Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • Page 13

Local The Evening Press Binghamton, N. Y. I and 1.5 inches was reported to have fallen at Edwin A. Link Field. The snowfall expected to taper off by this evening.

Related photo, Page 2B. EST Winter haze JOHN BOLAS Today's snowfall made many roads dangerous and provided a white haze for many motorists and residents, including those along Bernard Boulevard in the Town of Union, above. Up to two inches of snow was reported in downtown Binghamton today More help for poor STATE Page 6B section a THURSDAY Nov. 29, 1984 Around the region Chenango N. Berlin school plan OK'd NEW BERLIN New Berlin Central School District voters have appoved by more than a three-toone margin a $648,790 proposal to construct a square-foot, four-classroom addition to the elementary school.

The plan also includes provisions to expand the building by 2,000 square feet for administrative offices. Voters approved the proposal, 120-38. The additions will be constructed at the north end of the school and include a computer laboratory, a special education room, a multi-purpose room and a room for the library. former library facilities were recently converted into classroom space and library books are housed in a storage area and dispensed to students by the librarian visiting the individual classrooms. School officials say the present book storage area is inaccessable to students.

The computer room will allow for inclusion of computer science as dictated in the state's Regents Action Plan, according to school officials. The -purpose classroom will be used for a number of activities including art and music and extensions of other programs. The special education room will enable the district to stop busing special education students to the high school for classes. The proposal is scheduled to be completed without additional cost to the district taxpayers utilizing state aid and surplus budget money. Delaware Building campaign begins SIDNEY The Sidney Memorial Public Library Board of Trustees will undertake a $100,000 fund-raising campaign next year to assist with money needed for a building campaign.

The campaign is scheduled to start Feb. 1, 1985, but a special account has already been established at the National Bank and Trust Co. Sidney offices for people wishing to make tax deductible donations this year. Any contributions toward the new construction will immediately be deposited in the building fund account, according to Edward Roelle, chairman of the fund-raising committee. "While the actual fund drive will not begin until Feb.

1, 1985, many people have expressed a desire to give now and again in 1985 to take advantage of two taxable years," said Janice Vartuli, library director. The exact costs of the new library are still unknown, but it is estimated the total project will be in the neighborhood of $400,000 to $500,000, according to Vartuli. The architectural firm of Myron Jordan Associates is scheduled to present findings to the Library Board Dec. 10, after which time board members will meet with village engineer John Woodyshek to determine what ideas to hold down costs. The library board, headed by President Lewis R.

Johnson also is seeking additional money from New York State and public and private foundations which donate to libraries to assist in new construction and renovation. Donations are being accepted and can be mailed to Library Building Fund, Sidney Memorial Public Library, Sidney, N.Y., 13830. Tioga Woman hurt in car crash NEWARK VALLEY Tioga County sheriff's deputies are investigating an accident that injured at least one woman this morning. Laura Felice, 20, Smullen Newark Valley, was taken to Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton after the 8 a.m. accident on Route 38 near the Day and Night convenience store in Newark Valley.

A hospital spokesman said Felice was being evaluated in the emergency room and that no further information was available. It was not known whether anyone else was involved in the accident. Short-circuit linked to fire SMITHBORO A -circuit in a 220-volt power line has been cited as the cause of a fire that destroyed a henhouse and killed 18,000 chickens at Kemp's Poultry Farm on West Whitcomb Hill Road last Friday, said Tioga Center Fire Chief James R. Houseknect. Although damage was too extensive to determine what caused the short, Houseknect said it isn't unusual for barn fires to start when rats chew on electrical wires.

More than 100 firefighters from seven Tioga County fire departments battled the blaze. Tomorrow Some community residents are organizing a benefit for a girl who's been ill for most of her life. Inside Births 2B Obituaries State 4B, 6B, 7B N.Y. numbers 8-4-8 Lotto: 2, 12, 14, 29, 30, 33. Supplementary: 24 Pa.

numbers 1-5-6 Big 4: 7-0-2-8 If you have a story idea, question or comment regarding news from Broome and Susquehanna counties, call City Editor Matt Nozzolio or assistant city editors Tom Frazier or Fred Gaskins at 798-1151 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Rating questioned Page.11B BUSINESS Food is suspected in illness at SUNY By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI The dining hall will remain closed and MARK WINHELD until Marriott officials complete their Food is the prime suspect in an ill- own investigation, Gaffney said. ness that struck more than 100 students The illness appears to have subsided, yesterday at the State University of she said. New York at Binghamton, Broome Gaffney said the fact that the stricken County Health Commissioner Kathleen students were from the same dormitory Gaffney said today.

complex "makes food a very high susFour area ambulance crews were pect, but that doesn't necessarily rule forced to resort to disaster procedures out other possibilities. when a mysterious stomach ailment "Tracking down something like this hospitalized some of the stricken stu- usually takes a few days," Gaffney dents with symptoms ranging from said. nausea to immobilizing abdominal "It was morbid," said Michael P. pains. Flanagan, a freshman who lives in State health officials today began in- Bingham Hall.

"You got nauseous, and won't find the exact cause for a few down the hall who were going to get the vestigating the illness, but probably you could watch and see other people days, Gaffney said. Meanwhile, the same thing. It was like a Marriott which runs the univer- Isolated cases of the illness began to sity's food service, this morning volun- appear Tuesday evening and increased tarily closed the Newing College dining after 8:30 last night, said David L. Anhall, Gaffney said. See ILL, 3B Crabb salutes SCORE for small business aid By SUSAN E.

LUNN Binghamton Bureau With the help of the Service Corps of Retired Executives, Rhonda Plunkett and Dorothea Cornwell were able to expand Backscratchers, their fledgling business, from a small shop in downtown Binghamton's Midtown Mall to a larger store nearby at Washington Binghamton Mayor Juanita M. Crabb today thanked two representatives of SCORE, Donald Killian, the chairman of SCORE chapter 217, and William Gansdorf, the district representative to SCORE. The organization counseled Backscratchers, which started out selling porcelain fingernails, so that it was able to expand into a company which will also provide hair and cosmetic services. SCORE is a non-profit agency sponsored by the federal Small Business City lights stealing stars from a astronomers By RICK MARSI The heart of darkness, says astronomer Jay Sarton, is hard to find these days. Don't look for it in the night sky over Binghamton, says Sarton, who runs Roberson Center's Kopernik Observatory on Underwood Road in Vestal.

If you stand on a hill at midnight, looking down at the Triple Cities, you'll see an eerie glow that hangs over the Susquehanna River valley a glow that radiates upward, brightening the sky. Lights. Thousands of them. Security lights. Street lights.

Advertising lights. Lights that blaze all night, Sarton says. Lights that steal the stars from astronomers. At the Kopernik Observatory, located on a hilltop 15 miles south of downtown Binghamton, such outdoor lighting presents a chronic problem, Sarton says. When observers there train telescopes on the northern horizon, city lights obliterate 80 percent of the night sky.

Directly overhead, viewing conditions are better but still not good: the lights still reduce ideal viewing conditions from the observatory Vestal spelling bee stings some elementary students By HATTIE BERNSTEIN Soon, however, on There was no one-room schoolhouse ble," half of the gallery and no prim schoolmarm with martinet nated. There were ways, but yesterday afternoon at the then three, then two. African Road Elementary School in Vestal the old tradition of the school Shalini Chander, spelling bee was revived. Tioga Hills School, Almost 100 children in grades one at her parents, through six participated in the district- Chander of 25 Elmwood wide final competition which followed who sat in the school contests held two weeks earlier. daughter during the June Bergerman, a parent volunteer, the petite, dark-haired was a proctor in the third con- face in a serious test.

She smiled often as the lithe and Each time Bergerman peppy third-graders filed into the room to spell a word, she like so many her buzzing bees. Her voice Ruth Britto-Pacumio, was soft, presence gentle and at Vestal Hills and unthreatening. Ronald and Zenaida "Hello boys and girls. My name is 825 Dickinson Drive, Mrs. Bergerman," she said.

"I'm the ing for a close second one who's going to give you the words two spelled on, their today." tors growing restless, The rules came next: how another first place and Ruth parent, Janet Hogan, would pull a piece "The best part was of paper from the blue coffee can; how dering who would Bergerman would say the word aloud, said after the contest then use it in a sentence. There were simple words first, a Lynne Wells of practice really, and every boy and girl mother of Owen in each of the three rows spelled his or at the Clayton Avenue her word correctly. When the first words her son had round came up from the coffee can, the easy ones. "There real competition began. The heat was list that finally, on.

right," she said. Do bearded men During the last couple of years, when I'm far away from people who know me, I've tried to cultivate a beard. I'm way out in the country, so I don't shave. I have this friend who accompanies me on these furtive trips alongshore and occasionally she will say to me, "You haven't I am too embarrassed to tell her I am trying to raise a beard, so I shave. Then the household settles down until my next try.

I have for many years looked with envy upon men who have the determination not to shave, but lately I'm not too sure that I admire them. James Gleick, who is an assistant metropolitan editor of The New York Times, has written a thoughtful article that includes this paragraph: "A psychiatrist friend says that, professionally speaking, she associates beards with masculine insecurities or a desire to hide. She thinks their removal (Mr. Gleick shaved his beard off) as a healthy sign. Still, she notices that an awful lot of her male colleagues are hiding their faces (or hiding their masculine insecurities) in the manner of their profession's godfather." That would be Sigmund Freud.

Administration that offers free counseling to people who run or are starting up a new business. Rhonda Plunkett, one of the partners in the company, said Backscratchers was able to expand from three employees to nine. Killian said about 30 retired executives make up chapter 217 of SCORE, which, along with other SCORE chapters across the nation, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Backscratchers is one of the first minority businesses to be helped by SCORE locally. Plunkett said Backscratchers went into operation in April, moving into the Washington Street Mall site at the end of October.

Besides the financial and management counseling done by SCORE, Backscratchers also received a loan of $9,500 at percent for three years from the Binghamton Local Development Corp. in late October. by 20 percent to 30 percent. Sarton says he is no Don Quixote. He realizes many of these lights are necessary.

As for those that aren't, he says he just hasn't had time to go seeking them out and asking that they be turned off. Until now. Now is the time to prepare for Halley's Comet, says Sarton. Last seen in 1910 following a 76-year elliptical orbit around the sun -the most famous of all comets is swing. ing toward earth again.

It should be faintly KEITH HITCHENS Brad Clayton, a student at the Tioga Hills Elementary School, tries to spell a word a word loudspeakers with permanent brackets, Kudgus said. visible to "naked eye" observers in Broome and surrounding counties during its. prime viewing months of March and April, 1986. There's a catch, however. The comet which should appear low on the Southern horizon as a faint, fuzzy blob with a head as big as a full moon will be visible only under dark sky conditions.

To make matters worse, Sarton says, the brightening effects of city lights are worst near the horizon. See COMET, 2B Sounds of the season return to the Avenue the word "eligihad been elimifour children left, a third-grader at did not turn to look Krishna and Sudha Drive, Vestal, audience behind their match. Instead, little girl set her expression. called on her spelled it right. a -grader the daughter of Britto-Pacumio of Vestal, was spellwith Shalini.

The former competiuntil Shalini won came in second. when I was wonwin," Eric Anderson was over. Keenan Drive, Vestal, Wells, a third-grader School, said the to learn were not are words on that I'm going to spell have during yesterday's Spelling Bee. said. something So that's what I've been doing, trying to raise my beard.

I've been attempting to get rid of my insecurity by ducking under a bush. I think I'd look pretty handsome behind a beard, but nobody will sympathize. I hang around wharves a lot on the Atlantic Coast and I have studied beards. There is the Maine beard, for instance. This beard swoops down the sideburns, encircles the chin and stops abruptly.

There is no mustache. This a clean, fine beard, and its wearer stares at the sea with a steely challenge. Then there is the academic beard. This flows all over, like a spring tide covering a marshland along a bay. The owner of this beard wouldn't be found dead near a marsh, but it impresses his students in the community colleges, where they By SUE WUETCHER Western Broome Bureau Shoppers on Washington Avenue in Endicott again are being greeted with seasonal music as they go about their holiday chores.

The village last week installed loudspeakers along the avenue, after providing conduits for sound that will enable merchants to play holiday tapes, said Eugene A. Kudgus, village public works superintendent. The street had been silent for more than a year after loudspeakers were removed during the first phase of the reconstruction from North to Monroe streets. Work continued this summer on the second phase, from Monroe to Broad streets. Merchants could not afford to reinstall the sound system last Christmas season.

Kudgus said the village more or less destroyed the old sound system during the reconstruction, and was obligated to replace it. "The village enabled us to have music for the holiday season," said David Roth, owner of Danel 50 Washington Ave. Roth said merchants will play "pleasant" music during the rest of the year. The music had been played along the avenue for seven or eight years, with the reconstruction work providing the only interruption, he said. Village workers fashioned brackets to mount the original speakers to light poles along the street with the thought that the village will order new to hide? Tom Cawley are studying Lit.

1. He never combs it, and crumbs tend to gather in it. I feel an awful lot of guilt because I am trying to conceal my face behind these sparse hairs, so have given up. The hell with it, I say, and now I shave every morning and look like everybody else I meet in buses, on subways and in the post office. What interested me in beards is a book I've been reading, which includes a lot of photographs.

Chin beards, with straggly mustaches, were popular in the day of John C. Breckinbridge, vice president under the late James Buchanan, but he looks rather seedy. The fist mayor of Binghamton, Abel Bennett, had a fierce beard, which gave him the apearance of a surly Santa Claus. He was a banker, and looked upon the world jaundicely. The most benign beard festooned the chin of Schuyler Colfax, who was Ulysees S.

Grant's vice president (Grant also tried a beard, without much success). Mr. Colfax, from Indiana, once was descried by Abraham Lincoln as a "little This whole history of beards has put me off, but, then, I admire Mr. Lincoln, who grew one hell of a great beard himself. I'll just have to buy more razor blades, which are expensive..