News from the Noteworthy Asking for, Offering Support are Skillsets We Can Re-learn In my last “News from the Noteworthy” column, I wrote about the wellbeing struggles that are keenly felt across the workforce. I shared the results of a recent survey where business leaders, managers, and supervisors told us they are spending an average of 39 percent of their time on issues such as employee burnout, fatigue, stress, anxiety, mental health, and substance misuse issues. That number went up…
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Columns - Page 40
Column from Dan Sullivan Otsego County—a ‘Receiving Community?’ The lexicon of climate change evolves as the climate crisis wears on. Terms like “greenhouse effect” and “global warming” are now considered old, even though they are not. Recently, two new terms (new to this writer) appeared during a Harvard University climate change webinar: “retreating communities” and “receiving communities.” Simply put, these terms refer to communities that are becoming undesirable or unlivable (“retreating”), and those that appear to be either less affected…
Column from Otsego Electric Cooperative Inc. OEC Statement on Climate Action New York’s Climate Action Council is finalizing its Scoping Plan for meeting the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goals. The Climate Action Plan needs to achieve an affordable, dependable, and safe electric grid but we are not certain that the CAP will achieve this. OEC is a distribution utility. We do not generate our power supply. OEC has been a green energy utility since the early 1960s. OEC…
News from the Noteworthy Post-election Activities Full of Positivity, Unity The midterm elections are over, or mostly over, as tight returns leave many state and federal races close and uncertain. I, for one, am very glad that pre-election coverage and political mailings have ceased and we have voted. We can now get back to our jobs, our community, and our lives, where real things happen, where we can make a difference to a person and to our community.…
Life Sketches by Terry Berkson The Ritz Crossing In late November of 1965 my dad, in his yellow taxi cab, ferried me and my duffle bag down to the Brooklyn Army Terminal where I would board the USS Darby bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. Several other soldiers who had also gone to Preventive Medicine School were among the 1,400 troops that were about to cross the Atlantic. The water was calm for the first few days but, in spite of the…
News from the Noteworthy Trust is Key to Success of Vertically Integrated Farm Teresa Labruzzo, co-owner of Dream Weaver Farm in Richfield Springs, admits she was not at all sure if there would be any customers when they opened their farm store two years ago. But in fact, market research wasn’t necessary after all…there is a huge demand for DWF’s products. This edition of “The Life of the Land” will explore some of the elements which make this an agricultural…
Column from Dan Sullivan Projects on the Horizon in Northern Otsego Over the past several years, the Town of Richfield and Village of Richfield Springs have built a coalition of residents, civic groups, and local government officials to form a revitalization plan for the two municipalities. Momentum began to build back in 2015, with the formation of a Joint Town/Village Comprehensive Plan Committee. Working with a professional planning firm, under a grant secured by Otsego Now, a Joint Comprehensive Plan…
Column from Deboah J. Taylor Yes, Virginia, Our Recyclables Really DO Get Recycled A group of Otsego County residents toured Sierra Processing in Albany to find out exactly what happens to the items we place in our local recycling bins. Where does it all go? Does it really get recycled? How do they sort it? When Otsego County’s official hauler, Casella Waste, empties our recycling bins at the Northern and Southern transfer stations, as well as the towns of Hartwick…
Up On Hawthorne Hill by Richard DeRosa On Cutting Back This is the time of year when several things cross my mind. I think of those lines in Frost’s wonderful poem, “After-Apple Picking,” where he admits to being “… overtired /Of the great harvest I myself desired.” Not that we are burdened with a “great harvest” up here on the hill, but we do maintain a hefty assortment of gardens, among them two sizable vegetable gardens that meet most of…
Column by Richard Sternberg, M. D. Diligence Called for, Now More Than Ever Again, just when it seemed we reached the point where we can go out with people and decrease our use of masks, COVID strikes back and possibly with more virulence than previous strains. The number of new strains to consider is large. New strains include BA.5.2.6, BA.4.1.9, BE.1.2, BA.4.7, BF.13 and XBB, among others. Already BA.5 and BA.4 strains have high penetrance in the U.S. The new…
