Springtime

The pond is still frozen solid, but there were geese on it anyway this morning. I’ve seen small groups and pairs flying over the last few days, but this is the first time I’ve seen them land. Almost all the snow is gone from the hill, except in the shady places near the wooded borders, and in the mountains Jay piled up clearing the driveway, although they have shrunk considerably. I’ve been hearing songbirds, and I’ve seen a few at a distance, but none close enough to identify. The daffodils are starting to sprout. The little stream that runs down Scotch Hill Road to where it ends at 205 is still partly frozen. Its waterfalls have rows of gleaming icicles on both sides, but the water runs free in the middle. Otsego County is coming back to life.

This has been such a hard winter for the county, after a hard summer and fall without tourists. Our favorite restaurants in Cooperstown have made it through to spring, and they must all be feeling the promise of outdoor dining. Miraculously, Silvio’s little Hartwick Restaurant has survived. Some of the tourist dependent shops in Cooperstown have closed permanently, but I’d guess there will be new entrepreneurs coming to try their hands by summer. There is talk that Dreams Park, the big baseball camp for Little Leaguers, will open at reduced capacity and with a range of limitations this summer. That business is important for Cooperstown, in weekly rentals for visiting families, in restaurants, and in shops. The Glimmerglass Opera is constructing an outdoor stage and has a season planned. The Baseball Hall of Fame will have some sort of an induction ceremony this year, but it won’t be 30,000 visitors here for the weekend. So while the natural world will have a normal spring, the world of humans will be way better than last year, but not quite normal.

The main economic engine of Cooperstown is Bassett Hospital, and of course that employment base has been stable. We’ve had 44 Covid deaths so far in Otsego County, putting our mortality rate at a little less than half the national average. I don’t have the data, but I’d guess that most of the deaths have been in denser Oneonta. People are still pretty good about masking up here, and the Oneonta Colleges, Hartwick College and SUNY, seem to have gotten their students to behave a bit more responsibly. What spring break will bring is another question. But everyone I know over 65 has gotten at least one shot, so the most vulnerable population is better protected now.

Joe Biden is president. As my anxiety about Covid has started to ebb, so has my anxiety about reading the headlines each morning. It’s such a relief to have Trump out of office, off Twitter, and largely off the front page. The damage Trump has done lingers here in hardened partisanship and misinformation about the pandemic and the vaccines. But some of that damage is giving way to the $1.9T bill and its benefits to the County and to individuals and families. In our economy, those $1400 rescue checks are huge, and the new child tax credits will be an even bigger deal. For many, the extended unemployment benefits mean no loss of income and even modest improvements. Our little County is getting money that will make a real difference, and there’s aid for farmers and small businesses that will matter. If Biden manages to pass an infrastructure bill that includes rural broadband, the recovery picture will be even brighter. Deb Haaland is Secretary of the Interior. It doesn’t have near the impact on us that it has on Western States and areas with large Native populations, but of all his cabinet picks, this one lifts my heart the most and fills me with hope for a country that has been ravaged by the oil and gas crowd, a country in which continuing betrayal of Native people has been the norm for so long. Nationally, it has felt like four years of brutal winter. And now the ice is thawing, the green shoots are appearing, and the geese are back in droves.