Cooperstown Crier

Welcome to the Cooperstown Crier

Home Page

Local News

Local Sports

Community Calendar

Opinion

Editorials

Columns

Letters to the Editor

Archives

News Archives

Sports Archives

6-07-2007

In These Otsego Hills

We are always amazed at how quickly the weeks seem to fly by, which, of course, means the months are also flying by. But we must admit we had not, until a couple of weeks ago, taken this thought to the next step to consider how quickly the years are flying by until our son Christopher, a.k.a. the wee-we who is not so wee anymore, called to tell us he had been to the Years of Service Recognition Luncheon at Kenyon College as he has just completed his fifth year at the college. We were stunned. Of course, we were also secretly delighted because he has now more than made back from the college not only the money that we spent to send him to college there, but also the money that the he-we's parents paid to send him to college there. So, there is indeed a certain sweetness about this.

As part of the event, the college printed a booklet which contains a bit of information about those employees who were being honored by having been at the college for five, ten, fifteen, and so forth right up forty years. We were most pleased when we read the following, written by the chair of the Department of Dance and Drama, about the wee-we. Christopher C. Ellsworth Technical Director, Department of Dance and Drama Christopher Cuthbert Ellsworth has been hanging around Kenyon since birth. He was there as a toddler at the dedication of the Bolton Theater. He probably bleeds purple and white. After he graduated in 1996, Chris left Gambier for a few years, but now he's been back with us for the past five years. He is the person who makes all of our productions run like well-oiled machines; he is a critical part of each and every one of the dozen shows we do in a year. Chris is the magician behind the theater magic that you see, building the sets, hanging the lights, rigging the flies, and making it all work. We throw bigger and bigger challenges at him, and he says, "It can't be done. There's no way!" But somehow, in the end, he always pulls a rabbit out of his hat. Chris is not just our master carpenter and our maser electrician; he's also a teacher. He works with students every day, teaching them how to build scenery, how to use the tools, how to be safe in the theater. Chris's students are very loyal to him; they are like his disciples.

Chris is our unsung hero. Much of what you see in our shows, he does without any of you knowing about it, but he is one of our most valued department members. We are thrilled to have Chris back at Kenyon. —Jonathan E. Tazewell, associate professor of drama Now we willingly admit that we may be just a tiny bit prejudiced, but we think Professor Tazewell has captured the wee-we quite well. In addition to the lunch and kind words, the wee-we also got a genuine Kenyon blanket embroidered, in purple no less, with his name and years of service. Of course, we still think the real highlight has been earning back all that tuition money.

Last week we were asked, by someone who plies the village highways and byways on a regular basis if there had been a winner of this year's "ILeft- My-Christmas-Wreath- Up-Until-Easter" contest, as he was of the opinion that there are still a fair number of Christmas wreaths hanging around the village. We pointed out that we had not sponsored the Christmas wreath contest for a number of years, and hence, assumed there was no winner as, to the best of our knowledge, there was no contest this year.

Thus we were unable to enlighten our questioner as to exactly why such wreaths are still on display. Does anyone have a clue?

Our mention of the Black- Berry in last week's column raised the eyebrows of a friend who assumed that blackberries were something one ate. We must admit we had a rather difficult time explaining the non-edible BlackBerry to her and had to, in fact, make a call to Ohio to be certain we had our facts somewhat straight. During the ensuing conversation with our friend, we soon realized there was a problem in discussing the edible blackberries to say nothing of the non-edible one. As far as we can tell, different parts of the country use the same name to refer to what we have to think are different things. Our experiences with blackberries comes, of course, from growing up in Michigan where, smack dab in the middle of our potato field, located on acreage behind our Lake Michigan cottage, there are both blackberries and dewberries. According to our father, the blackberries grow to a height of five or six feet while the dewberries grow on trailing vines that are only about two feet high. Additionally, the dewberries are larger and, if this is possible, seedier than blackberries.

During our blackberry discussion there seemed to be general agreement about these two berries. However, we also mentioned we had wild black caps which are quite small, and seemingly less seedy, although still black. We were informed that around here black caps are about the size of a regular blackberry but are hollow in the center, more like a raspberry. In fact, we suspect we would call the upstate New York black caps, black raspberries. All in all, we are ever hopeful that new technology, whatever it might be, will not be named after fruit. We have had trouble with apples for years, and now we seem to be having trouble with blackberries. In closing, while on the subject of technology, we hasten to point out that we discovered, since the wee-we told us we could, we are able to video teleconference with our computer. In fact, once we got it set up we were able to connect with the wee-we in Ohio with no trouble whatsoever. Of course he got his end organized much faster than we got our end organized. But then, unlike us, he didn't have to comb his hair first.

We remain,
In these Otsego hills,
The Ellsworths

The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer St., Cooperstown, N.Y. 13326, by telephone at 547-8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny. rr.com. They look forward to hearing from you.