WE All SCREAM foR …

Thomas Jefferson wanted to be remembered as “author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia. I would like to add that he is also credited to be the person who popularized ice cream in the United States. His original ice cream recipe still remains available online.

I am one of those for whom Ice cream is a key part of the food pyramid, a much loved confection that can be savored and critiqued. Like most things, it all goes back to my childhood.

They cost five cents. Our mother and father were ice cream aficionados and so our begging for ice cream was often heard by giving us the money to go to Pop’s candy store on the corner of 55th and 3rd Avenue to buy Dixie Cups, little four-ounce paper cups with lift-off paper lids filled with mostly vanilla ice cream. They also included the affectionately-remembered wooden flat spoon used to scrape the ice cream into a form that we could eat. Now, this isn’t widely known, but my siblings and I saw that wooden spoon as a bonus; not only could we use it in our make-believe play as a piece of flatware, but when you had a loose tooth, it would be the device that would free the tooth engendering a visit from the tooth fairy who would leave 10 cents under our pillows … 10 cents would buy two more Dixie Cups. It was a crude version of “cash back” for those under 10 in Brooklyn a long time ago.

I saw Dixie Cups again in the freezer section of a grocery store just last week. I don’t’ think they were the “Dixie Cups” brand as such, but the same cup form, multiples packed in a plastic bag, without wooden spoons. Maybe they gave you the spoons when you checked out. I didn’t pursue this line of questioning because my love off ice cream was now fulfilled by other offerings in that same freezer section. Half gallons or cartons that looked like half gallons offering multiple flavors of the dessert. “Monkey paws, Orange sunset, Key Lime,” etc. - exotics to tempt the consumer.

As tempting as the many brands and flavors are, the offerings are not the same quality. If you purchased a

Critical of Olson

To the editor:

Mark Olson has not posted on his Onondaga County Legislator page since August 2022. Recently he broke his silence with a post about his favorite candy. Candy? Seriously?

In addition to his full-time job as a salesman, Mr. Olson collects two salaries funded by cash-strapped taxpayers. He is both the long-term mayor of the village of Fayetteville and the county legislator for the 10th district. The village is encompassed within that county leg district.

In Onondaga County there are thousands of children being poisoned by lead every day! It is an emergency – but it is not treated as one. We consistently rank first in child poverty nationwide, but the county fails, year after year, to change that ranking. Our infrastructure sorely needs millions in investments. We need affordable and low-income housing, quality childcare, and a mass transit system that meets the needs of a city on the verge of historic change.

But the county executive wants a frivolous aquarium. Olson was the 9th and deciding vote on the $85 million aquarium, despite his constituents being against it 10 to one, as he reported publicly. Mr. Olson voted recently to spend an additional $1.7 million to buy polluted land in the Inner Harbor for the aquarium without an appraisal. The return on this investment will take over 100 years to repay and the county has not released a business plan to prove the wisdom of this expenditure.

Display Ads CR: lori lewis, ext 316, llewis@eaglenewsonline com half gallon of ice cream and allowed it to melt (and who does that on purpose?) you can compare it with other melted half gallons. There are significant differences because of the amount of air or “overload” that the ice cream maker beats into the basic ingredients. Less air, more ingredients, equals a creamier mouth feel and, in my mind, a better ice cream.

How do I know this? When I was in high school, I worked three summers at a venue in Lake Carmel that made and sold frozen custard. The custard mix was rich with eggs and cream and would make a superior product. The degree of superiority was determined by how much air was added as the giant machines churned the mix into frozen custard. My boss was adamant about producing the most superior product. Eating that ice cream was a pleasure played out in taste and how long a cone would last.

You can also judge how much overload was used in making any ice cream by seeing how fast it melts.

Seeking really good ice cream is a side hobby of mine which has contributed to my sides, my front and my back, but that is another story… related but not germane here. Once, when my spouse and I were on a tour in Italy, I found myself climbing the hill that led to the town of San Gimignano. Half way up this precipitous hill, I began to have chest pains.

“Oh, my God,” I worried. Am I having a heart attack?”

My spouse had long reached the town and disappeared. The rest of the tour group were scattered. I began to walk more slowly, thinking about my mortality and wondering how they would get my body home, when I spotted Gelateria Dondoli, a gelateria the guide had told us produced the best gelato in Italy. OK, I figured, if I was having a coronary, I might as well go out enjoying the best gelato in Italy. So, I went in and bought the biggest cone that I could. I sat in the ancient town square and ate my gelato, the strains of sad melodies in my head. The pain disappeared with the first lick. A side note, it was the Howitzer style coffee that I had for breakfast that had awoken my esophageal problems. The cool gelato calmed the angry cells

From The Mailbag

Mr. Olson is neglecting his responsibility to exercise due diligence in ensuring public funds are well spent on that contaminated land. Prove to the public that the land was cleaned up according to the agreement between the seller and the city of Syracuse. There is a great deal of information that is unknown – and for some odd reason, hard to find. He should take a pause and proceed with serious deliberation rather than bend over backwards to please a developer eager to break ground without public scrutiny.

Perhaps if Mr. Olson had more time to devote to county business we would see his performance improve. It is not only unseemly to accept the salaries and benefits of two elected positions, there is a glaring conflict of interest. Mr. Olson should resign as mayor of Fayetteville and prove his focus outside of his sales job is on the more complicated issues before Onondaga County at a time of unparalleled change. Be a leader, not a follower.

Olson, like most in his party, votes as directed by the county executive. It makes his job easier and limits the amount of time he spends on county business. Mr. Olson has not held a single town hall, on his work as a county legislator, let alone the multiple town halls he promised publicly during his campaign, after winning the seat, and, in both village and town of Manlius meetings after the election.

Mr. Olson wants you to know his favorite candy though, and, he really

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Creative Director: gordon bigelow, ext 331, art@eaglenewsonline com down. I credit the gelato for saving my day, if not my life. Gelato is a poster ice cream for low overload. So creamy tasting, it is made from milk rather than cream and churned slowly with practically no air added.

I often take my grandsons to the ice cream stand next to the Bowling Alley in Marcellus. On a hot day there is nothing like one of their “small” black raspberry cones to cool down your body and mind. Watching those boys enjoying their treats, laughing, giggling and exclaiming about the amount of ice cream they are eating is a gift I give myself. Of course, I will have had my own small cone too. If you haven’t partaken of said small cone, you are missing something that revises the meaning of small.

I have, in my mind, a list of places where I can find great ice cream. I recently added the Ice Cream Sandwich shop in Marcellus to that list which also includes … now these are my favorites …the Marcellus Lanes ice cream stand, Doug’s ice cream, Abbots Frozen Custard on Onondaga Boulevard in the city, the little shop in the building that houses the Chinese restaurant on Kasson Road across from Tops in Camillus and the Creamery in Caz. But there is one source of ice cream, no longer available, that makes me smile the most. I was working at Catholic Charities on the west end of Syracuse, about two city blocks from the legendary Marble Farms where, in the summer of 1979 I was with child, and craving ice cream. Marble Farms made the best ice cream, using fruits in season. That summer, I ate a giant waffle cone (is there any other kind?) filled with peach ice cream at least once a day, sometimes more than once a day.

One has to think of sampling a wide variety of ice creams as having historical and scientific connections. As you sample, you are recreating Thomas Jefferson’s delight as well as measuring how much air the maker added to the ingredients. Or … you could just admit, in all transparency, it just tastes so good wants to know yours too.

Ann Ferro is a mother, a grandmother and a retired social studies teacher. While still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up, she lives in Marcellus with lots of books, a spouse and a large orange cat.

CASEy ClEARy-HAMMARStEDt

Fayetteville

New Cazenovia community yard sale

To the editor:

Recently a few members of the Cazenovia community felt that there was a need to assist others in the greater Cazenovia area that are in need of housewares, furniture, books, electronics and other home and outdoor items but could not afford to purchase new items. Likewise there was a group of Cazenovia area residents that have these items in abundance and are interested in down-sizing. It seemed logical to solve two problems with one solution and the idea of a greater Cazenovia community yard sale was born.

The yard sale functions by members of the greater Cazenovia community donating their good reusable items to the sale on the first day and on the later days other community members make a cash donation to purchase these items. All proceeds from the yard sale would be donated to local and international charities.

The yard sale will be located on the south side of Route 20 just east of the village of Cazenovia. Community donations of good usable items will be accepted on Friday August 11 from 8am to 8pm and the sale will be Aug. 12-13-14.

Any individuals who would like to help with the sale can contact Tom Green at 315-655-3655 or they can

Letters l Page 7 arrive at the sale site at the times they are available to help. Any local charity who might be interested in partnering with us to run the yard sale can also contact Tom Green. We are not able to accept clothing, mattresses, or large pieces of exercise equipment at this sale.

Sorry but we are unable to accept donations prior to Aug. 11.

toM GREEn Cazenovia

Park or folly?

To the editor:

In the depth of the Great Depression, hunger causing dust storms bringing America to its knees—the Delphi Falls Park was first imagined. It wasn’t created for the privileged few. It was originally converted from cow pasture to two public pavilions with four by eight wooden shutters that let the public, come free, even in the rain and sit at the picnic tables.

On beautiful days—there were rows of picnic tables and small wood burning brick fire grills lined up all the way to the falls— free for public use. The park wasn’t built to turn a profit. The park was built by a Roosevelt’s CCC camp that housed and fed men who slept and ate at their CCC camp, built the falls public park with dignity and able to send money home to their families weekly. They were careful when they built the stairs up the hills and the cinder paths above the cliffs not to disturb Native American burial grounds – but to have safe trails enabling walking tours of nature’s beauty. Our family was fortunate during the depression—my father, Big Mike Antil, was a baker—a partner in a bakery that baked 82,000 loaves of bread a day, seven days a week— servicing upstate New York, the then Pine Camp (now Fort Drum) and the bread lines that fed the hungry daily by the tens of thousands.

On a Sunday drive in the late 1930s my mom and dad bought the then vacant park and gifted the two farmers above the falls – acreage on either side of the second falls –to water their stock.

The plan was to move our family of ten from our 3-bedroom home on Helen Avenue in Cortland to the Delphi Falls and convert the pavilion into a home. The war effort halted construction. The park remained open for public picnicking –only charging companies for company picnics – or very inexpensive admission for local farmers to weekly round and square dances in the pavilion.

It became our home in 1947.

I remember my dad not allowing loggers to

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Check out our videos on Facebook bulldoze on top of the cliffs, possibly damaging Native American burial mounds – requiring them to pull logs out by horse.

I remember someone from a university offering two hundred thousand for the property in 1952. I remember Dad turning them down saying when Jim Brown was given a football scholarship because of his talent and not refused because of his skin color, he’d consider it.

Now guaranteed income for life parks department people – nice folks, mind you –but absentee planners building highways up cliffs… and subway-like concrete stone walls from soon to be demolished home to the falls –the barn too, for coming cold stone and glass white elephant like edifices for the privileged – soon competing with local businesses in the same community whose two-century old Cazenovia University closed its doors for good this year.

Delphi Falls or Madison County folly?

JERoME MARk Antil Judge

Moore

To the editor:

I was saddened to learn recently that former Cazenovia Town Judge Timothy Moore passed away. Tim Moore was a good lawyer, a good judge – and a good man. He was, in my opinion, the personification of how New York’s system of local judging is supposed to work.

I think highly of his judging because of the way he mixed justice with mercy. I’ll give you an example which involves Judge Moore mitigating the draconian impact of a law depriving college students of financial aid for doing nothing more than smoking some pot. This is something which is now legal in New York but which, when Judge Moore was on the bench, wasn’t.

The law in question, a section of the federal Higher Education Act (HEA), denied loans, grants and even work study jobs to tens of thousands of students every year who have drug convictions. The law did not meaningfully distinguish between serious drug-related felonies and misdemeanors. In terms of student aid, the hapless marijuana smoker could be punished as harshly as a heroin dealer.

It was the pot smokers who got routinely hauled before Judge Moore – not the heroin dealers. He cut them a break first time around by letting them plead down to something innocuous. He did this because he was aware that the HEA hurt mostly lower income families by denying aid to those who need it the most.

Judge Moore took some heat for this exercise of judicial discretion. There was a strongly critical editorial in this newspaper expressing outrage and suggesting that Judge Moore would keep treating repeat offenders leniently. This was silly. In my experience representing criminal defendants before him, it was a really bad idea to come back twice.

So there you have the measure of the man. Wise. Compassionate. And brave. He will be missed.

BARRy SCHREiBMAn

Cazenovia

Melodramatic

To the editor:

Regarding the two mailbag letters in the recent Eagle Bulletin by Alicia Loomis and Prerna Deer, they both seem to have a bit of melodramatic exaggeration in their criticism of Moms for Liberty. Does Ms. Loomis have actual examples of this group openly harassing and intimidating people?

As for “stripping history,” Democrats and the Left are the ones creating new history with “The 1619 Project,” the tearing down of historical monuments and failing to bring out the true facts that Republicans fought to end slavery, Dems fought against ending it and created the KKK after the Civil War.

Moms for Liberty was started in response to this new movement that parents (who pay for the schools) do not have a say in what is taught to their children and that parents who dare to state their views at school board meetings are terrorists who must be investigated by the DOJ. The new curriculums indoctrinating children with CRT and gender identity issues are serving to pit children against each other and totally confuse them. The group only wants books with explicit sexual and racial content to be withheld from young children whose developing minds cannot comprehend these issues yet. Whatever happened to teaching a strictly academic curriculum with a side of respect for everyone, regardless of sex, race, religion or opinion. Whatever happened to the Dems and Liberals being the party of tolerance of everyone?

What can be seen in these two letters is exactly what the writers accuse the GOP of: divisive rhetoric and intimidation.

If future parades are so uncomfortable to Liberals, they can either stay away, or invite the Southern Poverty Law Center to march alongside the Manlius and Onondaga County Democrats. The people of Manlius will certainly allow them a “space in the community.” Aren’t we all for free speech and Democracy?

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