FOOD FOR THOUGHT Disagree? You Must Be Crazy There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed. It’s as if they are members of a cult,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said of Trump supporters on Jan. 12. Former CBS news anchor Katie Couric agreed. “How are we going to really, almost, deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump?” she asked Bill Maher. And both CNN and…
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Opinion - Page 144
LETTER from R. SCOTT DUNCAN Let’s Try A Little Tenderness To the Editor: Kindness is very powerful. Many years ago I had surgery. The hospital kept me till the end of the day and then pushed me out the door and into a cab. They stuffed a prescription for pain killers in my hand. I don’t remember filling the prescription, but I do remember the brutal pain of climbing up two flights of stairs to my apartment. Then collapsing into…
Local Governments Should Tend Our Roads, Not Our Minds Do we really expect our local elected officials to tell us what to think? Quite the opposite, probably. And yet instead of focusing on paving streets, keeping tax at a reasonable level, and providing whatever might be considered essential services, they seem increasingly determined to do just that. Three examples popped up in the past few days that suggest this may be spinning out of control, including at the February meeting…
HOMETOWN HISTORY February 11, 2021 150 Years Ago Home & Vicinity: It is fortunate for people desiring to locate in Oneonta that plenty of desirable building lots are in market at reasonable prices. Buyers can take their choice as to streets and localities. E.R Ford, T.D. & H. Watkins. S. Huntington, S. Wood, C.L. Michael. H. Wilcox, J.H. Peters, H. Baker and S. Parish all have good lots ready for purchasers, many of them finely located. All of these men…
BOUND VOLUMES February 11, 2021 200 YEARS AGO Interesting Memoranda: It is 328 years since John Cabot first discovered North America; 236 years since Sir Walter Raleigh more perfectly explored it; 240 years since the first permanent colony was planted in Virginia; 208 years since the founding of New Amsterdam, now New York, was settled; 200 years since the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth; 44 years since the commencement of our national existence; and 31 years sincethe adoption of…
LETTER from TERRY BERKSON The Jumping Chicken Of Otsego County Got a call the other day from my friend Charlie in Brooklyn. He said that he was thinking of getting a couple of chickens to keep in his apartment so that he could get really fresh eggs. I got on my high horse and asked, “What do you know about raising chickens?” “I’m good with birds,” Charlie countered. “Remember how I taught my parrot to stand on his head for…
LETTER from ROBERT MOYNIHAN To Explain COVID-19, It’s Back To The Future To the Editor There should be no more name-calling or evasions from one who lost the popular vote in 2016 by three million votes and in 2020 by seven million. His policy: “The Covid will just go away” – complete with a presidential hand signifying bird flight. Instead, national policy is now to be founded on observation and science instead of theories from pre-germ mythologies. Intelligent action instead…
LETTER from JIM ATWELL No Need For A Brick How’d it happen? Suddenly it’s 2020, I’m 82, twice a widower, living in a comfortable assisted living home. Well cared-for. But, essentially, alone. The pandemic has us 18 residents quarantined, even from one another. Lots of time alone in one’s room, even with meals brought to us on trays. Just now, however, despite prescribed aloneness, I have kept my room crowded with vividly remembered adults; ones who, because or in spite…
LETTER from R. SCOTT DUNCAN Hospitals Posting Prices? When You’re Sick, It Doesn’t Matter To the Editor: As I was driving along listening to NPR talking about hospitals now being required to post prices for services. I thought: That is all the hospital needs, more hoops to jump through for the government. I looked on the Internet to find out more details. “The Trump Administration…announced it would begin forcing hospitals to publicly disclose the discounted prices they negotiate with insurance…
LETTER from CHIP NORTHRUP Many Owe Their Lives To Muslim Immigrants To the Editor: The COVID vaccine I got today was invented by a husband and wife team of Turkish Muslim immigrants. They live modestly in an apartment and ride their bicycles to work at their company, BioNTech. They were the first to decode the C-19 virus and developed the vaccine made by Pfizer. So, like many people the world over, I owe my life to a Turk. Maybe you…
