For a good part of his life, and to the benefit of his home county, Jim Seward was our state senator. First elected in 1986, when he was 38, he served 17 terms, and retired in 2020, after 33 years in Albany. He represented all of us in Otsego, Cortland, and Schoharie counties, and some of us in Chenango, Tompkins, Cayuga, Delaware, and Ulster counties, fighting hard for what he believed to be the right ideas and opportunities for our reasonably large and unquestionably not-so-rich landed, forested and still somewhat wild portion of Upstate New York.…