Pictures released a black-and-white thirteen-chapter movie serial, The Green Hornet, and at the end of that year, the first comic book series based on the character emerged. Following that, a television series, more comics, and more movies were made.

In addition to the character’s success, the franchise introduced Bruce Lee to American audiences as he played Kato in the ABC action television series.

The character endures in popularity today, and collectors continue to seek out some of the oldest memorabilia from myriad media. Because he’s been reimagined so many times, many versions of the character exist. Some of those versions share interesting similarities with Clancy.

The specific adaptation which bears the strongest resemblance to Clancy is likely found in The Green Hornet Year One series published by Dynamite. Issue 1 reimagines the Green Hornet’s origin story. In this incarnation, a young Britt Reid is the star of his high school track team, and his father, Dan Reid Jr., is an important figure in his local community, owning and operating the Daily Sentinel. Clancy was the star of the basketball team his junior year, and his father was a well-respected doctor. (Lou says, “My father delivered almost 1,200 babies…Everybody knew him.”) Both Britt and Clancy faced some pressure to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Britt’s dad stressed to him the importance of a sharp mind if he was ever going to inherit the Daily Sentinel. Clancy’s dad pulled him from Wellsboro High School his senior year to attend Mercersburg Academy and encouraged Clancy to become a doctor. At one point, they both chose their own paths. Britt left for a season to travel the world, and Clancy dropped out of school to join the Navy.

Both Britt and Clancy had to pivot their life direction. Soon after returning from his trips abroad, Britt’s father died of a stroke. This led him to take over his father’s business and work toward his father’s goal of using the newspaper to investigate and topple organized crime. Frustrated with feeling limited to make a real difference, a suggestion from Kato encourages him to strike from the shadows. Thus, he trains in martial arts, dons his masked vigilante persona, and the Green Hornet is born. A hero is made.

Everyday Hero Clancy

Every August since 2022, the owners of Pop’s Culture Shoppe, Julian and Anja Stam, have organized, hosted, and sponsored the Wellsboro Comic Con, which celebrates heroes from all types of fiction. People dress up in cosplay of their favorite characters, artists and writers meet up to share their work, and thousands of fans meet together to celebrate their favorite stories and characters from novels, comic books, and all sorts of fandoms. This year the fun happens on Saturday, August 8.

When he began organizing the first Comic Con, Julian didn’t know about the Green Hornet/Wellsboro Hornets connection, but he is interested in learning more about it. Even before his personal hobby of collecting comic books and comic memorabilia became his business, Julian was always fascinated by stories. He used to work as a preservation librarian. When asked which qualities he thought certain characters possess that cause their stories to be retold and endure, he says, “What makes a character for me is them being relatable. Having human weaknesses, but still overcoming obstacles.”

Clancy embodied many of those qualities. He had a relatable sense of humor demonstrated by his high school hijinks. Many can probably imagine a younger version of themselves in the stories Lou told about his brother. Clancy struggled too, battling alcoholism, navigating the loss of his brother, John, and exploring love and connection. In the end, the reluctant hero overcame many challenges: after four previous marriages finding the love of his life, Sheilah Young Prevost; preventing a terrorist from causing harm; and living sober for his last sixteen years as an inspiration for recovering alcoholics across America.

Julian says he is especially captivated by moments when characters have to make difficult choices. He is intrigued by how characters weigh options, like whether the ends justify the means, or how should one balance rules, obligations, and expectations versus what needs to be done in a difficult moment, moments when reluctant heroes and other characters have to consider the greater good against their individual good and their individual needs. Whether on a personal level or on a broader scale, when faced with a tough choice, it’s compelling to hear how characters respond to the question: “What will you do?”

Clancy was someone who would do what was necessary. In sharing his memories, Lou likes best the stories of his brother that show Clancy’s joyful and playful nature. Whether intentionally or not, Clancy—his memory and the stories of his antics, his life—encourages living like that, and to remember that laughing and sharing stories are some of the greatest treasures to cherish.

That’s how we know Clancy would have loved the Wellsboro Comic Con.

“No bee puns, please,” Brent Welch asks. “They’re too easy.” (Also, he’s heard almost all of them.) Brent and his wife, Teresa Vanek, own Bright Raven Farm (4061 Swamp College Road in Jacksonville) where they manage 130 hives and fifty-plus acres of land being returned to natural habitat. Their open-air farm store, a spacious pavilion built in 2019, is known as the Honeybee Embassy.

Here, from May to September, open Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., they offer handcrafted products, honey-based sodas, tea, chocolate truffles made with honey, and about a dozen varieties of mostly local honey, created by their winged families.

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Honey, like fine wine, turns out to also be a product of terroir, which is the combination of climate, ecology, agriculture, and human intervention. What the bees can produce, and the nuances of flavors, varies each year as the weather does. Timing honey extractions through the productive season means obtaining honeys flavored with spring flowers, basswood blossoms, Japanese knotweed—a favorite with many customers—asters, goldenrod, and sometimes buckwheat. Their raw honey is cold-processed (unheated) and unfiltered. At the store they also support indigenous growers with coffee-blossom honey from Guatemala and Oaxaca honey from Mexico.

“Each year there’s a different mix of flowers depending on the weather,” says Megan Alexander who works in the retail shop and explains honey to walk-in tasters. “The bees are the creators. Sometimes we figure out afterwards what the bees did. They always make delicious honey.”

“It takes two million flower visits to make one pound of honey,” Brent says. “That’s 55,000 miles of flying. It’s ridiculous the amount of work they do.”

While the bees gather nectar, one of his and Teresa’s jobs is keeping tabs on the health of each hive, so the bees can do their thing. Some of this is informed observation. Are the bees healthy? Bringing in a lot of pollen? They might have to suit up in a bee suit and veil to investigate what’s happening in their hives.

“One important thing—it’s a dynamic system,” he says. The bees’ cycles of life and work depend on soil health and the vitality of the worker bees. In turn, he and Teresa support them using natural, organic, time-tested means. Like all agricultural workers, bees’ productivity depends on the weather, which can vary significantly from one year to the next. And unlike domesticated animals, they make their own decisions about where they’re going and what they collect. There might be buckwheat growing nearby, but, if it’s a good basswood year, they might choose to collect basswood pollen instead.

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“It’s fun to look at plants through the bees,” Brent says.

In college—they both attended Cornell—Brent and Teresa studied ethnobotany, learning how people, particularly those in indigenous cultures, use plants for food and herbal medicine. They lived in the Andes in Bolivia for two years with the Quechua and Aymara people, whose agricultural traditions are entwined with a deep reverence for Pachamama, the Earthmother goddess. They returned here in 2000, with a side trip to British Columbia, knowing they wanted a land-based lifestyle. “We started farming and learned as we went,” Brent says.

For several years, having named their land Red Tail Farm, they grew heirloom vegetables, close to forty different ones, and had a few bee hives, adding a few more each year. But in 2016, during a devastating drought when it was hard to grow as many vegetables, they had an epiphany when they saw how the honey they brought to farmer’s markets found a truly appreciative audience. Circumstances encouraged them to pivot away from vegetable farming to concentrate on bees.

“While in British Columbia, we learned about the importance of ravens in indigenous myths,” Teresa says. “And ravens were moving back into the Finger Lakes.” A change of name came with the change in their farm’s direction. And Bright Raven also proved a more memorable name.

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They currently have twenty-five hives on their home farm, the rest spread among six nearby bee yards. At farmer’s markets, they’ve seen their customers increasingly intrigued by the varieties of honey and the idea of pairing different varietals with foods. For instance, many were surprised and delighted by flavors of their almost-clear black locust honey, prized throughout Europe and particularly nice for sweetening tea.

Both Teresa and Brent appreciate fine tea—“He’s more knowledgeable,” Teresa says—and they sell a dozen imported black and green loose-leaf teas as well as nine varieties of herbal teas online and at the Honeybee Embassy. While visiting, it’s possible to order a pot of tea or a single serving and enjoy it on the pavilion’s shady porch, looking out at their wild acres while being serenaded with birdsong.

Not to leave out chocolate lovers, Japanese knotweed honey is good in hot chocolate; a house-made honey blend called Cacao Kapow includes habanero pepper, cinnamon, and cocoa for a Mayan take on the beverage. Brent came up with this, while Teresa uses her own take on this ancient flavor mix for one of the varieties of chocolate truffles she makes for the store. Minus the chocolate, “hot honey” (honey infused with hot peppers) and pizza are a winning combination, Brent says. And when bees feast on the blossoms of staghorn sumac, the honey takes on a fruity, mango-flavored quality.

While customers at the store are offered honey tastings, those interested in the beekeeper’s perspective can book a more in-depth honey tasting, mostly Thursdays and Fridays by appointment for up to a dozen people. This combination talk and tasting—Teresa and Brent take turns giving it—lasts about an hour and is generally given on the back porch.

Not surprisingly, Bright Raven Farm packs honey in special small jars for wedding favors and corporate gifts. Find out more at brightravenfarm.com or call (607) 209-4038. They also ship tea and honey to all fifty states. But (forgive me, Brent) bee-ing there is a particular treat.

every

summer day

in the milkweed

i look for her

the monarch

on vacation

-by Teri Messmer

She’ll never know, for sure, if Amelia got to Mexico.

Or Lola. Or Sherry. Or the dozens of others released with a tiny tag and a lot of hope. They leave Teri Messmer’s Liberty homestead to begin a 3,000-mile journey, fraught with wind, weather, and predators, only to arrive to find a shrinking habitat.

But monarch butterflies are nothing if not resilient. And Teri is determined to give them their best chance. A beekeeper, she’s always enjoyed nature but really hadn’t given much thought to butterflies. She knew, though, that her mother liked them.

“When my mom passed, we would always see a yellow butterfly, which was a swallowtail, I’m sure,” she remembers. “We always had that connection, but I never really explored it, and I never knew that you could rescue them until a friend told me he and his wife were raising monarchs. When I found out, I started going out and collecting eggs.”

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Gathering the eggs from her milkweed patch, she protected them until they hatched into caterpillars and then gave them a safe place to pupate or form a chrysalis. That first year, she released forty-nine back to the milkweed—the only plant the caterpillars will feed on. Teri then found Monarch Watch, an education, conservation, and research program based at the University of Kansas that focuses on the iconic orange and black Lepidoptera, its habitat, and its migration. Monarch Watch also supports a citizen science tagging program that gathers vital research information.

The monarch lifecycle is complicated. According to Monarch Watch, the overwintering butterflies begin what is best described as a relay race starting in Mexico in March. The eight or nine-month-old monarchs get as far as Texas before producing the year’s first generation. Those butterflies grab the baton and move farther north, bringing the second and third generations to our backyards. These monarchs are short-lived (typically two to five weeks) and produce the fourth “super” generation; they’re a little bit bigger and won’t reproduce until the following year when they return to Texas from those wintering grounds in Mexico.

It’s this super generation that Teri begins tagging after the August 15 Monarch Watch deadline. She’s not an entomologist—she retired in 2017 from her job as cafeteria manager for the Father Judge High School in Philadelphia, a Catholic all-boys school—but she tagged four her first year and five in 2024. Last year, getting the hang of things, she sent fifteen winging their way south with the tiny tags. It’s a delicate process.

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“When the butterfly ecloses (or comes of out its chrysalis), the wings are wet, so it takes a few hours before you can release it. They’re pumping fluid into the veins of their wings and drying them and they’re not able to fly,” she explains. “They will walk all over you—on your hands and up your arms.” That’s when she adds a tiny Monarch Watch sticker. “They’re very lightweight and they have just the right amount of adhesive so it will stay on the butterfly, but it doesn’t impede their flying at all.”

It’s a good thing. There’s no relay team for the two-month flight of these super monarchs, which takes them south, hugging the coast of Texas, into the Transvolcanic Mountains of central Mexico. Millions are welcomed as they tuck themselves in to the oyamel fir forests where cool, but not cold, temperature keeps them in a state known as reproductive diapause through the winter. Mexico has a special relationship with the monarch. Believing them to be divine messengers, they are deeply revered as sacred beings that carry the souls of ancestors visiting from the afterlife. In pre-Hispanic times, the butterflies were seen as messengers carrying the wishes and dreams of the people to Xochiquetzal, the Aztec goddess of beauty, love, fertility, and the arts.

Teri’s monarchs carry wishes and dreams, too.

“From my very first butterfly, I decided to name them from A to Z. My best friend, she’s a spiritual person, was having a birthday and her middle name’s Amelia. I took a picture when the caterpillar went into chrysalis and I sent her a text,” Teri says, relaying the lore of monarchs and Xochiquetzal. Now Teri’s barn is filled with named chrysalises waiting to take flight with the hopes and dreams of dozens of friends.

“I put (the chrysalis) onto a little clip, put it in the barn, and I put their name on it and the date,” she says. She’ll record a video as the butterfly emerges and share it with the monarch’s namesake. “I really like the connection of nature, people, and spirit.”

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Always hopeful, Teri has ordered fifty stickers this year, and is visiting the milkweed patch daily, gathering eggs and raising and releasing some of the early butterflies while eagerly awaiting the deadline to begin tagging the super generation and sending another round of dreams to Mexico.

That they arrive is her dream. Each year, Monarch Watch works with Mexican guides in the butterfly sanctuaries to gather tags from dead butterflies that won’t make the trip north. It builds a database which volunteers can then search for their tags; Teri’s never found one of her numbers. The ratio of untagged to tagged butterflies is high, with only 21,000 tags retrieved since 1993, that from the millions that migrate each year—very long odds. She’s not deterred, however and she still encourages her friends to “wish upon that butterfly.” She gives everyone the opportunity, just as she did for her first release for her best friend.

“I said to her, ‘You have a week before this monarch, Amelia, ecloses and is going to take your wishes directly to the heavens. You have seven days to think about it; make it good,’” says Teri who, seven days later, videoed the butterfly leaving her hand. “A year and a half later, that wish came true.”

Amelia must have arrived after all.

The marquee on the outside hints at only part of the magic. It lures customers inside, promising enchantment—then delivers even more.

When Wellsboro’s Arcadia opened in 1921, moving pictures were a novelty. Owners Irvin Focht and Leon Klock took a risk building a 900-seat auditorium, hoping the seats they sold for fifteen and twenty-five cents would repay their investment.

Fortunately, the audiences they hoped for arrived.

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Back then, operating a movie theater meant more than creating a welcoming space with plush seats and a working projector. Movies were silent, dramatized with the accompaniment of an organ, a piano, sometimes even a small orchestra. Musical accompaniment, carefully coordinated with the onscreen action, supplied some of the drama dialog later provided. The theater’s name, Arcadia, suggested a place of innocent, rustic pleasures, possibly to reassure early patrons, riveted to the shenanigans unfolding in front of their eyes, that attending a movie could only be good, clean fun.

The opening movie, The Old Nest, was an eight-reel movie, meaning it was about eighty-eight minutes long, requiring the projectionist to nimbly switch between two projectors, to keep the action going, rethreading one while the other ran and seamlessly accomplishing the changeover every ten or eleven minutes.

That movie, once immortalized on celluloid, a notoriously flammable early plastic which also easily degrades, might now be permanently lost. No matter—its place in the hearts of its audiences was quickly replaced by other Hollywood productions. In cinema’s golden age, before the advent of television, moviegoers faithfully returned, sometimes weekly, to take in the newest dramatic release—and these came thick and fast. Audiences giggled, gasped, and sighed as they followed the vicissitudes of the characters, got enjoyably scared at horror movies, fell in love with actors they followed on the screen and in movie magazines. They came to forget their troubles and be taken out of lives that included the stresses of the Depression, war, and personal and global threats.

They still do.

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“People want to come together in a theater or concert and have that moment of community over a shared event,” says Peter Davis, general manager of the Arcadia. “Meet up with friends, go on a date, get out of the house, laugh together, and cry together. There’s something about that, especially to come together and forget about all the craziness.”

The experience became more compelling—and the era of the in-house orchestra ended—when films including sound, known as talkies, arrived in 1929. The Arcadia was one of the first theaters north of the Mason-Dixon line to begin showing this new sort of movie.

In the 1930s, when owner/manager Larry Wooden began screening films on Sundays, some town residents were concerned. Then a fire damaged part of the theater, a common hazard when the heat of an incandescent projection bulb made contact with celluloid film, causing the Sunday nay-sayers to deem this accident a heavenly response to Sunday showings, summarily discontinued for several years thereafter. Later, when the rise of television, and later the availability of movies on video, challenged the viability of movie theaters across the country, audiences declined and many worried an era had concluded.

But the Arcadia kept going.

In 1987, the theater was purchased by the Wellsboro Hotel Company, owner of the historic Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge. In 1996 and 1997, it was completely renovated to celebrate its seventy-fifth year, reopening in March 1997 as a state-of-the-art four-screen movie house. The original stage was extended over the former orchestra pit to make that part of the theatre more versatile for live theatrical performances. The building was extended over an adjacent property, then divided into four performance spaces. Complying with modern code and ADA requirements, adding soundproofing, and installing more spacious seats—people got larger over the past century—meant losing more than 200 seats, but the new ones are comfortable and upholstered. Once a dark celestial blue with silver accents, ornate plaster work and other accoutrements of luxury, later a generic beige as the result of a previous renovation, the interior walls of today’s Arcadia are painted “Arcadia Green” with burgundy accents. Many of the original Art Deco details were repaired and restored.

The theater began offering private screenings as well as the occasional stage performance and special “dinner-and-a-movie” nights.

“As a single screen theater, it was feeling a little old,” says movie buff Clare Ritter, a frequent patron. “Now it feels nostalgic as well as modern. It’s more intimate than many modern movie theaters and it has such amazing history.”

Although the Arcadia, like most theaters, had to close its doors for some time during the pandemic, “The main thing is how vital a movie theater is to a downtown in a small town,” Peter says. “Movies are still one of the only things happening at night. We’re there every night.” And when movie patrons go out to eat or to a bar in conjunction with a visit to the Arcadia, there’s a synergistic benefit felt by many area establishments.

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The immersive experience of the big screen with surround sound, and an absence of other distractions remains unlike any other. Of course, so is movie popcorn. “It’s not like your couch,” Peter says. “Sitting at home is just not the same.”

As the pandemic recedes, he’s hoping people will again have the fun of going out to the movies they once took for granted. Tickets and gift cards can be purchased online at arcadiawellsboro.com or call (570) 724-4947 or in person. Peter says patrons can still see first-run movies, “Pretty much the first weekend they come out.” With admission at $8.50 for adults and $6.50 for kids, “We’re trying to keep it affordable. We’re hoping people are rediscovering going out to the movies.”

There may not be a sea-faring vessel anywhere in the world as appropriately named as the Seneca Legacy. And if there is, chances are it doesn’t have a history as rich as the 100-ton, 110-foot-long, steel boat that serves as the centerpiece of Captain Bill’s Seneca Lake Cruises.

The ship was named in a local contest when it first sailed into Seneca Lake in 2006. The name primarily honors the legacy of the late William Simiele, the original Captain Bill. But it also pays homage to the Captain’s family, with roots in Italy, boating and tourism in the Finger Lakes, the Erie Canal, even the celebrated nautical history of Cape Cod.

Built in 1963 to be used as a 460-passenger ferry between Hyannis Port, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard, the ship—known then as the Cross Rip—was purchased in 2006 by Mark Simiele, second-generation president of Captain Bill’s. It was put into service in 2007 and this summer is celebrating its tenth anniversary as the Seneca Legacy, specializing in lunch and dinner cruises and special events such as weddings, rehearsals, corporate outings, and the like.

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That’s the short of it.

The long of it goes back to the early 1900s when two couples from Italy—Philip and Rose Simiele and Dominick and Theresa Roccisano—got off the train in Watkins Glen, ready to start a new life in America. Two of their children, William Simiele and Julia Roccisano, would marry, and William would end up developing the very lakefront location where that train station once stood.

First, though, he was a successful liquor salesman in Rochester until 1963 when the Palmer brothers decided to put their little company, which included a sightseeing boat, up for sale.

As Mark Simiele tells it, his father and five friends and relatives pooled their resources to buy the business.

“They were all going to keep their full-time jobs and do this as a sideline,” Mark says with a laugh. “Over time, the partners dropped out, realizing they couldn’t do both. It got down to my dad, his brother, and a cousin, and dad said, ‘Either you guys buy me out or I’m going to buy you out because it’s got to be a full-time thing.’”

William bought out the others and named the business Captain Bill’s.

Mark, now fifty-seven, came onboard, as it were, in 1986. After graduating from Oneonta State and then working for five years as a sales rep in Florida, he decided to return home to Watkins Glen and go into business with his dad. His sister Gina also helped the burgeoning company.

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“My dad was the best. I learned from him,” Mark says. “Some kids played catch with their dad and built model airplanes. Our project was we built this business together. We were very close, and he allowed me to be a part of the business, he made me feel like a part. I probably wasn’t, but he made me feel like I was.”

The business grew—it now includes the dinner boat; a smaller wooden sightseeing boat, the Stroller; a restaurant for landlubbers, Seneca Harbor Station; a gift shop; and a small marina.

“I had a vision, an idea,” Mark says. “So dad gambled and slowly over the years we evolved from an operation with six employees and a single sightseeing operation to what we have today.”

That means 140 employees, including the crew that sails the Seneca Legacy every day the weather allows from Mother’s Day until deep into the fall. One of those employees is Bill Darrow, who is the company’s marketing director and also fills the role of either captain or first officer on dinner cruises during the summer.

“I’ve been lucky and blessed,” Darrow says. “I think every guy always wants to work on a boat.”

Lucky and blessed, in fact, are two wonderful words to describe the Seneca Legacy’s voyage from its original home in Fairhaven, Massachusettes, to the southern tip of Seneca Lake in 2006.

“The process to get it back here was really a feat,” says Mark, who first lined up a crew that included his father-in-law, a cousin, and two captains, including Captain Bill’s’ Tony Compese.

They encountered the roughest seas on the week-long voyage early as the ship navigated Buzzards Bay, Rhode Island Sound, and Long Island Sound before rounding Manhattan and heading north up the Hudson.

“It was a heavy weather day. It was so rough with nine-foot chops coming into the Sound before they got protected,” Mark says. “My father-in-law said they couldn’t even stand up.”

Later, when the crew and ship reached Albany and prepared to take on the New York State Canal System, special measures had to be undertaken. The ship was too tall to challenge the canal’s low bridges, so it had to be cut down. Literally.

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“We had to cut the pilot house off and the top deck off to give it a lower profile,” he continues, adding that those parts of the ship were welded back on when it got to its new home in Schuyler County. The crew also had to purposely take on water in a couple of compartments to sink the bow another two-and-a-half feet because the ship still wasn’t low enough to get under some bridges.

Oh, and there was one more crucial step. “We had to pray that it didn’t rain, because the canal system is very volatile as far as coming up,” Mark recalled. “We had very good fortune because that was the driest spring that I can remember, and we had no increase in water level, otherwise we might have been stuck in Albany for the summer.”

Captain Bill had passed away by then, but his son credits him with looking after their voyage from a crow’s nest somewhere up above.

The ship cleared the lowest bridge in the system in the Cayuga-Seneca Canal “by three inches,” Mark says, and then it was clear sailing on down Seneca Lake to Watkins Glen, where workers and contractors spent the rest of that summer gutting the ship and turning it into the 270-seat dining and entertainment vessel that it is today.

Even though his dad died without getting to see the Seneca Legacy put into service, Mark is sure Captain Bill would have been happy with it.

He also would have been happy that one of the workers helping to get the ship ready for its tenth anniversary season represents the third generation of the Simiele family. Will, named after his grandfather and the oldest son among Mark and Michelle’s six children, is expected to carry on this remarkable and charming legacy.