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A mix of Schuyler news ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Aug. 8 -- Life is often unsettled. Agitated. Discordant. But that's not always bad. It can keep us sharp; creative.

It's not always good, of course. Just look at calamities throughout history. Or at such things as the stock market and economy today.

Having said that, I offer a hodgepodge of local goings-on -- some of them clearly unsettled, some discordant, some being settled, and some turned creative.

--Michelle Simiele is stepping down as coach of the Watkins Glen High School girls varsity basketball team due to family obligations and personal issues. It was not an easy decision, she said, given her love of the game. She has had a couple of good runs as coach, with four division titles and two IAC championships in seven seasons at the helm -- including an IAC title last year, when the team went 16-4. Her overall record is 110-38. Assistant Chris Clark will be taking the helm, and while Simiele says she does not foresee coming back as head coach, she indicated she might assist Clark down the road, if he's amenable.

She expects a successful season for the squad this winter, given that it has several returning seniors, including three-time WGHS Athlete of the Year Taylor Chaffee. "They're very good," said Simiele, "and very dedicated." And beyond them, in the lower grades, "there's a lot of talent coming up," including Simiele's two daughters.

"I appreciate having had the opportunity to coach in the district," she said. "The administration has always been supportive."

--Primary races are under way for a couple of important county offices: county judge and treasurer. The campaigns have been pretty low-keyed up to now, but Legislature chairman Dennis Fagan, in expressing frustration last week over an audit critical of procedures in the office of incumbent Treasurer Peggy Starbuck, might have sparked a political attack or two in the race between Starbuck and challenger Gary Whyman by taking a verbal swipe at that office's performance and competence. "The only way to resolve this situation is through the ballot box," he said.

The judge's race has been mild, if you discount the appearance of a couple of gazillion signs along the county roadways promoting Joe Fazzary or Dennis Morris. I imagine there might be a little more turbulence in that campaign before it's over, although there are certain safeguards in place in races for judgeships -- a position held to be exalted. The primary is Sept. 13, but both candidates have indicated an intention to carry on through the general election in November.

--The sport of football went south last year at Watkins Glen High School, where it might have trouble relaunching this season. We may know on the first day of practice, Aug. 15, whether WGHS has a sufficient number of players to field a team this year. Let's hope it does.

The popular theme circulating this past weekend was that if -- IF -- Watkins comes up short of players for a football program, there is an old existing "fallback position" ... that those who want to play can join a team in an adjoining district while still attending WGHS. True enough, says a school official, "but it's not as simple as that." There would be the matter of applying to the league, of transportation (provided by the Watkins athletes) to the selected school, the securing of uniforms (who pays?), and such issues as playing time for the Watkins athletes on their new team, and how that might go over with the new team's players and parents.

If Watkins were to play any games this season and then terminate early (as it did last year), there could be no movement of players from one district to another.

--Odessa-Montour, despite looking a little depleted athletically in girls' sports (except perhaps in swimming) after the graduation of a very strong class, is looking optimistically toward one of the boys' sports -- football -- under new coach Bob Lee, a two-time former WGHS coach who Watkins officials seemingly had had a chance to hire, if they'd wanted. How his O-M program figures into Watkins' football future -- as opponent or landing pad -- remains to be seen.

Lee -- who is currently coaching the Southern Tier Warriors minor league football team -- reports that he has yet another high school coaching job in his future. He said the Bradford School Board has approved him as that school's boys varsity basketball coach. When asked what he'd do for a springtime coaching job, he laughed and said "I don't know. Maybe baseball."

--Both Watkins Glen and O-M have embraced change in their athletic departments, with new faces running them: Chris Wood at Odessa as Athletic Manager, and Alan Gregory at WGHS as a Teacher on Special Assignment. That latter was a cost-cutting move -- shifting Gregory's administrative role without hiring anyone new as Athletic Director or even paying a stipend. This points up the economic stresses of the time.

--With a struggling economy comes a tendency by various people to take measures to counteract it. Some measures are matters of shrinkage, and some of growth, of creativity. Accordingly, we have seen some business initiatives of late.

In Odessa, JoAnna Scott -- faced with a reduction of her role as business head of the Mane Street Hair Salon upon that building's sale -- instead opened another salon down the street, along Rt. 224 west of Odessa. It's called Simply Your Best, and JoAnna reports that the early days of the business have been encouraging.

In Watkins Glen, meanwhile, the Henderson Pharmacy storefront on Franklin Street closed, while next door a new antique store opened: Country Haven Treasures, run by Kim Andrews and Mike Jayne. Near that store, bicycles are now rentable in front of the offices of Schooner Excursions, which operates the "True Love" sailboat on Seneca Lake. There is also a new tanning salon in the old Pick-a-Flick store, and a Chinese-Japanese restaurant not far from there is trying to pass the final hurdles on the way to opening.

Ken Wilson has sold his Glen Dairy Bar ice cream stand after 14 years of operation, and another new restaurant, a Mexican one, is set to open Thursday in the old BV's restaurant on Fourth Street. A ribbon-cutting is set for Sept. 1.

It's a time of unsettlement, of change. It's a time of comings and goings, of successes and failures, of extravagances and economies.

It is, in other words, like almost any other time before, and any other time to come.

******

The late Debra Whiting was a contestant several months ago on the Food Network's "Chopped" program, a taping that will finally air Tuesday, Aug. 16 from 10-11 p.m. A facebook invitation is making the rounds urging restaurants in our region and from Buffalo to Syracuse to host viewing parties for the episode. It urges interested restaurant owners to contact the Red Newt Winery's Greg Tumbarello at Greg@rednewt.com or at 607-546-4100.

Whiting -- a community leader and a renowned executive chef at Red Newt, which she co-owned with her husband Dave -- died June 30 in a motor vehicle accident on the New York Thruway. Since her death, the Debra Whiting Foundation has, according to the Facebook page about the "Chopped" show, "been formed to carry on Debra's vision and commitment to wine, food, farms, families and community. The Debra Whiting Foundation is pending approval for a 501C3 non-profit status."

******

And earlier:

At the meeting: Front row from left: Girls varsity soccer coach Alyssa Hoobler, varsity volleyball coach Krysti Westervelt, girls modified swim coach Kelsey Wood, girls varsity swim coach Abby Tormey, Athletic Department assistant Diana Crane, varsity cross country coach Marie Fitzsimmons, and Booster Club vice president Caroline Simpson. Back row from left: girls modified soccer coach Brian Gardner, varsity football coach Lou Condon Jr., assistant varsity football coach Lou Condon Sr., and Alan Gregory, who is fulfilling duties of the Athletic Director as Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA).

The TOSA & the Trainer

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Aug. 3 -- They gathered Wednesday morning in the Field House gym at Watkins Glen High School -- coaches who are leading the school's fall sports teams this upcoming season.

The meeting was led by Alan Gregory, a self proclaimed TOSA -- Teacher on Special Assignment -- who is filling the Athletic Director's spot in the wake of the elimination of that job and the accompanying departure of Denise Wickham, who had been AD for three years.

It was a meeting notable not only for the new leadership -- Gregory is assisted by Diana Crane, who served Wickham in the Athletic Department, too -- but for the introduction of a new Athletic Trainer and Physical Therapist provided by Schuyler Hospital to better monitor the extent and treatment of sports injuries; and for the conversations afterward, specifically regarding the school's football team.

First, the new leadership:

"I am playing AD without the title," Gregory told the coaches, who were seated in the bleachers along the west wall of the gym. He said his job this year is "to support you, not to micromanage." But having proclaimed that, he stressed that he will be "very touchy about inventory." He said he had found various unused equipment that had been misplaced, and was dismayed to find that some items "had simply walked away."

"We need to get our arms around this," he said.

He also said he would stress proper care of the locker rooms in the wake of "some complaints this past year" about conditions.

Being new to athletics, he added, "It's all Greek to me. Just because I've been here (working in the district) for 30 years doesn't mean I know what I'm doing. I'm ignorant of a lot of high school sports regulations. But I promise you I will learn them by the end of the year.

"I'm looking forward to this. The one thing I ask is that we communicate with each other."

The Athletic Trainer:

Jim Somerville, employed by and paid by Schuyler Hospital, told the coaches he will be spending 30 hours a week at the school "providing athletic training services" -- a pilot program that Superintendent Tom Phillips helped arrange, and which might expand in future years to the Odessa-Montour and Bradford school districts.

"Our goal," Somerville said, "is to get kids (who are injured) seen as quickly as possible" and referred properly for treatment, "hopefully avoiding some ER trips. We hope to get kids seen in a day or two instead of a week or two." He said he would be at the school six hours a day with fluctuating hours, including presence at some sports events.

"We will keep coaches apprised," he said, of the injury status of various athletes "and when they can return" to practice or competition.

Somerville said he has been an Athletic Trainer for 25 years in various states including New York, mostly in secondary schools.

Also present this year, but on a limited basis, will be Vanessa Mirabito, a Physical Therapist at the hospital who said she specializes in foot and ankle injuries, along with those to shoulders and knees. She will be at the school a couple of hours a week doing evaluations, and will "serve as liaison between the school and the hospital. We're looking at a continuity of care between doctors, us, and you coaches."

Superintendent Phillips, in an interview after the coaches' meeting, said the Athletic Training program has been "in the works" for awhile, and got jump-started recently with the blessing of new hospital President/CEO Andy Manzer.

There is no cost to the district, he said, with the service available to all student-athletes in grades 7-12. It falls in line, too, with an unfunded state mandate calling for Concussion Management, "so it's working out beautifully."

Once-a-week evaluations by Physical Therapist Amanda Smith-Socaris will continue separately. Smith-Socaris will also be overseeing strength and speed training at the school for four weeks this fall.

The football coaches:

New head football coach Lou Condon Jr. was present with his father, Lou Sr., who will serve as Junior's assistant on the varsity. Condon Jr. takes over the role held last year by Mike Johnston Sr., who saw his lone Watkins season end prematurely (after five games) when the roster shrank to a point where continued competition was deemed unwise by those in charge.

Condon is openly nervous about the prospects of attracting enough kids this year, figuring at a minimum he needs two-dozen to start with, with defections and injuries afterward kept to a bare minimum. The first test of the available numbers comes on Aug. 10, when physicals are held in the Nurse's Office at the school. Then comes Aug. 15, the first day of practice.

"Tell the kids that anyone interested should come on down," he said.

Should there be enough players, the football schedule will have Watkins starting with a road game at Newfield on Sept. 3, followed by home games against Lansing and Whitney Point, and then the Bucket Game at Odessa-Montour on Sept. 23.

The final four games include one at Waverly on Sept. 30, two at home (against Edison and Trumansburg), and one Oct. 22 at Newark Valley.

Photo in text: Physical Therapist Vanessa Mirabito and Athletic Trainer Jim Somerville.

*****

And earlier:

The notebooks of '79 ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, July 31 -- I took a trip in 1979 designed to give me ammunition for a book. It was to be a travelogue, along the lines of ... well, any picaresque novel that suited me.

The problem was, everything I wrote back then was derivative -- lacked originality -- and so all I ended up with were notebooks full of journal-like entries from the trip, and three or four failed starts on an end product, on a book that would qualify, I hoped, as great.

The journey, in sum, was one that my wife Susan and I took to probably half of the states, and to several key national parks. We traveled in a small motorhome purchased for the trip, and stayed mostly at campgrounds. We reached the West Coast by traveling along the northern portion of the country, and returned to the East Coast by traversing southern-lying states.

In essence, we ran short of funds after a few months and ended up back in New York -- in the Southern Tier (after having lived previously in Northern New York) -- and stumbled economically for awhile before I secured regular employment at the Elmira Star-Gazette. From that point, we produced and raised two children and never seriously traveled again, other than direct back-and-forths to Florida and Michigan (the latter with some regularity in Susan's final decade).

An account of the 1979 trip has languished in those notebooks, whose pages I filled with a determination that it all would, someday, mean something. If -- as proved to be true -- I lacked the ability to convert daily notes to a compelling account that would have the public rushing to the bookstores to purchase it, I thought that something as grand as an around-the-country trip would, ulimately, be of value ... if not to myself, then to my heirs. It would be a detailed slice of family history.

Alas, it faded from memory to the point where its value seemed to lack even historical import --to the point where I, if I gave it any thought at all, grew to doubt its value entirely, other than in some snippets it contained that were either mildly amusing or somewhat poignant.

*****

I raise this matter because I have recently viewed a film that is in the form of a travelogue, but with an appealingly romantic -- actually doubly romantic -- tale weaved through it. It is not a great film, but it is a pleasure. It is called "Letters to Juliet."

The film is remarkable, in my mind, for the performances of a couple of veterans named Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero, and the chemistry they generate on the screen at their advanced age -- which is to say in the area of 70.

I'm a fan of almost any good romantic comedy -- think "Working Girl" -- and this one has moments that leave me smiling and weak-kneed at the same time. And while I laud the abilities of the lead actress, Amanda Seyfried, I am awed by the art of Redgrave and Nero, and again, by their chemistry.

There is a truth-telling here, in this story, in those two characters. And that is what I would have loved to apply to my travelogue: truth-telling. And seeing it in "Letters to Juliet," I started thinking: since film is illusion, how did they achieve this? How did they weave an essence of verity?

It didn't take me long to figure it out. I googled the names of Redgrave and Nero, and found -- as I should have recalled -- that they played the lovers Guinevere and Lancelot in the 1967 film "Camelot," were romantically involved in real life (to the point of having a child), and acted together on other film projects. And here's the kicker: Forty years after "Camelot," they reunited and were married. Yes, married. That chemistry onscreen has a reality to it because it is both true and a case of art ("Letters to Juliet") imitating life.

*****

So, I could just shake my head and say "Wow, I can't match that" as far as realism goes. And that's probably true. But there can be -- I am now convinced, the more I think about it -- a reality in a travelogue that goes beyond the daily journey ... that goes to the heart of both the exercise itself and that of the people who undertake it.

I am thereby tempted -- and possibly more than that -- to tackle that reality, to weave an American tale from my journey around the country, to turn it into something other than words in notebooks that recorded the day-to-day occurrences of what felt like an adventure, but has faded to a memory both episodic and sketchy in nature.

Somewhere in there, in those daily notes, is a pulse -- a portal, if you will, to the thoughts and emotions that drove two people to drop everything and leave on what was considered by some (not without reason) to be a foolish trip west, on what ultimately became a transition from one home (in Watertown, New York) to another (in Odessa), and an exchange of one lifestyle for another. Looking at the basics of the story, and knowing the economic difficulties the trip temporarily created for me and mine, it is not something I would likely attempt again -- not within that situation, those conditions.

But now that I have been pondering the matter -- and given that there are always perceptions and meanings that go beyond the bare facts -- I'm curious to find out if what we did, the journey we took, was a willful act fraught with irresponsibility and almost predictable economic consequence, or a life-affirming one.

The truth, a Biblical saying goes, will set you free. I don't know about that, but I think that if I could find it in those notebooks, it would give me a little different feeling about the kind of life I have, to this point, lived -- about, in particular, my decision to leave Watertown, where the security of my job could have led to a pension.

And should I locate the truth, I would hope that it proves a signpost -- shows that I am headed now in the proper direction -- and that it would serve as a barometer of my past, giving me a sense that my choices, our choices, sometimes regretted, might ... might ... actually have been the right ones.

I know that the decision to travel, the journey west and back again -- while fiscally shaky -- cured us of our wanderlust and formed, as a result, the bedrock beneath our subsequent sense of family. And that is no small feat.

In that regard, it all played out well -- could be seen (speaking as a loving parent, with Susan, of two boys) as the cornerstone of our finest and most meaningful achievements.

But consequences and achievements are the results, byplay -- not the heart of the matter, nor the truth. That, more often than not, I fear, remains hidden and beyond attainment.

But I think I might try to find it anyway. All I have to do in order to begin is to dig out and dust off those old notebooks, and start reading.

*****

And earlier:

Danger in the waters ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 17 -- I was seated Friday morning at Hawk's Landing, the Island's lone convenience store, which doubles as a restaurant. I've long made a practice of visiting Hawk's each vacation morning to field incoming e-mails with which to update this website.

It also gives me a chance to eat a well-rounded meal while contributing to the restaurant owners' business -- which seems to be a little thin this year.

I had been reminded the preceding day of the dangers of the surrounding waters as I was out walking. I passed a point along the Bois Blanc shoreline from which officials had pulled the body last year of an Island resident who drowned while simply swimming in front of her cottage. It rattled the other Islanders, and provided everyone with a reminder not to take the seemingly placid waters of the Straits of Mackinac for granted. As I passed the spot, I shivered, as if the hand of death were still present there, beckoning.

But it is not just the Straits, of course. Any lake or stream holds those dangers -- a point driven home yet again in an e-mail from a Seneca Lake resident that arrived as I ate that breakfast Friday at Hawk's Landing. Seneca, we all know, can be dangerous. Marina owner Don Roberts died in a boating accident there last year, and a couple of people were saved earlier this year after their boat capsized. Its history contains many such emergencies.

And it happened again last week, when two canoeists capsized and were rescued by a pair of shoreline residents, Cyndy Wood and Joan Merrill. Thus the e-mail.

****

But first things first. Let's talk safety on the lake.

As Sgt. Steven Lawton of the Schuyler County Sheriff's office puts it -- and he should know, being part of the department's marine division and a boating safety instructor -- there are all sorts of ways to get in trouble on the water.

One way, he says, is to neglect to take along PFDs -- personal flotation devices, or life jackets -- while out in a craft.

And if your vessel capsizes, "stay with it or climb onto it. That way you might avoid hypothermia. Don't try swimming to shore, particularly if it's a great distance away."

That is, again, because of hypothermia. "When it sets in," says Lawton, "you get confused and uncoordinated. You might start swimming around in circles, and not realize it. And you're burning energy and cooling your body that much quicker, bringing on hypothermia sooner." And especially in cold water -- which in Seneca, well away from shore, "is 65 degrees or less."

It is much colder -- about 36 to 38 degrees -- just 20 feet down. That, Sgt. Lawton said, accounts for why, on occasion, bodies are not recovered from the lake. It is so cold that decomposition and its attendant gases don't occur and thus the body won't float to the surface. It is consigned to the depths, hundreds of feet below.

"And there are rules for those doing the rescuing," said Lawton. "Precautionary measures. Like don't jump in the water. Throw them a PFD or a flotation cushion or a buoy ring.

"Never get in the water, because that can make you susceptible to the same conditions. If you do get in and the person being rescued starts thrashing, he can take you under. Get him to the boat without entering the water."

*****

Now, about that recent rescue. As I said, I got word of it Friday morning during my Hawk's Landing breakfast, in an e-mail from a Seneca Lake resident.

"No (media) covered this, but it is the talk all over town," said the e-mailer. "Cyndy Wood (Watkins Glen High School physical education teacher and aquatics director, who oversees lifeguarding and lifesaving at the school) rescued two people -- a man and a woman -- out in the middle of Seneca Lake yesterday.

"They were renting down at San Felice and went out in a canoe, and capsized with no life jackets. I understand the man was really in trouble, in danger of going under. They were heard yelling for help, and a neighbor alerted Cyndy. Cyndy jumped in her boat and rescued both people. Not exaggerating. She saved a couple of lives."

This happened a mile or so north of Peach Orchard Point, some significant distance from where the canoeists had departed from shore at Valois Point. They capsized in the lake waters down the hill, roughly, from where the Valois-Logan-Hector Fire Department is located.

After receiving the e-mail, I called the Schuyler County Sheriff's Office on the offchance that it had a report on the incident, but the dispatcher said it hadn't been involved. Firefighters had been called, though -- which I took to mean the VLH firefighters.

Without an official record from which to draw information, I decided it would be helpful to talk to someone who directly knew the facts of the incident, such as Cyndy Wood herself. But I didn't have her phone number. I did, however, obtain her daughter Kelsey's number and called that, leaving a voicemail message explaining why I wanted to talk to Cyndy. I didn't hear back from Kelsey, but at dinnertime my phone rang, and it was Cyndy herself. Kelsey had evidently passed word along.

"What happened out there?" I asked her.

She wasn't reluctant to explain, but emphasized that she didn't want any special notice. She had merely done what anybody would do in similar circumstance, she said.

"Well," she added, and outlined roughly what the e-mailer had, but with more texture -- how the canoeists, "without personal flotation devices," capsized and struggled in the water.

The woman canoeist was yelling for help, cries which were heard by a female shoreline resident -- a neighbor of Wood's not adept at boating. She ran to Cyndy's place, and Cyndy in turn -- "not knowing what I'd find out there, what I was dealing with" -- grabbed another neighbor, Joan Merrill, to go out with her. "Joan didn't hesitate. We just went. And she proved very, very helpful."

The two women climbed aboard Wood's inboard-outboard craft and found the canoeists -- a man and woman in their mid-30s, reportedly from Binghamton. The man, Wood said, was "distressed, a beginning swimmer. He didn't have a lot of time" before his struggles would have been in vain.

Wood and Merrill effected "an extension rescue from the boat," pulling the man up onto a platform at the boat's rear and into the boat "after Joan threw him a line. He was exhausted. The woman was in good shape" by comparison as they helped her aboard.

The next move was to call 911 on a cell phone, alerting the Hector firefighters to send emergency personnel to meet them ashore and "check out" the canoeists. "I didn't like (the man's) condition," Wood said. "He was pale and weak."

While enroute, the rescued woman turned to the man and said "We just used up one of our nine lives."

They were met on shore by emergency personnel, who took over. Wood said she doesn't know what happened to the two canoeists then; whether either was taken to the hospital.

The entire episode "was very disturbing, upsetting," she added. But what she and Merrill did was nothing special, she said again. "Any person" with a boat and boating experience "would have gone out there." It was merely a matter of being the right people in the right circumstance at the right time.

"I'm just glad they're safe and back to shore," Wood said of the canoeists.

*****

Sgt. Lawton, in our discussion on water safety that followed this rescue, had some observations.

The canoeists, he said, "didn't even have a PFD in the canoe. And they were in a vessel that was not appropriate for the weather conditions," which consisted of gusty wind and choppy waters.

Beyond that, "they didn't stay with the canoe" -- again, a big mistake.

Wood and Merrill "deserve all kinds of kudos," he summed up. If not for them, "we could well have had a drowning."

*****

And earlier:

A pair of deer along the Bois Blanc shoreline, near the editor's cottage.

The race to The Island ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 9 -- The summer days are warm and the nights are cool here on The Island -- a 5-by-12-mile chunk of land in the Straits of Mackinac. Cooling breezes are nearly constant. Heat waves are rare on Bois Blanc.

The Island is roughly the same as it has been for the 57 or so years I have known it. It possesses dirt roads, a 30 mph maximum for the relatively few cars on it, acres upon acres of thick state-owned forest, and game that occasionally puts in an appearance.

My first day here, I saw a deer. The next day, I spotted two down by the water, getting drinks and foraging for food, and another that visited the side yard of the cottage in which I am staying with my brother and his clan. That likely means the coyote population is still down; otherwise they would be giving chase, running down the deer.

I have encountered humans from summers past, each giving me a hearty hello -- including one young fellow who gave me a lift from the Lighthouse on the island's far shore last year.

I had felt adventurous that day, and so had headed out toward the farflung beacon on a bicycle too small for me, and had run out of steam.

While negotiating the Lighthouse road -- a path through the deep woods marked by bunker-sized potholes and snaring roots reaching across from trees on either side -- I had encountered fatigue and a growing impatience.

Then along had come an old, loud jeep driven by the young man, who had graciously taken my bike and me on as passengers back to civilization.

"Remember me?" he asked as I was out for a walk on my first day of this year's visit, along the shoreline of the island's lone municipality, Pointe aux Pins. He was working at a cottage along the way, painting the deck railing in front.

"Sure," I said. "You're the guy who saved my life last year. I thank you again."

He laughed at the exaggeration, but seemed pleased to encounter me again. Whereas his stay last year had been brief -- and well-timed from my perspective -- he is up here this year "until the last boat," he said. "In November sometime."

Since I can count the days of my stay on two hands, I felt envy course through me.

During that same walk, a rusted Toyota came sliding to a halt along the edge of the roadway to my right, and a voice called out: "I thought that was you!"

The driver was a 20-something denizen of the Island who has been coming here for most of the summers of his life, and has a house on the western shore that he shares with "my girlfriend and her two kids."

This girlfriend, I deduced right away, is someone new since last I saw him -- replacing the girl he had long squired around Bois Blanc.

"Two kids?" I said. "Instant family, huh?"

He laughed. "Yeah. It's like microwave popcorn."

*****

I also encountered the ferryboat owner, Curt Plaunt, on the crossing from the mainland -- a man I first met when I was a child and he was a toddler. And I said hello to his oldest sister, Lee, before the crossing, in the office where I paid for my ferry ticket.

That crossing, by the way, came at 4 p.m. Wednesday. I was scheduled to take the 7 o'clock boat, but made good time in a speedy rental car I had opted for on this journey. When I was four hours distant, I calculated the chances of making the 4 o'clock, including the need for a stop at a grocery store in Cheboygan -- the mainland city that serves as the ferry service's headquarters. I thought I might make it.

But even if I did, I wasn't sure there would be room on the ferry; it can carry about 16 cars, and sometimes is solidly booked, occasionally filling up at the last minute. But I wanted to try for 4 o'clock, anyway. Spending three hours waiting in Cheboygan for the next crossing was not appealing.

I knew my timing would be tight. I was getting good mileage, and so didn't refuel from Toledo north, and kept the speedometer a little above the maximum. I pulled into Cheboygan at 3:32, called my brother (already on the Island for several days) for his specific grocery needs (an obligation to which I had earlier committed), and raced through the grocery store as though on one of those Shopping Spree shows. I managed to find a checkout booth with just one person ahead of me, and sailed through quickly and out the door, tossing my purchases into the car.

The grocery store clock had indicated it was five minutes to four o'clock as I exited the building. My car clock said, a minute or so later, that I had six minutes. Which was right? Would the boat still be there? Please, I said, don't leave early.

I drove through and out of the store's large parking lot, waited at a red light, crawled along at about 25 mph in thick traffic for a mile or two, and took the first turnoff to the right that led to the river and the ferry. It pays to know the terrain, the back ways.

As I reached the ferry's lot, I saw the boat was still there, and as I rounded the corner past a line of cars, I spotted the boat owner striding across the lot. I skidded to a halt and yelled out: "Yo, Curt!"

He looked up, recognized me and gave a little wave.

"Any room on the boat?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Just pull up near it, and one of the guys will help you."

I did that, getting out of the car so a crew member could climb in and drive it on board. I ran into the nearby office to procure my ticket, ran out again, and jumped on the boat as another crew member was putting the craft's rear gate in place. The boat's engine was throbbing, impatient to make the crossing.

Seconds later, we were on our way. And I, anticipating the peace that lay ahead, and my eyes on the distant island shoreline, nodded and smiled. I had made it.

Photos in text:

Scenes of the island: A deer in the cottage's side yard, jet skiing in the Straits of Mackinac, and a snake that stuck its head up from a pile of leaves.

*******

And earlier:

One of the good ones ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, July 1 -- I had intended to be on the road today, heading west and then north toward The Island -- Bois Blanc Island in the Straits of Mackinac, which I generally visit on an annual basis.

I don't have a rental lined up this summer, but was going to bunk in a cottage held for two weeks by my brother, who is arriving there tomorrow from Florida.

But when I got up this morning, every fiber in my body told me not to go. Maybe some of that stemmed from battling a washing machine flood in two rooms the night before. Cleanup took awhile.

And maybe my senses were telling me my old van wasn't up for the journey, even though it checked out pretty well when I took it in for a checkup the other day.

Or maybe I knew intuitively that the highways are not a good place to be on the Independence Day weekend.

Anyway, I had just decided to stay home for the weekend -- and perhaps tackle the trip the following week with a rental car -- when I got a phone call alerting me to the Thruway accident Thursday night that had claimed the life of Debra Whiting.

And I felt instantly deflated. Absolutely gut-wrenched, as though someone had struck me in the midsection.

I did my job by making some phone calls and verifying the horrible news, and then posted something on this website. And then -- with just enough energy left to answer an email from an enraged reader who imagined I had somehow slighted him (a not-uncommon byproduct of my profession) -- I sagged in my desk chair.

Deb Whiting. Oh, my God.

Deb Whiting was, for those who never crossed her path, important on several levels -- mother, wife, chef of note, co-owner with husband David of the Red Newt Winery and Bistro in Hector. And she was civic minded, serving recently as chairwoman of the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.

I encountered her with some frequency -- at Watkins Glen High School, where a son of hers is a student-athlete, actor and musician; at public functions where she provided some of her specially prepared foods; at her bistro, where I photographed her last year being videotaped for a segment of a Food Network show called "Chopped"; and at various festivals. And she was almost always in the company of David.

Their office manager, Greg Tumbarello, said the accident -- on the way home from a business trip to Vermont -- occurred in a customized Volkswagen van the Whitings had purchased in April in California. They had traveled cross-country in that van after buying it. The Vermont journey was taken to visit family and friends and to try and energize their market in that state through a Burlington wine organization. Tumbarello thought they had also visited the Burlington Wine Festival while they were there.

I don't know exactly what happened out on the Thruway. The police report said it all happened quickly, with their van and another vehicle sideswiping. Both vehicles veered from the road and overturned, with the van striking a tree.

*****

The Red Newt Cellars issued a statement about Deb's passing, which you can read by clicking here. That will tell you a lot about the woman.

For my part, I feel like doing some philosophical hand-wringing -- asking what many of us tend to after something so horrible occurs: the "Why?" we tend to throw at God.

But I won't. I'm just not equipped for it.

I will only say that here was a woman of great social and ethical worth, a woman of ability, a community leader.

I will always remember her trademark short hair, her warm smile, the look of confidence and concentration on her face when she was creating one of her food specialties in the kitchen.

Here was a woman who clearly enjoyed her work, her family and her life.

Here was one of the good ones.

Photo in text: Deb Whiting during the taping of a promo for a Food Network show called "Chopped" last August. She later competed on the show in New York City, but the segment never aired.

******

And earlier:

In a world of ambiguity ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, June 21 -- I've always tended toward misdirection or, at the least, ambiguity in my novels.

In the first one I published, Island Nights, I tell about a girl who died, a girl who lived -- the same girl, dying and living in that order. The how is a mystery.

In that book's prequel-sequel, The Islander, I tell about the demise of Mussolini -- and his unsettling reappearance -- and about a carpenter in the woods who may or may not be who the religious among us would assume him to be. And the girl from Island Nights, now grown, reappears ... and embraces an uncertain future.

In Cabins in the Mist, I tell about my travels across a portal on Bois Blanc Island, my Michigan hideaway ... how I was invited through by the late gangster John Dillinger, a restless wraith looking for someone to shoot against competitively. Only there was much more to the invitation, and to the story.

In The Maiden of Mackinac, the search for a legendary 700-year-old Indian maiden serves as precursor to a plague that may or may not wipe out most of mankind. And the narrator, drawn to the legend as a potential journalistic coup, finds himself a centerpiece in the tale. A giant talking turtle, reincarnation and a magical journey from the Southern Tier to Northern Michigan help season the tale.

Misdirection and ambiguity are useful tools in novel-writing, and in employing them, I've been alert to the fact that they are equally useful in real life -- and I suppose particularly in politics, or even in School Board goings-on, which I consider pseudo-political.

Saying one thing -- particularly in campaigns -- and doing another are staples of the American political system. In polite company, campaign promises would be called lies, but we embrace them -- indeed, demand to hear them. So we are as culpable as the politicians.

Once in office, our representatives are normally a little more circumspect, reducing what pours from their mouths in order not to overstate or offend. For once in office, the politicians find the public is a little more demanding of truth-telling.

That, of course, is where ambiguity and misdirection come in -- where a representative might emphasize one action while concentrating behind the scenes on another, less popular one; or will describe a situation in vague terms, in doublespeak.

One of the most annoying ploys is when a politician says "we really have no options" in a pending resolution, words intended to leave little room for debate. That occurred recently regarding a potential appointment to an important position in our region. "We really have no options," an authority figure said in explaining the anticipated move, viewed in some circles as inexplicable in all but financial terms.

It is a move not yet made, and I applaud the caution being exhibited. For there is almost always room for debate, and there are almost always options. (Addendum on June 22: The move was announced, after all, just one day after the words above were written. Ah, well ...)

*****

But I digress. I wanted to say that there are unambiguous certainties in life, too, and I mean beyond death and taxes -- in particular (in the lives of many of us) the love of a family. Nonetheless, we can get a little jaded about that latter; assume it is a birthright that will always be there.

I was brought back to the certainty, and the glow it generates, when my sons presented me an unusual and quite warming Father's Day gift. My youngest son, Dave, who works in Washington, D.C., asked me during a recent visit home if I might send him digital copies of those novels I had written.

"Well," I thought, "I guess he's finally going to read them." Getting anyone in my family to read my writings has been a nearly impossible achievement. While I suspect Dave will read them, his immediate goal was somewhat different.

He took The Maiden of Mackinac -- which had until then been available in its entirety only through 110 copies I created, spiral-bound, several years ago -- and he formatted and submitted it to Amazon.com for inclusion in its storehouse of available Kindle books. Yes, I now have a Kindle book out there -- and it's in fact the book I had been planning, on and off, to publish in a more widely available format over the past few years. The other books I had long ago published in paperback format through an outfit called Xlibris; they too are available, in their original book form, on Amazon.

The artwork for the The Maiden of Mackinac cover was created by my artist son Jon -- known locally for his caricature work, but a talent far beyond just caricatures.

I'm grateful to both Dave and Jon. While I anticipate no sales (the novel costs $9.99), I nonetheless find the gesture they've made both touching and reassuring -- reassuring of a certainty, of familial love, in a world of ambiguity and misdirection.

Thank you, boys, and bless you.

*****

And earlier:

Home from a foreign land...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, June 13 -- Adults were seated, beer or other refreshments in hand. Children were scurrying about, playing on the lawn sloping down to a field, from where -- in the distance -- Seneca Lake was visible.

Beyond that, in the western hills, a mist hung, and storm clouds were swirling. One storm had just moved through, leaving behind wet tables set up under canopies at the side of the yard -- intended as a dining area for visitors at the gathering. Another storm was on the way.

A 60-pound pig was being roasted, and there were pack after pack of hot dogs waiting to be grilled. The beer, water and other drinks were in coolers lining the concrete patio, which was sheltered by a deck above.

Amid all of this, there was one constant focus, one person to whom the eyes went -- the person the owners of those eyes were there to see: Adam Foster, flitting in and out of the back door of his house along Rt. 414 north of Burdett, site of a celebratory party. He was alternately tending to the celebration's needs inside and greeting his visitors outside with hardy handshakes and heartfelt hugs.

Foster was a day returned from Dubai, from a trip that was to have been weeks long, but turned into months as he ran afoul of the law. It has been well reported here and elsewhere: how he found a pair of handcuffs that he tried to take home with him -- only to be stopped by authorities and held, lashed, released, tried and (amid a grassroots letter-writing campaign back home) sentenced to 30 days in jail. The sentence could have been seven years.

His friends and neighbors describe him in glowing terms: "a sweetheart," "a great guy" and so on. He has, judging by the response to his Dubai plight and all the birthday greetings he received on Facebook when he turned 31 on Friday, a wide range of those friends.

He strikes me as unusually engaged and engaging -- bringing the full force of his attention to a conversation.

I was invited to the celebration at his home that day after his return trip -- a journey he took by air from Dubai to Atlanta to Detroit to Elmira. We talked briefly amid the swirl of guests, with him saying -- among other things -- that he didn't eat much while in jail because "the food wasn't very good." (By contrast, he was honored with the first taste of the roast pig, which smelled great, and by the look on his face, equalled the smell in its taste.)

Foster had encountered some official run-arounds on his most recent attempt to leave Dubai, and had run out of time one day, but managed to get the paperwork sorted out the next and boarded the flight to the United States -- "fifteen and a half hours" in the air to Atlanta, he said.

He looked around the grounds of his home now, at the people there to share the moment with him, and shook his head. "It's so good to be here," he said.

I asked if he hadn't been nervous going public on Facebook with his plight those weeks ago -- and he conceded that he had been. He had been trying, early on, to keep things quiet after getting out of jail that first time, in the period leading to trial. He hadn't wanted to make matters worse by upsetting the Dubai officials.

"But when I learned I could get two to seven years," he said, he decided he had to do something. And so his friends learned of the plight through Facebook, and the grassroots movement formed, and officials at the U.S. State Department and United Arab Emirates embassy were besieged with letters calling for fair treatment. And in the end, the sentence was -- in relation to the glaring possibility -- quite light.

Foster said he doesn't know how well those letters were received by the officials involved -- how exactly to measure the pressure brought to bear by folks far away from Dubai, in America. And it's difficult to gauge what else might have been going on behind the scenes. He was, after all, otherwise disposed. But reception and measurement aside, the result was resounding.

"I'll tell you," he said. "I'm convinced that without those letters" and without the other support that surfaced, "I would have gotten seven years."

Instead, he was home now -- and getting hugs from friends and talking quietly to his mother and father and his girlfriend, Jennifer Pasto -- and looking ahead to a future much brighter than the one he was pondering a few weeks ago.

He will return to work with Cameron Compression Systems of Buffalo, he said. According to reports, it performed well for him in Dubai, helping get him out of jail after his first stay there, the one where he sustained lashings to his feet. But there will be a difference.

""Will you be going overseas again?" he was asked.

His answer was direct, unhesitant, to the point -- the answer of a man who has been to hell and back, and has no intention of getting anywhere near the purgatorial heat again.

"Nope," he said.

Photo in text: Adam Foster at his party.

*****

And earlier:

An evening to remember ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, June 4 -- It is a matter of opinion, of course, but mine seems to parallel that of most people who attended the Top Drawer 24 party on June 1 honoring two dozen of the best and brightest of our high school students in Schuyler County.

The evening was compelling. It was compelling from the accommodating weather to the beautiful setting (the Watkins Glen State Park pavilion) to the speeches by a cross-section of athletic personalities and a TV personality (YNN meteorologist Vanessa Richards).

The fact that one of the speakers was a longtime member of the Pittsburgh Steelers scouting division (Mark Gorscak) helped bolster attendance, which was standing-room-only.

The centerpiece of the evening was the group of honorees, though -- students from the Watkins Glen, Odessa-Montour, Trumansburg and Bradford school districts who have excelled on the playing fields, in the classroom and in life. By the time Brian O'Donnell, the career educator whose name graces the Top Drawer 24 subtitle, had completed his introduction of each honoree -- the introductions listed many, many accomplishments by each -- the collective assemblage were shaking heads, I think stunned that there could be so much of a positive nature in such a small group of young adults.

Each honoree received a Top Drawer 24 medallion, along with a Certificate of Merit delivered by the office of State Senator Tom O'Mara. And I mean delivered. A woman named Sara in his office hand-delivered them to my home the day before the State Park party. The Senator, per usual, couldn't attend in person, since midweek at this time of year is always a session day in Albany.

But the presentation of the certificates, along with cover letters from the Senator, added greatly to the evening. We have, in the past, secured similar messages of encouragement -- Certificates of Achievement or something similar -- from other offices, but came up dry in the attempt this year. Elected representatives in the Assembly and Congress ignored such requests, despite the seeming importance of the evening. Well, perhaps I'm biased. And perhaps they'll respond next year.

This was the sixth such annual celebration, held each year around the turn into June, and each year held at the park pavilion. It is a unique setting, and despite the annual risk of weather gone awry, we intend to stay right there. Part of the charm of the event is the charm of the site.

And part of the charm of the event is in the promise embodied in the honorees. These are two dozen young adults chosen over a period of time by a committee, a rather large committee. The honorees each year represent not only the best examples of the scholar-athlete-citizens in our high schools, but provide us with a possible look at our future leadership.

The Top Drawer 24 was an idea born during a brainstorming session I had with Watkins Glen High School teacher Craig Cheplick, who was back then serving as the district Faculty Manager -- in essence handling the job of Athletic Director and striving, as always, to improve the district's athletic program through promotion and encouragement of the positive.

The Top Drawer 24 was an idea that took hold quickly and has grown steadily in impact and importance. And judging from the laudatory tone from many who attended this most recent celebration, it is an idea so well-received that it might very well be around for a long time.

*****

And earlier:

Ahead of his time ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 27 -- I have been to the land of Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson, that is. Third President of the United States. Author of the Declaration of Independence.

The road to Charlottesville, Virginia -- home of the University of Virginia established by Jefferson, where my youngest son, Dave, received a Master's degree on Sunday -- is a heavily traveled one.

The land around Charlottesville is enticing -- the Blue Ridge mountains are an arm's reach from the traveler's roadway -- and historic.

Up a twisting road a mere handful of miles out of downtown Charlottesville, that history awaits, and hundreds of thousands of visitors immerse themselves in its magic each year.

Their destination is Monticello, the home and grounds that were Thomas Jefferson's estate, now a World Heritage site with visitor center, cafe, museum and introductory-film theater beside its parking lots, and bus rides from there to the house itself.

It is opened every day but Christmas, although we -- I, along with my sons Dave and Jon -- encountered something a bit out of the ordinary: a delay.

I was driving up the narrow, twisting road to the parking areas, woods enveloping on either side, when suddenly a sharp sound -- a siren -- pierced the stillness from behind. I looked in the mirror, and there was a fire truck -- imponderably large on that narrow blacktop -- coming up the hill, lights flashing, and cutting loose with the siren again.

I slowed and edged to the side of the road, near what appeared to be a dropoff into the woods on the right. The truck, slowing too, moved carefully around me and then sped up again, disappearing around the next bend.

******

After we parked, bought our tour tickets (at $22 a pop) and took the tour bus to the estate grounds, we learned that there had been a fire alarm in the house. Security had cleared the building, and firefighters were looking for what might have caused it. There was, from all evidence I could see, no fire.

The bottom line was this: we waited probably 45 minutes, along with a lot of other folks as the line to tour the facility grew longer and longer. Finally things started moving again.

******

The tour-takers form their line on a walkway that is gravel covered. Not far down the way from that line, there was a small archeological work crew carefully poring through the soil in a square hole dug a couple of feet deep. They were, said their foreman, seeking evidence that the walkway -- created for tourists -- might be covering what, in Jefferson's day, was a transportation route.

"We haven't found much," the foreman said, pointing to a container holding bits of relics of a bygone day: pieces of pottery and china, and small metallic objects that appeared to have been parts of tools.

"We've been doing this a couple of weeks," the man said, and he went back to carefully sifting through dirt from the hole. The project, he indicated, would continue until they could make a determination about that possible old route.

*******

That encounter, along with the subsequent tour -- the house is in beautiful shape, with much of its original, Jefferson-era state maintained, and with books and artifacts and furniture the guide said were Jefferson's -- put me in an odd mood. I loved the place, but it is such an anachronism, sitting there, the past drawing the present, inviting it inside, that I got to wondering how old Tom himself -- one of the cleverest, most intelligent and productive men of his generation -- would handle the present that we know.

A common term in studying outstanding, foresightful men of the past -- people who helped frame the world in which they lived, setting the table for the generations that followed -- is to say they were "ahead of their time."

But I wonder about that. Maybe some of them -- maybe all -- were perfectly suited to their time. Maybe Thomas Jefferson, a giant of his day, would be something a great deal less in the din of a more modern era.

Imagine the intensity of the media today if it were covering him and discovered his relationship with Sally Hemings (a mixed-race slave back then), with whom he had several children out of wedlock. Take Arnold and multiply.

The man who used a quill to write, and who never experienced radio or television, let alone the computer and social networking, just might have been out of his element in a time such as ours. Of course, he might not have been. He was, among many things, adaptable.

But I imagine in my head a man -- the older Jefferson who lived at Monticello almost exclusively in his retirement years -- in residence in our world, and I see him befuddled, straining not just to understand the intricacies of an age like ours that seems to be accelerating toward an unhappy future; I see him wishing too for a simpler time.

That is not uncommon in our elderly. Many long for the simplicity of the 1950s, the Eisenhower years.

Jefferson, if of this age, might have wished for the same 1950s lifestyle. And if he were somehow transported here from his own time, I have little doubt that he would be casting his eyes toward the Monticello of 1809-1826, the years of his retirement.

It was there, in the peace of the hills -- at a home open to friends and colleagues he invited, but not to the pilgrimages it sees today -- that he was able to deal with his fame, his achievements, and his contradictions. He was a slave owner who believed slavery wrong; but being a practical man, knew he could not alter an institution so ingrained. That change would have to come from future leaders. It must have been an awkward position for him, considering his authorship of the Declaration of Independence.

There is beauty in the hills surrounding Monticello, in the home, on the manicured grounds, and indeed on the campus of the University of Virginia he established there in Charlottesville -- and now, having experienced their allure, I understand Jefferson's devotion to the area.

And having seen how seemingly pleasant life might have been on an estate like Monticello -- the tours accentuate the positive -- I can almost imagine transporting myself back to that era to decide for myself if the apparent sweetness of Jefferson's time would stand up to inspection.

That would, I suspect, be the only way I could be (quite literally) ahead of my time.

*****

And earlier:

Will Watkins play football?

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 20 -- With Bob Lee taking the Odessa-Montour football coaching job, the question left on a lot of minds in Watkins Glen is this: Will WGHS even field a football team this year?

After all, last season ended far early, a victim of injuries that depleted a roster that was too thin to start with.

Well, here's the official answer:

Watkins will absolutely have football, says Watkins Glen Schools Superintendent Tom Phillips.

In fact, he says, the goal is to name an entire football coaching staff at the June 6 School Board meeting, from head varsity coach on down.

There were four applicants for the varsity post, and Bob Lee was one of them. So now there are three -- all from counties adjoining Schuyler.

Well, that's fine and dandy, but coaches do not a team make. It requires players, and at last look only 14 had shown up at recent physicals.

Not to worry, says Phillips.

"We're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 28 players solid" for varsity, he said, "and 17 for Modified. Yes, we're still a little lean on numbers, but I've had discussions with seniors and juniors who assured me we will have a turnout" that meets roster needs.

And the goal "is to go higher," he said. "We're not looking to bring freshmen up to varsity. We're looking to get solid junior-senior leadership to come forward."

Phillips said the two school districts -- O-M and Watkins -- missed "a perfect opportunity for efficiencies" though a merging of the football programs. But with Lee's hiring, "it's not happening now."

Not that it would have. O-M has not expressed any interest in that direction.

"We're just doubling the cost" this way, said Phillips. "We could have put together one decent program. But ... I wish O-M luck. Now we'll work on our program and put it together."

*****

Adam Foster of Burdett, awaiting his fate in Dubai for weeks and the subject of a letter- and email-writing campaign on his behalf in this country, received a 30-day sentence in a case in which he conceivably could have drawn seven years in jail.

He was accused of two things: possession of police handcuffs and, more seriously, of stealing the handcuffs from a police station. He says he found them in a parking lot and decided to take them home, back to America, as a souvenir. Authorities at the airport discovered them in his luggage and arrested him.

That was back in January. What followed in jail, he later said -- after his temporary release was effected by the company he was working for over there, Cameron Compression Systems of Buffalo -- was torturous beatings and bone-chilling threats at the hands of his jailers.

That's what gives pause about the 30-day sentence. He was taken right back into that hell hole.

People are celebrating in exchanges on Facebook, calling the relatively light sentence great news and a relief -- and in the context of the sentence he could have received, it certainly is.

But 30 days at the hands of the same people (presumably) who so abused him before ... that gives me, and it should give everyone, pause.

If Adam sails through his sentence unharmed, then great.

But it's the spectre of what happened before that proves worrisome.

I, and I suspect others, had hoped that all of the publicity surrounding this -- reaching to the national stage, at least online -- might have triggered some sort of deal between State Department and United Arab Emirates officials. The UAE, after all, shouldn't want to be painted as a bunch of evil hoodlums.

Then again, maybe what's happened online and in the media will keep the beatings at bay. Maybe the system has worked as well as anyone could have hoped.

Maybe ...

We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, let's do what those Facebook folks who were keeping in touch with Adam have been doing -- and I suspect you have been doing. I know I have been.

Let's keep praying.

See message from the Foster family here.

*****

And earlier:

Watkins Glen Mayor Mark Swinnerton, left, and trustee Scott Gibson.

About those haircuts ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 17 -- They don't normally wear their hair very long. But this was something else: buzz cuts.

Watkins Glen Mayor Mark Swinnerton and Village Trustee Scott Gibson returned from a recent Vermont trip with their hair shorn fairly short -- enough so to elicit comments from a good many folks they've encountered since.

Was this a new political statement? Our leaders gone skinhead? A message to the masses?

No, it was more like "totally stupid bonding," in the words of Gibson.

It happened at the Mount Snow, Vermont Tough Mudder obstacle-course event -- a 10-mile preview of hell where competitors faced all sorts of challenges: mud, icy waters, steep hill climbs, a rope-webbing climb, corrugated-pipe crawls, vertical-wall climbs, rope bridges, and barbed wire to crawl under. It all took about two hours or so.

Talk about fun. Yeah, right.

Tough Mudder is a recent phenomenon, concocted by an Englishman named Will Dean, that has caught the fancy of a lot of folks over the past year through the power of social networking -- of Facebook and other Internet accesses. There are more than a dozen such events around the country this year. The idea -- as a New York Times article pointed out -- "is not really to win, but to finish. And to have a story to tell."

Swinnerton and Gibson decided to test their mettle by entering the Tough Mudder event at Mount Snow. "I'm turning 40 soon," said the mayor. "I wanted to prove I could still do it."

As part of the experience, the Tough Mudder organizers urge team bonding -- and one way to do that is through similar haircuts, in this case Mohawks.

Yes, the mayor and trustee had Mohawk haircuts when they tackled the Tough Mudder course. But they didn't keep them for long.

"Yeah, it was a bonding thing," said Gibson. "But I trimmed (the Mohawk) back as soon as I got home."

And the mayor?

"Yeah, right after I got back," he said.

There's something about Mohawks and wives -- or for that matter the dignity of public office -- that don't mix.

*****

An easier event, and one for a good cause, comes Saturday, May 21 with the Jean Lawton Memorial Walk, set for the Watkins Glen High School track from 9-11 a.m.

The event is in memory of the former Physical Education teacher, coach and fitness enthusiast who walked regularly throughout her life. She died on Feb. 25.

Lawton was also an avid reader, which explains why organizers are turning donations over to the Watkins Glen Public Library.

*****

And earlier:

Waiting and hoping ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 11 -- There is perhaps nothing more difficult than waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Dread can hang with that shoe, oozing its figurative bile ahead of the physical act.

Adam Foster is awaiting that other shoe, and we're all -- here in Schuyler County -- waiting too and watching, and commiserating. And we feel as helpless as newborn babes.

Kate LaMoreaux, bless her heart, has tried rallying the troops (which is to say friends of the Foster family) to make some noise -- to generate some support -- on behalf of Adam, 30, a former student of hers at Watkins Glen High School. And she seems pleased with the response. We can only hope it has a positive effect. (See LaMoreaux's letters on the Forum Page.)

*****

For those who came in late, Foster, a mechanical engineer working in the United Arab Emirates for a Buffalo firm, Cameron Compression Systems, was arrested at the airport on his way out of Dubai when authorities found a pair of police handcuffs in his luggage. He is, according to available reports, accused of two things: possession of police paraphernalia and a more serious thing, that of allegedly stealing the handcuffs from a police station.

He says he found the cuffs in a parking lot, and thought they'd make a nice souvenir -- which nobody is claiming wasn't a poor decision. And as cause leads to effect, he found himself in jail, signing a confession coerced by beatings and threats. That happened several weeks ago, but through legal assistance from his company, he was released -- an unusual thing over there, but not the be-all and end-all of the case.

The matter of his fate -- whether he receives a jail term or, on the flip side, is freed -- is still up in the air, along with that proverbial shoe. A court appearance Tuesday resulted in an adjournment to the 19th of this month.

*****

Foster, despite the experience in jail and the prospect of a return there, has maintained a wry sense of humor, posting pointed jokes on his Facebook page. That is something he couldn't have done a mere handful of years ago. Facebook has helped reduce the world, in a communication sense, to a large neighborhood.

But in a physical sense, the world is still a patchwork of nations of varying laws and beliefs, with the age-old biases and hatreds that go with them. The fact that the West (which is to say the United States and assorted other English-speaking entities) is regarded with distaste by many non-English-speaking countries would seem, in this case (judging from police tendencies), to make the locale -- the United Arab Emirates -- very far away, indeed.

It is a strange dichotomy: We are in front-row seats, chewing our fingernails in fear of how Foster might be treated, and yet we are so far away that we can do little except rattle email sabers, hoping that a show of support directed to a UAE ambassador and to our own State Department will have the effect of keeping that shoe airborne.

*****

Foster, a Burdett property owner, has a host of friends around here, being a 1998 graduate of WGHS. He's not so far removed from that time in his life that he has lost touch. And those friends have been showing up on his Facebook page with their good wishes and kind thoughts.

The State Department is working on his behalf, and Congressman Maurice Hinchey's office is working with State. And there is the reality that the UAE and the United States strive for a rapport that something like this could -- in the fast-transmitting, viral world of the Internet -- undermine if not handled well on both sides. There could be instant political ramifications.

All of that is, I imagine, reassuring to Foster, but he is still out there alone, waiting, in a strange land that doesn't seem to hesitate to mistreat people who fall under accusation.

I imagine that every so often, at least figuratively, he casts an eye upward to see what that other shoe is doing.

******

And earlier:

A history worth recording...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 9 -- I received a note from Kelsey Wood regarding a student project she, as a Watkins Glen High School History teacher and as a race fan, is overseeing. I'll turn the column over to her words here, because the project deserves some airing. She wrote as follows:

"For the last two months students at Watkins Glen High School have been working on a project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Formula One racing at Watkins Glen. The International Motor Racing Research Center contacted Watkins Glen High School back in January with the news that a year-long celebration to commemorate the F1 years (1961-1980) was being held. While many influential figures from the F1 years had been interviewed, there had not been an organized project to document the experiences of local people involved.

"The idea was to have students conduct and videotape interviews from various people around Watkins and upstate New York who were involved in F1 at the Glen. As a longtime racing enthusiast, I volunteered to act as liaison to organize the interviews with students, along with the invaluable help of the high school's librarian and media specialist, Maggie Field. Students from across various grade levels who were interested in local history and racing signed up to conduct and record the interviews. The IMRRC put together an initial list of interviewees who either worked at the track or were spectators during the era.

"The focus of the interviews was mainly on what Watkins Glen was like during the F1 years -- both track and town. Interviewees discussed not only what their jobs were during the racing events but also their interaction with the international crowd and their experiences with the drivers. Among those interviewed were Mickey Sipperly, Bill Green, Michael Maloney, Bob Gillespie, Ginny Close, J.C. Argetsinger, Michael Argetsinger, and Bill Milliken.

"Students learned the value of interviewing as a method of collecting information and researching history. There were many stories that had never been heard before and to have the opportunity to hear history from those who were there and learn more about their town really pulled students into the project.

"Early on in the project, as I met with the IMRRC staff in February, the idea came about that it would be a great opportunity to celebrate the track history with F1 if we could interview someone who had actually been a racer during the years. One of the greatest drivers of the late '50s and early '60s, American Dan Gurney, was contacted. Gurney raced for teams such as Porsche and Brabham, as well as his own team, Anglo American Racers, winning in France, Belgium and Mexico throughout the '60s. Gurney, who is based in California, agreed to do an interview with the students at Watkins Glen.

"One recent afternoon, students Casey Holland and Thomas Wickham were able to interview Gurney through Skype, an online video conferencing site. While most of the questions were directed toward his experiences racing and in F1, Gurney showed a great affection for the area, reminiscing about the beauty of autumn in the Glen and how welcoming the town was.

"Students, with the help of teachers involved, will be editing and compiling the footage from the interviews to create a final video."

Photo in text: Students Casey Holland and Thomas Wickham interview Dan Gurney. (Photo provided)

*****

Thanks, Kelsey.

And speaking of the Racing Research Center ... aside from being an amazing resource for historical data, it often provides an outstanding program or event. Recently, there was the 100th birthday celebration for racer/engineer extraordinaire Bill Milliken, with the honoree present and quite pleased by the attention. And on Saturday, May 7, there was an appearance -- an autobiographical speech, actually -- by Bobby Rahal, one of the great racers of the past few decades.

I'm not going to go into detail on his speech here -- at least not now; maybe later -- but I do want to note what a warm and sincere individual Rahal is. His speech was both entertaining and illuminating. The man has a great sense of humor and perspective.

Congratulations to the Racing Research Center on bringing Rahal to town, on its year-long celebration, and for all it offers racing fans locally and around the nation and world.

*****

And earlier:

In the wake of the monster...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 2 -- It was a busy weekend locally, but national news took precedence late Sunday night: Osama bin Laden was dead.

I didn't react with great glee at the news; more with a sense of relief. I missed the President's announcement of the precision strike by U.S. forces, and so learned about it all an hour or so later, when my son arrived home from a weekend away, and asked if I'd heard the news.

I gave him a blank look, and so he said: "I guess you didn't. It's big, the kind of thing that's going to dominate the news in the days ahead ..."

I continued to give him a blank look, and he finally told me: "They killed Osama bin Laden."

My eyebrows shot up, for I believe I was surprised on two levels. I had figured, wrongly, that the man might already be dead, rumors of his demise to various maladies having swirled on and off for a couple of years. And if this news -- this termination -- was in fact as announced, I was surprised that after a decade of futility tracking the man, we had cornered him and killed him just like that.

Quickly, surgically.

It seemed too easy. Too perfect. But of course it wasn't easy. A great deal of planning took place, a great deal of nerve on the part of the strike force that took him out.

****

As soon as my eyebrows came back down, I switched the TV from a movie to the news channels, and started immersing myself in the coverage. It was all fairly sketchy, but bit by bit reporters and officials were layering the facts.

The response nationwide to the news was impressive. The coverage showed celebrations in the streets, at a baseball game, at Lafayette Park in Washington -- all over the country, despite the late hour. There was something energizing in the whole affair.

There were retrospectives -- about 9/11, in particular, but about other bin Laden operations long before that. And while I didn't hear it mentioned in all the reporting, I recalled a story about Lt. Col. Oliver North, a National Security Council aide testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, saying he had installed an expensive security system at his home that year because of fears that he might be targeted by a terrorist named Osama bin Laden, "the most evil person alive that I know of."

That stuck with me, as many apocryphal things stay with us in this life. I say apocryphal because other accounts (including one by North) say North didn't name bin Laden at all during those hearings -- was in fact referring to another terrorist named Abu Nidal. The whole Oliver North-Osama bin Laden story was a legend.

That North testimony came, in fact, a few years before bin Laden, a Saudi, developed his rampant hatred for all things Western and started growing into the monster we all came to know and loathe.

But the North story has legs because in that monsterdom that came later, bin Laden in fact became "the most evil person that I know of" -- at least, I dare say, the most evil one that you or I have known about in this generation.

And so, by not reacting with joy -- but rather relief -- at the news that bin Laden had been killed, I find myself ascribing to a line delivered on one of the news shows that followed the announcement: "It's not a time for the bars," said commentator Chris Matthews, "but rather a time to go to church."

Yes, that's right: to church.

To give thanks. And to pray that there isn't another bastard out there quite like Osama bin Laden.

******

And earlier:

The goal of the century ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 18 -- I was provided with an important lesson last weekend.

It came at the end of a week of uncommon difficulty when measured in terms of reporting. It was the week of forums on the proposed propane storage project north of Watkins Glen, pro one night and con the next.

A story with such vivid opinions and passions are always difficult to describe, at least in what either side perceives as a balanced fashion. And so it takes great care in the writing.

That takes its toll -- especially, I told myself, when a fellow essentially long in the tooth, like me, insists on behaving like a younger man by covering not only those sessions, but a flock of sporting events, several other meetings, and a celebration of Bill Milliken's 100th birthday.

It was, in fact, just before that week-ending event -- that centenary celebration -- that I was feeling a bit bedraggled, and wearing a touch of self-pity. I was, at least in fleeting thought, telling myself that in building this website, I have created something that carries with it expectations by many of its readers far beyond what I had ever anticipated.

I was thinking how, in the eight-plus years I've worked on it, I've slowed, and how -- with that slowing -- the site has grown, and with it the amount of time poured into it.

I started calculating how many pictures I might have taken in the past year, and then how many in the past eight years, and how many stories I might have written to go with those photos, and I had no real idea.

*****

I was, in point of fact, feeling old -- and then I went to that birthday party, and saw a man two days shy of his 100th birthday walk in under his own power, and work his way from well-wisher to well-wisher, smiling and nodding and enjoying the adulation and the acclaim.

And I felt absolutely chagrined. I'm 62, and he's 100. I mean ... come on ... he's two generations older than me and he seems to be more well-adjusted -- more suited to bear the weight of life -- than I am.

I think he must have, over the years, experienced some of the doubts I have been experiencing. But I'm not sure of that, for this is a remarkable man, this Bill Milliken -- notable in the annals of aeronautics and auto racing. He is, in particular, important from a local standpoint, an historic figure from the first road race in Watkins Glen, and later Chief Steward at the Watkins-based U.S. Grand Prix races.

He is a man described by an English admirer at that party (who flew over The Pond just for that event) as Einstein-like -- "a genius" against whom all other engineers measure themselves. And all fall short in the comparison.

The party was at the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen, and among its speeches was one by the Center's president, J.C. Argetsinger, who among many laudatory comments said Bill Milliken is still working today in engineering. In truth, Milliken probably never stops thinking in those terms, but ...

"Nice of J.C. to say that," said Milliken's son, Doug, an engineer himself who has worked with his father across the years. "But the truth is, Dad has been slowing recently." Age and the loss of a brother were both contributors, he said, and engineering has pretty much been shelved.

And yet, here was Bill Milliken, longtime engineer extraordinaire, a man with a zest for life, still enjoying that life on this day. He had traveled from his Buffalo-area home with family, the same as he did last year when the Center celebrated his 99th birthday.

He has seemingly always been on the move -- in the air for flight tests, behind the steering wheel of race cars, traveling the world for various engineering projects and consultations, and, in later years, continuing his work and writing. His autobiography, Equations of Motion, covers his first 90-plus years.

He has, Argetsinger noted, "led his life at a hundred-mile-an-hour pace."

There is something special about Milliken even now, in his declining years -- a keenness, and a joy, and a curiosity. Admirers approaching him to say hello or to get a signature on his autobiography -- which was for sale in the Center -- found a man very much focused on them and what they had to say. He was engaged with all that was going on around him.

*****

A theme throughout the party was friendship. Anybody who has known Bill Milliken across the years has seemingly found in him a friend. Every speaker referred to him in that vein, and a couple applied the word great before it.

That's a pretty good measure of a man. Oh, you can be awed (as I am) by Milliken's achievements and intellect and zeal across the many decades -- but the fact is that if he were a curmudgeon, there wouldn't have been such an outpouring of admiration and affection at that party. There might not have even been a party.

Friendship matters.

*****

The whole enterprise had me shaking my head in wonder. How has he done this? Lived such an amazingly full life, one a century long? And built such a devoted following along the way?

A century, I thought as I left the party, walking out onto the Center parking lot and heading toward my van.

A century. That leaves me -- assuming the same longevity as Bill Milliken (a tall order, but it might be in my genes, for my mother is 92) -- just under four decades to get my own act together.

That's perhaps what I needed: a goal.

I needed to be goaded by the gods of time, shown that life is what we make it. We can, with the right attitude and drive and joy of life, attain worthwhile things, worthwhile goals, and do so well beyond the normal retirement age.

Bill Milliken has demonstrated that. He has shown us that life's parameters can be shrugged off, and that, in word and deed, the sky is the limit.

******

And earlier:

What it is that I do ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 8 -- With seemingly half the county population down at Myrtle Beach, there has been little to report on in the past couple of days. But come the return of the masses, and the reopening of schools, there will be plenty of stories.

It's strange, but I don't particularly find such lulls as this week's all that restful. If sitting around idle, I think I am neglecting my duty. But what, exactly, is my duty?

To report, for sure, but to what extent? I have found, as this experiment in journalism continues well into its ninth year, that there is more and more work landing on my doorstep. I have noticed an increase in press releases, in letters, in emails with requests for photos or information, and in events that cross my radar screen and put me behind the wheel of my van, en route to cover them.

Advertising is, much to my surprise, up for me in this year of economic woes, but countered by a decline in donations. So I remain on a plateau, looking for ways to maximize what I do in a financial sense, while not inflating advertising rates. It's a delicate balance, advertising is, especially when the flip side of the coin is the world of stories, of reporting.

When I worked at a regional paper in the late '90s, that innate conflict reared its head more than once, the advertising department being ever mindful of the bottom line, and the reporting staff insisting on an independence from fiscal restraints.

*****

An example: I was working on a series of stories about lakes in the region, and stopped at a camp (before its season had begun) for a few mood photos. The camp owner, who had been doing some advertising in the newspaper, was not present upon my visit, and later complained loudly to the advertising department, after the photos had appeared. He took exception to them; he had not given permission for any to be snapped. The shots were of the lake's shoreline, with a couple of them showing the campground buttoned up, waiting for the rebirth that spring would bring to it.

I have no idea what, specifically, the camp owner wanted; I only know he was threatening to cancel some advertising he had been planning unless he got some sort of satisfaction. An advertising representative for the newspaper confronted me, angry that she had been put upon by the man, and seemingly looking for some sort of satisfaction herself.

"Wait a minute," I said, annoyed at the intrusion, for I was busy dealing with the news of the day. "The guy got some free, positive publicity in the context of the beauty of our lakes, and he's upset?"

"Yes," said the rep. "He said you had no right ... and he says he's gonna pull his ads."

"How much is his advertising?" I asked. "How much is he spending this year?"

"Well, it's $180," the ad rep answered, taken a little aback by the question. "You know, a handful of small ads."

"Oh, hell," I said, and laughed. "You gotta be kidding. You're in my face over $180? Look ... If he pulls his ads, take it out of my wages. Now ... I have better things to do." And I turned away.

Now while the camp owner no doubt had a point -- we tend, in journalism, to take to an arrogant degree our right to inform the public -- let it be noted, for the record, that I didn't pay anything, because he kept advertising.

******

Anyway, what I do now is different from then. I wear both hats, advertising department and news department (not to mention business department and art department and photo department). I try not to let the advertising role influence the reporting, but it would be disingenuous to claim there isn't at least a thread connecting the two.

I've shaped the website with that thread in mind. I rarely cover police stories, unless they have an interesting or particularly compelling hook; I don't sit in court reporting the outcome of cases; I stay away, as much as possible, from the underbelly of our county -- from the emotionally trying or jolting. And I do so with a background in such coverage: I reported on the police departments and courts at my first post-graduate journalism stop, the Watertown Daily Times.

Now, decades later, nothing turns me off faster while watching the evening TV news than to hear about this arrest, and that conviction, and this arson, and that assault. And so they are not on my list of stories to cover. By keeping for the most part in a positive vein on this website, I believe I encourage the readership, and by extension the advertisers. I can't always hew to the ideal, but for the most part I try.

I also don't attempt to cover every non-police, non-court story. There are other, complementary outlets for that: the Star-Gazette and the Watkins Review, to name two. What guides me in my coverage, basically, is this: If it interests me, I report on it. Since there is quite a bit that interests me -- government and politics and sports and people and the good deeds of various organizations and individuals -- I am a busy man.

******

And that brings me back to my duty. It is, I think, to present a vivid cross-section of the major events and trends that occur in Schuyler County, a place unique in its beauty and in its promise.

It is to reflect that beauty and that promise -- to celebrate the achievements of our citizens, young and old, and to tell about a county rooted in tradition but looking forward to a very interesting future of potential growth and socio-economic development.

And if that sounds a little pretentious on my part, perhaps you can accept this less flowered explanation:

I'm here, I've decided, to tell stories. That's always been my calling. It's what I do. That is my duty.

At the heart of it all, it's really that simple.

*******

And earlier:

Pair of meetings take the spotlight in LPG project flap

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 3 -- We're in a bit of a lull now. High school spring sports (with a couple of exceptions) haven't started yet, and won't until after Spring Break. Village elections are over, the school plays are completed, and the candidates for county judge (barring any surprise additions) have announced they're running.

The July 1-3 Phish concert has caused some discussion, although fears that we might be trampled like the area was in 1973 seem doubtful. Officials say there's a cap of 60,000 tickets -- which would no doubt be a number that pleased Watkins Glen International, since that's more than attended the IndyCar weekend that used to inhabit that calendar spot.

Come mid-month, sports should be in full bloom, as well as some anger and frustration over the proposed propane storage and brine pond plans on the west side of Seneca Lake. There is a meeting scheduled on that subject on April 14 at the Watkins Glen High School auditorium that, at least initially, promised some emotional fireworks, since it seems slanted toward the fears surrounding those Inergy plans.

But possibly undercutting it was the announcement late in the week of another meeting, the night before, on April 13, on the same subject at the Watkins Glen Community Center -- a session that appears to be taking a more middle-of-the-road or even pro-storage stance by offering the viewpoint from Inergy representatives.

County Administrator Tim O'Hearn helped arrange that April 13 session, and says it wasn't designed to counter or neutralize the other meeting, "although I'm sure it looks that way. It turns out it was the only night that worked for all the parties involved."

For the uninitiated, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is studyng a proposal from Inergy (which bought U.S. Salt in 2008) to store liquified propane gas in salt caverns off the southwest shore of Seneca Lake. Involved in the proposal is a large brine pond built into the hillside. The perceived potential for contamination of the lake and for an explosion have prompted a protest movement by some area residents.

Inergy, a recent Corning Leader article pointed out, "isn't a direct supplier" of the propane and butane it hopes to store there, but rather "specializes in storage and wholesale distribution." The company's application to DEC, the paper noted, "says it will store up to 2.1 million barrels of LPG, but the company ... says it hopes to eventually expand to about 5 million barrels."

Part of the project, the paper added, calls for "a 13-acre brine pond ... dug nearby, on a sloping hill overlooking Seneca Lake." Beyond that, the plan calls for "a truck and railroad facility for transferring LPG, to be built just off State Route 14A." The DEC says the facility could operate around the clock every day of the year, loading or unloading 12 rail cars every 12 hours, plus four trucks per hour. The idea is to use the rail line, trucks and pipelines to bring in and ship out the gas.

Inergy, the paper said, also bought a natural gas storage facility within the caverns from NYSEG, and plans to expand that capacity. It is touting the overall facility, in conjunction with underground ones it operates in Steuben and Tioga counties, as a "gas storage and transportation hub of the Northeast."

O'Hearn, in alerting the media to the April 13 meeting, said in an e-mail that because the proposed project "has the potential to be both controversial as well as divisive within our community, we have scheduled a public informational session ... in the interest of receiving accurate fact-based information while providing an opportunity for the public to ask questions of experts in this field.

"At this time the County has not taken a position on this project and is actively engaged in conducting due diligence of this proposal. The upcoming meeting (on the 13th) is an attempt to further that process and involve the public in so doing."

The other meeting, on the 14th, is billed as "Seneca at a Crossroads," and subtitled "Large-Scale LPG Storage vs. Tourism, Wineries, Peace & Quiet." That doesn't exactly sound middle of the road, especially when further wording on a poster (see the PSA page) includes this:

"Do we want to be the gas storage and transport hub of the Northeast? Do we want LPG stored in our salt caverns? Or do we want agriculture, tourism, home-grown businesses and small-town living?"

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm neutral here, but while Inergy has issued written assurances of safety -- and Schuyler County Partnership for Economic Development (SCOPED) Executive Director Kelsey Jones has noted that NYSEG has stored natural gas and propane in area salt caverns for years (and that this new project, in essence, constitutes an expansion) -- greater direct communication from Inergy is needed ... and so the meeting involving Inergy representatives is a welcome one.

The folks organizing the April 14 meeting did, according to the poster, invite officials from the county, from SCOPED and from Inergy. I don't know why they're not on the list of speakers. That list includes a representative of the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes, a water quality expert, an environmental health and safety expert, a geographic information systems consultant, and an ecologist.

That's quite a cross-section, but without someone from Inergy there, it seems like a bit of baying at the moon. Of course, with Inergy available the previous night, anyone wishing to question its representatives will, presumably, have the chance then -- although I'm sure there will be rules to ensure a measured discourse.

So, if you're interested in the subject, or involved in it, there are competing (or, more hopefully, complementary) meetings regarding this so-called Battle of the Brine on successive nights -- Wednesday the 13th (from 6-9 p.m. at the Community Center off 4th Street) and Thursday the 14th (from 7-9 p.m. at the WGHS auditorium).

*****

And earlier:

A little of this and that ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 25 -- Winter doesn't seem to want to leave, which could pose early-season problems for high school spring sports. I just received word that a track scrimmage scheduled at Watkins Glen on Tuesday against Trumansburg and South Seneca has been canceled.

The baseball and softball fields at Watkins Glen and Odessa-Montour are far from ready, and I imagine the golf course north of Watkins is a tad bit moist.

But warmer spring weather will arrive, and the athletes will soon thrive, and it will be stretch-run time for consideration by the Top Drawer 24 committee as to which students will be honored this year by inclusion on the Top Drawer 24 team.

That squad of 24 student-athletes -- subtitled the Brian O'Donnell Schuyler County Scholar-Athlete-Citizen Team -- is being selected by a committee of 20 teachers, coaches, administrators and lay people who observe potential team members throughout the fall, winter and spring sports seasons. Representation on the committee is from the Watkins Glen, O-M, Bradford and Trumansburg districts, for among the 24 honorees will be students from all four districts.

This year's awards ceremony will be in the late afternoon and early evening of June 1 at the Watkins Glen State Park pavilion -- and speakers will include a representative from the Pittsburgh Steelers front office, a regional TV personality, an area sports official, a former Top Drawer team member, and others. Finger food and beverages will be provided, and everyone is invited.

Announcement of the team will come in the latter part of May, after the honorees have been notified.

******

I see that our population in Schuyler is down in the latest census -- by 4.58%. We now have 18,343 residents -- about enough to fill the end zone area at a major-college football game. I constantly marvel at the lack of people around here, one of the most beautiful areas in the world.

******

I received an e-mail from William Hill about his daughter, Torie (pictured at right), who is a 5th grader at the Watkins Glen Middle School. Mr. Hill wanted to point out that there are other sports than those offered in area schools -- such as gymnastics, an interest of Torie's. She is a member of the Elmira Gymnastics Club, and last week competed in a meet at Jamestown Community College called the Lucky Stars Invitational.

Torie "practices very hard," her father says -- a regimen that includes three school nights from 6 to 9 p.m. and Sundays from 2 to 5. She also travels around the state to get to various competitions. She is a Level 5 gymnast, he said, and has been competing in the age 11 division. (She turns 11 today -- Friday, March 25). All that work is paying off, because she won her division's Balance Beam title at the Lucky Stars meet with a score of 9.525. She has, her father notes, "many trophies, medals and ribbons to attest to her dedication to gymnastics."

Beyond that, she is a High Honor Roll student.

Well done, Torie, and Happy Birthday.

Photo: Torie Hill. (Photo provided)

******

The O-M students put on an excellent spring musical in "Annie Get Your Gun." The two Annies, Alyssa Bleiler and Morgan Stermer -- O-M has a long tradition of splitting the key roles between two students -- were very good, with appealing acting and spot-on singing.

The Watkins play kicks off tonight: "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." From what I've seen in rehearsals and in a performance at the Watkins-Montour Rotary Club, this one is a hit, too. Jacq Goehner is strong in the lead role, and the rest of the cast is quite talented too. Look for some great songs, some entertaining dances and a good bit of humor. Show times are 8 tonight (Friday) and Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

*******

And earlier:

Out of the mist of history ...

By A.C. (Charlie) Haeffner

Odessa, March 17 -- History is a murky thing.

Take the matter of A.C. Haeffner. No, not me; the one who came before me, who helped give me life: the A.C. Haeffner who was my father. Friends called him Gus.

Dad loved to tell stories and jokes, but oddly enough, he never really focused on the time that came before he met Mom.

However, their meeting on Owasco Lake in 1940 near Auburn, New York, is family legend. Mom (Eleanor Bennett, then 21) was lounging on a raft with Dad's sister, Ruth; Mom knew of Dad, but he was nine years older and beyond her experience level. But when he swam out to the raft to join the two ladies, something clicked. Gus and Eleanor became an item.

They went out on a date, and over the course of the next two weeks they went out on a couple more while Dad was in the area, before heading back to work. He was, at the time, employed as a salesman in Indiana by the Auburn, New York-based Dunn & McCarthy shoe company.

"We got married after two weeks and two weekends," Dad liked to say -- although that referred to the specific dating pattern. The actual time frame, as far as I could make it out, was about two months. The marriage date was Columbus Day, Oct. 12, 1940.

*****

I know most of the history after that. Dad worked at Dunn & McCarthy until called into service in World War II, was discharged in late 1945, went back to work, and eventually hooked on with the U.S. Shoe Corporation, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1952 as its Michigan salesman. We (I was not yet four years of age) moved to Birmingham, Michigan, and five years after that to nearby Bloomfield Hills.

It was an amazing upbringing in a very affluent area, and in a modern home with all the conveniences. The Bloomfield Hills house was a split-level ranch with four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, and something like 5,000 square feet of space. There was a recreation room downstairs, a bar, a dressing room for anyone who wanted to change into trunks and swim in the lake we fronted (spring-fed Sodon Lake), and a workroom/furnace room with access through a door that was practically invisible, built as it was into a paneled wall. More than one guest leaned against that wall and fell through the swinging door into the room beyond.

It was a mention of upbringings during a recent conversation with a friend that reminded me that I had file folders -- passed along to me at some point by my mother -- containing information on that house, and on a retreat my parents bought and renovated later in northern Michigan. When I looked for and found those folders, there was one mixed in with them that I had forgotten I had: a record of my father's service in the Naval Reserve during World War II -- from 1943-45.

That record in itself is interesting. He was a Lieutenant involved in Communications. He schooled for that role at Princeton and Harvard for six months, and then was shipped overseas to Scotland. He made his way eventually to France and finally to Bremerhaven, Germany at war's end. He took a brief detour back to England in August 1945 to compete in the U.S. Navy Tennis Championship. Dad was a heck of a tennis player, something he tried to impart to his three sons without success. I don't have a record of how he did at that Navy tournament, but if memory of his stories serves correctly, he was on the winning doubles team.

******

Within those papers, too, is a resume prepared by the Navy, and this is where a missing portion of Dad's life jumped out at me. A.C. (Gus) Haeffner, who cut his teeth in the business world during the Great Depression, followed his graduation in 1931 from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with a job as an assistant manager in the Chicago branch of the Binghamton-based Agfa Ansco Corporation, a manufacturer of photographic equipment.

I never knew that.

He worked with that firm from September 1931 to January 1935, when he became a sales representative in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, selling stationery for the Eaton Paper Corporation of Pittsfield, Mass. A notation says this was "a position with greater authority" than the Agfa Ansco job had provided.

I never knew any of that, either.

In October 1936, he hooked on with Dunn & McCarthy, Inc. of Auburn as a sales representative in Indiana and Ohio, selling Enna Jettick shoes. This carried him to October 1943 -- into marriage, into fatherhood (my eldest brother, Bob, was born in 1942) and into service in World War II.

*****

The Dunn & McCarthy shoe-sales job served my father well -- was excellent training for the job of a lifetime with the U.S. Shoe Corporation. In his years with U.S. Shoe, he earned a handsome living and provided an astoundingly comfortable upbringing for his three sons. In my youngest years, he was often on the road, traveling the highways and byways of Michigan, selling to shoe stores around the state. Mom held down the fort at home, running things in his absence.

Dad ultimately retired and moved with Mom to Florida. He died there on Nov. 1, 1994, at the age of 84.

I eventually, with what meager facts I had at my disposal, wrote a novel in which Dad played a key role as an Allied spy in Europe, a glorified extension of his actual service. It was part of an effort in the tale to turn family history upside down -- to suggest, as it were, that there are so many shadows obscuring facts in our history -- probably in the history of most families -- that ... well ... it's easy to fill in the blanks with imagination run slightly amok.

I wasn't going to publish the book, figuring that if Mom ever saw it, she'd flip out -- consider it disrespectful. But my brother Bob, on a visit to my home, spotted the manuscript on a shelf, took it home with him to read, and liked it well enough to pass it along to Mom. Her only reaction to the story was this: "My, you have an active imagination."

And so I published it. It's called The Islander, and is available here and there, including on Amazon.com. Not that I try to promote it. It's really just a curiosity from my past. It's listed, as are other books I wrote, under the name A.C. Haeffner -- which is how Dad signed his papers and checks. Call it a stylistic nod to my father, a man with some obscuring shadows in his history, but at the heart of it a man of his times who did very, very well.

God bless you, Dad.

*****

And earlier:

Johnston Sr. leaves for SHS

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 10 -- With the word Wednesday night that Mike Johnston Jr. -- former Corning West football coach and son of the 2010 Watkins Glen football coach, Mike Johnston Sr. -- had secured the job as the new Elmira Southside football coach, the die was cast.

Mike Sr. announced the next morning that he was going to head south to Elmira to help his son, as he has helped him in the past. In the doing, he will be leaving behind a troubled Watkins Glen football program that he led for one season -- well, for five games before the plug was pulled, ending the season prematurely.

Johnston Sr. says his goal in getting back into coaching a few years ago was to do so alongside his son, who was head football coach at the time at Corning West. Mike Sr. had been away from the sidelines during tenures as Notre Dame High School athletic director, Odessa-Montour High School principal and Horseheads athletic director.

Mike Jr. lost that West job last year when the Corning sports programs merged, and he ended up as offensive coordinator at Elmira Free Academy. That proved advantageous when the Southside head football coach, Brian Moore, bowed out in January.

Word has been circulating for weeks that Junior was going to get the Southside job; all he needed was the blessing of the Elmira School Board -- which was bestowed Wednesday night.

*****

There's a growing body of history involving the Johnstons working together. Senior has served as a JV coach and assistant to Junior in Corning West football and boys basketball. Before that, he helped out his son by serving as a football spotter in the press box. The two seem to work well together.

Before Johnston Sr. confirmed his departure from the Watkins Glen job Thursday morning, speculation ran in that direction.

"Yes, I imagine he would go with his son, and no hard feelings," Watkins Glen Superintendent Tom Phillips said of Johnston Sr. Wednesday evening, after word of the impending appointment of Junior had made the 6 o'clock news.

*****

After the 2010 Watkins Glen football season shut down early -- it had too few players, courtesy of declining interest and increasing injuries -- Johnston, along with Athletic Director Denise Wickham, put a brave face on the future, saying they would generate enough enthusiasm to produce a turnout of players at the start of the next season that would withstand the attrition that defections and injuries bring.

But a meeting with prospective players two weeks ago left Johnston frustrated. There were 23 athletes present, he says, "and we needed 30-plus. It's just wasn't working, at least for me, anyway." He didn't, he added, "want a repeat of last year."

Now, with the Southside appointment in Junior's grasp, Johnston Sr. says unequivocally that he will be working with his son's team in the fall, "whether on his staff, or as a volunteer, or in the (press) box."

And so he leaves the Watkins job, a post that he likely wouldn't have assumed had his son not been squeezed out of the West coaching job. That job loss in 2010, says Senior, "freed me up to help other places," meaning Watkins Glen -- where he says everybody, from the kids to the administration, "have been great."

The Watkins stay didn't last long, though, and so now the district needs to advertise for a new coach, if indeed the program continues. AD Wickham says the school has every intention of mounting a program this coming fall, despite rumors to the contrary.

All it needs, it seems, are a few more student-athletes who commit to it ... and of course a new coach.

Photo in text: Mike Johnston Sr. on the Watkins Glen sidelines in 2010.

****

Fatigue has got me, I guess. Too many winter sports contests. Too few days off. I posted a photo of Kevin Thornton on the Government Page along with the three candidates for Watkins Glen mayor who will appear on the ballot. Thornton is an announced write-in candidate.

The problem is, I initially misspelled his last name in the photo. If I had made that mistake on the ballot (assuming I was a Watkins resident voting for him), the vote wouldn't have counted.

Likewise, if you vote for him -- if you write in his name -- that name has to be spelled correctly. So, class, for purposes of the write-in, the spelling is THORNTON.

*****

And earlier:

Sometimes it's best not to ask

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 6 -- I remember a lawyer once telling me that a courtroom rule-of-thumb for people of his profession goes like this: Never ask a question of a witness if you don't know the answer.

Good advice, applicable also to the occasional political engagement.

The pitfalls of ignoring it were shown at the recent Meet the Candidates forum conducted by the Schuyler County League of Women Voters at a joint luncheon meeting with the Watkins-Montour Rotary Club.

Speakers included three mayoral candidates from Watkins Glen (incumbent Judy Phillips and challengers Mark Swinnerton and Richard Scuteri) and two from Montour Falls (incumbent Donna Kelley and challenger John King).

There were several trustee candidates in the audience, among them a Watkins incumbent, Nick Kelly, who announced to fellow diners early on that he planned to put a question to Swinnerton, a man who has a full-time job and a young family -- traits, in Kelly's mind, that would limit the time Swinnerton could devote to the mayor's job if he were to be elected on March 15th. (Kelly is running in tandem with Mayor Phillips, against a Swinnerton team that includes trustee candidates Scott Gibson and Kevin Smith.)

When it was time for questions from the audience, Kelly posed his. Just how, he asked, could Swinnerton find time for the mayor's job, considering his other obligations?

Moderator Jim Wilson, president of the League of Women Voters, jumped in to try and divert the question away from just the one candidate And so Phillips and Scuteri were able to first get up at the podium and say, gee, 9-to-5 jobs weren't a problem with them because they're retired.

Then Swinnerton, the point of the exercise, stood up and announced he'd need a little bit more than the allotted minute in which to respond because he had a letter to read, one he had sent that morning to The Odessa File (and which appears on the Forum page). It was from an official at the firm where Swinnerton works, the Fahs Construction Company.

It said, in effect, that the company is proud of Swinnerton's run for mayor, and that "he has our full support not only for his campaign activities, but after the election, as your mayor. We at Fahs would expect Mark, as your mayor, to carry out his mayoral duties effectively, and whenever necessary to be available to the community. All of our key managers are expected by Fahs to balance their family, community, and work responsibilities in a manner that does justice to all ... not just his employer. Mark has the talent, energy, and support systems to achieve this important balance."

Swinnerton then told about how one day, when he arrived at the Fahs office, the other employees were all wearing identical T-shirts, with Mark Swinnerton for Mayor printed on them along with Swinnerton's photo.

With that story told, Swinnerton unbuttoned his own dress shirt, there at the Meet the Candidates forum, and displayed a T-shirt like those, given to him by his employer.

The laughter drowned out any thought that he might have too full a life to add another course -- that of mayor -- to his plate.

Now I don't think he fully answered the question -- it was a little weak on details -- but that doesn't matter. What the audience will remember is the letter, and especially the T-shirt. Visuals work well -- not to mention moderate striptease acts. What they will also remember is that Mark Swinnerton was ready for the question.

For what it's worth, Nick Kelly didn't look too happy with the success of the answer.

Photo in text: Mark Swinnerton displays the T-shirt. Meet the Candidates moderator Jim Wilson is on the right.

*****

And earlier:

Return of the Opinionator...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Feb. 28 -- You might have noticed that the columnist known as A. Moralis has resurfaced on this website after an absence of some months (click here), and that the subject tackled this time is budgetary woes, school-district style.

Before any of you sharpshooters take aim at the anonymous nature of the column, it is (as explained here in detail before) sanctioned by me in honor of the grand tradition of philosophers and essayists across the centuries. I will say this much: Old A. is, quite obviously from the focus of the current piece, a resident not only of Schuyler County, but of the Watkins Glen School District.

I have been accused of being A. Moralis, but in fact am not. I'm a good deal more liberal than A. is, and quite often disagree with his (or her) writings. If any of his (or her) phrasing sounds like mine, it's because I edit the pieces, and sometimes my stylistic tendencies might surface.

I'm actually not too far removed from agreement this time on the premise that school districts would do well to have business leaders -- CEO-worthy people -- in the roles of superintendent. I realize the traditions and intricacies of state law regarding administrative positions, and therefore suspect such a change isn't all that simple. It might even classify as a pipe dream, but it shouldn't. Why, it must be asked, has the state education system grown into such an intricate, bureaucratic, unnavigable, financial mess -- resistant to any change except steps backward?

More to the point, perhaps we could use more business expertise on the state level -- in the Legislature, in particular -- rather than going with the preponderance of lawyers we now have. Yes, lawyers should know more about laws than businessmen, but look at all the mischief they've been creating in Albany for decades past.

Anyway, I -- like A. Moralis -- harbor no ill will against the Emperor of 12th Street (I'm embellishing on A.'s reference to the 12th Street empire), and in fact wish him well. It's just that he has been expressing so many doubts about this budget deliberation and about the state of school districts in general that ... well, that the negativity has begun to depress me, to push me to a suspicion that we're looking at a self-fulfilling prophecy.

****

And speaking of depressed, that's what I am -- courtesy of the impending end of the Village Take Out Restaurant in Odessa. The eatery, which specializes in Greek food and has some excellent Italian food and good old American burgers, is closing March 20. Owners Bob and Shelly Landon have run it for nearly 15 years, and feel it's time to decompress from the daily pressure.

They're selling to Dandy Mini Mart, which has a store next door. Dandy hasn't announced anything, but the Landons understand that the firm will use the VTO for storage before leveling the building to make way for Dandy expansion.

I've eaten at the VTO many, many times. It was a favorite haunt of my late wife, and is a favorite of my son Jon. It is a place with history -- dating back to the 19th century -- and a place that conjures up many fond memories -- of lunches with family and friends, of chats with Bob and Shelly, of good meals and a genial atmosphere.

I'm sorry to see it go.

*****

And earlier:

Some fever-induced verse...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Feb. 22 -- Poetry -- well, verse at any rate -- has been wafting in my cranium, looking for escape. It's a byproduct, I think, of a sinus-related malady that laid me out flat Sunday and had me napping intermittently on Monday.

Anyway, in order to get rid of the verse bouncing around inside my head, I've let the words out in written form.

They have to do with the end of the world as we know it, courtesy of the Internet:

A Tubular Ending

There was a day, not long ago,
Morality was fashion;
When violence was rare to see
And sex a private passion.

But with the 'Net came graphic scenes
Of murder, mayhem, gore;
Of bodies twined, of sweat profuse,
Of more and more and more.

Of troubled teens a-slicing arms,
Of vivid sights unbidden
By souls that fare far better
If life's truths are partly hidden.

And with these revelations,
These assaults upon our morals,
We came benumbed, were hardened
To life's marvels, life's rich florals.

And in the end, these images
This rampant information.
Led us to chaos, anarchy,
The undoing of nation.

When truth is bared in all its warts,
When Earth is shrunken, vile,
When compasses veer far from right,
When kindness turns to bile,

The end result is foreordained,
Upheaval will be ample.
Society will rupture, bleed,
Traditions will be trampled.

The moral here is simple:
It's far better -- not to lie --
But temper truth with veneer soft
With whispers, gentle sighs.

Granted, that's a little conservative and simplistic, and perhaps strange coming from a fellow who lives off the Internet and offers mostly positive things upon it. But the cyberworld is so vast, its information and tendency toward mischief so extensive, that a darker viewpoint is easily embraced.

******

And having written that, perhaps a lighter touch is in order. So let's try this brief one about March 15th, the day of Village Elections, in particular the one in Watkins Glen:

Life

Election day, the ballots cast,
Someone for mayor will be the last
One standing, Judy, Mark or Rich.
The other two? Well, life's a ....... niche.

******

Congratulations to the Watkins Glen boys varsity swim team, the Section IV, Class C champion for the second straight year. And congratulations, too, to the Watkins Glen girls varsity basketball team, the IAC Large Schools champion. This has been quite a year for WGHS sports, what with these two successes following banner years in cross country, boys soccer and cheerleading, not to mention assorted individual achievements.

*******

And earlier:

About those Athlete awards...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Feb. 14 -- Perhaps it's time to address the matter of The Odessa File Athlete of the Week and Athlete of the Year Awards.

As we near the end of the winter sports season, with snow and cold bringing the patience in many of us to the breaking point, I have been receiving some input -- a kind way of saying flak -- and questions about who gets what in the Awards landscape, and how it's determined.

Well, it's like this: I've evolved a little bit over the years. I started the Athlete awards with an eye toward crowning a definitive champion at each of the two high schools covered -- a dominant figure anointed by a clearcut lead in the points accumulated over the thirty or so weeks of the fall, winter and spring sports seasons.

That worked well, but in and of itself missed the point I was also hoping to make -- that there are other worthy kids out there doing some amazing things in competition. That was why I published the ongoing point totals in the early years. The problem there was that I was on occasion second-guessed by a parent angry that his or her child didn't get a point in a given week. (A point is given for an Honorable Mention performance. There are also two-point Double Honorable Mentions. Each Athlete of the Week gets three points.)

So I started not publishing the running point total, which seemed to eliminate the one problem, but posed another: How do you give the kids their due if you're not publishing their names (on the Honorable Mention list) when they do something pretty cool out there on the athletic fields? That's where the evolution came in: I started leaning toward a spreading of the wealth in the weekly award itself.

Accordingly, I give a much harder look at the lesser sports, if you will -- those that aren't in the mainstream of public attention: track, tennis, golf and bowling, for examples. That is true at both schools covered by the award: Watkins Glen High School and Odessa-Montour, each of which has one athlete (or more) honored weekly. I study performances, and balance one sport against another, try to measure impact, and so on.

The result is pretty interesting. This year, nobody has gotten the award more than four times, and in fact in 21 weeks, it has gone to 39 different entities. I say "entities" because in two instances it went to entire teams.

I like that. Spreading the wealth.

Meanwhile, the running point total is an ongoing thing -- kept snug and secure in its own computer file. I still utilize it because it is the most accurate gauge I've found for deciding, ultimately, who is Athlete of the Year in an apples-and-oranges athletic universe. It comes as close as anything can, I believe, to answering the question: How do you balance track performances or bowling performances against football or basketball or soccer performances, especially over the course of an entire school year?

So ... where do we stand on the current standings? I will say this: The races in both schools are, at the moment, quite tight. Girls, for the most part, are holding sway in the points race over the boys. (Yes, that's another apples-and-oranges situation.) Parenthetically, among this year's points contenders are previous winners of the annual award.

Spring sports will definitely determine who takes home the hardware. In the meantime, I expect to see some more fresh faces -- hopefully some first-time Athlete of the Week honorees -- receiving their just due for jobs well done.

******

And earlier:

A misty night at Shea ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Feb. 6 -- Jason Bond, the coach of the Watkins Glen High School boys varsity swim team, is in Dallas as I write this, preparing to attend the Super Bowl.

He got a ticket from a friend down there who works at a car dealership that somehow won two tickets. The dealership owner passed them along to this friend, and the friend invited Jason south to attend the game.

"They're great seats," Jason said. "Ground level, a corner of the end zone."

I'm a little envious, but watching the game on the big screen in my living room will actually be plenty good enough for me. Not that I wouldn't have jumped at the opportunity that Jason had.

I've actually only been to one major sports contest of significance -- if you ignore the Detroit Lions' first game at the Pontiac Silverdome, which in its day was considered quite the place.

No, the game that lists up there as my one major was Game 6 of the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets. The Red Sox were leading the Series 3 games to 2. A championship beckoned.

I still have my press pass from that game, with my name printed on it in a Sharpie pen, written by someone in the Mets organization. Accompanying it is the name of my employer at the time -- the affiliation that allowed me access to the ticket in the first place: the Elmira Star-Gazette.

******

I was there when the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs. I was out in the left field stands, in a section reserved for media, watching in disbelief as the Mets avoided elimination at the hands of the Red Sox. It was Saturday, Oct. 25, 1986, a cold, misty and mystical night in Shea Stadium.

While it was the only World Series game I've ever attended, I'd have been hard-pressed to witness a more memorable one. Don Larsen's perfect game in 1956 would have been nice to see, as would Game 7 of the 1960 Series, won by the Pittsburgh Pirates over the mighty New York Yankees on Bill Mazeroski's homer. But this game will suffice, thank you.

I was employed as Sports Editor at the Star-Gazette, and we had access to tickets for each game at Shea. One of our reporters went to an early game -- the first two were at Shea -- but I exercised administrative prerogative and took control of the Game 6 credential. I drove down to Queens and the stadium well ahead of game time, and was permitted field access during batting practice.

I recall Wade Boggs of the Red Sox chatting good naturedly during that pre-game period with a couple of Mets along the foul line near third base.

I recall the Mets' Darryl Strawberry taking what seemed like long, looping swings at the practice pitches -- and watched mesmerized as ball after ball shot off of his bat and headed deep to the outfield and occasionally over the fence. The man was huge, and his bat seemed about 10 feet long. Bunyanesque, I remember noting.

I recall the Mets keeping wraps on Dwight Gooden, the golden boy of the staff but something of an introvert back then. He stayed in the locker room until near the end of batting practice, and then -- when he did appear -- remained in the dugout, a security official, arms folded across his chest, blocking reporters from talking to him.

I recall the Red Sox pitcher that night, Roger Clemens, sitting alone at one end of his team's dugout, three days growth of beard on his face, along with a scowl. He was concentrating, working himself mentally into a competitive place, steeling himself to win -- he hoped -- Boston's first World Series championship since 1918.

******

The media seating was fine -- a section among bleachers looking down on left field, not far from the bullpen to our right, and adjacent to signs and a scoreboard to our left. There was an awning over our section, which kept the night mist off of us -- and shielded us from the sight of a parachutist gliding down from behind. He came into our view as he neared the infield, where he landed as a stunt. He was quickly escorted from the field.

The early part of the game was long and fairly boring -- and the weather increasingly cold. The night air was wet, bordering on flakes, and I gave thought along about the fifth inning to leaving. I had a long drive home that night; had decided not to absorb the cost of overnight lodging.

But I stayed, perhaps feeling some magic among the mist. Had I not, I would have been second-guessing myself forever.

The Red Sox scored a run in each of the first two innings, but the Mets rallied to tie the game in the fifth. Boston went up 3-2 in the seventh inning, but the Mets rallied to deadlock matters again in the eighth. After a scoreless ninth, the game went to extra innings -- but there was only one.

Boston scored twice in the top of the 10th, and it looked as though the Mets were done. That was the consensus among the reporters seated around me.

Wally Backman and Keith Hernandez were retired to start the bottom of the 10th, and the crowd -- you could feel it -- had resigned itself to a Mets defeat, the end of the season. But then the magic struck.

It's all there in the baseball histories, or on Wikipedia: a two-strike single by Gary Carter, a pinch-hit single by Kevin Mitchell, a Ray Knight RBI single, a wild pitch by the Red Sox' Bob Stanley that brought in the tying run, and the squiggler down the first-base line by Mookie Wilson that went through Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner's legs.

As Knight crossed the plate with the winning run and Buckner stood despondent, alone, watching the offending ball roll away from him, Shea Stadium was rocking, feet stomping on metal, the place deafening.

*******

Buckner was long vilified for that miscue, but of course there was still a Game 7 to be played. Had the Red Sox won that finale, the error would have been minimized. But they didn't, blowing a 3-0 lead in an 8-5 loss. They had to wait another 18 years before they would taste that elusive World Series championship.

*******

I recall that after Knight had scored on Buckner's error, I walked beneath the stands -- even louder there, with the fans still stomping above -- and down a long hallway past the Mets locker room to a media briefing room.

I recall the Boston manager, John McNamara, bristling at a reporter who suggested that the Red Sox loss was the result of the Curse of the Bambino -- the longstanding bit of baseball lore that said the Red Sox were cursed for selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees between the 1919 and 1920 seasons. History had nothing to do with it, was the gist of McNamara's response, although it wasn't quite that restrained.

I recall the long walk out of the stadium -- past the Mets locker room again, where Kevin Mitchell was leaning against the door jamb, smiling, talking to friends.

I recall the long drive home in the wee hours, the fight to stay awake, the relief when I reached my house, and the slow climb up my stairs. Above all, I recall the exhausted bliss of crashing onto my bed, next to my wife Susan, and the joy that came simply in stretching my legs and closing my eyes.

I could sense, as I did so, that Susan had wakened. She waited a moment before speaking.

"Have fun?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," I answered. And then I slept.

********

And earlier:

A memorial and other matters

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Jan. 31 -- Word has reached here of the death of Dr. Frank G. Fielder, who was injured Dec. 7th in an auto accident in Montour Falls.

Dr. Fielder, 96, a retired veterinarian, was hospitalized after his car went out of control and struck a house. He was at first transferred from local care to a hospital in Philadelphia, and then moved to one in New Jersey, where he passed away.

Georgie Taylor, president of the Humane Society of Schuyler County -- an organization that took over Dr. Fielder's veterinary property on County Rte. 10 several years ago for a spay-neuter clinic and shelter -- e-mailed to say there will be a memorial service for Dr. Fielder at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 5, at the Episcopal Church in Catharine.

Taylor says that Dr. Fielder's son, George, "is asking that in lieu of flowers, memorials be made to The Humane Society of Schuyler County."

******

An e-mail arrived here from a couple of readers, Jannica and Mark Moskal of Watkins Glen, concerned about the proposed brine pond along Rt. 14, "just south of 14A, right on the Seneca Lake Wine Trail." It's part of a project planned by Inergy that involves the storage of liquid propane in converted underground salt caverns.

The Moskals were concerned that such a project would mar a region "known for its beautiful vineyards, delectable wines, scenery that takes your breath away, outdoor adventures, and racing" -- and that beyond the esthetics of the issue, they are worried about what the project's critics say are potential environmental hazards. The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has been reviewing the proposal for some time.

"We've all worked hard at making this region a must-see destination, and we have to keep it that way," the Moskals said, urging people to e-mail the DEC chief, David Bimber, at dlbimber@gw.dec.state.ny.us "to let him know how you feel."

*****

Schuyler County Sheriff Bill Yessman has sent along word of a fund-raising chicken barbecue on Sunday, Feb. 6 at the Montour Moose Lodge, starting at 12 noon. It will last until the chicken is sold out. Dinners are $8, and half-chickens are $5.

The event will raise funds for the Sheriff's Office's K-9 Unit. The unit operates without public money. Funds raised will pay for food, equipment and medical services for the unit's dogs.

******

It's hard to believe time has passed so quickly, but we're down to the last few regular-season high school winter sports contests. There have been some notable successes -- the Odessa-Montour girls and the Watkins Glen girls basketball teams are each 11-2 as of this writing, while the Watkins boys are 8-4, including a win over a tough Waverly squad that had beaten the Senecas 55-33 the first time they played.

Beyond that, the Watkins Glen boys swim team is once again exceptional, beating everyone in the IAC except Lansing, and winning its third straight C Division title at the EFA Invitational. And in wrestling, Adam Hughey captured an IAC title at 160 pounds.

Perhaps most fascinating is the Watkins Glen indoor track team. The members of that squad have set well over a dozen individual and relay school records in this, the program's fourth year. Amber Swartz has had a hand in a half-dozen of them, and Shane Smith in about as many. Other multiple record-setters: Shannon Hazlitt, Nick Sorensen, Charlie Bascom, Sarah Hazlitt, John Fausold and Amelia Stamp.

******

Jeff Dill hosted a great fund-raiser on Sunday, Jan. 30, for the Spirit of Schuyler -- the Tony Vickio-led non-profit that provides financial assistance for county residents in emergencies. Live music, plenty of food and wine, and camaraderie marked the event, held at the J.R. Dill Winery on Rt. 414 north of Burdett.

The Spirit of Schuyler started small, with annual fund-raisers at Tony's sign shop next to his home on Rt. 329, but it has grown, and will likely continue to do so. Fittingly, Tony was recently honored by the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce with its annual Community Spirit Award.

*****

And earlier:

Onward to March 15 ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Jan. 26 -- Let the Games begin.

The Republican Primary for mayor of Watkins Glen -- won Tuesday by Mark Swinnerton -- was just the appetizer.

Now comes the feast: a three-way battle for the village's top spot, to be decided on March 15. It's Swinnerton vs. incumbent mayor Judy Phillips and the man Swinnerton bested Tuesday in the primary, former mayor Richard Scuteri. The latter said he would continue campaigning as an independent.

There is already some discord in the air. After his primary win, Swinnerton -- concerned that Scuteri's continued presence in the race might siphon off some Republican votes -- suggested that Scuteri would best serve the party by stepping aside.

"I wish you'd do the honorable thing and listen to the party," said Swinnerton. "The honorable thing would be not to run."

Scuteri disagreed.

"That's not going to happen," he said.

"I guess that means you don't want change," said Swinnerton.

"Change, yes," said Scuteri. "Just not your change."

Translated, that means both men want to be mayor. As does Phillips, who has held the post since Bob Lee resigned it in 2005. She won a full term in 2007.

As a possible precursor to upcoming dialogue, Swinnerton noted that Phillips has been on the Village Board since 1989. "We've been talking about that," he said, referring to his running mates, Scott Gibson and Kevin Smith, each seeking a trustee seat under the banner of the Listening Party. "We're talking about term limits," Swinnerton added. "It's time for change. Change is good."

There will be a lot of campaign rhetoric ahead, and plenty of advertising -- much of it by the Swinnerton camp, which showed a proficiency for utilizing the media in the weeks leading to the primary. They adopted an effective slogan accompanying a photo of a smiling Swinnerton: "It's not about what I want. It's about what you want."

In contrast, Scuteri took out longish ads that carried no photo -- just a lot of words explaining his position on various issues. That's admirable, but it's also a challenge for the voters. They tend to embrace slogans, not essays.

Phillips has been quiet thus far, letting the primary play out, and awaiting her nomination in the Democratic caucus. She received that Saturday, and now looks ahead.

*****

If age -- which is to say ageism -- plays a factor here, then Swinnerton has the decided advantage. He is roughly thirty years younger than Phillips, and forty years younger than Scuteri.

If government experience is a factor, Phillips would seem on the face of it to have the edge with her two decades-plus of board service, and her six years as mayor.

If life experience is a factor, Scuteri is certainly in the mix, with his 21 years in the Air Force and his successful run as a restaurateur in the heart of downtown Watkins Glen before retirement a decade ago.

If campaign signs are a factor, Swinnerton -- with some very sleek, professionally produced streetside ads -- will have the edge on Scuteri, who admits he doesn't have the kind of money to spend that the Swinnerton camp seems to. Phillips' signage and her media advertising are unknowns as of this writing.

If rhetoric is a factor -- well, we'll have to see about that one. Campaign talk can lift or derail a candidate.

However you slice it, two of these folks will be on the losing end of the election -- as will three of five candidates vying for two trustee seats: Scott Gibson, Kevin Smith, David Wyre Sr., Jeff Blanchard and incumbent William Smagner, a Democrat.

It will be an interesting ride these next seven weeks, and possibly a bumpy one. Buckle up.

******

And earlier:

The battles from within ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Jan. 18 -- I've been in a bit of a funk lately, no doubt partially the product of winter. I always get a little blue -- and I don't mean just cold -- at this time of year.

To get out of those blues -- to freshen my life a little bit -- I'm looking at changing some things, though not regarding the website. With the help of some friends, I started some outdoor renovations on my property before the cold weather set in, and I hope to continue them after the warmth returns. In the meantime, I'll be tinkering a bit with my home's interior.

Beyond that, I've jettisoned my annual trip to Michigan's Bois Blanc Island, which I have visited in each of the past 15 years, and where I spent a month last summer . I might sneak up there for a short visit, but my goal there now is to develop some property I have -- to establish a year-round home that I can visit at any time, without the burden of $850-a-week in rent.

Beyond that, I'll be turning my ragtag garage at my Odessa home into a reasonably fashionable workspace, and I might tackle a wraparound porch for the house. But that's all physical things. I also have to work on an inner peace that has been elusive of late.

I like to say that I once considered -- it was actually three or four times -- going into the ministry. I don't see that as a viable option at my age, but the sense of it still appeals. Accordingly, I will try to embrace that aura; try, symbolically, to serve as an agent -- a communications conduit -- of all that is good about this county.

But there is within me, too, a sense of balance that seems to require a response to a provocation -- a growing tendency to embrace confrontation when it seems right or necessary. That's a far cry from my childhood self, when confrontation of any kind set me to shaking.

I'm not sure how those two tendencies -- the ministering and the confronting -- will coexist, or if one might prove dominant. As life progresses and my body slows -- and the aches and maladies increase -- the ministerial side might be difficult to grip firmly. I might tend toward the crotchety.

An elderly acquaintance, beset with failing health in his final year, once put it succinctly, with a grimace brought on by recurring pain: "Don't get old."

I'll likely have little choice in the matter; but given my druthers, I'll take the aging. I just hope I wear it well.

******

Being mid-January, members of the Top Drawer 24 Committee -- those teachers, administrators and lay people entrusted with deciding which two-dozen high school students will be honored with inclusion on the Brian J. O'Donnell Schuyler County Scholar-Athlete-Citizen Team late in this school year -- are preparing to fill out ballots designed to determine some of the honorees.

The decision-making process is a long one, full of observation, rethinking, discussion, and the study of lists of students and their achievements. There is a sharing of information -- of encomiums and, on the flip side, reservations.

The winnowing process continues into May, with more discussion, more observation, and a final ballot to determine which students earn the last available spots. The team is announced in mid- to late May, and then comes the celebration at the State Park Pavilion in early June, in this case June 1. This will be the sixth such annual celebration.

There are students from four schools honored: Watkins Glen, Odessa-Montour, Bradford and Trumansburg, since all four have territory within Schuyler County. The number of students chosen from a given school is based roughly on the percentage of Schuyler students at that school.

There are more than 60 students on the initial lists of nominees being considered, based on grades, athletic participation, and citizenship. The committee looks at the entire package a student brings to school -- to the classroom, to the playing fields and to service organizations. Character and attitude are large determinants.

Eligibility applies to seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen, although only one 9th grader has made the team thus far.

The selection process is steeped in secrecy, but the honor -- the announcement and celebration of the team -- has always been well-publicized on these pages. And it will be again.

******

And finally:

We're heading into one of the more interesting Village Election Days in recent memory. There is a three-way contest for mayor in Watkins Glen, a two-person battle in Montour Falls, and God-knows-what in Odessa come those mid-March ballots.

Independent petitions won't be turned in until early February, so it's hard to say who, exactly, will seek the Odessa mayor's post -- although the incumbent, Keith Pierce, has indicated he'll run for reelection. If there is no avowed competition, speculation is circulating that there might be a quiet write-in campaign to try to unseat him -- a campaign directed by the small group that recently forced a vote on village dissolution. The speculation is fueled by the thought that a write-in winner -- with a couple of write-in pals running for and winning two available trustee spots -- would, once inside the seat of village power, direct another dissolution vote. That's the only way another such vote could be brought up in less than four years.

Would a write-in campaign work? It has in Odessa before, back when Tom Cook defeated the "unopposed" candidate, Don Flatt. So ... yes.

Like I said, an interesting Election Day.

*******

And earlier:

Bosses, bosses everywhere

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Jan. 10 -- I've not always done well with my bosses.

Oh, there were some who inspired me -- encouraging me in my writing, and showing me the proper way to handle employees, which is to say with honor and respect. But I've also encountered bosses in my jobs who were ego-driven, idiosyncratic types who were not at all concerned with feelings, just with the bottom line.

I recently wrote a bit of verse about one such arrogant boss -- but it applies equally well to any who are poorly equipped to run a ship well -- who believe that wielding power for the sake of that power makes them somehow important.

They aren't.

The verse is titled "The Outsider." It begins like this:

There once was a workplace of goodwill, of promise,
A place where encouragement ruled.
But the board of directors said "Let's jazz it up.
We'll import an outsider," they drooled.

Later, after this newcomer, this new boss, has been installed, he (it could equally well be a she) tells the workers:

"Encouragement's fine if you're learning to walk
But most of you know how to run.
So let's stop this joy stuff and get down to work
We're not here to have any fun."

And so the outsider took hold of the reins
And sucked the joy out: Holy Merde.
The once-happy workers complained loud and long
But nobody listened and nobody cared.

The verse goes on to note:

But work without joy is a house made of cards
That eventually teeters and falls ...

And, indeed, it does in this case, as -- in my experience -- it has in most similar cases. The boss is finally shown the door, which is a tough pill to swallow for those who did the hiring.

The leaders at last saw the folly they'd wrought
By mucking up something so prized
As a workplace where joy was a prominent thing,
Where success had been gained, and reprised.

So now, in the wake of the boss's dismissal,
Some tenuous happiness bloomed.
But workers, once bitten, would cautiously ask:
"What madness lies yonder, what gloom?"

As I said, I've had inspiring bosses, but I've also experienced the kind who are demoralizing. The most extreme case I encountered in a negative vein occurred when a new boss, moved in from the outside, literally rubbed staff the wrong way so badly that half of them left to find friendlier pastures within a year. I was one of them.

The bottom line for me is this simple fact:

Workers high and low have important roles in the success of the workplace. That workplace is, in the best of times, like a well-calibrated timepiece. If a boss fails to wind it up, to inspire it, the success stops. If he or she twists the stem too hard, the entire venture seizes up, as though from a coronary.

So, to the bosses of the world who inspire -- who know how to bring out the best in their employees and how to reward them appropriately -- I say bravo. Well done.

To the others, to the domineering, I say this: I wish on you ... a boss like you.

******

And earlier:

Eagle Scouts get my vote

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Jan. 1 -- Welcome to the New Year. As I write this, it is 1-1-11.

And being 1-1-11, I have, by three days, now exceeded eight years with this experiment in personal journalism called The Odessa File.

Eight years of growth, I hope. Eight years of news, and personal observation -- both mine and that of other columnists. Eight years without an office of co-workers, and thus no office politics, and no bosses.

Eight years. Enough time for two Presidential terms. I've been in office, so to speak, three days longer than Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Which got me thinking. We're coming up fast on the Presidential season, the start of campaigns leading to the 2012 primaries and general election. And once again, we'll likely be saddled with choices that leave something to be desired. Such is the nature of politics and its compromises, not to mention the ridiculous cost of campaigns.

So ... I started thinking: Maybe I should run for President. I know me, and I trust me. I would at least get my vote.

I could run the campaign through the Internet, much as I run The Odessa File through it. Fittingly, I could run under the banner of The Internet Party.

More and more people are working from home, of course, thanks to the wonders of technology. When I go on vacation, I take my laptop along with me, and put in a couple of hours or more a day keeping up with things back home, updating the website with photos, columns and stories.

So ... in the spirit of American individuality and creativity, I could mount a campaign from my home (or even on vacation), from the very laptop I use to provide you with these pages.

No, I wouldn't win; I'm not completely foolish. But it would be a grand thing to be able to say to my grandchildren -- if ever I am blessed with them -- that their grandfather ran for President.

******

But wait. If someone runs for President, maybe he or she should aspire to more than a Pat Paulsenish effort. Maybe, down the road, the Internet will play an increasingly important role in elections ... but the degree of importance would depend on how serious a candidate is at the controls

I'm thinking Eagle Scouts might be the ticket. They are serious, and goal-oriented, and determined to achieve. I'm thinking that in the future, I'll look for the likes of Schuyler County residents Adam Rice or Lee Sidle to run for President.

*****

Adam, a senior at Watkins Glen High School, earned his Eagle rank last year after achieving a community-minded project: a new Clute Park sign alongside the park office on Fourth Street in Watkins Glen. Check it out: it's a work of beauty.

Adam's a serious guy -- a good student, an exceptional swimmer, captain of the school's cross-country team, and a member during the last school year of the Top Drawer 24 team of scholar-athlete-citizens sponsored by this website.

Sidle (right), a sophomore at Elmira Notre Dame High School, is a Life Scout striving for his Eagle rank. His proposed Eagle project: a park on the east side of the walkway that leads down to the site where the walking bridge was removed from above the creek in Odessa last year.

Lee has approached the Odessa Village Board about it, and was warmly received. There are obstacles, such as liability concerns, since there is a steep drop into the water from and near that walkway. But the board gave its preliminary approval, and said it would work with Lee in developing a plan that could be realistically achieved.

Lee is a Scout in Troop 3030 in Odessa. His initial ideas for the park have included landscaping with trees, flowers and shrubs, a perimeter gravel path, and a couple of benches.

"It's great to see the younger generation take the initiative," said Mayor Keith Pierce.

Amen to that. Hail to the serious-minded among our young adults -- folks like Adam Rice and Lee Sidle

Who knows?

It could lead, someday -- and perhaps with the help of the Internet -- to "Hail to the Chief."

Photos in text:

Top: Adam Rice (top) receives a commendation from Watkins Glen Village Mayor Judy Phillips in March 2010, with his parents, Bill and Mary, at his side.

Bottom: Lee Sidle at a recent Odessa Village Board meeting.

*****

And earlier:

A time of love & compassion

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Dec. 25 -- There is a sweetness about Christmas Day that has always appealed to me, no doubt a legacy of the love and largesse shown by my parents when we celebrated it during my childhood.

In fact, that period resonates so soundly with me that I find myself, each Christmas Day, revisiting that long-ago time -- placing myself in the living room of our house at 16036 Amherst in Birmingham, Michigan. The Christmas tree was in a corner of the room, at the rear of the house, and when I'd arise on that magical morning, it would always be surrounded by what seemed a mountain of presents.

They weren't all for me -- not by a long shot. I have two older brothers who shared the wealth, and Mom and Dad always bought nice things for one another, although the cards attached to their presents were signed by "Santa Claus."

I bought into that: the Santa tradition. There was little doubt in my mind that Santa was responsible for all of that bounty -- although I could not fathom why he would be so kind to people he didn't really know. I didn't let that minor concern detract from the joy of ripping the paper off the packages, though.

In particular, I always sought -- and was generally rewarded with -- books (I loved, and still love, to read), and sports cards (during that season, football cards were the norm, from which I hoped to gather as many Detroit Lions as possible), and sports games (preferably baseball; the kind with dials to spin -- or even better, one of the newfangled electro-magnetic inventions).

I also loved -- though it wasn't an annual present -- those little balsa wood planes, the kind that you throw into the air and watch as they circle, dipping and rising, dipping and rising before plummeting to earth ... or in that case, on Christmas morning, before plummeting to the carpet.

I look back on those mornings, and I realize that while I recall the presents with some clarity, what mattered most was the love in that room, in that home. It was not a once-a-year thing, that love. My parents were astoundingly kind and supportive, and my upbringing quite clear of what I have found in succeeding years to be all-too-common in the workaday world: conflict and compromise and contentiousness.

Those, I have learned, are the truer measures of a life lived, and I find that sad. That is perhaps why I cling to the sweetness of Christmas, why I cherish it. It brings back to me the sights and sounds and feeling of an innocent time -- a period when life was gentle and I was enveloped by love and compassion.

To all of you, I wish those same elusive qualities. May the day and the coming year be kind.

*****

And earlier:

Kissed by the angels ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Dec. 18 -- It was a time of innocence, of hope. It was a time to go courting. There was little need here, in the United States, to be too concerned about what was happening overseas.

That's what Richard "Red" Falvey was doing in early December 1941. He says he was courting his future wife -- on the start of a date -- when word arrrived of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

"I'd never heard of it," he said. "I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. But I thought how foolish it was to do that -- that we'd clean them up in a week. We learned how powerful they were, though; how Japan had built up its military. But I ask you, is there any more powerful country than the United States?

That Day of Infamy, as President Franklin Roosevelt called it, was the start of a long journey for Falvey, now 89 -- a journey that would take him to England and France and Holland and the Battle of the Bulge and Hitler's Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden at war's end.

For Falvey lived what millions of brave Americans lived: World War II, with a front-row seat. He was one of the lucky ones; he was able to return whole and to live a full life. More than 400,000 men didn't make it

*****

Red Falvey -- a Yonkers native who has lived in Hammondsport for many years -- was born in 1921, and among his early memories is the taunting he received for a cross-shaped birthmark he carries near his left temple. It was difficult, that taunting, but his mother put it into a different perspective. The birthmark, she said, signified that he had "been kissed by the angels."

Falvey, a religious man who carried a small Bible into battle with him in the war, described his experiences at a recent Watkins-Montour Rotary Club luncheon. And he made it clear faith is still a part of his belief system by decrying the general tendency of government to shy away from the concepts of God and prayer. "Who are these people running this government?" he asked, shaking his head.

By contrast, World War II was definitely a time for prayer. After he had enlisted on his 21st birthday (the earliest age allowed in the military back then, he said), he signed up for a newly formed parachute unit, becoming part of the 506th P.I.R. (Parachute Infantry Regiment) of the 101st Airborne Division.

"It was a new thing, a new idea," he said, "forming a regiment of airborne right off the street. But it was an experiment that worked. It was a success."

He had training stateside and in England, and then -- on the eve of the Normandy invasion -- his battalion commander gathered his 500 men and said he was "going to ask you to pray with me for the success of this mission," and then indeed prayed.

"We do not ask favors," the prayer went. "We are instruments of your will," instruments that might "restore peace to the world. Be near us in the fire ahead."

*****

That fire included, for Falvey, 33 days in France after parachuting in -- a perilous maneuver that proved fatal for many men shot down in the sky or while dangling in their harnesses, hung up in the limbs of trees. "Many men's feet never touched French soil," he said.

After Normandy came the invasion of Holland (called Operation Market Garden), where he spent 72 days (the men had been told it would take seven days) after a risky daylight parachute drop. And then came the Battle of the Bulge -- 66 years ago, a ferocious and costly event that began on Dec. 16th, 1944. It was the final major offensive by the Nazis -- an attempt to split the oncoming Allies, to disrupt their supply lines. And it killed or wounded 75,000 American soldiers.

It went on for months, and Falvey was in the middle of that, too -- occupying foxholes and trying to survive hunger and extreme weather. "It snowed and snowed," he said. "It was knee deep, unbelievable weather. And for over 30 days I never saw the inside of a building."

It was, he said, "the only time in my life when I thought I was starving. Food was hard to come by. Then, two days before Christmas, we received some bread, and I ate some and tucked a couple of pieces away."

On Christmas Day, he said, he pulled that bread out and shared it with some of his fellow soldiers. "It was a blessing just to get something to eat. I imagine those men, if any are still alive today, remember that bread."

Eventually, he said, he and the other Airborne soldiers "were pulled out" of there, and were soon "rushed across the southern part of Germany toward Berchtesgaden. For some reason they wanted the 101st there before anyone else." His unit was the first to arrive at that location, which had been used by Adolf Hitler as a retreat. Hitler was by then dead in Berlin by his own hand.

While at Berchtesgaden, ensconced in comparative luxury -- which is to say he was indoors -- Falvey joined in the celebration that came with word of the war's end.

"I popped a bottle of champagne and took a drink," he said, "and then threw the bottle out a window. But I didn't open the window."

He smiled. "I was never proud of that. It was part of the foolish things and excitement that came upon word that the war was over."

*****

Red Falvey, a sharp, spry and very active man in this, his 90th year, remembers a World War II general named Lee who told the troops heading into the battle for Europe that they had "a rendezvous with destiny." It was a phrase borrowed from a speech made by President Roosevelt in 1936, but it struck a chord there in 1944, with all hell about to be unleashed

"We didn't seem too concerned with what our future would be," Falvey said of the Airborne soldiers with whom he had prepared for the invasion -- the assault on Hitler's well-entrenched troops. "We had trained hard; we just wanted them to let us loose to do our best."

With his Bible packed in his gear and grenades and other weaponry strapped to his belt and slung over his shoulder, Falvey -- along with the other men of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment -- made the hourlong flight on D-Day over France, and floated down onto it.

And somehow -- a couple of frozen toes his only damage of note -- Red Falvey made it through from there to the end of the war and to that bottle of champagne.

"There were 16 million men in the service," he said, "and I was a little piece of it. I did the best I could with what I had. I had my rendezvous with destiny."

Considering the dangers he faced, he also had fortune smiling upon him -- although he prefers to call it "providence" and "divine intervention."

"There's no doubt in my mind," he said of his war experiences. "I was kissed by the angels."

Photos in text: Red Falvey at the Rotary luncheon, and a World War II picture of him in a plastic frame circulated among the Rotarians.

*****

And earlier:

The legacy of a young boy

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Dec. 12 -- I'm tempted to call this a Christmas story.

For in a sense it is. It is ongoing, with new developments, in this holiday time, and it is a story that fits the spirit of the season, for it is one of birth, death, compassion, and the healing power of love and devotion.

But it goes beyond that, I think. It strikes me as a story for all seasons, about a little boy for all seasons.

It is also about that boy's parents, the Campbells, and their entry into the world of transplants ... and about their upcoming journey west on Christmas Day as part of that world.

*****

Holly and Andy Campbell are both teachers in the Odessa-Montour school district. They have two children ... and had a third, Jacob Rian Campbell, who died in August 2007, just two-and-a-half months after his birth. He stopped breathing during a nap, and while efforts by Andy and hospital staff restored breathing, Jake's brain was irreversibly damaged. Thus, the Campbells made the decision to provide his heart and eyes for transplant.

The discussion leading to that decision, they told a recent gathering of the Watkins-Montour Rotary Club, was incredibly difficult -- "the hardest conversation we've ever had," said Andy. "We were trying to make a hopeless and terrible situation somehow better."

Jake's heart ended up going to a two-week-old boy in Iowa named Beckham Scadlock. The donor family, the Campbells, were not supposed to know the identity of the recipient -- just that he was in Iowa. But they found out his identity by research on the Internet.

"We were curious to know if the Iowa boy was doing well," said Holly.

"We googled the information we had," said Andy, "and found a blog about Beckham Scadlock. It seemed like he must be the one, and he became a source of inspiration for us -- something positive to look to." That was in January of 2008.

"We watched the blog for months," Holly said, "and then one day the Scadlocks posted that they were writing the donor family -- so we knew a letter was coming our way."

It did, and the two families began a correspondence that resulted in them meeting at the 2010 National Kidney Foundation's U.S. Transplant Games in Madison, Wisconsin. The event is held every two years -- a gathering of transplant families from around the nation.

"We weren't sure the Scadlocks could make it," said Holly, "but we told (the organizers) our story, strings were pulled so the Scadlocks could be there, and we finally met them. There are no words to describe hugging the little boy who has become home for your child's heart."

Holly, a veteran of local stage musicals, had sent an audition tape to the event organizers, too, when she heard they were looking for performers -- a touching song called "For Good" from the musical "Wicked." She sang that song to Jake the last time she held him. It has the line: "You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart."

"When she found out that's the song I was singing," said Holly, "Beckham's mom told me she sang that same song to Beckham when he was born."

While Beckham's health has been up and down, he was healthy at last report and about to welcome a baby sister into the world.

****

Now, a new chapter has arisen. The Campbells learned that the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network had selected Jake as the subject of an annual Donate Life-sponsored floragraph for inclusion on a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year's Day in Pasadena, California.

Floragraphs, made from photographs transferred to a wood base and then completed using natural elements -- primarily flower seeds -- offer an unusual and sometimes colorful depiction of the photo subject, in this case donors. There are 77 floragraphs planned for the float, pictures of donors whose sacrifice "give life, hope and health to those in need," according a website describing the project.

"It was definitely a surprise and an honor when Jake was chosen," said Andy. He and Holly -- who went to Rochester this weekend for a ceremony and to put the finishing touches on Jake's floragraph (which was nearly completed by experts on the West Coast first) -- decided they wanted to travel to Pasadena for the parade.

Accordingly, they raised funds through T-shirt sales and donations, and came up with enough money so that they and their two sons, Ben and Alex, could go out there. The boys' grandparents are also going, Holly said, to share in the experience and so they can look after the boys when Holly and Andy are busy with float-related activities in restricted areas.

They will be leaving on Christmas Day from Rochester -- heading west by way of the Newark Airport and into an experience that will, once again, bring Jake's short life into sharp focus.

The Campbells have dealt with their grief by talking about it, which Andy says is "helpful." The fact that Beckham has survived is hugely gratifying and motivating, and the experience of meeting other donor and recipient families through the Transplant Games network has proved edifying.

It all "has given us hope," Holly said, "given us something to fall back on in a dark time. It has given our son a legacy. Organ donation is a beautiful gift from both sides. It was a worthwhile decision to make."

*****

Moments after writing the words above, I received an email from Holly describing the Saturday trip to Rochester. Attached were photos of the floragraph. Her note read as follows:

"The ceremony was MC'd by Rob Kockik, the executive director of the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network. He gave a brief introduction, and then three members of the University of Rochester Medical Center faculty spoke: Dr. Kathy Parrinello, chief operating officer of Strong Memorial; Dr. Thomas McInerny, associate chair of the pediatric unit; and Dr. Mark Orloff, the head of the organ transplant team. I wish I had a recording of their speeches!

"Then we completed the floragraph, with the help of Joe Carder, the transplant coordinator who took care of Jake (and us). They also had two nurses give us roses, one of whom was part of the staff who attended to Jake while he was at Strong.

"I really can't put to words what this experience has been like for us. It was truly humbling and touching, to have Jake honored in this way.

"One thing you could also share is that people can dedicate roses for anyone they know who was an organ donor, and they'll be placed on the (Tournament of Roses) float while having the dedication read. The link to the float website is www.donatelifefloat.org -- there's a link to click on from the main page to dedicate a rose. You can also look at Jake's story through that page, along with his photo that was used to create the floragraph. Or you can click here.

"Thanks again, Charlie, for helping us share Jake's message."

Photos in text: Holly and Andy Campbell at the Rotary meeting on Dec. 9 (top) and in Rochester on Dec. 11 with sons Alex (in Andy's arms) and Ben. (Rochester photo provided)

******

And earlier:

An infinity of promise ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Dec. 3 -- I received a Facebook message from a young reader -- a recent Odessa-Montour graduate -- wondering if I might write something "about the true meaning of true Christianity and family. I think some people in the community would enjoy that."

Well, I'm no minister (although I considered that path from time to time), and not somebody who really understands all the facets of what true Christianity is about, at least in a philosophical, discussion-based sense.

But I'll try something here that might touch on it -- a story I've been working on about looking back, looking ahead, and suffering withdrawal symptoms: a mix of anxiety-producing stimuli that might lead to personal illumination.

So ... here it is:

*****

Back in the day -- which is to say during my high school and then college years -- I knew a guy named John Burkoff, and a girl named Nancy Mammen.

They were both hugely intelligent -- enough to to give me an inferiority complex. But that didn't keep me from either; John was one of my closest friends, and Nancy -- well, I dated her for a short time in high school. John was a bit more serious about her, though.

As was all too common back then, I lost touch with them. They both attended the University of Michigan, went off to law school and related careers, and got married to one another. I, meanwhile, got married, graduated from Albion College (not far, really, from the U of M) and moved to New York and into a journalism career.

There was a high school class reunion 15 years past graduation, and the Burkoffs might have been there; I just don't recall. But if they were, that was the last time I saw them. (Our class was not known for reunions, and didn't have another one until it was time for a 40th, which I didn't attend, health and distance conspiring against me.)

Then, the other day, I took the advice of a friend and utilized Facebook for a search of my past. I typed in the names of some people from my long-ago, and when I tried the name John Burkoff -- voila, there he was. I sent him a note, and he responded, and we updated one another on the paths of our lives.

Forty years later, and he looks about the same. He has a beard, which he did the last time I remember seeing him, but it's fuller and gray-streaked now. His smile, a confident one, brings to mind the teenaged John who decided to take tennis lessons because he wanted to become MVP of the school tennis team -- a goal that I thought foolhardy and impossible to fulfill, seeing as how he had never played the sport before. But he did, in fact, learn the game well enough to become the MVP.

He and Nancy -- who is posed with him in various Facebook photos, and who has the same kindly eyes I remember from long ago -- are grandparents now. He is a longtime professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and she is an attorney who joined that same institution a couple of years ago.

*****

I bring all of this up because ... well, because the loss of friends and family in recent years has brought aging and death into play in a very real way, instead of in the abstract of my youthful days -- and has me casting an eye backward to a happy, safer period of my life at the same time that I look ahead with some trepidation.

Granted, a friend tells me I am actually young by actuarial standards, which is to say that I should have a few years left. And if I have the longevity of my mother (who is 91), then I could be around for a very long time. But still ...

Mix in with all of that a bit of withdrawal I'm experiencing -- after years of living on the stuff, I've sworn off Diet Pepsi, and it's left me with some anxiety issues (go figure: from pop?) -- and you have a meeting of various emotional forces colliding in the middle of my nervous system.

Amid that sort of imperfect storm, I'm a little more vulnerable than usual to self-doubt. Who among us hasn't experienced that?

When overtaken with anxieties like those, when grappling with a fear of the unknown future -- my father-in-law, suffering near the end of his life, told me quite simply "Don't get old" -- I take a deep breath to calm the nerves, and think about the fact that everybody, after all, lives and dies. Yes, I argue with myself, but there will be so much I will be missing after I'm gone. And then logic says "You missed eons before you got here, so what's the big deal? You'll just miss some more eons afterward."

Self-debate doesn't always work, though, and it hasn't in this case. Consequently, I've turned to the example of my late wife, Susan, in her final days six years ago. She was faced with possible paralysis after tumors had wrapped themselves around her spine, limiting her mobility; and even if she had regained full use of her legs, the prognosis was for a seven-month slide toward death. Such is the cruelty of cancer.

She was frightened as the cancer took her over, and frightened when her hospital stay began. She was facing radiation treatments, and heaven knows what else. As it turned out, she lasted only six more days, but in that time worked from fear to acceptance, from tears to smiles. She somehow felt that what was happening was okay, that she was in God's gentle hands.

"It's all right. Really," she told me there in the hospital.

In the two days preceding her sudden death -- of a pulmonary embolism -- she visited with friends and family, made peace by phone with a couple of people from her past with whom she had had issues ... and then she was gone, in the wink of an eye, almost as though she had lifted out to a far gentler, kinder reward.

I think of that, and I think I need that kind of acceptance, that kind of faith she exhibited. In this Christmas season -- at a time in which physical ailments (and withdrawal) have slowed my step and left me vulnerable to self-doubt; at a time when I am looking backward to people like the Burkoffs for emotional sustenance (or perhaps existential validation) while I face an always uncertain future -- it seems as though I must find the spirit of the season.

It seems as though I must shrug off the fears and embrace the infinity -- an infinity, an eternity that Susan believed, at the end, was one of promise, not of darkness.

*****

And earlier:

To an Absent Friend ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Nov. 26 -- Every day is a gift.

That's a trite maxim, but true. And it's akin to the equally trite Make every day count, for it could be your last.

Add to that ... well, add to that whatever related phrase you want. It all comes down to this: Once life is over, it's over.

If it's our time, then we lose everything -- barring an afterlife. If it's a family member or friend, we have lost a treasure.

A great writer named Red Smith referred to the latter such losses as Absent Friends.

We can no longer see these friends, or talk to them -- unless we are a bit imaginative, and don't mind talking to seemingly thin air. But we can still fall back on counsel they might have provided when they were alive.

That last hints at what we do have: memory. It's not as good as a physical reality, but at least it's something.

That's what I have with my father (gone 16 years now) and my wife (gone six years), and other friends who have departed before me.

Memories.

I lost another friend Wednesday ... another person relegated to my memory bank.

This time, death claimed a man named Bill Peckham.

*****

Bill literally burst into my life one day about a decade ago, when I was operating a little gift shop in Odessa called Country Cards. It was my mother-in-law's business, but she had me run it for her on occasional days.

I was in the shop's middle aisle, straightening some gift cards in a rack, when the front door swung open and a tall, slender man with a shock of graying hair and a neatly trimmed white goatee and mustache came surging in -- much as a strong wind signals a weather change.

The change that day was significant: it went from a low-keyed, humdrum day to one of vitality, for that's what Bill Peckham exuded. He was large and he was loud and he enjoyed life.

As I looked toward the door that day and sized him up in the moment before he spoke, I sensed something different about to happen, and I was right. I was asked a question I'd never been asked before.

"Are you the writer?" he asked right off, loudly, without preamble.

I smiled and answered.

"Well, I'm a writer," I said. "I don't know about being the writer ... Who's asking?"

"Bill Peckham," he said, striding forward, arm extended. And we shook hands.

He had, it turned out, read a couple of novels I had written -- passed along to him by a daughter-in-law who lived outside of town -- and he professed to have liked them.

Bill and his wife Dodie had moved here from Oregon, where he had had a long career in education -- specifically as a superintendent of schools. They had relocated to be close to family, to a son and daughter and grandchildren.

Bill was voluble, and charismatic, with warm eyes that lit up when he smiled -- which was often. He was opinionated -- generally against the conservative trend in the country -- and intelligent and family-oriented, often talking about his children and his wife. He invited me on occasion out to his home along Rt. 224, near Alpine, an old farmhouse that he was renovating.

When illness started taking its toll -- his wife was afflicted with a degenerative disease, and he was struck by cancer -- the invitations waned, but his occasional visits to my house and his occasional phone calls never did.

He fought off the cancer a couple of times, and took great delight in saying he had confounded the doctors who thought he should have been dead long ago. He delighted in all things about life, really -- whether it was sighting what he said was a cougar on the acreage behind his home, or touting the fishing available in his pond, or bragging about the achievements of his grandchildren, or tweaking the foibles of today's education administrators -- always a subject close to his heart.

That heart gave out Wednesday, not many days after Bill had left his home, had been taken to Schuyler Hospital. He was visited there by his sons Allen and Ivan, and he told them he had also been visited by his father -- his late father. And in those closing hours, his father having brought him a hint of the other side, Bill shed the pain that had been crippling him and found peace.

And then he departed, joining the ranks of Absent Friends.

Knowing Bill, he probably left smiling.

*****

Bill Peckham was a rich man, although I can't attest to his net worth ... to the depth of his bank accounts.

What Bill had was friends, myself included.

There is a wonderful old movie, a Frank Capra-directed gem called "You Can't Take It With You," in which the grandfather chides a tycoon for devoting himself so single-mindedly to the art of making money.

"You can't take it with you ... so what good is it?" says the grandfather. "As near as I can see, the only thing you can take with you is the love of your friends."

Amen. And so long, Bill.

*****

And earlier:

A night in the newsroom ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Nov. 22 -- As I've said here before, I'm writing an autobiography. I don't know if it will ever go beyond something to hand down to my sons and their children, but no matter ... it's an interesting exercise.

I'm covering events in snapshotty, brief vignettes, along with longer pieces -- starting with my childhood (contrary to rumor, it was not in the 19th century), and moving on to my college years and my work experiences. I'm jumping around, actually, blending past with present as needed, although some passages are purely chronological in and of themselves.

An example is the following event from my time at the Elmira Star-Gazette -- where across eight years I served in turn as a copy editor, Assistant Regional Editor, Regional Editor, Assistant Sports Editor, Sports Editor and News Editor before leaving the business for a prolonged period.

What follows is the story of life at the Star-Gazette nearly 30 years ago, in the newsroom on the night John Lennon was killed -- a night as vivid to me as any.

******

I had been working at the paper's copy desk for about three weeks when, one night during a lull, one of the other copy editors, a young (fresh out of college) fellow named Joe Scotto asked the Night Editor, a young man (30ish) named Mark Murphy how Murphy would handle the story "if a Beatle died."

At that point, all four of the Beatles -- John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr -- were still among the living. The group had broken up 10 years before, but their music was still hugely popular.

"What?!" Murphy asked, rather dumbfounded at the question, which seemed to come out of nowhere.

"How would you play the story if a Beatle died?" Scotto said. "Would it be the lead on the front page? Or would you put it down at the bottom? Or someplace else?"

Murphy shook his head. He always seemed amused by Scotto, who had a wide-eyed innocence that struck the seasoned Murphy -- the man essentially in charge of the news operation at night -- as humorous.

"I don't know, Joe," he said. "What would make you think of such a thing?"

Scotto thought a moment.

"Beats me," he said. "It just occurred to me. But really ... how would you play it?"

Murphy looked my way and rolled his eyes.

"It depends," he finally said.

"On what?" asked Scotto.

"On the circumstances," said Murphy. "It would be pretty important, no matter what. But it would depend on circumstances."

******

A week later, we received a bulletin in the newsroom at about 11 p.m. that John Lennon had been shot outside his apartment complex in New York City, a bit of news that had Murphy shaking his head and looking at Scotto as if he were a warlock ... or some sort of otherworldly creature.

"How're you going to play it?" asked Scotto, a grin counterbalancing the shock of the news. It was hard, I imagine, for him not to say: "See?"

"Depends," said Murphy. "He's still alive, according to this. We don't know how bad it is."

But before long, another bulletin announced Lennon's death.

"Okay," said Scotto. "Now how are you going to play it?"

Murphy pursed his lips.

"Big," he said.

*****

That would have been a simple matter, but the issue was made more complex by a promise from the Associated Press at midnight that it would soon be sending along a photo of Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, at Lennon's side earlier that day, getting an autograph from the former Beatle on a record-album cover: Lennon's recently released Double Fantasy.

"Oh, we need that photo," said Murphy.

It was about that time that Scotto, his shift completed, was leaving. Scotto, as he put on his coat and turned toward the door, echoed Murphy's sentiment, leaving us with a departing declaration. The photo, he said, "will be cool," words with which I couldn't disagree.

The deadline for our first edition of the night, destined for the counties to our south, would be in about 30 minutes. An edition targeted for Steuben and Schuyler Counties would be rolling off the presses 45 minutes after the South papers. The final edition-- the large majority of the night's newspapers, to be distributed in the Elmira-Horseheads metropolitan area -- would follow at about 2 a.m. That was the edition Murphy was most concerned with, and the one in which he wanted to include that photo, displaying it prominently on the front page -- above the fold for all to easily see.

Alas, the Associated Press dallied on sending it. The estimated arrival time kept changing, kept being delayed; the AP was negotiating a price with the private individual who had snapped the photo, and it was taking time ... precious time. It reached the point where we were in peril of missing our deadline on the final edition. We had gone without the photo in those two earlier editions, but the final edition was the big one.

"You realize, of course, that we're about to go in late," I cautioned Murphy, but he knew very well what the time was.

"We need that photo," said Murphy again. "It's historic."

And so we waited, and suffered through another two delays, until we were approaching an hour beyond deadline. In that hour, we sat and watched the clock, and shuffled papers, and alternately smiled and grimaced at one another, our patience stretched increasingly thin. At one point Murphy asked if we should forgo the photo, but I just shrugged and said: "We're late already ..."

Finally, the photo arrived. The bell on the AP photo machine had no sooner rung than Murphy was out of his seat and striding to the side room where the machine was stationed. He exited waving the photo in my direction, and hustled it out to the composing room. A couple of the compositors, held for that extra hour and none too pleased about it, processed the photo and got it onto the page -- and the presses finally ran.

Afterward, Murphy seemed satisfied. But the powers-that-be -- administrators who worked during the day (the paper being published twice a day, in the early morning and afternoon) -- weren't happy the next morning.

******

Murphy was awakened early that day by the Managing Editor, Wayne Boucher, after only a handful of hours of sleep, and was told to report immediately for a meeting.

Boucher had caught heat from above on the tardiness of the paper's morning delivery. By missing deadline, Murphy had kept drivers waiting, and they had complained to the mail room chief, who had complained to the composing room chief, who had left a complaint with the publisher, who had complained to the Executive Editor, Rick Tuttle, who had criticized Boucher -- who had, after all, not even been present. And so, I imagine, Boucher wanted to exact his pound of flesh.

Accordingly, he had a lengthy closed-door session with Murphy, explaining some deadline facts of life to him. Or so I heard afterward from reporters present in the newsroom at the time -- all, no doubt, keeping one eye cast in the direction of Boucher's glass cubicle and listening as Boucher's voice would, on occasion, rise.

I arrived at work hours later, and for once beat Murphy there; he was usually looking through reams of wire stories by then. But there was no sign of him, which had me worried. Had he been fired? Would I be dismissed, too, for serving as an accessory the night before?

But before long, Murphy arrived, looking haggard. He had been napping, he said, to make up for sleep he had been shorted by Boucher's phone call and the meeting.

"How did it go?" I asked, wondering how much trouble, exactly, Murphy had taken on.

Self-interest was at play, of course, since I had done little to dissuade him the night before -- in fact had encouraged him to wait after the final-edition deadline had passed, thinking a few minutes more wouldn't hurt. But I hadn't bargained on the lengthy nature of the AP delivery. And so I wondered now if I could expect a meeting with Boucher, too.

Murphy was by then scanning the wire stories, looking for that night's best ones -- including follow-ups on the Lennon murder.

In the silence that followed my question, Murphy continued shuffling through the stories. After a few seconds, he stopped, glanced at me, and then back down at the stack of papers. He looked very tired and very serious.

"It's all right," he said.

"Boucher was pissed, though, right?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "But that's okay."

"How do you figure?"

Murphy glanced over his shoulder -- in the direction of the offices of the Managing Editor, Boucher, and the Executive Editor, Tuttle, both of which were empty, their occupants having left for the day a short time earlier -- and then turned to me. This time he smiled.

"We got the photo in," he said. "That's how I figure.

"We got the photo."

*******

And earlier:

Way to go, Haleigh ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Nov. 20 -- Congratulations to Watkins Glen High School senior Haleigh Wixson on an amazing performance at the State Swimming Championships in Buffalo. She set two school records -- in the 50 Free (during the prelims) and the 100 Backstroke (in the Consolation Finals) while finishing 12th and 10th, respectively, in those two events -- and broke the Section IV Backstroke record for good measure.

"She was pretty excited," said WGHS varsity swim coach Abby Tormey, who said it's been a long time since any swimmer from around here has done so exceptionally well in two events at the State tournament.

******

I have encountered a few folks lately who've said they like the job that I and my staff are doing on this website.

Well, I've answered, thank you. I didn't bother to explain that there isn't really a staff. There are guest columnists and volunteer photographers, but no other reporters or editors, no business office, no ad sales department. As far as reporting goes, I often count on press releases and -- on occasion -- on the kindness of people who want something covered even though I'm not there to cover it.

Put another way, if I miss an event that someone out there thinks should have been covered, let me encourage that person to send along photos and a story. I've been known to publish those. If you have any questions about how to do that, just e-mail them to me.

******

We lost Floyd Seeley Thursday night -- a neighbor for three decades, husband to Bonnie, father to three grown boys. I was never close to Floyd, but I always admired him. He was a quiet, strong individual who kind of intimidated me with his calmness, his grace. Now he is gone, and I'm already missing him. God bless you, Floyd, and God bless you, Bonnie.

*****

It's been 10 years since the year of The Glory Girls, the Class D State Champion girls basketball squad from Odessa-Montour led by a 30-points-a-game point guard named Stefanie Collins. That squad had an amazing run, one that had the community abuzz and united.

The team members were, in addition to Collins, Jill Pevo, playing a key role at center; Amber Hoffman, Allison Bloom, Cristen Hill, Christie Emerson, Cara Mundt, Stephanie Cross, Tiffani VanZile, Val Richardson, Tracy Cooper, Anna Feliciano and Jenny Thomason. The team manager was Kristine Gardner, who would in later years star for O-M on the court, leading the Indians to another Final Four berth.

The coach in that championship 2000-2001 season was Frank Gavich, in his final year at the helm, and his assistant was son Greg Gavich, who has overseen the team since then.

That 2000-2001 squad went 23-4, its fourth straight 20-win season. The team had six seniors, three juniors, three sophomores and one freshman, Thomason.

Collins' 30 points per game were the major impetus, but Pevo averaged 15.3, as well. Those two accounted for an average of 45.3 of the team's 62.2 points per game. Hill added almost five points per game, and Mundt nearly four. Pevo led in rebounds with 358, while Collins snagged 140, Cross 107, Hill 106, Mundt 86, and Emerson 72.

Interesting stats, interesting year -- and food for thought, I suppose, as we head into a new basketball season.

*****

And earlier:

Dissolution: The facts are in

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Nov. 16 -- So the committee studying dissolution has reported back, and informational sessions have been held, and all that remains is to vote on the matter of dissolution on Dec. 7. Hopefully, if common sense prevails, the majority will be against the proposal to end Odessa's village government.

I've had a notion since the beginning that this was a misguided quest, this petition drive that forced the vote. There always seemed, behind the petitioners' actions, something personal involved here -- a suspicion that more than one person has put into words

But whatever caused this ruckus -- and even if the petitioners' intentions were sincere and genuine -- this will be a thing of the past if we band together, we 350 or so non-petitioning registered voters in Odessa, and drive the point home with a resounding NO! on ballot day, on Pearl Harbor Day.

The study committee -- a brain trust of some of the finest minds in authority in the county -- examined the known facts and worked the numbers and came up with this seemingly unavoidable truth:

If we dissolve, we will end up paying more money (once larger water bills are factored in), and we will be minus various services we now rely upon.

So, common sense says vote NO! If you vote yes, it makes no sense from a monetary standpoint, and if you don't vote, you could be handing the outcome over to those who would eliminate services and add to the overall cost -- toward what end?

Get out and vote. Get out and vote. GET OUT AND VOTE!

That's Dec. 7, from noon to 9 p.m. at the Municipal Building community room. Be there and vote "no" ... or be prepared to pay more and get less.

It's up to you.

*****

--Congratulations to Southern Tier Warriors Coach Bob Lee for leading the winning team at the North American Football League All-Star game.

--Sympathies to O-M grad Matt Shutter, whose Dominican College soccer team lost 1-0 to Southern Connecticut State University in the NCAA East Super Region tournament. Matt almost headed the ball in off a corner kick, but it hit the crossbar.

--A get-well to Tom Phillips, recovering from a burn accident at his home. See you at the School Board meeting next week, Tom.

--A job well done, Lake Country Players. They just concluded a three-day run of "The Pirates of Penzance," under the direction of the able Jane Daum. The cast had a blast, and so did the audiences.

******

This is a relatively quiet time, as far as news goes, what with high school sports between seasons. And the Watkins Glen High School seniors are on their Senior Trip to Washington, D.C. this week, which makes things pretty quiet at the school.

But even without sports, there are a few things going on: meetings, in particular, starting with one tonight at the Town of Catharine offices, when a decision is expected on whether to allow the proposed Humane Society animal shelter project to proceed. And the Watkins Glen Planning Board meets Wednesday night with a couple of potentially interesting items on the agenda. Come Saturday evening, the Southern Tier Warriors will be holding a postseason dinner from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Montour Moose Lodge.

Earlier that day, Nov. 20th, there will be two holiday events -- a Holiday Bazaar at the Odessa United Methodist Church from 9-3, and a Holiday Nuts & Sweets Fund-Raiser from 9-1 at the nearby Odessa Baptist Church.

******

And earlier:

The heart of the warrior...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Nov. 7 -- Here's to the warriors -- all those young people who compete in sports on the high school level, covered on these pages. But in particular I will dwell here on the wounded warriors who surge ahead despite injury and pain.

Now some might say that when confronted with a broken bone -- or even the suspicion of one -- an athlete would do well to sit down; to let those with sounder bodies compete. I have no argument with that viewpoint.

But it ignores the very heart and soul of the true athlete -- the boy or girl, man or woman who is driven to succeed in the arena. We glorify them in our society on the professional level; and especially the wounded ones. Think Curt Schilling and his bloody sock. Or Kirk Gibson, hardly able to walk, hitting a key homer off Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley.

This past week, we had two instances of injuries at Watkins Glen High School diagnosed as broken bones. One was in a cross-country runner, Taylor Kennard, normally the leading competitor on the girls varsity, who went slower than normal as the Senecas fell short of a hoped-for title at the Section IV tournament. She had pain in a foot, she announced afterward -- a pain which X-rays later indicated was caused by a broken bone.

Small wonder she was running slower. And a large wonder that she was able to compete at all.

But like I said: The heart of an athlete.

And then there was swimmer Haleigh Wixson, who jammed the middle finger of her right hand into the wall during the Section IV prelims at WGHS at midweek at the conclusion of a heroic comeback that drew her 200 Free Relay team into a dead heat with Lansing. She was in obvious distress afterward, and a doctor's subsequent cursory exam diagnosed a break -- but she was determined to swim in the Sectional finals on the weekend.

She did -- and was still in obvious distress (especially every time she used that hand to turn at the end of a lap) to the point that it was suggested she bypass the final event, the 100 Backstroke. But she insisted on competing in that race, and not only won in stirring fashion (by 15/100s of a second), but in a state-qualifying time -- meaning she can compete in that event at the State Swimming Championships Nov. 19-20 at Erie Community College in Buffalo. She had already qualified for States in the 50 Free during the IAC Championships.

I intercepted Haleigh (a girl I have known for almost a decade) after that Backstroke win. She had been in obvious pain -- the tear-inducing kind -- at the conclusion of the race, and had iced the finger before going over to speak to her mother in the bleachers. I caught up to her there, tapping her on the shoulder.

As she turned toward me, I whispered to her: "Now I've seen everything."

She smiled, but it was the smile of someone still in pain. It also, I thought, harbored a hint of kindly patronization -- a bridge to an acquaintance, a friend, from a person, a warrior athlete, who is driven to succeed despite adversity, who knows that the friend is not, and who also knows that the friend will probably never fully understand the drive, the need.

It is a hard world, that of the warrior, and often a lonely, painful one.

*****

The Dominican College men's soccer team upset top-seeded Bloomfield College Saturday in the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference Men's Soccer Championship in Lakewood, N.J.

On that 3rd-seeded and now champion Dominican team is Odessa-Montour graduate Matt Shutter. On hand to see him was his family and various friends who had driven to the game.

Congratulations, Matt.

*****

And earlier:

The dross in the mailbox

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Nov. 1 -- In a down moment, I wrote the following verse about political campaign mailings:

'Twas the day before voting,
and there in my box,
was more junk mail to throw out,
more dregs to detox.

Out Pam Mack and Tom,
Out Hare and Chris Friend,
Out Carl and Cuomo.
Thank God it will end.

I think of the money
They spend on such dross
And shake my head, certain
a win is a loss.

Whoever wins our hearts and minds (translate that to our votes) gets to go to Albany and -- in the case of Tom Reed or Matt Zeller -- to Washington, where they will make nice paychecks to represent us in a seriously listing system that they can do little if nothing to change. A new Congressman? He can't effect any significant change. A new State Senator? Likewise. And despite their protests to the contrary, I doubt either major gubernatorial candidate has the mojo to seriously alter the status quo.

Ultimately, the experience of any winners -- any new officeholders -- will be fraught with frustration at their failure to achieve. Or they might, conceivably, self-destruct along the lines of our last Congressman.

That having been said, this is still the greatest nation in the world, full of promise. I can't put New York State on the same pedestal, but in either case I hold optimistic for the future. While I dislike campaign rhetoric (and that includes the hype found on those glossy mailers), and I dislike the tendency of candidates to take the low road (negative ads), and I'm hugely disturbed by the economic chaos that has reigned supreme for the past couple of years, I maintain a core of hope.

The system is too cumbersome, yes, lumbering along like the Titanic, without the ability to turn very quickly, to avoid icebergs. It seems, at times, a bit hopeless.

We surge ahead, though, hellbent on getting wherever we're going before anyone else -- led by credit card companies and banks and other financial institutions whose bottom line is ... the bottom line.

It's a fool's race, leading ulimately nowhere -- except maybe into one of those icebergs.

And yet, being an eternal optimist (and no doubt a bit naive), I cling to the belief -- the faith -- that we will somehow avoid the biggest ones, the ship killers.

*****

I heard through the grapevine about an official who complained recently that The Odessa File is no more than a "pseudo-journalistic website" run by a fellow who has a disturbing tendency to "print whatever he wants."

I have to disagree with "pseudo" -- I've been in this business since the man in question was in diapers -- but yes, I can print (within the bounds of decency and common sense) anything I want. It's called freedom of speech. The same way he can say (within the bounds of decency and common sense) whatever he wants.

See how that works?

It's really cool. It's called America.

Which reminds me:

Let's all get out and vote.

*****

Congratulations to the Watkins Glen High School girls cross-country team on its IAC Championship -- its first ever since the program started at WGHS in the mid-1970s. And congratulations to Shannon Hazlitt on her IAC Sportsmanship Award, and to Hazlitt, Taylor Kennard and Amber Swartz on achieving IAC First Team All-Star status. The same goes for Nick Sorensen and Matt Gill, All-Stars on the boys' side.

And congratulations to Watkins Glen's Haleigh Wixson on qualifying for the New York State Swimming Championships for the fourth straight year. That's quite remarkable.

*****

And earlier:

The cult of celebrity, Part 2

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Oct. 25 -- I had a boss once who was full of various colorful aphorisms. My favorite (please pardon its raw nature) was this one: Never get into a pissing match with a skunk.

Which I suppose is akin to never try to explain the obvious to someone who just doesn't get it -- and who is angry.

Now, I will stress at the outset that I am not calling anyone a skunk here, although -- from their track record -- they're likely to think I am.

But it is true that they are angry.

I refer to the Odessa Tea Party, which is angry with government and -- I've been told by several people -- is angry with me, to the point that I've been targeted in an emailing by a candidate for County Legislature, one Karen Radenberg, herself a Tea Party member. No, you won't find her on any major-party line on election day, but she's running.

Anyway, her gripe with me -- and I gather others feel likewise, judging from a return email to her from a Tea Party "co-organizer" who wrote "Excellent. Well done" -- is that I called the Tea Party a "cult."

Yes, that's right. A cult.

Well, there's a column down a ways on this page that details a visit by Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino to a Watkins Glen Tea Party party back in early October. The Tea Party loves the guy, and I explained the excitement and intensity surrounding his arrival and speech. And I headlined the column "The cult of celebrity ..."

Yes, I used the word "cult," but I implore Radenberg and any other Tea Partier to google that very term: cult of celebrity. Go ahead. You will find that it is an expression that means "the widespread interest in famous individuals" -- a phenomenon especially entrenched in America.

And boy, did Paladino's appearance fit that expression to a ... dare I say it? ... fit that to a T.

White-hot political celebrities like Paladino (and almost any famous entertainers) get a sort of worshipful star treatment. They've been receiving it on the political front, I suspect, since the heyday of Teddy Roosevelt. It has long been inculcated in the fabric of our society, and never more so, I think, than today. The fact that 450 people showed up to see Paladino in Watkins Glen illustrates that contention.

Alas, Radenberg decided I had called her beloved Tea Party a cult, and according to her email, that meant I thought its members "strange or sinister" -- prompting her to suggest instead that it is journalists who are strange and sinister.

Well, I'm strange, yes; but sinister, no.

All of that didn't really bother me, but I was bothered by a contention relayed to another person (who relayed it to me) that I would be asked to leave any Tea Party gathering I dared to attend at the Odessa Municipal Building, where the group has been hosting all sorts of political candidates of late.

I would welcome the Tea Party to try that -- considering my tax dollars go toward funding the operation of that building. I can say with some assurance that the outcome of a confrontation over who, exactly, can use that building would not please them. They are, the way I see it, my guests there.

So, please, be nice guests. Before targeting me or anyone else who -- like you -- is also disenchanted with the existing direction of government, do this: Get a grip on basic idiom -- defined as "an expression that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words."

It's really not that difficult to understand.

I did not call you a cult. But don't push it.

******

And earlier:

A little of this and that ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Oct. 21 -- I've started writing my autobiography. It seems like a good time to do it (you know, being on the old side and all), and I'm finding it's fun.

I get to figuratively revisit friends I haven't seen in years, and I get to analyze and make value judgments that I probably wasn't equipped to make in my younger days.

I'm not sure how I've reached this particular age -- it seems like I was turning 21 just yesterday -- but looking backward for this book has indeed taught me that I've been around a while, and met a lot of interesting people.

I might do this in two installments. The first can deal with my youth and younger working life -- a study, if there is a theme, of a person in love with words and with journalism.

The second would probably focus on the Schuyler years. If I publish this, I imagine it might sell reasonably well around here, for I've encountered a lot of you, and I'm guessing a significant number would make it onto my pages.

This won't be a minute-by-minute accounting, but more in the form of snapshots of the people and experiences in my life. Credit the influence of writers Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Larry McMurtry -- the former a master at short chapters, and the latter using the same method to great effect in a trilogy of memoirs he recently produced.

I imagine I should run the galley proofs past an attorney before I publish, though. He or she might have some cautionary words that will keep me out of court, should any readers take exception to how they're depicted.

*****

I received the photo at right and the following note recently from District Attorney Joe Fazzary.

"My 6-year-old son (Georgio) was a ballboy for the Detroit Pistons/ Minnesota Timberwolves game played at the Carrier Dome on Friday night (Oct. 16). Minnesota won the game. Georgio rebounded balls and cleaned the floor for the players for the second half of the game. Some very notable former SU basketball players were in attendance (Dave Bing, Bill Gabor, Jim Boeheim, Derrick Coleman, Gerry McNamara, Lawrence Moten and many others). Georgio is a first grader at the WG Elementary School. Mrs. Gregory is his teacher. It was an amazing experience."

*****

A Rangers-Giants World Series? Looks probable. What kind of alternate universe have we slipped into?

*****

Is it just me, or are there other folks out there who also hope that LeBron James and the Miami Heat fall far short this coming NBA season? There's something about their arrogance ...

*****

We have two soccer teams going for IAC titles this Saturday at Ithaca High School: the Watkins Glen boys at 3 p.m. against Trumansburg (a 2-0 winner over Lansing Wednesday in a Large Schools North Division tiebreaker) and the Odessa-Montour girls at 5 p.m. against Marathon. Watkins is going for an IAC Large Schools crown, and the O-M girls for a Small Schools title.

Both have been very impressive this year, with seemingly everybody contributing to their success. Good luck to both.

*****

And earlier:

The numbers game ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Oct. 13 -- The demise of the varsity football season at Watkins Glen High School will probably create some waves, some community disenchantment.

The words "quit" and "forfeit" don't set well with fans used to a diet of tackling and controlled mayhem.

On the face of it, which is to say the way it's (logically) being spun, it's all about numbers and safety. I have no problem with that, other than to point out that numbers have been a potential stumbling block for the past several years. With the rise of soccer has come a diminution in the football program.

Other schools have merged sports programs with adjoining districts. That hasn't happened here, the relationship between the two closest districts -- Watkins Glen and Odessa-Montour -- being occasional chilly.

Odessa-Montour has had numerical problems in the past, too, in particular in one recent season where injuries depleted the roster to 15, one below the mandated level. So a 16th player with a broken foot (or some casted injury) suited up to give the team the necessary minimum.

It seems obviously shortsighted, especially now, to assume (or pray) that injuries in a violent sport won't bring a season crashing down like Watkins Glen's did.

*****

Life can be dizzying, with its twists and turns, and sports can be a microcosm of that -- a bit of a soap opera, if you will, magnified by the public fascination with it.

When the Watkins Glen district changed coaching staffs this past summer -- turning from a program that had failed to win a game the year before but which, in fairness, had won five games not long before that -- hope ran fairly high. Change can do that, can bring new energy, a rebirth of confidence.

But now -- in but a short time -- that hope has been scattered to the wind. A season in disarray, victimized by numbers and injuries, has come thudding to a stop.

It was there in the air at Trumansburg, in what proved to be the season's final game, a 33-0 loss in which 13 Senecas were manning the fort under attack from Santa Anna. Well, that's how it seemed ... like the Alamo. Brave defenders, those 13 ... and brave defenders, the two in their midst who had fallen, one to a head injury, one to a knee injury.

I love the warrior aspect of football, the grit it takes -- the act of hitting and getting hit. But it comes at a price, every time.

School officials -- in any small district -- should realize that, should know that two-dozen players at the outset (and in Watkins' case, with no junior varsity from which to easily draft) might not be enough.

Case in point: the 2010 Watkins Glen football season.

May it rest in peace.

****

Having said that, we have the words of Mike Johnston, the Watkins Glen head coach, who said he was "chagrined, to say the least" by the decision to end the season.

But he also said it was necessary because of the depleted roster and for the safety of the remaining players.

The bottom line, he agrees, is a need for a larger roster -- preferably in excess of 30 kids. Even though in one of his football-coaching years at Notre Dame "we started with 24 players and ended with 24" -- and even though "in 29 years of coaching (football and basketball) I've never had the number of injuries we've had this year" -- the need exists "to get other kids in the Watkins Glen community to play football. Kids listen to other kids before anyone else, so we need to get kids to talk to kids to come out."

The season, he said, started so well ... and ended so badly, with four consecutive on-field losses and, now, with two forfeits..

"We had things going there in the Odessa game," he said, referring to the season opener in which the Senecas won back the prized Bucket that goes to the victor of that contest each year.

But when the district was unable to secure a second-week game after the scheduled opponent, Southern Springs, dropped its football progam, "things kind of turned. We lost our focus. Then injuries took the starch out of us."

And the rest is history -- of an abbreviated nature.

******

Will there be finger-pointing? I suspect there already is.

Will there be a cry from some quarters that someone should be sacrificed over this? Maybe. That is, after all, an American tradition.

Will there be accusations that this decision was hasty? Of course. That, too -- the tendency to second-guess -- is our birthright.

I imagine calls for a merged football program will be balanced by calls for the elimination of the sport altogether. And that's fine. Debate can be a fruitful thing.

In the end, though, this season will be one of head-shaking, will be remembered as one of what-ifs that led to never-weres, of hopes colliding with broken bones. Perhaps because of its heightened expectations, it will go down in lore as the antithesis of the storied season of '82, the year the Senecas went 8-0 before losing twice in the playoffs, a year when there were 10 games instead of five.

When there was abundant pride instead of rankling regret.

******

Birthdays and other things

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Oct. 11 -- I'm not a big proponent of Facebook, although its rise is fascinating.

It proved gratifying, however, on my birthday -- 10-10-10 -- when I received dozens of messages from well-wishers through that social network. It seemed like another five or six greetings popped into my e-mail every half hour or so. At last count, there were 50 -- some from forner area students whose athletic exploits I covered when they were in high school: Courtney Warren, Michelle Thorpe, MacKenzie Myers, Sparky Gardner, Jessica Smith, Margie Amisano, Amy Centurelli, Justin Kibbe, Stephanie Letteer, Mallory Richards, DJ Locke, Nicole Long and Maggie Lucero. And there were some notes from current high school athletes, too.

To each of you, I say thank you for your kind gesture. It's always nice to be remembered, and this was appreciated.

*****

I received a note from TJ Love updating me -- and by extension you -- on a milestone reached and a milestone approaching in the world of Watkins Glen High School boys soccer.

The one reached was a school career assist record of 44 set last week by junior Austin Stephany, breaking the record of 43 held previously by Mike Beber.

The approaching milestone is Coach Henry Ferguson's 100th victory. With last Friday's win at Notre Dame, he has 94 -- "so if all works out Henry should have it this year deep into sectionals," or early next year, says TJ.

Henry is in his ninth season coaching the Senecas. In order, starting in 2002, his teams have won 14 games, 10, 11, 5, 9, 6, 14, 14, and (thus far this year) 11.

*****

Back to birthdays. Since Sunday was mine, it was also Kaz Estelow's. She's a teacher at WGHS, and basically just a kid, 20 years my junior. (Let's see: That means she was about three weeks old the first time I got married. That kind of puts things in perspective.) Anyway, happy birthday, Kaz.

One more thing about birthdays: They conjure up all sorts of thoughts in me -- measurements, if you will, of how far I've come and how far, maybe, I have yet to go. None of us can say for sure how much time we have on this orb, of course, but as I said to a friend: Maybe, just maybe, my time isn't winding down yet. Maybe I'm just starting.

I'm not sure if that's an optimistic or pessimistic viewpoint -- but as long as I can create, can write and photograph and enjoy doing both, I will consider it a positive outlook.

******

The high school sports season is nearing a conclusion, and it's been fascinating so far -- largely because of unexpected fresh faces who have excelled to impressive degrees. At Odessa-Montour, Jocelyn Garrison, a senior transfer from Corning West, has set a school single-season scoring record and thus garnered most of the publicity on a talented squad (Michelle Melanson, Katie Ray, Allison Stamp etc.) that has won a division title.

And at Watkins Glen, the most surprising story has been the sudden rise of 8th grader Taylor Kennard as a consistent winner for the varsity cross country team. She too has, as a result, received a good deal of publicity, although the stunning success of the team (it went 12-0 in the regular season) has involved virtually every member of the squad, which is, I think, 10 girls strong. Leading them are co-captains and seniors Amber Swartz and Shannon Hazlitt.

So ... kudos to Garrison and Kennard and to their teammates. They've all done well, and certainly enlivened the coverage presented here.

And kudos to a couple of other unexpected successes at WGHS: Chilean exchange student Maria Chavez in volleyball, and freshman Samantha Gill, who has provided strong support for returning standouts Haleigh Wixson, Haley Tuttle and Victoria Wixson on the swim team. Both Chavez and Gill have set high standards and contributed significantly to the success of their squads.

******

And earlier:

Carl Paladino addresses the crowd at the Watkins Glen Community Center.

The cult of celebrity ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Watkins Glen, Oct. 4 -- I thought at first that I had wandered into a prayer meeting, for there was a bunch of praying going on, and religious fervor seemed thick in the air of the Community Center.

I picked up a couple of giveaways on a table in the corner: a pocket Bible -- the New Testament -- and a pocket book with the Declaration of Independence and Constitution within its covers, and I listened, mesmerized, as the crowd sang three of the four stanzas of The Star Spangled Banner.

Yes, it has four rather poetic stanzas, and the piped-in performance was professional and energetic, and the crowd -- with song sheets in hand -- sang along. Missing was the third stanza, the anthem's weakest link and rarely sung.

There were guest speakers, too, all of them ripping on the established government leaders, and all doing so in a very loud way, the sound system being incredibly forceful and ... well ... a bit deafening.

This was a Tea Party party down in Watkins Glen, a gathering called Patriot Rally in the Glen that was organized by the Odessa Tea Party. It attracted an estimated 450 people -- and I have to think almost all of them were there for one primary, overriding reason: they wanted to see Carl Paladino, Republican candidate for governor of New York.

The whole gathering, in fact, seemed pointed toward Paladino's arrival -- which was understood by one media member to be set for 1 p.m., although the printed program didn't have him speaking until 3:40. When I arrived shortly after noon to try and sort out his schedule, I was told he'd likely be getting there at 2:30. In fact, he arrived at about 3:20 or so.

The media was out front waiting for Paladino as his vehicle approached, but his driver took him around to the Community Center's back entrance, and he hunkered down in a darkened rear room with his entourage -- and picked up a disciple while he was waiting: a 5-year-old Watkins Glen girl named Macy Fitzgerald who was present with her father and wandered back to see the candidate's dog -- a creature wearing a "Pets for Paladino" doggy jacket.

It's a great visual, that dog. Dog lovers of the world can unite behind Carl. And he recognized the value of the little girl, too. He had her sit next to him in the front row of folding chairs after he entered the main room and awaited his turn at the podium. Once he reached the podium, he mentioned that he was a father and a grandfather, then marched down to the little girl's seat and hoisted her up and carried her to the podium. I figured -- and I imagine others figured -- that this was his granddaughter. But no.

"She's not mine," he said, and then added: "She's ours."

Meaning, I suppose, that she is a symbol of what is right and pure in the young and what can be right and pure in politics. We can and must look after the young among us, who are our future, by getting rid of the scalawags in office. Or so I interpreted.

The place was rocking, I must say -- a product of some pretty energetic and skilled speakers preceding Paladino, but mostly the product of the crowd's reaction to its hero, its maverick candidate, being there with and among them. The Tea Party loves this guy. He shoots from the lip -- not always accurately, and sometimes to his own detriment -- but his aim is at the "establishment," and that's the Tea Party target, too.

Other politicians were on hand, some of them with tables where they distributed campaign literature. Schuyler County Legislature candidate Angeline Franzese -- who is running on the Conservative line after losing in the GOP primary -- had a table, as did Assembly candidate Christopher Friend, along with several others.

County Legislator Phil Barnes was present for the day's event, as was State Senate candidate Tom O'Mara and Congressional candidate Tom Reed. They and others were on the dais when Paladino rose to speak, and received hugs from him that seemed a little forced, a little awkward.

Paladino didn't disappoint the crowd, calling his opponent, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, a "criminal" and other unflattering things -- which is not unusual, considering Paladino has also in recent days called former Governor George Pataki (a Republican) a "degenerate idiot" while his campaign chairman has called former Governor Eliot Spitzer (a Democrat) a "whoremonger."

This is not the politics of the genteel. This is nasty, bruising stuff.

And who knows? It just might work. Paladino is coming across as a normal guy who is angry. That is actually his pitch, and a lot of folks are buying it.

Mix that with the stunning aggressiveness of his words, and it makes Andrew Cuomo -- who is not firing back with the same caliber of verbal weaponry, or at least is not getting the same kind of play in the media -- seem timid ... or seem as if he's hiding something.

That's the perception, anyway ... and perception can be everything.

******

I went over to watch the runners coming across the pedestrian bridge near the finish line of the Wineglass Marathon in Corning on Sunday, Oct. 3 -- my first-ever visit to the Marathon. I was there because two of my sons, Jon and Dave, were running in it relay-fashion along with Dave's girlfriend Ali Piacente. Dave and Ali -- both marathoners -- had traveled up from Washington for the event and had talked Jon (a non-marathoner) into joining them.

The enthusiasm of the spectators was contagious, and the clearcut satisfaction on the faces of the runners as they completed their task was inspiring -- though not so inspiring that I'm about to try what they did.

Jon was beaming, in fact, as he ran across the bridge with his brother alongside. He was sore later, but still carrying an aura of achievement. My hats off to him and to everyone who completed the challenge.

Photos in text:

From top: Carl Paladino; a Paladino supporter; and outside the Community Center, Assembly candidate Christopher Friend (left) with Paul Marcellus, who lost the Republican primary to Friend.

******

And earlier:

On the passing of Aunt Ruth

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Sept. 24 -- Some weeks would best be passed by ... never experienced. Such was the week just ended

First, there was a physical affliction that can't be discussed in mixed company. Let's just say it put me on my back for a couple of days.

Then there was some nettle-like plant that assaulted me as I cleaned out some brush from my yard. It's amazing how something so small can be such a large pain.

And then I lost an aunt: Ruth Haeffner. She passed away after a long life (nine decades). She was my Dad's sister, and as such always in my life in some fashion, though usually at a substantial distance. In fact, I hadn't seen Ruth in years. She was a private person with all sorts of personal demons. She had been institutionalized for a while years ago, when I was still a child, and she had been a ward of the state ever since.

Yet ... all through the day leading up to the phone call announcing her death, I'd been anxious and distracted. I thought it was indigestion caused by village dissolutionists, but now I wonder.

Ruth was, among our extended family, probably the one person I knew least. Life has scattered the rest of us around the world, but I've never felt disconnected from them. By contrast, I never felt connected to Ruth -- although, now that she has reached the day of departure, I wonder.

Maybe the anxiety I felt on her final day -- which dissipated with news of her passing -- was in fact part of a connecting cord ... an unseen familial strand binding us together.

****

And now, with her passing, I can't help but feel a part of me has passed too.

I know I lost part of myself the day my Dad died, back on Nov. 1, 1994. And I lost a sizable chunk of myself exactly 10 years later, on Nov. 1, 2004, when my wife Susan died.

I felt a sense of loss -- a diminishment -- when another aunt, Betty, died a few years ago, and the same when her sole brother passed.

I have felt it upon the death of friends -- a girl I once dated in college named Mary Lou Norton, taken by a stroke in childbirth when she was in her late 20s; and another girl I dated, Annette Slavsky, taken by a heart attack at an even younger age than Mary Lou.

I have felt it in the passing of a mentor named Bunker Clark -- like me an annual visitor to an island in northern Michigan. He was a University of Kansas musicology professor, a musician, and a friend. He edited my first novel -- set on the Island -- and wrote some books of his own. Bunker was taken by a brain tumor at 72.

I miss him still.

****

As I grow older, I find the connections to friends and family growing sweeter, and the loss of those people becoming more difficult -- even when it is an aunt from whom I felt disconnected

I find, as I age, that life is, in the living, enhanced; and that the losses impart a heightened sense of ... not so much pain as regret. Of sadness, and of impending shadows.

Yes, in the shadows are illuminants: the lights of bright memories, of what was.

But in the face of death, those memories are mere gossamer, whispers of what can never be again.

*****

And earlier:

About this dissolution vote...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Sept. 14 -- Recent events, and those ahead in fairly short order, bring to mind the following limerick:

There once was a man quite aghast
That his foot speed was slower than fast.
He longed to be fleet,
But betrayed by his feet,
He shot one, and now wears a cast.

Welcome to the wonderful world of dissolution, village style. It is a place where, frustrated by our lot in life, we are trying to figuratively shoot ourselves in the foot. Or so it appears.

Here's what it all looks like:

A small group of Odessa residents wants to do away with that which has served us well for more than a century. And they seemingly want to do it without any answers as to what, exactly, the effects of such a move -- the elimination of this village's government -- would have on our pocketbooks (or, for that matter, on our sense of identity). They want to shoot first, and figure it out later.

That's what it looks like. But nothing about this is really that clear. Yes, there is a dissolution vote coming. But how we got to this point is a bit murky.

*****

I received a couple of missives recently about dissolution, intended for the Forum page. I decided not to run them there. One of them was written anonymously, which is something I discourage, especially in what should be an open and, I think, instructive debate. That letter writer, interestingly, raised one point that needs addressing. He (or she) signed the petition that is forcing a referendum on dissolution, but will be voting against the measure -- largely because his (or her) signature was in response to the petitioner's claim that the end result would be a study of the feasibility of dissolution, not a vote on dissolution itself.

I've heard similar reports from a couple of other sources regarding what the petitioners were telling people, but I can't get too riled over it, if it's true. After all, the petitioners, calling themselves the Committee to Dissolve the Village of Odessa, prepared a petition late in 2009 or early in 2010 that called for dissolution -- although the committee members said at that time that the committee name was really a misnomer, and that what they were seeking was a study of the effects of dissolution.

So ... there was confusion from the get-go, and yet an evident intent by petitioners to pursue a study. Perhaps they were still operating with that mindset these months later. But in the interim, the state had changed the rules so that a study that was de rigueur is now passe. A Petition To Dissolve now literally means that, and mandates a vote on eliminating the government.

And so here we are.

******

The other letter was from one of the petitioners. I chose not to run it because rather than provide information as to how dissolution would save any money -- or indeed how it would positively impact our lives in any fashion -- the writer chose an aggressive mode that included disparaging remarks and some figures regarding village officials' pay that I found ... well, impossible to swallow. It all seemed like misdirection. (And now that I think about it, the aggressiveness seemed to signal that the writer indeed wants dissolution -- as opposed to just a study. Which makes this thing a little murkier. What exactly did the petitioners want?)

Anyway, on the offchance that the same arguments in the letter are being circulated verbally, I want to address that pay issue here -- in particular a contention that the mayor, in a given year, makes $166 an hour for attending 12 monthly Village Board meetings of one hour's duration each. That's taking his $2,000 salary and dividing by 12.

Well, for starters, the meetings aren't an hour long. They've been known to go three-and-a-half hours or thereabouts. So you can start by reducing that hourly pay rate accordingly.

Then figure in all the phone calls and study and discussions with various village personnel and county and state officials, and the concept that, really, being a mayor is a 24/7 deal peppered with all sorts of interruptions and worries and brainstorming and criticism, and mix in the fact that this mayor has been known to pitch in on winter plowing and autumn tree removal, and you really, really don't have a $166-per-hour official. By my reckoning, discounting the eight hours he should be sleeping, and the time he's unavailable to us while out working a regular, paying job, we should be crediting him with eight hours a day (of sweat and worry and actual hands-on time) for, say, 50 five-day weeks. That's 40 hours a week times 50, or 2000 hours.

Divide that by his $2,000 salary, and by my reckoning he makes about $1 an hour.

******

Yes, I am opposed to dissolution -- at least without facts. I think it's shortsighted to force an issue like this. The process thus far -- the murkiness of its origins aside -- has seemed emotionally based, a bit fevered, and more than a little personal.

Show me, petitioners, that you have a grasp of the effect of what you are attempting, and I'll start listening. But I'm not hearing any pertinent facts.

My concerns about dissolution are many: a loss of services, an increase in the cost of operating a fire department, a hike in the cost of running the water system, a reluctance on the part of the two towns affected to have to take us under their wings, and the effect on community spirit and identity -- those last two being intangibles whose importance I can't overstate. There are many variables, too, some visible and some not, that I feel are just begging to create problems should we actually pull the trigger and dissolve our government.

This is complicated stuff, far too tricky to just blindly surge forward.

Lemmings might do that. We shouldn't.

Accordingly, there is a committee that is beginning a study of the potential effects. It will be meeting in closed sessions over the coming months to try and get a handle on what, exactly, dissolution would mean to the average taxpayer -- and, I hope, what it would mean to the spirit of the community. The committee has among its members a county official, two village officials and two town officials.

Whether it has enough time to paint an accurate picture remains to be seen. The dissolution vote -- whether the intended effect of the petitioners or not -- will be taking place before year's end.

*****

There is a movie that aired recently on the Hallmark Channel called Fairfield Road, where the female protagonist -- a bookshop owner on Cape Cod -- tells her soon-to-be romantic interest that her town has "always been a place where people don't mind working hard" in tandem with one another to create "a sense of community. I think we're close to losing that."

And in a later scene, the male protagonist says to a developer planning to disrupt the town's way of life: "What is your problem? Why are you trying to make this place a whole other place? People like it the way it is."

Barring any surprising, significant money-saving revelations from the study committee that might alter my perception (a possibility, but one I doubt), I hope that when the dissolution vote comes, Odessans demonstrate -- in substantial numbers at the ballot box -- that they like our place the way it is.

*****

And speaking of government:

The guest at the Sept. 9th Watkins-Montour Rotary Club luncheon was Dennis McCabe, a New York State Assistant Attorney General out of Binghamton. He spoke about a website that offers state residents a chance to track such things as the status of bills and where various politicians stand on those bills. It also shines light on lobbyists, campaign finance activities, and how charities raise and spend contributions,

You can find it all at www.sunlightny.org

*****

And earlier:

In the aftermath of tragedy

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Sept. 7 -- I heard about it first at The Bucket Game -- the annual football battle between intracounty rivals Watkins Glen and Odessa-Montour that I was photographing. A friend in the crowd told me about it during a break in the game.

"Don Roberts is missing on the lake after a boating accident," he said.

I swore, a bit stunned, and -- as action resumed on the Watkins football field -- I ignored a couple of plays, digesting the news, absorbing the shock.

Don Roberts ... damn.

*****

As part of my job, I made phone calls later, tracked the facts, wrote the story of Don's disappearance ... and the next day followed that with the story confirming his death. His body had been found by sonar in water more than 100 feet below the surface of Seneca Lake.

*****

I don't know how to address something so intrinsically awful as the passing of a man in midlife who was of importance in various ways ... to community and family.

I don't know how to address the feeling that rises within me -- I think perhaps within most of us -- when mortality rears its head so suddenly and violently as it did out there on the lake.

I don't know how to deal -- amid all the feelings of vulnerability that come to mind and to heart in the face of death taking one of us -- with the blanket of sadness that settles upon me when that person is a man I both liked and admired.

I just don't know ...

*****

I met Don Roberts through my website work, when he decided to run for the Odessa-Montour School Board. I published an ad for him telling people of his platform, his background, his interests.

We seemed to share a common ground politically and philosophically -- and talked on occasion by phone or in his office at the Glen Harbor Marina, the business he owned and operated.

He was an inquisitive man -- wanted to know, for instance, upon his election to the School Board, about the workings of the O-M School District as I saw it. He wanted to know about the people he would be dealing with.

I told him my views, and he absorbed them -- filtering, I think, what I said to fit the parameters of an inherent fairness he possessed.

I'm told by other people who knew him that they too saw him as a nice, smart, honest guy. That says a lot, really.

One of those acquaintances -- a summertime lake resident -- reported seeing Don that last day, passing by in his boat on the way to his rendezvous with fate. She says now she wishes there was a way she could rewind to that moment, to somehow flag him down and tell him not to go up there, north on Seneca to the Yates County vicinity.

But she can't. We can't go back. We can't change what has happened.

We can wish for might-have-beens. But facts are facts. Life is hard, and fickle, and finite.

*****

Calling hours are set for Saturday, Sept. 11 at the Royce-Chedzoy Funeral Home on Fourth Street in Watkins Glen. They run from 2 to 6 p.m., and I imagine the family -- wife Christine and young son Donnie, along with Don's parents, sister and brother -- will need all of that time to handle the crowd. Don knew a lot of people through his business and his outside interests -- snowmobiling, martial arts, competitive shooting, flying, and dog training.

A service will be held at the funeral home at 2 p.m. Sunday, with burial the next day in Brackney, Pennsylvania.

And then ... then we will move on, as we always do; move on despite the horror and the sadness.

And we will remember the man.

******

And earlier:

The passing of Dominic ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Sept. 1 -- Dominic Pepp is being laid to rest.

Aside from me, nobody around here knows who Dom was. But he was something special.

I was blessed with his acquaintance back when he and I were much younger, more than 30 years ago. I was going through my 20s and reaching 30, while he was going through his 50s and passing 60.

We were both reporters at the Watertown Daily Times, a newspaper of long standing in Northern New York. He had in fact been there a good many years before I arrived. He and his brother John both worked there for decades -- John as the Obituary Writer (yes, with all the attendant jokes about it being a dead-end job), and Dom covering .... well, I think he covered just about anything.

I don't remember him being associated with any one single beat -- a beat being the specific area of expertise for a given reporter. For instance, I was for a time a cops-and-court reporter. Another reporter was in charge of covering education. Another covered city hall, another the county government, and so on.

Dom was in charge of a couple of specialized in-house projects -- covering TV-related stories and overseeing the paper's annual business edition -- but in general he was, in my memory, an aptly titled General Assignment Reporter. Outside of the office, he was civic-minded, serving on the Watertown Housing Authority, as chairman of the Jefferson Community College Scholarship Corporation, and as a director of the Italian American Civic Association.

What I remember most about Dom -- and I mean vividly -- is the ready smile that would blossom on his craggy face. He was a rough-looking guy -- still tough, like a fighter, at 60, and in fact with the nose of a fighter, seemingly broken along the way, judging from its ragged angles. He had dark hair, slicked back and receding, and he leaned forward when he walked, his 5-10 frame (I might be granting him an inch or so) seemingly in a hurry to get where it was going.

Dom was a Northern New Yorker, born and bred -- a graduate of Watertown High School, and a Daily Times employee who worked his way up from newspaper deliveries. Once he became a reporter, he stayed in the role for 45 years. His marriage to the former Nettie Doldo was also durable, lasting 66 years, ending with Nettie's death seven years ago.

Dom and I never hung out together socially, but I sat near him in the newsroom for a while, and for a period of time enjoyed morning get-togethers with him and one of the City Councilmen at a local diner in a little mall downtown. Dom would always drink coffee, while I tended toward Diet Pepsi (a lifelong addiction). Those meetings kind of kick-started our days, giving us caffeine and, once in a while, a story lead from the Councilman (a man named Karl Burns -- who, parenthetically, became mayor and later presented Dom with the city's first Citizen Award.).

Dom's voice was sort of raspy -- but craggy appearance and raspy voice to the contrary, the man was gentle, and he was full of joy. You just felt it when you got near him. He was, consequently, a steadying influence for a young developing reporter full of doubts -- which is what I was.

Dominic Pepp died late last week in Florida, his retirement world. He was 94. A celebration of his life was scheduled this week in Watertown, where his body was to be entombed in a mausoleum. I had hoped to attend the service, but between late nights on my job and the early-morning nature of the Watertown ceremony, I found attendance too daunting -- and thus have to be content with this remembrance.

So ... rest well, kind Dominic. You are remembered, and -- in my small, humble way -- you are revered.

Photo in text: Dominic Pepp (Photo provided)

*****

The annual Bucket Game is coming up -- at 7 p.m. Saturday at Watkins Glen High School's athletic field, pitting the homestanding Senecas against intracounty rival Odessa-Montour in the season-opening football game for both schools. It promises to be interesting, as always -- but more so than usual with a new coaching staff in place at Watkins, and attendant hopes high.

Again, that's Saturday -- not Friday as a Section IV website and a recent TV report have said.

******

I have plenty I could say concerning the upcoming vote on dissolving the Odessa village government, but I'll refrain for now. Suffice it to say I'm opposed to the idea.

******

And recently:

Bombs, boxes and baseball

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Aug. 23 -- I've been taking it a little easy lately, trying not to overdo the coverage on any one story, and basically not seeking any extra news to report on.

With high school sports season fast approaching, such a luxury won't be easily maintained for the next ten months or so.

Actually, the life of laze could easily be habit-forming. It calls to mind childhood -- those halcyon days when a summer meant doing only what I wanted; sometimes nothing at all, and sometimes swimming or playing baseball and golf. It also meant watching the neighbor girls swimming in our lake -- a small crater-shaped body of water called Sodon Lake in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

It calls to mind, too, the cherry bombs and M-80s my friends and I used to place in tennis balls. We'd slit a ball open, squeeze it so the opening widened, place the bomb inside and let the opening close. The fuse would be sticking out, ready for lighting -- and once lit, would burn down as I or a friend threw the ball skyward over Sodon Lake. That rubberized orb would arc out over the water, and halfway down would explode, sending fragments flying.

The tennis balls we used were mostly rejects of my father's. He was a fine tennis player, and only used a can of three balls for a limited time before passing it on to his sons.

Dad (Augustus Charles Haeffner Jr., known as Gus, pictured at right in his later years) was also a salesman -- a shoe salesman who traveled the state of Michigan, peddling women's shoes with names like Red Cross and Cobbies to stores all over the lower Peninsula.

Accordingly, my mother ended up with a lot of shoes, and we had a lot of empty shoe boxes. I stored all sorts of things in those boxes: little plastic figures like soldiers and cowboys and Indians, some marbles (although I preferred drawstring bags for those), and baseball cards.

I was a nut about baseball -- in particular about the Detroit Tigers, who played 20 miles to the south of my home. I remember buying baseball cards in nickel packs in the mid and late 1950s, and I recall receiving a full box of unopened wax packs in 1959 -- on my 11th birthday, as a gift from my parents. I ripped open the packs, looking for Tigers and expressing disdain for any New York Yankee players I encountered.

The most despised of those players was Mickey Mantle, so I never had a desire to keep his cards -- which was shortsighted, considering that Mantle cards are now worth more than anyone else's from that era.

I had shoe boxes full of baseball cards, but left them home when I departed for college. I never saw them again. My mother, as though following a script for mothers nationwide, either threw them out or donated them to a church rummage sale. In any event, they were gone.

*****

Anyway, I'm working in a roundabout way to the mention of two gentlemen of importance to me as I grew up.

One was Joe Falls (right), a sportswriter at the Detroit Free Press and later the Detroit News who covered the Tigers for years. He was also a great columnist with an easy writing style I studied for years. My hero-worship of Falls eventually led me into sports journalism as Sports Editor of the Elmira Star-Gazette.

I met Falls once -- at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in the mid-1990s. I was wandering through one of the display rooms there on a slow day. There was only one other person in the room, and when I glanced his way I realized it was Falls.

I don't normally ask for autographs, but this time I did. I approached him and asked if he was Falls, and when he said he was, I told him how he had influenced me.

"That's very nice," he said pleasantly, and when I asked if he could sign a sheet of paper I had in my shirt pocket, he shook his head.

"I can do better," he said, and reached down to a briefcase beside him on the floor. He opened the case and pulled out a baseball, then produced a pen and signed it.

I have that ball still. It's in my office, an item of honor left behind by a hero. Joe Falls passed away a few years after our encounter. Death took him in 2004 at the age of 76.

*****

The other man was Ernie Harwell (right), who died this past May at the age of 91. He was another Detroit fixture -- a radio and TV announcer of Tiger games for decades. I remember when he joined the broadcast team in 1960; he replaced -- I thought of it then as displaced -- a large fellow named Van Patrick who had a wonderful voice and a home-run call ("It's going, it's going, it's gone") that still resonates with me. Patrick had teamed on-air with baseball Hall of Famer George Kell. I don't know why Patrick left, but Kell was an old acquaintance of Harwell's, and got him to move to Detroit.

I finally warmed to Harwell in 1963. That was the first year that major league third baseman Bubba Phillips played for the Tigers -- coming to the squad from the Cleveland Indians through a trade. Bubba was an acquaintance of my family, and as such provided me and my friends with free tickets to Tigers games. A couple of those friends and I were at Tiger Stadium early one day in 1963-- well before the start of an afternoon game -- hoping to chase down a ball or two hit into the stands during batting practice.

While wandering about on the third base side of the lower deck, we heard a voice call out from somewhere above.

"Hello, boys!" the voice said, and we looked around for the origin of the sound, which had come from up to our right. That's when we spotted Ernie Harwell, leaning out of the press box fronting the stadium's second tier on the first base side. Harwell waved and yelled again.

"Hello, boys!" he repeated, and we giggled and waved back. It was but a moment, but it has lasted in my memory all these years. It struck me then, and still does, as a symbol of the kindness in the man. And I was forevermore a fan.

So when Ernie died this past May 4th -- on what would have been the 100th birthday of my father (who had died at 84) -- I found myself shaking my head. The juxtaposition of a meaningful centennial observance and the passing of a meaningful childhood icon was all too evident.

Therefore, as I sat reading Ernie's obituary, I couldn't help thinking about my father and his tennis abilities and his shoe boxes, and I smiled at the memories.

And I thought about Ernie Harwell leaning out of that press box, waving and calling to me and my friends.

And I found myself answering him these many years later.

"Goodbye, Ernie," I said softly.

Then, silently, I added this wish:

"Godspeed. And please, say hello to my father."

Let's all recall the scribe ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Aug. 10 -- I was on the phone the other day, talking to a friend and at the same time perusing local websites on my computer, when an obituary from an area funeral home showed up in my e-mail.

I mentioned it to my friend -- announced the name of the deceased and the circumstance of the death -- and that in turn triggered a thought.

"I'm always running obits on The File," I said. "But who will run mine when I die?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be covered," the friend said.

Which triggered another thought: Who would write my obituary? In my experience, it's generally the surviving family members who write it, or who provide the needed information to the funeral home handling the arrangements.

That's all well and good ... but I think I'd rather have the last word.

And so, herewith, is my obituary:

ODESSA, Oct. 10, 2056 -- Charlie Haeffner, aka A.C. Haeffner, aka Augustus Charles Haeffner, aka Augie and Chas and Char-Char Haeffner, died yesterday just a day short of his 108th birthday.

"If I don't make it to 108," he had said in the weeks before his demise, "I will not be happy."

That particular age had long been his goal -- for no other reason than arbitrariness. "Life is arbitrary," he once explained. "One hundred eight is arbitrary. Therefore, life is 108."

Having fallen short of his goal, Charlie will be serenaded by song and tribute at a service on Oct. 12 (the date of his parents' anniversary, which also used to be the celebratory date of Columbus's discovery of America) at the base of Shequagah Falls in Montour Falls -- a site that he never quite learned to spell correctly (it being a name of native American origin and thus of various spellings, Anglicized and otherwise).

"It doesn't matter," he once said of his preferred spelling. "Phonetics are what count."

He also said attendance at his funeral would likely be quite low -- since he outlived almost all of his contemporaries and was generally forgotten by those who followed. He had worked well into his 90s, churning out the news on his beloved website, The Odessa File, but the pace of the world directed the attention of his readers elsewhere, quickly, after his retirement.

His declining years were spent sitting in a rocking chair on a porch overlooking Michigan's Straits of Mackinac in summers, and sitting in a rocking chair in his Odessa living room, cursing the New York snow in winters.

He eschewed Florida, which his brother -- who had lived there -- once called God's Waiting Room. "A horrible place," Charlie would say if asked. "Hot ... as ... hell. And too damn many blind and deaf drivers."

Charlie is survived by his sons, Bill, Jon and Dave, themselves fairly ancient; by his annoying dog Duke, long ensconced in the Guinness Book for longevity by a Cocker; and by longtime friends Chep and Lizzie, who always defended Charlie's honor despite significant evidence that should have dissuaded them from the task.

"I thank them all for their loyalty," Charlie said recently. "Except for Duke. He's been leaving message messes on my floors now for more than half a century. I thought for sure I'd outlive that guy."

In lieu of flowers, anyone around who remembers Charlie can leave a donation in his memory with the Humane Society of Schuyler County (for Duke's upkeep) or to the Sons of the Sons of Columbus.

Or, for that matter, they can leave a donation at a PayPal account Charlie kept active from his Odessa File days -- just in case this obituary, like so much of journalism, has been printed injudiciously early, without much basis in fact.

*****

Okay, that's that. I'm covered, I guess. And if you want to make that donation a few years early, feel free. The link is at the top left of this page.

******

Olivia Coffey, 21, of Watkins Glen -- a key player years ago when the Watkins Glen High School girls varsity basketball team made it to a Section IV final (before she left the district to attend the Phillips Academy prep school in her sophomore year) -- comes from a rowing family. Her parents, Calvin and Maggie, each were champion rowers in their younger days -- with Calvin earning a silver medal in pairs at the 1976 Olympics. Olivia has trained in the sport for several years.

With that as background, Olivia (pictured at right) -- a senior at Harvard University -- was a member of the United States Under-23 Women's Eight National Rowing Team that won a gold medal at the July 22-25 World Rowing Under-23 Championships in Brest, Belarus. The team built a 1.5-second lead by the halfway point of the 2,000-meter final, and then pulled away for a 4.5-second victory over New Zealand. Canada won the bronze medal, with Germany fourth, France fifth and Belarus sixth.

This was Coffey's second year on the team. It won the silver medal in the 2009 World Championships.

Coffey -- 6'2" and 170 pounds -- says that after graduation, she plans on pursuing some serious rowing training, with an eye on the 2012 Olympics. And after that, she recently told an interviewer, she might pursue rowing "as a career path. I'm not sure."

Photo in text: Olivia Coffey (Photo provided)

*****

And earlier:

An emotional day in Madison

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Aug. 3 -- After a 12-hour drive home from vacation on Friday and some hard-to-come-by sleep (I felt like I was still moving, cruising along the interstate), it was back to work Saturday.

There was the Italian-American Festival parade to cover, and a visit to the Hector Fair, and a Southern Tier Warriors football game at Odessa-Montour school.

And there was a phone call from Madison, Wisconsin, that got my complete attention.

*****

The caller was in charge of public relations for the U.S. Transplant Games, a sort of Olympics for athletes who have received organ transplants of all kinds. He had a story to tell about "a woman in your area who today met the little boy who received her son's heart."

I suspected right away who he was talking about, and when he said the woman's name -- Holly Campbell -- I told him: "Oh, I know Holly."

"You do?" he said, surprised -- although if he knew our area, he wouldn't have been at all shocked. There just aren't that many folks around here, and certainly not many who have had to live the story that Holly and her husband Andy have.

They lost their infant son Jake three years ago (see story on People), and decided to donate his eyes and heart. The latter ended up saving a young boy named Beckham Scadlock -- who the Campbells met this past weekend out at the Games in Madison.

It is a story that I have to believe resonates with everyone -- for the loss of a child has to be among our greatest fears. Parents (as a friend pointed out after reading the article about that Campbell-Scadlock meeting) should not have to outlive their children.

*****

The day after I ran the article provided by the PR man -- altered to update it with Saturday's events -- I contacted Andy Campbell on his cell phone, and we chatted about his and Holly's Madison experience.

"It was an up and down day emotionally," Andy said of Saturday's meeting with young Beckham and of the evening's opening ceremonies -- where Holly sang "For Good" in front of 5,000 people.

The meeting "was quite an event," he said. "I don't even have the words for it. It was amazing. Something we've been waiting quite a while for. To see the little guy able to be around and do as well as he is ... he has his ups and downs physically, but right now he's doing well."

Sunday was, in fact, Beckham's third birthday, and Andy and Holly -- along with sons Alex and Ben -- were planning to help the Scadlocks celebrate.

Beyond that, they were going to meet more people who, like them, have been affected by organ donations. And they would be contributing a quilt square prepared by Holly for a huge quilt created by transplant-affected families from around the nation.

A picture of the quilt square is on Holly's Facebook page.

"'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,'" said Andy, quoting the words on the square, "'Do you know how loved you are?' And Holly wrote 'Became a Hero August 16, 2007' on it. That's how we think of him. That's Jake."

*****

I received an e-mail from a local woman telling me that the Ayers twins -- Rebecca and Whitney, who both graduated in June from Odessa-Montour High School -- were among the crowd on The Today Show recently. And they got Al Roker's attention.

The twins, the e-mailer said, were "wearing matching Corning shirts" (they're going to Corning Community College soon with an eye on nursing careers). "Al Roker asked them where they were from, and 'Upstate New York' was their answer. He then asked them if they ever got confused as to who was who. They laughed and both said (at the same time) 'No.'"

*****

The Odessa-Montour and Watkins Glen football teams open the season on Sept. 4 against each other at Watkins Glen in the annual Bucket Game at 7 p.m. According to the schedule, Watkins Glen will be at O-M a week before -- in a scrimmage at 6 p.m. But O-M Athletic Manager Greg Gavich puts that seeming pre-season confrontation into its proper perspective: "WG and O-M will be among five teams at O-M that day," he says. "Harpursville, Whitney Point and Notre Dame are the other three. The plan is that WG and O-M will not face each other during the scrimmage."

*****

And earlier:

A walk along the shoreline ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 28 -- The days of vacation are dwindling down now, and my mind is turning toward departure to the mainland and the long drive home.

It's been peaceful here -- a much needed rest from the daily grind that I left behind, and which awaits me on my return. But maybe I'll get away again for a few days in August -- after the NASCAR week has come and gone, and before high school sports begin their fall schedules.

I spent last evening walking -- along the shoreline, from my rental cottage to the heart of The Pines, the lone municipality on the Island. As I passed the old township dock, I encountered a familiar Island face -- that of Char Plaunt McLaren, who I first met about a million years ago, when we were both kids here. Her father ran the ferry boat back then; her brother does now.

We chatted about yesteryear, and about the Island today, and then I went on my way, wandering the shoreline, cutting back through the woods (stopping briefly at some property I own) and then out to the main road and back east, toward the rental.

I spotted a deer along the way, foraging in a yard to my left, and he paused every few moments to check me out, but didn't run as I drew nearer. Before I reached him, a westbound SUV came to a stop in the roadway, maybe 20 yards from the deer, and nobody moved -- human or deer -- until the SUV passenger suddenly screamed, "I'm gonna shoot you, Bambi!"

The startled deer moved quickly, back another 15 yards or so, and then gave the man a look that I could only imagine was disapproving. The passenger and his driver laughed loudly and spun their wheels, accelerating away.

I shook my head, puzzled at the moronic behavior of some humans.

Still shaking my head, I regained my former pace, moving eastward, keeping an eye on the deer as he watched me. And having studied me, and judged me fairly harmless, he returned to his foraging as I passed by.

******

I received word from Mark Stephany of Watkins Glen today about an honor earned by his son, Austin, a junior at Watkins Glen High School and a member this past year of the Top Drawer 24 team of scholar-athletes sponsored by this website.

Mark can relate his news better than I. So here's his note:

Hi, Charlie.

We were just notified last night that Austin has been selected for the US Soccer Academy Development Team for Empire. As you know, he was playing for the Rochester Junior Rhinos, who 3 years ago merged with the Buffalo Football Club and Syracuse Football Club to form Empire Academy. Since then he has been playing with the Empire Academy-Rochester team. They've won State Cup and gone to the Region 1 championships for 3 straight years.

At U16, players have the option (which Austin took) of trying out for the US Soccer Academy Development team, which this year involved competing against 60 premier club players from Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara Falls and Syracuse (and points South). After 4 days of tryouts, they posted a final callback list of 30 players Saturday night. Following a final callback tryout at Rochester's Fauver Stadium on Sunday, they posted the roster of 20 players on Tuesday, and Austin was on it. They will now compete all year against such other US Development Academy Teams as the New York RedBulls, Columbus Crew Juniors, Baltimore Casa Mia Bays, Albertson Academy, etc.

The team flies or buses to games and stays together, without us going along. Austin is down at Wake Forest University Academy Showcase Camp this week, but I called him last night and he was really excited. I've attached the photo from his player profile. It would be nice if he could get some recognition for the achievement.

-- Mark

To which I add: congratulations, Austin.

And just for good measure, I'll list some of his other soccer accomplishments:

--2009 Co-MVP Interscholastic Athletic Conference Boys Varsity Soccer - Large Div. South
--1st Team All-IAC Varsity Soccer - Freshman & Sophomore
--22 Goals & 33 Assists - 2 Yrs. of WGHS Varsity
--2009 All Corning-Leader Team
--2-time Odessa File Athlete of the Week
--NYS Scholar Athlete - Varsity Soccer
--Wake Forest - 2010 Soccer Academy Showcase Camp
--Region 1 ODP Identification Camp 2007 & 2008

******

And earlier:

Deer forage for food in the backyard of the Bois Blanc rental cottage.

A visit from native Islanders...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 21 -- A trio dropped by to visit at my rental cottage Tuesday: a couple of grown deer along with a fawn.

We have in past years occasionally seen deer wandering into the yard, but they've usually realized with a start that they were in an unprotected spot, and bolted back to the safety of the wooded overgrowth nearby.

We get wild turkeys on the lawn, too, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs, and occasionally as a threesome. They generally cross the entire yard, moving from east to west for a reason that eludes me.

We once saw a coyote chasing a deer across the front lawn. The latter went flying by, angling in from the dirt road to the west, and disappeared into the woods on the east. The coyote blazed by in hot pursuit a moment later. It all happened so fast, I could only watch in wonder; there was no time to fetch a camera.

But the coyote population seems to be down this year, and the deer are as a result a good bit bolder than usual. They appear in fields around the island, go down to the shoreline for a drink, or even meander along the Island roads at dusk, when there is little or no traffic.

Tuesday's visit was emblematic of that boldness, in that the visitors spent several minutes on the lawn abutting the cottage.

I was seated on the front porch, a wraparound structure, when a motion to my left caught my eye. It was a deer foraging in the yard, just beyond the screened enclosure. I stood slowly, went inside, grabbed a camera and managed a single shot before the animal bolted toward the rear of the property.

A couple of minutes later, I glanced out a window in the back of the cottage and saw the same deer again, along with a slightly smaller adult and a fawn. They were taking their time, wandering about the yard, foraging.

I took the deer shots above and below through a couple of different windows. It was several minutes before the deer realized they were on Candid Camera; when they did, they hustled away, heading toward a path that leads beyond the yard's rear border.

Photos in text: Fawn tries to scratch his nose; and a day earlier, turkeys waddle across the cottage's front lawn.

Above and below: The cottage visitors.

*****

And death pays a visit:

Victor Babcock, a lifelong Island resident, was seated Wednesday in Hawk's Landing -- one of two eateries on Bois Blanc -- staring out the windows toward the waters of the Straits of Mackinac.

Behind him was a table full of relatives, but Victor wasn't engaged in their conversation. He just kept staring at the water. His gray hair was unkempt, his blue eyes were misting, and his color was pale.

Another customer entered the restaurant, and Victor -- spotting him -- rose and walked over to shake his hand in greeting. The new arrival said it was good to see Victor, and then added: "I was sorry to hear about your wife."

Victor looked down quickly, tears welling, and turned without a word. He retraced the steps to his chair, reseated himself and gazed through the windows again.

Yes, death visited Bois Blanc this week. Victor's wife, Roberta -- known as Berta -- passed away Monday evening.

An ambulance siren sounding at dusk that day in The Pines -- the municipality of Pointe aux Pins -- signaled that something was amiss, sirens being a rarity here. Then the sight of the Island's two deputies speeding past our cottage on the main road, and ultimately a rescue vehicle passing by slowly on its way to the main dock, supported the suspicion. Something had indeed gone wrong.

I had a strange premonition that Victor himself might have died, for I had seen him the day before and thought he looked spent -- a far cry from the energetic, tireless worker I remembered from my boyhood here. The Babcocks are as important to Island history as any family, with a work ethic that is legendary. Victor's father, the late Eugene Babcock, was the architect back many decades ago -- probably around the '30s -- of a pump house that pushed water from the Straits up to the Pines cottages.

It was the system that enabled my family, when we first came here in the 1950s, to hand-pump water into our kitchen sink, for cleaning and cooking and drinking. The system is long since gone, with wells supplanting it.

"It's strange," said a waitress at Hawk's on the morning Victor was there. "We all thought Victor would go first. He hasn't been well."

As I write this, services in Cheboygan (on the mainland) and on the Island are upcoming, and no doubt a large turnout is in store. People will want to pay their respects to an Island lady, and give their condolences to her Island man.

Photo in text: Victor Babcock earlier this month.

******

And earlier:

The ruins of one of the Dillinger cabins. This is located between the other two.

The start of an Island tale...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 15 -- A friend back home asked that I relate a story set on the island on which I'm vacationing. You know, just conjure one up.

That is not an outrageous request, I suppose, since I've written about the Island before both here and in novels and a novella. The novels were Island Nights and The Islander, and the novella was Cabins in the Mist -- an account of a portal I crossed at the scene of dilapidated Island cabins once inhabited by gangster John Dillinger.

Excerpts from Island Nights and Cabins can be accessed on The Odessa File Home Page, bottom left, as can the entire account of The Islander.

Anyway, about that request: Chances are I might at some point in my stay be inspired to write a short piece based on this 2010 visit; I just don't have it in me at the moment. In the meantime, I will share part of a sequel to Cabins that I've worked on sporadically. I will take you to the point at which I basically ran into a writer's wall -- an inability to find the right plot stream with which to finish the exercise.

Suggestions any of you might have would be welcome. Well, let me rephrase that: I need plot suggestions.

So, if you want to read it, the (partial) story can be found here. Thanks, and enjoy the portal ...

******

And earlier ...

Football is in the air ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 11 -- The Southern Tier Warriors played Saturday night in Odessa.

Three days before that, the Watkins Glen School Board named a new coach (Mike Johnston Sr.) and staff for the high school football team.

I could point to the undercurrent that connects the two -- the coach of one team (the Warriors) used to be the coach of the other -- but I will steer clear of such a live grenade by simply pointing to the obvious: football is in the air.

It seems especially alluring in the wake of the drawn-out LeBron circus.

I don't know if the Johnston experiment will play out in the form of victories for WGHS. I would hope so, but there are forces at work against it -- the talent drain that high school soccer presents (the recent football rosters have been numerically slender); the late start that Johnston and his crew are dealing with; a feeling among some observers that in this economic climate, the fairly-expensive-to-mount football program isn't providing an adequate return on the dollar (presumably adding to the pressure on the new coaches); and the concomitant suspicion that's bound to exist (at least a little bit) locally when a new coaching staff is brought in -- and its members' resumés have nothing to do with Watkins Glen.

I'm not suggesting any of that is insurmountable -- and I for one (a longtime football fan) will be looking forward to seeing how well Johnston and his crew do once the season is under way.

I wish them luck.

*******

I've been on the Island a week, and have read four books. I don't read that many books back home in the course of a year. I just get too busy tracking the news.

That pretty much sums up why I'm here: to read, and in the reading, to rest.

******

And earlier:

A deer cuts across an inlet as gulls scatter in the background along the Bois Blanc shoreline.

Back on the Island ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, July 7 -- I write this from the Island -- Bois Blanc (Bwa-blonk) in Michigan's Straits of Mackinac, where a cool wind is blowing in from the west.

My son Jon and I made the trek here Saturday and early Sunday, arriving in Cheboygan -- our mainland departure point -- at about 3 a.m. After a three-hour nap, we power-shopped at a local grocery called Glen's Market, and then crossed the Straits on the 9 a.m. ferry.

It was the 4th of July, always a nice time to be here -- especially when there is a heat wave back home. (We did, in fact, move up our departure from Odessa a full day in order to avoid some of that heat. It is quite nice up here ... a little too warm for a brief period on Tuesday, but beyond that comfortable.)

The Internet connection here is slow, making work on this website a bit more difficult than usual, but I'm not about to complain. It is a luxury to be able to update The File from paradise.

My first evening here, I shot a deer -- well, with a camera. The result is shown above. He was a skittish subject and didn't stick around very long after I'd spotted him on a finger of land reaching out from the southern shoreline.

Sleep has been a major reward through the first three days here. I grabbed about 9 hours the night before last, a duration I haven't experienced in quite a long time. My sleep schedule, often dictated by my work on The File, normally is a broken hodgepodge of a couple of hours here and three more there. A 9-hour stretch was quite restorative.

I plan to do a lot of hiking, a lot of reading, and a lot of visiting with my eldest brother, Bob, who arrived up here a week before I did. We normally see each other but once a year, so this time is quite valuable from a family standpoint.

I think I will tackle some writing, too -- possibly a sequel to my novella Cabins in the Mist. Or I might pick up where my novel The Maiden of Mackinac left off, placing the focus on a favored character named Tobias, a hairy creature called a Tajahenus who -- when we last saw him -- was living in a cave on Mackinac Island. That's an island two removed from Bois Blanc, off to the west -- every bit the tourist mecca that Bois Blanc isn't.

Speaking of The Maiden of Mackinac, I visited the Bois Blanc Island library/museum on Tuesday -- one of three days each week it opens in the summer. They had three copies of Maiden there (along with my other books) -- which is remarkable considering I only published 100 copies of it.

Finally ... the fog was thick this morning, and hung around until after 10 a.m. I snapped a few photos of it, a couple of which are presented here. I don't imagine I'll be doing much photography up here, but if the opportunity presents itself ...

Meanwhile, I trust the heat wave back home will pass soon. I understand it's supposed to get cooler on Friday. I hope so.

Photo in text: A couple shoves off from the shoreline, heading into the fog.

The Hoover dock on the southwest corner of the Island was visible Wednesday morning, but nothing could be seen beyond it.

******

And earlier:

It's Island time again ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, July 2 -- This is the time of year when I venture away from Schuyler County for a few weeks -- laptop in hand so I can still update this website with press releases, columns, photos, obituaries and the like -- and visit my Island.

Well, the Island's not all mine. I have a bit of property there, but it's mostly state-owned. Bois Blanc Island, it's called -- a 5-by-12-mile piece of rock in Michigan's Straits of Mackinac.

I've written about it here before; it's a place I loved in childhood and rediscovered 15 or so years ago. I travel there every summer to recharge my spirits and my energy. It is a place I've written about in books, too -- in four of them, to be exact, although it only played a passing role in the last book, a limited-issue production called The Maiden of Mackinac.

I have a very small fame on the Island as a result of those books -- an occasional reader appreciates my written love for the place because he or she shares that feeling. I've encountered very polite folks who've wanted me to pose with them for a photo, and -- in one case -- a gushing fan who treated me like I was a rock star.

Most people, though, keep to themselves on Bois Blanc, which is a large part of its charm. We can congregate as a society at Hawk's Landing -- the Island's lone convenience store, which doubles as a restaurant -- or for game nights on Tuesdays at the Coast Guard Chapel, a converted Coast Guard boathouse out on the east end. Or there is an occasional square dance at the Hoover Building, a structure donated to the Island folks by the family of the late Earl Hoover, the former head of the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner firm.

And there are religious gatherings on Sundays throughout July and August at both the Coast Guard Chapel and the Church of the Transfiguration. The latter is in Pointe aux Pins, or The Pines, the lone Bois Blanc municipality, located on the island's southwest corner.

It was there in The Pines, one day back in the '90s, when I reconnected with a trio of important people from my childhood. It was early in my annual midlife sojourns to the Island, and in fact I had come ahead of the rest of my family in order to honor a fallen friend. Forty years had passed, but the memories hadn't dimmed..

*******

One of the three people was Sally Babler, married name Sperry, with whom I used to paddle around that southwest point on a makeshift raft when we were 6 or 7 years old. I think we were Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Anyway, I lost touch with her over the years, but knew she was still a summer Islander. Her family had roots there that stretched back eight decades.

This particular meeting, this reunion with Sally, took place at the Church of the Transfiguration -- at a memorial service for a man named Morgan Poole, who had been a family friend. I was listening patiently to the eulogies when a middle-aged woman walked to the pulpit to expound about Morgan's attributes and eccentricities. I glanced at her -- and didn't recognize her until she spoke.

Even in childhood, there was what I call a smoky quality to Sally Babler's voice; it has a low timbre to it, very distinctive. And this woman at the pulpit had that same quality. I had cast my eyes downward, reading the service program, when she started speaking, and I looked up in wonder -- and saw through the years the young girl with whom I had played. And I smiled.

After the service, I caught up to her just as she was getting into her car in a nearby parking lot, and told her how much I had liked her remarks. She glanced at me and thanked me, and continued to climb into her vehicle. I stopped her with a comment about how her voice hadn't changed in 40 years.

She stopped then, and studied me, and finally asked: "Who are you?"

"The name," I said, "is Haeffner. Charlie. You knew me as Chuck."

She smiled warmly then, and got out of the car and gave me a hug, and we chatted, and she suggested I visit her sister Marilyn, who had been at the service, too -- though I hadn't noticed her -- and had already left. Marilyn's cottage was one I knew well -- it had, in fact, belonged to the Babler girls' grandmother in my childhood years.

Marilyn was a bit older than me, but someone who knew well the Haeffner name, since she had hung out during Island summers in her youth with a crowd that included my older brother Bob. Her parents -- hers and Sally's -- were in fact friends of my parents before we ever visited the Island, and they had encouraged the Haeffner clan to try Bois Blanc's charms. That was in the early 1950s. The initial visit led to another, and another ... until the late 1950s, when my parents built a house alongside a lake in southeastern Michigan, negating the need for the Island.

*******

I drove to Marilyn's cottage, parked in front, and saw a woman on the porch who was obscured by the screen and the shadows -- and I wondered if it might be Marilyn. Then, thinking she looked too young, I called out: "Excuse me, but is Marilyn here?"

The woman -- in her 20s, as it turned out -- turned and bellowed through the front door: "Mom! Someone to see you!"

I walked to the porch door and was admitted by the young woman just as Marilyn -- still beautiful in her 50s -- came from the interior of the cottage to the front door, cell phone to her ear, a man stationed behind her.

She looked at me and asked rather brusquely: "Yes? Who are you?"

I took a step nearer her -- and was about a yard away when I answered.

"My name is Chuck Haeffner," I said softly.

Marilyn shrieked -- the force knocked me back a step -- and tossed the phone over her shoulder, where the man (her husband) caught it. She grabbed me then, and hugged me, and wanted to know, in a rush of words, what I was doing there, and where was I living, and how my mother was ...

... And that was my double reunion, Babler-sister style -- on the one hand very low-keyed, and on the other a fully charged jolt of energy.

******

There was one other reunion that day -- with a man named Bunker Clark, a professor of music out at the University of Kansas who had summered on the Island for many years, dating back, once again, to my childhood. Bunker had kept in touch with my parents over the years, and then, by extension, he and I had started a correspondence. He, in fact, had served as editor on my first Island book, Island Nights. But even after that book's publication, I hadn't had occasion to see him -- not until the Morgan Poole memorial, where Bunker was serving as organist. I had told him in our correspondence that I would try to reach the Island for the service.

It was immediately afterward, after the eulogies and the prayers and the final recessional music, when I approached him; but I had to wait a minute while he completed a conversation with another man. His eyes flickered toward me a couple of times, probably trying to figure out if I was who he thought I was; again, he hadn't seen me in four decades.

Finally, his conversation complete, he turned to me, and we looked at one another, and we smiled; and he knew.

"So," he said. "You made it, after all."

*******

Bunker died a few years later. A brain tumor assaulted and took him. And in the taking, I lost a valued friend, one of the Island folks.

Sally still spends summers on the Island, and Marilyn makes it up there every August. And others from my long ago past wander in and out of my Island visits. But increasingly, there are more and more memorial services involving the faces from my childhood.

Now, with summer here, I am heading out there again, to my Island, to soak up the energy of the place, to revel in the memories, to touch base with old friends, and to rest.

For in the final analysis, that is what the Island is about:

It is a place of peace.

********

And earlier:

Of angels and glass beads...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, June 22 -- We lost an angel over the weekend -- a 34-year-old victim of cancer -- but another angel has arisen. She is a remarkable 10-year-old. Well, she insists on specifying that she is actually 10 and a half.

The lost angel was Judy Lynn (nee Dunn) Chrisman of Horseheads, a 1994 Watkins Glen High School graduate who I had the great pleasure of meeting on May 8th at Bleachers bar and restaurant in downtown Watkins.

She was there for a surprise presentation to her of a $500 donation from a group of police officers from Wayne and Ontario Counties. She was bald thanks to chemo, and smiling bravely, and near tears when talking about the prospect of having to leave her two young sons, Zakkary and Alex, 8 and 5. The prognosis those few weeks ago was not good, but she seemingly had much more time than this. But matters took a turn for the worse a couple of weeks ago, and now she's gone. If you want to read the account of that day at Bleachers, it's here.

The very thought of her passing saddens me. The necessity to run her obituary (here) is extremely maddening. She was a very likable young lady, and this kind of thing ... just ... happens ... too ... damn ... much ...

*******

The young angel who has arisen is Jordan DeMeritt, a 5th grader at the Watkins Glen Middle School. This remarkable girl was singled out at the Middle School Awards Ceremony on June 21 with a Labor of Love Award for her tenacious and very thoughtful avocation: the creation of cancer bracelets from glass beads color-coded to remind us of all of the various cancers we must strive to combat.

She received a certificate and had her name placed on a plaque for her efforts -- efforts that began in earnest in January. The award was engineered by Catholic Charities, which has a hand in the 21st Century after-school program at the Middle School. (For a clarification of the originof the award, see Forum.)

Jordan, daughter of Brian and Connie Mathers DeMeritt, took up her cause -- creating and selling the bracelets to raise money for the fight against cancer -- upon the suggestion of her grandmother, Nanny, but also out of a need to do something in the face of a disease that claimed a 4-year-old cousin named Javier and her mother's cousin Joanne Mathers Fitch (a personal friend of mine who was in her 40s), and has struck another, teen-aged cousin.

Jordan made bracelets before all of this, she said, but not for sale or for a cause. But now they pack a double wallop: they are symbolic of the need to fight the scourge of cancer, and they are practical in raising funds toward that end.

"She's worked really hard at it," said her father after the Middle School Awards presentation. "She's put in a lot of time and effort."

And she has, in the process, raised more than $3,000 -- $500 of it (targeted for Breast Cancer research) at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure last month in Elmira. She also sold bracelets at the recent Schuyler County Relay for Life, donating her profits to the Cancer Society. The bulk of her earnings are being saved (and expanded) for donation to CureSearch, an organization based in Washington, D.C., devoted to the fight against childhood cancer.

The family hopes to travel there later this year to present the funds in person.

"It would mean more doing it that way than just sending it along," said Jordan's mother.

Jordan's odyssey into the realm of fund-raiser started with a Christmas gift certificate for glass beads, courtesy of her grandparents. She started buying the beads, carefully choosing them for color and quality, and then began producing the bracelets. They sell for $5, even though Jordan has been urged to put a $10 price tag on them.

"I want people to be able to afford them," she says.

She has made many hundreds, and has about a hundred on hand. Sales have been by word of mouth, and through one outlet -- the Flip-Flop store at 15 East Market Street in Corning.

The bracelets are beautiful creations, with the various colored beads and a charm in the form of a ribbon with the word "Hope." Jordan can put one of the bracelets together inside of a minute, but the purchasing and assembly-line preparations require a much lengthier effort.

The colors and cancers are associated as follows (as explained on a card accompanying the bracelets, and signed by Jordan): Pink (Breast Cancer), Teal (Ovarian), Purple (Pancreatic), White (Lung/Bone), Orange (Leukemia), Black (Melanoma), Yellow (Bladder), Dark Blue (Colon), Red/Burgundy (AIDS and Myeloma), Kelly Green (Kidney), Grey (Brain), Blue (Prostate), Gold (Childhood cancers), Peach (Uterine), Lime Green (Lymphoma/Liver), Teal/White (Cervical), and Lavender (Survivor/General Cancer Awareness).

These are nationally recognized alignments. But Jordan has adopted them on a personal level as she taps into the national psyche. Somehow, coming from the freshness and earnestness of youth, her message carries a meaning more uplifting than usual -- more hopeful.

******

Ten years old. And a half. Already a businesswoman, and a humanitarian. She does the heart good, this cancer battler, especially in a time when we are losing so many angels to the disease.

Jordan has a cause, and you can help, if you'd like, by purchasing a bracelet. But as her mother points out, "Just remember that a 10-year-old is doing this by herself."

Meaning ... don't expect instantaneous service if Jordan is flooded with orders. It is, after all, summer, and she would like a little recreational time after the rigors of the school year.

But that having been said, and having observed her, I can add this: Don't be deterred from buying one of her creations ... one of her gems; she is very serious about this, very determined. You can contact her through the following e-mail address: bdemeritt@stny.rr.com. Include your phone number so that Jordan or a member of the family can get back to you to discuss any individualized orders or specifics of the transaction.

The purchase of a Jordan bracelet is -- as we find ourselves saying so often these days -- for a good cause. But it's more than that, I think.

It's just plain right.

Speaking of which, Jordan is also turning her attention to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She'd like to do something for that organization so that cancer-stricken kids can have a wish realized.

And beyond that, says her mother, there is this:

"Jordan says she'd like to do something for old people and dogs ... because she loves them, too."

Photos in text:

From top: Jordan at the Middle School after the Awards Ceremony; one of her bracelets; and Jordan at work, making bracelets (Photo provided).

Addendum: Since this story was written, word has been received that Jordan's bracelets are now also available at the Schuyler Hospital Gift Shop from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday. Saturday hours vary.

*****

And earlier:

The value of courtesy ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, June 13 -- I was going to use this space to relate a rather bizarre phone call and a follow-up ad cancellation that occurred on a recent weekday.

But I won't.

The guy who called, a representative of a prestigious operation, is fairly new to the area, and would really be too easy a target to skewer -- especially if I used his own poorly chosen, rather abusively aggressive words against him.

Suffice it to say that in the time he has been among us -- a number of months -- he has been, by his own account, oblivious to the presence of this website, even though the operation he oversees was advertising on it right along. A predecessor of his had arranged the ad.

In fact, this guy couldn't even get my name right. Hefron, he called me. (As an observational friend points out, at least the man didn't call me Hayward ... a reference to the BP chief.)

Anyway, he canceled his organization's ad -- which is no big deal. What bothered me instead was his lack of courtesy. He was more bulldog than businessman; insulting, really.

Courtesy is a quality I prize, and something which I generally find in great abundance in my dealings with the local business community.

Because of its absence in this particular instance, I sat down and wrote a column -- the account of the conversation -- that led to a specific, very positive conclusion. While the account of the talk would probably be entertaining to most readers, I've opted to go only with the concluding section that followed it.

It goes like this:

"While I'm sure many advertisers hope for a return on their investment, I get the sense too that there is afoot in this county a desire on the part of many advertisers to help keep this journalistic venture -- this eye on the county -- going strong. They are, by supporting The Odessa File, supporting you, the readers who have come to rely on it. I thank them for that support, and I thank you for yours.

"Of late, a couple of advertisers needed to scale back their ads for economic reasons. I was not a bit surprised, and gladly worked with them on it. I like to think that we're in this together -- that the effort that goes into producing this website is appreciated as much as I appreciate any help given me. True, there are relatively few donations from individuals, but I understand that. Why pay when you can get it for free?

"My salvation -- the salvation of The Odessa File -- has been in those individuals who have donated, and in the continued advertising by businesses within the county who take pride in Schuyler, and like to see it promoted.

"The fact is, I don't go out selling ads, unless I'm asked by a business to stop by. That's how a good many of the ads you see on these pages came to be here, including the one just canceled.

"I believe strongly in letting the product sell itself. And it does, more often than I at first imagined possible. It is a product into which I pour my energies, and to which I always hope enough people -- enough advertisers and individuals -- respond by helping to support it.

"I'm sure that readers who visit the site on a regular basis are mindful of those advertisements ... of those advertisers ... of who is helping to support the effort, now 7 1/2 years old. And I imagine the advertisers, being savvy business people, understand the value of such good will. We tend to rely on each other around here."

That's it. It covers things, I think, from my perspective -- although my aforementioned observational friend weighed in with this about the annoying phone caller:

The Cancellator (to borrow a comic-book name) actually serves a useful purpose -- "offers a balance, reminding you how fortunate you have been -- and are -- in your dealings with the other people of Schuyler County."

Well, amen to that.

*****

About that vote:

For various reasons, I don't cover Odessa-Montour School Board meetings in person. Budget votes and Board elections, yes; other things no. To explain why would take a novel (which I might yet write).

So, not having been there, I received word instead from several people about a 4-3 vote the other night, at the latest Board meeting. They have that kind of a split on occasion, for this is not always a unified board. What was noteworthy was that the vote this time was on adding a fifth year back onto the contract of Superintendent James Frame.

This is normally a standard procedure. Each year a board will vote on whether to reinstate the year just concluded back onto a superintendent's contract -- to keep it at a designated length, in this case five years. If the Board votes against it, then that's not good news for a superintendent. I've seen that happen, and seen a super leave in fairly short order from a district after finding new, perhaps more secure employment elsewhere.

Anyway, my initial reaction on hearing about that 4-3 vote on Mr. Frame was: "Whoa! That's got to sting. He couldn't be happy with that: a narrow majority." But it turns out the vote could have been 7-0 in Mr. Frame's favor.

A member in the minority -- specifically Scott Westervelt -- said the vote would likely have been unanimous if the board had not voted against his move to table it. He wanted the delay so he and fellow board members Don Roberts and Matt Walters could see -- could study -- Mr. Frame's contract. None of the three has ever seen the contract, said Westervelt, and simply thought it prudent to do so. (Westervelt said he asked for all independent contracts a month before, and received those of building principals and the Building and Grounds chief -- but not that of the superintendent.)

But the board majority voted down Westervelt's tabling motion 4-3, and moved quickly to a vote on the fifth year -- and thus went on the record with a 4-3 vote in favor of Mr. Frame.

"I don't understand," I said to Westervelt. "Why would they want a 4-3 vote on the record, when they could have had a 7-0?"

"Good question," he answered.

********

And earlier:

The Comeback Kid ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, June 6 -- I thought at first, watching her speak to students in the Watkins Glen Middle School auditorium, that she seemed friendly enough. But with her track record -- a musical career of rising success, a battle that conquered cervical cancer, and the ability to stand up there and lecture and sing -- I felt a bit overmatched. I found the combination of celebrity and nerve a bit daunting.

I could have snapped my pictures and walked away, but I knew I needed to talk to her, to get some quotes -- and perhaps some further understanding -- to help fill out whatever article I might write about her. I went to the front of the auditorium after she was done, but first approached Superintendent Tom Phillips, who had just closed the session with words of caution to the students about caring for their health through checkups -- the theme the woman had been espousing through words and music for the previous hour.

The woman was sitting on the edge of the stage at this point, swinging her legs, in perpetual motion. That pretty much describes her: perpetual motion. Even when seated, there's an energy field jumping around her. I was marveling at that energy when she suddenly sprang from the stage and walked directly toward me and said: "Hey, yellow shirt. Cool, dude!" Or words to that effect.

I was, indeed, wearing a yellow shirt -- yellow being her operative color as she preaches awareness of cancer. It is most visible in the yellow umbrella she brings to her performances -- a symbol borrowed from the movie Harold and Maude, Maude being an elderly woman in love with life who carries a yellow umbrella to an otherwise bleak funeral.

That use of color called to mind a line my late wife Susan once uttered when coming out of anesthesia following surgery involving her cancer. She had a particular distaste for the bedside manner of the doctor who had, months earlier, pronounced her death sentence. Coming out of that surgery, with that same doctor leaning over her to see how she was doing, she told him this: "I'm going to wear a red dress to your funeral."

She never did get to execute that particular desire, but the spirit of the moment resonates -- and it resonated there in the Middle School auditorium, in the yellowness and verve of this lecturer-entertainer, this Christine Baze.

******

Baze is an Elmira native, a 1987 Southside High graduate, a classically trained musician and an indie performer of note -- with an increase in visibility since her battle with cervical cancer nearly a decade ago. That battle included a couple of surgeries and the removal of various of what she calls her "girl parts." Depression followed, and then resurgence, with inspiration from the joie de vivre of moviedom's Maude.

That resurgence has been fueled by candor, by the need to share a message of hope: that cervical cancer can be beaten. That is what she carries with her on tour, and into schools: her message, promoted by her music

We bonded there in that auditorium when I divulged my own experience in the world of cancer -- how I had lost my wife to it one day in an area hospital. How I had raced to that hospital when her condition (in the words of a caller) had "changed"; how I had run to her room and found a team of doctors working on her; how someone had told me I couldn't be there, and how I had said:

"F... you!" said Christine Baze, as though she was there in my place, there in that hospital room.

I smiled at her. "That's exactly what I said," I told her.

******

I encountered Baze again less than two hours later, at a meeting of the Watkins-Montour Rotary Club, where she was to be guest speaker. She spotted me and sat at my table, and it was there that I also got to know her companion, a sort of second mother to her, Barb Van Dine.

The perpetual Baze motion -- in little movements, in sudden outpourings of words about her visit to the area and about VanDine's role, about the fact that she still gets nervous when going before a crowd, "whether it's a big show or 40 people at Rotary Club" -- continued. And in that nervousness, she was introduced to the club and stood far from the podium, so she could move, could go up on her tiptoes and duck and express herself, express her story. And in the telling, she had the Rotarians listening very closely, for her story is harrowing and uplifting at the same time, and oh, so human.

And she sang a song, playing the piano that resides in that banquet room, and the reaction of the Rotarians was enthusiastic, and she was clearly pleased, smiling widely, moving up, down, and side to side.

*******

I wrote a story about her, and published some pictures of her. The next day, Friday, she went to the Watkins Glen High School to spread her word to more students, to caution them that their health is far too important to ignore, and that they can save themselves a world of distress through pap smears and checkups and various tests.

Friday evening, she was concluding her two-day visit with an appearance at the Village Marina Bar and Grill. I ventured down there for a photograph, which is atop this column. She was playing on the patio in front of the Marina, with a crowd at first scant, but steadily growing while I was there.

Her mentor Van Dine spotted me first, and came over to greet me, a smile on her face. They had liked the article, she said. And then Christine Baze finished the song she was singing, smiled widely in my direction, literally skipped over to me and gave me a big hug. She had loved the article, and thanked me, and offered to buy me a drink.

I declined, saying I just needed to snap a few photos and would be on my way. And so she went back to her performance, to her music and to the words she delivers about being a cancer survivor. Her trademark yellow umbrella punctuated that fact as it hung nearby on a post fronting the Marina building. I fired away with my camera, and then waited for the singing to stop, and approached her, hand extended, saying thanks, and how nice it was to have met her.

And she gave me another hug, and said "Let's not be strangers."

********

That, of course, can be a hollow phrase, but coming from the mouth of Christine Baze, a woman of uncommonly blunt honesty, it rang true. It is that directness that appeals to audiences, I think -- a no-bull look at life. I don't know if she was that way before the cancer, but I suspect not; at least not to the present degree. A long look into the abyss can change people.

We parted then, she turning to her music, and I to other plans. I imagine at some point we might reconnect, though -- at some time when she's back in our area, talking in schools, spreading the message, playing her music and moving ... perpetually.

I imagine I will be swept up again in that energy, in that enthusiasm, in the rich voice she uses so well. I imagine I will publicize her words about cancer awareness some more, play some small role in helping her disseminate them to the masses.

It's a good cause, really. Awareness usually is. It offers some light -- some reassurance -- against all of that darkness that lurks out there, waiting.

*******

And speaking of messages:

--The 2010 Top Drawer 24 team of two-dozen outstanding scholar-athletes from our high schools heard solid messages delivered from several speakers at the annual Top Drawer party at the State Park on June 2. Most notable were those from former coaches Jim McCloe and Kate LaMoreaux -- who urged, respectively, that the honorees aim high and never settle for being normal -- and former honoree Ben Robertson, who said that after high school, the Top Drawer team members had better be ready to raise their performance levels if they hope to compete successfully against people who want the same positions they want.

--And a message we can derive from Amanda Crans' experiences in the world of basketball is this: determination and perseverance pay off. Crans, who under the tutelage of AAU Coach Chris Wood in her high school days turned from a marginal Watkins Glen High School varsity player into a long-distance sharpshooter -- and, thus, an offensive force -- has completed a four-year career at Russell Sage College in which she earned a nursing degree and played four years of varsity basketball.

Amanda was a team captain this past season, completing a career in which she played in 81 games (8th on the Sage career list) and sank 63 three-pointers (5th on the list). She was also a member of the Sage College Intercollegiate Athletic Honor Society her junior and senior years -- reserved for student-athletes with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.2 or better who have been members of a varsity team for at least two seasons. She is now beginning a career as a Registered Nurse at Arnot Ogden Hospital.

******

And earlier:

His name was Bobby Farmer

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 27 -- I couldn't help but notice, as a second day of sweltering temperatures embroiled us this week, that people were talking less.

It takes energy to talk, and energy to ward off excessive heat. The choice is easy. We tend to slow down and shut up.

In my own slowing down, I sat immobile, letting some air-conditioning cool me off. To step outside was pointless, unless I was deliberately looking to sweat.

And in the sitting, I pondered and mulled ... and as often happens in such circumstance, my mind wandered back in time, back to the 1970s, to Watertown, New York -- where I was employed in my first truly adult job, as a journalist.

And the image popped up of a middle-aged man of that time, short of physical stature, suitcoat off and necktie loosened, and sweat glistening on his brow. His face was red.

This was how Bobby Farmer would look on one of these hot summer-like days. But all in all, he was a pretty cool customer.

******

Newsrooms -- at least those many years ago, when they had full contingents of employees -- were places of ambition, and shifting loyalties, and platforms from which societal outsiders could do something useful for the very society they tended to skirt. I'm talking about that unique breed known as journalists.

Journalists are almost uniformly dedicated to their craft, and generally a little skeptical about authority, which they are in a unique position to monitor. The term adversarial relationship is often used to describe this balance of power -- of government officials exercising power, on the one hand, and journalists ready to blow the whistle if those government officials exceed the authority we, the people, have provided them.

Journalism is also occupied by people with widely divergent levels of ability -- the low side sometimes alarmingly so. This is due in part to the absence of any stringent course work or tests that must be passed in order to pursue such a career. (Such an absence is a philosophical and practical necessity, the reasons for which could fill another column.)

And where I worked, at the Watertown Daily Times, there was a divergence of generations.

There were kids like me, fresh out of school, being recruited by the young son of the editor-publisher. Both the editor and the son were named John B. Johnson -- the younger known simply as Junior.

And there were elders there -- gentlemen who were old-school journalists, starting with an 80-something, white-haired, cigar-chomping and somewhat frightening Executive Editor named Gordon Bryant. He had been at the Daily Times roughly forever -- all his working life, I believe -- which gave him the edge in seniority, but not by much, over four or five craggy-faced reporters.

I tended to hang out with these older fellows in the newsroom, because I saw the chance to learn from them. But outside the office, I gravitated toward the younger reporters -- golfing regularly with two of them, and drinking on Friday evenings (at week's long-awaited end) with the full contingent of them.

*******

But this is not about drinking -- I left that behind many years ago -- and not about my relationship with either the elders or with people my own age. No, this is about one fellow in particular who was in-between those two camps -- and whose kindness and ability impacted my development daily. I refer to the aforementioned, ruddy-faced Bobby Farmer.

Bobby was pretty much the heart of the newsroom, at least after my first few years there. By then he had advanced from Assistant City Editor to City Editor upon the retirement of his predecessor, one of those old-school gentlemen named Fred Kimball. Bobby was 15 years or so my senior.

He was a local boy, from the Thousand Islands area, and always smiling, even when stress was evident in his eyes. He was the balancer in that newsroom, keeping both the old guard and the young whippersnappers happy, which was no small feat -- not when the one group knew everything there was to know about journalism, and the other only thought it did. And he was a manager of the mercurial moods of Junior, who back in those days was widely known for his journalistic passions and demands. Junior was, in short, sometimes difficult to please.

*******

Bobby was always there, at my elbow, whenever I hurriedly typed a deadline story -- which in those days meant using an old typewriter the company provided. He'd snatch the sheet from my roller after every paragraph, jot some editing marks on it, and send it out to the composing room -- and then return for my next paragraph.

He was a married man -- with a wife named Jean who, I always thought, was the boss of that union. They had no children.

The newspaper was his child, in a way, and was his larger family. He worked there from the time he was a young man, doing odd jobs and eventually assisting Mr. Kimball on the copy desk before taking over as City Editor. He wasn't the hard-driving City Editor of movie lore, but rather a soft-spoken man, quick with a soft quip, cherubic in appearance -- chubby cheeked, with glasses and thinning hair. And short, probably no more than 5-5.

His dream, I'm quite sure, was to snag that job -- and he did. That's where he was -- what he did -- during my last few years in Watertown, and that's where he was and what he did for years after I left.

I saw him a couple of times after I had moved on -- after I had traveled the country and settled down in the Southern Tier and worked at the Elmira Star-Gazette. He was always the same when I saw him -- always smiling, always friendly, always welcoming.

And then word came one night: Bobby had left the newsroom at day's end and gone down the elevator to the first floor, and was waiting for his wife to arrive in their car to take him home. He was standing in the lobby when he got dizzy, and he told someone, and co-workers jumped to his assistance; had him sit down.

And he died.

Just like that. A stroke had ended his life.

And so it was that I returned to Watertown that week ... for his funeral. The service featured an open casket, a tradition I normally despise -- but I found myself standing there, looking down at him, shaking my head.

"Damn, Bobby," I said. "Damn. So this is what it's come to."

And standing there, I wept.

*******

There was a reception at a public hall afterward, and people were going up to Bobby's widow, Jean, to express condolences. I was hanging back, thinking she wouldn't even remember me. We had never been close, and I had been gone for some years, and she was no doubt in some shock.

But eventually, with a lull in the crowd around her, I approached, intending to explain who I was. As I approached, she looked up at me and smiled weakly.

"Oh, Charlie," she said before I could utter a word. "This has been a terrible week."

And we hugged there. And she wept.

*******

Now, after reaching the age at which Bobby Farmer left us, I found myself sitting on a hot day and thinking -- thinking about the vagaries of the weather and the vagaries of life. I found myself searching for some clue as to why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing. And I came to this, an answer that avoided a cosmic generality, focusing instead on one man -- on Robert Farmer.

Bobby, I decided, was here to make life a little easier for a young fellow stumbling his way through the early years of a journalism career. He was here to bring balance to a newsroom that -- with its widely divergent mix of generations and talents and ambitions -- could easily have swung to anarchy and failure ... but didn't.

He was one of life's referees.

And he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing.

********

Of note:

-- There will be Memorial Day services on Monday, May 31 at the base of the Shequagah Falls in Montour Falls at 9:30 (keynote speaker is Sheriff Bill Yessman) and in Watkins Glen.

The Watkins activities start at 10:30 at the naval memoriial at the Seneca Harbor pier. A parade follows along Franklin Street to the Courthouse, where the annual service will be held at 11 a.m. on the front lawn.

-- I've received word from two readers that Odessa-Montour graduate Zach Williams, son of Nancy and Pat Carlisle, was wounded recently while serving in Afghanistan and has undergone two surgeries in Germany. He was shot in the stomach and small intestines, said one of the readers.

*****

And earlier...

The One More Thing Society

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 1-- Welcome to the inaugural signup for the One More Thing Society.

It's an extension, I suppose, of the Bucket List -- only organized in group fashion, sort of a fraternity of people who want to do exciting things in their lives, but have trouble getting started doing them. The idea is to push club members on to the next thing and the next thing ... always toward One More Thing to experience in life.

The idea came to me the other night, in my sleep ... in a dream. I don't usually remember dreams, but this time I dreamed, too, that I was writing down the name of the organization so that I could recall it in the morning. And that did the trick.

The dream was taking place, for some reason, on the campus of Colorado State University. Mind you, I've never been to Colorado State University, but there was a gathering of the club there, on a lawn on campus, with stately buildings in the background.

Honestly, I can't tell you if they even have stately buildings there. But in my dream they were there, as were I and a female companion and a whole bunch of like-minded folks. I don't recall exactly what we were doing there -- what One More Thing we were up to -- but the sense of the atmosphere still lingers.

There was something about the lawn, and how it needed cutting.-- it was as though it had a fuzzy topping that hid objects, such as baseballs ... which I assume had some sort of symbolic importance.

Anyway, I'm back from Colorado State University now, it is daytime in Schuyler County, and I've decided to spread the gospel of the One More Thing Society. Any takers? We can push one another to do those things we've always intended to do, but just haven't quite gotten around to.

Anyway, I'm signing up, and giving serious thought to doing something ... anything ... other than the day in and day out routine that has my head spinning and my enthusiasm waning. The same old, same old can be debilitating across time. (No, I probably won't disappear; just realign.)

Anybody care to join in ... to do One More Thing?

*****

In that vein, there is a local businessman-politician who is planning to hike the extent of the Appalachian Trail this summer. What a great, ambitous idea. I told him he could blog his experience, and we could post it here.

His name is Paul Marcellus, a county legislator, and he e-mailed me the following note after I told him about the One More Thing Society, and its origin, and how it reminded me of what I'd heard of his pending adventure:

"How interesting," he wrote. "Acting on ideas straight from the sleep state! Emily (his daughter) and I plan to start hiking no later than July 1st. We will be hiking southbound from the Northern terminus of the trail, Mt. Katahdin. The southern terminus is Springer Mountain, Georgia, 2,168 miles later. Emily will be with me during July only as she will be heading back to school for an early-starting fall semester at Flagler College.

"I will be accepting pledges from all animal lovers within the community, like this: so many pennies per mile I complete, with all proceeds collected going to the Humane Society building fund. Their plan is to erect a new building that will house both feline and canine.

"Potential pledgers will be reminded that only about 12% of those who start on the trail intending to go the distance ever complete it. I think the percentage is probably lower for southbounders as well, due to the fact that 80% of the effort expended on the length of the trail is generally recognized to be spent in the northernmost 20% of the trail: the venerable mountains of New England."

*****

Plans have come together quickly for the Devon's Day Benefit in support of Devon Shaw, who has been diagnosed with cancer in his right femur and his lung.

We have a copy of the poster on the PSA page (here), and a story about Devon's plight here.

Under the guidance of Mark Stephany, who has coached Devon in soccer across the years, committees were formed, and a plan swiftly formulated. Thanks to the generosity of Mark Simiele, the problem of where, exactly, to hold the benefit was solved: his Seneca Harbor Station restaurant and his Seneca Legacy vessel (for a Teen Cruise).

The event will run from 4-9 p.m. Sunday, May 16 at the restaurant. It will feature a Chicken Dinner, a silent auction (with lots of items donated by local businesses), raffles, and entertainment. Cost of dinner is $20; the same for the Teen Cruise. Tickets are available at various places, including the Watkins Glen High School and Middle School and Seneca Harbor Station.

*****

Oh, happy day ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 20 -- So the school budgets passed, despite some trepidation on the part of administrators that they might not. Such is the lot of school leaders: they get to worry a lot.

But even with the passage -- by wide margins in both the Watkins Glen and Odessa-Montour School Districts -- there is always next year to worry about.

The economy continues to sputter, and with that, lives are being disrupted. The number of teacher positions cut in Watkins Glen (10), O-M (a couple) and -- more strikingly -- in Corning (24 among 43 total positions) means in some instances (where attrition or retirement weren't the reduction mechanisms) that there are real lives and real families that were thrown into a turmoil of potential joblessness, depression and, yes, fear.

Layoff numbers don't ever reveal the toll on the victims. The numbers belie the pain..

*****

And with the economy still a big question mark -- and with God knows what effects the oil spill in the Gulf will have on it -- we all can look forward to even tougher times ahead, the President's assurances to the contrary. (Listen to the sounds coming out of Albany. Those are screams of agony and frustration amid the ineptitude.)

Schuyler County leaders have warned that the layoffs of the past year are just a precursor to a tougher budgetary squeeze the next time around, and school officials have said that as tough as the just-passed budgets were to fashion, next year's will likely be a good deal more difficult.

One could extrapolate from those outlooks that more jobs are at risk in the county and the schools, and that student services to which we've become accustomed might be trimmed back.

"It won't be pretty," said one school administrator about the coming year.

******

The Devon's Day benefit May 16 on behalf of cancer-stricken WGHS freshman Devon Shaw and his family was a thing of beauty. The weather was nearly perfect, the setting (the Seneca Harbor Station restaurant) was ideal, and the cause was one which hundreds of area residents embraced with fervor.

As the saying goes, a grand time was had by all.

On a personal note, I won two raffle prizes and two silent-auction paintings (by a Texas artist named Laurie Pace) during the benefit. All of that was rather surprising, since I rarely win anything.

******

This year's Top Drawer 24 team has been selected, and the honorees notified. We'll soon have a story introducing them and inviting you, the public, to attend the party celebrating their achievements. It will be held at the Watkins Glen State Park Pavilion (near the south entrance, across from Seneca Lodge) on Wednesday, June 2, with a social hour starting at 5:30 p.m. There will be brief speeches, and presentation of a medallion to each honoree. Finger foods, cake and ice cream will be available, all at no charge.

The Top Drawer program, with representation from the Watkins Glen, Odessa-Montour, Trumansburg and Bradford High Schools, is in its fifth year of existence. It annually celebrates two-dozen students who excel athletically, academically, and in citizenship and character. This year's membership was decided over a period of months by a 16-person committee. There are 10 seniors, 10 juniors and four sophomores on the squad.

********

And earlier:

A little of this, a little of that

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, May 10 -- Some of these weeks are so full of things happening that I can't even begin to keep up with everything.

Of course, it was never my intent to cover every bit of news. I've always figured if I tried that, I'd just be duplicating to some degree what some perfectly fine publications were already doing.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting in passing what one such publication reported on Saturday -- that the P&C in Watkins Glen will continue to operate as a Tops Market. Given the time that has passed since Tops picked up the P&C stores from the bankruptcy-filing Penn Traffic, it seemed logical to assume that this would be the outcome.

Assumptions are dangerous things, of course, but this one seems to have held true. The report said the Watkins Glen store and ones in Penn Yan and Elmira are among 30 that Tops decided to continue operating.

******

I met a remarkable young woman Saturday, who you can read about here. Her name is Judy Chrisman, and she's been battling breast cancer.

She didn't know I was coming to meet her at Bleachers, or for that matter that a half-dozen police officers from Ontario and Wayne Counties were. They wanted to present her with a donation of $500.

When I received a request earlier in the day to show up there, I wondered if I might be walking into a situation where I wasn't really welcome. But when I got there, everybody -- and in particular Judy -- was very friendly, very open, and remarkably upbeat.

Having been through my late wife's cancer battle, I could understand if perhaps Judy would prefer privacy; some people in such a situation do. But she was very open, very warm, and very brave.

A lovely lady.

******.

Saturday Night Live with Betty White as guest host was a hoot -- laugh out loud funny. Ribald. Racy. And with some great old familiar faces joining in: Amy Poehler, Molly Shannon, Tina Fey. It was, as my son Jon said, "the best ... SNL ... ever."

And what's remarkable is that White, at 88 years of age, had the stamina to be in as many skits as she was -- which is to say a lot of them.

*****

Don't forget: The Devon's Day fund-raiser at Seneca Lake for cancer-stricken Watkins Glen High School student Devon Shaw is this coming Sunday, May 16. The main event is at the Seneca Harbor Station Restaurant from 4-9 p.m. -- with lots of food and music, and raffles, and auction items. There is also a teen cruise from 5-8 p.m. Tickets for either, at $20, are available at various locations, including the Watkins Glen High and Middle Schools and the restaurant.

If you're not up to speed on Devon's situation, click here.

*****

The Concerts in the Park at Watkins Glen's LaFayette Park resume under new leadership on June 22, when Ed Clute's Dixie Five Plus performs.

In succeeding weeks come the Hepcats Big Band, Joe Cavallaro's Dixieland Jazz Band, the Ageless Jazz Band, Dave Paugh, The Musicmakers Big Band, the Route 66 Country Band, the Sgro Brothers, Bob Melnyk's Polka Magic Band, Steve Southworth and the Rockabilly Rays, and Girls Gone Mild (with some blues, folk, jazz, rock and pop music).

Julie Sissel is in charge of the concert series now, taking over for the retired Rose Ciccone. The concerts run every Tuesday from 7-9 p.m.

*****

The 5th annual Live Liz Liz 5K Run/Walk is coming up -- on June 6, on the Watkins Glen High School Track and the nearby Catharine Valley Trail. There will be a 1 Mile Fun Run for the kids, a keynote speaker, an education tent, and camaraderie. It's all in memory of Liz Amisano, who died on Oct. 12, 2005 of ovarian cancer at the age of 20 -- and it is designed to raise awareness of the disease.

******

And earlier:

As May nears, so do awards...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 26 -- The rain has settled in as I write this, and my mood seems to reflect the color of the sky -- which is to say one of a dark nature.

It is in times like this that I ponder the meaning of ... heck, of anything -- the why of our existence, if you will, or for that matter the why of any part of it: why Jimmy Carter was President, or for that matter why Franklin Pierce or George W. were; why Eric Massa went on the Glenn Beck show, and so on.

Since answers to such puzzles are beyond the realm of simplicity -- are too hard bought -- I tend to sidestep the struggle, to draw back from philosophy and readjust to the here, now, and soon to be.

I'm looking ahead, in fact, to May, since I seem to operate best when time is compartmentalized in easily identifiable chunks, such as months.

So ... May means lots of things. It means proms, and spring sports heading toward conclusion, and school budget votes, and school board elections, and the start of tourist season, and the approach of the high school awards season.

*****

The awards that matter most to me are, I think quite naturally, those that emanate from this website.

The Odessa File will, this year, be providing Athlete of the Year awards to student-athletes at the two high schools it covers with regularity --Watkins Glen and Odessa-Montour -- as well as a Schuyler Spring MVP award to one student-athlete in the county.

There will also be the sixth annual Susan B. Haeffner Schuyler County Sportsmanship Award, named in honor of my late wife. The first five Susan Award winners were O-M's Sally Wilcox, Watkins Glen's Courtney Warren, Sophie Peters and Ian Remmers, and O-M's John Blaha.

The Athlete of the Year Awards and the Susan Award will be presented on June 2 -- at the site and night of the Top Drawer 24 party at the Watkins Glen State Park pavilion. The Athlete of the Year awards will likely be presented before the formal Top Drawer ceremony, and the Susan Award during it.

For those who are a little foggy on Top Drawer lore, this will be the fifth annual presentation of Top Drawer awards to 24 outstanding high school students. The Top Drawer 24 is subtitled the Brian J. O'Donnell Schuyler County Scholar-Athlete-Citizen Team in honor of the retired WGHS principal who is currently president of that school district's School Board.

There will be representation on the team from WGHS and from the O-M, Trumansburg and Bradford school districts, each of which lies at least partly within Schuyler County. Ninth through 12th graders are eligible, although a freshman has been named only once. The criteria are varied, with a focus on achievement in sports and the classroom, and on citizenship and character.

The team is selected through a school-year-long process that involves the wisdom of well over a dozen committee members, including teachers, coaches, administrators and a community representative from outside the teaching and coaching professions.

Certain other coaches are sought out for their opinions, or seek me out to provide them.

Selection of the Top Drawer 24 team is, in other words, taken quite seriously -- and is ultimately marked by an early evening awards ceremony at the State Park featuring such foods as cheese, grapes, ice cream and cake for everyone attending. As in past years, there will be several speakers this time -- we'll be announcing them soon -- and medallions presented by O'Donnell to each honoree. Last year we also had certificates of achievement for each team member sent from our State Senator, state Assemblyman and Congressman.

I figured out some months back that in the four years in which we've held the party, we've honored 69 different students, which means we've had some repeaters. It's an elite group, and it is one -- judging from the turnout of honorees thus far (just one absence, and that for a very good reason) -- that takes the award to heart.

So ... stay tuned. The final decisions on who makes the team will be completed soon, and the honorees will be informed in mid-May. The announcement itself will be several days later -- a divergence from our first couple of years, when we would tell the honorees they were on the team, give them their party, and then announce publicly who had been selected.

I kind of liked that, but this way we can get the word out to you, the public, in advance and encourage you to attend. This is a celebration of outstanding young people in our county -- among them, very possibly, our future leaders.

*******

And earlier:

Hal Holbrook speaks to the media in front of a steamboat mural in the Holiday Inn's Tom Sawyer Room.

And the Twain shall meet...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 21 -- Hal Holbrook -- an actor with a long and distinguished career in stage, film and television work -- was once featured in a movie called "Wild in the Streets." It was an outrageous tale starring Christopher Jones as a musician named Max Frost who becomes the leader of a movement to dispatch anyone over 30 years of age. If memory serves, such "oldsters" were packed off to concentration camps.

Holbrook played a Senate candidate named Johnny Fergus who was, alas, over 30, and thus ended up in a bad way.

I bring this up because the film, although it came out in 1968, has stayed with me over the years, and because Holbrook -- many, many years beyond 30 now (he's 85), arrived in Elmira Tuesday and held a press conference at the Holiday Inn on East Water Street before receiving a Global Legacy Award from the Chemung County Chamber of Commerce.

And I bring it up because, oddly enough, Holbrook made a reference to that film -- whether intentionally or not I don't know. But more on that later.

Holbrook, who amazingly enough made this journey East just a week after the passing of his wife, Dixie Carter, was in both thoughtful and comic form in front of the media and Chamber members. He choked up but once, when he made his lone mention of how much his wife would have liked this trip -- which was culminating with Holbrook appearing Wednesday night at the Clemens Center in his one-man show Mark Twain Tonight, a role he has presented on stage some 2,200 times since he first tried it in 1954. The appearance had been long planned, falling on the 100th anniversary of Twain's death.

He told in detail about those early days, how Twain had first been an occasional character in a two-person show Holbrook performed with the first Mrs. Holbrook, and then how he haltingly took on the role of Twain in a solo setting in order to put food on his table, and then watched as the role seemingly took on a life of its own -- gaining fans and bookings and fame. It was only then that he truly studied Twain and his era in detail, and started morphing into the man. On stage, Holbrook is wholly appealing in his impersonation -- and being a great actor, he is by turns moving, thought provoking and very funny. I've seen the performance on TV, and have an old audio recording of it that I first obtained back in college.

Holbrook is quick to say that he is just an actor, and that he owes much to Twain -- that in fact Twain deserves all the credit for the long-running success of Holbrook's show.

But to hear Holbrook speak is almost to hear Twain speak -- in the sense that both are acerbic while amusing, and deeply intelligent while possessing a common touch.

And both are fearless. For instance, Holbrook -- in front of media Tuesday -- tackled the media.

He said that cable news "has people it's hard to look at -- who are so unaware of their arrogance ... These are very dangerous times in which we live ... they're cutting down on newspapers, which you could read and think about. (Instead) we get 8-second sound bites (of interview subjects), and then a commentator takes a minute or two or three to move his mouth around. We don't want to hear those idiots; we want to hear (the people) they interviewed."

After 56 years of performing as Twain, he was asked how long he might continue.

"I don't know. Until I drop dead on the stage, I suppose. As long as I can keep strong, and hear the audience (he has reduced hearing), and put up with the travel arrangements, I'll keep going."

When asked how he would feel and what he would ask if he had a chance to sit down with Twain, he smiled. "I would be nervous or scared (because) it's almost an affront to try to be him on stage." But he said he would ask Twain what he thought about "our political climate. I'd want to know what he thought about it; about our excursions in various parts of the world, taking on a role unasked for, and uninvited, to reform (other lands) to our way of life. That's a great trap for a powerful country."

Of Twain, he said that the biggest surprise he's encountered in studying the man is that "he was no joker. He was a joker, but he wasn't a joker. I think he was a profound thinker. We don't have anybody like that now. When something happened in the world, reporters went to his home to ask his opinion. He represented something very visible about America. But somewhere, sometime, somehow, some sort of shuffle was done, and all that (about Twain) was lost, forgotten."

He said for years Twain was widely considered a children's author, when in fact he was so much more. "The man is so relevant today, it's almost mystical, mysterious. I never update Mark Twain (on stage). You don't have to update him. If you leave out the name of the war, and the politician and the incident, the audience thinks you're talking about today."

Twain, he said, has had a vast influence on his own thought process. "My ideas have very powerfully been affected by studying Mark Twain's world. I think that something within me was waiting to be opened by Mark Twain."

So, while health and stamina are a concern in continuing on his chosen path of channeling Twain to audiences around the country, there is still the matter of a spark -- that inspiration that can lift Holbrook from the depths of personal loss and from the well of fatigue that accompanies age. And that's where that movie comes in, the one where anyone over 30 was in deep trouble.

"There are so many idiocies running wild in the streets," he said, perhaps subconsciously, "that to get fired up to do the show" -- to bring the Twain brand of skepticism, cynicism and sharply barbed observations down on the heads of the high and mighty -- "is very easy."

It is as though the spirit of Twain has taken over the soul of the actor. It is as though the actor, despite his words to the contrary, is every bit as important as his subject because he has, in abstract but noticeable ways, become the subject -- and carried that subject's message, and spread his gospel: The Gospel According to Twain.

Photos in text:

Top: Hal Holbrook examines his Global Legacy Award. He is the fifth such recipient of the Chamber of Commerce honor. Previous winners were Tommy Hilfiger, Joey Sindelar, Rob Brown (who portrayed Ernie Davis on film) and former Congressman Amo Houghton.

Next three: Holbrook at the podium, responding to questions.

Bottom: Holbrook at a table during the Chamber of Commerce party that followed the press conference, talking to a guest.

*******

And earlier:

Should truth be told ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 18 -- It's just three days after Tax Day, so my mind is still dwelling on politicians who bring us ... yes, taxes.

This is quite a time we're living in, what with burgeoning burdens such as taxes (thank you, lawmakers), shrinking buying power, increasing job losses, villages dissolving or thinking about it, high school sports programs combining, and so on.

It is a time of tremendous stress for many people, and despite assurances from the White House, not too many of us are nodding and saying, "Yes, the economy is improving."

But that's par for the course, such assurances. It's called politics.

*****

Words from politicians are often apart from the truth, aren't they? I was going to write about that here, about political mistruths, and spin off into the realm of lies in general -- congenital, habitual, situational and defensive, to name a few types.

I was going to talk about how the Internet and social networking and instant communication have amped up the opportunity for politicians to spin their mistruths, and how disheartening that seems to be. I mean, it was almost charming when we only got fed their sound bites once every 24 hours, on the evening news. Now it's all turned so ... strident. So ceaseless.

I was going to talk about the liars among us, and the hurt they inflict, and the legacy they leave behind. I was going to tell about the BS meter a lot of us have developed as we are exposed more and more to mistruths.

But I haven't got it in me. I'm just too tired of it.

And that's the truth.

******

I'd rather talk about Saturday, April 17. That was more uplifting.

It was a day of irony, for I attended the birthday celebration of a man turning 99 -- Bill Milliken, renowned auto racer, race official and aviation engineer. He was feted at the International Motor Racing Research Center, and it was a scene of great charm and warmth and joy. Milliken is amazing -- sharp and engaged. And, I'm told, he still drives.

After that gathering, I went back up the hill to Odessa for the ceremony honoring Bobby Franklin, a former Odessa Fire Chief who died April 11 of cancer. He was 46, a fellow a bit larger than life -- and now gone. There were hundreds who showed up -- for visitation at the Municipal Building adjoining the Fire Hall, and at the high school for a memorial service. In between, the urn carrying Bobby's ashes was transported in Engine 27 along a route that passed by scores of saluting firefighters from departments around the region.

This was a celebration of life, too -- but a very somber one.

99 and 46.

It makes you think.

*****

I completed my rounds that day by attending the final of three performances of "Twelve Angry Jurors" -- a Lake Country Players production in the Watkins Glen Elementary School auditorium. It was disappointing that relatively few people were there -- relative to the musicals that the group produces. But it was entertaining nonetheless -- fascinating, really.

I know the story pretty well, having seen the movie several times -- the one where Henry Fonda is the only juror in a murder case who votes not guilty, and then, one by one, turns the jurors over to his side.

A fellow named Mike Truesdail nailed the composure and intellect of the holdout juror beautifully, and the rest of the cast was smooth, too -- in parts emotional, intellectual, confrontational and so on.

Nicely done, so kudos to the first-time director, Beth Clark.

******

I ran into a fellow the other day who complimented me on the website and said he would contribute to its upkeep if he could ... but he can't. In these economically troubled times, that is too true with a lot of folks.

*******

An interesting tidbit: Since we started tracking traffic on the website through Google Analytics in early November, we've been visited by 121 countries and/or territories. That includes Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, Spain, Mexico, Switzerland and so on. Who would have guessed? Not me.

And we've reached all of the states (heavy in New York and light in the Dakotas), with Florida second in visitors, Pennsyvlania third, Virginia fourth, Massachusetts fifth and California sixth.

*******

And earlier:

Unsubstantiated...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, April 5 -- I detest bullyism. Alway have, always will.

It reduces the level of our existence ... demeans it, and often draws the worst out of us.

Phoebe Prince -- certainly not the first victim of bullyism, but in this age of tsunami-style informational waves, the most catalytic -- reacted with suicide. If you've missed the coverage of that desperate act's aftermath, then you're clearly not a current-events kind of person.

I've followed it, and pondered it, and drawn on my own experiences to try to come to terms with it. And the bottom line, on a personal basis, is this: I have, when confronted by bullies, reacted with a sort of controlled anger -- a "not to my house and not to me" mentality. I'm not proud of it, but neither am I ashamed.

My first memorable brush with bullyism came when I was in high school -- as a runt that a particularly distasteful fellow decided to push around. I took it from him for a very short time, and then challenged him to meet me in the parking lot after school. I took along a couple of friends -- not to back me, but to scrape me up and carry me away should it go as I expected.

But the bully didn't show up. And lo and behold, he was always civil to me after that.

I encountered it in my high school gym teacher, too -- a very large fellow who literally threw me out of his office and into a nearby wall when I told him I couldn't dress for gym because of a stiff neck. It was a legitimate malady, but without a doctor's excuse. In the absence of an excuse, the teacher told me to suit up and participate. I declined, and he threw me. The collision with the wall didn't help the neck.

My next stop -- minutes later -- was the principal's office, where I lodged a complaint. That resulted in school action, at my parents' insistence, against the teacher. He kept his job, but he was on notice and was very nice to me after that.

I've encountered it in my role as a reporter -- when an irate caller threatened to enter the newsroom where I worked and use my head for batting practice, and another time when a fellow phoned to berate and threaten me. In the first instance, I made sure the front door to the building was locked; in the second, I turned once again to authority, calling the Sheriff to alert him not only to the threat, but to the person his deputies might arrest if I turned up dead. I didn't hear anything further on the matter.

I've encountered bullyism second-hand, too -- where it affected my children. Three instances come to mind that occurred in school -- years ago now, but still fresh in the memory. One thing about bullyism: it scars, and lasts.

In two of those instances the bullyism involved teachers -- one directly (involving my oldest son, for which the teacher was called to account) and one more deviously, where a teacher at the very least failed to discourage bullying of my middle son, and I believe actively encouraged it. I couldn't prove that, though, since bullies often operate in the shadows. I confronted her, and pleaded my case to the administration, but was rebuffed. And so I pulled the boy from that school for the duration of the year, sending him to one in another community.

The third incident was pure students-on-student physical bullying, involving my youngest son. The school -- despite some positive efforts by one guidance counselor -- could not curb it, and so I pulled that boy out, too. This was in the eighth grade. He attended school in another district starting the next year -- and found a pronounced absence of bullies. He stayed there through graduation, went on to a successful college career, and now has an excellent job in the Washington, D.C. area.

I could go on -- but the simple point is this: There are lots of bullies out there, and oftentimes in a school environment.. If such a situation exists -- and persists -- in the classrooms, in the hallways or at lunch or recess, parents of the victimized should be proactive, or at least creative. And that might involve, as it did with my family, creating a new environment through the simple act of extraction and/or transfer.

I'm sure the fine folks who run the school where Phoebe Prince attended would -- until the past few days -- have told anyone who asked that whatever was going on there was not abusive, and that any reports to the contrary were a figment of the conspiratorially minded. Or put another way: the reports were "unsubstantiated." That's a useful term of the ineffectual or, worse, the bully enabler. It is a word large enough to hide behind.

*****

The fact is, very few of us like confrontation, and thus allow the relatively small cadre of bullies to flourish. It's easier to let them do their thing -- but in a school setting, this is particularly onerous. Allowing it -- turning the other way, saying "Well, that's just kids being kids" -- breeds a culture that can too easily become ingrained.

While I'm not trying to indict every district, it appears that such a culture, such ingrainment, might well have been the case in South Hadley High School in Massachusetts -- Phoebe Prince's school. The physical abuse and verbal and text taunts against her were not only allowed, but reportedly allowed to escalate. The district ducked and bobbed afterward, trying to avoid the spotlight, but when the district attorney -- herself a graduate of that school -- brought charges against nine students, it was hard to hide.

The facts emerged from the dark, where the fungus grows -- from the dank world of the devious. And the facts were disturbing, as they always are with bullyism.

Yes, I've seen it first-hand. And you've probably seen it first-hand. But most of us don't want to say anything or do anything about it, unless it directly affects us. And then sometimes we still don't act. It's just easier not to, we tell ourselves.

And yet ... the bottom line is this:

Bullies are, underneath it all, just cowards. They need to be confronted, and when they are, they will more often than not fold up their attitudes and slink away -- whether young toughs, misguided teens or troubled adults.

What is so hard, really, about understanding that -- and taking appropriate action?

******

I contacted area superintendents asking about their take on bullyism -- whether it's in their schools; if so, to what extent; whether they have a School Resource Officer; and if not, how they deal with the issue themselves. I received responses from Watkins Glen and Trumansburg.

Said Paula Hurley of T-burg:

"I think it is in every school. We are trying very hard to address it proactively with character education and awareness, as well as responding to the individual reports made by students. I think that students are afraid to report it many times as they do not want to experience repercussions from the incident being addressed. It usually will take more than one report to really get an idea of what is happening---and by that time the student being harassed may have been too intimidated to report in the future. We surely try to follow up, but without a report, it can be hard to do.

"We try to make staff very visible during the ‘unstructured’ times of the day (class changes, recess, etc), but no matter, students will find where adults are not…

"We also do mediations with students when they think that might be beneficial.

"We do not have a school resource officer, but I do think South Seneca and Lansing still do (maybe not after this year)."

Added Tom Phillips, whose Watkins Glen district, along with Odessa-Montour, shares a School Resource Officer, Trooper David Waite.

"I don’t think it is prevalent in our district, but we do have incidents in which kids are bullied. I have to say we have created a "Caring Community" culture through the PBIS program at the Elementary School and the implementation of advisory services at the Middle School. Yes, David Waite plays a critical role in educating students related to respect and appropriately dealing with conflict.

"As for my take, I think bullying is a symptom of students not feeling connected or in some cases rejected from their peers or school. For many students, school is the place where their identity is valued the most. Connections (some good, and some not so good) are mostly fostered in the school environment.

"The key to creating a caring environment is a caring staff that fosters the development of positive student/teacher interactions -- that encourages students to view adults as advocates. We also believe it is critical to have a comprehensive student support network centered in the Guidance Department of each building. An example is the high school, where we have added a career counseling component as well as intervention specialists. Both of these additions to the high school have enhanced the student support network as well as provided transition services for students as they contemplate what they will do after high school."

*****

And earlier:

A little of this and that ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 29 -- Spring musical season is over, and I for one am glad. It's not that I found fault with either the Odessa-Montour or Watkins Glen efforts -- The Wiz and Bye Bye Birdie, respectively -- because I didn't. They were beautifully realized.

It's just that shooting and processing and laying out all of the photos can be a bit draining. Counting dress rehearsals, I think I did 10 groups of photos in two weeks. The end result was worth the effort, I think, but that doesn't mean I'm any less tired.

I know, I could cut back, but the kids put so much effort into the plays, it just seems as though the photos are a well-deserved -- if minor -- reward.

*****

And yet, fatigue or not and ready or not, here comes the spring sports season. I'm actually looking forward to it, because it will get me outside. I think I need the outside, at least on sunny days. I crave the sunshine.

It probably has something to do with the aging process, but each year I find the winter a little more daunting, and the absence of warming sunlight increasingly depressing. I suppose that's why retirees head for warmer climates.

No, I don't plan on retiring. It wouldn't suit me.

******

Speaking of retirement, I received a phone call Sunday from an old friend with whom I had lost touch. I hadn't spoken to him in 15 years, in fact. He is living now in South Carolina, and decided to reconnect because ... well ... because he has been following matters back here by reading The Odessa File.

He brought me up to date on his life, which has included retirement since he suffered a heart attack and had a quadruple bypass last year. The attack happened "out of the blue," he said, and very nearly killed him. He is but a year older than I am.

As if his health problems weren't enough, his 20-year-old son has cancer. The young man is battling bravely, exceeding doctor's expectations, but the outlook -- as is too often the case -- is not encouraging..

It was great to hear from my friend, but the call left me a little unsettled -- natural, I suppose, when all that we sustain as humans is brought into such sharp focus.

********

Reverting back to spring sports, I ran into an acquiantance at Bye Bye Birdie who told me an acquiantance of hers had been wondering why this website was carrying fewer stories lately, especially in sports.

Well, my acquaintance told her acquaintance, there haven't been any sports contests lately. Between seasons ... you know?

I shook my head, smiling at the quirky ways of some people.

Aside from sports, there has been quite a bit of news lately. It might look like less than before, though, because of three moves. I've reduced clutter on the Home Page, moving PSA ads to their own page and starting a Recent News page. And I've been listing some Inside stories up high on the Home Page instead of giving them each a photo promo.

*******

I was reading on the Editor & Publisher website that a new age of online journalism is supposedly about to start with the implementation of a pay-as-you-go policy by Rupert Murdoch at his papers, starting with The Times of London.

Murdoch has vowed to erect such "pay walls" at all of his papers, with "the price for a day's access" on this first one in London "the same as the cover price for the weekday print Times."

Says a Murdoch spokesman: "At a defining moment for journalism, this is a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition. We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value."

That kind of move hasn't worked to any great effect anywhere yet, but it has been discussed throughout the industry. Murdoch's attempt should prove interesting.

*******

On another matter -- related to the above through economics, I suppose -- I received a note from B. Moralis, who has weighed in with philosophical thoughts here once before. This time he (or she) -- a person of position -- wrote:

"I just read an article about the increase in the murder rate in New York City during the first quarter of the year and how Mayor Bloomberg has tied the increase to budget reductions and the economic downturn.

"You know, people tend to see the financial meltdown as something done to someone else, but in reality the impact of all of this mess has manifested itself in each community across the nation. From county employees to public safety to a student's ability to go to college to funding for public education, the reality is the impact has come to our community in the form of a loss of service or increases in taxes or both. Not to mention the loss of employment opportunities.

"The reality is, simply put, the financial collapse and the cost of the bailout are now coming home to Schuyler County."

*******

And earlier:

A dark day, a darkened light...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 26 -- Okay, who among you figured -- at the start of March Madness -- that Butler was going to the Elite Eight?

Anybody?

No, I thought not.

Syracuse, up 54-50 Thursday night, allowed an 11-0 Butler run at the worst conceivable time.

Game over. Season over.

Now that was painful to watch.

*****

And then there was Cornell.

It went up 10-2. Then came a 12-0 Kentucky run as part of a 30-6 first-half romp, and it was out of reach. The Big Red outscored the Wildcats 14-6 to pull within eight points with less than nine minutes left, and whittled it to six points with 5:25 left. But that was as close as it got.

Too bad.

So long, Orange; so long, Red. It was a Black Thursday, indeed.

*****

Is there anybody besides me and Mayor Keith Pierce who thinks the Department of Transportation's plan to remove the blinker light on Route 224 -- Main Street in Odessa -- is a bad idea?

Nobody else seems to be saying.

According to information brought to my attention this week, the blinker was put there in 1938, in reaction to some accidents. That makes sense, and probably more so with today's layout. It's a nasty spot, what with a side street, a busy gas station, some commerce, and an often poor line-of-sight up and down the road.

The village says that DOT studied the situation and decided the blinker wasn't needed any longer.

Does that mean there's less traffic than there was 72 years ago? And does it mean vehicles are going slower?

No? I thought not.

How, exactly, does the DOT measure the reaction -- perhaps slight, but perhaps telling, too -- of a driver entering the village too fast who lets up on the gas when that blinker impresses itself on his or her brain?

The light is due for removal in late spring or early summer, village leaders have been told.

I repeat: It's a bad idea.

******

Tops Markets is closing P&C stores in Cortland and Ithaca as it continues to evaluate its purchase of the Penn Traffic groceries in the Northeast. It says it is also selling some stores in Northern New York to Price Chopper (of Schenectady) while it evaluates other stores based on condition and "economic viability."

Tops, of Western New York, acquired the stores of the Syracuse-based Penn Traffic Co. through a Penn Traffic bankruptcy action in January. Other stores closed by Tops have included a P&C in White River, Vt., and Quality Markets in Lakewood, NY, and Erie, Pa.

I haven't seen anything yet about the Watkins Glen P&C store. Has anybody heard anything?

******

And on an up-note, I received the reassessment on my house from the Schuyler County Real Property Tax Service, and was pleased to see that while the assessment level has climbed, my expected town and county taxes are going down.

If I were a drinker, I'd hoist one to that.

******

And earlier:

The Sweet 16 sweet indeed

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 22 -- The Sweet 16 is set, and as always, there is a lot of hype about the upsets -- particularly of Kansas. But this is a pretty normal NCAA basketball tournament.

By that I mean that of the 16 surviving schools, there are three No. 1 seeds and three No. 2 seeds still in the hunt, and 11 of the 16 teams are no lower than No. 5 seeds. The higher seeds, as usual and as expected, are still the primary forces to be reckoned with.

A big surprise, of course, is No. 12 Cornell's dominance in its first two games. But anyone who harkens back to the team's near-miss against then-No. 1 Kansas in the regular season might recognize this showing isn't a fluke.

It's great to see Syracuse playing so well, too. The Orange kind of limped in after that Big East tournament ouster. But they too have been dominant in two NCAA contests.

I, for one, look forward to what happens next. In theory, at least, Syracuse could meet Cornell for the national championship on April 5th. -- although it's perhaps worth mentioning that Syracuse defeated Cornell 88-73 on November 24th.

*****

In a related subject, I certainly hope that CBS straightens out whatever problem was causing its picture feed to look like a computer streaming experiment Sunday. It was so jumpy, my eyes are still twitching. And let's hope the network shows better sense than it did in cutting away from the Xavier-Pitt game with 0.4 seconds left, with Pitt down by 3 points and inbounding the ball.

*******

On the same day that both SU and Cornell were making the Sweet 16, the Tioga Central High School girls varsity basketball team -- the IAC Small Schools champion and Section IV, Class C champion -- fell in the Class C New York State title game by two points to Marion Central at the buzzer.

It was no doubt a tough loss to absorb. How often, after all, do you brush up against your dream, and reach out to grab it -- only to have it elude you?

I enjoyed watching Tioga this year, even if it did defeat Odessa-Montour three times. The Tigers are a fine group of players -- a number of whom we'll see this spring on the softball diamond. It so happens Tioga also has an exceptional softball team, led by lefty pitcher Sarah Wayson (a member of the basketball team).

******

Away from sports ... the Watkins Glen School Board -- looking for ways to overcome that $825,000 cut in state aid that may or may not stand as proposed by the governor -- is waiting to see how many teacher retirements are coming, so that it can get a better fix on how many teacher layoffs will occur in the next school year. Superintendent Tom Phillips says teachers thinking about retirement have until the end of March to decide, so the number of layoffs is still up in the air.

The Watkins board and administration are understandably uneasy about the layoff situation, but are intent on holding the tax-levy increase to a reasonably low level -- and to do so without digging into reserve funds. Tapping into those, Phillips has said, would be unwise -- especially if the shaky economy makes budgetary matters even worse next year.

Which is a distinct possibility, especially in the absence of the Federal Stimulus funds that helped so much this time around.

******

And speaking of Phillips, he pointed out something I had missed -- an NCAA wrestling championship by a Cornell freshman who graduated last year from Lansing High School: Kyle Dake at 141 pounds.

Dake led the third-ranked Big Red to a second-place finish behind perennial champ Iowa in the three-day Division 1 championships that concluded Saturday in Omaha. "He was the only Cornell champion and a Section IV alum!" wrote Phillips in an e-mail.

Dake, a six-time letter winner at Lansing and a two-time New York State high school champion (and a finalist another time), is enrolled in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

He won the NCAA title match Saturday 7-4 against Iowa's Montell Marion, helping Cornell to its highest finish ever at the annual tournament.

Not a bad weekend, all in all, for Cornell -- even considering that its women's hockey team lost its national title game in triple overtime. That sting was countered by a championship by the men's hockey team in the ECAC Hockey tournament. The men's opener in the NCAA Tournament comes Friday in Albany against New Hampshire.

*******

And earlier:

Hannah is honored again

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 19 -- Hannah Hubbell was honored again Thursday, this time by the Sullivan Trail Chapter of the American Red Cross as it presented its annual Heroes awards at a breakfast at the Holiday Inn Riverview in Elmira.

The organization presented awards to five individuals and one group in three categories: Life Saving, Community Impact and Life Time Achievement. The one that stood out for Schuyler County residents was a Life Saving award presented to Hannah, who at the age of 6 made news of the very good kind in early December.

Hannah (at right) -- a student at B.C. Cate Elementary School in Montour Falls -- was honored by the Red Cross for her actions in securing help after the car her mother was driving skidded off Route 224, struck a tree and came to rest near a creek. Hannah, a passenger in the back seat, freed herself from the wreck and scrambled up to the roadside to flag down help. Her mother was seriously injured in the crash, but is recovering and was on hand for Thursday's award ceremony.

This is the second honor for Hannah, who received a special award from the Schuyler County Sheriff's Office soon after the incident. We had a column about it, which you can see by clicking here.

As I indicated then, and have said since, this is a girl of uncommon common sense. Give that previous column a read and you'll know what I mean.

Congratulations, Hannah.

****

As I tend to do when flummoxed by government, I try to put the given situation into perspective the best way possible, and that is sometimes through verse.

While following the most recent stratagems of Democrats in Congress in their push to get President Obama's Health Care Bill passed, I flash-forwarded to the upcoming vote itself, which may or may not (at last reading) be accomplished through a parliamentary maneuver called Deem and Pass.

Anyway, imagine that the vote has passed, and the bill is headed to the President's desk for his signature. The poem, in that case, will go like this:

Deem and Pass,
Shock and Awe.
Holy Moly:
It’s the Law.

Health Reform is here at last;
Arms were twisted, deals were vast.
Now we’ll see what’s good, what’s bad,
If we’ve been saved or we’ve been had.

*****

There was an interesting speaker Thursday at the weekly Watkins-Montour Rotary Club luncheon: Steve Beaver, who is a vocational horticulturist at the Willard Correctional Facility, which is also known as the Willard Drug Treatment Center.

The site of the former Willard Psychiatric State Hospital has served its current purpose since 1995, and Beaver -- son of Rotarian Stan Beaver -- has worked there for three years. It is a campus created as an option for low-level drug offenders and parole violators, with stays of 90 days.

Beaver described the inmates' days, which are divided either into educational or vocational programs (such as the one he teaches), Alcohol and Substance Abuse Training to try and curb addictions, and work squads -- shoveling snow, working in the kitchen, collecting garbage, mowing and the like.

Beaver said he loves being a horticulturist and loves being a teacher, so the job has great appeal to him. However, he said "you have to remember where you are," and accordingly be prepared for any potential trouble.

And earlier:

Reputation can be so tenuous

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 12 -- I've often marveled at how fragile reputation can be ... or how tough. But mostly how fragile.

1. Sometimes a person's reputation is built solidly on one trait.

Example: I knew a kid back in high school who was a bit of an underachiever, except at the poker table. He had a reputation of being a proficient and heartless master of the cards. Not a bad way to be perceived. And that's how I remember him.

2. Sometimes a person's reputation is undermined by rumor or outright fabrication.

Example: There was a girl in my high school who had the reputation of being a slut. In the social circle I inhabited, her name was synonymous with that. I don't know how she earned such a reputation, because from what I learned in later years, she was anything but loose. But the perception stuck to her. Some reputations cannot be escaped, no matter how unjust.

3. There is the reputation that comes with inherited position.

Example 1: Paris Hilton is famous for being rich and famous -- and has parlayed her ditzy act into a consistent public persona. It's not a bad place for her to be. She has our attention, and nothing she does, good or bad, seems to affect our perception. Call her reputation rock solid.

Example 2: Ted Kennedy also inherited position -- it was handed to him by his father -- to such a degree that not even Mary Jo Kopechne's death completely derailed him. It set him back, for sure, and likely cost him the presidency, but he had a long and storied Senate career.

4. There is the reputation that must be earned. That applies to most of us.

Example: Somebody like former Congressman Eric Massa falls into this category, too -- a man whose reputation had to be built from the ground up, and which could grow only through achievement. He had to earn his position and hope that a sound reputation followed.

He was doing pretty well, it seemed. His Congressional office issued a steady stream of press releases that were a huge improvement over his predecessor's. He was scheduling town-hall meetings throughout his 29th Congressional District on many weekends. He was well-spoken in front of a crowd -- an independent voice of reason.

****

And then, just like that, Massa went off the rails -- came out with an announcement that poor health was forcing him not to seek reelection; and then proclaimed, after word started swirling about an ethics investigation, that he was stepping down within days. He just couldn't fight anymore, he said.

And then he tried to fight anyway -- after the fact -- after he had tried to dodge the wrecking ball coming his way, after it had grazed him and knocked him off his pedestal and out of his job.

He tried to fight -- one can only wonder why -- by going on the air on a Hornell radio station, and then leaping to the national stage -- to Glenn Beck's and Larry King's TV shows. That was unwise, and the result was predictably disastrous.

"A klieg-light meltdown," one commentator described Massa's appearance on Beck's show, where the ex-Congressman admitted to "groping" in a "tickle fight" with staff members.

That revelation aside, Beck had hoped for much more -- some way to smear the Democrats in the White House. And so, at the end, when nothing of the sort had issued from Massa's mouth, Beck called the interview a waste of time and apologized to his viewers.

Then hours later, King, taking into account the admission of "groping," asked Massa if he is gay -- which Massa refused to answer because such a question "insults every gay American. Why would anybody ask that?"

Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a resultant field day on their shows, mocking Massa and Beck. (Stewart dubbed the matter "Sour Gropes." And Colbert referred to the former Congressman as a "wrestling hobbyist.") David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon -- and probably most comics in the country -- weighed in, as did cartoonists, at least one of whom compared Massa to Tickle Me Elmo.

And suddenly not just a career, but a reputation, had been run through a blender.

This website has not provided accounts of all of the twists and turns of "The Massa Mess" (as Fox News has called it). It's unfortunate enough that Massa chose to pursue a path of reputational self-destruction in the week following his first announcement. I decided not to help him along that path.

I'm just going to say this, with some sadness and a sense, still, of disbelief:

If you see a wrecking ball coming your way, and you dodge it the first time with minimal injury, don't stand there and try to embrace it as it swings by again.

The radio interview and the Beck and King shows constituted that second swing. They were of such power in this age of instant and endless news coverage that they were a very wide-reaching and unstoppable force.

Eric Massa was not an immovable object.

He should have just closed his mouth and gotten the hell out of the way. He should have just left the stage without trying to utter the last word ... without saying anything more at all, really.

******

*****

And earlier:

The girl from whom I fled ...

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, March 5 -- I'm sitting here, mulling, trying to write a column on ... well, I know not what. It just seems like I should be saying something. I think this feeling, this need has something to do with all the head-shaking I've been doing lately.

We have a governor who can't seem to get out of his own way. We have a Congressman who said, reasonably enough, that health was forcing him out of a run for re-election; but then decided to resign in the shadow of a seemingly unseemly allegation. We have a Congress that seems hell-bent on ramming a health-care bill through, damn the rules. We have an economy that is spluttering, and we have, as a result, a lot of folks out of work and possibly more to follow -- including some of our teachers.

We had a respite called the Olympics, which were inspiring and entertaining (although I've seen enough curling to last me a very long time), and we've been entertained by the success of the Odessa-Montour girls varsity basketball team. But the drabness of the winter has seemingly counterbalanced those pluses.

So, I'll do what I do when I'm feeling a little down. I'll look backward for some kernel from my past that can part the clouds. Let's see ... why don't I visit the girl who said I had eight personalities? That's always good for at least a tenuous smile.

******

Her name was Karen. She was blonde, and cute, and smart as heck. She was a freshman at Michigan's Albion College in my freshman year there; a classmate.

We met at a mixer, I think; at least that's where she first made an impression. We danced, and it felt right, and we started hanging out together between classes, and in the evening, and on weekends.

We were, in short order, something of an item; although I must say that my friends -- a small group from my dorm with whom I had quickly bonded in the first few weeks of school -- didn't take to Karen. They sensed in her a need to control. I, of course, was blinded by her blondeness and, well, the fruits of dating.

But over time, which is to say weeks -- I did not, before ultimately embarking on marriage to someone else much later, date anyone for longer than weeks -- the relationship soured. Most notable, to my mind, was her assessment of my personality ... or rather my multiple personalities. I don't recall exactly how she broke them down, but I think there was the Fun Charlie, and the Cerebral Charlie, and the Typically Male Charlie, and the Romantic Charlie, and so on.

I heard about this assessment -- this dissection of my persona into eight distinct entities -- second- or third-hand; Karen did not actually psychoanalyze me to my face. But as she tried to gain control over our social life -- where we'd go, who we'd see, which friends I could have, and so on -- she also seemed to want to control my mood ... my personality at any given time. She clearly wasn't enamored of the eight personalities in their entirety, but there must have been something in there that she liked. I imagine that most of all, she wanted to be with the Doormat Charlie.

Predictably -- at least it's predictable in hindsight -- I started avoiding her. Not that she was that easy to dismiss. It was a small campus (her father, parenthetically, was a professor there, meaning she was actually both of the college and a townie) and she cornered me eventually, and forced me, in my awkward way, to offiicially end it. I think she wanted to see the Nervous Charlie, and possibly force an appearance by the Regretful Charlie.

But end it I did.

*****

We shared the same campus for another three-and-a-half years, but I don't think we encountered each other very much. She ended up dating a fellow from one fraternity, while I joined another fraternity. Social standing and alliances at Albion were very Greek-oriented.

I don't know what became of Karen after graduation, although I imagine she did very well in life. As I said, she was extremely bright. But every so often -- such as in economically and politically depressing times -- I think back to her, almost as if she has remained a touchstone across my years. In any event, she obviously left an impression.

So, in the spirit of our times, I would like to invoke the memory of Karen -- blonde, bright, capable, controlling, and someone from whom I fled.

It was, I imagine she would say -- if for no other reason than to get in the last word -- the Shortsighted Charlie in action.

******

Okay. That's my Karen story. Now I will tell you that while there was a Karen, and there was some truth to the fact of her eight-personality assessment, most of what I just related was embellished.

I structured it as allegory.

The fact is, I've always suffered from a bit of Shortsighted Charlieness -- from tunnel vision. But in running this website, I have on occasion embraced that particular shortcoming. I use it to shy away from the negative in stories -- from depressing matters involving governors, Congressmen and the economy, for instance -- except when unavoidable, like when a forced resignation occurs. And, to go further, I cover very little in the way of police and court news -- very little of the underbelly of our society.

I also tend, as in the case of my allegorical Karen, to bristle when anyone -- and in general I'm referring to our so-called leaders -- tries to control a situation through intimidation or silence or bullyism or character assassination or whatever. I see it nationally a lot, and on the state level alarmingly often, and locally on occasion.

I will leave it to you to speculate exactly from whom I have fled -- who, in essence, is not covered here for reasons more practical than allegorical ... more a matter of my preference.

In the meantime, I owe a thank-you to Karen (who has probably long since forgotten me) for serving as the untameable shrew here. She really was nicer than that.

*****

And earlier:

The time to hesitate is through

By Charlie Haeffner

Odessa, Feb. 26 -- I was a big Doors fan back in the '60s. Jim Morrison was flat-out cool in an independent, give-'em-hell kind of way. His music spoke to my generation. And among my favorites from him was "Light My Fire," which included the classic line "The time to hesitate is through."

That came to mind, oddly enough, as I sat pondering the goings-on during a joint luncheon meeting of the Watkins-Montour Rotary Club and the Schuyler County League of Women Voters on Thursday at the Watkins Glen Elks Lodge.

On hand to answer questions from the luncheon crowd were Schuyler County legislators Tom Gifford, Dennis Fagan, Mike Yuhasz, Paul Marcellus and Glenn Larison. And first among the questions from the audience was one that asked, in essence: "Would you support a move away from multiple school districts in the county and toward a single, countywide school district?" The questioner mentioned how we have one superintendent for each district, when in fact we could have one, period.

Larison, a veteran lawmaker and a former School Board member in the Odessa-Montour district, said he thinks a county school district "is an idea that should be investigated" by getting the Boards of Education of the affected districts together to discuss it. This has been done in the past, he noted, without success. "But times have changed," he said, with enrollment down significantly over the years in the O-M district.

Legislator Yuhasz, who was principal at the Watkins Glen Elementary School for 25 years, said there were "many joint meetings on consolidation" during his tenure, and that each one "ended in failure." It all came down to "ownership," he said. "Watkins Glen didn't want it to be the Odessa-Montour/Watkins Glen district, and Odessa-Montour didn't want it to be the Watkins Glen/Odessa-Montour district."

Legislature Chairman Tom Gifford said that Schuyler's small population is overseen by eight town governments, four village governments, a county government, a state government, and three school districts (the Watkins, O-M and Bradford schools are all located within Schuyler).

"They're probably overgoverned," he said of the 20,000 county residents, adding that "shared services are doable."

An audience member mentioned that other school districts actually have at least part of their boundaries within Schuyler -- including the Dundee and Trumansburg districts, which could make a countywide district a little complex to effect.

(Parenthetically, the Trumansburg district has a sizable portion of its area within Schuyler -- which is why T-burg scholar-athlete-citizens, along with similar representatives from the Bradford, O-M and Watkins Glen high schools, are part of the annual Top Drawer 24 team honored in a spring ceremony at the State Park. That broad representation -- team members from four school districts -- is mandated by the Top Drawer executive committee in recognition of the way in which all of us who live in Schuyler County share a common land and heritage ... and should, ideally, share a common vision.)

******

The word "merger" was not mentioned at that Rotary-League session. It is a hot-button word, and "consolidation" seems to flow ever so nicely in comparison.

But it's essentially the same deal -- a sharing of services for the greater good, which is to say for the good of We The Taxpayers.

This is a difficult time as school districts grapple with the governor's proposed reduction in state aid and with growing health and retirement costs. The Watkins Glen district is feeling the squeeze created by those factors.

Superintendent Tom Phillips has let it be known that in the ever-changing landscape of the 2010-2011 budget, insecurity is the byword. He and the School Board have arrived at figures and plans that may or may not be adopted, depending on what shape the state budget ultimately takes.

Right now, the district is looking at eliminating Driver Education during the school year, two Reading teachers, one Art teacher, a part-time Physical Education teacher, a Math teacher and an administrative position (that last one through retirement). After planning all of that and applying $900,000 of Appropriated Fund Balance toward the budget (thus reducing reserves), and by assuming the state will restore half of the proposed $825,000 state-aid cut, the Board found at its most recent session that it was still looking at a 6.7% increase in the tax levy.

"And that's not acceptable," said Phillips, explaining that he was directed to trim the levy hike to 4% or less.

But so much can go wrong -- starting with that assumption of state-aid restoration. If half of the aid reduction is not restored, he said, "then we'll be looking at grade-level and subject-area teacher cuts."

But factors like unforeseen departures or retirements would mitigate the damage.

"I want to emphasize we're in the preliminary stages, bouncing ideas around," he said.

******

The Watkins Glen district is not alone in its problems, of course; all districts have them. And when it's time to prepare next year's budget, things will likely be worse in the absence of the positive impact derived this year from the federal Stimulus Funds. If no such stimulus is repeated, that will only add to the challenges -- from state government on down.

The legislators on hand at Thursday's luncheon touched on the problems they face in the county's next budget -- a task so daunting "that we're already discussing it, and we usually don't start to do that until August," said Fagan. There will no doubt be choices made that will not be well-received, he said, noting: "The reality is we won't be very popular."

That comment, perhaps, helped send my thoughts back to the '60s -- back to Jim Morrison and The Doors, back to "Light My Fire," back to a group that had little difficulty with popularity. And maybe it was the oddity of the day Thursday -- a storm blanketing us, a quiet that reigned outside (broken by the occasional plow), a mood that begged introspection -- that led me back, too.

I swear, sitting at the window of my home later, looking outside, I could imagine the legislators lining up, instruments in hand at the luncheon, a spotlight on them as they performed a song that might secure that elusive popularity. They sounded like The Doors in my imagination, but certainly didn't look like them.

Instead of lead singer Morrison, guitarist Robbie Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek and drummer John Densmore, I envisioned Larison, Fagan, Marcellus and Yuhasz, respectively, with Gifford managing -- and manning the spotlight. And joining them, fiddle in hand, was Superintendent Phillips.

Larison, I imagined, was leaning in toward the microphone, crooning:

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now; if we don't, we lose
And our votes become a funeral pyre
Come on folks, we won't retire
Come on folks, we won't retire
We'll try to lead the county higher.

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar