News stories tagged with "meet-the-masters"

(11/04/10) Well-know auctioneer Roger Huntley died yesterday. He was 82 and had been in failing health. Huntley was the sixth generation of his family to operate their 300-acre dairy farm in the St. Lawrence County Town of Pierrepont. He was a familiar figure in the Crary Mills neighborhood.

Crary Mills is a little four corner settlement now - a hamlet with a church, a cemetery, a grange hall, and the Crary Mills Mighty Mall - an antiques place Roger and his wife Ann opened several years ago.

That's Martha Foley's neighborhood. It's also David Sommerstein's neighborhood. David and his family are close neighbors of the Huntleys. They shared memories...and radio pieces from the NCPR archives.

(09/17/04) This Sunday, Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, or "TAUNY", will honor three "North Country Legends". Helen Taylor Condon, traditional rug braider from Parishville; Ralph Morrow, builder of traditional Adirondack guideboats in Saranac Lake; and the New Bremen Ice Harvest, a community tradition of the Lewis County hamlet's volunteer fire department, will receive North Country Heritage Awards. Todd Moe profiles rug maker Helen Condon.

(05/04/04) Anyone with an eye for beauty can appreciate the sight of a well-tied fishing fly. A little piece of feather here, a bit of fur there all to lure in the hungry trout. Where did these designs come from? Do they work? Fran Betters of Wilmington has spent years studying the insects he's imitating when he constructs an Ausable Wulff fly, one of the many successful flys he's designed. Lamar Bliss reports

(04/28/04) Recent surveys show that more people use complementary and alternative medicine than ever before. Talk about acupuncture, massage therapy, aromatherapy and herbal preparations fills popular magazines and television talk shows. For generations, the only medicines used by Mohawk healers came from their knowledge of the plants and animals they lived with. Varick Chittenden and Lamar Bliss spent a late afternoon exploring a woods near Akwesasne in Franklin county with one such healer.

(04/27/04) Her kids tell her they think she's a mountain goat. She just laughs and says she's built close to the ground. Being able to climb hills and scramble through brush allows Cecelia Mitchell to find the wild plants she uses for medicine. Lamar Bliss introduces us to this Mohawk elder from Akwesasne who is widely known as a healer and teacher.

(04/06/04) More than a hundred years ago when great camps were being built for families like the Rockefellers and the Durants, many of the furnishings were designed to bring the woods indoors. Chairs, tables, dressers and beds featured tree branches and limbs in their construction and twigs and bark were applied decoratively to the outside surfaces. The style was known as rustic or Adirondack. Today, prized antique pieces are displayed at museums and in lodges, where visitors are inspired to furnish their camps to evoke life in the woods. As Lamar Bliss reports, craftsmen like Tom Phillips of Tupper Lake now make a good living and practice an ancient art at the same time.

(03/17/04) Quilting was long considered a salvage craft, with homemakers using scraps of fabric from old clothes and leftover material to create warm blankets and bedcovers. The quilts were colorful and well made and most quilters used traditional patterns learned from family and friends. Well, it's not your grandmothers' quilts anymore! Many of today's quilt makers use old patterns for inspiration, but don't let them get in the way of creative expression. Lamar Bliss visited the biennial Raquette River Quilters' show and also spoke with one of its founding spirits.

(02/24/04) The village limits of Port Henry expand towards Vermont in the depths of winter to include scores of little fishing shelters that dot the thick ice surface of Bulwagga Bay. On weekends, local motels and restaurants are filled by winter fishermen. Sportsmen give a boost to the local economy, but 50 years ago, commercial fishing in the winter was common. Earl Sprague remembers when ice fishing provided pocket money for him, and a living for others. Varick Chittenden has this story.

(01/14/04) The village limits of Port Henry expand towards Vermont in the depths of winter to include scores of little fishing shelters that dot the thick ice surface of Bulwagga Bay. On weekends, local motels and restaurants are filled by winter fishermen. Sportsmen give a boost to the local economy, but 50 years ago, commercial fishing in the winter was common. Earl Sprague remembers when ice fishing provided pocket money for him, and a living for others. Varick Chittenden has this story.

(12/31/03) For more than 50 years, Canton has been home to Barb Klemens and the Yarn Shop on Church Street. If you want to work with interesting yarns and need anything from needles to row markers or help with a button hole Barb's shop is the place to go. Lamar Bliss knows this from experience. 30 years ago she stopped in the shop for yarn in what was the first of many visits.