Oneonta Historical Society to hold discussion
The small toys in McDonald's Happy Meals are already prized by some collectors, said Dominick Reisen, president of the Otsego County Historical Association.
The Greater Oneonta Historical Society is sponsoring a panel discussion at 7:30 tonight titled, "The Past, the Present, and the Future: What Should We Be Saving Now?"
The event will be held in the third floor meeting room of Huntington Memorial Library.
Now is the time to weigh what and how things should be preserved, whether it is the mundane objects of daily life, buildings with historical significance or the vistas seen from area roadways, Reisen said.
GOHS President Bob Brzozowski will moderate the panel discussion, which will include Reisen, Hanford Mills Museum Director Liz Callahan and auctioneer Kevin Herrick, owner of Lettis Auctions.
"We see this as possibly being a series," Brzozowski said.
It is hoped, he said, that strategies of preservations and perhaps even active projects could result from the panel discussion.
"In our affluent society, with each person having a wealth of material goods - and the U.S. population projected to reach one billion by the end of the century at the current rate of growth - what will be of value and of interest to future generations is a real issue," Brzozowski said.
Because this area has been largely spared the development seen in places closer to larger cities, there are a lot of opportunities to save architecture and landscapes, Resien said.
But Reisen said he doesn't believe that everything that is old should be saved.
"We don't necessarily need to preserve every house of the common farmer," Reisen said.
From a landscape perspective, there has not been a lot of change in Otsego County in the last 100 years, but the advent of baseball camps, the possibility of wind farms and other development could change that, Reisen said.
"There's a lot of external pressure on what has essentially been a rural county ever since Europeans first came here," Reisen said.
The urge to preserve comes from both those moving to the area and from families who have roots reaching back several generations, Reisen said.
"The vast majority of people coming to this area immediately get attracted to the old buildings and the rural landscape here," Reisen said. "A very large number of people who grew up in this area have a very innate understanding of this history."
When it comes to preserving smaller items related to daily life, one of the challenges is that we live in a "disposable" culture where items are used and then thrown away, Reisen said.
Just a few generations ago, people didn't throw things out nearly as much, he said.
Something like a Big Mac container _ like the canning jars from a hundred years ago _ will tell a story of what daily life was like in today's world.
"It will be interesting to see those sorts of mundane things," Reisen said.
There have also been a lot of technological advances in relatively short periods of time, Reisen said.
"A lot of things I remember as a child, my children look at and they are just astonished because they have no point of reference," Reisen said.
The discussion, which is open to the public, will include a question and answer period and focus on maintaining