Up on Hawthorn Hill: Early Winter Musings By Richard DeRosa A light coating of snow now blankets our hillside, snow shovels at the ready. The new snow blower waits quietly for its first call to duty. Life is now lived more inwardly, more reflectively. Books having piled up for some months now await their turn in line. Thoughts that have incubated for some time seem riper for reflection, perhaps a temporary resolution of what have been conflicting possibilities. Few would…
Online home of The Freeman's Journal and Hometown Oneonta
Advertisement
Columns - Page 52
Wassail, toddies, and, well, yes, politics By Ted Potrikus Ah, mid-December, when thoughts turn to the wrappings and trappings of the holiday season and joy-filled activities like wassailing and hot toddying and the Jenga stack that is New York State politics. New York Attorney General Tish James last week announced the end of her brief run chasing Governor Kathy Hochul for the Democratic Party nomination for governor in 2022. Surely that news brought seasonal joy to New York City Public…
Life Sketches: A Matchmaker’s Ball By Terry Berkson The other day I was driving on County Route 16 outside of Schuyler Lake when I noticed the ruins of an old barn. Upon closer inspection I realized it was the remains of a block building that had been built and used by a man I once knew. His name was Ziggie Pupecki, and I got to meet him through the efforts of my Aunt Ruta, who fancied herself as a kind…
Omicron: good news, bad news, more news By Richard Sternberg M.D. Some good news about the Omicron and Delta variants of COVID-19. Data from an Israeli study shows that people who received booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 90 percent less likely to die from a Delta infection than those who relied solely on the initial two-dose vaccination. Those who received the initial two-dose vaccine were 85 percent less likely to die than the unvaccinated. Unfortunately, these are not…
News from the noteworthy Tobacco-free colleges save lives Tobacco Free Communities| Delaware, Otsego & Schoharie Nine out of 10 smokers start smoking by age 18, and 99% start by age 26. So, if we can just keep young people from starting, we can prevent a vast majority of them from becoming one of the 480,000 lives taken every year by smoking. But how do we do that? It takes intentional steps, including reducing the appeal and accessibility of tobacco products,…
Take precaution, but don’t rush to judgment “Virologists will tell you that predicting how a new virus might evolve is a fool’s errand. Predicting that it will evolve is money in the bank.” – The Economist. Since the genome for Covid-19 was first sequenced in January 2020, there have been 5.6 million sequence variations added to the database. Obviously most variations do not make much difference, but a very few do so spectacularly. The Omicron variant is different than others…
Let’s verb again, like we did last Christmas By Ted Potrikus Do you remember the classic comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes”? It was my daily must-read back when it ran in newspapers; it remains a go-to in its various printed collections or online. My favorite among the strips finds Calvin telling Hobbes this: “I like to verb words.” He goes on: “I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when ‘access’ was a thing? Now it’s something…
Bound Volumes 185 YEARS AGO Man is so constituted, that when he directs all his energies to a single employment, the products of his labor are far more abundant and excellent, than when he follows several employments. By confining both body and mind to a single operation, a degree of skill and dexterity in that operation is acquired, which could not be attained if the same, or even a much greater amount of labor had been bestowed on several direct…
Hometown History 110 Years Ago At about 8:30 o’clock last Thursday evening, while a double rig from the livery of Dr. Hamilton at Delhi was being driven from that village to Oneonta, the wagon was struck by a light engine at the Ulster & Delaware crossing between Sherman Lake and West Davenport. Both horses were killed and the wagon entirely demolished. All three occupants of the wagon, Emery Young of Calicoon, Henry Young of Scranton, and Carl Bartholomew of Delhi,…
Bound Volumes 210 YEARS AGO Advertisement – The co-partnership of Cory & Cook is, by mutual consent, this day dissolved. All persons indebted to said firm are requested to make immediate payment to said Cory, who will attend to said business at the store of Mssrs. Goodsell & Cook. They do not forget to offer their sincere thanks to all those who have been their good customers. O.L. Cory, Seth Cook, Cooperstown. November 30, 1811…
