►greater oneonta HistoriCal soCiety to reopen with a new look and new exhibits

Greater Oneonta Historical Society will unveil new exhibition at their grand reopening

On Friday, may 13, 2022, the Greater Oneonta Historical Society (GOHS) will reopen the doors to its History Center at 183 main Street in the heart of downtown Oneonta. The reopening follows a fourmonth closure for renovations to the first floor, including updates to the walls, floors, and lighting.

At the grand reopening, GOHS will unveil Small Community, Big Ideas: Greater Oneonta, a new exhibition exploring the history of the town and city of Oneonta, New York. The exhibit will include modern, interactive, and digital features and a variety of different, formerly unseen objects from GOHS’s object and archival collections.

“Small Community, Big Ideas will feature five chronological modules, each shedding light on the everyday people, places, and events that have shaped the town and city of Oneonta over the past three centuries,” Dr. marcela.micucci, GOHS Executive Director said. “It will tell the stories of how Natives, settlers, immigrants, and residents created a community, and how they built and rebuilt Oneonta to become a destination city — one that was adaptable and evolved with the changing geography, economy, culture, and society.”

Throughout the exhibit visitors will experience floor maps, ambient sound, audio and visual content, and additional interactive components. At the close of the exhibition, visitors also will have an opportunity to contribute their own ideas of what they believe the next “big idea” for Oneonta might be. In the coming months, GOHS will continue to integrate new interactives, objects, and expanded content into the exhibit, ensuring visitors a different experience each time they visit.

In addition to the new permanent exhibition, the History Center’s first floor also includes a newly designed gift shop, the Sally mullen Children’s Corner, and the Brzozowski Special Exhibition Gallery. The special exhibition space will feature three to four rotating exhibitions each year, beginning with Remembering Oneonta in the 1960s, to open in summer 2022.

Also featured in may will be a special display, 100 Years of Oneonta Rotary, celebrating the centennial of the Oneonta Rotary Club, in GOHS’ Buckingham Window on main Street and SUNY Oneonta Alumni Window on Dietz Street. The exhibit will highlight the Rotary’s local and international charitable work and community service, their membership and camaraderie, and their 100-year history.

“We are thrilled to reopen our doors to the Oneonta community in celebration of our new first-floor space and permanent exhibition,” said Dr. micucci, “I am grateful to be part of such a collaborative team and organization, and I look forward to sharing this milestone with our local community. Our new first floor space is a testament to GOHS’ mission to promote and preserve our history for Oneonta’s future.”

John Pontius, President of the GOHS Board of Trustees commented, “It is with great pride that we present to the Oneonta community the new museum on the first floor of the History Center in downtown Oneonta, along with the new permanent exhibit, Small Community, Big Ideas. Having a vibrant museum as an integral part of our downtown is a tremendous asset for Oneonta and it will serve as an important facility to provide educational programs and celebrate the rich history of the Greater Oneonta area for many years to come.”

For more information on the grand reopening events, visit www.oneontahistory. org, Facebook and Instagram pages, or call or email the History Center at 607-432-0960 and info@oneontahistory.org.

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HOMETOWN Views

A-4 HOMETOWN ONEONTA THURSDAY, MAY 5, 2022

EDITORIaL

Great choice, Governor

[Editor’s note: This week’s edition goes to press just as the news about Rep. Delgado is breaking; we offer here a brief analysis of the situation as it stands on the morning of May 3.]

For Otsego County, Governor Kathy Hochul’s May 3 announcement appointing Rep. Antonio Delgado as her new second-in-command in Albany is nothing short of politically seismic — a move that could send aftershocks throughout the entire state and even into Washington, D.C.

Certainly Rep. Delgado was a Washington up-andcomer, an important part of the Democratic Party’s hopes to keep its majority in the 2022 mid-term elections. That he was pitted against a popular Republican challenger, Marc Molinaro, in an electoral district whose boundaries hang in the balance of a federal mediator, might have had something to do with his decision to take the offer.

Political machinations notwithstanding, Governor Hochul’s choice is a wise one. Rep. Delgado has proven himself to be a tireless and energetic voice for Otsego County and his district as a whole. Smart, approachable, and affable, when he shows up at an event or to tour a business, he shows up with good questions and displays a genuine interest in the issues at hand.

Surprised as we were to read the announcement on May 3, on reflection, we think Rep. Delgado is an excellent choice for Lieutenant Governor. In Albany, he succeeds Brian Benjamin, who resigned last month after the feds picked him up on a handful of corruption charges. New York has learned the hard way that the office of LG is more than ribbon-cutting ceremonial work; governors Hochul and David Paterson both rose to their office after their respective bosses resigned under curious circumstances. In a state bruised repeatedly by political corruption at the highest level, Rep. Delgado brings a breath of fresh air to a stale Capitol.

Rep. Delgado brings to the position an equanimity sorely lacking in Albany these days — an ability to listen to both sides, measure the discussion, engage the participants. We think he’ll be an effective and stabilizing addition to an administration currently floundering amid a series of political and policy slip-ups.

Practicality aside, he’s a great political choice, too. Pundits will note that a Hochul/Delgado ticket presents an interesting and — at least in modern times — an unprecedented choice for New Yorkers. Two upstaters, two (relatively) moderate Democrats in a party that — like their Republican counterparts — is torn by fringe voices that tend to choke all the air out of a reasonable debate. We expect voices from the Working Families Party, for example, to decry the choice — he’s not downstate enough, he’s not ‘progressive’ enough, he’s not whatever enough it would take to please those who seem so impossible to please.

Rep. Delgado is, however, a commanding presence on the campaign trail. We think he will do in the whole of New York what he has done in Otsego County throughout his term in Congress — visit everywhere, get to know everyone by his or her first name, command the room without dominating the conversation.

While we wait at press time for news as to who will take his place in the race for the 19th congressional district, we are reminded of a thought from Albany Times-Union columnist Chris Churchill not long after Mr. Molinaro announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination. Two nice guys, he wrote, a rarity in politics these days. We agree with Mr. Churchill’s personal assessment and look forward to Lieutenant Governor Delgado imparting his personal charisma and professional comportment in a New York arena sorely in need of decency.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY

The Hometown Oneonta welcomes letters to the editor that reflect the writer’s thoughts on an article or other item appearing in the paper. They must include the writer’s name, address, email and telephone/ mobile number; the opinions expressed must be the writer’s own. Hostile, offensive, factually incorrect or excessively inflammatory content will not be published. The length must be no more than 250 words. The editors reserve the right to accept, reject or edit letters for clarity and space. Please send letters to: info@allotsego.com.

o H metownoneon t a 2008-2022 14th anniversary HOMETOWN ONEONTA & The Otsego-Delaware Dispatch

Tara Barnwell Publisher

Ted Potrikus Editor

Larissa Ryan Kathleen Peters Business Manager Graphics & Production

Ivan Potocnik Tom Heitz/Sharon Stuart Web Architect Historian

TED POTRIkuS

The unifying power of baseball

My wife and I stopped by the Stax Museum of American Soul Music as we passed through Memphis, Tennessee on Saturday — we’re on a long-planned, twice-delayed drive from Cooperstown to Charleston to Tucson to visit our kids. “Where ya from?” the clerk asked. “Upstate New York,” I said. “Cooperstown, to be exact.”

“The Baseball Hall of Fame!” he said happily. “I drove up there a few years ago. Loved it. Had to visit. Love baseball.”

“I love baseball, too,” I said, “but I love my Stax records. I’m glad to be here at your Hall of Fame.”

This week’s column comes to you from the ninth-floor room in a Hilton Garden Inn in the “Bricktown” neighborhood of downtown Oklahoma City. The view from our window: the glorious field of the OKC Dodgers, the AAA affiliate for the Los Angeles Dodgers. We watched the final three innings of the game as we pulled in yesterday afternoon; no game today (but there are tornado warnings for later tonight, so there’s that).

Around the stadium — statues of Baseball Hall-of-Famers like Warren Spahn, Johnny Bench, and Mickey Mantle. Busts for Lloyd and Paul Waner (“Little” and “Big” poisons, respectively), Carl Hubbell. One for Negro League great Joe Rogan. One for beloved Yankee Bobby Murcer, a street named for Joe Carter. Proud Oklahomans all.

In Charleston, out for breakfast with our daughter and her husband, I wore a t-shirt sporting the Fenway Park Citgo logo. “Red Sox fan?” the waiter sneered. “Not so much,” I said, “I’m alright with them but I love the Mets, sorry.”

“Detroit Tigers,” he said, relieved. He had moved from Michigan to South Carolina and took his team with him. He did not like the Red Sox. Nor the Yankees. He, too, was alright with the Mets. We had a good chat about our teams and the state of baseball. Maybe we get a little jaded by the whole baseball thing in Cooperstown, what with it being our local industry and everything. It’s all around us — the Hall of Fame and Doubleday Field in the village, of course, and assorted fields of dreams and baseball-branded activities dotting the county landscape. Maybe we get tired of the ‘America’s Pastime’ trope. The endless souvenir shops.

But driving across the country as we’re doing, it’s gratifying to see baseball as a unifying salve in a country otherwise at each other’s throats. I had to catch myself as we walked the perimeter of the stadium earlier today — those Spahn, Bench, and Mantle statues? At first glance, I thought, “Hey wait a minute, those are our guys. They’re in Cooperstown now.”

Of course they’re not “our” guys. They belong to Oklahoma, just as every Baseball Hall of Famer belongs to his home town, home state, home nation. And in Cooperstown, we’re lucky enough to have them all in one place for the nation to behold as one, members of an elite and diverse team.

It won’t be long before our village streets and county roads are full once more with families and tour buses coming to visit “our” team. They’ll be playing ball nearby and flying home to tell their friends about an experience they won’t soon forget. They’ll visit our restaurants, shop in our stores, and bring renewed life to the region as they did in the years before COVID.

Growing up here, we’d occasionally wince at the onslaught of out-ofstate license plates that took up all the good parking spaces and didn’t seem to know how to get to the Hall of Fame (even when they were standing a block away from it). Today, we’re thrilled to welcome them back, again and again, for a shared experience that begins in Detroit, and Charleston, and Oklahoma City, and everyplace else where there’s a team to root for. Let’s look forward to a busy summer. (Also: The Stax Museum, the Sun studios, and a trip to Elvis’s Graceland are very much worth your consideration. And Oklahoma City is one hospitable place!)

LETTERS

Editorial unfair

The editorial that appeared in The Freeman’s Journal/Hometown Oneonta on Thursday, April 28, 2022, regarding the Otsego County Democratic Committee’s Ukraine fundraising, sparked many a reaction in my mind.

Most important of them: What an astonishing example of performative outrage, high dudgeon, and holierthan-thou-ness. I do hope that the newspaper will apply equally outraged scrutiny when any seemingly altruistic local Republican initiative comes to your attention — and then devote an equal number of selfrighteous paragraphs (in this case, ten) before magnanimously allowing that “we’re no less appalled when people wrap themselves in the American flag to claim moral or small-d democratic superiority...”

Depending on one’s particular perch, one committee’s fine print is another committee’s full disclosure.

Mitchell Owens

Cooperstown Thanks, power heroes

On behalf of everyone, I would like to extend a genuine, heartfelt, thank you to all those whose tireless efforts resulted in the restoration of our power.

While the rest of us kept warm, dry, and illuminated as best we could, these hometown heroes were out there day and night, struggling through that deep, wet snow. No doubt there were times when they encountered nearly as much snow hanging over their heads as was under them!

Fires; snowpacked, shattered branches loaming overhead; hefty snow-laden branches needing to be moved; downed wires hidden under the snow … I’m sure these are but a few of the exhausting perils these brave folks faced when cleaning up after such an “upstate” spring snowfall!

So from all of us who are so very blessed to have you, may you each be richly blessed in return.

Also a very special thank you to all the workers who came from out of state to lend assistance. Leaving home and families for days is a big sacrifice. I hope they will somehow see this “thank you” or hear about it from someone.

Pat Patterson

Mt. Vision West Oneonta needs guardrail

On Friday April 22, for the second time in two years, we had a car drive off State Route 23, crash through our fence, and land in the culvert on the corner of our property in the Hamlet of West Oneonta.

The first incident was due to distracted driving. The most recent incident was due to a medical issue. Our five-year-old and dog play every day in the yard where both of these accidents occurred.

We acknowledge that the medical issue that caused the most recent accident was nobody’s fault and commend our local emergency squad for their hard work. Extracting the car and driver from the culvert was not an easy task. The top of the car needed to be cut off for the driver to be extracted.

These are not the only incidents to occur along this stretch. About three weeks ago we witnessed a propane truck get stuck at a 45-degree angle across Route 23 from our home.

There is a clear need for a guardrail along Route 23 in the Hamlet of West Oneonta. We have begun the process of requesting a guardrail with the State DOT and would like to invite others to do the same.

I ask the local community to consider two things: 1. Please pay attention to the 40mph speed limit through the hamlet of West Oneonta. We are concerned for our family and we don’t want to see any more injured drivers pulled from our culvert. 2. If you live in West Oneonta, especially along Route 23, please consider submitting a written request for a guardrail to:

Tony Signorelli 44 Hawley St.

Binghamton, NY 13901

Thank you for your help in making our West Oneonta community safer!

Nick White and Jennifer Raphaelson White

West Oneonta A constitutional right to abort

Justice Alito’s opinion is based on the fact that the right to abort is not mentioned in the Constitution. Guess what, no womens’ rights, either natural, such as the right to abort, or political, such as the right to vote, are mentioned in the Constitution. But every state that ratified the Constitution allowed a woman the right to abort — as a natural right. So the right to abort is an assumed right in the Constitution — one that did not need to be enumerated to be allowed, since, under English common law, “That which is not prohibited is allowed.” The fact that no state can prohibit such a Constitutional natural right is the very basis of Roe. Alito’s opinion is a cheap bit of legal legerdemain, a political fabrication from one of the brightest legal minds of 14th century Spain. If adopted, I hope to live to see it reversed 7 to 6.

Chip Northrup

Cooperstown