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Hyde Hall’s Hyde & Shriek!, Summer Dreams insert to 29 October 6 1 rday from 3 tu a er S b o y, ct a d Monday O rsday, Fri Every Thu ay October 30 and 12 credit Plus Sund $10 cash/$ y tr n E • onta Mall, One Southside
Volume 214, No. 39
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AllOTSEGO.com, OTSEGO COUNTY’S DAILY NEWSPAPER/ONLINE
Cooperstown, New York, Thursday, September 29, 2022
Cornell Cooperative Extension Embarking on Huge Project Richard Sternberg
“I am currently raising funds for renovating our offices at 123 Lake Street in Cooperstown,” Liz Callahan, Executive Director of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Schoharie and Otsego Counties (CCE) said. “It’s really involved and we want to do it right.” CCE will have its interior as well as exterior renovated. “We want everything to be energy efficient and we need to address the issues that this 100-year-plus building has,” Ms. Callahan said. “We’re looking at plans for energy efficiency, in addition to basic structural and rehabilitation needs throughout the building. Everything from electrical service to plumbing to insulation, but those aren’t the only things that need to be looked at.” CCE and other parallel organizations related to agriculture have occupied this building since the 1940s. “The building is deeded to CCE from the Clark family. It must be used with purposes that are aligned with CCE,” she said. “Organizations have floated in and out of the building. It gets a lot of use.” Which brings us to the renovation project. “The house is a great example of local vernacular architecture. It was a farmhouse. We need something now that accommodates 21st-century programming and office space to match,” she said. “We want more programming spaces for not only CCE programs, but we’d like the community to be able to do programming as well.” “We need to use our building in a more contemporary fashion,” Ms. Callahan said. “The planning process is just getting
started, fundraising is essential now!” The goal is to have a solid plan by the end of 2023. “Once the plan is complete and fundraising is secure, we imagine this happening over a five-year timeframe,” she added. CCE was organized on January 5, 1914. Its purpose was to bring scientific principles of agriculture from the universities in New York State, especially from Cornell, to farmers’ attention on how to be more productive and to use best practices. While that still remains one of its major focuses, CCE has broadened its mission “to put knowledge to work in pursuit of economic viability, ecological sustainability, and social well-being.” CCE is a nonprofit, unincorporated association, organized under authority of New York State Consolidated Laws, County Law 224(8), as a subordinate government agency and exempt from income tax by Internal Revenue Code 501(C)(3) as an educational organization. On January 1, 2011, CCE of Otsego and Schoharie counties merged. The Extension System grew out of the Morrill Act of 1862, which allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges in U.S. states using the proceeds from sales of federally owned land, enacted during the American Civil War, and the Morrill Act of 1890 (the Agricultural College Act of 1890) expanded this model. The purpose of land-grant colleges was “without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactic, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, Continued on page 8
INSIDE ► F ly crreek general store vandalized, front windows broken, page A2 ►s pringbrook closes on Ford block, page A3 ► f ormer surgeon credits his successful career to m*a*s*h, page A4
This Week’s Fall Photo
Photo: Nicholas Durwin
Photo of the Birch Pond at Wilber State Park, Oneonta.
Weekly Medical Briefs Multiple Shots in One Arm? Picking whether to give both shots in the same arm or separate arms seems to be a matter of debate and speculation rather than hard science when giving more than one vaccine at the same time. Some, including the White House, advocate giving both shots in one arm spaced at least one inch apart while others advocate using different arms for each. Many pediatricians, who often have to administer four or five shots to a baby at once, are habitual splitters. “If there’s more than one vaccine syringe to give to a baby, generally, two legs are used,” “If there’s a local reaction to the vaccine, you can identify which vaccine it was if you separate them by space.” (The author of the article had a more painful reaction in her left arm, where she received the COVID shot. Others have reported the same disparity.) The Atlantic
Stop Cooking Chicken in NyQuil
► A FEW THOUGHTS ON IMPORTANT THINGS: Our columnists and letter writers this week look at the hunting season; accolades for school staff, let’s bring 1,000 employed residents to Oneonta, A4&5 Follow Breaking News On
AllOTSEGO.com L to R: Liz Callahan, Executive Director, studies the renovation plans with Madelyn Sánchez Taylor, Operations Coordinator, and Mary Ellen Calta, Master Gardener Volunteer.
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The FDA has issued a warning against cooking chicken in NyQuil after a social media challenge that encouraged people to try it went viral. Called the “sleepy chicken challenge,” the trend tells people to cook chicken in NyQuil or something similar which include ingredients such as acetaminophen, dextromethorphan and doxylamine. “The challenge sounds silly and unappetizing — and it is. But it could also be very unsafe,” the FDA said. “Boiling a medica-
tion can make it much more concentrated and change its properties in other ways.” Even if someone doesn’t plan to eat the chicken, inhaling the vapors of the medication while it cooks could cause high levels of the drug to enter the body. FDA
Pandemic Fraud The Justice Department said on Tuesday that it had charged 48 people with running a brazen fraud against antihunger programs in the coronavirus pandemic, stealing $240 million by billing the government for meals they did not serve to children who did not exist. The case, in Minnesota, is the largest fraud uncovered in any pandemic-relief program, prosecutors said, standing out even in a period when heavy federal spending and lax oversight allowed a spree of scams with few recent parallels. The Minnesota operation, prosecutors said, involved faked receipts for 125 million meals. At times, it was especially bold: One accused conspirator told the government he had fed 5,000 children a day in a second-story apartment. New York Times
Reduce Risk of Dementia A new study suggests that adults who take just under 10,000 steps per day have a lower risk of dementia. According to the results, there was an association between daily steps and a lower risk of dementia. The researchers observed that optimal step count was 9,826 steps and the minimal step count was 3,826 steps. JAMA Neurology
THE FREEMAN’S JOURNAL & HOMETOWN ONEONTA, OTSEGO COUNTY’S LARGEST PRINT CIRCULATION 2010 WINNERS OF The Otsego County Chamber/KEY BANK SMALL BUSINESS AWARD