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 In the News This Week -- July 6, 2007 |
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 As Soon As Bonds Hits 756,
Helmet May Be In The Mail
Towns OK Jordanville Generators
As soon as Barry Bonds hits his 756 record-breaking homer – he’s expected to do so in the next several days – his batting helmet will be en route to 13326, according to Jeff Idelson. The National Baseball Hall of Fame vice president of communications and education said he expects the batting helmet, which the ballplayer promised him when the two met June 26 in San Francisco, would be on its way as soon at Bonds nudges past Hank Aaron’s career record of 755 home runs. As of Tuesday, July 3, Bonds was at 750, so the record could be broken any day now. Idelson’s experience with the famously testy baseball star was contrary to what press reports might have you expect. “He was very cordial,” said the HoF executive. “We had a very good heart to heart about what our mission is and how we feel – if and when he passes Hank Aaron – his record needs to be recognized in Cooperstown.” Idelson said he expected no less from the touchy star: “It wasn’t the first time I ever talked to him.” The meeting was set in the clubhouse after the New York Yankees had headed home, so it was relaxed. Bonds, whose run for the record has been tainted by allegations of steroid use, has been famously quoted as saying, “I’m not worried about the Hall. I take care of me.” But Idelson said Bonds has always been good to the Hall. According to one report, there are already a dozen pieces of Bonds memorabilia among the 35,000 artifacts at 25 Main St., including the bat from his rookie year, the bat from his 400th homer and the spikes from his 400th stolen base. Bonds is very interested in baseball history, spending six hours in the Negro League Baseball Museum during a visit to Kansas City, Mo., Idelson said. But he doesn’t expect to see Bonds on the shores of Otesgo Lake anytime soon. “He’s pretty superstitious,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll see him in Cooperstown until – if and when – he’s elected.” When fans on Main Street were asked about the prospective donation, they answered with what’s come to be a characteristic mix of sadness and ruefulness when Bonds is the topic. “Have they proven he is off steroids?” joked Ed Oliver of Jacksonville, Fla. After brief contemplation, he added, “but who knows about [Hank] Aaron. There’s no telling what those guys were taking back then. They just didn’t investigate.” “I think it’s a very prestigious record,” said Cory Ballou, manager of Take 2. “It’s unfortunate he got caught up with steroids, but it doesn’t demean his ability to play ball.” Tom Harding of Binghamton was saddened by the contention surrounding the record to which many attach both sentiment and nostalgia. “My only thought is that it’s a shame that such a major record has to be clouded with such controversy.” Idelson said his meeting with Bonds was the kind of routine session HoF emissaries try to have with all ballplayers approaching major milestones. He recalled meeting with Mark Maguire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, when each of them was approaching Roger Maris’ record of most homeruns in a season. And he met with Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki in 2004, as he neared the record of most hits in a season.  Here’s the story. Orpheus is god of music. His wife, Euridice, is tricked or tempted into the Underworld, or ends up there after being bitten by snakes. He follows her into the depths and the beauty of his songs convinces Hades and Persephone to let Euridice follow Orpheus back to earth – as long as he doesn’t look back. He does, and she’s lost to him forever. That story, which dates back to Pindar, is the inspiration for the 2007 Glimmerglass Opera season, which opens Saturday, July 7, with Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,”followed by Gluck/Berlioz’ “Orphee et Eurydice on Sunday, July 8.” Philip Glass’ “Orphee” debuts on Saturday, July 21, and Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” – marking its 400th anniversary this year, it is considered the first modern opera – on Saturday, July 28. Performances of Haydn’s “L’Anima del Filosofo (Orfeo ed Euridice)” are planned at 11 a.m. Aug. 5 and 19, and movies on the Orpheus myth – “Black Orpheus,” set in Rio de Janeiro, and Jean Cocteau’s “Orphee,” Glass’ inspiration – will be screened for free at the Fenimore Art Museum several times over the course of the summer. If past seasons hold, 40,000 opera buffs from around the world will visit the Otsego Lake Region between now and Aug. 28, when the curtain drops for the season, according to Brittany LeSavoy, the opera’s director of communications. Last year, 30 percent of audience members were from within a 30-mile radius, but the rest came from 45 states and beyond. For the past nine months, the Glimmerglass Opera has been in relative hibernation, with only a couple of dozen people working during the off-season at its campus on Route 80 at Otsego Lake’s northwest end. By opening day, that will have blossomed to 400 singers, interns, conductors and staffers of various types, LeSavoy said. The productions are built around 14 guests artists – in effect, the stars of the show. Local fans will remember soprano Sarah Coburn, who sang the title role in “Lucie de Lammermoor” in 2005; she will be singing in the two Haydn performances. Also well-known to opera audiences are Michael Maniaci, a male soprano singing in the Berlioz; mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle in the Offenbach, and Meghan Monaghan, who sang Mabel in last summer’s “Pirates of Penzance”; she’ll be back as Euridice in the Monteverdi. Some events that may be of additional interest to the public: Post-Opera Receptions – Each opening night; buffet and cash bar, $15. Family Day on July 15 (12:15 p.m.) – Families are invited to learn the Can-Can and prior to a matinee performance of Offenbach’s Orpheus. $10. Online Exhibit Opening on July 16 (6 to 8:30 p.m.) – Works by Michael Slattery, Orfeo in the Monterverdi production, July 16 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Sego Café in downtown Oneonta. $20. As the Holy Trinity monks hold prayer services and mount a letter-writing campaign, Otsego 2000 is seeking out the most appropriate “petitioners” to file an Article 78 complaint against the 68-turbine Jordanville Wind Farm, a preliminary step to going to court to block the 400-foot-tall towers in view of James Fenimore Cooper’s Glimmerglass. The Otsego 2000 board of directors met for two hours Tuesday afternoon, July 3, but were not forthcoming after leaving the meeting on whether a firm decision was reached on a course of action. An announcement is planned early next week, according to Martha Frey, Otsego 2000 executive director. Henry S.F. Cooper Jr., Otsego 2000 president and the only person authorized to speak for the board, could not be reached. However, it was learned an extensive conference call was conducted at the meeting, with Otsego 2000’s environmental lawyer, Drayton Grant of Rhinebeck and New York City, participating. Polly Renckens, an Otsego 2000 board member, said “no decision has been made” one way or the other. “We are working very hard to make the right decision,” she said. “We’re still deciding,” echoed Kent Barwick, another board member who attended the meeting and was encountered at the Springfield Center Independence Day parade the following day. Still another Otsego 2000 director, attorney Robert Poulson, was unable to attend the meeting, but said he supports a strong challenge if tenable. “Do I want to see windmills at the other end of the lake?” He answered his own question: “Of course not.” The first legal hurdle to get over is the question of “standing” – finding people with the most to lose from the wind farm, which is planned by Community Energy on both side of the ridge between Van Hornesville and Jordanville in the southern Herkimer County towns of Warren and Stark. “The fact of the matter is people living 10 to 15 miles out will see it,” said Sue Brander of Advocates for Stark. “But they won’t hear it. It won’t ruin their water supply. It won’t give their children learning disabilities.” She added, however, “real estate values will effect us all.” At Otsego 2000’s request, she agreed to be a petitioner, and lined up four other people who are in proximity to turbines and have spoken up at hearings and information meetings over the past year. One, Denise Como, a one-time truck driver, has objected to the damage she perceives will be done by the large trucks that would be needed. Another, Steve Reichenbach, has “a baby a week old and a turbine 1,200 feet from his home.” The others are Yuri Zycoff and Diane Thomas. Harry Levine, who heads Advocates for Springfield, said at mid-week if the Advocates and Otsego 2000 are in sync – as they well may be – they may file an appeal jointly; if there are profound differences, the Advocates may file their own appeal, Levine said. After a year working through the State Environmental Quality Review Act process, the towns of Warren and Stark, on June 20 and 21 respectively, accepted the final Environmental Impact Statement on the project and approved special-use permits. That step started a 30-day clock running on the Article 78 proceeding. The next step for Community Energy is to apply for a certificate of necessity from the state Public Service Commission, which would require a further public hearing before action could be taken. The towns must then issue building permits for each turbine and related building in their jurisdictions. Meanwhile, the monks at Holy Trinity Monastery, the Russian Orthodox Church’s spiritual headquarters overseas, have begun a cycle of “molebin,” prayers of supplication somewhat like the Roman Catholic novena, and as many as a dozen people from the community have been attending. Father Luke Murianka, the deputy abbott, said all are welcome. But, since the services are not being held on a set schedule, prospective participants should call the monastery, (315) 858-0940. “Certainly, we feel that prayer is one of the best methods,” Father Luke said, but influential Russian Orthodox clerics are also weighing in, and their letters will be sent to Gov. Eliot Spitzer and others in state government. Archbishop Hilarian Kapral of Australia, former abbot at Jordanville and metropolitan in Manhattan, had visited a wind farm in Tasmania and concluded “it would be terrible tragedy to have it here.” The archbishop in Manhattan, Gabriel Chemodakov, has also written a letter decrying “the desecration of the landscape.” At Fenimore Farm, James Fenimore Cooper’s biographer Wayne Franklin will be speaking next week about: Fenimore Farm. Fenimore Farm today is the Fenimore Art Museum, the Georgian mansion donated to the New York State Historical Association by Stephen Carlton Clark in 1944, and Franklin, whose “James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years,” was published by Yale University Press on June 19, will deliver a public lecture there at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July 11. Franklin’s talk will be just one of numerous highpoints Cooper fans will be experiencing locally in the next several days, as the 16th annual Cooper Conference and Seminar, “The Coopers’ World: Literature & The Formation of a New American Paradigm,” is under way from Sunday, July 8, to Thursday, July 12, at SUNY Oneonta’s Morris Conference Center. Wednesday afternoon, before Franklin’s speech, the conferees will be in Cooperstown, touring The Farmers’ and Fenimore Art museums, before gathering for a reception on “The O-Te-Saga’s” east veranda and, presumably, taking in their colleague’s lecture. The following day, Franklin, who is chairman of American Studies at the University of Connecticut, will deliver the keynote address on the topic, “Everything Was Subordinated To Him: Cooper’s Resistance to Lafayette.” That will end the conference. The conference is organized under the auspices of SUNY Oneonta’s English department, and Richard E. Lee, the department’s chairman, is conference director. This year’s seminar coordinator is Roger Hecht, a SUNY Oneonta assistant professor of English. Scholars will be visiting here from around the nation and even the world. Tamara Logacheva will be presenting on “Translating Cooper for a Russian Audience.” Jacqueline Foulon from the Universite of Paris will discuss “Cooper’s ‘Letter to his Countrymen.’” One of the more unusual presentations, “Perhaps Some Day It Will Be Pleasant,” will be delivered by Christina Starobin of the Culinary Institute of America, who has researched the treatment of animals in Cooper’s novels.  A Difficult Birth; A Beautiful Baby Bridge
As Crew Battled Soft Earth, Flood Waters,
3-Month Job Turned Into 10-Month Ordeal
It’s done. And it’s beautiful.
But you can’t blame county Highway Superintendent Ron Tiderencel if he shudders at bit when the smart new $2.1 million Susquehanna Avenue bridge comes into view. For what was anticipated as a three-month job – from late August to late November 2006 – stretched out into a 10-month one. People all over the village complained about the pound, pound, pound of the pile-driver. Fitness buffs grumbled about the long detour back and forth to the Clark Sports Center. And neighbors on that detour, Brooklyn Avenue, were in an uproar as the constant rumble of traffic over potholes awakened their sleepy street. Regardless, it had to be done. “It was the worst bridge in the county at the time,” a 2 on the county’s 1-5 scale, Tiderencel said the other day in an interview in his office on the second floor of the county Highway Department on Linden Avenue. Pothole after pothole kept popping open on the old bridge’s deck, meaning something was happening to the fill between the pavement and the arch beneath. That cement arch also showed signs of efflorescence, a rash that indicates dampness. Three years of planning – the development and pursuit of four alternatives, an archaeological survey, a go-head from the “SHPO,” the State Historical Preservation Office – occurred. Work began on schedule; demolition was routine. Multi-national Earth Tech designed the span. The prefab structure was on order with Con/Span, one of the nation’s foremost bridge builders. Larry Shaw from Barton & Logiudice, supervising engineer for the Albany-based consultants, was on site. The crews from Tioga Construction, Herkimer, were ready to go. Then pile-driving began. When the H-piles – looked at from the end, they are shaped like a capital H – hit 60 feet, the anticipated depth necessary, they kept going. The ground just wasn’t firm enough to hold the superstructure. (The firmness is measured in “hits per foot” – for instance, if it takes two hits of the pile driver to drive the H-pile a foot, the foundation’s twice as firm as one hit per foot.) Seventy feet; 80 feet. It wasn’t until piles reached 100 feet that the required firmness was achieved. Figure it out. Two-thirds more steel than anticipated would be needed. “We didn’t have enough steel,” said Tiderencel. It turns out the H-piles aren’t constantly being made; they’re batched. The next batch wasn’t due to be done until the end of January. The H-piles on the market had been spoken for. “There was no more to be found,” Ron said. Happily, he knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew there was a stack of H-piles available in Texas. The phone in Tiderencel’s office rang at 9 one morning. Do you want it? If so, say so now. By 10, the order was placed. Four weeks of driving pile followed, and a hazard surfaced. It rained. And rained. The Village of Cooperstown was able to control the flow into the Susqehanna River at Mill Street to a degree, but water began splashing over the sheet pile – sheets of steel – that cordoned off the work site. At that time, crews were “well below the bottom of the river,” so there was cause for some concern. By this time, Columbus Day had passed. That’s when the asphalt plants close for the season. So when the span was finally put in place – it came in, piece by piece, 14 tractor-trailer loads – there was no way to pave the deck. Tiderencel, needing to get his snowplows to the other side, opened the bridge nonetheless to traffic. There’s an upside to this, he said: Cars and truck driving over the soon-pitted dirt compacted it to a much greater degree than it would have been otherwise. In any event, spring arrived, the asphalt plants reopened and the bridge was closed again to complete the job. Not surprisingly, perhaps, there were some final wrinkles: One young fellow’s name kept appearing on the sidewalk’s wet cement. “We had to tear out four sections of sidewalk,” Tiderencel said. On Wednesday, June 27, Don Lindberg, chairman of the county Board of Representatives, and Tiderencel inspected what had been wrought and announced the job complete. Then, without fanfare, the barricades were removed. MEMBERSHIP INVESTMENTS: It is time to make your renewed support for your Chamber. 2008 Renewal Investment Invoices have been mailed. Please fill out the Member Questionnaire and send it back with your renewal ASAP. Check out the new Membership Directory and category listings at www.otsegocountychamber.com. If you have any questions about your invoice, your current category listing or you would like to purchase multiply listings, contact Shelly at (607) 432-4500 ext. 207 or shelly@otsegocountychamber.com. | Jan. 04, 2008 | Local Honor Roll | Pages From The Paper | july 6th 2007 | Hall of Fame Friday | Hall of Fame Saturday | Hall of Fame Sunday | Hall of Fame Monday | July282006 Archive | Aug042006 Archive | Aug112006 Archive | Aug182006 Archive | Sept012006 Archive | Sept082006 Archive | Sept152006 Archive | Sept222006 Archive | Sept292006 Archive | Oct062006 Archive | Oct132006 Archive | Oct202006 Archive | Oct272006 Archive | Nov032006 Archive | Nov172006 Archive | Nov242006 Archive | Dec012006 Archive | Dec082006 Archive | Dec152006 Archive | Dec222006 Archive | Dec292006 Archive | Jan052007 Archive | Jan192007 Archive | Jan262007 Archive | February092007 Archive | February162007 Archive | February232007 Archive | March162007 Archive | March232007 Archive | March302007 Archive | March302007 Archive | April132007 News Archive | Chris Gentile | Obituary | April272007 Archive | May112007 Archive | May112007 Archive | May252007 Archive | June 22, 2007 | July 13 2007 | Sept05 2007 | Sept 7th 2007 | Aug 31st 2007 | Local Law Parking | October 26, 2007 | Nov. 2 2007 | Nov. 16, 2007 | Glimmerglass Oct 5,2007 | Nov 16., 2007 | November 30 2007 | Nov. 30, 2007 | Dec. 07, 2007 | Dec. 14, 2007 | Dec. 21, 2007 | Dec. 28, 2007 | Jan. 11, 2008 | Jan. 18, 2008 | Jan. 25, 2008 | Feb 1, 2008 | Feb. 8, 2008 | Feb. 22, 2008 | GlimmerGlass Feb. 15, 2008 | Sports Feb. 15, 2008 | Feb.28, 2008 | March 7, 2008 | March 14, 2008 | GlimmerGlass March 14, 2008 | March 21, 2008 | March 28, 2008 | April 4, 2008 | April 11, 2008 | April 18, 2008 | April 25, 2008 | May 9, 2008 | May 2, 2008 | May 23, 2008 | | Our Services | Contact Us | Great Links | Return Home | Classified Ads | News Archive | Cooperstown Homes | Calendar -Best Bets | Letters to the Editor | |
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