The O-town Scene

April 07, 2011

The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY

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Look on the Bright side Story and photos by Sam Spokony Bright Hill is a literary and artistic gem in Delaware County Bertha Rogers*, the director and editor-in-chief of Treadwell’s Bright Hill Press, loves art, and she loves poetry. As she led me through the Bright Hill Center, I couldn’t help but notice her inexhaustible enthusi- asm toward the work produced by the artistic talent she has come in contact with. It’s clear that Rogers hasn’t lost any of the creative sparks that drove her to found Bright Hill Press nearly 20 years ago. With pink highlights, a quick step and a joyful countenance, she is anything but matronly. “Every now and then I say, ‘Oh, my God,’” she said, laughing, “because we have such a massive events schedule, and it takes months to put together. But the truth is that this is all just so exciting.” That massive events schedule has developed exten- sively since Bright Hill’s creation in 1992, but remains based on its trademark, Word Thursdays. Every other week in the Bright Hill Center, Word Thursdays com- bine open mic poetry with featured readings by pub- lished writers of widely varying ages and backgrounds. According to Rogers, the readings have come a long way from humble beginnings, and took inspiration from the New York City environment she lived in for years while doing, among other things, freelance design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I used to go to a lot of readings in New York … I really liked hearing other poets,” she said. “So my husband and I decided to start our own series. We sent out a press release to The Daily Star. Five people came!” Since then, the readings have grown to draw word- smiths from both central New York and throughout the country. More importantly, they have become a staple of the regional community, attracting both a core group of residents and new faces from surround- ing colleges and high schools who fill the center to 16 O-Town Scene April 7, 2011 Bright Hill Center’s Community Library, which was built in 2004, features prose, poetry and literary journals. capacity at each event. What is surprising is that the Bright Hill Center didn’t actually exist until 2002; Rogers held Word Thursdays and various artistic workshops in her own home for nearly 10 years. With the valuable help of her husband Ernest M. Fishman, Bright Hill Press’s board president, and the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O’Connor Foundation and the Walter Rich Charitable Foundation, the organization found its current home on Church Street in Treadwell. Along with that new space came new ambitions. “When we got the place, I walked in and thought, ‘It’s perfect,’” Rogers said. “But then we thought, ‘Oh, we need a library.’” A grant was written, and was soon approved by the New York State Council on the Arts for $50,000, a to- tal that was matched by Bright Hill. Along with other funds, that effort culminated in the construction of a community library annex in 2004. It is what Rogers calls a humanities library, stocked with literary prose and poetry, art books, children’s books, theatrical history and biographies, along with several tall shelves by the entrance to the annex that include more than 5,000 literary journals and poetry magazines, some of which date back to the 1940s. And it’s considered a community library for a good reason: there have been thousands of donations. “I find bags full of books sitting on the porch all of the time,” said Rogers. “After a while, we realized that we had more books than shelves, so we had to solve that problem.” That solution is under way, as all of the library’s books are currently being catalogued. Rogers believes that the children’s section will be circulating by June, with the other sections to follow by the end of this year. Continued on Page 17 Bertha Rogers* is this week’s Casual Chit Chat, Page 7

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