​The Mountain Man climbed back to the top at the 25th annual Pennsylvania Stone Skipping Tournament.

​Kurt Steiner of Emporium, who won the first contest in 2001, took Saturday’s first place award with 41 skips.

It is the seventh win for the current Guiness World Record holder for stone skipping. Steiner also won in 2001 (25 skips), 2002 (34), 2005 (31), 2011 (39), 2012 (40) and 2015 (38).  

"It's been a minute," Steiner said about his ten year absence from hoisting the trophy.

When asked what he will do now that he is the winningest competitor in PA stone skipping history, breaking the tie with tournament originator Russ Byars, Steiner replied “Now I can retire” with a chuckle.  

Steiner was joined at the top by two other tournament regulars and past champions.

​Dave “Spiderman” Ohmer of Erie came in second with a top skip of 40 and the highest second of 38. Ohmer won the contest in 2013 and 2014 (43 skips each time) and 2021 (45).
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Andy “Big Rock” Severns of Tidioute came in third with a top skip of 40 and a second skip of 36.

Severns is the only contestant to record 50 or more skips during the competition winning in 2022 (53) and 2023 (50).
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Enzo Ferrari of Baltimore, Maryland also recorded a toss with 40 skips this year but just missed the podium with a second highest skip of 23.
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There was a large crowd gathered in Riverfront Park for the contest that typically draws competitors from across the country and sometimes around the globe.

A young man, Joel Lewis from Liverpool, England competed as a exhibition thrower with the pros.
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There were 55 contestants in the amateur category. Logan “Igneous” Campola won the division with 31 skips.
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He elected to “go pro” and threw consistently throughout the six-toss competition on his way to capturing the Highest Cumulative Total honor with 178 skips (28, 27, 37, 19, 32, 32).

He was also one of 12 people to record a toss of 30 skips or more on Saturday, representing nearly half of the 25 professional competitors.
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Along with Steiner, Ohmer, Severns, Ferrari and Campola, contestants in the 30s and their top skips included Aiden “The Wizard” Woolsey of Buffalo, New York (39), Colin “Noodles” Hales (38), Kyle Graff of Soquel, California (37), Jonathan Jennings of Louisville, Kentucky (37), David Michael Ohmer of Titusville (36), Greg Winger of Franklin (33) and Alex Ferry of Warren (31).

Thursday's cooler temperatures found band director Steve Johnston smiling as the Franklin High School Black Knight Marching Band continued to fine tune this year's show. 

​With band camp in full swing, Johnston says they are not only gearing up for Friday nights and several Saturday performances, but also the 250th anniversary of the United States of America and the Semiquincentennial celebration in Philadelphia next year.

​"It's because of all the Washington, D.C. parades we did that we were invited," Johnston said. The band has been a frequent participant in the Memorial Day parades in D.C. for many years.

"The Pride of Pennsylvania," as Johnston announces each halftime of the Franklin football games, gets recognized because they deliver time and time again locally and on the national stage.

Last weekend

Deadline extended to Monday

What does art do?

Some think of it solely as decoration, something to beautify our surroundings.

But for others, art reaches inside us to elevate feelings we don't always allow to be shown in public.

"Rabbit Hole" by David Lindsay-Abaire is a Pulitzer Prize winning work of art that fits into that latter category. And this small Off-Barrow production, opening Friday in the Barrow-Civic Little Theatre, delivers this rollercoaster of simultaneous emotions straight into that lump in your throat that you will fight to swallow until after the final bow.
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This show explores the human condition. It examines how we all carry grief in different ways.

To deliver  laughter, anger, empathy, being lost, and suffering deep in sorrow  and to pull these emotion from the audience all in the span of around two hours is a truly remarkable thing.

​And good actors don't just memorize lines, they deliver them with their whole body.

Elizabeth Williams use of hand gestures  from  wringing, hands, clenching fists and putting down and picking up the same items over and over again help us along for the ride of her emotional toll.

The work her hands do holding a tissue as her facial expression looks out past the audience sitting in seconds from loss to hopeful wonderment of an alternative version of herself that is happy.

Her counterpart Evan O'Polka also has to navigate through the portrayal of moving on. His lost stoic stares, frustrated drooped shoulders, and restraint in tough scene after tough scene that many wouldn't blame his character from exploding with raw unfiltered emotion.

One scene after learning one of his prized processions that he watched to remember his son had been accidentally destroyed he had to move from his aggressive pain to acceptance that it too, like his sons death, was an accident and, though easy to place fault on another, in the end it does not serve his pain to carry it further, 

Williams' and O 'Polka's dynamic isn't a black and white portrayal of characters. It is a woven tapestry of emotional sparring that isn't easy to pull off.

​And yet they have found these characters and allow themselves to drain every ounce of blood from their veins and leave it on the stage.

And if you don't believe that, watch them when they take their bows. All characters are emotional drained.

​Nate Boley, in some ways has the hardest character to pull off. As a young actor with not many performances under his belt, Boley has to deliver awkward emotional lines with a lack of confidence like a teenager would but with the importance of learning the life lesson of connection and becoming an adult despite the difficulty of the situation.

Being able to draw someone into a hug through song is perhaps the greatest art. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. said that if one needs proof of the existence of God, they need not look further than music.

There are levels of music from recorder babble in first grade - to   tuba practice in elementary school -  to ditties sung on a comedian’s stage - to melodies that lift you off the ground as if you've been called to heaven's promise.

This year’s Taste of Talent winner, Madolyn Williams, fits into that latter category. This Franklin High School senior is a performer, a songstress of the highest caliber despite her young age. She becomes the words she is singing and if you allow yourself...you join with her soaring above the clouds.​