BY SANDY BROWN
The month of October was absolutely GOURD-geous at The Thanksgiving Home. We started off the month with a beautiful and festive harvest dinner for both staff and residents. As one big family, we sat around warm plates of turkey, fluffy mashed potatoes, delicious corn casserole and fresh rolls.
Laurie Blatt handed out black markers and miniature pumpkins to each table. Ourassignment was to pass the pumpkin around with each person adding one facial featureto make a jack-o’-lantern face. The creativity swooshed through the air like a friendly ghost as each pumpkin came to life with smiling mouths and missing teeth, crossed eyes and curly hair. Our harvest dinner was also a time to celebrate October birthdays with the most delicious pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and caramelized sugar made by our extraordinary cook, Darcey Schilling.
Samantha Klein, Dottie Bly, Martha Quinn, Tierney Johnson, Amanda Groshans, and Lauren Miller were our birthday celebrants this month.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY — we are so glad you were born! We welcomed two new members to our family in October in our traditional Thanksgiving Home style with a party! Lois Warrell and Norma Wagner joined the Thanksgiving Home family; they both bring their experiences and warm smiles and fit right in with the rest of us. It’s hard tobelieve they just joined us; they are already integral components of our home.
Former resident Maureen Micek popped in for a visit and enjoyed dinner with us. She even stayed for a singa- long. It was wonderful to hear her stories about New Hampshire and to bring her up to date on news here.
Reconnecting with Maureen brought more sunshine and laughter to the Thanksgiving Home.
Francis Wright, the directorof the Otsego County Office of the Aging, presented an update on Medicare changes. Martha Wilhelm met with individual residents about their pharmacy plans. We thank both of them for sharing their knowledge and expertise.
To get us all in the Halloween mood, Bruce Markuson came and told ghost stories of prominent places in Cooperstown.
We all enjoyed the spooky ambiance he created and hearing about “the other side” that exists in our own hometown.
On Halloween, residents and staff dressed in a variety of costumes, ranging from cowboys, to tigers, and witches. Kathy Lindberg, Hilde Parr and Sandy Brown came as the Three Wise Men.
Alberta Bowes won the candy corn contest by guessing how many “kernels” of candy corn were in a jar. Laurie told Halloween jokes, and we played charades and Halloween bingo.
Jameson Gable made quite an entrance in a Spiderman suit, complete with burly muscles! He also invited his cronies from Cooperstown preschool to come and trick or treat with us.
The kids were dressed in spectacular costumes: a construction worker, an Indian prince, a dragon and a princess along with many other creative ideas.
Their teacher, Miss Mary, led them in several Halloween songs and entertained us all with their smiles and polite manners. The children gave out handmade paper pumpkins to the residents and warmed the hearts of everyone in the room.
On a sad note, we lost a member of our family this month. Bobbie Mook died on Oct. 18 here at the home. There was a celebration of her life on Nov. 5 at the Presbyterian Church in Cooperstown. Bobbie is greatly missed by all of us.
She was a sweet lady witha bright smile. I will always remember her love of plants, namely violets. Bobbie taught me how to propagate African violets and actually gave me two of her violets as gifts. I have one here at the home and one at my house; each time I see them, I think of thekind and generous woman who gave them to me.
Columns
Home Notes: Residents enjoy harvest dinner
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From Fly Creek: Revving up for spring
Time to bring you up to date on Fly Creek’s happy clambering into Spring. First, the eatery scene. “Is Jerry’s open yet?” The answer is, “Oh, yes!” The porches are freshly stained; the lawns a uniform green, and the hop vines are already climbing the posts on the covered side deck. Blue and I went up there to lunch earlier this week, and I celebrated spring with my traditional bacon, onion and Swiss cheese hamburger. We two sat on the deck, enjoying the broad view and some spectacular clouds marching across, up toward Schuyler Lake.
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In These Otsego Hills: More from 1986 ...
This week we continue with the discussion of telephone service from the pre-dial days. On March 12 we noted that: “No one has yet produced a telephone directory from pre-dial days, but Doug Preston of New Hartford recalls that some business (which one?) in the village had the phone number 7.”
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Home Notes: Celebrations abound at the Thanksgiving Home
April was a month of celebrations and much to appreciate. We had a 90th birthday celebration for Wanda Noyes on April 4 including her family and friends. Personal care staff Dee Bouck worked with residents to hand paint Easter eggs for the tree in the activity room.
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In These Otsego Hills: 1986 continues ...
This week we continue our journey through the columns of 1986 with the answer to the question “for whom, according to tradition, was Hannah’s Hill named?”
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Book Notes: Baseball book features local contributors
Baseball is part of the nation’s fabric. Most kids have a memory of the game either from playing Little League, attending a major league contest or meeting a favorite player. In Cooperstown that feeling is magnified since we are the official home of baseball. We get to see firsthand what has made the sport the national pastime.
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From Fly Creek: Ya really wanna know?
SETTING: Fly Creek General Store. CAST: Assorted seated geezers, drinking coffee. [Door opens, enter heavy-set geezer; walking slowly with wide stance, maybe prostatitis.]
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In These Otsego Hills: Returning to 1986 ...
For the past several years now we have undertaken sharing some of the area’s oral history we have collected over the years that we have written this column. Therefore, this year, we would like to go back to 1986 to share that rather unusual year. Those who were here then no doubt remember that it was that year that the village celebrated the bicentennial of its founding.
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From Fly Creek: For reasons unknowable
[Jim’s reached back to 2002 to share one of his favorite columns.] My father was born as the last century began into a river village in tidewater Maryland. He told me once of a man there in his boyhood who, like so many, made a thin living tonging for oysters in the cold months and, in the hot and humid ones, crabbing and raising vegetables.
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In These Otsego Hills: CCS balancing act ... side two
Last week we shared a number of activities in which students at CCS can participate. We thought it was an impressive, if not overwhelming, list. And we are indeed pleased that the young people of our area have these opportunities. However, we think it is also important to keep in mind that these undertakings do have a cost associated with them. They are not free. In fact there are, no doubt, those who would say they do not come cheap.
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From Fly Creek: A graceful crowd
Make of this what you will, friends. I feel I’m really meant to share it with you. Despite good medication for my Parkinsonism, every four or five weeks I can sensethe symptoms building up on me, giving me more than ordinary trouble. Lately it’s been falls, and last week brought a typical one. I’d gone out to get the paper, moving along with penguin steps on the snowcoved ice patches, and usingmy spike-tipped cane the waya climber uses an ice axe. But circumstances overcame me. Parkinson’s wipes out the possibility of multi-tasking.
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In These Otsego Hills: This and that and the other side ...
We note that the CCS Class of 2012 is presenting its senior class play, “Snow White” by Tim Kelly, this week with performances 7:30 p.m Thursday and Friday, March 29 and 30, and at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31. All performances will be at the Nicolas J. Sterling Auditorium at the Middle/High School.
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In These Otsego Hills: That green thing ...
Of late we have noticed that our email inbox has been much busier than usual. In fact, we find ourselves hard pressed to keep up with all the various messages we receive. As a result we suspect we have not answered some in as timely a fashion as might be thought appropriate.
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From Fly Creek: What you need to know
In their last Sunday’s bulletins, all 84 churches of Otsego County were to have carried announcements of an important meeting; most of them did. But because the announcement is so important, and not just to the churched, here it is again.
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Book Notes: Living the magic of ‘Hoosier’
A lot of people consider “Hoosiers” the best sports film of all time. The 1986 classic follows the exploits of a fictional small town Indiana high school basketball team in 1952 as it attempts to achieve the impossible dream of a state championship. The story is inspired by the true life achievement of the 1954 Milan team, who with an enrollment of only 161 students shocked big city power Muncie Central on a last second shot to win the state title. It’s the kind of sports story that represents something that is hard to grasp unless you live in a small town.
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In These Otsego Hills: The most perfect village... home to heavy industry?
We suspect we would get a whole lot more accomplished if we spent less time thinking, pondering and musing about things. In fact, there is a good possibility we might actually have completed our goal of cleaning the basement if we only focused on the task at hand, instead of trying to figure out the world around us. It almost makes us wonder if it is possible to think too much about things. We certainly hope not because should that be the case, we are in deep trouble.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: The past in the present
Clichés abound about the value of photographs. Most are probably true at least to a certain extent. What I do know about an image is that it represents something of the past that is not the pastitself. But that is the power of any image. It represents something that once was. The beauty of an image, revisited, is that it functions as a catalystfor reliving in the present a past experience. My own view, one that I thank the Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges for, is that all we ever can experience is the present.
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Home Notes: Workshops held for Thanksgiving Home residents
We welcomed Linda Keller, Ph.D. of the Bassett Research Institute and Ida Baker of NYCAMH who presented a six-week workshop for residents and staff.
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From Fly Creek: Late-winter hamlet news
Well, at least I’m “guessing” it’s late winter now — in the winter that wasn’t. But, if not snow, I can provide a flurry of Fly Creek news to share with you, scooping Associated Press, Reuter’s, and United Press International, not to mention all local news services except our General Store.
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In These Otsego Hills: Waiting for spring to have sprung ...
Difficult as it to believe, both January and February seem to have flown by and we find ourselves turning the calendar over to the month of March, which we have long thought is one of the more dreary months of the year. Of course, as in the pastthere are signs of spring as reflected by the tapping of the maple trees. For many years, the trees sprouted buckets to capture their all important sap. However, we now know to look for the sap collection lines that are strung from tree to tree.
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Book Notes: Kennedy: a unique individual
It’s been almost 50 years since the Kennedy assassination shocked the nation. Since then much has been written about President John F. Kennedy and whether he would have achieved his destiny (whatever that may have been) if he had lived. It is said he inspired young people in a way that has never been equaled. And there is the notion of Camelot, espoused by his widow Jackie, that there will never be a time of hope and promise like that again.
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From Fly Creek: Revving up for spring
