Published: August 14, 2008 08:15 am         

In These Otsego Hills

Over the years, we have always been interested in what various publications say about our fair corner of the world. And while we suspect that most of what is written specifically about Cooperstown revolves around baseball, this summer we have noted several articles about Cooperstown which emphasize that there is more to Cooperstown than baseball. In the July issue of “Car & Travel,” Cooperstown was mentioned in an article entitled “Our Northeast’s Wonderful Weekends.” The first paragraph in the part about Cooperstown read: “That Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum place, right? Yes — since 1939, this shrine on Main Street has drawn legions of fans — but Cooperstown, founded in 1786, is a home run in many ways.

Nestled between the Catskill and Adirondack mountains in Central New York State’s pastoral Leatherstocking region, this ‘perfect village’ is an important center of American heritage and culture.”

Similarly, from the July 11 issue of the New York Times, an article entitled “American Journeys/ Cooperstown, N.Y. Echoes of an Earlier Time on a Glimmering Lake” by John Motyka begins with: “Long before there was a Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown was a pilgrimage site as the home of James Fenimore Cooper, the early 19th-century superstar author whose wildly popular novels, including ‘The Deerslayer’ and ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ put a haze of romance on an upstate New York frontier that had already vanished ... The view of the nine-mile-long lake remains appealing, if less dramatic than in Cooper’s novels, and after your obligatory morning with the throngs at the baseball shrine, Otsego Lake is the place to begin a search for the other Cooperstown, with attractions that are literary, cultural, recreational and still, despite the depredations of the centuries, naturally beautiful.”

We think both of the aforementioned articles manage to capture what we have known about Cooperstown for a long time, namely that baseball is just the place to start, but, if one is lucky, it will not be the place to end. We are somewhat less enthralled with a 2008 election project, Patchwork Nation, which has become an ongoing feature in the Christian Science Monitor.

Although it has appeared right along in the paper, we must admit that we hadn’t really paid much attention to it. And frankly, we rather wish we had kept it that way but, for whatever reason, we chose to learn more about the project on the paper’s website.

As we understand it, the Patchwork Nation project is designed to delve more deeply into the motivations of the voting public and look beyond the traditional blue/red designations. To this end, it has devised 11 categories of population type and then assigned a specific category to each county in the country. We think this has to have been no small task.

Yet, as we read about the 11 categories, we must admit that we felt we would have been hard pressed to apply any of them to Otsego County. But, by merely entering our zip code we were able to discover that Otsego County has been assigned the category of “Campus and Careers.”

The website has this to say about the category of “Campus and Careers.”

Young and educated, these 213 counties are home to universities and recent grads. More than 13 million people live in these counties, where the median age of about 41 falls below the national county median of 44.

Almost one-quarter of the population in these places is in the 20 to 34 age bracket. The median household income is below the national median, but that is because so many people are beginning their post-school lives.

These communities tend to be more secular than America as whole. President Bush won more votes here in 2004 than John Kerry, but the vote was close and may be again in 2008. Campus and Careers and their politics are represented by Ann Arbor, Mich., in Patchwork Nation. When we stopped laughing at this comparison, we exchanged several e-mails with the paper, learning they feel there are legitimate reasons why Washtenaw County in Michigan, where Ann Arbor is located, and Otsego County in New York would be in the same category. Both counties are perceived as being young with 40 percent of Washtenaw’s population and 37 percent of Otsego’s population in under the age of 24.

Additionally, Otsego County has a high percentage — over — 10 percent of college students. This would seem to be in line with Washtenaw’s percentage of students, which is about 12.7 percent. And thus, even though there seemed to be some admission that Ann Arbor is more liberal than most communities, when measuring the demographics of the two counties deemed to be of importance, it was decided that Washtenaw and Otsego counties are indeed similar, although Otsego County does probably share attributes with other types of counties as well. We must say, however, we remain unconvinced about the overall similarity of the two counties. According to our research from a number of on-line sources, Otsego County boasts a population of 62,196, with 62 people and 128 housing units per square miles. It is considered to be 26 percent urban and 74 percent rural. The medium income per household is $33,444 while the medium income for a family of four is $41,110. The per capita income is $16,806. Fourteen and nine-tenths percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Washtenaw County records a population of 322,895, with 455 people and 185 housing units per square mile. It is considered to be 82 percent urban and 18 percent rural. The median income per household is $51,990 while the median income for a family of 4 is $70,393. The per capita income is $27,173. Eleven and one-tenth percent of the population lives below the poverty level.

Somehow we tend to think that these demographics do not seem to be quite so similar even though, in the Patchwork Nation’s defense, the age categories and student population of the two counties may be quite similar. In closing, we have lived in both Washtenaw County, Mich. and Otsego County, N.Y. And, although we were at a different point in our life for each of these living experiences, we still have a great deal of trouble thinking that the two counties are all that similar. And in fact, when it comes to the 2004 presidential voting, the two counties seem even less similar.

In Otsego County, 47.3 percent voted for Kerry, 49.6 percent voted for Bush and 3 percent voted for other. In Washtenaw County, 63.5 percent voted for Kerry, 35.5 percent voted for Bush and 1 percent voted for other. And, although we have most fond memories of Ann Arbor having not only lived there for six years, but also having been married there, we still do not feel is not a good representative community for Otsego County, N.Y. no matter what the Patchwork Nation demographics might indicate.

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.