WINTER CARNIVAL CLUE #2

how is your search going for the hula dancer? Keep looking!!!

LEAF Offers $1,000 For Anti-Gambling Art

ONEONTA

LEAF Inc. is looking for a few “striking images” that dramatize the growth of problem gambling in Otsego County.
Whoever does so stands to win a $1,000 first prize, $500 second or $250 third. 
The LEAF Fine Art Contest – the theme, “Gambling, a Risky Business” – will award prizes in two categories, adults and 18 and under.
The winning images will be used in a campaign to educate the public in avoiding gambling addiction, according to Carol Mandigo, the LEAF community educator in charge of the project.
The artwork may be figurative or abstract, 2D or 3D and in any medium.  The deadline to enter is April 1, and a show of the artwork is planned for May.
For more information, contact Mandigo at LEAF, Inc., 80 Water St., Oneonta, NY 13820.  Call 432-0090 ext. 106, or e-mail  carol.mandigo@leafinc.org.  Contest details may also be found on Facebook under LEAF Art Contest.

WHITE KNIGHT AT THE OPERA

Claire McAdams/Glimmerglass Opera
Francesca Zambello, Glimmerglass’ chief executive

Speaking to hard-core fans at the Village Library of Cooperstown Sunday, Jan. 23,     Francesca Zambello praised Glimmerglass Opera’s endurance. 
“Very few have made it past 25 years,” she said. 
Resilience would have to be on her mind, with such eminent opera companies as Boston’s and Baltimore’s declaring bankruptcy in recent years.
But Sherwin Goldman, chairman of the newly renamed Glimmerglass Festival, didn’t bring Zambello – a “brand name” in the opera world – to Otsego County to preside over the collapse. 
Quite the opposite...

Peyton Lea/Glimmerglass Opera
Inside Glimmerglass’  Alice Busch Opera Theater, nine miles up Otsego Lake from Cooperstown.

 By JIM KEVLIN; COOPERSTOWN

What a fiasco!
“First, it was such a bad show.  It was a comedy of bad opera,” Francesca Zambello recalled with a visible shiver.  (Granted, it was single-digits outside the glassed-in conference room at the Glimmerglass Festival’s offices that day.)
The opera in question was Marschner’s “Der Templer und die Jüdin” (“The Knight and the Jewess) at Ireland’s Wexford Festival in 1989.
The curtain went up, a singer “went crazy” on stage, tried to kill another actor and had to be dragged off to the Irish equivalent of Bassett Hospital’s Third Floor.
But if every unhappy opera is unhappy in its own way – and thus memorable – most of Zambello’s operas, in memory, are like happy families, much the same in the intensity of focus, the stress and, in the end, the thrill.
Zambello, a 50-something dynamo – bright eyes and shock of thick, dark hair strike you immediately – became the Glimmerglass Opera’s general & artistic director July 1, succeeding Michael MacLeod in the midst of the worst national recession in 80 years.
She was teaching at Yale about a year ago, driving back to New York on manic I-95, when her cellphone buzzed.  It was Sherwin Goldman, chairman of the opera’s board: Would she consider the top job at Glimmerglass?
“He’d asked me five years ago,” said Zambello, a veteran of three decades directing operas from San Francisco to La Scala.  “I said no.  I was in the middle of too many difficult projects.”
But Glimmerglass “has a special reputation,” and she had personally experienced its charms, directing “Iphigénie en Tauride” during the 1997 season.
Goldman, retired New York City Opera executive producer, invited Zambello to meet the rest of the board at his Fifth Avenue apartment.  It clicked.  She took the job.
Rechristening “the gem” she is now responsible for as Glimmerglass Festival is part of a larger strategy, to make the property on Otsego Lake a magnet for, not just committed opera fans, but the public at large.
The Colgate University graduate (1978) – she was raised in Europe and speaks five languages – plans to promote more heavily in the region – Albany, Syracuse, Utica, Binghamton – and to cross-promote where possible.  For instance, “Later the Same Evening,” a one-act opera based on five Edward Hopper paintings, is being coordinated with a Hopper exhibit at The Fenimore Art Museum.
Ommegang Brewery is develop a special beer just for the opera, which will hold a contest to help name it.  The beer will be the exclusive brew at all opera events this summer.  Plus, opera-goers will be able to camp on Ommegang’s grounds for free.
Wednesday, Jan. 26, Zambello planned to conduct a master class at SUNY Oneonta’s Music Department, followed by a “conversation” with the public at the Goodrich Theatre.
The first day of the season, July 2, when Bizet’s “Carmen” opens, tickets are $10 for anyone local who has not experienced the opera before.  All season, tickets are $10 for children accompanying a parent, and students 18+ will get 50 percent off tickets, all with the idea of widening the opera’s reach.
Zambello’s salesmanship was in evidence at the Village Library of Cooperstown Sunday, Jan. 23, when she held a packed room in the palm of her hand for 40 minutes and could have gone longer, (but the library was closing.)
Bizet was “the Andrew Lloyd Weber of his day,” and “Carmen” is “one of the greatest operas ever written.  The younger set loves it:  a lot of murder, sex and death.”
The plan is to include as many local people in the performances as possible, and boys with an interest in the gory have shown particular interest in Cherubini’s “Medea,” where mom Medea kills her two kids and one scene includes one of the youngster’s hearts as a prop.  (Cool!)
“Annie Get Your Gun” will be presented just the way Irving Berlin intended it – with a full orchestra and non-miked singers.  Deborah Voigt, who stars as Annie, will be the company’s first “artist in residence” this season. (There will be a tie-in between “Annie” and The Fenimore’s Thaw Collection of Native American Art.)
Two one-acts, “Later the Same Evening” and “A Blizzard in Marblehead Neck” (libretto by Pulitzer winner Tony Kushner of “Angels in America” fame; he will visit) represent the opera’s ongoing commitment to new works.
“There’s no place quite like Glimmerglass,” Zambello declared, and everyone seemed to agree.

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT GLIMMERGLASS OPERA

37th Annual Glimmerglass Season: Saturday, July 2–Tuesday, Aug. 23

• Bizet’s CARMEN opens 7 p.m. Saturday, July 2.  A gypsy’s fiery temperament leads to jealousy, mutiny and murder.  Tickets $10 for first-time opera-goers and children.  Ginger Costa-Jackson in title role.

 • Cherubini’s MEDEA opens 7:30 p.m. Friday, July 8.  Spurned wife murders her children. 
Alexandra Deshorties stars. 

• Two one-acts, A Blizzard at Marblehead Neck (Tony Kushner, librettist) and LATER THE SAME EVENING open 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 21.  LATER based on five Edward Hopper paintings.

• Irving Berlin’s ANNIE GET YOUR GUN opens 8 p.m. Saturday, July 16, featuring “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better.”

• A CABARET, featuring artist-in-residence Debbie Voigt, who also stars in ANNIE, 3 p.m. Friday, July 29.

• NATHAN GUNN recital, 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 12.

• MEET ME AT THE PAVILION, performances, discussions with cast, crew, Young American Artists throughout the summer at Thaw Pavilion, next to Alice Busch Opera Theatre.

• BACKSTAGE TOURS, 10 a.m., every Saturday in August.

• Post Performance CAST PARTIES, call 547-2255 for details.

• TICKETS and SUBSCRIPTIONS, check glimmerglass.org or call 547-2255.

WINTER CARNIVAL CLUES !!!

NYSHA Collection Connects 19th Century Art, Modernists: POLLOCK COMES TO FENIMORE

Jackson Pollock’s “Number 48,” (1949) will be a centerpiece of “Prendergast to Pollock,” The Fenimore’s first 20th century exhibit, in the collection of Utica’s Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute.

By JIM KEVLIN


COOPERSTOWN

Who doesn’t love it when a plan comes together?
Yes, the newly renamed Glimmerglass Festival is planning an opera this summer based on Edward Hopper, “Later The Same Evening.”  (No valkyries here.)
Paul D’Ambrosio’s phone rang.  It was Francesca Zambello, the opera’s new director: Can The Fenimore Art Museum do an exhibit to complement the opera?
D’Ambrosio’s first reaction:  There’s not enough time.  Then the NYSHA vice president & curator got on the phone. 
The result:  “A Window Into Edward Hopper,” including oils (two major ones, “Camel’s Hump” and “Freight Cars At Gloucester), watercolors and 30 drawings, many from private collections and seen for the first time.
Separately, D’Ambrosio found himself at Utica’s Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute – his wife, Anna, is assistant director there – viewing “Prendergast to Pollock: American Modernism,” which is touring the nation under the MetLife Foundation’s sponsorship.
The eureka moment:  Stephen C. Clark, founder of The Fenimore Art Museum (and the National Baseball Hall of Fame), leaped to mind.
“He was traditional AND forward-looking,” D’Ambrosio said of the man who collected 19th-century primitives AND helped launch the Museum of Modern Art.  “He was forward-thinking AND rooted.”
The outcome of all this will be evident this summer, when The Fenimore – repository of 19th-century American creativity – will go modern.  In addition to Hopper and “Prendergast to Pollock,” the offerings will feature photographic portraits of the enigmatic artist Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera’s lover.
In D’Ambrosio’s view, what The Fenimore is doing is unusual and hard to replicate.
University art departments have 19th century experts and 20th century experts, each in their own silos; The Fenimore is tearing down those silos, demonstrating how the early art established the foundation for what followed.
“Prendergast to Pollock” – it includes works by O’Keefe, Rothko, Gorky, de Kooning and two of Jackson Pollock’s big canvases – is “a real show stopper” in its own right.
But visitors entering the exhibit will encounter panels discussing works from The Fenimore’s collection foreshadowing what was to follow, and advising where those earlier works may be viewed in the museum’s collection.
Works of everyday life from the 1830s and ‘40s, for instance, depicting people in everyday situations, can be seen as paving the way for what Henri, Prendergast, Luks and Sloan did on the gritty canvases of the Ashcan School.
The Hudson River School’s landscapes made the American countryside a suitable subject, a fight fully won by the time 20th century Cubists began taking the world apart and not exactly putting it back together again.
Over the past three years, D’Ambrosio said, the full range of modern American art has been reflected in
The Fenimore’s exhibits, beginning with “America’s Rome” in 2009, which examined its European roots.
The new Americanism fully flowered in the 2010 exhibit, “John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women.”  The looser style of Sargent’s later portraits suggested what would come in the 20th century, when, as D’Ambrosio said, “You didn’t translate nature; you interpreted it.”
The curator ticked off the landmarks of 20th century American art: The 1908 MacBeth Gallery show that introduced the Ashcan School; the 1913 Armory Show, a flood of Impressionism;  Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery 291, which pioneered O’Keefe and John Marin.
By the 1940s, New York City was “a hotbed of avante garde,” with Greenwich Village’s Cedar Tavern the hangout for Pollock and the rest of the Abstract Expressionists.
“At the end,” D’Ambrosio said, “New York City was the center of the art world; at the beginning, it was Paris.”
“Portraits in Praise of Women” got a lot of attention last year, and it was reflected in The Fenimore’s gate:  20 percent more paying customers went through the turnstile than the year before.
This season promises to be even bigger, said D’Ambrosio, who was expecting a call from the Wall Street Journal’s art critic later the day of this interview.

THIS SUMMER AT THE NYSHA MUSEUMS

► “Frida  Kahlo: Through the Lens of  Nickolas Muray”
April 1–Sept. 5
“Endlessly fascinating” describes renowned Mexican artist Frida  Kahlo, a 20th-Century Mona Lisa whose enigmatic face means  something different to everyone.  
► “Shadow Catcher: Edward Curtis Among the Kwakiutl”
April 1–Dec. 31 
Photographs from 20 years documenting 80 American Indian  tribes. 
 ► “A Window Into Edward Hopper”
May 28–Sept. 11
This coincides with the Glimmerglass Festival’s “Later the Same Evening,” an opera based on  Hopper’s paintings. 
► “Prendergast to  Pollock:  American Modernism from the Munson-Williams Proctor Arts Institute”
May 28-Sept. 15
Key works from every major artist from the first half of the 20th century.  
► “Unfolding Stories: Culture and Tradition in American Quilts”
Sept. 24–Dec. 31
Quilts from the collection not seen for a decade.
► “Inspired Traditions:  The Jane Katcher Collection of American Folk Art”
Oct. 1–Dec. 31
First major showcasing of one of the  most prominent private folk art  collections in America.
Plus:
► “Highlights from the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art”
April 1–May 8, and Oct. 1– Dec. 31 
 ► “Otsego Lake Landscapes”
April 1–Dec. 31

 

•

This may be the year to join NYSHA.  Memberships, will include unlimited admission and discounts, begin at $50 for individuals and $80 for families.
     For details, call Corrine Armstrong, 547-1425, or e-mail c.armstrong@nysha.org

Auditions Near For ‘Always ... Patsy Cline’

ONEONTA

‘Always ... Patsy Cline” will open The Oneonta Theatre Stage Players in the spring, but auditions are Tuesday-Thursday, Feb. 8-10, at 7:30 each evening at the Chestnut Street venue.
“Always … Patsy Cline,” about the relationship between the singer and uber fan Louise Seger, a Houston housewife, will be staged Thursday-Sunday, April 7-10.
To audition, or to be considered for the on-stage band, contact Patrick Lippincott at pflippincott@yahoo.com.

Foothills’ First Show Of 2011 Gets Season Off To Energetic Start

Taken By: Jim Kelvin
Craig Wander of We Do Fondue shows mom Wendy Loitsch, Gilbertsville, and bride-to-be Ashley Loitsch how to partake of a chocolate fountain.

For More Photos of this event and others go to our Facebook Page --> Hometown Oneonta

Joe Campbell's Sentimental Journey

 In addition to Don, several cartoonists have captured Joe’s craggy features, elastic
expressions and accomplishment over the years

By JIM KEVLIN: ONEONTA

Spending a few hours with Joe Campbell is a “Sentimental Journey” indeed.
He’s immediately in character, and there are lots of them.
There he goes: “Jack Armstrong, all American boy,” he intones.  “Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys.”
Then a commercial break for Armstrong’s sponsor, Wheaties:  “Won’t you try Wheaties, the best breakfast found in the land?”
Then on to “Little Orphan Annie: She’s a little chatterbox, that gal with auburn locks.”  At the key point, Sandy chimes in: “Arf, arf.”
At almost 84, Joe Campbell, “The Voice of Oneonta,” whose “Sentimental Journey” – spoofs of those old radio shows, plus Big Band favorites, aired for decades over WDOS-AM 730, Oneonta – still captivates.
As he gathers force, the back room of his bungalow on Grand Street disappears.  The boombox has become a Philco “Five Star Baby Grand.”   Your back in Joe’s boyhood days before World War II.  You join his family gathered around the radio, imagining adventure, romance, journeys to distant lands, as WGY crackles out of the net-covered speakers.
As Joe, born in Moosic, Pa., grew up on Cliff Street, and Union Street, and Maple Street, there was stability:  dad, Buchanan Campbell, D&H foremen of engineers, sat in his armchair, reading the Binghamton Evening Press.  Mom Elizabeth would sew, and Joe, brother Bill and sister Ada (now Day, of Otego), would crowd around the console.
“That was it,” said Campbell.  “There was no TV of any consequence.  There was the radio in front room.”
As long as he can remember, Joe Campbell wanted to be in radio.
He first realized he had a talent for mimicry at Oneonta High School, then on Academy Street. 
The revered principal, Charles Belden, recruited Joe, a three-letter man, and other BMOCs, to found “The Saturday Night Club.”  (Students had been up to some mischief around the city, and Belden wanted them to have a healthful outlet for fun.)
There were card games.  A jukebox with the latest dance tunes.   And, as things evolved, a floor show.  “That gave me a chance to get up there and ham it up,” Joe recalled.
Joe Romanelli would do Jimmy Durante.  Timmy Williams would imitate other stars of the day.  And Joe figured he’d try stand-up comedy.
He told his first joke.  Dead silence in the packed bleachers.  Finally, someone in the back yelled, “Hey, Campbell: sit down.”
Joe replied, “No, I’ll do sit-down comedy.” And he sat down on the floor.
“That brought a big laugh,” and Joe was on his way.
Graduating from OHS in 1945, he was immediately drafted and found himself at a “separation center” in Fort Dix, processing out GIs flooding home from Europe and the Pacific.
Discharged, he used the GI Bill to attend Colgate, where he joined Delta Upsilon, studied philosophy and graduated in 1952.  But even then he was hanging around the Hotel Oneonta on holidays.
For something had happened while he was away:  In 1947, Charley Hobart went on the air from the top floor of the hotel with these historic words, “This is WDOS, the Star station.”
Otsego County had listened to radio for two decades, but now it had the first station of its own, and Joe wanted in.
He auditioned with Hobart.  He read a news story ripped off the wire.  He read a sports story.  “Well, we’re going to take a chance on you,” said the station manager, signalling the start of a 50-year career.
Bill Bennet was “The Sunshine Boy,” signing on at 8:15 a.m.  Ted Roodhoff presided over “The Farm Journal of the Air.”  Denny Sullivan was the DJ, and when he went on to a bigger market, Joe took over his popular “Request, Granted” show.
Listeners would send in requests by postcard; Joe would play the selections.  And they would call in, through the Hotel Oneonta switchboard.
“Good afternoon, sir.  Do you have a request?” he asked cheerfully on his first day.
“Bring back Denny Sullivan!” the voice at the other end of the line growled.
“I was crushed,” said Joe, but not too crushed to consider giving it up. 
He was teaching in Walton, where he spent much of four years at Ma Peck’s Boarding House, $12 a week, room and board, and coming back to Oneonta whenever he could.
But in 1957, he joined the city school system, where he would teach fifth and sixth grades until 1991.  “I just loved teaching,” he said.  “I had a lot of very good students; wonderful young people.”
At OHS, he had played football with Ed House, one of OHS’ all-time greats, and George Kershaw, the first local player to make it to the NFL, the Giants.  Now he joined the coaching staff, guiding such players at Mark May, who would later help the Washington Redskins to Super Bowl XVI, (although an injury kept him off the field.)
And he was married and raising a family.
And there was radio, radio, radio.  (When May was playing for Pitt, he confided to Joe on a trip home that he was a frontrunner for the prestigious Outland Trophy, to be awarded the following week.  Joe  and Mark conducted an interview just as if he’d already won it.  And when he did, Joe aired it, to everyone’s amazement at his “scoop.”)
In the 1950s, Joe hosted “The Saturday Night Dance Party,” although station owner James Ottaway, Sr. – his Ottaway Newspapers also owned The Daily Star at the time – was out of synch with changing tastes.  Every evening, WDOS would play classical music.
At “Dance Party,” Joe would play the Top 10.  Until Elvis Presley came along, to Number One before long.  The word came down, “Don’t play any Elvis on the radio station.”
“The whole idea of rock and roll – it was too rough and raw for the older people,” Joe said. 
The whole radio business was evolving.  WDLA had come on the air in Delhi soon after WDOS.  WCHN appeared in Norwich.  WSRK, “Good New Radio,” featuring Pastor Mel Farmer, entered the market.  The owner of Brackett’s Bookstore launched WZOZ in the 1960s.
About that time, restrictions tightened on owning a newspaper and radio station in the same market, and Ottaway divested WDOS.  “With each owner, things changed,” said Joe.
The station had long before moved from the Hotel Oneonta, to Chestnut and West, to 2 Market, to the Southside, to Route 7, next to Brooks.
Formats changed too.  But some things stayed the same.  The Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter.  The Dorseys, Artie Shaw, Count Basie.  Those men had song writers, composers and performers on the payroll.  Their orchestras went on the road, playing at The Pavilion at Canadarago Lake and other local venues.
In the 1980s, Joe Campbell discovered their fan bases endured when  he launched “Sentimental Journey,” the radio show he’s most remembered for today.  He would play the old favorites, and spoof the old shows, creating such knock-offs as “Max Headstrong,” a tribute to his boyhood hero.
Don Sherwood, the nationally prominent comic-strip creator who passed away in 2009, was one of his biggest fans.  So was the late Joe Fioravanti, the retired professor.  And Al Gallodoro, the jazz great who brought his sax to Oneonta when rising costs took the Big Bands off the road.
During this time, his family grown – two sons, two daughters, and, now, seven grandchildren (wife Judy is an interior decorator locally and in New York City) – the honors began to pour in.
Mayor David Brenner presented Joe with the keys to the city in 1997.  In 2005, the OHS Alumni Association honored him as Alumnus of the Year.
One WDOS manager, Ted Nixon, ordered “Sentimental Journey” off the air about that time.  The phones rang off the hook.  A week later, Nixon told him, “Put your ‘Sentimental Journey’ back on.”
In 2002, Joe Campbell decided to take a break.  And so, after a half-century plus one year, without fanfare, he did. 
Every once in a while, George Wells, general manager at Central New York Radio, which now owns WDOS, urges Joe to revive “Sentimental Journey.”  As he walks around town, folks call out to him, “Bring back ‘Sentimental Journey.’”
Joe pauses.  “I never really signed off or anything,” he muses.  So who knows?

Joe Campbell’s cartoonist pal, Don “Dan Flagg” Sherwood, captured the early decades of WDOS radio, from Charley Hobart, who hired Joe, to “The Voice of Oneonta” himself. 

FOR THE ♥ OF IT: Bobbi Harlem’s Husband Asked: Are You Sitting Down?

Bobbi Harlem, right, escorts Wendy Davie of Oneonta through
the newly redone Carriage House, Old Southside Drive, Oneonta. 
Wendy and her husband, Duncan’s daughter Jocelyn
is marrying Jesse Marsh on March 13.

By JIM KEVLIN
ONEONTA

In May 2009, the phone rang on Bobbi Harlem’s desk in the office at St. Mary’s School.
It was her husband, Bob, who asked, “Are you sitting down?”
She was.
“I just bought Frazier’s,” he said.
Luckily, Bobbi WAS sitting down, and “for one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.  But once it began to sink in, I was very excited.”
Frazier’s, a venerable Oneonta institution on Old Southside Drive, contained a venue for weddings and other major events – Frazier’s Gables – in addition to its nurseries, greenhouses and furniture store.
But the family had decided to move on to other ventures, and had put the property and all its contents up for auction.
For a lot of reasons, the facility – renamed The Carriage House and just finishing its first season – made a lot of sense to the mother of two, who has spent 35 years on Oneonta’s food and catering scene.
Foremost, because after all those years, she still loves the work.
“I have a passion for it,” she said the other day, sitting in the newly appointed bridal suite on the property.  “I enjoy people.  I like to sit down with a customer and understand their needs.
“To know you can do something to make their dream come true is extremely satisfying.”
Plus, there is a shortage of wedding venues locally, she said: “I have bookings well into next year.”
Bobbi was raised in Huntington, L.I., and met her first husband, Joe Lipari, while studying at SUNY Oneonta. 
After a year teaching home ec in her hometown, she returned to Oneonta in 1975.
The only sub shop in town was Jreck’s (now a defunct chain), and the couple had an idea:  make subs and deliver them to college students in the dorms.

They bought 10 Pleasant Ave., their first house, and receive temporary approval from City Hall to make subs there for an academic year to see how it went.  (No on-site business, however.)
J&B Subs “just took off,” and the Liparis opened their first shop, on South Main Street.
The business/life partners worked side by side for more than a decade.  In 1989, however, returning from vacation on an auto train, Joe suffered a heart-attack and passed away prematurely at age 39.
Alone, Bobbi soldiered on, moving J&B Subs to where Athens Famous Gyros is located today, on Muller Plaza.
Life went on, and she married Bob Harlem, president, Oneonta Block Co., at St. Mary’s Church during the March Blizzard of ‘93.  (Buffeted by the storm, the wedding party made it as far as J&B Subs.  The banquet was hot dogs and macaroni salad.)
Bobbi continued J&B but, by 2000 and with two little boys – Ryan is now 17 and Gregory, 15 – it was too much.  She closed the shop, although she continued her catering.
The boys are almost grown and the catering is still going strong; that’s why Bob took the plunge.
Still, “it was empty,” Bobbi recalled.  “There was an awful lot of work to be done.”
The closing didn’t happen until this past May.  The cement pads of the former greenhouses, which had been auctioned off and taken away, had to be removed and the resulting parking lot graded.  Ryan, who studied heavy-equipment operation at BOCES, got a lot of hands-on experience, and Greg helped too.
The main building had been unoccupied for at least one season.  “We pretty much redid everything,” Bobbi said – cocktail tables, banquet tables, chairs for 200, coolers, a freezer, a convection oven.
“We repainted everything,” she added.
By Labor Day, The Carriage House was ready to go.  The first reception – Jen Obergefell to Geoffrey Chesser – occurred Sept. 5.
Over the summer, Jay Meyer and Julie Neer drove up from Virginia.  The Unadilla natives, looking for a fall wedding, asked:  “Do you have a bridal suite, because we need to stay for three nights?”
Now I do, thought Bobbi, and added the two-room suite to the plant.  Jay and Julie were married Oct. 9.
The main building has two spacious floors.  The wood walls and floors glowed, as Bobbi showed Wendy Davie, whose daughter Jocelyn is getting married in March, through the property.
The peaked ceiling of the second floor gives an airy feeling.  The gardens, including two waterfalls, are still in use from the Frazier’s days, but Bobbi says the second floor is helpful if the weather doesn’t cooperate.
Bobbi loves weddings, but that’s only part of the plan.
Already, the Carriage House hosted the Future for Oneonta Foundation annual luncheon in November and a girls’ soccer banquet.

Business conferences are welcome as well.

AllOTSEGO.com In case of rain, the airy second-floor banquet
room can accommodate weddings from the garden.

AllOTSEGO.com Bobbi Harlem shows off the bridal suite,
suggested by a couple from Virginia – Unadilla natives –
who married at The Carriage House in October.

 

 

Father Burns Was About People

Just after the wonderful Christmas celebrations, we learned on the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr, that Father John Burns, pastor of Holy Cross Church, Morris, had passed away.
Father Burns was dean of Otsego County, appointed to that post by Bishop Hubbard to represent the diocese in the western area of the Diocese of Albany.
Father Burns was a friend of ours here at St. Mary’s, Cooperstown.  Any time he was invited, he joyfully came to parties, social events, business meetings and liturgies.  Recently, he was here for the funeral of Dennis Murray.  He came through our Open House on Dec. 19.
He heard confessions here on Dec. 22. Father John often came to assist with our confirmation students, to hear confessions or to lead the once-a-month special mass for our confirmation students.
Many have shared their feelings about this quiet man.  Some commented how his faith came out when singing, full voiced and unsparingly.
“He was gentle and kind in confession.” “He loved his vocation and the people he served.”
My own thoughts are:  John listened.  He was quiet. When he spoke, one should listen.
The week he died, John would have traveled to be with the bishop, priests and seminarians for the annual Christmas social.  I confess that I am too Christmas-exhausted to even think of the trip.
Not John. He was always there. And “there” was people.  John Burns ever sought to bring people together. 
One of the greatest comments I heard about his passing comes from the wonderful person who maintains the rectory and watched John convalesce here after this heart surgery.  She observed: “Father Burns was always busy doing the Church’s work very quietly and diligently.”
My fondest thought is how he traveled to be with us on Sunday morning, June 6, at 11 a.m., for the celebration of the Year of Priests.   Father Andrew W. Cryans of Durham, N.H., said:  “ You  can always  count on John Burns to be there when it is priesthood.” 
May the Eternal Priest embrace Him.  “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchisdeck.”

Father Rosson is pastor of St. Mary’s “Our Lady of the Lake” Church,
Cooperstown.

Bishop Officiates At Funeral of Father John Burns, 71, Otsego-Delaware County Dean

MORRIS – The funeral mass for the Very Rev. John R. Burns, dean of the Otsego-Delaware Deanery, was Friday, Dec. 31, at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Oneonta.  Bishop Howard Hubbard of the Diocese of Albany officiating.
Father Burns, 71, who was also pastor of Holy Cross Church, Morris, passed away Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010, at his home in Morris.
He was born in Albany in 1939, the son of Robert J. Burns Sr. and Anna (Wohlfahrt) Burns.
He was a graduate of St. Joseph’s Academy in Albany in 1957. He attended Mater Christi in Albany and St. Paul’s University in Ottawa, Canada, then was ordained at the Cathedral in Albany by Father William A. Scully.
While assistant pastor at St. Ambrose Church in Latham, he was an instructor at Mercy High School in Albany. He was assistant pastor at St. Joseph’s Church in Rensselaer and St. Agnes Church in Cohoes, then chaplain at Memorial Hospital and School of Nursing, then assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in Ballston Spa.
In 1981, he became pastor of Precious Blood of Jesus Church in South Kortright, and in 1999 became pastor of his current church Holy Cross Church of Morris.  He was chaplain of the Joseph P. Molinari Council 4989 Knights of Columbus.
Survivors include his brother, Robert J. Burns Jr. and his wife, Agatha, of Canada Lake; a nephew, Robert A. Burns and his wife, Kristen, of East Greenbush, and his three great-nieces, Madison, McCayla and Macey Burns.
Burial was Monday, Jan. 3, at Holy Redeemer Cemetery in Niskayuna.
Memorial donations may be made to Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, P.O. Box 118, Morris, NY 13808.
Arrangements were with the Johnston Funeral Home of Morris.

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