Hometown Oneonta - The Otesgo-Delaware Dispatch

City of the Hills

Thursday, March 26, 2009

St. Mary’s School early childhood teacher Mary Shepard and her father Ed Travis, Goodyear Lake, show off the larger than life Dr. Seuss books they built for the 4th Annual “Step Into Seuss” Extravaganza, held Wednesday, March 25, including eight activities “where literacy collides with craziness.”

SURPLUS SOLD: The City of Oneonta has begun selling its surplus equipment at www.publicsurplus.com. Check it out.

UNDER ARREST: James Clark, 22, a former Hartwick College student who transferred to Aberdeen University in Scotland, is under arrest in Massachusetts in the March 15 slaying of his grandmother, Eleanor Clark, 80, in a Boston suburb. The Boston Globe reported Clark began experiencing psychotic episodes after graduating from the Cambridge School in Massachusetts four years ago.

SIXTIES, REDUX: ’60s icons Crosby, Stills and Nash will be performing Friday, June 12, at Doubleday Field, Cooperstown.

TELL YOUR STORY: The public is invited to share memories of Oneonta’s railroading heyday at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 28, at the History Center at Dietz and Main. Retired SUNY President Alan Donovan will moderate.

2009 HONOREES: Reservations to the Friday, April 3, Otsego County Chamber’s Annual Dinner & Celebration – retired Supreme Court judge Robert Harlem and The Otesaga will be honored – are available by calling 432-4500, extension 201.

FOOD, FITNESS: “Obesity and Adult Diabetes” is the topic for the 25th Annual Food & Fitness Conference, planned 1-3:30 p.m. Thursday, April 23, at the Foxcare Center. The program will be repeated at 5 p.m.

Labels: 03-27-09, Front Page

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A Healthy Teacher Is A Better Teacher, Schools Conclude

By LAURA COX

As all Oneonta’s public school teachers filed into the high school, it was clear this wasn’t business as usual.
Wearing sweats and tennis shoes, with yoga mats slung over their shoulders, these teachers were ready for a day focused on health and wellness, the topic of Oneonta City School District Superintendent’s Conference Day, Friday, March 20.
Keynote speaker Stan Zdunek began with a keynoter titled, “Stress Vaccine: A Laughter Inoculation,” encouraging teachers to “laugh as if their lives depend on it.” Don’t let the first stress of the day get to you, he advised them.
“We invest in building and technology, but what’s the point if faculty and staff arrive on empty,” said Zdunek in an interview. “They need to be healthy and fit or there will be no return on the investment.”
Other seminars included, “Preventative Health Care,” “Nutrition, Vitality and Gratitude,” and “Re-Connecting with Your Life Vision.” Teachers participated in yoga, kayaking, scrapbooking and cardiovascular training.
The thinking: A healthy, stress-free teacher is a better teacher.
“When we are here, we need to be at our very best for the children,” said Superintendent of Schools Mike Shea. “If teachers stay healthy and take care of themselves, it will benefit the students in the long run by reducing our illness and absentee rate.”
Businesses have thought this way for years, Shea said.
The Otsego Area Occupational Center in Milford – part of the ONC BOCES – also started a health initiative last month called the ONC Iditarod.
The fitness program encouraged staff to participate in fitness activities by keeping track of their progress along an Iditarod trail mapped along a hallway. Each participant received a puppy which they gave a name so no one would know who was who.
For each minute they exercised, their musher was moved one mile along the trail, the goal: to reach Nome in 1,131 miles.
About 40 mushers participated in the fitness program, logging a total of 73,167 miles over the seven weeks. Many of the mushers completed the course more than a couple times, with some exciting obstacles befalling some.
On Wednesday, March 18 – the same date the real Iditarod’s first place musher, Lance Mackey, finished – all the participants were invited to a Breakfast Bash to celebrate.

Labels: 03-27-09, Front Page

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Hometown People

MCKANE HONORED WITH
LEGISLATIVE RESOULTION

State Sen. Jim Seward, left, presents Oneonta Middle School student Charlotte McKane with a state Senate resolution honoring her as a recipient of the 2009 Prudential Spirit of Community Award. Also pictured at the Monday, March 23, presentation is Assemblyman Bill Magee, right. One of two New York youth volunteers to receive the award, Charlotte will receive a $1,000 award and a trip to Washington, D.C.

ON BOARD: Hartwick College professor Mark Davies has joined the board of directors of the Otsego County Conservation Association. Davies, who holds a doctorate in Social Foundations of Education, has a personal interest in environmental matters. Davies, who lives in Oneonta, has been involved in the Environmental Working Group of Otsego County, a network seeking to raise public awareness about peak oil and global warming and encourage sustainable lifestyles.

ONEONTA HIGH PRESENTS ‘LES MISERABLES’ THIS WEEKEND

Playing “The Poor,” are front row (left to right), Adrian Adamo, Veronika Siskova, Jessica Maskin and Amanda Flannery (standing), second row, Emily Pidgeon, Mary Hunter, Lindsey Insetta and Amanda Blake, third row, Sherry Geogeson, Alexandra Fisher, Gwyneth Hyland and Maureen Brown. “Les Miserables” will be performed at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 27-28, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 29, at OHS.

Labels: 03-27-09, Hometown People

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Lady of the Tower

Famed Photographer Departs Beloved ‘Shabby
Old House’ For Comforts Of Oneonta Highrise

By LAURA COX

‘I did it my way.”
That is the way photographer Lady Ostapeck, famed from Fly Creek to Finland, is happy to have lived her life, the past 50 years of which she has spent in a Fly Creek Valley farmhouse and, since December, at Oneonta’s Nader Towers.
Facing failing eyesight from macular degeneration and having given up her car, friends became concerned about Lady Ostapeck being snowed in and about her ability to stay warm enough, and so she decided to make the move.
“I miss my shabby, old farm house and my feral cat, Meow,” said Lady Ostapeck in an interview at her apartment the other day. “But it is so warm here, I can walk around barefoot, and back there I had all these heavy winter sweaters I had to wear.”
Her small efficiency apartment is decorated with some of her favorite pieces of art and collectibles, including a large portrait she took of her late son, Bruce, when she was first discovering her photographic talent.
A screen separates the bed from the rest of the room. An old typewriter on the desk is used to hold envelopes and letters she intends to write. Another desk holds a computer where she plays spider solitaire – she states she is addicted to it, but doesn’t know how to do anything else on the computer.
The neighbors are very private, and she has yet to make many new friends, but the programs planned for residents include movies, cards and bingo – something she says she is starting to enjoy.

Among her favorite things about her new living quarters are its proximity to the Salvation Army Thrift Store – she can walk there on a nice day – the very reasonable rent and not having to pay for her trash to be taken away – she happily showed off the garbage chute.
At 91, as of Feb. 22, she has lived a life full of unusual stories and exciting adventures, starting as a child born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a Finnish family. Lady’s mother passed away when she was just five days old and her father left them, so she went to live with her aunt in Brooklyn, Conn.
Her aunt was killed by a neighbor in a famous mass-murder rampage in that northeastern Connecticut town, and Lady was adopted by another Finnish family.
As a photographer, Lady gained renown for transforming her subjects from “ordinary” and “modern” people to historical figures – kings, queens and nobles, Indian braves and princesses – with props that filled her Greek revival cottage from floor to ceiling. (Her favorite historical figure: Eleanor of Aquitaine, who went through several husbands and played a role in governing several kingdoms.)
At her Fly Creek studio, a sitting could take all day as she explored her subjects’ personalities.
While her career as a photographer came to a true start late in life, her calling came in the crib.
“Psychologists say that your first memory affects your life, my first memory is from the crib,” Lady Ostapeck: “I was waking from a nap and I saw a picture I had never seen before, it had a gold frame and was of a country scene.
“My uncle from New York was there visiting and I wouldn’t look at him because I was focused on this picture.”
Lady studied dressmaking to start off, learning about all the fashions from “Adam and Eve on,” but found a talent for negative retouching after responding to an advertisement in the New York Times looking for people who could sketch well. She was described as a retoucher with soul.
After moving to Fly Creek in 1960 and feeling really down having no work, Lady Ostapeck was drawn to buy a beautiful old Corona 4 by 5 camera she saw at a Salvation Army store in Utica. Her background as a retoucher helped her to know the trade and how to make people beautiful in her pictures.
“The camera shows all of our defects, that the human eye doesn’t notice,” said Lady Ostapeck, “this was a magic camera which makes everyone so beautiful and elegant.”
Her magic camera, and those which she has since purchased provided her with a career which may not have brought her much money, but certainly brought her joy and accomplishment. A portrait by Lady Ostapeck was amongst the must-haves of locals and her work is well known in her ancestral land of Finland.
She stayed true to form in her art, having never switched to digital photography saying “digital is a dirty word.” Lady Ostapeck felt that making a portrait was like birthing a baby and she didn’t even want to know anything about the digital side of things.
Though she is unable to do portraits anymore because she cannot see clearly enough to focus the camera, her work is still being shown at the Photocenter in Utica, by owner Nick Argyros, who sees to many of Lady Ostapeck’s affairs.
A gallery titled “Somewhere in Time: Victorian Portraitist Lady Ostapeck” is planned for Nov. 6 through Dec. 20 of this year in Utica; the reception is Nov. 2.

Labels: 03-27-09, The City of the Hills

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Letters to the Editor

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

4 More Women After Eva Coo Got ‘Chair’ In New York State

To the Editor:
I was pleased to see your coverage of the reading of the first act of Isaac Rathbone’s play about the Eva Coo murder case.
However, your assertion that Mrs. Coo was the last woman executed by electric chair in New York State is incorrect.
Executed at Sing Sing prison on June 27, 1935, Mrs. Coo was only the fourth of eight women to be electrocuted at that prison.
She was followed by Mary Frances Creighton in 1936, Helen Fowler in 1944, Martha Beck in 1951 and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953.
Mrs. Rosenberg and her husband Julius were executed under the Espionage Act for allegedly selling atomic bomb information to the Soviet Union in the famous “Atomic Spy” case.
One other woman, Mary Farmer, was executed in the electric chair at Auburn prison in 1909. Prior to 1914 New York State operated electric chairs at Sing Sing, Auburn and – I believe – Dannemora prisons.
CALVIN W. CHASE
Oneonta

Tedisco Will Support Main Over Wall Street

To the Editor:
I urge voters in the 20th Congressional District to join me in voting for Jim Tedisco for Congress in the special election on Tuesday, March 31.
I have known Jim Tedisco and worked with him for years in the state Legislature. I can’t think of a more qualified individual to be our next congressman.
Jim Tedisco will cut taxes for working families, small businesses and seniors. We can trust him to rein in federal spending and make Main Street our priority, not Wall Street.
Jim Tedisco will help our farmers, and work to get government off the backs of small business owners on Main Street so they can create new jobs. He’ll work for our volunteer firefighters, and support the rights of hunters and gunowners.
While his opponent was working for the governor of Missouri, Assemblyman Jim Tedisco was right here in New York, working for property tax relief and economic growth.
Please join me in voting for Jim Tedisco, the right choice, in the special election on Tuesday, March 31.
JAMES L. SEWARD
State Senator, 51st District
Milford

Let’s Protect Ourselves Against Gas Drillers

To the Editor:
I was in attendance at the “How Gas Drilling Can Affect You” forum sponsored by Sustainable Otsego Sunday, March 15.
The information presented by the well-prepared citizen panel was frightening, to say the least.
The future that awaits our county when (not if) natural gas development takes hold is one of almost unimaginable change.
We are about to morph from a peaceful, rural community into an industrialized nightmare, complete with hundreds of tanker trucks, ruined drinking wells, poisoned air and miles of pipeline.
I’ve been following the growth of natural gas development in the Marcellus shale for a while now, hoping that the horror stories I was reading and hearing weren’t true. But they are true and they are headed our way.
The personal accounts of folks in Pennsylvania (where gas extraction is in full swing) broke my heart. Their wells are contaminated, their health and that of their animals is compromised and they live with a 24/7 operation of high-decibel compressors just 500 feet from their homes.
I urge you to contact your county representatives and Chairman Powers to let them know your concerns and to ask them what the county can do to mitigate the dangers that are headed our way.
Conventional thinking is that we cannot stop this development; the gas and oil lobbies are just too powerful. We must however, do everything possible to protect ourselves and we have very little time.
BETH ROSENTHAL
Roseboom

Labels: 03-27-09, Hometown Views, Letters to the Editor, Opinion

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Editorials

Natural-Gas Drilling Has Potential To Ruin Otsego County

On New Year’s Day, an explosion blew the concrete cover off a well in Dimock, Pa., a few miles from Scranton.
Early this month, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection reported that the cause was methane from a nearby well drilled by Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. The DEP charged the company with contaminating groundwater, according to a report in the Scranton Times-Tribune.
Coincidentally, three forums, “How The Dangers of Gas Drilling Affect You,” were held around Otsego County – in Cherry Valley, Cooperstown and Oneonta – in the days that followed, organized by Sustainable Otsego and other citizens groups concerned about a veritable plague of gas-drilling locusts expected to descend on this neighborhood when the price of oil inevitably begins to rise again.
The speakers – Colleen Blacklock of Oneonta’s Health Communities Campaign, Ron Bishop of Cooperstown, a SUNY Oneonta lecturer in chemistry, and Jim Herman, a Hartwick landowner – painted what, frankly, is a scarey picture.
•
To set the stage, at issue is a new techology, hydro-fracking, whereby a vertical pipe is drilled several thousand feet into the ground; an “octopus” of horizontal pipes then fans out in all directions. Chemicals – and they are toxic – are pumped into the ground and cause explosions that create cracks in shale, allowing natural gas to seep through and come to the surface.
Here’s a sampling of the concerns Blacklock, Bishop and Herman expressed about hydro-fracking:
• Each well requires 3.8 million gallons of water, half of which stays underground, the rest, laced with poisonous heavy metals and petroleum byproducts, is brought to the surface and stored in pools until it can be trucked away to special treatment plants.
• Each well requires 1,000 tanker-truck trips to and fro to bring the water in and out along country roads.
• Since 54,000 acres in Otsego County are leased to gas exploration companies, and 16 wells can be sited per square mile, a potential 1,300 wells could be drilled locally. (An aerial photograph near Eunice, N.M., showed one pod after another as far as the horizon.)
• To relieve pressure, those 16 wells per square mile may be “flamed” – lit – a nice picture to contemplate.
• Each well will require an access road to the pad.
• Each well will have to be connected to the main Millenium Pipeline through a pipeline.
• Wells can be active for up to 40 years.
• Compressors at each well head emit 90 decibels of low-frequency noise 24 hours a day.
• The underground explosions create 8,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, or four times that inside a propane tank.
• Fracking can create fissures up to a half-mile (2,640 feet) long, and the shale in the Canadarago-Cherry Valley area are only 1,500 feet below ground. Even at Oneonta, the shale is only 3,000-3,500 below ground.
• Much of the leased land in Otsego County is along streams, near aquifers, the source of local drinking water. Once contaminated, aquifers – huge underground reservoirs – can’t be cleaned.
• After an EPA whistleblower raised issues of potential water contamination, Congress in 2005 exempted the gas-drilling industry from the U.S. Clean Drinking Water Act.
• Along with natural gas, radon can be freed to come to the surface. (In Marcellus, outside Syracuse, where there’s an outcropping of the Marcellus Formation, radon was found to be eight times the national average and twice the EPA “action limit” in every one of 271 houses tested.)
• Radioactive substances coat equipment and the inside of pipes, and have to periodically be cleaned.
•
Even if half of this is true, or a quarter, or less, gas drilling could make the Otsego County we know today unrecognizable.
Granted, Blacklock, Bishop and Herman aren’t trained natural-gas-drill-ologists. They are just brainy individuals who have been researching the potential impacts of natural-gas drilling since the locusts began swarming last summer.
And all of the concerns expressed at the forums are separate from the whole land-leasing issue.
There was so much concern expressed about that – Are the drillers offering enough? Will landowners be stuck with any and all liability? – that state Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford – no alarmist – has urged people to be wary and he set up a link on his web site (www.senatorjimseward.com) on that very issue.
But so many leases have been signed it may too late for many property owners; they’re stuck.
New York City was able to extract a concession that no drilling or exploration can be done within one mile of its Catskills watersheds, but what about the rest of us? Who’s looking out for us?
•
To date, no one in Otsego County government, regrettably, has shown much interest in this issue. The DEC in New York is underfunded and understaffed, even if the political will were there to make the gas drillers toe the line. Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, so far has focused just on concerns that leases may be faulty.
There are vast, vacant stretches of this great land of ours that may be suitable for this kind of environmental Russian roulette. Otsego County, which has so much going for it, is definitely not one of them. If Blacklock, Bishop and Herman aren’t the ones to protect us, fine. But then who is?
The suggestion has been made that a countywide moratorium be put in place until concerns are sufficiently addressed.
This issue is not a partisan one. If Oneonta’s county representatives, as a bipartisan unit, adopted this as an issue and pushed it to completion at Cooperstown, the City of the Hills would be doing a service to all 66,000 people who view Otsego County as our cherished home.

Vote For Scott Murphy; He Does Have Experience Creating Jobs

Driving from Oneonta to Liverpool the other week to watch the Oneonta-Cazenovia game, you would have passed through town after charming town, all with large, elegant 19th century homes bearing witness to former prosperity.
But prosperity was then, and it hasn’t been now for decades. The tide of agriculture and manufacturing went out, and no new tide came in to replace it.
At first, when Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy surfaced as the candidates to replace U.S. Rep. Kristen Gillibrand, D-20, the GOP Assembly minority leader seemed like the obvious choice.
Instead, Murphy came out of nowhere and has made a strong case. It’s clear he’s the more likely of the two to bring fresh thinking to the redevelopment of an under-achieving Otsego-Delaware economy.
It turns out that Murphy, a Harvard grad, was one of the first entrepreneurs to develop an online fantasy football league, Small World Sports. By the time he sold it in 2001, he had a million participants.
In the last few years, operating Advantage Capital, a venture capital operation out of Glens Falls, Murphy has been seeking out promising businesses Upstate and investing in them.
One, Golden Globe Tournament Park, Fort Anne, is a Dreams Park-like venue for lacrosse players. Another, Synacor, in Buffalo, provides cross-platform solutions for businesses; it has grown from 30 employees to 200 and from $1 million to $60 million in annual sales.
Gillibrand was absent from these parts, but Murphy has pledged to visit every town in his district every year.
Fresh approaches are needed, and he seems to have them.
Local voters east and south of the Susquehanna can cast ballots 6 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday, March 31. Pick Murphy.

Labels: 03-27-09, Editorial, Hometown Views, Opinion

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Hometown History

125 Years Ago
Home & Vicinity – The widely known hops firm of D. Wilber & Sons of this village has been dissolved by mutual consent. The firm was composed of Hon. David Wilber, of Milford, and his sons George I. and D.F. Wilber, of this village.
Since the dissolution, D.F. Wilber has moved to Milford and formed a co-partnership with his father for the transaction of a hops business under the firm name of D. Wilber & Son, while George I. Wilber will continue to deal in hops at Oneonta. In the division of help which follows the dissolution, T.A. Norton remains in the employ of George I. Wilber, Frank Hanford going to Milford with D. Wilber & Son.
March 1884

100 Years Ago
The mangled body of John W. Stewart of 16 Fourth Street, Oneonta, was found early Friday morning on the Ulster & Delaware tracks near Phoenicia. Both legs were cut off near the body, one arm severed, and the top of his head crushed. Mr. Stewart, who was 22 years of age and unmarried, left Oneonta the previous evening on his regular run to Kingston. At Phoenicia he alighted to open a switch. The train was a double header and Stewart was not missed until it reached Kingston. An engine was then sent back over the line and his body was found near Phoenicia. Evidently, after he had opened the switch he attempted to board the train and slipped under the wheels.
March 1909

80 Years Ago
Letter to the Editor – Lewis B. Curtis, Oneonta resident and Cornell graduate, who has for three years been an instructor in Robert College, Constantinople, Turkey, writes in part:
“Trotsky – that arch communist – is, according to the most reliable reports, encamped in our midst. Fernandez, the correspondent for The New York Times, has been moving heaven and earth to endeavor to have an interview with the great man, but until yesterday, his telegrams to Moscow, etc., had brought him no recompense.
Trotsky is undoubtedly a prisoner and more than likely he is ill. I cannot imagine that he came here of his own choice, for there is probably no city where he has more enemies. Every White Russian in the city would very likely be anxious to lay their hands on the great leader of the Reds.
The Russian who serves my table in the dining room, for example, had his two brothers killed by Trotsky’s order.
I have my own theory that Trotsky came here to have diplomatic talks with Charlie Chaplin and Thomas A. Edison, both of whom are said to be on their way here.”
March 1929

60 Years Ago
Dr. James Bordley III, director of the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital has announced the approval of a contract of affiliation between the hospital and the School of Nursing of Hartwick College at Oneonta. The affiliation forms part of a complete revision of the practical course of training for the student nurses of the college.
Under the new plan the students will spend the latter half of the sophomore year of their college course in residence at the Bassett Hospital where they will receive basic instruction and practical experience in medicine, surgery and dietetics. A part of the junior year will also be spent at the hospital for special training in maternity nursing.
During the remainder of the junior year and part of the senior year the students will take advanced courses and specialties at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City with additional special training in tuberculosis nursing at the Homer Folks Hospital in Oneonta and in psychiatric nursing at Willard State Hospital.
March 1949

40 Years Ago
The Otsego County Head Start Program is perhaps the strongest overall program of rural development visited recently by Joseph Murphy, task specialist, who highly praised the program in his report.
“From the top administrative levels through staff, volunteers, and parents, there is evident a sincere attitude and genuine effort toward active programming and self-help,” his report said. “Mrs. Esther Fink is particularly skilled in the areas of child development and in parental involvement. It is, perhaps, this skill tempered with an understanding of the disadvantaged, that the Head Start Program is designed to develop the whole child.”
March 1969

20 Years Ago
Advertisement – Volkswagen of Oneonta, Inc., RD 2, Route 23, Oneonta, New York, 13820. 607-432-8100. It’s simple addition – $384 per month; plus 3-year 50,000-mile no-charge scheduled maintenance; plus 3-year 50,000-mile limited warranty; plus 10-year corrosion protection; plus 24-hour roadside assistance. It all adds up to a great deal on an Audi 100E. Audi Advantage – one of the world’s most inclusive ownership protection plans. The Audi 100E.
March 1989

10 Years Ago
A heavy blanket of snow darkened thousands of homes and businesses amid broken trees and collapsed power lines and forced officials to open shelters in Otsego and several area counties. Local schools and many businesses remained closed on Monday and officials warned that power might not be fully restored until Wednesday. New York State Electric & Gas Corp. reported that about 5,000 customers were without power as of 10 p.m. Monday night.
Weather observers reported that this was the largest and heaviest snowfall of the season, amounting to more than 12 inches in Otsego and Delaware counties. Road crews in both counties reported that primary roads had been cleared by Monday evening but that many secondary roads remained a problem. Winter weather is expected for the next 10 days. The storm began as rain on Sunday evening but quickly turned into a heavy snowfall.
March 1999

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

Labels: 03-27-09, Columns, Hometown History

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That Thing In Your Eye: A ‘Floater’?

HEALTHY LIVING

FRED CICETTI

Q I’ve been noticing this thing in my eye. At first I thought it was an eyelash. Then I realized the thing was actually in my eye. One of my friends told me it’s a “floater,” and not to worry. What exactly is a “floater” and should I see a doctor?
•
To allay any fears you may have, I should tell you that floaters are usually nothing to worry about. I have them myself. More than 7 in 10 people experience floaters. Now for some biology.
The lens in the front of your eye focuses light on the retina in the back of your eye. The lens is like the one in a camera, and the retina is like film. The space between the lens and retina is filled with the “vitreous,” a clear gel that helps to maintain the shape of the eye.
Floaters occur when the vitreous slowly shrinks over time. As the vitreous changes, it becomes stringy, and the strands can cast shadows on the retina. These strands are the floaters. They can look like specks, filaments, rings, dots, cobwebs or other shapes. They move as your eyes move and seem to dart away when you try to look at them directly.
In most cases, floaters are just annoying. When you discover them, they are very distracting. But, in time, they usually settle below the line of sight. Most people who have visible floaters gradually develop the ability to make them “disappear” by ignoring them.
When people reach middle age, the vitreous gel may pull away from the retina, causing “posterior vitreous detachment.” That’s a common cause.
These vitreous detachments are often accompanied by light flashes. The flashes can be a warning sign of a detached retina. Flashes are also caused by head trauma that make you “see stars.” Sometimes light flashes appear to be little lightning bolts or waves. This type of flash is usually caused by a blood-vessel spasm in the brain, which is called a migraine.
If your floaters are just bothersome, eye doctors will tell you to ignore them. In rare cases, a bunch of floaters can hamper sight. Then a “vitrectomy” may be necessary, but this is a risky procedure most eye surgeons won’t recommend.

Labels: 03-27-09, Fred Cicetti, Healthy Living, The City of the Hills

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Swindler Was Bernie Madoff Of Long Ago

OLD TIME OTSEGO

HUGH MacDOUGALL

It was, said an 1863 Rochester newspaper, “one of the most stupendous frauds of the day ... It seems incredible that a man could carry on such a scheme over a period of nearly two years, without exposure and detection.”
The victim was Aristarchus Champion of Rochester; the swindler was Luther Calvin Saxton of Cooperstown. Most of this material comes from newspapers of the period.
Born in Massachusetts in 1806, Luther Calvin Saxton graduated from Hamilton College in 1825, and moved to Cooperstown, where he was became superintendent of the new Cooperstown Sunday school. He was able, ambitious and versatile.
In 1826-27 is published “Ten New Lessons for the Piano Forte,” and at least eight pieces of popular sheet music (25 cents each), all engraved by Cooperstown’s Elisha C. Tracy (1778-1827).
About 1828 Saxton started a “select school” on Elm Street, which operated for some years, under various teachers, as the Otsego Academy.
He became a lawyer and was admitted to the bar as an attorney in 1832, and promoted to counselor in 1835.
By the 1840s he was arguing important cases, shuttling between Otsego County and a flourishing practice in New York City. He entered politics, and in 1832 was a delegate to the Otsego County Anti-Masonic Convention.
In December 1827 Saxton was married at the Presbyterian Church to Lucy Crafts Cook (1790-1873), a much older Cooperstown widow with three children. They had two sons: William Wirt Saxton (1828-1883) – named for the Anti-Masonic leader – was born in Cooperstown; Daniel Webster Saxton (1832-1870) was born in Cherry Valley, where the Saxtons moved about 1830. But by 1850, the family was back to Cooperstown.
In 1851, Saxton tried his hand at history. His two-volume, 1,000 page “The Fall of Poland,” on which he had worked for years, was published by Charles Scribner’s of New York. It went through three editions, was widely advertised and quoted, and a reprint appeared only last year.
In its preface, dated Cooperstown, Saxton promised to provide “a general view of all the learning necessary for the scholar, statesman, or traveller, in relation to that unfortunate country.”
By 1860, however, it seems that Luther Calvin Saxton’s life was falling apart. He was now living alone in Cooperstown’s Keyes Hotel; his grown sons had left town, and his wife was boarding in the home of James Cockett, a local bookseller.
One account says he was deeply in debt. And so, it seems, he launched his great scheme to get rich.
Early in 1861 Saxton appeared in Rochester, with only the clothes on his back, and struck up an acquaintance with Aristarchus Champion (1784-1871), a prominent and wealthy Rochester philanthropist, then aged almost 80.
After getting Champion to pay his hotel bills, Saxton explained his grandiose schemes. His “Union Book Company,” with a capital of $3 million, mostly in England, would publish over 5,000 volumes of historical works written by “distinguished European and American authors” and edited by himself. Champion forked over $100,000, in bonds and mortgages, in return for “stock” in this company.
Presumably as evidence of this scheme, Saxton produced Volume I, No. 1, of “The Union Magazine” (the only issue ever published) to promote these books. He said he had wealthy supporters, such as the Astor family in New York.
Saxton then told Champion about “The International Manufacturing Company,” with a capital of $100 million, plus an International Bank with a capital of $1 billion (to be raised to two billion!!!).
The manufacturing company alone would immediately realize an annual profit of 13 percent. All that was needed, Saxton said, was $50,000, to clear up a complicated $5 million real estate deal in New Jersey. Again, Champion came up with the cash.
Saxton then went off to Europe (presumably on Champion’s money), and returned with glowing promises for the new firm and what he said was a secret message from French Emperor Napoleon III to President Lincoln.
The Russian Government had agreed to supply Union Book Company books throughout the Russian Empire, and the capital of that company could be raised to $13,000,000 – with Champion as its new President.
Eventually Aristarchus Champion became suspicious, and when he learned that the Astors had never heard of Saxton, he called in his lawyers. Luther Calvin Saxton was arrested in May 1863, jailed in lieu of bail, and tried for fraud.
Despite a vigorous defense by Joseph Dottin Husbands (a lawyer originally from Cooperstown), he was convicted and in January 1864 sentenced to three years hard labor in Auburn State Prison. Perhaps $25,000 of the $150,000 taken from Champion was recovered.
Aside from a few rumors, that was the last of Saxton. He got one moment of probably posthumous fame when he was included in “Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography” (6 volumes, 1887-89), with the classification of “imposter.”
His wife lived on in Cooperstown until her death in 1873.
As for Aristarchus Champion, the gullible man from Rochester, he died there at the age of 90 – still rich enough to leave an estate estimated at $300,000.

Hugh MacDougall is Cooperstown village historian and a founder of the scholarly James Fenimore Cooper Society

Labels: 03-27-09, The City of the Hills

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 8:22 PM 0 comments

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Requiem

SAM GOODYEAR

ART BEAT

It is official: Leatherstocking Theatre Company is no more. It was legally dissolved this past month.
There are two very important points that must be made.
A) The cause of its dissolution was not money. Strange, especially in these days of financial desperation worldwide, but true. The fact of the matter is that the entire Summer 2009 Season had been paid for at the time of the cancellation of two thirds of its offerings last August. Stranger still, perhaps, is the report that there was money in the bank after the company closed its doors.
B) The decision to abort the 2009 season, thus ushering in its eventual collapse, was made by the board of directors, without consultation with myself, the artistic director.
The cause of the company’s demise, as with that of a human being, does not need to be the ultimate focus upon it, no matter how untimely, unjust, or avoidable. What is done is done.
Of far greater value is to consider Leatherstocking Theatre Company’s remarkable history and contribution to the community.
When Carolyn and George Goetz of Piscatawy, N.J., and Springfield first called together potential supporters at their house overlooking Otsego Lake in March 1991, an anonymous $100 was given as a seed to get the enterprise under way. It wasn’t much, admittedly, but it did allow the company to open a bank account.
A letter inviting subscriptions and support went out immediately thereafter. Response was enthusiastic and generous (checking the post office box each day was like finding presents under the tree on Christmas morning), so much so that there was enough money to produce “Social Security” in June of that year.
Four productions followed through Labor Day.
All actors were paid, including some 10 members of Actors’ Equity. In fact, throughout its life of 18 years, every single performer was remunerated for his or her services. That seed of $100 could not have grown without the generous watering of the people of our region.
Leatherstocking Theatre Company’s very first offering, in a pre-season invitational evening in May 1991, was the world premiere of a hitherto unknown Cole Porter song, “Who, But You?” The company started at the top and stayed there.
How many theater companies can boast of hosting playwrights A.R. Gurney, Jerome Choderov, Terrence McNally, Howard Ginsburg, and Frank and Malachy McCourt? The latter two not only visited the company, but performed their hilarious and touching “A Couple of Blaggards” (much of which later found its way into “Angela’s Ashes”) in LTC’s third season.
And let’s not forget that actor Cliff Robertson hosted a fund-raising evening at Hyde Hall one pleasant summer evening.
People are still talking about the company’s production of “Inherit the Wind” at the Cooperstown courthouse in its second season, with Malachy McCourt’s unforgettable, towering portrayal of Matthew Brady/William Jennings Bryan.
It was Leatherstocking Theatre Company that first brought an original script, “Jefferson & Adams,” to life, the initial step towards its eventual nomination for an Emmy in the form of a television production aired on PBS on July 4, 2005.
The company was blessed to be able to perform in a wide array of venues throughout the county: the Milford Central School Auditorium, the Cooperstown Theatre Festival, Hyde Hall, the Upper Susquehanna Cultural Center, TJ’s, the Hoffman Bistro, the Louis C. Jones Center at The Farmers’ Museum.
And it was most especially blessed by hundreds – thousands – of patrons, benefactors and friends. There is much to be thankful for.
It was too short a life, perhaps, but it was a good one.

Sam Goodyear, long active in The Leatherstocking Theater Company, writes a weekly column on arts in the Otsego County area.

Labels: 03-27-09, Art Beat, Sam Goodyear

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 5:04 PM 0 comments

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The Chemical Pumpkin

EVAN JAGELS

NIGHT LIFE

The Chemical Pumpkin is Oneonta’s newest trio of veteran rockers. If you are thinking that the name comes from a mixture of the Chemical Brothers and the Smashing Pumpkins, you are wrong.
Rather, it stems from a particularly bad yet proudly admitted gastrointestinal release from bassist and bandleader Stevie Tsangaras.
Tsangaras, who retired upstate from Long Island in 2004 refers to the Chemical Pumpkin’s inception as a “raw three-piece intensity.”
“I saw a music scene that was hurting,” Tsangaras said of Oneonta’s rock scene. He refers not to the level of talent, but rather the element of onstage personality and entertainment.
The band will debut at the Foothills Performing Arts Center at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, April 3, and the event promises a variety of multimedia in addition to their classic rock and original repertoire. Considering their fancy for B-horror movies, the extravaganza should have definite flavor.
In fact, the band refers to guitarist Ron Hadden as “Rondo the Creeper,” after Rondo Hatton whose brutish facial features and brief yet prolific career in Hollywood 1930’s and 40’s B-movies are legendary to any horror buff. According to the band, “… [horror movies]…draw us together like flies” – a pleasant image.
The connection to these flicks runs deeper, as Tsangaras revealed that he played a ghost and wrote the closing sound track for the film “Hellementary: An Education in Death.” In July, the filming of “Melonheads” will begin and Tsangaras will play the role of lead cannibal who, with luck, will get to eat Gary Busey.
No doubt this band’s presence will prove nothing short of Tsangaras’s expectations when he says, “You’re either going to be offended of laugh your…[butt]…off.”
Drummer Art Bresleau (a.k.a. “Barefoot Bresleau” and “Artie the Breeze”) is a truck driver across the northeast, and it is no joke when he refers to girlfriend Tina Diehl as his manager. Spending so much time on the road, he truly needs someone to organize all of his music affairs.
Diehl can actually claim responsibility for the formation of Chemical Pumpkin, as she knew Tsangaras through their mutual work in real estate and put the members in touch with one another via internet.
Thus far, the band has recorded the theme song for the television show “The Beat” which airs Thursdays on WISF 15, cable channel 27 out of Oneonta at 7 p.m.
They will be appearing live on the show April 2 and will be looking at the completion of their first CD this July.
Tickets for their debut at the Foothills Performing Arts Center will be $5. There will be a cash bar for patrons of at least 21 years of age.

Evan Jagels may be reached at
evanjagels@yahoo.com

Labels: 03-27-09, Evan Jagels, Night Life, The City of the Hills

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 4:50 PM 0 comments

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Hughes Brothers Take 2 Top Teams To Maine, N.Y., Finals

OHS Athletic Director Joe Hughes was a little more rueful then he might have been after the Lady Yellowjackets’ squeaker loss to Nanuet in the Class B state finals Saturday, March 21, in Troy.
On Feb. 27, his brother Bill’s Camden Hills Windjammers boys basketball team beat Cape Elizabeth in a Portland, Maine, civic center to claim that state’s Class B basketball title.
Joe was hoping he and Bill would both have a state championship to brag about at the next family gathering.
Bill’s team romped to a 62-49 victory after trailing by four points at halftime, a feat not unfamiliar to the Lady Yellowjackets.
In January, there was another chapter of the friendly rivalry, when Joe Hughes took the OHS boys’ team to play his brother’s team before a crowd of 1,200 at Camden Hills High School.
Both Hughes brothers are Oneonta High School grads.

Labels: 03-27-09, Hometown Sports

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 4:48 PM 0 comments

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GREAT GAME!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

...Ends Great Run. Coach Zeh Reflects on Season

By JIM KEVLIN

It was Monday afternoon, March 23, and Bob Zeh hadn’t eaten for two days.
It was just about two days since “Destiny’s Darlings,” his OHS Lady Yellowjackets basketball team, had come within a few points and a few seconds of winning the state Class B championshop in the cavernous arena at Hudson Valley Community College, Troy.
Bob had lost six pounds in the past 48 hours, but still he said, “This was the most enjoyable season I ever had, coaching for 44 years.”
“It’s too bad we couldn’t have had it all,” he said. “But that doesn’t take anything away from how much fun it was.”
Fans know exactly what he meant. What a ride.
Star guard Madie Harlem, calm, almost looking like she was thinking about something else, effortlessly – or so it always seemed – dropping in a three-pointer from the outside. Swish.
Senior center Meredith Ridgway plunging down the middle at hapless defenders. The look in their eyes suggested fear, if not a hint of terror.
Sophomore Sienna Wisse – she shoots, it’s in! That happened at so many key moments in the just-finished season.
And, of course, Bob Zeh, pacing the sideline in front of the Yellowjackets’ bench, stern, craggy, like one of those Mount Rushmore visages come to life.
The girls had a squeaker or two, but they breezed through most of their matches before Zeh’s favorite moment of the season – that victory over Cazenovia in the state semi-finals Saturday, March 14, at Liverpool High School.
The Lady Yellowjackets were down by nine at the half. And when they came out of the locker room to start the second half, you might have thought they looked downbeat. Actually, that look reflected determination.
We’ve never been in this place before, the coach observed to his players during the break.
“Yeh, we were, coach, at Norwich,” said guard Leslie Harlem, Madie’s younger sister.
The girls had been down 8-0 at the start of their first game against their Chenango County arch-rival, then rebounded to beat Norwich 59-44.
Stay focused, Zeh told the team. Play the second half four minutes at a time. And they did.
Halfway through the second half, guard Sienna Wisse’s second of two shots from the foul line slipped in easily, putting the Yellowjackets ahead for the first time in the game. They never looked backed.
“Madie was ‘in the zone,’” the coach continued. “She was determined we would win that game.
Final score: 36-33.
Madie had shot 10 for 10 from the line and scored on nine of 17 attempts from the floor for 30 of the 36 points.
Coming into the season, Bob Zeh thought his team would be strong. He hadn’t lost any seniors. And new players were moving into the front ranks.
But the home opener of the season against Johnson City – a 68-36 rout on Dec. 16 – confirmed his expectations. “We knew we were going to be pretty good.”
Listen to him talk about his players:
• Madie – “a genius. She is probably the finest, the most outstanding player I’ve ever coached. Her basketball IQ is off the scale. She’s not particularly quick. She’s not big and strong. But she’s so-o-o smooth. She knows how to get open. She knows how to get the ball to her teammates when they’re open.” She intends to play at Hamilton College next year.
• Meredith – Always a defensive powerhouse, he saw her average points per game rise from four two seasons ago, to eight last year, to 11 this year. She’s always been good for 9-11 rebounds. “She’s going to be a pretty good Division III basketball player somewhere.” (She still waiting to hear what her choices will be.)
• Sienna – A sophomore, the team’s going to depend on her in seasons to come. “They called her baby,” the coach said, noting that, just a sophomore, she’d already been playing varsity ball for two years. He told her at the start of the season, “You can be a baby any longer. You can’t play like a sophomore this year.” And she sure didn’t.
• Val Ridgway, Meredith’s sister – “A rebound machine, that’s what we call her,” Zeh said. “She’s a tenacious player. There are games where she gets every rebound. We just have to make her believe she’s an offensive player.”
And she’ll be back next year, along with Sienna, Leslie Harlem and other up-and-coming youngsters.
“They learned that, to be successful, you need to be team-oriented,” the coach said. “You have to depend on other people.
“They learned how you have to compete when you’re at the top. Every time you go out to play there’s a bull’s-eye on your back.
“They learned to sacrifice individual glory for the sake of the team.”
If the quarter finals in Liverpool showed the Lady Yellowjackets had grit, the semis on Saturday, March 21, a 55-31 pummeling of Olean, showed they could still turn on the juice.
But in the last few minutes of that game, Madie aggravated a back injury received in the 2007-08 season when she took a hit in the game against Johnson City.
She sat out the last few minutes, an ice pack on her back, and said she was fine – but, her coach and fans believe – she couldn’t have been.
When she took the floor against Nanuet, “she was hurting,” said Zeh. “She wouldn’t admit it, but she was.”
A team is a fragile entity. Bob ticked off this player for Lansing, that player for Cazenovia, who had been injured days before critical games.
This was Madie’s and the Yellowjackets’ turn.
“It she had been 100 percent,” her coach avowed, “we would have won by 5-10 point.” On to 2009-10!

Labels: 03-27-09, Hometown Sports, OHS Girl's Basketball

posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 7:43 AM 0 comments

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