Van Wyck Gazette Autumn Issue 2015

Autumn Issue 2015

New Paltz • Rhinebeck • Poughkeepsie • Wappingers Falls • Fishkill • Beacon • Newburgh

Diane Lang

Table of Contents

The Power of Gratitude

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“Of all the positive strengths we’ve looked at, people who are highest in gratitude are also highest in well-being.” Martin Seligman.

Norwegian Heritage Site in 4 Connecticut Thor A. Larsen

We all know gratitude is one of the positive emotions we should feel as part of our daily diet of emotions, but that statement above really says it all. Gratitude should be one of the positive emotions that become part of your daily life. Gratitude for me has become a habit about four years ago and one of the best things I have added into my life.

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Gratitude is a simple emotion to add in. Its the feeling of being grateful, thankful and/or appreciative. Cultivating gratitude doesn’t take much time or money yet the benefits are huge.

Benefits of Gratitude: • Gratitude improves our physical health. This includes feeling less aches and pains and feeling better overall health. It builds our immune system and grateful people tend to take better care of themselves.

• Gratitude is the antidote to stress. Gratitude reduces signs of stressand anxiety. Basically being grateful on a daily basis equals lower levels of stress.

• Gratitude improves our relationships and socialization. Grateful people tend to have a more active social life.

Paying it forward is a great way to get a boost of happiness and raise your self-esteem.

• Write a letter of thanks to someone who has changed your life. Write down in the letter what they did and how it changed/affected you.

Then arrange to see this person (if possible; if not send by letter, email or call but in-person is best) and read the letter to the person.

• Keep a gratitude journal. Write 2-3 things you’re grateful for each day.

If you don’t want to write, you can say it out loud or in your head.

• For families of any age; at dinner times while sitting around the table, have each person say what they are grateful for. This includes everyone.

I have a few families who have taken it a step further. One day a week, they will all say a thank you to someone at the table.

If you feel you keep saying the same things over and over and the activity is losing its meaning then its time to add “why” to your gratitude.

Ask yourself what is one thing I am grateful for and then ask why. Asking why allows you to dig deeper and find the true meaning of gratitude.

What are you grateful for?

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Mike Jurkovic

David Amram

The Greatest Gift

The Worlds of Lewis Gardner

12 Joseph Yeomans

• Gratitude is a form of meditation and we know all of the benefits of meditation include calmness, a sense of peace, mindfulness, better sleep, etc.

Adding Gratitude Into Your Life: • Give thanks by paying it forward. We can have our kids start doing this at preschool ages. You can have your children get rid of all the clothes that no longer fit, toys they don’t play with, and bring them to a local church/temple or to someone in need.

The Judith Tulloch Band

Janet Hamill

11 Meryl Hartstein

• Gratitude reduces our toxic emotions such as resentment, envy,regret, etc. Instead, gratitude reduces depression and increases happiness.

• Gratitude helps us to retrain our brain from negative to positive. It allows us to have an appreciation of everything and everyone around us.

The Power of Gratitude

Diane Lang

Old Bet and the Elephant 14 Hotel Peter Rae

Eat Healthy and Local

16 Amy Zarichnak

Engaged Employees Help 18 Grow Your Business David McGorry

History of Japanese Guitars

21 Frank Meyers .

Van Wyck Gazette ™ Finally a magazine with personality!

Publisher

Caplan Media Group, Inc.

Page 3

Va n Wyck Ga ze tte Editor In Chief I love the synergy of daily life. Every once in a while a charismatic man or woman with their unique personality intersects with the best plans you laid out. Your behavior is suddenly either subjectively or objectively reactive to some unseen force. You alter both a change in the orientation and direction of your teamwork.

The results are always unexpected in ways you never imagined and might even evoke a sense of gratitude. Which is the theme of this Autumn Issue.

I walked into the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon, New York on a crisp fall day a few years ago only to find a copy of “Lunch at the Live Bait Diner” shared by Director Florence Northcutt. She asked that I reach out to the authors, which I did. I am thrilled to present our cover by artist Joseph Yeomans plus his interview of character actor/ poet Lewis Gardner.

In speaking with creative local chef Joseph Jurkovic a few years ago, he asked that I reach out to writer/poet Michael Jurkovic, which I also did. I am elated to share his interview of musician David Amram.

I called quite a few respondents in reply to our advertisement for a journalist which led to the fine features about local historic sites by Peter Rae. Enjoy his review of the Elephant Hotel. And ever the voracious reader, I found by chance the life coaching expert Meryl Hartstein and psychologist Diane Lang, both of who share their wisdom about life and love.

In scouring the internet I happened to find, purely by chance, the definitive text about the “History of Japanese Guitars” by Frank Meyers.

And I am thrilled to present his exemplary yet brief narrative on the genesis of lutherie in Japan and radical influence on guitar manufacture in the United States. A nod of appreciation to his publisher Centerstream, plus gratitude to everyone whose path in life intersects mine.

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Joseph Caplan Our appreciation to Joseph Yeomans for a spectacular cover designed exclusively for Van Wyck Gazette Autumn Issue.

Joseph Yeomans is a self-taught cartoonist and illustrator whose work has been commissioned for advertisements and commemorative events. As a painter he has participated in several group shows in the Hudson Valley. His largest body of work has been a collaborative effort with the poet and actor, Lewis Gardner, with whom he created a collection of 30 illustrated poems penned by Mr. Gardner over the past several decades. The collection, ‘Lunch at the Live Bait Diner’, was exhibited as an art/literature show in Beacon, Kingston and Gardiner, and also was published in book form. The illustration he created for the Autumn Edition of Van Wyck Gazette was inspired by Yeomans’ passion for cycling (He rides a Raleigh CX, circa 1987) and his love for mingling with various peoples on common ground.

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Fall 2015 Issue

Thor A. Larsen

A Norwegian Heritage Site in Connecticut

Norwegian organization that owns and maintains the Borgund church would not provide them with any drawings and would not even allow Some of the them to use a ladder most loved and to help in the meatreasured of surements. UndauntNorway’s historical buildings are their ed, they took copious stave churches. Of those, the best amounts of photopreserved with minimal changes over graphs (especially the years is the Borgund Stave Church Joyce), made mealocated in Borgund, Lærdal, in the Sogn surements that could and Fjordane area of Western Norway. be done on the ground The church was built between 1180 and level, and then David 1250 AD and its style is known as “tripledrew up detailed bluenave” stave church. On a cleared area prints for building the within a private, wooden property in rural All of the measurements and details of the church were based on church.

Connecticut, there is now a perfect, fullphotos of the original.

Four years ago, scale replica of this famous stavkirke!

David, with an average of three helpers, ment of his wife, Olga, they sought out a The owner of the Connecticut property started to build the church. The materials, is a successful businessman with some builder who would undertake this incredibly such as the pine, spruce, and cedar came complex task.

David A. Miller, who had been Norwegian roots who fell in love with stave from various sources. In fact, Olga and Tom restoring homes from the 17th and the 18th churches and Norwegian history and culture drove to Canada, a good source of spruce, from his many happy visits to Norway start- century throughout New England provided to bring home spruce “knees.” They had a ing in the 1950s. About 10 years ago, Tom the perfect match. problem bringing the wood into the U.S., decided he wanted to build a perfect repTom, Olga, David, and David’s wife, due to importation restrictions at the time. lica of the Borgund Stave Church on his Joyce, travelled to Norway to study the Every aspect of building this “Heritage Site” property. With the support and encourage- details of the Borgund Stave Church. The On a private, wooded property stands a stunning replica of the Borgund Stave Church

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Va n Wyck Ga ze tte

due to their hardness. In order to build the roof, it had to be assembled on the ground and lifted up into place with a crane.

Design of the roof and all structural areas of the church were replicated from the Borgund church. However, instead of the “stone foundation” used in Borgund, the Connecticut church has a basement foundation.

At the arched entrance, there is a rich complex of carvings in pine. This work was done by Rosanna Coyne, a local wood carving specialist, and took about a year to complete. All the other carvings inside the church and all the dragon heads were done by none other than David, the builder and wood carver. The front door has hand-hammered iron decorations and door lock. The metal work was done by Newton Millham, a local blacksmith, reflecting the actual details of the Borgund church’s door, along with its current flaws.

Different beam connections use notching techniques like those of the original, as well as 1200 “nails” similar to the ones used at The stave church in Connecticut is every bit as impressive as the Borgund. A noted modern improvement is the use of a wood spray which makes the wood less flammable.

Borgund church that inspired it.

The plantings and stone work surrounding the church have an had unique problems but they were all solved, often very cleverly. understated elegance that befits this powerful building. The The church structure is supported by 14 rounded pine “staves.” beautiful landscaping was designed by Anne Vaterlaus.

Each stave is tapered and only hand tools were used to shape It turns out that the church interior has excellent acoustics, and them. The total height of the church is 35 feet to comply with the the church has already been used for a musical recital and an Connecticut building code; this is very close to the height of the elaborate 17th of May celebration. original stave church. As noted in the interior photograph, the The final result of this Herculean project is a monumental display walls are vertical pine boards, and consistent with the original of Norwegian Art in a pastoral setting that leaves anyone lucky church. The arches between the main beams are built with spruce, because this wood is less likely to split over time and weaken. enough to see it in awe Photos by Thor A. Larsen.

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Fall 2015 Issue

Janet Hamill I first became aware of Beacon’s own Judith Tulloch in 1997, when I was working in an Orange County public library. I had heard from musician friends that Tulloch was one of the most original singersongwriters in the Hudson Valley. Being responsible for scheduling the adult programming at the library put me in the position to invite Judith to perform. It’s an occasion I won’t forget. Her voice was as original as her self-composed songs, and she had a magnetic presence.

“Rhythm is Freedom” The Judith Tulloch Band

Alive”), the band excels and accomplished at renditions of bossa quartets, performing nova and samba clasat premiere venues sics, as well as contemthroughout the lower porary Brazilian and Hudson Valley inLatin songs (song in cluding Bodles OpSpanish and Portuera House, The Falguese). And capping off con, The Howland the band’s virtuosity is Cultural Center, The their unique re-workings Towne Crier, Banof popular American nerman’s Island, standards.

Bethel Woods Harvest Festival, and To see them live is to many other festivals. be seduced. Tulloch’s They’ve also worked approach to singing utitheir magic in New lizes her voice as a muYork, at spaces sical instrument, creatranging from Central ing vocal phrasings that Photo by Jessica Mallon Park Summerstage work in counterpoint to to the Bronx Zoo, the NY Aquarium, the Franchino’s flute and saxophone stylings.

Central Park Zoo, the Queens Zoo, the Her fluid, understated guitar voicings proProspect Park Zoo and clubs throughout vide the harmonic backdrop that the vocal Manhattan and Brooklyn. and instrumental melodies ride on while

Since that day, I’ve observed Tulloch evolve from a solo performer to the leader of one of the Hudson Valley’s most singular ensembles – The Judith Tulloch Band. The group consists of Tulloch (guitar and vocals), Steve Franchino on flute, Bansuri Indian flute and soprano saxophone, Ron Figueroa In addition to Tulloch’s original composi- Figueroa and Arlequin provide the subtle on bass and Alex Arlequin on drums. tions ( a short list would include “Grooving beat.

Together they have established them- to the Beat of the Times,” “Sweet Changes,” Before settling in Dutchess, Tulloch selves as one of our region’s most versatile “Head in the Sand,” and “Keeping Our Love traveled to Kenya and the Galapagos

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Va n Wyck Gazette Islands to see the animals she so adores in their natural environments. Her travels have inspired songs such as the “Beast of Paradise,” the “Lemur Song,” “Timber Wolf Goodbye,” and “Pheromonious Scent.”

Photo by Jessica Mallon Such compositions are meant to raise animal awareness. As Tulloch states, “My trip to Kenya and the Galapagos Islands has to be one of the most amazing experiences of my life. In my songs, I try to provoke images of nature and wildlife in hopes of protecting habitats so all animals may live and roam safely.” Her love and passion for Brazilian and World Music infused with exotic rhythms and melodies are also very present in the the mix. Being a citizen of the world informs her band’s cosmopolitan style and the group’s

empathetic response to the diverse was a beautiful, almost danceable, tribute audiences for whom it plays. to the Macaque monkeys of Japan. When For purposes of writing this article, I met the song was over, Tulloch spoke excitedly recently with Judith at a restaurant on about the customs of these exotic creatures Newburgh’s waterfront. It was a hot day that live at high altitudes where snow covers and the place was mobbed, both the ground almost year round. Unlike her inside and on the outside deck. I’d music, it was a subject she could easily talk come to talk about the Judith Tulloch about forever.

Band, but in Judith’s almost self-effacing way, she wanted to talk about almost anything other than her music. It was an effort, but I did manage to get her to turn her thoughts to her art. A lot was said about her introduction to music as a child in New York City, and her vision of music as a tool to call attention to the oneness of humanity and its need to preserve other species.

But her most memorable quote that For her growing fan base, both in the afternoon was, “rhythm is freedom.” She Hudson Valley and NYC, Tulloch’s future expressed the words with such joy, as ambitions for the band include writing, though she was making the realization for performing, and ”keeping our love alive”… the first time.

For information on The Judith Tulloch As a special treat before we parted, Judith Band’s schedule of upcoming events visit played a disk in my car of a brand new www.judithtulloch.com. composition, “Snow Monkeys.” The song

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Mike Jurkovic On first glance he might strike you as a lunatic professor, leading a restless inquiry into the human spirit. David Amram is certainly that and an incorrigible creator.

An irascible global citizen. Like Pete Seeger, with whom he shared a deep, lasting friendship and of whom he still speaks of in reverential tones, he’s a tireless musical and cultural ambassador who inspires you to greatness.

His list of achievements (among them over 100 classical compositions, including The Final Ingredient, a Holocaust opera commissioned by ABC Television in 1965 and Giants of the Night, a flute concerto commissioned and premiered by Sir James Galway in 2002) accolades, honors, concerts, and historic encounters could fill several special issues of the VWG. Fortunately he has vividly collected a treasure trove of them into four books. His latest, which was to accompany the 2013 DVD David Amram The First 80 Years, is so far beyond deadline that he jokingly admits will be retitled The Next 80 Years. “My publisher’s hoping it’ll sell at least some copies among the AARP, Geritol and cryogenic crowd.”

“I’ve been blessed with good health so I figure I gotta pay back the tuition y’know,” the 84 year old eminent hang-out-ologist enthuses. “Like Dizzy told me when he invited me to play together at his 70th birthday concert for PBS, ‘It’s time, to put something back in the pot.” Here the perpetual gleam in his eye brightens. “I realized I had to repay all the great people who gave so freely to me - Charlie (Parker), Dizzy (Gillespie), Oscar (Pettiford), Leonard (Bernstein), Monk (Thelonious), Dmitri (Mitripoulos - conductor of the NY Philharmonic ‘54-’60) by giving back freely, and most importantly, gratefully. That’s what

Fall 2015 Issue

David Amram

“There’s Never Enough Beauty” Willie Nelson still does. All these wonderful people, as well as waitresses, poets, artists, bartenders, Washington Square chess champions, car mechanics, also give back freely. It isn’t the thing our career counselors

“Art, music, anything of humanistic value should inspire creativity in others and that’s what I try to do everyday. You have to honor the past to have a more fulfilling future,” he adds fervently. (An adjective not overused in even the most casual of encounters.)

An engaging raconteur and historian of the highest order, his recollections are our history. During our first meeting many a Putnam Valley moon ago, he recalled an indelible moment in ‘56 on the front steps of the Cafe Bohemia on Barrow Street, discussing Einstein’s theory of relativity with John Coltrane, who was joyously devouring a piece of blackberry (or was it blueberry?) pie.

tell us we ought to do, but that’s our obligation to each other. And that’s a real important thing. It isn’t about being a star for a week and then being dumped in the landfill.”

“This was all before John played with Monk at the Five Spot. Before he became renowned for his “sheets of sound.” (The description was first used by jazz critic and historian Ira Gitler to explain Trane’s rapid fire arpeggios and improvisational playing.) “John was on a break and he’s discussing the construction of the pyramids, how the ancient Egyptians understood the balance of stars within the geometry of the Universe. He felt that Einstein’s approach to the origins of energy was simply the first step towards reflecting the natural balance of things which the Egyptians already understood.”

“And I think back to my dad who was a full time farmer back in the early 20’s. Even after he became a part time farmer, he would always plow under a third of his fields with soybeans. When I asked him why he said you always had to nourish the land, give “Thirty years after his (1960) album Giant back to the land so the land can give to Steps became music for the ages, a you. The Native Americans understood that musician charted it visually as a series of in the most sacred way.” pyramids representing the harmonic “That has always resonated with me structure of the song rather than using because even as a kid negativity and traditional musical notation and when I saw narcissism made me feel ill. So it’s like I’ve it, it hit me! That’s what ‘Trane was talking always had the opposite antibody and I’ve to me about between sets, while eating pie.” been fortunate during my lifetime to work His whole life defies our concept of a with so many like minded people from every thumbnail. In 1955 Monk invites him to visit walk of life.” and play with him at his apartment. He

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Va n Wyck Ga ze tte records and performs with bass giant, Charles Mingus. In 1966, just as he’s about to begin bartender school to earn some bread, Leonard Bernstein chooses him to be the first composer-in-residence for the NY Philharmonic. He composes incidental music for the NY Shakespeare Festival for twelve years. He and Joe Papp collaborate on a full length opera based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In ‘59 he writes the music and appears in Pull My Daisy, the definitive Beat Generation film narrated by Jack Kerouac. In 1962 he composes and scores the music for Splendor In The Grass and in ‘62, The Manchurian Candidate. In November ‘71 he records with Dylan and Allen Ginsberg for the poet’s ill-fated Holy Soul & Jellyroll album. (Eventually released by Rhino Records in 1994.)

Since everyone’s buzzing about America’s renewed relations with Cuba, how about this cultural/political nugget: In 1977, President Jimmy Carter and the State Department sanctioned Dizzy, Stan Getz, Earl Hines, and David to travel to Havana to perform with Cuban musicians for the first ever American/Cuban musical exchange since the Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution in ‘59. (Two of the then unknown Cuban musicians who performed and recorded on Amram’s part of the concert were trumpet master Arturo Sandoval and altoist Paquito D’Rivera) He tours the Middle East in 1978.

He marries for the first time at the ripe old age of 48 in ‘79 and has three children.

You’ll notice that time, like his music, is very fluid for this Pennsylvania farm boy.

But 1956-’57 was his year of serendipity.

He strikes up an enduring friendship with Kerouac and the duo collaborate on the first ever public jazz poetry performance in NYC. Barely a month later, another holy bond forms with Woody Guthrie. He meets one of his mentors, Joe Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival. He

then joins Julius Watkins in taking the French Horn beyond its classical dialogue and develops its voice for the jazz vernacular when he begins a two year stint riffing and recording with another heralded jazz bassist, Oscar Pettiford.

He recalls hanging with Woody with genuine joy and, to this very day, grateful awe. “Scat singer Ahmed Bashir and I were living on the Lower East Side, and I was working with Mingus and jamming with Ahmed’s friend, Sonny Rollins. One night, when neither of us could sleep (he interjects here that his last nap was ‘57 and it left him with a headache) Ahmed asks if I’d like to meet Woody.”

album included Amram performing in jazz, folk, Latin, and Middle Eastern idioms, soloing on authentic instruments. In our conversation, he flashes on the “animated discussion” he had with the acclaimed maestro Eugene Ormandy, who was in the midst of his forty-four year residence as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Ormandy insisted that jazz and Native American music had no place in symphonic music. David, as always, argued just the opposite. And in 1977, “Trail of Beauty”, David’s composition for the Philadelphia Orchestra was premiered by Ormandy and toured to the Kennedy Center to great critical acclaim.

Another flight of musical modernization “I immediately think “Woody Herman!? happened just nights before Arthur Miller’s Wow!” and Ahmed says, no Woody Guthrie.

After The Fall opened in NYC, January ‘64, “Now by this time it was known that David, who had written the music, was Woody wasn’t in good health.” (Guthrie died sitting with Miller and the play’s director, from complications due to Huntington’s Elia Kazan, waiting for the ending music.

Chorea, October ‘67.) “So the next day we It never came. The sound-man and stage walk about a block or so and there’s Woody manager thought the tape was defective. and he’s having a good day! Cowboy boots. Both thought it was just a tone signal.

Jeans. Feet up on the kitchen table coming Amram calmly explained to them that it was all the way from Brooklyn to visit at the a violin playing a high-E harmonic and surely apartment of a friend on East 6th street, part of the score. The next night, that high telling about his travels. And all the people note re-appeared in the score. The show, he’d met. The haughty and the humble.” as the say, went on.

“His profound love for this country was So it comes as no surprise that This Land inspiring. Still is. I left him at his friend’s conjures all the musics Woody heard along apartment that night over half a century the way and all the rhythms David has loved ago, never dreaming that some day I would and performed on the global stage. compose a symphony to commemorate “Composing for me isn’t about using a and honor his journey and the journeys of slide rule or a computer. It’s about honoring those he met along the way.” your life and painting pictures in sound, This Land - Symphonic Variations On A based on what you heard and felt that Song by Woody Guthrie is David’s labor of touched your heart. It’s about visiting the love. Of Remembrance. Of honoring the places the music comes from. Meeting the past with an eye on the present. players, the poets, and the everyday people As a true world music pioneer and who make the world work. So writing innovator (his second album, ‘71’s prescient This Land: Symphonic Variations on a Song No More Walls featured not only three major

by Woody Guthrie took a while.” “But in classical orchestral works with Amram 2005, a year after Nora Guthrie (Woody’s conducting. The second part of the double Continued on page 10

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Fall 2015 Issue daughter and curator of the Guthrie Archives) asked me to write a full symphony honoring Woody’s classic song “This Land Is Your Land,” I was invited to go to Okemah, OK (Woody’s hometown) to perform at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival.

“It was there, as well as during all my years of traveling through the West and hooking up and playing with Arlo (Woody’s son) and Pete Seeger in the East that I made the connection and began writing the symphony.” (He’s returned eleven times to WoodyFest since then and was preparing to leave to this year’s festival the day after we spoke.)

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“For the Theme to base the variations on, I had wanted to use “Deportees” or “Pastures of Plenty” because of those great, great melodies. But Nora said that Woody’s song “This Land is Your Land” would be the perfect one to use as the basis for all the variations. I couldn’t figure out what to do. I’d played the song so many times with Pete, Willie Nelson, Arlo, and others. It’s a perfect song without a symphony. So I’m sitting there filling the waste basket with sketches that I’ve torn up because I couldn’t hear it with a symphony.”

“Then Nora suggested I read Joe Klein’s Woody Guthrie: A Life, Ed Cray’s Ramblin’ Man, This Land Was Made For You and Me by Elizabeth Partridge, and Jim Longhi’s Woody, Cisco and Me and wow! It was like MapQuest for me! I heard those Mexican field workers Woody spent time with. I heard the hard traveling families forced from their homes by the banks and the dust storms. And I heard the music he grew up with in Okemah, his trip to Pampa Texas, and his years walking through all the neighborhoods in New York.”

In Amram’s This Land, as in Woody’s immaculate song, you feel the stirrings of the American spirit. The true American spirit. Not the beleaguered democracy held captive by corporate kings, their purchased politicians, and their feral TV and radio bullhorns. Cherokee winds blow through Saturday night Oklahoma stomp dances. An organ imagines how the song might have been played the next day in church. As Woody and the music ramble southwest through Texas and Mexico then eventually east, to that other shining sea, tejano swing, horns, a little bop ‘n jazz. Celtic pipes and slow mournful strings reminiscent of so many despairing Great Depression/Dust Bowl journeys. Klezmer, Caribbean rhythms and Salvation Army hymns bring us to New York.

Woody’s last destination. The immigrant and artistic melting pot. The city of countless dreams.

“We may not always remember all the beauty we experience in our lives, but art never forgets,” he sagely counsels, as we agree to our next hang. That perpetual gleam in his eye brightening. Towards the future. Towards the past.

Next time: hangin’ The Hudson Valley Philharmonic will be opening its 2015-2016 season with This Land on Saturday, October 17th, 8pm at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie.

Selected Discography: This Land - Symphonic Variations On A Song by Woody Guthrie Jazz Studio #6: The Eastern Scene No More Walls Havana/New York Pull My Daisy The Manchurian Candidate The Chamber Music of David Amram David Amram - An American Original Triple Concerto www.davidamram.com

Page 11

Va n Wyck Ga ze tte

Meryl Hartstein

The Greatest Gift I’ve heard of stories where people would receive gifts anonymously. They were anywhere from cups of coffee to a year’s tuition. It always would amaze me why someone wouldn’t want acknowledgement for their generosity.

As I’ve grown older and wiser, I now fully understand the gift that giving gives. We all have enormous power to change the lives of others. Some will use it for good while many others will choose it selfishly.

Every day we hear the phrases, “Spread kindness”, “Give back” and “Pay if forward”.

Do we really listen and do we actually participate in any of these? I think the answer is, probably not. I believe in order to have this happen, we need to make it part of our daily routine. It needs to be practiced and worked on, almost as if it’s a lifestyle.

After surviving many unimaginable adversities in my life such as abuse, divorce, cancer, a child with addiction and a special needs grandchild, I look back and remember with a warm heart, the many people that

Now, years were there for me along my long and painful journey. I know that without any of them, I later when I look back at this dark wouldn’t be the woman I am today. time, I see it as In the early years, I had never even known a time of underanyone who was abused. This was prestanding what it Oprah days and no one ever talked about means to it. I carried that shame for many years and “Spread kindwondered what it was about me that would ness”, “Give anger someone so much to be able to raise back” and “Pay a hand to me. I had grown up with a mother it forward”. who also was abusive emotionally and I began to look physically. I had learned that women that came out of abusive homes actually ended for ways of reaching out to women who had up in abusive relationships. It was a familiar struggles and adversity. I wouldn’t back away from anyone who was suffering. pattern.

Before, if I heard someone was going Although my abuse was caused by an through adversity, I would turn the other angry alcoholic, one always carries guilt as way in fear of “catching it” on some stupid if they were somehow worthy of it. The level of superstition. verbal abuse outshined the physical and I I was now a changed woman in so many believe, in my case more damaging long ways. I craved to share my knowledge, to term. pay it forward. My journey was an education, Through this journey of divorce and living a life lesson and a blessing. I began to reach as a single mother, I searched for someone out to people who were hurting. Any to open up to. To have someone to talk opportunity I could find to be a shoulder to about my experience without feeling shame cry on or a comforting voice was an honor and guilt. Then one day, I met someone at for me. a playground at park for kids. She and I There is no better feeling than to pay it started to talk. I was still kind of in shock on how my life had turned out. She asked forward. It awakens your spirit and helps me personal questions that seem to trigger you stay in touch with your gratitude. I had all the emotions I had kept locked up inside. also discovered true compassion and I needed it. I needed to open up. She was empathy for others. It was so much harder a therapist. She also ran a support group now to turn a blind’s eye. for divorced women and asked me to come It’s not so hard to spread kindness. It just to the next meeting. I did, and I healed and takes a little bit of awareness and then it grew and got my life back on track. I had becomes automatic. A simple hello and a learned something that day that I carry with smile is the easiest way of being kind. Once me always. Never be afraid to pay it forward. you feel the amazing feeling of giving back If you see someone who looks like they are you’ll start to look for more ways of doing suffering, in pain or in need of a friend. Take it. It fills your heart with such joy, you’ll want the time talk to them. Open up your heart to do it every day. and let them know they are safe.

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Joe Yeomans

I recently met with the actor, poet and playwright Lewis Gardner at the College Diner in New Paltz. It would not be our first interaction. That happened around 2009 when, as a volunteer for the Arts Society of Kingston (ASK), it was suggested I speak with Gardner about a “Selected Shorts” – style program I hoped to initiate as part of the Halloween season.

Lew was then directing the literary side of ASK. Truth be told, I joined ASK in order to meet this man, though I didn’t know it at the time. I was an illustrator looking for someone to illustrate for. That someone was Lewis Gardner; more on that later.

Since we hadn’t seen each other for some time, I met with Gardner to catch up on things, and to discuss for this article some of the events, which have made his recent life so interesting. Since retiring from the administration of a local community college, Gardner has become an “actor-for-hire”, appearing on stage, in movies, on television programs and commercials, as well as in a number of music videos of various genres.

Now, at 72 he reflects: “I hear people say, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire.’ Well, in the six years since I retired, I’ve had a lot more fun and satisfaction than in most of the years before.”

In commercials he has pitched Visiting Angels, Consumer Reports, Ally Bank and Western Union. In feature films Gardner has had scenes in such movies as “Mi America”, “Alien Connection” and “Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous”.

Recently, Gardner played the lead role in an episode of the new Investigation Discovery series, “Mansions and Murders,”

Fall 2015 Issue

On Stage and On Page: The Worlds of Lewis Gardner playing a lonely millionaire ‘befriended’ by the city of Newburgh. And it might prove to a woman who would eventually become be a good resume builder, so why not? He his murderer. The take-away, says Gardner: was hired to play a laid-off General Motors “Don’t tell someone worker. The video was for The you’re planning on Fabulous Thunderbirds’ song, taking her out of your “Do You Know Who I Am?” will.” A significant role, Upon viewing the completed it amply displays video, Gardner was surprised Gardner’s increasingly to find he played the central sophisticated thespian role. With this, other film and skills. video jobs queued up. Gardner recalls with a grin, “I kept So how does one getting roles as factory make the jump from workers.” Again, many for no the work-a-day world pay. to the lead role on a TV show in just six But his music video cast of years? The process characters grew to include wasn’t entirely a everything from a demonic matter of chance. monk to a roto-scoped (a Over the years, acting process by which a live actor’s was one of the things Photo by: Nikolai Golovanoff image is traced to resemble a Gardner did in his cartoon) sea captain in the creative, after-work life. The roles tended e x t r a o r d i n a r y L u m i n e e r s ’ v i d e o , to be small and varied, not especially “Submarine”. lucrative. His gigs included a stint in the With a number of performances in other 1980s as half of a sketch comedy duo, videos, as well as significant roles in several “Gilbert and Gardner”. Playing in a number short films by Vassar and N.Y.U. students, of New York City venues, it was an Gardner soon had enough material to create opportunity to act, as well as perform original a reel, or montage of his work, with which works. he would market himself to bigger film But a role in the Arthur Miller play “The producers. This is how he landed his Ride Down Mount Morgan”, may be said television work with The Discovery Channel to have set Gardner on his current trajectory. and Lifetime Network.

Performed in Phoenicia, he was enlisted While the “big breaks” with Discovery and for the role of Tom Wilson by the play’s Lifetime were significant (They provided his director, the late Gavin Owen. Gardner largest audiences, and revenue), it could describes it with understatement as “an be argued that some of Gardner’s best enjoyable experience”, which lent him the acting to date has been decidedly low impetus to pursue other such opportunities. budget and fairly obscure, in roles both He soon found a listing for a part in a touching and hilarious. An uproarious music video. The actor would receive no example of the latter is on view in the short pay. But the filming would be close by – in film “Teeth”. Here Gardner plays an

Page 13

Va n Wyck Ga ze tte admonishing dentist to his patient, the gifted young comedian Josh Rabinowitz. This dentist doesn’t stop at emphasizing the importance of regular flossing. He chides his supine foil on, among other things, his failure to assist an elderly relative and for dropping his pursuit of becoming a lawyer “to fight for the underdog.” Gardner’s comic delivery is dead on and complements to perfection Rabinowitz’ own fabulous performance.

Conversely, his dramatic role in another short film, “Old Junk”, will have you falling head-over-heels for his protagonist, let alone for the story as a whole. In “Old Junk”, Gardner points out dryly, he plays “the lead role, not the title role.” He is an old man, living alone in a city apartment. His only companion is the walker he requires to ambulate forth on his routine daily outings to the park. On one such outing he comes upon a box labeled “Old Junk”. It is a metaphor for the character himself who, like the boxed items he takes home to re-invent, discovers that someone has noticed him, too. A beautiful performance, well worth seeing.

But certainly Gardner’s most novel role - at least in terms of venues - has him cast, giant-sized, on a 60-screen video wall for the piece “New York Minute” by the artist Gabe Barcia-Columbo. A non-speaking role, lasting literally a minute, Gardner was one of several of the monumental work’s volunteers of various ages, backgrounds and ethnicities filmed for the slow-motion video installation created for the inauguration of the recently opened Fulton Center and Day Street Concourse in New York.

Gardner is shown blissfully showered in a rain of dollar bills.

All these, and other examples, may be viewed on Gardner’s web site, gardnerspeaks.com. Herein are collected his various film works (“My private film festival”, he calls it) as well as dozens of examples of his writings.

Upon my introduction to Lewis Gardner at ASK, he told me about some of the writing he had done. I would come to learn that his literary output has been extensive and on-going over the course of many decades into the present. What’s more, his writing is superb, and has been recognized as such. Over 60 examples of his poems and light verse have been published in the pages of the New York Times. Among works written for the theater, his “Pete and Joe at the Dew Drop Inn” was included in the anthology Best American Short Plays 2008-2009. These are only two of the many places Gardner’s work has been published.

Included in this body is the collaborative work this writer created with Gardner, “Lunch at the Live Bait Diner,” a collection of 30 poems ranging in theme from the comical to the poignant. Each is illustrated by myself.

Besides being put together in book form, the poems and their images have been displayed as an art/literature show in several venues throughout the Hudson Valley. It represents but the smallest fraction of Gardner’s impressive output.

Currently, Gardner is working on producing a theatrical version of his “Not What You Think: Notes for a Memoir”, a reflection on how seemingly obvious situations may not always be as they appear. This is a series of comical remembrances from his life, including early recollections as a child with a speech impediment… “At the time, I spoke only in vowels.

I think it was self-protection. If I left out the consonants, I wasn’t committing myself.” Sometimes biting, always funny and consistently intelligent, the works are to be performed as spoken monologues.

More film work is on the way, too. And in the meantime, Gardner continues to conduct a writing workshop in Woodstock. So this is retirement?

Gardner ends his “Notes for a Memoir” with the following lines: “I just got a note from someone I’ve known since we were both 16.

She says: You always seem to be happy and are doing such fun things.

I could reply: Oh, hey, it’s not what you think- but…Maybe it is.”

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Fall 2015 Issue

Peter Rae Recently the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that after 145 years of featuring elephants in its productions, its 13 traveling Asian elephants would be retired to its Center for Elephant Conservation in central Florida. That’s a better fate than befell America’s first circus elephant, named “Old Bet”, who was, according to some of the newspapers of the time, “murdered”.

Old Bet is commemorated today in Somers, New York, where, in the early 1800s, the Danbury and Croton Turnpikes intersected, and Routes 202 and 100 still do. The means of commemoration is unusual, as it consists of a large brick building with the name “The Elephant Hotel” emblazoned across its front. Outside the hotel, next to a traditional flagpole, is a fifteen-foot obelisk, atop of which is a threefoot-high wooden elephant. That elephant is Old Bet. Inside the hotel is the Somers Town Historian, Doris Jane Smith, with lots of stories to tell about Old Bet and its owner, Hachaliah Bailey.

Born in 1774, “Hack” Bailey was a farmer and cattleman living in Somers near the site of what was later would be The Elephant Hotel. Hack was also a drover, meaning that he herded the cattle he raised from Somers to Croton, where they were shipped down the Hudson River by boat to New York City’s stockyards to help feed the city’s growing population. He even acquired an interest in a cattle boat, reducing his own costs while increasing revenue by shipping others’ cattle. (Ever the entrepreneur, Hack

Old Bet and the Elephant Hotel addition to Old Bet, it included “a trained dog, several pigs, a horse, and four wagons” – and toured the immediate vicinity. People would pay a quarter each to see Old Bet and the rest of the “Bailey Menagerie”. There were also group rates – “A coin, or a two-gallon jug of rum” could get an entire family in.

The Bailey Menagerie fascinated the public, which of course spawned competition. Others in the area’s towns, including Carmel, Brewster and North Salem, started their own menageries, and Somers became known as “The Cradle of the American Circus”. But they didn’t all have elephants, and the Bailey Menagerie, with Old Bet, toured in ever widening circles, ranging as far south as Georgia and as far north as Maine, for about eight years. Typically the “Elephant Hotel” Photograph by Daniel Case menagerie would travel from town to town at night so as to limit opportunities also set up his own toll booth along one of to see Old Bet for free. the turnpikes, charging others fees for using it, a practice that was both legal and common at the time.)

“Murder” It was in Maine in 1816 that the final curtain came down abruptly for Old Bet. Following a show in Alfred, a small town in York County, one Daniel Davis, whose family operated a sawmill there, shot Old Bet, killing her with two shots. Davis was arrested and jailed while the authorities pondered what to do. Local newspapers wrote it up as a “murder”, and the story (in today’s jargon) quickly “went viral” nationally. Davis was said to be upset that poor people were wasting money better spent elsewhere to see Old Bet.

Finding Old Bet Old Bet is thought to be the second elephant ever imported to the United States.

The story goes that while on a trip to Boston in 1804, Bailey saw the elephant, a female, performing at a show, and was intrigued.

Two or three years later he saw Old Bet again, this time in New York City, and was able to purchase her for the sum of $1200 – a princely sum at the time. His intention was for her to help out with farming activities such as plowing. But as Old Bet trudged What subsequently happened to Davis along the turnpike from Croton to Somers, Hack quickly learned that passersby were is unclear. According to some, he was tried fascinated by his prize pet, and would pay and convicted. Others say no charges were ever brought and three days afterward Davis to see her.

Bailey put together a menagerie – in was released, following which he quickly

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Va n Wyck Ga ze tte disappeared and was never seen again.

What happened to Old Bet is equally unclear. One report has her buried in Alfred, Maine, where she died. Another places her remains in the front yard of the Elephant Hotel. Some say her stuffed remains toured as an exhibit for a number of years. Doris Smith, the Somers Town Historian, thinks she may have been exhibited at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City, until the museum was consumed by fire in 1865.

Bailey continued in the menagerie business for a time, owning two more elephants. His other businesses prospered and he served for a time in the state legislature. In 1837 he and his family moved to Virginia, to a town that was later named Bailey’s Corners. He died during a visit to Somers in 1847, and is buried in Ivandell Cemetery, not far from The Elephant Hotel.

Building the Hotel Before heading south, Hachaliah Bailey himself built the hotel, naming it The Elephant Hotel to commemorate Old Bet. He added the obelisk several years later. Over the years the hotel has functioned as an inn, a teahouse, a private residence and a post office. It became a stagecoach stop for travelers between New York City and points north and east. In 1835, the Zoological Institute, a kind of trade association for the menagerie and circus business, was incorporated at the Elephant Hotel, and the hotel also became the principal meeting place for members. The Farmers and Drovers Bank, chartered in 1830, adjoined the hotel, as did a dance hall that became the focal point in Somers for fun, frolic and business transactions for farmers, travelers and hotel guests.

In 1927 the Town of Somers purchased the hotel from the Bailey family. The building now houses to Town’s administrative offices and the Somers Historical Society. In 2005, the Elephant Hotel was named a National Historic Landmark.

The Bailey Question If you’re wondering about the name Bailey appearing in two different contexts in this article, the answer is no – Hachaliah Bailey is not that Bailey. As mentioned earlier, menageries became something of a cottage industry in and near Somers, and some of its practitioners were Baileys. Indeed, two were the children of Hachaliah and his wife, Mary. Daughter Maria performed as an equestrian while son Lewis performed as a clown in addition to managing a traveling menagerie.

Other Baileys in the circus business included Hack’s nephew, Fred H. Bailey. While traveling as manager for Bailey Circus in Michigan after the Civil War, Fred hired a young, enthusiastic assistant named James A. McGuiniss. Fred was so impressed with his young employee’s work ethic and business expertise that he adopted him as a son, and James A. McGuiniss became James A. Bailey.

Fred ultimately turned the business over to James, who continued to run it for another thirty years. During that time, James met P. T. Barnum and the two subsequently became partners: James ran the business while P. T. focused on the shows themselves. Later they merged with another successful circus, Ringling Brothers, and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus – “The Greatest Show on Earth” - was born.

So as an iconic American business plans to move on without its elephants, one of the foundations of its success, it’s good to recall Old Bet, the elephant that played a primary role in making the circus a successful enterprise so many years earlier.

Page 15

Page 16

Fall 2015 Issue

Amy Zarichnak Hudson Valley Provides Incredible Wealth Over the past thirty years, we have been inching towards locally sourced food, organic foods, holistic health remedies, and a much more natural approach to living in harmony with our environment. These are good things; our food supply was originally structured in the early part of the 20th century in order to feed a burgeoning population that was quickly outgrowing its ability to provide food for the masses. The protocols put in place to mass-produce food – genetic modification, use of pesticides, etc. -- were done with good intentions. However, we now know that using these tools to increase food production are causing health issues, food allergies, disease, and contamination of our soil and water supply.

Mass food suppliers are resisting change and trying to challenge those of us who are aware that they are slowly poisoning the population in the United States because it would cost them billions of dollars to turn this ship around and use natural ways of eliminating pests and growing crops.

of Options to Eat Healthy and Local

continues to put money into large companies’ pockets, which perpetuates the cycle and allows these companies to continue to thrive and supply what we now know is tainted food. As a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, which basically means I am someone who demands delicious, highquality food at every meal but who owes too much in student loans to afford it, I have pondered exactly how to go about securing fresh, safe food at prices that I can actually afford. The answer, I’ve realized, is all around us: Eat local. This also supports the economic strength of our local communities and takes power away from mass food producers who refuse to change their farming habits that are adversely affecting our health, our communities, and the earth.

Local food costs somewhere between mass-produced and organic, and most of the time, is organic, although please note that “local” and “organic” are not synonymous. We are so lucky in the Hudson Valley, as it has been a mecca for local food for years and we have a plethora of local and artisan delights from which to choose.

local and they only purchase what is in season for maximum flavor and freshness.

They sell no conventional produce at all.

They also sell locally produced body care products and herbal tinctures that are all natural and/or organic. For more information, hours, and addresses and phone numbers for each location, visit www.motherearthstorehouse.com.

Barb’s Butchery – Open since December 2014, Barb’s Butchery is a nose-to-tail grocer featuring chicken and poultry from Fazio Farms, beef, pork and lamb from Meiller Farms, lamb from Dashing Hill Farms, and veal from Cream Hill Farms, all within a 200-mile radius of the shop. If you can conceive it, they can cut it, and Barb’s also offers a small weekly menu and house-made lunchmeats and charcuterie, including beef stick and jerky products.

They do limited catering and participate in local events as a vendor. Firefighters and police officers always receive 15% off.

Located at 69 Spring Street in Beacon, they can also be reached at 845-831-8050.

Hours are Tuesday – Friday 11am – 7:30pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 10am – 6pm. Closed Mondays. www.barbsbutchery. com

So, where should we go? There are literally dozens of websites that outline hundreds of locally produced goods and As a result, eating a salad is no longer services. Here is a smattering of business Quattro’s Poultry Farm and Market – healthy unless you can afford all-organic, selling locally produced items that are worth This is a market with urban sensibilities in non-GMO ingredients. a try: a rural setting providing meat and poultry We are in the midst of a slow dawning Mother Earth’s Storehouse – Locations from their own farms. Offering top quality, about the toxicity of the food available in in Poughkeepsie, Kingston and Saugerties prime cuts of beef, as well as venison, the United States, and a slow but steady – Locally owned and operated by brothers pheasant, squab, duck, chicken, turkey, uprising is occurring. We are being forced Kevin and Mike Schneider, this is a one-stop and other game meats, Quattro’s animals to make more conscious, informed choices, shop for all things natural. Featuring local, are fed only high-quality, locally grown feeds and in so doing, we need to demand seasonal produce from local farmers pro- that yield a natural, free range product. A changes to the way our food is grown and cured through a local distributor, they aim variety of craft beers are now being offered, supplied. to supply only certified organic produce. and the shelves are full of local and imported cheese, vinegars, olive oils, and other Shopping at your local grocery store chain While not all produce is certified, it is all

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Tuthilltown Spirits – Everything in moderation, right? Located at 14 Grist Mill Lane in Gardiner, NY, Tuthilltown Spirits Farm Distillery is New York’s first whiskey distillery since prohibition.

Offering varieties of vodka, gin, bourbon, whiskey, bitters, and liqueurs, Tuthilltown sources all ingredients locally and all spirits are made by hand, one batch at a time. Their liquor has been winning awards for years and they even feature a restaurant onsite that can also accommodate the special events in your life.

For more information on this local tourist destination, visit www. tuthilltown.com or call 845-255-4151.

Nature’s Pantry – With locations in Fishkill and New Windsor, Nature’s Pantry is committed to selling products produced in the Hudson Valley. Produce is antibiotic-, chemical-, insecticide-, pesticide-, and herbicide-free, and they call themselves an “alternative grocery store” offering products that are not waxcoated or genetically modified like traditional grocery stores. They do stipulate that some of their more exotic fruits and vegetables are imported from trustworthy sources and marked as such with the country of origin plainly labeled on the product. Offering groceries, produce, supplements, bulk, and health and beauty items, they are family-owned and support local civil, school, and volunteer organizations. Visit their website at www.naturespantryhv. com for addresses and phone numbers for each location.

The Hudson Valley has abundant resources for locally produced meats, produce, and other products, and one only needs to do a search on the internet to bring up literally hundreds of local options. Embarking on a new way to shop and eat can always feel like a large undertaking when you already have your shopping

Page 17 and cooking routine in place. However, in the interest of health and the economic stability of the region, it pays to explore your natural food options and understand the food supply chain in a more comprehensive way. Eating healthy doesn’t need to be exorbitantly expensive, and local products are just that – local to wherever you live in the Hudson Valley and no further away than most regular grocery stores. Choose one of the stores above or research ones in your town. Over time, you will understand that the value of spending a few pennies more for high-quality, organic and local food is evident in your waistline, your overall health, and your palate.

Amy Zarichnak is a career changer with over 20 years’ experience in marketing and sales. She graduated from Penn State University with a B.A. in communications in 1993 and from The Culinary Institute of America in July 2014 with an A.O.S. in Culinary Arts.

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Page 18

Fall 2015 Issue

David McGorry Despite the many technological tools available to marketers, engaged employees are still considered one of the most valuable assets to ongoing success.

According to a 2014 study by Harvard Business School, 74 percent of business executives rate employee engagement as one of their priorities for business success.

If you are a regional or local business unable to invest the money required for a formalized program, there are still many actions you can take to keep employees engaged and helping to drive business growth.

Employee engagement means more than just providing employees with additional perks to keep them happy. It is about offering them opportunities to contribute to the success of the business, grow their experience and earn rewards for their efforts. It can be especially valuable if you run a small company where it is harder to offer employees regular opportunities for promotion.

Engaged Employees Help Grow Your Business customers and see if there are opportunities to strengthen the customer experience.

Front line employees deal with customers every day and if they consistently get customer complaints about a practice or request for a product you don’t carry, it may be a chance to offer something new and lucrative for your business.

Personas can help you decide what promotions will remind people it is time to think of your business. If specific products or services are noted as valuable by numerous customers, it can help you decide what information should be front and center in any marketing program.

Speaking directly to your customers is always important and will yield valuable information. But don’t underestimate the information gold mine that all employees become. Employees see customers through the jobs they do and they become experts on their part of the customer experience.

They can be in sales, service, billing even maintenance. Together they provide a full picture of the customer experience and where problems or opportunity exist. It is important to document what they say so you can get a full picture of every opportunity A persona identifies the ideal customer, to differentiate your business. how they think, feel, when they are most It is important to reward employees for likely to consider your products and what attracts them to your business. Uncovering helping you build your business. There this information will feed your own planning should be a bonus program and every purposes. What products attract customers employee who contributes to the program to your business? Are there seasonal events should benefit. It is also important to let new that make them think about your business? employees know over time that they will Are there life events that drive them to your play a role in growing the business. This business? Is location an issue? Have raises their awareness to whatever they customers mentioned where they heard learn from customers. about your business?

It may be hard to keep your best When talking with employees it is also important to ask them about good experiences with customers and what they find makes your best customers happy.

Understanding what makes your most loyal and satisfied customers happy, gives you the chance to build a “persona” of your happiest and most loyal customers that can be the foundation of marketing promotions and deciding what products you should add to your portfolio.

If you provide incentives and rewards for the employees who are most engaged, it will help keep them motivated and feeling challenged in a positive way. In addition Answers to these questions can help you this can provide you with tools that make build your own promotional calendar and your business more competitive and aid help you build a content strategy that works you in making decisions that lead to growth. best for your business. Having a discussion Some simple tools employers can use is with employees and learning how customers to regularly take time with each employee discuss the business can also help you and ask them about experiences with develop a voice and tone for promotional material.

employees in a small business because there may be limits to what you can offer them and they are the ones most likely to be sought out by other employers. Getting employees engaged can help you retain them longer though and make them more valuable while they are on your team.

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Va n Wyck Ga ze tte

History of Japanese Guitars Years ago I used to love “guitar adventures,” where I’d plan out a route and travel to all the old pawnshops and guitar stores I could manage in a day’s drive.

These drives happened in the times before my wife and kids, when the most pressing responsibilities were saving change for gas and having a good mix tape in the car. Yeah, those were the days! So anyway it was on one of these long winding drives that I crept into a music store parking lot with a bit of apprehension, because the music store didn’t seem like much of a store at all. It was one of those thin, row homes that look like slices of cake stacked neatly down narrow streets and pre-war row homes.

And this was one of those old haunts that hadn’t changed much since the 1960s.

These establishments are really rare today, but 25 years ago some of these stores were still hanging on for one reason or another.

I only knew about this particular music store from a friend of a friend (the days before the internet) who mentioned there “might” be a music store still around. The owners lived upstairs and the music store was on the first floor, and the hours for opening and closing depended on the ring of the doorbell. And so it was that my grizzled mug appeared at the door one

sweet spring day. The owners of the shop were plump and kind, a bit indifferent to the business perhaps, but still sweet in a grandparent sort of way. They opened up the store with a few turns of the key and I swear to you, dear reader, that when the lights flickered on I was stunned. This store contained artifacts of all sorts from days past. Old boxes of DeArmond pickups were piled like cord wood on the shelves behind the heavy wooden counter. National (Valcomade) guitar amplifiers dating from the 1960s were stacked like a cubist puzzle along the long, narrows walls. And the guitars… good grief! So many guitars representing every era from the 50s to the 80s were hanging on the walls, dusty and dull in the light, but still giving my eyes fits like the first time you walk into a casino. It was really sensory overload.

As the owners (Harry and Marty I remember) settled down behind the counter and flicked on an ancient TV, I browsed the merchandise with careful inspection. I mean, the prices on this stuff reflected the era. In one spot I’d spy a late 60s National guitar with the original tag of $150 (ON SALE!!!) and then at another wall a mid 80s superstrat with a tag of $400. This all just didn’t jive in my mind, this confluence of eras and

Frank Meyers

Frank Meyers instruments in one place. I had a hard time wrapping my mind around it all. I really could’ve spent my life savings at the store, but Harry and Marty were way past the point of making sales. If something sold… ok. If it didn’t sell…oh well. They were content watching game shows on the TV and mildly planning for the day when they would sell off the building and everything in the music store. And so it went for the next few hours

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Fall 2015 Issue

Frank Meyers as I engaged these kind folks about the music business and import guitars and the guitar boom that shook the music industry in the 1960s. Harry and Marty really schooled me that day, and basically planted the seed for a book I always wanted to write.

But let’s go back a bit in time.

After World War II, people were enjoying life again. Those were the salad days! The dawn of rock ‘n roll convinced people that the guitar was a primary instrument rather than part of a big band. But kids were still more likely to take piano or accordion lessons than guitar lessons in the 50s. That began to change in the late 50s to some degree, but it wasn’t until the Beatles hit in the early 60s that the boom years began.

Starting around 1963, there was a demand for electric guitars in America that was unlike anything seen before or since. Of course the well established companies like Fender and Gibson were catering to the better musicians, and even beginning guitarists could find good used bargains on these finer guitars. But for the entry-level buyer and beginning player, companies like Harmony, Kay, and Danelectro (these companies did make excellent guitars but also catered to a lower price point) were soon cranking up production and yet still having a hard time keeping up with demand.

So a few enterprising individuals gazed across the pacific to Japan. There were

already some import companies of the time and they had discovered the cheap labor costs and high quality of some Japanese products. There were even some inexpensive guitars reaching American shores in the late 1950s. Additionally, there was an American presence in Japan mainly in the form of military bases and many military families. The earliest guitar makers in Japan catered to these soldiers, selling lap steel, hollow body, and electric guitars to the American folks.

In the early 60s there were a few established electric guitar makers in Japan, primarily Teisco, Tokyo Sound (Guyatone) and Fujigen. But in a few years those three guitar makers would be joined by about 25 additional makers from all over Japan!

Many of these newer guitar makers transitioned from making wooden caskets, barrels, and sandals to making electric guitars! Between 1964 and 1967, the demand for electric guitars was so great that many factories simply repurposed their efforts. These factories were mostly wood processing facilities, and almost all of them had excellently cured wood that made for a safe trip across the ocean to the very different North American climate.

From published accounts, the early Japanese guitar makers were very concerned with quality and originality in design. Teisco and Tokyo Sound were producing everything from pickups, electronics, and even guitar strings (often hand wound from imported German piano wire). But as demand increased and import companies started to battle it out for sales with corporate competition (remember these were the days of CBS buying Fender) and mail order catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward. Importers, jobbers, and music stores were all looking for the flashiest and most inexpensive guitars a working family could buy. And so it was that quality often went out the window, in favor of

GARY H. SCHWARTZ

aesthetics and price point. The notion of poorly built Japanese guitars was soon established here in the states but the extreme guitar designs still won favor among American youth who just wanted to sling a guitar around the garage and make a racket!

It was this era of Japanese guitar production that I became fascinated with, and kept searching out. While I was growing up in the 80s and 90s I kept discovering strange examples of Japanese guitar creativity. As Americans, most guitar players are familiar with the common lines of the Fender Stratocaster, the simplicity of the Telecaster, the beauty of the Gibson Les Paul. These images are basically etched onto our brains through simple repetition.

After some time I became numb to these guitars and the commonality of the design.

They were all great designs, but when I started to see guitars with four pickups, sparkle finishes, and a multitude of switches and knobs, then my curiosity was piqued.

It was a very cool time to grow up because most of the extreme guitar designs were still left over from the 1960s in pawnshops and old music stores… usually relegated to the bargain bin and back rooms and sold for 1960s prices. For the price of a fluorescent superstrat I could buy six vintage Japanese electric guitars! And being the son of a welder and a beautician, my options were often limited to these cheap buys.

Va n Wyck Ga ze tte Soon my basement began to resemble a guitar repair shop, where I would assemble parts and build my own wacky guitar creations.

Page 23 to factories. Now at this point I must confess interviewing people and visiting locations that looking back at this data collection, I with guitar history. Soon after I returned to can’t quite point to my motivation, but for the states, I started writing the book. whatever reason I dove into this project While writing I kept thinking back to my guitar adventures and the day at Harry and Marty’s store. I must’ve spent six hours there, talking and gawking and buying! I remember I brought five guitars home with me from that old store, and two years later the place was gone.

Erased from history if you will.

I kept thinking that if I didn’t document this era of guitar history then it would be gone forever, like all the guitar and music shops that have vanished over the past 30 years.

But there was one guitar I didn’t alter, and that was my first electric guitar. It was a Marvel EJ2 and I loved that darn guitar. My parents bought it for me when I was 10, and it was my favorite.

It didn’t play that well, and the pickups always had a distorted quality but I loved it. It was this EJ2 that always had me wondering about the Japanese makers. Who made the guitar? Who designed it? The history of most American guitar makers was well known, but there wasn’t much information to When I returned to Japan Frank Meyers’ meeting in 2013 with some of the current and retired Fujigen be found with the Japanese employees. He presented his EJ2 back to them and their museum. In return, in 2015, three of the nice men makers. Most of the electric they presented him with the first prototype of the EJ style body. Fujigen’s I interviewed had passed, yet guitars of the 60s carried the first electric guitars were the EJ series.

I remained truly thankful for brand names of the importer, They are standing in front of Yoichuro Yokouchi’s house in Matsumoto, their time and their inforthe distributor, or the seller who started the company in 1960. (Seated in front is Yoichuro Yokouchi.) mation. I have to laugh someand often there was no way times when I think about the to determine the origins of a reserved surprise of the Japanese people guitar. At least a Teisco was made at the with a serious drive to learn more. From I spoke with. They really couldn’t believe Teisco factory, and the Guyatone guitars there I started emailing Japanese factories that a Westerner had come all the way to were made by Tokyo Sound. So I started and I met some Japanese friends through Japan to talk about guitars from 50 years to go through my pile of guitars and examine roughly translated emails and online bulletin ago. These “guitar people” really the little things, like the dimensions of string boards. My contacts abroad continued to underestimated their value to guitar history, retainers, and names on the back of the grow and soon I had befriended guitar and music history. I suppose in the end it volume and tone pots, the build construction, company founders, executives, designers, all comes down to, what was your first and about 10 other attributes I measured and retired employees. To be honest, guitar? For me, it was my Marvel. And would and cataloged in an ongoing database that conversing with people across the globe you believe I actually returned that guitar became filled over the course of 10 years. became the most exhilarating part of this to Japan, to the people who made it in 1962.

Soon I had organized my random pile of experience. Finally in 2013 I made my first Folks, it all circles around now doesn’t it? guitars into 17 categories that corresponded trip to Japan and spent two weeks

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