Editorial The Great Turkey Hunt September is pretty much behind us, with its very warm and, at other times, quite chilly days and nights, and some torrential rains. It’s been like most of the Septembers around here, only the temperature fluctuations this year have been more drastic, and the thunderstorms have been more ferocious, felling trees and scattering branches and scaring children and dogs. And now, as we run smack into the pumpkins and foliage and the eventual Jack Frost…
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Editorial Re-Charge! A little over a year ago The Freeman’s Journal put forth an editorial on the subject of electric vehicle chargers, which were at the time pretty scarce within the Village and, in fact, even outside the Village. The reason we explored the local availability of these chargers was, of course, that our tiny historic Village has been, and is, the destination of myriad urban baseball, sports, scenic and music explorers whose mode of transportation to Cooperstown is increasingly…
Editorial A-maize-ing Grace Last weekend, along with everyone who happened to venture out-of-doors the evenings of Friday and Saturday, we witnessed the September full moon — one of the most spectacular events on the lunar calendar. Called the Harvest Moon, as it appears the closest to the autumnal equinox, which falls on September 22, it is the moon that, before electricity, provided farmers with three days of extended daylight hours by which to harvest their crops. According to Native American…
Editorial Looks Like We Made It Labor Day. The end of an exceptional summer in Cooperstown. Dare we say exceptional? Yes we can, despite the ominous glooms of COVID and recent blooms of algae. Our Main Street businesses are still here. They may not have had their best summer, and they may still be sadly short-handed, but they are proudly displaying their wares and energetically inviting shoppers into their establishments. The Hall of Fame reopened its doors for Induction Weekend,…
Editorial Looking an Aqua Pandemic in the Eye Recently, we at The Freeman’s Journal have become aware that some of our readers, and others who may not be our readers, still have questions about the toxic algae blooms that of late have been creeping up on us from the depths and edges of our beloved Otsego Lake. So here goes an effort to get it right. According to NOAA, whose satellites, along with those of the EPA, NASA and the…
Editorial What Lies Beneath When one looks about and takes in the bustling commercial activity of Otsego County during the busy tourist season and anticipates the impending return of the thousands of college students who keep things humming through the “off-season,” one feels confident that Otsego County has a healthy, perhaps even vibrant, economy. And while that may be true, beneath the shiny veneer of commercial success lies a dark reality. Otsego County, like many of its neighbors, has a…
Editorial Saving Fido and Creating Memories A few months ago the New York State House and Senate voted to approve the shutdown of the puppy-mill-to-New York pipeline, ending the retail sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet stores across the state. The bills await the governor’s signature. They have taken an inordinately long time to reach Hochul, having been first introduced in March, 2019. Among the relentless fighters for this shutdown is our own Stacie Haynes, Executive Director of…
Editorial Parks and Recreation Last Spring “Our Great National Parks” premiered, to the enthusiastic enjoyment of many of us still in the throes of Covid. The series’ executive producer and narrator is former president Barack Obama who, during his administration, protected more public lands and water than any other U.S. president. The series records the activities of a variety of animals, forests and plants, many formerly endangered, that have emerged, survived and prospered in the wild under the protection of…
Editorial We’re Hiring Since 2004 the U.S. has lost 2,100 newspapers, of which 2,000 were weeklies, closing at a rate of two per week. Many of the survivors have had to cut their staff and circulation. More than 200 of the 3,143 counties in the country have no local newspaper, with no reporters telling their stories and keeping an eye on the issues most critical to their local democracy and quality of life. There are no advertisers to offer their…
Editorial Our Gathering Storm Until this past week, we were just settling into a summer of weather that seemed almost perfectly “Goldilocks” — not too cold, not too hot. It reminded us of the summers of old, when there would be one or two days in early July that were considered hot — somewhere between 85 and 90 degrees. No one had air conditioning and very few had a swimming pool. But last week the heat was intense and somewhat…
