Editorial: Hello in there

Where have all the people gone?
Seems like there’s no one hangin’ on.
Look through the windows,
The houses are empty.
Hey!
Everybody’s out of town.
Seems like
I’m the only one around.
Hey!
Better send some people down.
Everyone on Earth
Is out of town.

Hal David wrote that apocalyptic lyric back in 1970, Burt Bacharach added some appropriately dyspeptic music with a wobbly trombone, B.J. Thomas sang it with the right tinge of loneliness.

The song came to mind as we stood at the top of Cooperstown’s Main Street late one frigid afternoon last week. The stroll to the post office didn’t do much to counter the desolation — plenty of doors displayed some semblance of the “closed until March” sign that turns up every year around this time.

As it must. It’s our slow season, that time of year when New Yorkers become temporary Floridians, when business owners can grab some much-deserved rest in between busier times, when people can escape the cold.

Three cheers, then, to the intrepid restauranteurs, shop owners, workers, and year-rounders who keep Cooperstown and its surroundings alive and kicking when it could just as easily be a pretty bleak couple of months. It’s a great time, for example, to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. A national jewel that — absent COVID — can be a hectic place. January and February? Study and stare at the displays to your heart’s content.

This page is an unabashed booster of our local businesses in every corner of Otsego County, and we urge you who have stuck around through these colder months to get out there and support your friends and neighbors. There’s no better antidote to the winter blahs – all boosted by pandemic blahs — than stopping in for a good dinner (or take-out) from one of the many fabulous restaurants with lights on and kitchens cooking. They’ve not let up on their attention to safety; we’ve yet to see a restaurant in the area that hasn’t kept up with Omicron-fueled protocol all while maintaining a welcoming atmosphere and a tasty menu. Don’t discount the therapeutic value of shopping — there’s no mistaking the boost that comes from adding something to the shelf.

Thanks, too, to the groups out there keeping up winter programming. It’s a challenge, what with all the shifting requirements as to who can do what, where, and how, but they’re doing it — everything from events at local libraries and movie nights, to virtual museum tours and conversations with authors and shows at area art galleries. Get some fresh air and sign up for the ‘Octet Challenge’ or take a walk around our wonderful state parks, Glimmerglass, Betty and Wilbur Davis, Gilbert Lake, and Robert V. Riddell. They’re close by.
This week, we report on the 2022 Glimmerglass Festival and Baseball Hall of Fame inductions — two summer staples that bring thousands of visitors to the area each year and — COVID permitting — will again. We’ll be writing soon about events through spring and summer across Otsego County, and don’t forget to keep up with the calendar on our website, allotsego.com.

Enjoy the peace and quiet while you can. Don’t forget to stop in to your favorite local stores and restaurants.

They’re open!