Hometown Oneonta - The Otesgo-Delaware Dispatch

Hometown People

Thursday, February 12, 2009

‘Daddy Day Care’ To Host Open House This Weekend

Stay-at-home dad James Stark will be opening a registered daycare facility out of his family’s home located near Riverside Elementary School. The business is called Daddy Day Care
The father of two kids, Madalyn, 2.5, and Nolan, 8 months, Stark has always wanted to be a teacher and he is fulfilling this dream as well as his want to be home and spend time with his kids by opening the daycare.
Stark and his wife Jennifer, a P.E. teacher at Oneonta Middle School, will be hosting two open houses for the daycare at their home, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 14, and another on Saturday, Feb. 21, during the same hours.
“Some people may not be used to a man running a day care,” said Jennifer, “and so we wanted to have an open house so people could come by and meet James and see our place.”
Call 432-3049 for more information.

MIRABITOS DONATE $50,000 TO SPRINGBROOK

Springbrook Executive Director Patricia Kennedy accepts a $50,000 donation for the Coming Home Springbrook Expansion Campaign on Wednesday, Feb. 4, from Joe Mirabito, right, and Bill Mirabito, left. The money will be matched dollar for dollar from a $2.5 million 2006 challenge grant from Thomas Golisano made in 2006.

Carleigh Bettiol Lands First Professional Role

Oneonta native Carleigh Bettiol has landed a role as one of four “Hot Box Girls” in a professional production of “Guys and Dolls” at the Armory Theater in Janesville, Wisc.
“I am very honored and blessed to have been offered this role,” said Bettiol, a December SUNY Oneonta grad. “I am so excited to perform in the show and to gain more experience in the theater business.”
The show will run March 13- April 26.

Rene Prinz describes a number in the Civil War concert his Oneonta Community Historic Band performed Saturday, Feb. 7, at the Foothills Performing Arts Center in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday. He is flanked by flautist Marilyn Roper and clarinetist Tom Slavinsky. The concert included a medley of Southern songs – “Oh, Susanna” – and of Northern songs – “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” – from the era. The afternoon was organized by Harry Bradshaw Matthews, director of Hartwick College’s U.S. Pluralism Program.

Bright Days/Bright Nights

The reception for “Bright Days/Bright Nights” drew a steady crowd to the B. Sharp Gallery on Route 28, Franklin Mountain, Saturday, Feb. 7. The exhibit, the gallery’s second, included Christine Alexander’s paintings and photographer Richard Walker’s shell sequence. Clockwise from upper left, Nathan Banks of Franklin shows samples of his work to Larry Bennett, East Meredith; gallery owner Bobby Sharp chats with Alba, a painter from Sidney Lake; and Lisa St. Onge of Oneonta and Renee Farnham of Unadilla examine the offerings.

Labels: 02-13-09, Hometown People

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Chinese New Year Falls Close To Heart

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

By LAURA COX

ONEONTA

The Chinese New Year – “Spring Festival,” a time to celebrate the New Year and the coming of spring with brightly colored decorations, traditional foods, music and gifts in red envelopes– may not mean much to most of us around here.
But it has taken new significance for the Solenstens of Milford, the Wolfgoulds and Medinas of Oneonta, and the Bohlers of Fly Creek, amongst a dozen others.
They all have children adopted from China.
“When families adopt children from China they make a promise to the Chinese Government that they will teach their children about their native culture,” said Lori Solensten, an adoptive mother and the only local social worker certified to facilitate adoptions from China, “our annual Chinese New Year celebration for children adopted from Asia is one way local families do this.”
So Sunday afternoon, Feb. 8 – as some have done for seven years, others for the first time – adopted children of all ages gathered with family and friends at the China Buffet King restaurant on Chestnut Street to celebrate the holiday of their cultural heritage with food, crafts, music and dance.
Jane Lou of Oneonta and her husband, who were both born in China, attend each year to teach the children about Chinese traditions provide music and teach Chinese words.
“I think of all the adopted children like my grandchildren,” said Lou, who came to the U.S. as a graduate student in 1969.
There are 20 local families with children adopted from Asia. The first family adopted a child nine years ago; the newest, within the past year.
The decision to become a parent comes easily to some but the decision to become an adoptive parent, especially in the case of international adoptions, often requires much more than a simple decision; that decision is reached for a range of reasons, from infertility to a sheer need to reach out to someone else in need.
The adoption process is not easy and can take years, typically three years to adopt a healthy infant from China. The process can be expedited for a child with health needs, said Solensten, whose firm works with both healthy and health needs adoptions.
All the adoptive families have gone through the same process of filling out lots of paperwork, doing a home study, providing a family dossier, waiting for approval and, finally, the two-week trip to China to pick up the child – usually from an orphanage or foster home – and finalize the adoption.
For the Wolfgoulds, who have two older sons adopted stateside, the international adoption of their daughter Robin from China seven years ago was a familiar process.
“The requirements to adopt were not any different, it just takes longer. It took us about a year to adopt Robin, with our boys it was right away,” said mom Carolyn.
The sons’ adoptions were “open” – they know who the boys’ families are – Robin, they do not, and that can be hard for her, said Carolyn.
“Adopting a child is a very involved process, if you want to adopt you have to really want to do it,” said Robin Medina, who with her husband Jose adopted two girls from China, Molly and Leia, who were 11 months and 14 months old and are now age 10 and 6 respectively.
One of the girls was adopted from an orphanage; the other from a foster home.
Developmentally this made a difference and so the girls required different types of socialization and nurturing once they were home in the U.S.
“They were jealous of each other right from the beginning, but that’s resolved now. They are both doing very well socially and they really are sisters,” said Robin. “They fight with each other and do all the usual sibling things.
“It was definitely the right decision for us to adopt both our children, it’s been absolutely wonderful.”
To teach their kids about their heritage, some families have taken them to Chinatown in New York City or Boston, some participate in activities with a larger group of adoptive families in Albany, some dedicate time at home to discuss Chinese traditions and culture.
The children running around at the celebration the other afternoon were excited to celebrate their heritage and to learn more about the land where they were born.
They ooo’d and ahh’d over each other’s beautiful outfits, and the older children corralled in the younger ones to play and dance.
As these children grow older some may form bonds that will forever link them with their friends who were also adopted from China, others may choose to abandon their cultural heritage in exchange for their new American culture.
But what is important, the parents said, is that each of these kids are given the opportunity to learn about where they came from and given the chance to develop their new Chinese-American identity.

Labels: 02-13-09, Chinese New Year, The City of the Hills

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Festival Of Joy, Anticipation

JEANNINE BOHLER

UNDER THE FLY CREEK SUN

About a year ago, I picked Alex up at preschool. It was a grey day, gloomy. I was freezing. My feet were wet. When I got home, something prompted me to stand in our dining room and look out across the frozen landscape of our yard.
The phone rang. It was the director of our adoption agency. We had official approval from the Chinese government to adopt Cate. Even now, a year later, I feel the full force of that emotion – ecstatic joy, relief, disbelief ... after two years of holding our breath, after four months of looking at a picture of her forlorn little face ... we had a daughter. What followed was a whirl of activity that hasn’t quite ended yet.
Our approval arrived shortly before the beginning of Chinese New Year – a festival that suddenly seemed created to mark our joy and anticipation.
Packages filled with red envelopes and well wishes from friends arrived in the mail. Alex celebrated Chinese New Year at school wearing T-shirts he had created with his sister’s name and his own written proudly across the chest.
We made paper lanterns and dragons and bejeweled the walls and ceilings. We decked ourselves and our house in red, and made a feast of Chinese food to share with friends. We listened to music, so foreign to our own ears, over and over, because Google indicated it was Chinese New Year music.
Holidays are nothing if not a collection of the memories and rituals of our lives.
Christmas is joy because it harkens not only the present happiness, but back to the anticipation I felt as a kid, left sitting at the top of the stairs while my parents “oohed” and “ahhed” over all the gifts under the tree.
Thanksgiving is a memory of my grandmother’s stuffed celery served on a green plastic platter, the Macy’s Day parade buzzing somewhere in the background as my mother cooked and the house filled with delicious smells.
Easter, still a joyful hunt for jelly beans among my grandparents’ house plants and pictures.
The feelings package themselves in so many layers, opening again and again with each passing year.
So it has become with Chinese New Year. This year, The Year of the Ox, marked only our third celebration of the ancient tradition and, yet, it has become our own.
In its celebration, I paid tribute to the anxious determination of our first celebration. Our paperwork had just landed in China, but our hearts were already tied to a child whose face we had never seen.
I researched the holiday. Alex and I did craft after craft. We ordered Chinese takeout and celebrated what we hoped would be. Last year, The Year of the Rat, was a feast of glorious preparation and joy of what would be. And this year, we celebrated all that we have.
I do not know what Cate will feel for the country of her birth as she grows. I suspect it will be a complex web.
She may reject what she once embraced and later embrace it again. She may go through a time when she wishes to disassociate herself. She may always love her amazing cultural heritage.
I have wondered how we will handle these issues as she grows. Will we stop celebrating Chinese New Year? Will we fail to honor the Autumn Moon? I think the answer is no. No, because we have already made them our own. They have already entered our family history. They are ours.
I know our celebrations, no matter how much we learn, will never be authentic. I know ours are only a version of the real thing.
I will never sweep all the dust to four corners and then leave it until the fifth day of the new year. I won’t open every window and door in my mid-winter home to let the old year out.
But I can prepare a feast of dumplings and long life noodles. I’ll place a bowl of tangerines on my counter to symbolize abundant happiness. We’ll light as many lanterns as we can.
And I will remember with each passing year, the magical range of emotions and events that have allowed our family to make this holiday one of our own.

Labels: 02-13-09, The City of the Hills

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WEEKEND’S BEST BETS

SINGING VALENTINE: Give a memorable gift to your loved one with a Singing Valentine presented by the City of the Hills Sweet Adelines. The special someone will receive a rose, a photo and a remembrance certificate for just $30. Greetings are available from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on Feb. 13 and from 9 a.m.-8 p.m. on Feb. 14. Call 432-8854 to order.

VALENTINE’S DINNER DANCE: Spend some time with your Valentine at the Foothills’ Valentine’s Dinner Dance. The evening begins at 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14, with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and soft music, followed by an exceptional gourmet dinner and dancing to live music. Cost is $90/couple, $50/individual.

COMEDY PLAY: “The Clean House” will begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 13, at the Lab Theatre in Bresee Hall, Hartwick College.
This comedy about clean homes and messy lives is presented by a cast of Hartwick College students and one alumna.
Tickets are $5 for students, faculty and staff, $8 for the general public. Reservations are suggested. Call 431-4CAP (4227). There will also be performances at 8 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday.

MYSTERY PLAY: “Scotland Road” takes place Friday night at 8 p.m. in the Goodrich Theater of the Fine Arts Building at SUNY Oneonta.
The play is presented by Mask and Hammer, the student theatre group of the SUNY College at Oneonta, in conjunction with the College’s Theatre Department.
Tickets are available for $3, call 436-3100 on weekdays from noon-4 p.m. Two other performances will take place, 8 p.m. on Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday.

CONCERT: Dana LaCroix and her band will perform at the Hilt Kelly Hall in Roxbury on Saturday night starting at 7:30 p.m. The concert is presented by the Roxbury Arts Group. Tickets are $15 for adults and $12 for seniors. You may reserve a table of eight for $85. Call 326-7908 for more information.

Labels: 02-13-09, The City of the Hills, weekend's best bets

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1,000 Points For OHS’s Harlem

CHRIS McSWIGGIN

SPORTS BEAT

Despite a rough start to the OHS boys’ basketball season, the girls are soaring strong as ever with a 17-0 record. The expectations coming into this season were astronomical after last year’s Sectionals victory, but these girls are determined and have handled the pressure well.
Behind every great team, however, there is a great leader, someone who has been there through the ups and downs and has the experience to persevere through the toughest of situations. Oneonta has that player; her name is Madie Harlem.
Harlem, a senior at Oneonta High School, scored her 1,000th point on Feb. 4, something that is very rare in Class A-B ball. This amazing feat, however, was exemplified by how humble and unselfish she is both as a person and a player.
“I didn’t even know about the stat until I saw I was close in the paper a few days before,” said Harlem during a phone interview with Hometown Oneonta Monday night.
Harlem, a captain on the varsity team along with teammate Meredith Ridgeway, says she didn’t set scoring 1,000 as a goal for the season. In fact, she didn’t have any individual goals. “I just want to win,” said Harlem, “as long as we keep winning, all of my goals are fulfilled.”
Harlem, who has been playing basketball at a competitive level since the third grade, was a four-year varsity player. She played junior varsity in seventh and eighth grade and was moved to the varsity team for the final few games of her 8th grade season.
This is a testament to her will and grit, her determination to be the best and her undying will to win. Harlem, who has played on the Boys and Girls Club travel teams and at the YMCA, has been known around the City of the Hills athletics for quite some time.
Madie, a star in her sport, will be going to college with an academic focus, not athletics. The senior heads to Hamilton College next fall to play under Head Coach Sean Mackin. As strong as the program is at Hamilton, currently posting a 12-7 record and setting the program record for league wins last season with 10, Harlem says her focus is predominantly academic.
A tentative Economics major entering college, Harlem said she was drawn to the school more after she found out how strong their academics had become, “Knowing how good of a school it is was a major reason for me choosing it.”
“Madie is a special player”, said Oneonta Girl’s Basketball Coach Bob Zeh, who has coached Harlem since she joined as a varsity player. He has been a coach at Oneonta High School for 28 years, and been coaching the girls for nine years.
“Madie would much rather make a good pass to set up a shot or get an assist than shoot. I used to have to beg her to shoot when she was a freshman and sophomore. That is the kind of player she is. She makes everyone on the court better,” said Zeh, who said Harlem also leads the team in steals and assists.
When Harlem was asked if she thought she was a leader on this team, the four year varsity player and three year captain was surprisingly humble, “Yes, I guess I could say that. We are all leaders. Meredith and I are the two captains and people listen to us, but if anyone else has anything to say we listen to them as well. The team has very good chemistry and we are very interactive with each other as a whole.”
A band of sisters, brought together as one cohesive unit and one dazzling ball club.
When told how humble Harlem was regarding her 1,000 points, Coach Zeh was not surprised, “It’s never about Madie, it’s always about team, that’s the kind of player she is.”
In many small schools girls play on the Varsity squad in 7th and 8th grade. Essentially, they have six years to score 1000. Harlem didn’t start playing until 9th, which makes her 1000 points even more special. Harlem is only the fourth player in OHS girls’ basketball history to score 1,000 points and the feat is something Oneonta can remember for a long time.
“Every coach should have the opportunity to coach someone like Madie Harlem,” said Zeh.
Hamilton College has only had seven 1,000 point scorers on the women’s level. The one who holds the most points is Julie Diehl who scored 1,451 points and graduated in 1993.
Nearly 16 years later, Hamilton is going to get another player with potential to beat even that score. Sean Mackin and the Hamilton College women’s varsity program are going to get a special player and student all in one dynamic package, her name is Madie Harlem.

Contact Chris McSwiggin at chrism@hometownoneonta.biz

Labels: 02-13-09, Basketball, Hometown Sports, Madie Harlem

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Hometown History

125 Years Ago
Rats have of late been numerous about the harness shop of D.A. Boardman. Last night, Mr. Boardman set a box trap. This morning he was rewarded by seeing an animal in the box. Calling his dog, Mr. Boardman cleared his shop and then opened the trap. Out bounced a creature strangely new to this locality, which, not so large as the dog, made lively work for him before being finally killed. It proved to be a pet prairie dog belonging to Mrs. Spencer of Academy Street, two of which had recently been sent to her from the west.
February 1884

100 Years Ago
The Local News – A much needed improvement has been made in the Oneonta police force whereby the streets are patrolled by two officers instead of one during the day time. At night three officers will do the work.
A.C. Bouton has bought a Keystone vacuum cleaning wagon and will operate the same in connection with his carpet cleaning work. The wagon will be ready for business about March 1st.
James Tamsett, one of Oneonta’s crack baseball players whose work has done much to strengthen the larger leagues wherein he has played will be in Albany again next summer. He is now in Cincinnati but leaves soon for Hot Springs where he will get himself in condition for the opening of the state league season.
The Alpha Delta sorority of the Oneonta Normal School gave a Japanese party and reception last Friday evening to the faculty and affiliated societies. Refreshments were served in the drawing room by members of the sorority in Japanese costume.
February 1909

80 Years Ago
The first concert of a series opening in this city under the auspices of the Oneonta Community Concert association and patronized by the many towns of Otsego and Delaware counties, filled the auditorium of the high school last night when the Russian Symphonic Choir, under personal direction of Basile Kibalchich, conductor, presented a three-part program.
The music came as a revelation to the local audience of what may be achieved in the way of symphony music with the human voice alone. The choir, numbering nine men and eight women, beside its director, gave a complete symphonic arrangement of sacred, classical and Russian folk music without accompaniment of any sort, all the orchestral effects being achieved entirely by the voices.
February 1929

60 Years Ago
Tournament plans for Section IV schools, members of the New York Public High School Athletic Association, were formulated in a recent basketball committee meeting held at Norwich.
Section IV involves the schools of ten counties along the southern tier from Grand Gorge and Fleischmanns on the east to Watkins Glen on the west. This area includes 80 school teams, the cream of which will compete in two classes for sectional honors. Hartwick College will be the center for the Schohanna League play-offs.
The Tri-Valley League in the east, involving a tournament of twelve teams, will play in two centers during the preliminary games – New Berlin and Franklin schools as hosts. Final games may move to Sidney and Oneonta.
February 1949

40 Years Ago
Jesse E. Brockway, Jr., 50, was appointed Supervisor of the Town of Laurens Thursday night at a meeting of the town board there. He succeeds Charles Z. Coutant, 55, who was in the second year of his third term before he disappeared from sight on August 6.
The office became vacant at noon on Thursday by order of Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Molinari of Oneonta. Mr. Brockway immediately assumed full duties of Town Supervisor, after serving as Acting Supervisor since Mr. Coutant’s disappearance. He has been administering the affairs of the Town of Laurens since last August, but did not represent Laurens on the Otsego County Board of Supervisors during the interim period.
A proceeding to declare the office of supervisor vacant was brought early last November by Laurens councilman Ronald R. Haus, who also is an attorney. However, Justice Molinari withheld a decision in the matter until January 24 in the hope that Mr. Coutant’s whereabouts might become known.
Last week, Coutant’s wife, Dr. Madeleine F. Coutant, offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the whereabouts of her husband.
February 1969

20 Years Ago
Advertisement – Outdoor Connections, 175 Main Street, Oneonta, 433-1334. Announcing our Annual Gambler’s Sale, February 13 to 18. Everything in the store is on sale up to 50 percent off.
Monday, February 13th – 10 percent off; Tuesday, February 14th – 20 percent off; Wednesday, February 15th – 25 percent off; Thursday, February 16th – 30 percent off; Friday, February 17th – 35 percent off; Saturday, February 18th – 40 percent off.
All Week Specials! Canoes by Old Town and White are 20 percent off. Kayaks by Perception and aquaterra are 10 percent off. Ski packages by Fischer and Landsem are 40 percent off. Specific items marked down an additional 10 percent.
February 1989

10 Years Ago
Civil rights activist Morris Dees, one of the founders of the Southern Poverty Law Center will speak Tuesday at the State University College at Oneonta. Dees is chief trial counsel and chair of the executive committee for the organization which is dedicated to pursuing equal opportunities for minorities and the poor.
Dees and his law partner Joseph Levin founded the center in 1971 along with civil rights activist Julian Bond. Dees has authored three books including an autobiography titled “A Season for Justice.” Two other Dees’ works are titled “Hate on Trial: The Case Against America’s Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi,” and Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat.”
February 1999

Resources for Hometown History have been provided courtesy of the New York State Historical Association Library.

Labels: 02-13-09, Columns, Hometown History

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Carl Delberta Sr.’s ‘Wonderful Life’ Leaves Oneonta ‘Boys’ In His Debt

By LAURA COX

‘Carl Delberta was one of the greats.”
Gary Dilello was reminiscing the other day about his friend and mentor, Carl J. Delberta Sr., the founder of the Oneonta Boys and Girls Club and former professional boxer, who passed away at the Oneonta Nursing Home & Rehabilitation Center in Oneonta on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009. He was 92.
As the story goes, through his travels with boxing and WWII, Delberta discovered there was really no place locally for boys to work out or play sports together. So in 1946, after the war, he started a club in his backyard where boys lifted weights. The Oneonta Boys Club took root.
An Oneonta policeman at the time, Carl worked with the boys when he was off duty, teaching them about weightlifting and boxing. Eventually the group moved into a building behind the old Eagles Club, and in 1967 the current building on River Street was built.
In 1997, an expansion added facilities for girls, and the club officially became the Oneonta Boys & Girls Club.
Carl Delberta was behind all of this.
Dilello, the program director at the Oneonta Boys and Girls Club, has known Delberta since he was 10 years old.
“He was the club director. And I was a young kid going there, he was a hero, a professional fighter who ran the club, and we all looked up to him,” said Dilello, “Generations have grown up there and he has been a father, coach and a mentor to thousands of young men.”
Dilello’s experience was similar to that of many of the boys of his generation and younger, who grew up running to the club and waiting for Delberta to get off work and open the door.
“My parents called it my home away from home,” said Steven “Lefty” Andrews, recreation director for the City of Oneonta Parks and Recreation, who met Delberta when he was 8. “I spent all my time there,” he said.
Andrews remembers Delberta disciplining him for misbehaving. He also remembers annual trips to the Rotary breakfast, where Delberta would pass out pancakes and sausage.
“One good memory I have is Friday nights at open gym,” he said. “Carl always had a record player, and he put on ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ and other classics, like the Harlem Globetrotters’ theme. I remember shooting hoops and playing around.
“To this day, listening to those tunes on the P-A makes me think of being at the club, playing pickup basketball,” said Andrews.
John Speranzi also goes way back with Delberta. “When I was a kid, the club was the greatest thing. We’d run up town at 6 p.m. and wait for his car to pull up, and he’d open it up for us.”
Speranzi and many other boys of the time thought of Delberta as an extension of their fathers. He taught them about respect, focus and following the rules. He showed them the ways of the world.
“I would always go up to him and get in the boxing stance, and he’d go right to his stance. That’s how I did it with him. I’d joke with him when he was 75, saying ‘I think I can take you now,’” said Speranzi.
Here’s how they summed up Carl J. Delberta Sr.’s contribution.
“The youth of Oneonta owe him a debt of gratitude. He was a family man, a high character man, a man of determination. He will be remembered as one of the fathers of youth, remembered for setting youth of this area up with a great facility – and those still programs continue,” said Andrews.
“He was one of a kind and there will never be another one like him,” said Dilello. “We would all say that we grew up there. He was awesome, and I’m going to miss him, I already do. The club already seems different,” said Dilello.
“Carl was a good man. I’ve been coaching college softball for 20 years at Oneonta State now. It reminds me of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ If he wasn’t born, I don’t know what I would be doing,” said Speranzi.

Labels: 02-13-09, Carl Delberta, Front Page, Jr

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IN THE CITY OF THE HILLS

BIG PLUNGE: As of Monday, Feb. 28, the tally of jumpers at the 14th annual Goodyear Lake Polar Bear Jump had reached 288, which would be a record. The jump begins at 12:30 p.m. sharp on Saturday, Feb. 21, on the east side of the lake. To register, go to www.pbjump.com

TOP POET: Robert Pinsky, former U.S. poet laureate, will read works at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, at Hartwick College’s Shineman Chapel. Hartwick’s New American Writing Festival continues the following night at 7.

SCIENCE FUN: The first “Science Saturday,” hosted by Oneonta World of Learning (OWL) and the Science Discovery Center, is “Light and Color in the Atmosphere,” presented at 10 and 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 14. Call 436-3177 to pre-register. Workshops are for kids 5-13; activities available for those age 2 and up as well.

Labels: 02-13-09, Front Page

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Nader Seeks $3 Million From Obama Stimulus

City Hall Ready If U.S. Acts

By JIM KEVLIN

City Hall has submitted $3 million in “shovel ready” projects to Governor Paterson, anticipating passage of President Obama’s economic stimulus package in the next several days.
“We have tried to stay ahead on this issue,” said Mayor John S. Nader, who characterized the city’s approach as “persistent contact.”
He was expecting a visit Friday, Feb. 13, from a representative of U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer’s office for the latest intelligence on how Oneonta can best position itself to gain maximum benefit from what’s expected to be an $800 billion allocation.
Nader said these are the projects on Paterson’s deck:
• Bugbee Road, $850,000 for total reconstruction of a 2,000-foot stretch, including replacing surface and storm sewer lines.
• Waste-water treatment plant, $500,000 to replace “rotating bacterial contactors” that treat the water for nitrogen and ammonia removal.
• Catella Park well, $400,000 to create a back-up water supply to the city’s two reservoirs on East Street.
• City parking garage, $250,000 for continuing repairs and upgrades to the Market Street deck.
Additionally, in response to a request from the state Department of Transportation, Nader has provided a list of seven streets in need of overlays and paving: West End, Morgan and Reynolds avenues, and Union, Cherry and Cedar streets, and part of Chestnut.

Labels: 02-13-09, Economic Stimulus, Front Page

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Letters to the Editor

Tolerance, Good Will Make World Better Place, Here And Everywhere

To the Editor:
This is in regard to the article in the Feb. 6 Hometown Oneonta on the Twelve Tribes and its Oneonta restaurant venture.
While I am not a Christian by faith, I do believe in tolerance and not feeding each other or the public with unwarranted fears and prejudices, and which does harm.
I have met members of this group and find them just as spiritual as any other members of various faiths in Oneonta, as I saw represented at the last interfaith service in Oneonta.
Labeling one group as a “cult” because its members live together communally, are evangelical and have a code of dress and demeanor other than the norm, may just mean that their religious expression runs a degree deeper.
Depending on how one defines a “cult,” one can say the Catholic Church is a cult, or orthodox Jews living in Monsey or Brooklyn form cults because they have actually a richer social web combined with their religious expressions.
It is ultimately and very wrongly demeaning and falsely elevates oneself as “feeling superior” in one’s own religious endeavors to so label a different religious group that does no harm.
If young people find refuge in a religious community – refuge from a modern society that teaches economic competition (competing against each other’s interests, often with harm, as in the current Wall Street bankrupting of the nation) rather than communal cooperation and refuge from a society that offers relatively poor spiritual sustenance and currently gives us a failed economics ... if all of that is an evil, then bread and butter are evils.
My parents were victims of the past century’s Holocaust. My dad just passed away at 91, the last Jewish survivor of his village, and where most were slaughtered.
I have worked for civil rights movements and personally also met Martin Luther King, Jr. in my teens. I lived in an Afro-American ghetto for many years in Newark and saw the effects of prejudice.
I thus very deeply and passionately detest the dissemination of either religious or racial biases – and especially here in my hometown of Oneonta and against those who do not lily white “act exactly like us or look like us.”
They are really just as human, humane, thoughtful, compassionate, hardworking as any other - and sometimes much more so.
If we rather practice tolerance and goodwill the world everywhere will be a better place.
NATHAN BATALION, CPA
Oneonta

Hanford Mills Says Thanks – Come Back For Ice Cream

To the Editor:
Hanford Mills Museum would like to thank everyone who helped to make the Museum’s Community Ice Harvest a great success.
With the help of more than 850 visitors and more than 30 volunteers, the museum was able to fill the ice house with more than six tons of ice. The harvested ice will be stored in the museum’s ice house and used in public programs throughout the summer.
Special thanks to all of the museum’s intrepid volunteers; to the students from the SUNY Delhi Hospitality Program who created beautiful ice sculptures in the milliard; to Jim and Maia Decker for roasting peanuts in an antique roaster; and to 15 local restaurants for donating soups for visitors to enjoy.
They were Applebee’s, Alfresco’s Italian Bistro, the Autumn Café, Brooks BBQ, Corfu Diner, Davenport Diner, Delhi Diner, Denny’s, the Doubleday Café, the Hidden Inn, Jackie’s Place, Jay’s Place, Morey’s Family Restaurant, Our Town Café and Ponderosa.
Everyone is invited to come (back) to the Museum the Fourth of July to enjoy ice cream made using ice harvested from the mill pond at the Community Ice Harvest! Visit hanfordmills.org or call the museum at (800) 295-4992 to learn about other opportunities to make ice cream and participate in food-ways programs – when the ice is used to cool food in the Hanford House ice box.
If you’d like to receive email announcements about events and workshops at the Museum, e-mail louises@hanfordmills.org and ask to have your email added to our distribution list.
STAFF & BOARD
Hanford Mills Museum, East Meredith

Labels: 02-13-09, Hometown Views, Letters to the Editor

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:35 PM 0 comments

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If SUNY Can Link Education To Jobs, Its Future Assured

Ask any student at SUNY Oneonta, even the computer-science majors.
It’s unlikely anyone of them will remember Wang Laboratories, that huge computer company. At its peak in the 1980s, Wang had 40,000 employees and was grossing $3 billion – and in those days, a billion was a billion.
Its office complexes dominated the Mass Pike heading into Boston. But in the 1992 recession, Wang filed for bankruptcy. For a while before that, many of the office buildings were vacant, and for a while afterwards.
By early in this century, however, Boston’s High-Tech Highway – Route 128 – had more than rebounded. It was bigger than ever – 3,600 companies with 300,000 people, 10 percent of Massachusetts’ work force.
Boston’s heavy industry is brainpower. Harvard, MIT, BU, Northeastern and dozens of other fine schools kept churning out brainy grads to launch or populate new Wangs that weren’t even perceived when the now-forgotten giant toppled.
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Carl Hayden, the chairman of the SUNY trustees who drives past Oneonta daily on his way to and from his Elmira home and Albany office, was speaking, more generally, to a New York version of that when he addressed 50 community leaders at an Otsego County Chamber breakfast Tuesday, Feb. 10, at the Holiday Inn.
Overall, however, he was arguing that the SUNY system is an economic-development engine, churning out brainpower that, someday, will result in Upstate’s rebirth.
Or maybe not.
At a couple of points, Hayden mentioned the SUNY Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, which is transforming the Hudson Valley around the Capitol District. (Nanotechnology is the miniaturizing of things high-tech.)
And he harkened back to Governor Pataki’s Centers of Excellence – at SUNY Buffalo, for instance – that were designed to spread high-tech prosperity statewide.
What’s happened with nanoscience is great. But, SUNY-wide, the economic-development benefit of all that education – it’s the largest state higher-education system in the nation – is implied only. The cause and effect – education leads to jobs – is more hoped-for than realized.
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SUNY Oneonta President Nancy Kleniewski reported the STEM initiative – it emphasizes science, technology, engineering and math – is about to be rolled out on the local campus, “to create the local workforce to do the science and technology jobs.”
This is great, truly. But if there are too few science and technology jobs locally, the grads will head elsewhere.
(Incidentally, when Hayden expressed the hope Kleniewski will follow the lead of her predecessor, Alan Donovan, and remain in Oneonta for 20 years, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause. That’s quite the kudo to someone who’s been in the city barely six months.)
If the link between a SUNY education and Upstate prosperity was manifest and explicit, no governor or legislator would ever argue against SUNY funding. The link, while real to some degree, is too fuzzy.
Could SUNY Oneonta’s music-industry program spur a fledgling music industry locally? Could the fashion program create a little Eighth Avenue on Market or South River streets, or perhaps on the vacant upper floors of the Main Street blocks?
At one point, Carl Hayden charged Otsego Chamber President Rob Robinson – the two were friendly from Rob’s early days in radio news in Binghamton – to get working on something like that right away.
If Boston’s brainpower quickly made Wang’s demise irrelevant, why shouldn’t SUNY be the vehicle for the rebirth of New York’s lovely rural counties, once home to thriving industry, flourishing cities, wealthy farms?
Simply, it should.

Labels: 02-13-09, Editorial, Hometown Views, Opinion

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