By CHRIS McSWIGGIN &
BENJAMIN DEER

.The Lady Yellowjackets, who took thrilled fans all the way to the New York State girls’ basketball finals last season, are at it again.
After winning the Section 5 title against Lansing in Binghamton last Friday, March 5, the OHS team will be playing the state quarterfinals in its hometown this weekend: Against South Jefferson at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 13, at Hartwick College’s Lambros Arena.
“I’ll definitely have butterflies before the game,” said junior forward Erin Wolsterholme, “but I just can’t wait to get out there and play.”
“Defense and rebounding have been our strength all year long,” said head Coach Bob Zeh, looking ahead in a post-game interview at the War Veterans Memorial in Binghamton.
One reason for the butterflies may be South Jeff’s 6-foot center. But, remember, Oneonta’s Val Ridgway is 6-foot-1.
The Lansing game was a defensive slugfest throughout. Lansing had the 16-14 advantage at halftime, which explains in itself just how much of a struggle both teams had on offense. The story of this game, however, can be told not just through defense, but heart.
“I thought Wolstenholme was done after the injury” said Coach Zeh. The entire arena shared his thoughts after Oneonta’s starting guard went down after getting a knee to the thigh in the second quarter.
Wolstenholme, who could barely put enough pressure on the injured leg to walk off the court, ended up being the hero....something you only see in movies.
“We have got to give a lot of credit to our trainer Andy Spence” said Zeh, “he took care of her, iced her, wrapped her, stretched her out.” Zeh asked her if she thought she could go, and of course –with the heart of a lion to battle through the pain –she said yes.
Wolstenholme would end up scoring the teams final four points, including a lay up that tied the game with 10 seconds to go. She got a little help from Kate Bredin, a senior, who hit a big three and free-throw late in the game to seal the deal.
Bredin, arguably the smallest player in the floor, was all over the court in the first half with multiple steals, rebounds and even a few blocks. Her efforts – as well as those from her team – helped to secure Oneonta’s 30-27 victory and date with another state tournament.

‘Government is the problem,” Ronald Reagan famously said.
Apparently, Richard P. Miller, Jr., wasn’t paying attention.
His second month as mayor of Oneonta ended the other day, and Miller hasn’t done nothing yet; which is to say, he’s done quite a bit.Just days into the job, the new mayor was faced his first crisis: The Oneonta Tigers, mainstay of Damaschke Field and source of community pride, had been tempted away to Norwich, Conn., a larger market with a bigger field.
Before the Tigers had even gotten on the bus, Miller was declaring there would be baseball at Damaschke – “by this summer,” yet.
Bold words, indeed. But within days – hours, perhaps – he had scoured the New York Collegiate Baseball League and came home with a draft pick: the Saratoga Phillies.
“That was a high point for me,” he said of his fledgling tenure. “I love things when they work really well.”
The mayor had begun to line up investors – Bob Hanft, Hartwick College trustees’ chairman from Miller’s days as president, had taken the lead.
But that wasn’t even necessary. The owners, Keith Rogers and Dan Scaring, are continuing to shoulder the financial burden, and so the deed is done.
•More important, perhaps, was another firm first step: convening Common Council members in a day-long retreat on Saturday, Jan. 9, in a City Hall basement conference room.Common Council’s regular meetings are formal affairs, governed by Roberts’ Rules, not conducive to open-ended discussion and reflection. The six-hour retreat allowed that. The pizza lunch gave the alderpeople a chance to chat, to joke, to get to know each other.
But the day was plenty structured in terms of what Miller wanted to communicate: That the city had been overspending by $1 million a year, a rate that would bankrupt it by 2012.
He didn’t declaim or blame. He simply shared the facts he had marshalled. They were compelling argument enough.
Miller also streamlined Common Council’s many committees to four – Human Resources, Finance & Administration, Facilities/Technology, and Marketing & Development – and assigned a senior city staff members to each as recorder, administrator and expediter.
In other words, the operation was stripped down for action.
“I was pleased by how receptive the council has been,” he said in an interview as his second month ended. “I had hoped for that; but I wasn’t sure I was going to get it.”
•The third initiative grew logically out of the second: Miller had stated during his campaign that the merger of the “two Oneontas” – the town and city – into one municipality should be studied. Now, he acted on that.
Common Council unanimously endorsed the study. Regrettably, the Oneonta Town Board unanimously rejected it. But Miller is undeterred.
He has asked SUNY’s Center for Economic & Community Development to proceed with its study, and is willing to see how the facts play out.“If the economics aren’t persuasive, the conversation ends,” he said. “If the economics are persuasive, we have to figure out how to do it.”
Reagan disciple Grover Norquist said, even more famously, that he wanted to get government small enough “to drown it in a bathtub.”
Eventually, maybe. But after Mayor Miller’s first two months, most Oneontans must be saying, “Not yet.”

By LAURA COX


Five years of writing have finally come to fruition for Oneonta author Alice Lichtenstein whose novel “Lost” was published by Scribner on Tuesday, March 9.
“Writing is rewording and intensely enjoyable,” said Lichtenstein, “and it’s wonderful to publish something. But writing itself is what I really enjoy. I can do it whereever I am, in any circumstance.”
“Lost” is Lichtenstein’s first hardcover novel. Her first novel, “Genius of the World,” was printed as a trade paperback by Zoland books in 2000. (Another novel she wrote failed to sell when it hit the New York market just two weeks before 9/11.)
An adjunct lecturer in creative writing at Hartwick College, Lichtenstein and her husband, psychologist Jim Bercovitz, moved here from New York City 20 years ago after a summer spent escaping the city in the peace and quiet of East Meredith. They raised their two daughters in Oneonta: Iris, 16, and Sarah, 12.
“Lost” was inspired by two local news stories that captured Lichtenstein’s attention and stayed with her. The first is about a young boy who set a fire that killed his brother. The second is of a woman who left her husband alone for just a few minutes; suffering from dementia, he wandered off into the cold winter night. A search party finds him, too late to save him.
Both stories haunted Lichtenstein as she reflected on the aftermath, on how those events influenced the boy and woman as they proceeded through their lives. In “Lost,” the stories converged in a third character, a social worker/search-party coordinator.
It took five years for Alice to think through the development of her characters – they almost came alive for the author – and complete the writing.
“Part of the joy of this kind of writing is that it is so rooted in the characters and language. Their voices take over,” said Lichtenstein. “In ‘Lost,’ one of the characters, Susan, is very private and reserved. I honestly felt it took a full year for her to let me tell her story. It felt like she really had to know that I was committed and she needed her time and space. Someday I’m going to write about someone not so uptight.”
Lichtenstein has always thought of herself as a writer. She wrote what she considers her first “novel” in second grade: “Cowgirl on the Plain.” She has always focused on fiction, calling writing her “refuge.”
As a teenager, Lichtenstein kept an “angst journal.” Working in an ice cream shop, she found her guest-check pad was the perfect medium for poetry.
Pre-publication reviews for “Lost” have been very positive.
“Here is a virtuoso novel which manages to be both a nail-biting page-turner and a lyrical meditation on fate and longing,” wrote Rebecca Godfrey, author of “Under the Bridge.” “…The story is intensely suspenseful and achingly beautiful, a masterful exploration of the intricate, heartrending ways we all seek to survive.”
One reviewer called the book a great book group book and a readers guide to the book is available on the Scribner website.
If any local book groups decide to read the book, Lichtenstein said she would be happy to try to arrange to stop by and chat or skype in if her calendar allowed.
To keep up with Alice Lichtenstein’s writing, visit her blog at www.alicelichtenstein.com.