Column FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE The ORIGINATING Sin By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com I’ve been driven out of the house to the peaceful shade of the front porch by television news. The programs are crammed with vitriolic volleys between this faction and that, one candidate and another. Pushing the mute button wouldn’t quell the stridence. It would still be there in the images – puffed up pols and preachers and pundits, each mouthing their one and only truth. There’s…
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FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE But What’s Her Name? By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com I’m at ease on my front porch on a beautiful afternoon, admiring the perspective up tree-lined Delaware Avenue. As the long last block heads toward Chestnut Street, curbs and sidewalks seem to draw together, trees conspire more closely over the street, and the two rows of handsome house fronts, bedecked with flags and hanging planters, draw closer till the last ones opposite each other almost block…
COLUMN THE FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE The Newspaper Roundabout By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com I’m at a loss to find a good simile for my Cooperstown newspaper career. It’s been a bit like a ping-pong game, but played like a flow of molasses. OK, forget figures of speech: Way back in the early ’90s, when I first moved north from Maryland, the redoubtable Lidie Mackie retired from her weekly Freeman’s Journal column about Fly Creek. She urged me to…
COLUMN A FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE Accidents Will Happen… By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com Well, of course they will, if you mean by accident a sudden, undesirable event – one that might have been prevented by closer attention. “Damn, why didn’t I see that coming?” That’s our common reaction to a minor accident, a fender-bender, maybe. But if the accident’s a more serious one, our response may well be guilt, recriminations, fear of consequences. “You know kids play ball…
COLUMN FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE To Sell, First, Sell Yourself By JIM ATWELL • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com COOPERSTOWN – Many years ago, when Earth was still cooling, I was a young professor teaching rhetoric. That study had been greatly advanced by Aristotle. He was not long dead then, so the topic was still fresh. Aristotle said that rhetoric is “the art of effective, persuasive speech.” The crassest form is used by the used-car salesman who scuttles across the lot with wide…
A Front Porch Perspective What A Woman! What A Country! Maybe it’s a part of “old-timers’ disease,” as the pun has it.I mean repeating myself. My poor wife puts up with a lot of it – and it’s partially the fault of my columns. In them I’ve recorded lots of my life’s last 25 years, most of them spent in Anne’s great company. And further, I’ve also drawn into them life recollections from 20, 40 and 60 years ago. I’ve…
A FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE New View, From Delaware Street It’s a pleasure to be writing again for The Freeman’s Journal (as well as, for the first time, Hometown Oneonta). I’ve been here before, though it was about two decades ago. More about that in a future column. For this new stint of columns, of course I need a new name. “From Fly Creek” just won’t do. Though all I learned and came to love while writing from that hamlet still lives…
HAPPENIN’ OTSEGO for THURSDAY, JUNE 21 Solstice Sunset Walk SUNSET STROLL – 7 p.m. Walk through the forest and enjoy the views of Canadarago Lake this summer solstice. Fetterly Forest, 302 Roses Hill Road, Richfield Springs. Call 607-547-2366 or visit www.otsegolandtrust.org EXHIBIT – 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. Artwork by Tom Soloman featuring 6 inductees, Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, current players. 30 one of a kind items. Displayed thru July 31. Heroes of Baseball Wax Museum, 99 Main St., Cooperstown. Call 607-547-1273.…
HAPPENIN’ OTSEGO for SUNDAY, APRIL 22 Discussion With The Candidates CANDIDATES FORUM – 6 – 8 p.m. Democrat Congressional candidates for the 19th district, Jeff Beals, David Clegg, Erin Collier, Antonio Delgado, Brian Flynn, Gareth Rhodes, and Pat Ryan discuss issues, more. HIRC Lecture Hall 1, SUNY Oneonta. Visit www.facebook.com/OneontaCollegeDems/ YOUTH PROGRAM – 2:30 p.m. Workshop introducing children to methods archaeologists use to find and identify archaeological sites. Cooperstown Village Library. Call 607-547-8344 or visit www.facebook.com/VillageLibraryOfCooperstown/…
COOPERSTOWN ECUMENICAL VIGIL Charlottesville Tells Us, Resist Evil, Pastors Say The Revs. Tom LeBeau (United Methodist), foreground, and Joe Perdue (First Baptist) help Linda Kosmer, right, and others of the 50-some attendees light candles at a noontime vigil called today in Cooperstown in the wake of yesterday’s fatal confrontation in Charlottesville, Va. Pastor Perdue, who hosted the gathering on his church’s front lawn on Elm Street, said, “I was horrified, but not surprised. It’s 2017, and there are Nazis on…