Photo of Otsego Lake taken today from the exclusive Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, New York

Leon R. Koziol, J.D.

Author, Advocate and Attorney

I call it “Little Lake George” due to its striking resemblance to the Queen of American Lakes 90 minutes north of here. This is the home of our first native born novelist, James Fenimore Cooper, who authored the Leatherstocking Tales, most notably the Last of the Mohicans in 1826. It became a blockbuster film in 1992 at Lake George, site of the bloody siege of Fort William-Henry during the French and Indian War.

Sometimes with the ever-complicating world we now live in, you simply got to get away from it all to keep your mind sane. And this hotel in the middle of nowhere in rural upstate is ideally located between Manhattan and my home, only one hour away. I’m hoping my respite here for a few days will help inspire my book projects and reform efforts to achieve successes, a fitting backdrop if nothing else.

That backdrop thrust me into a spectator role when a sandlot game broke out among future inductees to the nearby Baseball Hall of Fame. While moms, dads and little girls cheered, the school-age participants brought me back to a simpler time when I played high school ball here against the Cooperstown teams near this same picturesque, hastily formed, ballfield.

I was hard at work at the fire pit (stadium) when those in my vicinity distracted me to a point of shared conversation. I could not help but commend them for sponsoring such a spontaneous, family-style affair among strangers in the tradition of our great nation. This is the way it was, and the way it should be today to repair all the moral decline of our deteriorating society.

Oh to be a boy again !