Welcome to Counter Culture, a talk show normally in a diner.

(♪♪) Joining me on tonight's show, the author of 20 books, including Stealing Wyeth, Bruce Mowday.

- One of the local criminals read in The New York Times that one of the Wyeth paintings went for almost $1 million.

So they figured, why not steal one for a retirement fund?

(♪♪) - The president and CEO of ArtsQuest and Musikfest, Kassie Hilgert.

- In 2019, we got 1.2 million people from 45 states and 21 countries.

So it is truly a global event.

- And TV handy man, sometimes known as the lazy homeowner, Mike Ferrara.

- You know, if you think it's going to take three hours, double it, and then you won't be disappointed.

- All right here on Counter Culture.

(♪♪) Hi, folks, I'm your host, Grover Silcox, coming to you from Lehigh Valley Public Media Studio B while we wait for the go ahead to return to our original home at Daddypops Diner, in little old Hatboro.

My first guest once served as a courthouse reporter and managing editor for the Daily Local News in West Chester.

In 1997, he created his own media relations company.

He's the author of 20 books that cover a range of topics from criminal investigations with his book Stealing Wyeth to American history with his Pickett's Charge, The Untold Story.

Please welcome Bruce Mowday to the Counter.

Hi, Bruce.

How are you?

- I'm doing fine.

First, I want to say thank you so much for inviting me to your fine show.

I'm looking forward to spending a few minutes with you.

- Well, same here.

And I really enjoyed reading Stealing Wyeth.

I've learned a lot about the great American artists, the Wyeth family, NC, Andrew and Jamie.

I think I have that chronology right there.

- I think you do, too.

They are great family of artists.

And of course, Jamie's still alive.

And Andy left us a few years ago, but they just contributed so much to the artwork for the United States.

- And they're based in Chadds Ford.

That's where the family estate is.

And that's where the scene of the crime began.

That's where your story began, at the granary, which was sort of like a barn turned into a gallery.

- Yeah, it was one of the outbuildings on the Wyeth estate in Chadds Ford.

And they actually split their time in Chadds Ford and also up in Maine.

But this was one of the outbuildings that Betsy Wyeth actually used to as her office and had many of the famous Wyeth paintings up on the walls.

And one of the local criminals read in The New York Times that one of the Wyeth paintings went for almost $1 million.

So they figured, why not steal one for a retirement fund?

So that kind of started the whole idea of this theft.

- This is the story of the gang who couldn't shoot straight, really not professional art thieves, which made a huge difference in how this thing unfolded, correct?

- Absolutely.

Andy said they were great thieves, but awful art thieves.

In the world of art, the thieves almost have to have somebody that either ordered a painting to be stolen or have a buyer ready for one.

It's really difficult, as this gang found out, if you have and they actually took 15 paintings out of the greenery that they had this artwork worth millions.

And the next day, just about everybody in the United States and across the world knew that these paintings were stolen and what they looked like so they couldn't kind of go to a gallery and try to sell them.

- 15 paintings in all that were taken, and they were hidden in the back of the trunks of cars, in attics or wherever, but...or underground.

So there was a big fear that they would be destroyed when they were finally hopefully returned.

- Yes.

When the investigators started, there was a fear.

First of all, they couldn't find them.

And it took a while to get them and to get a lead.

And their first fear was that some Wyeth collector in the Far East, and there were a lot of collectors there, or in Europe had preordered them and they would never be seen again.

And the other great fear was that once the thieves found out they couldn't sell them, that instead of being caught, they would be destroyed.

So, yes, there was that fear there.

And you're absolutely right, the journey of these paintings, amazingly, they were put in the back of derelict cars and towed and put in plastic bags and buried and put in the walls of different people that they were associated with the gang.

It was amazing that they turned up and they turned up in pretty good shape.

In fact, Betsy, at one point said when they were returned, they were actually in better shape than when they received back some paintings from some museum exhibitions.

- And at the time, this is, what, 1983 when the theft happened, you were a reporter for the Daily Local News in Westchester at the time.

So you were kind of covering this ongoing theft and investigation.

- Actually, I wasn't.

It was a continuation of a larger crime.

And one of the gang members who actually was the one who spotted the article and started the Wyeth theft he was also a member of the Johnston gang, who just a few years before that, were convicted of three of the brothers of committing multiple murders.

I also did a book Jailing The Johnston Gang and detailed that.

That these guys were good thieves and there was about 20 members in the gang and they stole almost anything that wasn't nailed down.

They would steal things to order.

- The Wyeth thieves, they're the art thieves, were kind of linked to them.

- Yes.

Yes.

As a matter of fact, Matherly, who sold a lot of stolen articles for the Johnston gang, was one of the main members of the group that stole the Wyeth paintings.

So there was very much a continuation.

And this gang had roots and crime back three decades before that.

- What was the art valued at?

- If you look at them and you start putting them together, they were multimillion, probably five or six million at that point.

And today, you know, you can triple and quadruple that to the paintings that were stolen.

Like I said, you said they were good thieves, but awful art thieves, because you're absolutely right to have something that well known, and the Wyeth paintings were well known, you know, you need to have that buyer ahead of time.

They ended up, when they couldn't sell them, they started trading among themselves.

They paid off gambling debts to one another.

- After everything was resolved or solved, the criminals were apprehended, the artwork got back and the Wyeth and the law enforcement people all kind of got together and sort of celebrated.

- It was a great effort by police and they should be commended for what they did.

- It's a great story.

Stealing Wyeth truly proves that crime does not pay, but good investigators really make the day.

Thanks so much, Bruce.

I wish we had time to talk about your other books, Pickett's Charge, The Untold Story, your book about Richie Ashburn.

And on and on and on.

Thanks so much.

- Thank you.

- Bruce Mowday, an author whose keen sense of curiosity and gumshoes nose for storytelling led him to write on everything from crime and history to sports and writing itself.

(♪♪) Every August, my next guest's schedule gets 100 times busier than her normal busy schedule all year round.

And that's because in the first ten days of the month, she's responsible for overseeing the nation's largest free music festival, appropriately named Musikfest.

She is president and CEO of ArtsQuest, the nonprofit organization that has organized manage the festival since 1984.

Please welcome an old friend, Kassie Hilgert, to the Counter.

Kassie, how are you?

- I'm doing great, Grover, how are you doing?

- Well, that's good.

I love that smile because that just makes me feel more positive about everything and we need to be more positive about everything as best I can.

- We sure do.

- Yeah.

So I mean, Musikfest is certainly one of a kind, I mean in terms of size and culture and variety.

So paint the picture.

This has been going on now for since 1984, right?

This is when the first Musikfest started in Bethlehem, the city of Bethlehem in Pennsylvania.

- What you see is a city that is literally built within a city for ten days.

So as you fly over Bethlehem on the north side, you see these stages, all different sizes, dotted throughout the historic district.

We tuck these stages right into the most beautiful parts of Bethlehem.

So you have the main street stages in Leiderplatz.

You go down into Plaza Tropical and fest plots, the original plots.

And then as you fly over the Lehigh River, to the South Side Arts District, you see the 200 foot Gothic giants that are the blast furnaces.

And there are six more stages on the South Side for Musikfest, including the granddaddy of them all, our only ticketed venue, Wind Creek Stage, which holds about 6,500 people at max capacity.

So across those 60 acres and 16 stages, you've got 500 performers over ten days.

The additional magic that happens, along with the music and the artists from all over the world, actually are 60 food vendors, which literally are performers on their own.

People come from all over for some brand-new eats every year, as well as the traditions that they look forward to every year like Aw Shucks and Take A Taco.

- And it all began in 1984 with a hope and a prayer, so to speak.

But it sort of was successful from the outstart.

-Yeah.

Musikfest, the real reason Musikfest started was to attract businesses to the downtown, attract visitors to the downtown to see the historical assets and the beauty that is Bethlehem.

- How many people actually populate Bethlehem at this time?

How many people come visiting to see and participate in Musikfest?

- In 2019, we got 1.2 million people from 45 states and 21 countries.

So it is truly a global event.

- And we should say that the location on the South Side was once the 1,800 acre Bethlehem steel plant, and when that closed in officially I guess in the in the mid-'90s, and then the whole company closed in 2003 I think it was, who would have ever believed that an arts and culture organization would come along and with the city and with the community and with a lot of people chipping in to turn it around and bring arts and the economy together?

- You know, I'd like to say we had an original idea, for SteelStacks, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

And we really got the idea from a location in northern Germany that had done the exact same thing already.

They had taken a former steel plant and turned it into a cultural destination.

And that's when we realized we could do the same thing here in Bethlehem.

And you built the ArtsQuest Center, which is a four-story building.

And I love the way you designed it so that it sort of fits into the whole history of the steel plant and the industrial might of America and Bethlehem and tied it all together from the colors you used to the big windows that face these blast furnaces.

- I will tell you that we want to take advantage of the view from inside the ArtsQuest Center with a lot of glass and a lot of concrete, we wanted to feel industrial.

And that was a big achievement for Spillman Farmer when they designed that building because there are two materials you don't want to use when you're conducting live music, and that's glass and concrete.

But they did a beautiful job mitigating those issues and creating beautiful sound in that building.

- So tell us where the performance platforms are on the SteelStack site.

- The SteelStack site, on a year-round basis, has the Levitt Pavilion at SteelStacks, which is right at the base of the blast furnaces, it can hold about 2,000 people.

So we use that for at least 50 free shows a year, nationally touring acts and local acts.

We have a large screen video screen out there that we use for movie nights.

We also gate that venue periodically to have ticketed shows.

And then if you cross First Street, you've got the Highmark community stage right outside on the town square.

We use that for shows both before and after Levitt shows in the summer.

It's also a venue during Musikfest, as is the Levitt Pavilion.

When you go inside, we just had a newly redesigned first floor opening up a restaurant now called the Palette and Pour.

We have a two-screen independent cinema called the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas, which houses 100 or 200 people.

On the second floor, we have the dollar blast furnace room, which is really a multiuse room for us.

We can house private events there or we can host comedy or cabaret shows, seats about 200 people in there.

And then you bump up to the third and fourth floor, which is the jewel in the crown for us, the Musikfest Cafe, where we host nationally touring acts all throughout the year for anywhere from 450 people seated in cabaret style to a thousand person standing room only.

- And then up the street, you had also purchased an old banana factory or warehouse, and now it's called the Banana Factory.

And that's for the visual arts.

- That is our visual arts and education center.

So in there you'll find three galleries.

We host visual arts camps and classes year round in that building.

So we've got photography classrooms, we've got visual arts classrooms.

We also housed 30 resident artists.

So these are artists that make a living through their art and they make their art there, at the Banana Factory.

That's a really unique draw for the Banana Factory.

You can go in there and watch an artist make their art.

We also have the volunteer center is located within the Banana Factory as well as Pennsylvania Youth Theater.

- I have to ask you how you've been dealing with the pandemic, Musikfest 2020, and the way forward.

- We are in the same boat as every other arts and culture organization, and that means we're devastated.

When we were shut down, 90% of our revenue was turned off.

And so we have done everything we can to keep our doors open.

But we have kept the same spirit that started Musikfest back in 1984.

And that was how can we convene the community using the arts and provide some hope during a very hopeless time.

So we've been able to do virtual programs, including visual arts programs.

We've been able to offer a virtual and somewhat in-person music fest in 2020.

We are running Christkindlmarkt.

We've been able to spread out, socially distanced, 60 different artisans and crafters.

For many of them, this has been the only event they've had all year to generate some income.

We've only been able to put on this programing because of the amazing support of our sponsors and donors and members and elected officials that are doing everything they can to support us through this.

- Kassie, thanks so much for joining us.

Keep up the good work.

Keep us looking at the arts and being inspired and feeling optimistic about life.

That's what it's really all about.

That's what your mission is, I think.

- Well, Grover, thank you, and PBS, we are not just neighbors but we're partners.

We appreciate all you're doing, too.

So you guys stay safe and stay well.

- Kassie Hilgert, one of the brightest stars supporting a pantheon of stars in a city in which the star is emblematic.

(♪♪) Next up is a fellow known as Techno Dad for his proficiency with all things smart, but I've known him more as the everyman of home improvement, a guide for the lazy homeowner like myself, frankly.

Today, we're going to talk about things you've been meaning to get to around the house and now can't escape because you're stuck in the house.

So you might as well get them done.

It is a pleasure to welcome an old friend, handy guy, Mike Ferrara.

How are you, Mike?

- Oh, I'm wonderful, Grover.

- It's great to see you again.

- Coming up.

- It's been too long.

- Yes, it has.

It's been it's been a while, but you're coming to us from the great city of Minneapolis, I understand.

- Yes.

And I was thinking about garages because my garage feels like the inside of a refrigerator and insulation is my number one priority this year.

- For all those folks who aren't as handy as you, perhaps we can give them some tips, give me some tips as well, planning what we can do to fix things up while we're stuck in the house.

So let's start with like painting.

Is that something you can get done?

A lot of people are thinking that.

- Yeah, painting is good because it's, you know, basically every man can do that.

It's not a big deal.

But preparation is the key.

That's the main thing.

You have to make sure that you clean the walls before you paint them.

- OK. - Get a quality paint.

Don't waste your time on cheap paint.

You know, your time is worth more than cheap paint, I think.

And use a good brush, use a good roller and think about the lighting in the room.

A lot of people put on a coat of paint.

They say, "Oh, this is way too dark.

"What was I thinking?"

And it's like, no, maybe you should like get rid of that light bulb that's been in the socket for like ten years and put in something brighter.

And that'll make a huge difference.

- Yeah, and they have these LED lights now that really brighten things up.

- That's right, yeah.

The LEDs are great because they don't burn out, they're much brighter and they still you can still use your dimmer with them.

And you know, painting is great because it's inexpensive.

Just about everybody can paint and it does make a huge difference.

Just be a little bit aware of the colors.

You know, gray is very, very popular right now, probably too popular.

And I would recommend you go to the paint store and look at what's available.

Sometimes they'll even let you take some samples home.

And, you know, you can paint them on the wall and you can see what they're really going to look like.

- I always consult YouTube.

Which can get you in trouble.

I was so proud of myself.

- Yes, it can.

- Because I can't fix anything.

- Well, there's a lot of good information on YouTube, don't get me wrong, but you have to be very discerning about it.

there's a lot of bad information on there.

I'm sure that doesn't surprise you.

Take everything you see on YouTube with a grain of salt because basically they're doing a three to five minute video, if that long.

And that doesn't mean it's going to take you that short a time when you actually start doing it.

- Yeah, one of the first things, one of the first things I think you mentioned is that you really should be honest about your capabilities.

-That's right.

That's right.

You have to be honest.

Don't think that if you buy some special tool, it's going to make everything better.

It might.

But most likely you're going to have to do some homework, take your time.

You know, if you think it's going to take three hours, double it and then you won't be disappointed.

And I applaud the young ladies who might be first-time homeowners and they want to try this stuff.

And they're much more honest than the guys.

They'll come and ask me, you know, "I've never done "this before, can you help me?"

And that sets the stage for me to tell them what they need to know.

You know, the guys are more like, "Oh, yeah, I know "all this stuff.

You don't have to tell me anything."

And that may be true.

It may not be true.

- Not me, I ask.

I always ask, and then I go, "Can you do it?"

And then he can.

But you talk about some of the ladies.

I was watching a couple of YouTube videos of... Each one was a woman building a shed, I think they call them she sheds.

I couldn't believe it.

I was so intimidated just watching.

I mean, these ladies were great.

They were phenomenal.

- The great thing is they do have pre-built sheds that you can set up on a foundation.

And then a lot of the companies, one of them is Tuff Shed that comes to mind, they have all kinds of storage units and things you can put inside - a desk, a potting bench, whatever you want to do.

I think it's a great idea because it expands the area in your house so you don't have to take up an extra bedroom or whatever for your hobby.

And, you know, when you have an argument, you say, you know, "Go to the she shed."

- The other thing I thought I was really drawn to, and you had mentioned it, which really is something that, you know, seems overwhelming, and that is cleaning out and organizing your garage.

- Oh, yeah.

- And you pointed me to some kind of organization that has a thing they call creating the Garage Mahal.

- Garage Mahal.

Yeah, well, it's sort of a generic term now, Grover, but it used to be something special maybe 20 years ago.

The best way to start is, you know, if you actually put your car in a garage, I know some people don't even do that.

But if you do, think about how much room there is around the car and what you could possibly fit in there, while the car's in the garage.

When you start doing those things, you say, "Wow, "you know, this is going to be OK. "I wouldn't mind spending some time in here."

- Right.

And once you get rid of the stuff you don't want, then I was reading about activity zones, start organizing it by the activities.

- I'm a car enthusiast, so I have a whole section in my garage just for my tools.

And the light in the garage is really important.

I actually put some skylights in my garage because it was so dark in there.

It was sort of like a tomb.

And that was a great idea because I got one that actually has a vent on it.

So it'll open up in the summertime, and that lets some air in and circulation.

And obviously, if you live in Minnesota, like I do, you have to think about maybe heating the garage.

- Oh, right.

If you live down South, you may have to think about air conditioning.

- I also read where it's important to put the things you use most often, the tools or whatever, as close as possible so you don't have to go over things and moving things.

- Right.

Right, exactly, Grover.

And, you know, there's vertical space and there's horizontal space.

I recommend getting like slat wall or pegboard, and you can literally put all your garden tools and all the stuff that's going to take up a lot of space on the wall.

You really don't want anything on the floor.

And label everything.

You know, I'm great for putting stuff in boxes, but I never label them, and that doesn't really do you any good.

So make sure when you put stuff away, you label it.

And absolutely, if you're going to be using it a lot, put it in a place you can grab without having to put something else back five times over to get to it.

Next time, maybe we can talk about cars.

You know, I'm a car nut.

So we can move on to like electric cars or something.

- Well, you're in the driver's seat, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to technical and home owning and all that stuff.

So I want to thank you for joining us, Mike.

- Thank you, Grover.

You take care of yourself now.

I hope I can see you in the diner next time.

- Same here.

In the meantime, I hope that car has heated seats, anyway, because I know you're in Minneapolis.

- OK. - Take care, my friend.

- Bye-bye.

- Mike Ferrara, a guy who's not just handy on TV, but in real life as well.

(♪♪) Well, that's all for this episode, I want to thank my guests, author Bruce Mowday, the mover and shaker of ArtsQuest and Musikfest, Kassie Hilgert, and everyone's favorite handyman, Mike Ferrara.

And thank you for joining us tonight.

Don't forget to stop by next week for more amazing guests and great conversation right here at the Counter.