Monthly Archives: January 2022

The Progress of COIVD Cases

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Let’s take a look at the progress of COVID cases, speaking specifically of Steuben County, though as far as I can see the patterns are also very similar among the surrounding counties. In particular I’m looking here at numbers of cases, by thousands, as reported on line through the Steuben County Public Health Department. We go back to March 2020, as the COVID first appeared here in the U.S., and a global pandemic was correctly predicted.

It took over 7 months (3/11-10/26, 2020) to reach our first thousand cases.
It took a little over one month (10/26-12/4, 2020) to reach 2000.
It took less than three weeks (12/4-12/23, 2020) to reach 3000.
It took a little over two weeks (12/4/2020-1/8/2021) to reach 4000.
It took just under three weeks (1/8-1/28, 2021) to reach 5000.
It took a little over two months (1/28-4/2, 2021) to reach 6000.
It took almost four months (4/2/-7/29, 2021) to reach 7000.
It took a month and a half (7/29-9/15, 2021) to reach 8000.
It took just over two weeks (9/15-10/1, 2021) to reach 9000.
It took a little over two weeks (10/1-10/18, 2021) to reach 10,000.
It took about three weeks (10/18-11/8, 2021) to reach 11,000.
It took just over two weeks (11/8/-11/24, 2021) to reach 12,000.
It took a little over two weeks (11/24-12/8, 2021) to reach 13,000.
It took exactly two weeks (12/8-12/22) to reach 14,000.
It took just over two weeks (12/22/2021-1/7/2022) to reach 15,000.
It took three days (1/7-1/10) to reach 16,000. *
It took two days (1/10-1/12, 2022) to reach 17,000.
It took slightly over two days (1/12-1/15) to reach 18,000.
It took almost four days (1/15-1/19) to reach 19,000.
It took five days (1/19-1/24) to reach 20,000.
*Numerous home testing kits began to be made available beginning during this period.

I am writing this on Monday, January 31, prior to tonight’s scheduled release of new figures. I expect that we will break 21,000; if so, that makes seven days (one week) to get our latest thousand cases.

Now I loudly proclaim that I am NOT a doctor or an epidemiologist. I’m a historian and an administrator, so I’m looking at these figures from those viewpoints only, and am fully open to correction from those who actually know better (as opposed to those who just like to THINK they know better – and I don’t need any Laetrile, either, thank you.)

It took quite a while to reach our first thousand, perhaps because early spread takes a while to trek across the countryside, and also because testing regimes were only being developed and implemented – in other words, it seems plausible that the number of cases was actually higher, as some would have been undetected and even unsuspected.
The pace picked up beginning in October of 2020 – partly perhaps because the onset of early winter kept people inside more – a standard vector for respiratory diseases. There was also by this time a weariness with preventive measures including mask discipline. This carelessness was also fueled by President Trump’s erratic or uncertain behaviors. To many people, insisting that there was no real problem was a sign of quasi-religious loyalty to Trump. Many of them got sick, and in many cases passed the virus on to others. Herman Cain died. Trump himself had to be hospitalized, while dozens of his associates and family members also became ill.

In three months Steuben added 4000 cases, then things started to slow again as February dawned. People began getting outside again, and vaccines were finally being issued. Although multiple doses were called for, even a single shot provided some degree of protection, and perhaps people were encouraged to maintain discipline a little longer, with a light at the end of the tunnel.

Things looked good – it took four months to get another thousand cases! But the Delta variant helped push cases higher, and by November we also had the Omicron variant – generally less deadly, but vastly more communicable. By mid-September Steuben was consistently identifying a thousand new cases every two weeks – besides Omicron, we were also returning to “flu weather,” and its typical rise in respiratory diseases.

In January, the pace went UP – a thousand cases every two or three days! Quite possibly part of the reason was the widespread release of home test kits – with more people being tested, the numbers unsurprisingly increased.

Things have started to improve. It took four days to reach from 18,000 to 19,000… five days from 19,000 to 20,000… at least seven days from 20,000 to 21,000. That’s still not even as good as it was in the four months (almost) from mid-September to early January. But it may be the herald of better times – IF we all act sensibly, esteeming others more highly than ourselves, and doing the best we can for those around us – rather than insisting that we will just suit ourselves and take our chances. The problem with that is, that we’re also taking OTHER people’s chances. Without giving them a choice.

Our Place Names — Where Did They Come From?

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Where do our names come from? PLACE names, that is.
Hard to tell, sometimes! Such facts are often lost in the mists of time, perhaps supplanted by entertaining tales.
Supposedly a mother along the Chemung River was constantly calling for her little girl, ELMIIIIIIIRA! So when time came to pick an official name (for the post office), local folks chose the name of the outdoor-loving little girl.
Maybe. But at least as likely, maybe not. All entertaining stories about place names need to be taken with a healthy amount of skepticism.
The Horseheads story, on the other hand, actually seems legit. Sullivan’s army, pulling out for Easton after devastating the Iroquois country, decided that they had to move faster, and so shot their exhausted horses. The pile of skulls was a landmark on the river for many years.
Likewise it seems that Penn Yan may well have been named for the Yankees and Pennsylvanians who settled there, though the tale of the solomonic elder rebuking their parochialism, and bringing about conciliation, may be a fable.
Some places (Big Flats, Watkins Glen) were named for landmarks or geographic features, and others (Painted Post) for landmarks created by people.
Absentee landowners (Bath, Pulteney, Corning, Troupsburg) were always popular. So were landowners actually on the ground – Erwin, Cameron, Dansville, Lindsey, Rochester. Heroes of the Revolution (Steuben, Schuyler, Wayne, Monroe, Washington, Lafayette) were frequently honored.
Early land agent Charles Williamson may have started the custom of naming promising sites (Geneva, Lyons, Naples, Moravia) after prominent European communities. It was surely a marketing ploy, offering a hint of heritage and stability to what were sometimes just spots in the forest.
Steuben County has a knot of names from the Mexican War (Fremont, Sonora, Buena Vista, Monterey, Rough and Ready), and at least one (Atlanta) from the Civil War.
Such names as Chemung, Cohocton, Keuka, Tuscarora, and MANY more came (though often mangled) from the languages of those who were Native here before Europeans muscled in.
Of course western New York is famed for the classical names scattered across its landscape… Syracuse, Attica, Palmyra, Marcellus, Manlius, Macedon. Thus may gave been in an effort to lift the tone of the place. The same is true with a community named for the sweet vale of Avoca so famed in song, or those named for poets and literary figures (Dryden, Addison).
The arrival of railroads (bearing tourists!) may have helped fuel an improve-our-names trend in the late 19th century. Would you rather spend the summer at Poor Lake… or Loon Lake? Mud Lake… or Lamoka? We can find plenty of other changes such as Little Lake-Waneta Lake, Crooked Lake-Keuka Lake, Bloods-Cohocton.
More than anybody else the railroads and the post office needed names. Sometimes spots HAD no names, and needed to be supplied. Other times the names were unprintable, and had to be replaced. Railroad magnates such as Mr. Sayre were probably quite pleased to find themselves on the map.
Look at those timetables, look at old maps, and you’ll find old, almost-forgotten names, such as Beartown, Taggarts, and Lumber City. Likewise open up the Meteorological Service web site, and click on random locations in your county, and you’ll start to wonder: just what were Hermitage and Haverling Heights? Bennetts, Purdy Creek, Lent Hill, Cold Springs? And what happened to them? They were “places” once, some with their own schools and stores and churches, all now vanished like snow on the desert face.

Losing the Election

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Here’s something to think about. Half the people who have ever run for president – lost.

In other words, losing isn’t all that big a surprise. One or the other of them’s going to do it. As far as I can tell part of today’s ongoing furor is the idea that Trump couldn’t POSSIBLY have lost, so the whole thing must have been rigged!

A lot of times when such cries arise, they stem from wishful thinking. Someone WANTS it to be true, and so therefor it MUST be true.

Other times it just means you need to get out more. Pressured (and even commanded) by those who profit from hosing gasoline on the fire, we have increasingly sorted and segregated ourselves in our worship, living patterns, news sources, schooling, and even entertainment. If your person lost, you may be shocked, because EVERYBODY was in favor of him or her, so it couldn’t be possible. The reality is, most of us have just been spending time with our own crowd, and didn’t recognize how passionately the other folks feel… or how many of them there are.

Our second president, John Adams, lost when he ran for re-election. So did Martin Van Buren, who in many ways was the founder of our party system. So did Millard Fillmore. So did Grover Cleveland. THEODORE ROOSEVELT. So did William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George Herbert Walker Bush.

To be in with there John Adams and Theodore Roosevelt is to be in very exalted company! No shame there! Hardly anyone can say it! It’s something to BRAG about!

Trump is part of yet another select group: the five men who lost their elections, but had to go in through the back door to the White House anyway, because of the idiocy of our electoral college system. Rutherford B. Hayes announced right from the start that he would not run again. (Being wounded THREE TIMES in the Civil War perhaps conferred a certain perspective to Hayes.)

John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Harrison, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump all went to the well a second time, after being rejected the first time around. In all of our 230-year history, Bush II is the only president who ever pulled that off.

Losing a presidential election puts you in with war heroes like Bob Dole, John Kerry, and John McCain; statemen like Adlai Stevenson, Barry Goldwater, and Charles Evans Hughes. American titans such as Daniel Webster, Stephen A. Douglas, William Jennings Bryan (three times!) and Henry Clay (FOUR times!!!!) all failed to make the mark. Even with his single term, Trump beats them all. They never got to the White House at all.

So, we’ve had 45 presidents in our history. Eight of them died in office, leaving 37. Five more declined to run again, for various reasons, leaving 32. And 14 of those 32 lost their bids for a second (or third) term. In other words, out of our 45 presidents, only 19 ever won re-election. (The numbers don’t quite seem to add up because TR won one and lost one.)

Which means that if you become president, you’re most likely NOT to get re-elected. For those who lost the election but got in by the electoral college, only one out of five has ever won re-election. So Trump, disappointed though he understandably is, has a LOT of company. And some of them were truly great Americans. Losing the election is a sore disappointment, but it’s no shame.

Enjoy Your January!

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January can be a cold, hard month. It’s the depth of winter here in our parts… the harshest season usually being New Year’s Day through Valentine’s Day.
Not only that, but it’s an unrelieved season. In two months we gallop through the public revelry of Halloweeen, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve – plus all their attendent shopping, movies, TV shows, costumery, parades, and more.
True, New Year’s DAY is also a holiday, but mostly it’s just a day off to gird your loins before returning to the grind; unless you’re in Pasadena, there’s probably not much actually going on. And there WON’T be, holiday-wise, until Easter, because Valentine’s Day, pleasant though it may be, just doesn’t cut it as a major holiday. Nor, indeed, does Epiphany on January 6. In our own time, though, February’s Super Bowl Sunday has emerged as a major festive (and secular) holiday.
January is named for Janus, the uniquely Roman god of avenues, gates, and doorways. He has an old face gazing backward, and a young face looking forward. He highlights those places and times in which we transition from one thing to another. “Ring out the old, ring in the new. Ring out the false, ring in the true.”
In most all consumer businesses, January is a down time after the boom sales of Halloween through New Year’s. The quiet can actually be welcome, but the retailer needs to plan ahead for the lower income. Even supermarket business goes down, in spite of the fact that people still need to eat. I guess we’ve all got a lot of leftovers.
Our local tourism business shrinks almost to nothing, given that we don’t have any near-at-hand winter sports venues. Places like Swain and Bristol Valley, on the other hand, love January, assuming the weather cooperates.
Some of our “snowbird” friends left a month or more back, while others stuck it out through Christmas. By now they’ve just about all scampered to the south.
January (and February) of 1940 saw huge snow storms, repeatedly dumping a foot or two. The girls at Davenport orphanage went to school by sleigh for a week.
Ice fishing is big in January, just as ice cutting USED to be, in the days before reliable electricity. Parts of Keuka and Seneca Lakes often freeze over, especially in Keuka’s shallower Branches. Waneta Lake sometimes freezes thick enough for auto races.
January of 1996 saw heavy snow, followed by melt, followed by freeze, followed by heavy rain. Followed, unsurprisingly, by extensive floods, especially in Kanona, Corning, and Campbell.
Just after midnight on January 3, 1877, fire was discovered at the Arcade Restaurant on Pine Street in Corning. Trouble at the pumping station cut off the water supply, and the fire soon roared from Market Street to what we now call Dension Parkway. The restaurant, three clothing stores, a grocery, and a tobacco shop were lost. Erie Railroad station, a dry-goods store, and a lawyers’ office were damaged.
Less than three weeks later, on January 23, snow crushed the roof of Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, wrecking the building, a former Corning schoolhouse, beyond repair. Five feet and four inches of snow had fallen since the last thaw, and country roads were snowbound on every hand.
In January of 1908 Glenn Curtiss and his friends were designing their first airplane. On New Year’s Day 1911 he and his wife drove an electric car in the Rose Parade, taking a break from seaplane experiments at San Diego.
January also honors the birth of a great American, Dr. Martin Luther King. It’s more a day for reflection and action, though, rather than a time of revelry. But there’s no reason for gloom in January. The days are getting noticeably longer, and you don’t need Madison Avenue to tell you when it’s holiday time. No one else can MAKE you happy. You can do that for yourself! Take a day, or an evening, or a weekend, plan ahead, and do what makes YOU happy. Enjoy your January!

2021 — The Year in Review

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As we review last year’s top stories, the two at the VERY top carry over from 2020. Last year at this time I noted “a bizarre slow-motion coup” attempt. It became violent on January 6, when a Trump-incited mob attacked our Capitol to force Congress to throw out the election, and somehow keep Trump in the White House. Trump officials badgered Members of Congress by phone even as they were under attack. Multiple people died, but Congress reconvened later that night and completed the ceremony of certifying the election.
Even so, some two-thirds of Republicans in the House voted against doing so. According to Tom Reed, numbers of them told him that they know perfectly well that Biden won the election, but they’re afraid of people back in their home districts.
Trump finally left town, and Biden was inaugurated with Pence on hand, but in numerous states Republican legislatures, looking ahead to THIS year’s elections, are taking steps to limit voting, stop many people from voting, gerrymander districts even further, and (in some proposals) give themselves broad power to rewrite election results. Trump was impeached for an unprecedented second time, and 60 senators, including 10 Republicans, voted against him, but 67 total were required to convict.
The other big story, of course, is the still-ongoing COVID pandemic. Vaccines at last became available, but the Delta and Omicron variants pushed numbers up again, as did growing laxity in preventive measures such as masking. In November and December Steuben County saw a thousand new cases every two weeks. About 67% of Steubeners have had either had the virus or the shots, so about two-thirds should have some level of immunity. Even so, hospitals remain swamped, begging people to stay away except in direst need.
In other local news, convicted child-killer Eric Smith was paroled after 25 years. Joshua Horein, who pleased guilty to killing a 15 year-old classmate, was not. The Village Tavern in Hammondsport went up for sale. Acela railroad cars rumble out of Hornell, while Bath trembles on the brink of a possible new factory, possible new Amazon facility, and possible apartment conversion in the old Lyon school.
Family Life Ministries announced plans to build an extensive new facility in Gang Mills. Powerful summer storms caused severe flooding along the Pennsylvania state line. The disused Greenwood school had to be reopened to accommodate students from the damaged Troupsburg school.
Father afield, an unusually powerful and long-lasting tornado left a trail of deaths and destruction across several states. Kamala Harris, a child of immigrants, became the first vice-president to be a woman, OR of Asian descent, OR of African descent. Andrew Cuomo resigned his office under sexual-harassment charges, making Kathy Hochul our first female governor. After 20 years the U.S. pulled our troops out of Afghanistan, followed by a Taliban takeover. Biden labored to repair international relations damaged under Trump. America’s drift away from organized religion seemed to become a rush. Ninety year-old William Shatner went into space (the final frontier!).
The National Rifle Association sought bankruptcy protection. Vigilantism got a boost when Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of having committed any crime by killing two people and crippling a third while he was “defending” against a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Texas enacted a harsh new anti-abortion law, evading constitutional law by giving enforcement power to vigilantes and civil courts, rather than government officials. On the other hand, police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of having murdered George Floyd as he pleaded for breath. Three men were convicted for killing Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.
Last year we said goodbye to sports titans Tommy Lasorda, Hank Aaron, Al Unser, Bobby Unser, Leon Spinks, and John Madden; performers Cicely Tyson, Christopher Plummer, Gavin McLeod, Ed Asner, Tommy Kirk, Mort Sahl, Betty White, and Hal Holbrook; commentators Larry King and Rush Limbaugh; newsman Roger Mudd; controversial publisher Larry Flint; Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy; civil rights fighter Vernon Jordan; government and political leaders Bob Dole, Ramsey Clark, and Harry Reid; authors bell hooks, Eric Carle, Anne Rice, Joan Didion; convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff; committed lawyer F. Lee Bailey; and songster Stephen Sondheim.
Locally we were left without community spark plugs Marcia States, Laura Jones, and Harry Reynolds; former county legislators Don Creath and John Walsh; museum professionals Frank Starr and Jane Shadel Spillman; Barney Hubbs, from the wine and tourism industries; and Hazel Rittenhouse… godmother of many publications, and guiding light of the Bath Area Writers Group. Safe journey, old friends. And a safe voyage THIS year, for us all.