Ghostly doings around Venango

Lots to talk about today - it's trick or treating in Franklin tonight - one of my collegaues asked if we even still had trick or treating after the Howe incident - kind of sad - more bad press for the area portraying us as toothless, rapacious animals.

Anyhow - I'm trying to collect ghost stories or legends that take place in Venango - for an area as old as we are, there seems to be very few - send them to me before July 2006 - I'll be putting them together for Halloween 2006. What I'm looking for are stories like these in today's Titusville Herald.

Although I'm not sure there was really a story here in this morning's Derrick (an oil company once painted advertising on barns....) - Molitaris is a good writer, and I do like old barns.

Big Jack Earl has a song, Don't Worry Darlin', available for downloading on their updated music page - apparently this weekend's concert was fun, but cold. My daughter's slumber party precluded me from making the drive. (The link is currently broken).

One of my favorite writers and regional native Stewart O'Nan (who like so many artist who grew up in NWPA takes every chance he has to distance himself from us...Sigh) will be reading on Wed. Nov 2 in Pittsburgh's Frick Fine Arts Auditorium as part of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize Award Ceremony. It's at 7:30 and free and open to the public.

Fall Is Bigger Here, Butoh at Allegheny, and more

Things I missed in the past week:
The Matt Pond PA show at Club Cafe
Big Jack Earl at the North Country Brewing
The Polka Mass in Erie's St Paul Catholic Church

Hopefully, life will slow down a little. In a good way.
Lots of backlogged information

The Franklin Y is collecting cookies to give as a show of sympathy to the McFeely family; their son, and my ex student, Kyle, died recently, the subject of my last blog post. Drop the sweets off by Friday. Call the Y at (814) 432-2138 for more info.


You know those postcards you used to be able to buy with the fisherman with the huge walleye or the hunter with the rabbit as big as a VW? The good people at PA tourism are getting into the game with Fall Is Bigger Here. Stop by the site, check out the giant leaves, send an e-card, and then submit a photo - I really would like to see some Northwest PA representation here. I'd do it myself, but alas, my photoshop skills are limited to putting my head on better looking bodies.

There's nothing wrong with a little light hearted newspaper column, but, wow, Sherry Rieder's tale in The Erie Times News of wanting to get a get a tattoo (to go along with her permanent eyebrows....supress a shiver down the spine) is so fluffy it fairly floats. And that's not even mentioning the fact that she places the Maori people as an African tribe. I expect more from The ETN.

Less cattily, Butoh is coming to Allegheny College on Saturday, Nov. 5

"What?! I own a water system?," asks the managers of Conneaut Lake Park. Other less pleasant surprises are as foot as well.
Nationally, I've seen a lot of sad things, but this NYTimes photo of Ethan Hawke trying to dress like Jack Kerouac brings a sour taste to the back of my throat like nothing else.

One of my favorite ex-students was killed this weekend. I'm pretty bummed.

Duncan Prahl's Bar animals

Campus was silent yesterday - midterms and all I guess - the young women who used to come to class perfectly coiffed and made up now stagger in wearing sweats and perscription glasses - the young men already working on the beer guts they'll carry into middle age. My lit class has dwindled sharply which is kind of nice from 32 to about 15 - we can now sit and talk instad of lecture-quiz repeat - a good mix as well of race, class, ethinicty, age, and interests, although the students who remain are predominatly female.

Sheesh...I was frustrated in my efforts to buy an Eerie Horror Film Fest poster and/or a Great Lakes Film Festival poster - if anyone has one they want to sell (or for that matter, any other local gig posters, please drop me an email.) Unless it's a Michael Budai work. He still owes me the posters I paid for. Jerk.



Anyhow, Pittsburgh Artist Duncan Prahl has what seems to be a very idyllic life - by day he works for a Green (as in eco) building company and by night he builds little plastic animal still lifes (lives?) in bars. Want to come to the Sly Fox Mr. Prahl? First round is on me - or maybe show up at North Country Brewing on a Big Jack Earl night? Just some ideas...

As strange as this sounds, the usually sophomoric Pittsburgh City Paper has been the only media outlet that attempts to wrestle with deceased Pittsburgh native playwright August Wilson's thorny racial politics. And while I'm thinking about that - why doesn't Erie have an alternative weekly?

Just for fun, I opened a Venango area on upcoming.org. Nothing added yet, but feel free to use it.

Along the same idea, I created a Big Jack Earl group on Flickr. Upload, download, whatever, no big whoop.

Finally, as I was trying to find the silent movie schedule for Drake's Well in Titusville - I can across this - who knew Titusville had a Poet Laurate?

Erie blogger is complaining about having to drive to Meadville(!) to see indie films.

National Book Award Finalists are named here and here. Reviews of the books are here. I'm ashamed to say I haven't read any of them.

English playwright Harold Pinter has won the Nobel. Excerpts from his work here.

Tons of free poetry ebooks here: Plath, Bukowski, Neruda, to name just a few (Needs Acrobat to open)....

Oless' Eerie PA art, ALF results, and THS school play...sort of

Feeling brave? Head to Eerie PA, a showcase of regional artist's John Oless' gothic horror artwork. You can see (and buy!) them here or in the cafe of Erie's Borders Books and Music. Kinda cheesy, but very clever, and of course, local!

You can see Clarion's Autumn Leaf Festival parade results here.

Titusville High School is putting together a comedy called, “The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood”. The article in the Titusville Herald, though, admits show times, show dates and cost. Sheesh.

In non-local, comic book geek news, DC is remimagining their super hero universe.

Tall Horse in Pittsburgh - worth the drive...

First the local info
In Titusville, the Tyc-Toc and the Elks are planning a Tunnel of Terror. The tunnel will be open for the public tours on Oct. 22, Oct 28, Oct. 29 and Oct. 31 from 7 to 11 p.m. The tunnel will feature one night of extreme terror that will take place on Halloween, Oct. 31. Small children and those who are not up to a major frightening should not attend on this night. There will be a $3 charge to take the tour of the tunnel. Those who wish to help with this event should contact Penny Gustavson, Tyc-Toc director at 814-827-2381


Meadville native,Monica Cervone-McElwain, takes advantage of the SPROUT Fund and creates a mural on Pittsburgh's South Side.


Allegheny prof, Jonathan Helmreich, writes a local history, Through All the Years: A History of Allegheny College. My brother's drunken antics not included, I'm told...





The beautiful Tall Horse puppet play comes to Pittsburgh this week. Christopher Isherwood writes, "Tall Horse is a veritable multicultural festival in itself. The production represents a collaboration between two African puppet-theater companies, the Handspring company of South Africa, known for its work with the filmmaker William Kentridge, and the Sogolon company from Mali. Both the collaboration and the concept were suggested by an executive at the Kennedy Center in Washington. The script was written by an African-American, Khephra Burns. The director, Marthinus Basson, is South African. The choreographer, Koffi Kôkô, is from Benin. . . . There are, to be sure, some authentic wonders on view here, notably the title character, a magnificent puppet, 16 feet tall at full stretch, inhabited by two men walking with unexpected grace and animation on stilts. Constructed of a delicate exoskeleton of thin wooden rods wrapped in airy fabrics evoking the animal's patterned skin, it glides with the undulating, slightly awkward languor of the real creature . . ."
It's the Lion King for thinking kids and adults. NYT Review here and Pittsburgh Courier review here and here. Tickets here. It's too bad the Barrow isn't offering a bus down or that some of the local schools aren't headed down for a field trip.

Yesterday, due to gyro OD, I forgot to include Big Jack Earl's URl. Head here to get songs, show dtaes, and to sign up for the email list.

Exit Applefest

Another Applefest over and I couldn't be happier - I mean it's not really a celebration of Franklin or Venango County, or heck, even of Apples, it's just sort of a celebration of...itself. And crafts. Lots of crafts. Including those Calvin peeing stickers and hats made of real live skunks. My wife glared angrily when I asked her where we could find the white hood and robe tent, but geez...I tell all my artists friends, man you should move from (LA, SF, NYC and other initialed cities) and come to Venango COunty - everything's cheap, there's airports and good music and cheap beer...and I couldn't help but think what they would make of all this...Maybe they're right, maybe I was crazy for moving back.
But of course, the real reason I went there was not for any of the crafts booths anyhow - my mission on Saturday was simple - gyro, say hi to my nom de radio'd friend, Ted E Bear, with Forever Broadcasting, and then check out Big Jack Earl playing in the food court.


As my wife and I were walking from Bandstand PArk to Fountain Park to catch the show I marching band struck up - "Jeez," I said "I know they said they were trying out some percussion...but wow."
The set up was horrible - a little flatbed trailer with the tables for the food court placed parallel to rather than facing the band. And, yes, the judge stand for marching band comeptetion was maybe 50 yards away and smoke from various fried foods of death wafted over them. In short, it was a miserable show set up. It does seem time and time again that the locals really get the short shrift when it comes to any sort of Applefest showcase.
I really felt for them - I remember doing perfomance poetry with Lollaplooza in 95 and facing the same sort of environmental problems, with drunken angry hecklers added too, of course.
The good news was that they had added percussion, a guy named David whio plays in a jazzy style with a lot of brushwork. What was good was/is that he fits really seamlessly into older songs - like St. Beautiful, yet allows them to explore new avenues in unrecorded songs - whose names, of course, escape me, because I had a dripping gyro in my hand rather than a pen.

Wanted: Used brass instruments, in good condition.