Destination Middletown!

“The Hotels of Middletown,” a slide show featuring images and stories from more than 40 hotels and inns that welcomed guests over the past 150 years, will be presented Sunday, Aug. 16 at 1 p.m. at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Admission is $2 for HSM members, $4 non-members. www.mtownhistory.org

Presenters Diane Galusha and Georgi Fairlie will provide a whirlwind tour of destination lodging facilities ranging from farm-based boarding houses to elegant estates. Examples include the Pakatakan Hotel in Arkville which catered to artists; Briarcliff Lodge that started as a health retreat; the Pocantico Inn with its memorable porticoed entry on Margaretville’s Main Street; and Kass Inn, known for its sumptuous buffets and later its golf.

Half of the program will be devoted to Fleischmanns hotels, including the Takanasee, with its lavish entertainment, DePitts Mountain Lodge with its own ski slopes, the Palace, catering to Hungarian clientele, the massive Pinewood, and the Park Terrace, whose pool is now the municipal swimming pool on Wagner Avenue.

From Smith Farm in New Kingston, the Arena Hotel, and the Grand Hotel, that epic hostelry in Highmount, the slide show will recall an era when villages were crowded with summertime visitors. Images of the railroads that fed the tourist trade, turn-of-the century Main Streets, and 1950s promotional brochures will depict the decades-long enchantment that tourists had – and still have – with this part of the Catskills.

“The thrill of my life”

“The thrill of my life”

That’s what Helen Keller said after landing two fair sized trout in Dry Brook in late July, 1935.

The Catskill Mountain News reported July 5 that she had rented “King’s Lodge,” the former Kelly farm, one of the Gould properties, for the summer. With a sizeable staff to attend her, and “thousands of feet of rope stretched around the promises to help her get about unaided,” the woman famous for overcoming blindness, deafness and lack of speech was “enjoying the delightful air of the Dry Brook Valley.”

On August 2, the paper said Niles Fairbairn, legendary local outdoorsman and angler, was invited for a visit and to show her the stream. With the help of a nurse who “conversed with Miss Keller by the deaf and dumb alphabet with fingers touched to the palm of Miss Keller’s hand,” she was taught to swing the fishing rod in a space free from trees and vegetation.

Her first cast hooked an undersized trout which Niles returned to the stream. She next hooked “a large sized native” and “landed the beauty after a ten minute fight.” After a third catch of a good sized trout, she declared she’d had excitement enough for one day, adding “I had the thrill of my life.”

Gravestone cleaning workshop Aug. 8

Gravestone cleaning workshop Aug. 8

Learn to safely clean the surface of gravestones at a workshop Saturday, August 8 at the Clovesville Cemetery near Fleischmanns.

The workshop, led by Marianne Greenfield, proprietor of Gravestone Cleaning Service of Delhi, will run from 9:30 a.m. to noon. It is sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown in cooperation with the Clovesville Cemetery Association.

Participants will be guided in the use of gravestone cleaning techniques and the biodegradable and non-toxic cleaning product D/2, which is used and recommended by the National Park Service.

Space is limited; reservations are required and can be made by calling 845-254-5381. Workshop fee is $15 and includes all supplies.

Before cleaning

After cleaning

Square dance + ice cream social mean old fashioned fun!

Square dance + ice cream social mean old fashioned fun!

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will celebrate ten years of promoting, preserving and presenting local history with a square dance and ice cream social on Sunday, July 19 at its hall located at 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville.

John Jacobson, fiddler and caller, will lead the Tremperskill Boys in an afternoon of Catskills traditional music. Doors open at Noon, the dance starts at 1 p.m., and ice cream and cake will be served at intermission. Admission is $10; children 15 and under are free. www.mtownhistory.org

No dancing experience is necessary to participate in this family friendly event, which is in keeping with community dances, picnics and parties held over many decades by the Izaak Walton League and later by the New Kingston Valley Grange, former occupants of the HSM hall.

Ginny Scheer, director of Catskills Folk Connection, will offer the folk and historical context of square dancing in the Catskills and will guide dancers on the floor. Beginners are welcome; dances of interest to veteran dancers will also be called.

Square dancing is about community, so come enjoy dancing with your neighbors and make new friends, too. But if you don’t feel like dancing, just come listen to the music, with its origins in Irish and Scottish traditions. Bring a picnic to enjoy by the pond! An exhibit of items from HSM’s collection of artifacts and memorabilia is also on display at the hall for the summer.

Musicians in addition to John Jacobson will include Amy Liebermann on upright bass, Chris Carey on banjo and Sheila Addison on guitar. A special guest on July 19 will be Casey Mullaney who calls lively contra dances, a type of line dance common in New England that is being revived in this area.

The band’s repertoire explores the roots of Celtic music, and pays tribute to the music and square dance calls of the late Hilt Kelly of Red Kill. The Tremperskill Boys along with Henry Hermann served as Hilt’s backup band, thereby extending his playing and calling in his later years. John Jacobson became Hilt’s protégé and studied his tunes and calls as well as dances by other Catskills’ callers recorded at Camp Woodland.

Catskills Folk Connection is a virtual folklife center, established by Ms. Scheer and folklorist Karyl Eaglefeathers in 2007 to celebrate and preserve the folklife of the Catskills Region. It is sponsored by the Roxbury Arts Group and, with monthly square dances, supported Hilt Kelly, his band and his dances until his death earlier this year. “It was a great privilege to be part of the life of one of the great musicians of our region,” says Scheer, “and we will do our best to perpetuate his musical heritage.”
In addition to supporting Catskills music and dance, Catskills Folk Connection is conducting field work about the folk arts of farm women for the New York Folklore Society, and is researching a local folk painter, Nelly Bly Ballard, in a project funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts and the O’Connor Foundation.

For more information, tune in to Catskills Folk alternate Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on WIOX 91.3 FM and www.wioxradio.org, or take the “Catskills Vernacular Architecture Challenge” at www.catskillsfolkconnection.blogspot.org.

July 12 film tells story of radio, TV star Gertrude Berg

July 12 film tells story of radio, TV star Gertrude Berg

Gertrude Berg, aka Molly Goldberg

“Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a documentary about radio and television pioneer Gertrude Berg, will be screened Sunday, July 12 at 1 p.m. at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Admission is $5.

The famed comedienne got her start in show business in Fleischmanns and is buried in Bnai Israel cemetery there. Gertrude Berg memorabilia from the collection of the Greater Fleischmanns Museum of Memories will be on display at the HSM screening.

 

Born Tillie Edelstein in Harlem in 1898, the woman who became known to millions of radio listeners as Molly Goldberg first entertained guests at her parents’ hotel, a mansion once owned by the Fleischmanns family. Whenever it rained and the guests got restless, Tillie became a ‘gypsy’ and read palms, or organized playlets with parts for everyone. It was also at the hotel that she met her future husband, Lewis Berg.

Stories gleaned from family, guests and hotel staff found their way into the scripts she ultimately wrote for “The Goldbergs,” an original radio show she created and starred in for 17 years. Debuting just a week after the stock market crash in 1929, the program was a favorite of listeners who found the tales of this quirky and funny family a comforting escape during the difficult Depression years. The show was second only to “Amos and Andy” as the longest running radio show ever.

Gertrude Berg carried the characters into the brave new world of television with The Goldbergs. TV’s very first sitcom in 1949. Berg wrote the scripts for The Goldbergs, in which she also played the leading character. CBS’s number one show combined comedy and social commentary and featured Jewish characters, including the endearing matriarch Molly Goldberg who regularly kibitzed with neighbors across airshafts in the Bronx (“Yoo hoo, Mrs. Goldberg”).

Berg won the first ever Best Actress Emmy Award in 1950, and later earned a Tony on Broadway. A trailblazer in the male-dominated entertainment world, polls showed she was the second most respected woman in America, after Eleanor Roosevelt. Considered the Oprah of her day, Berg wrote an advice column (“Mama Talks”) and a cookbook, and even launced a clothing line.

“Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” a 2009 film by Aviva Kempner includes clips from The Goldbergs, and other period TV shows and films, including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Honeymooners, The Perry Como Show, I Love Lucy, The Milton Berle Show, and the Marx Brothers.

The 90-minute film features interviews with family members, historians and famous fans, including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ed Asner, Norman Lear and NPR’s Susan Stamberg. It also tells the story of “Goldbergs” co-star Philip Loeb, who was attacked by Joseph McCarthy’s blacklisting machine, a tragic witch hunt memorialized in the 1976 film The Front. Loeb committed suicide in 1955.

“Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is made available by the Ciesla Foundation and the National Center for Jewish Film.