Wednesday

It's Recyclables Day!


37 degrees and breezy.

WKTV's Forecast: "A storm system will pass to our north and west today, bringing more morning rain, a quick afternoon warmup, followed by colder weather for tomorrow. Rain showers will continue this morning, with the steadiest and heaviest rain north of the Thruway. Up to another quarter of an inch of rain will fall today. Rain is expected to end before noon. A cold front will move through between noon and 2pm, and will be accompanied by quite a bit of wind. Winds are expected to gust up to 35mph. Some breaks of afternoon sunshine are expected, with high temperatures near 50 degrees.

Colder air will build in by the evening, with temperatures rapidly falling into the 30s this evening, and eventually 20s and upper 10s tonight. Some lake effect flurries are possible late tonight, but accumulations are expected to be very light."

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Tom Morgan is ready!
There are plenty of rakes in his sidewalk showroom so that YOU will be ready, too!

Alcott's is ready, too, and seed packet racks are full along with shelves filled with other "green thumb" helpers!


Out in the greenhouse, it was warm and Spring-smelling and, well - everything was green!


Some plants even had blossoms on them!

But those "hooks" on all the hanging planters? They don't grow themselves!

Villagers are wondering when the Memorial Bandstand will start "growing," again, and Village Clerk Lorena Lenard has already received phone calls from parties asking to reserve the structure for weddings!

The unofficial answer: construction probably won't start for several weeks and although the building itself may be completed by mid-to-late July, there will still be landscaping to do.


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More and more pretty doorway decorations appear - this is on Madison Street -
but reflections in the storm doors make them difficult to photograph.

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In my morning mail I found a note from Doug Cornelius along with this photograph.

"My wife Sue and I walked (in last Saturday's Heart Run & Walk) with Team Mohawk Valley Heart Institute. There were about 370 runners and walkers - obviously not all were in the attached picture. It was a great day for a walk. Come on Spring!" (Thanks, Doug!)

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Also in the mail, Shirley Bynum Smith sent me this photograph of some of the members of the WCS Class of '56 & Friends, taken at Michael's last week, saying,

"This is the third such gathering in less than a year, and we hope to keep on keepin' on with this new tradition."

From left: Anna Hayes Halkowich, Esther Eisenhut Swarthout, Donna Ingersoll Morelle, Ann Fleischman Ingersoll, Shirley Eisenhut Smith.

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It's "Women's History Month" and Waterville had it's share of women who, although they did it quietly, accomplished a great deal in the world and whose stories make me wish that I had known them! Here's one:

CHARLOTTE BUELL COMAN

1833 - 1924

Born in Waterville, New York, to a family that ran a tannery and shoe factory. She married early and moved to the frontier town of Iowa City, Iowa where she became a pioneer housewife. However, her life became complicated because her husband died several years after their marriage, and she became deaf, something she jokingly said later was an advantage because she couldn't hear the scathing remarks of critics.

She returned to Waterville and determined that in spite of her trouble, she was not going to be idle. At age forty, she committed herself to a career in art.

Her first teacher was James Brevoort, a landscape painter of New York City, and she continued for another ten years abroad, first in Paris where she exhibited at the Paris Salon and studied with Harry Thompson and Emile Vernier, and then spent six years in Holland. She became a prominent late 19th, early 20th-century landscape artist known for her tonalist paintings, especially with misty blue coloration. A studio fire destroyed the output of these years. In France, she was greatly influenced by the Barbizon painters and their attention to contrasting light and atmosphere and the working in a broad-sweeping manner without attention to detail. In the early 1880s, she returned permanently to New York where she had already been exhibiting at the National Academy. In 1876, her painting "A French Village," had earned her much praise at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and critics compared her work to Corot. However, she turned away from European subjects and devoted herself to the American landscape, using the tonalist approach and suggesting spirituality with misty effects achieved with dominance of subdued blues and greens. Frequently her vantage point was looking down into a valley from a high point, a panoramic view on a small to medium size canvas. With her paintings she strove to achieve a sense of quiet, something that many of her artist peers, including George Inness and Alexander Wyant, were doing to counter the crass materialism of the Gilded Age of industrialism. She received much positive attention including election in 1910 as an Associate to the National Academy of Design, but well-aware of discrimination against women artists by male jurors, she always signed her work C.B. Coman. She continued painting almost to her death at age 89. Her reputation lapsed into obscurity until the mid 1970s when a renewed interest in feminine artists brought new appreciation to her work. Credit: Charlotte Rubinstein, "American Women Artists"

I remember seeing several of her paintings - including one of a double hop house built of cobblestones from which two Stafford Avenue residences were later constructed - but the owner left Waterville several years ago .......................

Perhaps someone from the family will read this and get in touch with me? It would be awfully nice to acquire one for local history's sake!

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I'm running late!

Sorry!

Have a Great Day, Everyone!